Fenton's Winter (7 page)

"Who was that masked man
Mummy?" asked one of the assistants under his breath but loud
enough for everyone in the theatre to hear. Eyes met above masks
and twitching ears signalled smiles hidden behind gauze. A student
nurse giggled and Rose Glynn froze her with a stare. "Can we start
the count sir?" she asked.

"Yes Sister, thank-you."

Rose Glynn and her student
nurse ran through the swab and instrument count ensuring that all
were accounted for. The tally was agreed, the stitching completed
and the patient wheeled out into the recovery room. Two hours later
he was back in bed with his teddy bear and sleeping soundly. His
parents who had spent an anxious day at the hospital were able to
leave for home and their first good night's sleep for many
weeks.

At eight fifteen Staff nurse
Carol Mileham noticed Timothy Watson become restless in his sleep
and went over to him. She smoothed the hair back from his forehead
and found that he was very hot. Half turning to go and call the
duty houseman she was stopped by a gurgling sound from the boy's
throat; she bent down to listen and a cascade of bright red blood
erupted from his mouth, drenching her apron and splashing silently
on to the sheets.

The surgical team and Timothy
Watson had their unscheduled reunion in theatre number four and the
atmosphere was very different from the previous occasion. There
were no smiles, no jokes and no music. The irregular blip of the
heart monitor probed the team's nerves like a dentist's drill, the
spikes constantly dodging anticipation. Rogan had come directly
from home on getting his houseman's call. 'Massive internal bleed,'
had been the message that had brought him racing to the hospital
still in carpet slippers.

Timothy's chest was re-opened
and the flesh held back by retractors. "Ye gods," murmured Rogan,
"He's awash...Suck please!"

Rogan's assistant started
clearing the blood with a vacuum suction tube while he himself
dabbed with cotton swabs. A nurse changed the transfusion pack for
the second time.

"Mop!" Rogan inclined his head
for Rose Glynn to wipe away the sweat from his brow but only to see
it reappear almost immediately. Rogan was losing the battle and the
tension in his voice conveyed that fact to everyone. Tension like
laughter was infectious.

"He's leaking like a sieve."
Exasperation took over from anxiety as Rogan realised that there
was nothing he could do. "There's something wrong with his blood
damn it...I can't stop it."

Four minutes later the heart
monitor lapsed into a long, continuous monotone. The tension
evaporated leaving silence in its place. "Thank-you Sister," said
Rogan quietly. He lowered his mask and took off his gloves, this
time slowly and deliberately. "Get some blood to the haematology
lab will you." His assistant nodded. Rose Glynn looked at her
student nurse and saw that her eyes were moist. She had planned to
have words with the girl about her earlier giggling episode. She
resolved not to bother.

Malcolm Baird, consultant
haematologist at the Princess Mary, phoned Rogan personally next
morning but only to say, rather cryptically thought Rogan, that
there was to be a meeting of all consultants at eleven thirty in
the medical superintendent's office to discuss the Watson case. He
should bring his case notes.

Charles Tyson was last to
arrive at the meeting and got the least comfortable seat as his
just desert. He apologised for his lateness but did not offer up
any reason. Cyril Freeman, medical superintendent at the Princess
Mary for the past seven years opened the meeting with a short
history of Timothy Watson's illness leading up to his admission.
Rogan was invited to follow and duly gave his account of the
operation and the subsequently tragic, and ultimately fatal,
internal haemorrhage. He sat down again and Baird got to his feet
to make his report. "A thorough haematological examination of the
blood sample taken from the boy Watson has shown conclusively that
all coagulation potential had been lost, just like Daniels in fact.
A massive dose of an anticoagulant drug is indicated."

Tyson leaned forward putting
his elbows on the table to support his head. "So the bastard has
started on the patients now," he said.

Anger vied with gloom and
despondency around the table.

"What the hell are the police
doing anyway?" demanded George Miles from Radiology.

"Running round in circles if
you ask me," said Rogan.

"It's not easy in a case like
this," said orthopaedic surgeon Gordon Clyde.

"I didn't say it was," snapped
Rogan.

Freeman intervened to prevent
further disharmony. "Gentlemen," he said, "We have one overriding
and immediate problem to discuss." All eyes turned to him. "We have
to stop the press from finding out about the Watson boy. If the
papers get hold of this there will be blind panic amongst patients'
relatives."

"And people would be right to
panic," said Tyson.

"Would you mind explaining that
remark?" asked Rogan.

Tyson said calmly, "Let's not
pretend that we are taking steps to prevent unnecessary panic. The
truth is we are quite powerless to prevent another killing. This
hospital is entirely at the mercy of a lunatic."

The desire to argue was
stillborn on the lips of Tyson's colleagues; it was left to Fenwick
to break the silence. He said, "We have, of course, discussed the
option of closing the hospital with the police and local
authorities but we simply cannot do it. We are too big, there are
too many patients to transfer and, as the police point out, the
staff who went with our patients would almost certainly include the
killer. We would just be transferring the problem."

"So we sit tight and do
nothing?"

"Yes, and hope the police come
up with something," said Fenwick. The frown on Rogan's face
suggested a feeling shared by the others.

What about the Watson boy's
parents?" asked Tyson. "They are bound to talk to the press."

Fenwick looked uneasy. He
fidgeted with his pen before saying quietly, almost inaudibly,
"They don't know."

"What?" exclaimed Tyson and
Clyde together.

"They are not in possession of
the full facts surrounding their son's death, just that the boy
died after post-operative complications."

"But that is..." Rogan was
interrupted by Fenwick.

"Don't lecture me on ethics Mr
Rogan," he said firmly. The police suggested this course of action
and I agreed. There is no way we could expect the parents to
suppress their anger and keep this matter quiet. Just how much you
tell your own staff I leave to your discretion."

"I suggest nothing," said
Clyde.

"I think Tyson might disagree
with you," said Fenwick.

Tyson looked over his glasses
and nodded slowly. He said, "So far, my department has taken the
brunt of the strain in this affair. We have lost two people and
have had to live with the fear that this psychopath had a
particular grudge against the lab and, worse, that he might
actually be one of our number. This latest death makes both these
things less likely. I think that at least some of my people should
be told to lessen the tension. A murmur of agreement filled the
room.

"Sorry Tyson," said Clyde, "I
didn't think."

Tyson left the meeting and
walked back along the main corridor past the room where Susan
Daniels had died. Two nurses were standing talking outside it,
laughing about some idiosyncrasy in one of their colleagues. Tyson
excused himself and squeezed past. The voices dropped to a whisper
as he did so making him reflect on how often this had happened in
the past. It was part of being a hospital consultant; people tended
to stop speaking when you came near.

By the time he had left the
corridor and battled back to the lab against the wind and spitting
rain he had decided to tell Alex Ross, Ian Ferguson and Tom Fenton
about the Watson boy's death.

The relief that Fenton felt on
hearing that the killer had struck somewhere else was followed
almost immediately by a wave of guilt at having found a child's
death any cause for relief. His guilt doubled when he remembered
that Timothy Watson had been the name of the child who had spoken
to him in the corridor when Susan had died.

Before Tyson left the room
Fenton asked him a question about Neil Munro's personal research
project. Did he know what it was? Tyson replied that he did not.
Fenton opened Munro's notes and pointed to a page heading; it said,
C.T. "It's just that I thought that this might stand for Charles
Tyson?" he said.

There was a long silence while
Tyson looked at the page. "Doesn't mean a thing," he said and left
before Fenton had time to ask anything else.

Ian Ferguson came into the room
and put some keys down on the desk, "These were Neil Munro's lab
keys. Alex Ross asked me to give you them. He said something about
a locked cupboard?"

Fenton thanked him and added
that he had asked Ross about a locked cupboard in Munro’s room that
he had been unable to find a key for.

"If you find an electric timer
in it let me know will you? Neil borrowed mine and I Haven't been
able to find it since." said Ferguson.

"I'll check right now if you
like," said Fenton and got up to lead the way to Munro's lab.

Ferguson looked on while Fenton
tried the keys and found success at his third attempt. "There's no
timer here," said Fenton.

"Damn."

Fenton sifted through the
contents of the cupboard while Ferguson stood by. Test tube racks,
plastic tubes and beakers and several brown glass bottles with
chemicals in them. He examined the labels. Potassium oxalate,
sodium citrate, heparin, EDTA, Warfarin. "What do you make of
that?" he asked Ferguson.

"They're all anti-coagulants,"
said Ferguson quietly.

Fenton nodded. "Indeed they
are," he said softly.

"I don't understand," said
Ferguson.

Fenton did not reply for his
mind was working overtime in trying to work out why Munro had been
using anticoagulants at all and why they had been locked away out
of sight. It must have had something to do with his research
project, he concluded, but what? He needed time to think, time to
ponder the frightening coincidence that Munro had apparently been
working with the same sort of drugs and chemicals that had been
used to murder two people in the hospital.He looked at Ferguson who
was obviously thinking the same thing but was waiting for him to
say something first. Fenton said, “I think it might be best if we
didn't say anything about this for the moment."

"Of course," said Ferguson.
"Whatever you think."

Fenton took out the one
remaining bottle in the cupboard and looked at the label.
Dimethyl-formamide.

"What's that?" asked
Ferguson.

"A powerful solvent." said
Fenton.

Jenny came to the lab at five
thirty hoping for a lift home. Almost as soon as she entered the
downstairs hallway she became aware of the absence of Susan Daniels
who, in the past, had always come out of her lab to chat to her. A
junior went to find Fenton leaving her looking at the notices on
the general information board by the staff lockers. Ian Ferguson
saw her standing there and stopped to say hello. They spoke about
the weather until Fenton appeared at the head of the stairs to say
that he would be another ten minutes.

"She can come and speak to me
until you're ready," said Ferguson.

Jenny sat on a swivel stool in
Ferguson's lab while he continued to add small volumes of a
chemical to a long row of test tubes. She was about to ask what he
was doing when Ferguson opened the conversation by asking how
things were going on the wards. "We're busy," replied Jenny, "We're
at least a third under strength. People are frightened." Jenny
remembered what Fenton had told her about Ferguson applying for a
new job and felt embarrassed at what she had said. As casually as
possible she said, "I understand from Tom that you are applying for
an exciting new job?

"I was," replied Ferguson. "But
I've changed my mind. Tom made me realise just what it would mean
to the department."

"But if it was a good
opportunity..." said Jenny.

"There will be others," said
Ferguson.

"I see," said Jenny, although
she was not sure that she did.She hoped that Fenton had not been
too hard on him, had not embarrassed him into changing his mind for
in many ways Ferguson was very like Tom Fenton. He was tall and
dark and very intelligent. She supposed that, in the classical
sense, Ferguson was more handsome than Fenton for Fenton’s face was
too open, too frank, too honest to be considered handsome whereas
Ian Ferguson had the dark broody quality so beloved of women's
magazines. There was an air of introversion about him but it was
certainly not bred of shyness and there was nothing in his eyes to
suggest any lack of confidence.

The sound of Fenton's voice
outside the door prompted Jenny to get up and wish Ferguson
good-night adding that she hoped her presence had not distracted
him too much. "Not at all," replied Ferguson. "It's always nice to
see you."

They had missed the worst of
the rush hour traffic and were home in under fifteen minutes, both
agreeing that they had had a hard day.

"Let's eat out," said
Fenton.

"Where?"

"Somewhere nice. We haven't
been out for a meal in ages."

"Queensferry?"

"Why Queensferry?"

"I want to be near the sea,"
said Jenny. "There is one thing..." she added tentatively.

"I know. No bike. We'll get a
taxi."

Fenton got out of the shower
and towelled down. His body still bore signs of the tan that he had
acquired during the summer and frequent exercise in the form of
squash and running had kept the flab of sedentary occupation at
bay. Wrapping the towel round his waist he padded through to the
bedroom and opened the sliding wardrobe. He laid out his clothes on
the bed, a plain blue shirt, navy socks, black shoes, dark blue
tie, dark blue suit. He shrugged his shoulders as he put on the
jacket and looked at himself in the mirror to straighten his tie.
He flicked at his hair with his fingers but there was little he
could do about it. It was curly and unruly and that was that. Dark
curls licked along his forehead taking five years off his age.
Fiddling with his cuff links, he walked through to join Jenny.