The Surgeon's Case

by E. G. Rodford

  35

  WHEN I STOPPED BY KAMAL’S AFTER STANDING IN THE RAIN outside Kristina’s taking photos, I learnt that his lodger Chris was out with friends, since it was the normal thing to do on a Saturday night. So I left the folder from Galbraith’s case with Kamal for him to give to Chris to decipher, with a message for him to call me in the morning. I also asked Kamal to get me the name of Galbraith’s senior registrar, the one who did all the work and was rumoured to be self-medicating. I thought I might as well make a pretence at working for Mrs G; maybe Galbraith had told me the truth when he’d said that Aurora had seen him bring someone home from work. It would make sense that he was leading someone on romantically that he was leaning on professionally. He was certainly right about the effect an affair would have on his TV career, especially if he was sleeping with someone junior to him. I now wished that I’d pressed Aurora about it, but the last few days had been nuts and I seemed to have been reacting to events rather than trying to steer them – ever the story of my working life.

  Kamal and I had a couple of kebabs at a lively and unpretentious place on Mill Road and he told me about the woman he’d been on his way to visit when he’d stopped by yesterday – a radiologist at the hospital who’d been badgering him to go round for dinner.

  When I got home I set out a fresh chess game with the heavy pieces. My father had an old book of Armenian Grandmaster games and I planned to run through a Petrosian game from his successful 1963 World Championship challenge against Botvinnik. I also fired up my old computer, since I hadn’t checked my emails for days – not that anyone sent me emails. Olivia used to send me updates on their Greek restoration plans and for a while I had even followed her on Facebook until I realised everyone on Facebook was having a wonderful life and had wonderful children and wonderful partners and I didn’t. So I quit and immediately felt better.

  I poured myself a whisky, found some Bach on the radio, and played through the Petrosian-Botvinnik opening until the doorbell disturbed my peace. I took my drink and put it on the telephone table in the hall where I opened the drawer slightly to make sure the Taser was handy, then switched on the outside light and looked through the peephole. Stubbing. Sighing, I opened the door. She was in her cheap work suit, her hands in her jacket pockets.

  “What’s the rumpus?” I asked her.

  She nodded at the hall. “May I?”

  “If you must.” I led her through to the living room, picking up my drink and closing the table drawer with my hip as I passed so she wouldn’t see the Taser; I doubted she would turn a blind eye to my having it in my possession.

  “Would you like a drink or are you on duty?”

  “I am on duty, as it happens.” She sat in the depression left in the sofa by Badem. Her face was pale and she had grey rings forming under her eyes.

  “You don’t mind if I imbibe?” I said.

  “Have you been in an accident?”

  I pointed to my face. “You mean this?”

  “That and your car.”

  “Occupational hazard.” I sat in the armchair.

  “If you need to report an assault or accident I can point you in the right direction,” she said, distractedly.

  “Is this a continuation of our chat the other day?” Which reminded me. “Did you run the licence plate I gave you?” I asked.

  “No I didn’t, I’ve got more important things on at the moment.” She took out a black notebook from her jacket pocket and flicked through it.

  “Do you know an Aurora de la Cruz?”

  I tried to hide my alarm as she studied me with her professional face on, features expertly inexpressive, a face honed from doing hundreds of interviews.

  “Yes, I do,” I said.

  “When did you last see her?”

  There was little point in lying to her. “Yesterday afternoon, around two. I dropped her outside Terminal Three at Heathrow Airport.”

  “Heathrow. And she was headed where?”

  “Manila, via Hong Kong. Why, what’s happened?” She took out a smartphone and flicked through some stuff and then seemed to pinch the screen and peer at it.

  “Can you prove that you took her to the airport?” she asked. “A parking ticket, that sort of thing.”

  “You’ll find I’m on CCTV of the drop-off area outside Terminal Three. I didn’t have time to park.”

  “And you haven’t heard from her since you dropped her off?”

  “No.”

  She wrote something down. “I’m assuming she’s the same woman you told me you were going to meet outside the church in Cherry Hinton, the one whose briefcase you said was being stolen by two men?”

  “Why do you assume that?”

  “Because the person who reported the fracas outside the church was a Filipino and described the woman as Filipino. So unless you are having dealings with lots of Filipino women then I am assuming she is one and the same person.” She said this all very matter-of-factly and I nodded.

  “You told me she was your client, right?” she asked, cocking her head slightly. What with the events of the past few days and my brain being fried I was having trouble remembering what lie I’d told Stubbing.

  “Has something happened to her?” I asked.

  She blew air from her cheeks. “Someone reported a body by the side of the A14 just outside Cambridge. Looks like a hit and run.”

  “Jesus…” Fuck, fuck, fuck. I put my drink down as Stubbing spoke.

  “I’m trying to get footage from the traffic cameras that hopefully cover the spot, but it’s Saturday night and apparently people don’t work Saturday nights.”

  I stared at her as she spoke.

  “All she had on her was a printout of a ticket, with your email address and phone number on it. It checks out with what you told me about the flight, although obviously she didn’t catch it.”

  “You’ve checked, have you?” I asked, stupidly, in the vain hope that she was in Manila and that everything I’d heard or seen to the contrary was just a bad dream I’d had.

  “Oh, thanks for reminding me, Kocky, I’ll get right on it. Of course I bloody checked. I haven’t had a chance to get her status from Visas and Immigration but I imagine they’re another five-day-a-week work-shy outfit. Unless it’s terrorism-related of course, then everything is immediately available.”

  I nodded because I didn’t know what else to do in response to her little rant.

  “So what were you doing for her?” she asked.

  “Getting her to the airport,” I said.

  Given that Aurora was dead I didn’t really have much choice in divulging information to Stubbing. However, I wasn’t going to give it up too easily. Aurora linked to Galbraith who linked to Badem who’d just threatened Linda.

  “How did you identify the body if all she had on her was the printout?” I asked.

  “We haven’t. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping you could, somehow.”

  “What do you mean, somehow?”

  She paused, glanced at my drink and said, “Whatever hit her was big and heavy and it looks like she was dragged beneath it for a distance. She may even have been hit by more than one vehicle; it’s been known to happen. What I’m saying is that there’s not a lot to actually identify.”

  I felt queasy. I took a sip of my drink but it tasted like cleaning fluid.

  “She had black hair,” I said.

  “Yes, that would fit, and the skin colour would make sense. But it’s hardly an ID.” Stubbing tucked a stray strand from her scraped-back hair behind her ear and I remembered something.

  “She was here for a couple of hours before her flight. She borrowed a hairbrush that belonged to… that was left here.”

  She shrugged. “I can take some hairs but hair isn’t ideal for DNA testing. It all depends on whether the roots are intact.”

  “Shall I get it?” I asked.

  “Hang on, before we do that. There is an identifying mark on the body which you may have seen.”

  “OK?
”

  “A tattoo, on the lower back,” Stubbing said, touching her own lower back to demonstrate. “What’s called a tramp stamp.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Stubbing.”

  She looked at me questioningly and brandished her phone. “I have a photo of it.”

  “Shut up,” I said, forcefully. I stood up, livid. Then I remembered something: I had briefly seen Aurora naked from behind, when I’d taken her the towel.

  “Why are you smiling?” she asked.

  I was so relieved I didn’t even care what Stubbing would think. “She didn’t have a tattoo,” I said.

  “Are you sure? You didn’t just see her bending over with her knickers showing?”

  “Yes, definitely. I’ve seen her fully naked from behind.” There, put that in your smutty pipe and puff on it, Stubbing.

  Smirking briefly, she wrote something in her little book. I sat down again and took a sip of whisky. It tasted like whisky this time.

  “So,” she said. “I still have a dead unidentified woman on my hands. Which brings us to the question of how this woman had Aurora de la Cruz’s ticket on her person.”

  “I really don’t have a clue,” I said truthfully.

  “Why didn’t she catch the flight?”

  My relief at learning Aurora wasn’t dead was short-lived. I could tell Stubbing everything and someone might even be able to track Aurora down, although it wouldn’t be a high priority. But if found she would then become part of the system’s machinery in dealing with illegals. Plus there was Badem’s threat to factor in. Luckily I was spared the need to answer by the doorbell ringing.

  “That’ll be for me,” Stubbing said, rising. “I came straight from the RTA in a patrol car.” She went to the front door and I followed. A young policewoman in uniform, cap in hand, stood under the porch light. Stubbing stepped out and they had a whispered conversation. Stubbing turned to me.

  “We’ll speak again tomorrow. Make sure you’re available.”

  “If I’m not in, it’ll only be because I’ve gone to church,” I said, but her attention was already on other things.

  36

  OBVIOUSLY I WAS JUST AS CURIOUS AS STUBBING AS TO HOW Aurora’s ticket had ended up on the dead woman. Had she been trying to escape from a car? I recalled Leonard giving Badem two passports after coming from the airport. Where had he taken Aurora? After all, he hadn’t been that long behind me. He might even have made it back to Cambridge before me since I’d been driving without any urgency to cut down the noise and in-car turbulence created by the lack of a rear window. So he could have taken her somewhere before bringing the passports to Badem, somewhere off the A14.

  All this I mulled over while washing down a Sunday breakfast of bacon and egg with coffee. Afterwards, in the dining room, I uploaded the photos I’d taken last night of Kristina and her lover. The compact camera had a limited zoom lens but since it had been raining and people shouldn’t live in glass houses, I’d managed to capture a few choice pictures. They’d closed the blinds when things got seriously carnal but you got the very definite impression from the pictures that they weren’t planning a game of Scrabble.

  I made fresh coffee and wandered outside with it to check on the growth of my brambles. My neighbour was currently hacking at them where they were growing into his pristine garden and throwing the cuttings back over the fence. I was about to cough loudly so he knew I could see him when the landline rang inside.

  “Hello?”

  “George, it’s Kamal. Chris has had a read of that report and wants to talk to you.”

  “I can’t leave the house,” I said. “Why don’t you come over for coffee?”

  “I can’t,” he said. “But I’ll send Chris over.”

  I got dressed, stripped the bed and put the bedding in the washing machine. I then tidied up the kitchen and, when the bell went, let Chris in, who’d arrived on bicycle. I made coffee and we sat at the kitchen table. Chris was clutching the report and champing at the bit.

  “I read this last night when I was drunk and then again this morning just to make sure I’d read it correctly.”

  “You didn’t share any of it, did you? On Twitter or Facebook?” I asked.

  “Just because I’m young it doesn’t mean I’m stupid. Although I do think it should be made public,” he said.

  “Hang on there, Caped Crusader. Let’s hear what it is first, then I’ll decide what to do with it.”

  Chris looked at me with ill-disguised scorn. He composed himself and began.

  “What you have here is an audit report of all the operations done by Mr Galbraith and his team over the last two years. This period includes pre and post his TV series, so it gives a nice comparison of the time before and after. The report looks at complications, readmission rates, deaths, etcetera, and compares them to the national average right down to procedure level. What the director did was to get people to go through the physical notes, not just rely on the codes entered into the system which is done afterwards. It’s a huge amount of work.”

  “OK, you’ve lost me a little. What does the comparison with national rates show?”

  “Nothing. Overall, performance falls within acceptable parameters. You could even argue that, since this is Addenbrooke’s we’re talking about, it might attract more complex cases than other hospitals so in that sense the odds are stacked against it.”

  “So where’s the news?”

  “The news is the analyses within the consultant firm. Remember how I said that there are several surgeons operating under a consultant’s name?” I nodded. “Well, the analysis compares them all, and breaks down procedures according to who did them, and then compares that to the national average. So it’s looking at things at a micro level rather than a macro level.”

  “OK, so what does that show?”

  “That shows that Galbraith has the worst outcomes of all the surgeons in his team. He’s mediocre at best, but on some complex procedures he’s well below national average with higher death rates and readmissions.”

  “But—”

  He put up a hand to silence me. “Also, the number of procedures he’s been doing has almost halved since he started appearing on TV. His senior registrar has taken up the slack, and as a result her complication rate is on the rise. So overall things are declining, but looking at his firm as a whole it’s still performing OK.”

  He sipped his coffee and looked at the folder in front of him. I thought about what he’d said. I could understand now why Galbraith wanted the case back so badly.

  “How many copies, physical copies, of this would there be?”

  He shrugged. “The meeting planned for tomorrow was with the chief exec and clinical director, and Mr Galbraith would have had one. Where did you get this?”

  “I borrowed it,” I said, sliding it towards myself across the table.

  “Borrowed it from whom?”

  “Never you mind.”

  “What will you do with it?”

  “Nothing. I’m sure the chief executive is going to deal with it in his own way.”

  “Her own way.”

  “Her own way. You say she’s got a copy and presumably she understands the significance of it?”

  “I guess. But now that the person driving it has been taken out, it will just fall by the wayside. And Galbraith is a high-profile figure for the hospital. He’s wheeled out to meet the bigwigs from pharmaceutical companies who are building on campus.”

  “Look, I’m sure she’ll do the right thing. She has a duty of care to patients, or something like that.”

  He looked crestfallen, perhaps thinking he could storm the citadels of the hospital with the report and avenge his wronged director. He sat up as if struck by lightning.

  “Is that Galbraith’s copy?” he asked. Before I could answer he said, “Wait a minute, it can only be his. Is it him you’re working for?” He stood up, scraping the chair legs against the tiles.

  I laughed at the absurdity of this suggestion, bu
t it obviously wasn’t the reaction he was looking for. He stormed out of the kitchen and slammed the front door, making the wine glasses on the shelf tinkle.

  I could have gone after him, but to be honest, the whole thing wasn’t exactly top of my agenda; it’s not like I was being paid to look into it. I should really have been more concerned that as soon as Galbraith returned from the US he would realise that the report was gone, and it wouldn’t take him long to work out that I was the only possible culprit. Which in turn would lead to another bloody call to Badem, which never resulted in anything life-affirming. Instead, here I was waiting for Stubbing to get back to me and deciding what I could say to her without dragging Linda into the mix.

  Around four the phone rang but it was just Kamal again.

  “What did you say to Chris? He seems pissed off.”

  “He thinks I’m working for Galbraith.”

  “Well, aren’t you?”

  “Not in the way he thinks. Is this why you rang?”

  “No, it’s about Galbraith’s registrar. Remember telling me that it pays to pretend to be a smoker to get information because now smokers from all strata of an organisation are forced to mingle in designated smoking areas? Anyway, I went to the smokers’ lounge, and you should pay me because it’s disgusting in there and I breathed in a lot of carcinogenic smoke.”

  “I promise to visit you in hospital if you get lung cancer,” I said.

  “Hmm. Anyway, I talked to a medical secretary who works in surgery. She said that she knows for a fact that Galbraith’s registrar lodged a formal complaint against him with HR.”

  “What sort of complaint?”

  “Bullying, apparently, which covers a multitude of sins,” he said. “Make no mistake, she hates his guts and makes no bones about it, it seems.” None of this was exactly a recipe for romance, I decided, after I’d thanked him and hung up.

  I went to the dining room and studied the chess board, playing a few more moves of the Petrosian-Botvinnik game from the chess book open by the board. I was distracted by the photos of Kristina and her lover that were still up on the computer screen at the other end of the table.