Chameleon

by Ken McClure

  Jamieson smiled wryly. 'That's what Thelwell would maintain. He thinks that Richardson in some way engineered the whole thing.'

  'Good Lord, what a place,' said Sue. 'And what do you believe?' she asked.

  'I saw the culture. It was Pseudomonas.' said Jamieson. 'He didn't make that up.'

  'Then I can't see the problem,' said Sue.

  'Neither can I,' confessed Jamieson. 'That's what's bothering me. But if there is one I'll find out tomorrow night.'

  The traffic was light on Sunday evening and this, combined with the fact that he had had such an enjoyable week-end, ensured that Jamieson did not lose his temper once on the journey north. He was still in a good mood when he got into his room and unpacked his bag. He would have a coffee before going down to see Richardson then he would come back and write up his report for Sci-Med. If there was time after that and Richardson had introduced no new problems he would go out for a couple of drinks at a nearby hotel and then have an early night.

  As he rounded the corner to cross the courtyard to where the steps leading down to the lab were he saw a figure hurrying along the far side. Jamieson recognised the walk. It was Gordon Thelwell. He wondered what the surgeon was doing in the hospital at this time of night.

  Jamieson took extra care on the stone steps to the lab for the light was failing and the nearest wall lamp was faulty. He pushed open the door and fumbled for the switch before finding it at the third attempt and clicking it on.

  He could see a light coming from under John Richardson's door but when he knocked there was no reply. He tried again and then entered to find the room empty. The desk lamp was on and some papers were lying there as if Richardson had been reading them. The swivel chair behind the desk had been swung to the right as if Richardson had just got up from it. Thinking that Richardson had just stepped out for a moment to go to the lavatory perhaps, Jamieson sat down to wait. The minutes passed and Jamieson had to abandon his theory. He left the room to go in search of Richardson.

  A quick search of the ground floor failed to reveal any sign of the consultant. Calling out his name did not help either. Jamieson started down the stairs to the basement. He stopped on the third step when he thought he heard something. It sounded like a creaking tree. 'Is anyone there?' he asked. The steady timbre of his voice thankfully breaking the silence which was breeding a distinct unease in him. There was no reply. Just the creaking sound again. 'Dr Richardson?'

  Jamieson reached the bottom of the stairs and was feeling for the next light switch when something hard brushed against his face. He took in breath sharply and stepped backwards, throwing up his hands to push away whatever it was. When he touched it he knew exactly what it was. It was a foot, a human foot wearing a shoe but it was at face level!

  Jamieson's pulse rate soared and he broke out in a sweat as he continued his frantic, flat handed search for the light switch like a mime artist faced with an imaginary wall. At last he found it and lit up a nightmare. John Richardson was hanging from one of the wooden support beams in the ceiling. He was hanging by a leather strap that had bitten deep into his fleshy neck. His eyes bulged out of their sockets and his tongue, blue and distended, lolled out of his mouth at one corner. The creaking sound was being made by his body revolving slowly in response to the positive air flow through the lab.

  Jamieson stared at the spectre for some seconds, unable to do anything. He was mesmerised by the sheer horror of Richardson's appearance, his cyanosed complexion and bulbous eyes. Incongruously, the watch on his wrist was still going. In the silence Jamieson could hear its tick and saw the second hand continue its sweep round the face as the dial passed in front of him. He thought about cutting Richardson down but that would be easier said than done. Apart from the physical difficulties involved in doing this, there was no point. Richardson was very clearly dead; there was no possibility of resuscitation. The police would probably prefer that everything was left exactly as it was.

  Jamieson called them from the nearest lab phone. When he had done that he asked the telephone operator on duty in the hospital front office to call out both the medical superintendent and the hospital secretary. He did not say why, just that it was very important and that they should come right away. Jamieson replaced the phone and the lab was returned to silence. At times like this he wished that he still smoked. He had given up some five years before but right now it would have been awfully nice to light up a cigarette.

  Jamieson stood in the background while the police photographer took pictures of Richardson from every angle before the corpse was cut down and laid out on the floor. The Inspector in charge saw to it that the forensic people were doing their thing and then came over to Jamieson. 'I understand you found the body,' he said. 'I'm Ryan. Is there some place where we can talk?'

  Jamieson nodded and led the way to Richardson's office. He thought that Carew and Crichton would both call in there first when they arrived. When they did he could tell them what had happened.

  Jamieson gave Ryan details of how and when he had discovered Richardson's body. He said who and what he was and what he was doing at Kerr Memorial.

  'You and me both,' replied the Inspector when Jamieson said that he had been investigating the cause of an outbreak which had resulted in the deaths of three women patients at the hospital.

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'I'm investigating the deaths of a couple of women myself,’ said the policeman.

  'Oh, the murders? I read in the paper that you were looking for a gang in connection with the latest killing,' said Jamieson.

  'They were involved,' said the policeman. 'But they didn't do the actual killing. Our nutter did that.'

  'Nutter?'

  'A ripper,' said Ryan. 'Forensic told us. The woman was badly beaten and mutilated but she was dissected just like the first.'

  'God, it sounds awful,' said Jamieson. 'Do you have any ideas to go on?'

  Ryan shook his head and said, 'This is always the worst kind of killer to find. Most murders are domestic, plenty of leads and ready-made suspects. When it's a nutter, it's different. It's odds on he's a loner with no friends or family and there will be no personal motive connected with the victims. At best it will be some kind of general obsession, at worst no rhyme or reason at all other than the fact that the victims were in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

  'I see,' said Jamieson. 'If it's any comfort I thought I had found my killer or rather, he had.' Jamieson gestured with his head to where Richardson had been found. Now I'm not at all sure about what's going on.'

  Carew and Crichton arrived almost together and were shocked at the news. Jamieson noted that both of them immediately assumed that Richardson had committed suicide. 'Why?' asked Jamieson, pre-empting Ryan's question.

  'John has been under a great deal of pressure over this infection problem,' said Carew. 'Much more than he ever showed. It's pretty clear that it just got all too much for him.'

  'But a lot of that pressure was relieved on Friday.' said Jamieson. 'Dr Richardson called me at home. He had proof that Mr Thelwell had been carrying the bug that was causing the infection.'

  Carew and Crichton exchanged glances.

  'Mr Thelwell did not believe him,' said Carew.

  'Worse than that,' said Crichton. 'He insisted that Dr Richardson had deliberately fabricated the result. He insisted that the opinion of another lab be sought.'

  'And?'

  'The Public Health Service carried out a second swab test on Mr Thelwell on Saturday. He got the result this morning. It was negative.'

  'I see,' said Jamieson slowly, still reluctant to believe that Richardson had really falsified the lab test. 'That in itself isn't conclusive,' he said. He mentioned Thelwell's use of antiseptic creams in earlier tests.

  'When I told Dr Richardson this morning about the PHS result he behaved very strangely.' said Carew.

  'How so?'

  'It was almost as if he expected it.'

  'I don't understand,' said Jamieson.
r />   'When I told him he turned ashen and had to sit down. Then he said, 'It's all my fault.'

  'You mean he confessed to faking the swab test?' asked an astonished Jamieson.

  'Not exactly,' replied Carew. 'He seemed somehow to be talking to himself when he said it. When I asked him what he meant he said that he now knew what had been going on and that it would all be over soon.'

  'What did he mean?'

  'I don't know and he wouldn't say any more. But now it seems quite obvious what he meant, wouldn't you say? He seemed quite ill, poor man.'

  'I'm afraid,' said Crichton, 'that all the evidence points to Dr Richardson being responsible for deliberately engineering a positive swab test on Mr Thelwell. I think the pressure of continuing failure to find the cause of the outbreak must have pushed him too far and he saw a way of relieving it. By contaminating Mr Richardson's swab with the killer strain of Pseudomonas he would at once appear to have identified both the cause and the carrier.'

  Jamieson noticed that Ryan had a bemused look on his face and caught his eye. 'Is this for real?' whispered Ryan during a lull and while Crichton and Carew carried on a conversation of their own.

  'I'm afraid so,' replied Jamieson

  'What's happened?' said a voice at the door.

  Jamieson turned to see Clive Evans standing there.

  'There's been… an accident,' replied Carew with what Jamieson thought was an air of melodrama worthy of a school play.

  'Dr Richardson is dead. He hanged himself,' said Crichton.

  Evans sank down into a chair and shook his head slowly. 'I don't believe it,' he murmured.

  'May we ask what brought you here this evening doctor?' asked Carew.

  'I'm on call,' said Evans distantly. 'I'm the duty bacteriologist. John was on this afternoon.'

  Later on, Jamieson sought out Evans and found him working in his own lab. He had remembered that he had been in Richardson's office when Thelwell's swab had arrived. He also remembered that Richardson had delegated the test to Evans. Now he asked Evans about it.

  The Welshman adjusted his spectacles and said, 'That's right, I inoculated the swab into two cultures.'

  'Then what?'

  'I don't understand,' said Evans.

  'What did you do with the cultures? Did you keep them in your lab? Did you put them somewhere else? Did you read the results in the morning? Did you find and identify the Pseudomonas in them?'

  'No,' replied Evans looking confused at the line of questioning. 'Dr Richardson said that he wanted to read the tests personally so I put the cultures in the incubator in his lab. He read the results. He found the Pseudomonas and made out the report.'

  'Do you think it possible that Dr Richardson could have interfered with the cultures you put in the incubator?' asked Jamieson.

  'What kind of a question is that?' exclaimed Evans.

  'One I have to ask,' replied Jamieson.

  'Anything is possible.'

  'Could you tell by looking at the culture dishes whether they had been changed or not?' asked Jamieson.

  'I suppose so,' said Evans hesitantly. 'I wrote something on the dishes in marker pen.

  'Would you check please?'

  Evans left the room briefly and returned with two plastic dishes. He said, 'These are the cultures from Mr Thelwell's swab.'

  'Do they have your markings on them?'

  Evans examined both sides of the dishes and said with some obvious reluctance, 'No they don't.'

  'So Dr Richardson could have substituted different cultures for the ones you inoculated?'

  'I suppose so,' agreed Evans with a pained expression. 'But why? What the hell is going on?'

  'It has been suggested that Dr Richardson took his own life after having faked a culture result in order to implicate Mr Thelwell as being the cause of the recent infection problem in the hospital.'

  'Good God,' said Evans slowly. 'He has been under a lot of strain recently. We all have.'

  'You liked Richardson,' said Jamieson.

  'Yes,' said Evans.

  'But you do think now that he switched the cultures?'

  'That's what it seems like and he was suffering from stress…’

  'Suicidal stress?'

  'Who's to say?'

  Jamieson nodded his agreement but in his head he was remembering the furtive figure of Gordon Thelwell hurrying away from the vicinity of the lab just before he arrived.

  Jamieson lay on the bed in his room and tried to think calmly and rationally. It was difficult; his mind was cluttered with doubts and suspicions. What had Thelwell been doing near the lab if he had not been to see Richardson at the lab? If Richardson really had faked the test results in order to take the pressure off himself and his department, why on earth had he behaved the way he had on the telephone when he himself had seemed to inject doubts about the result? Surely it would have been in his own interest to have made the report seem as conclusive as possible? Instead it was he who had wanted to delay the final report and talk to him first. What about? Jamieson wondered.

  He got up and went over to the radiator to place his hands on it while he looked out of the window at the courtyard below. Perhaps it was the darkness or the rain or the gloomy buildings that encouraged the thought but he remembered the parallel that Ryan had drawn over their respective jobs. They were both seeking killers. Ryan was looking for a crazed psychopath while he sought the source of an unfeeling, mindless bacterial killer. Both were killing women in the city.

  Jamieson took out a note book from his brief case and started to make notes about what he already knew. The infection at Kerr Memorial had been caused by a particularly virulent strain of Pseudomonas which was very difficult to treat. The organism had been isolated from the naso-pharynx of the surgeon in charge of the affected unit. That should have been the end of the story but at Kerr Memorial it seemed more like the beginning.

  The bacteriologist who had identified the cause of the outbreak was now dead and the evidence suggested that he had taken his own life after faking the lab result which implicated the surgeon. Where did that leave things? Jamieson was reluctantly left to conclude that he would not now be going home. He was back at square one.

  Perhaps it was even worse than that. Things had become even more complicated than when he had started the investigation. The infecting organism itself was becoming a bit of a puzzle for although it was an every-day sort of germ this particular strain seemed to be unique in terms of its virulence and resistance to treatment. The Sci-Med labs had failed to come up with any explanation for the virulence of the organism but for some reason the deceased Richardson had been less surprised about that than anyone else. Just what was it that Richardson had realised? And could that knowledge in some way be connected with his death? Jamieson pursed his lips in frustration as he failed to come up with an answer.

  Jamieson decided he had better turn his attention to more immediate matters. His first job would be to see Thelwell in the morning and inform him that the ban on his operating was still in force despite his negative result from the Public Health Lab. While there was still some doubt over the tests, he would have to insist on three negatives in a row, taken on separate days and under supervision.

  'This is ridiculous!' exploded Thelwell. 'The Public Health Service has completely exonerated me. It's quite obvious that Richardson fabricated the whole result in order to cover up his own incompetence. At least it's obvious to anyone with an IQ greater than that of an earthworm!'

  Jamieson ignored the comment. He had come prepared for Thelwell at his worst and had not been disappointed. He was determined to keep his temper. 'Your single negative from PHS is insufficient to clear you and you know it. Several more tests will have to be made and under properly controlled conditions before you can be pronounced free from contamination.

  'Free from contamination!' stormed Thelwell. 'I was never contaminated in the first place! It was that moron Richardson who made everything up!'

  'That has yet to be
established beyond doubt,' said Jamieson calmly.

  Thelwell became almost speechless with anger and frustration. 'The man committed suicide didn't he? As soon as he was faced with the PHS report he strung himself from the rafters! What more do you want?'

  'Two more negative tests from the PHS.' replied Jamieson.

  'And meanwhile my lists keep getting longer and longer.' said Thelwell shaking his head in exasperation.

  'Better your lists than the obituary columns.'

  'I want it placed on record that I object most strongly to your attitude and interference in my department,' hissed Thelwell through gritted teeth.

  'I would have thought that the safety of your patients would have been at least as important to you as it is to me,' said Jamieson.

  'What's that supposed to mean?' snapped Thelwell.

  Despite his intention to confine himself to the investigation in hand Jamieson permitted himself one little deviation and one comment slipped out. He said, 'Your enthusiasm for the operating table in the circumstances, suggests a certain disregard for the consequences. The source of the outbreak in your department has still not been established. Don't you care about these women?'

  The expected outburst did not occur. Instead Jamieson was treated to the spectacle of Thelwell having some kind of fit. At least that was what it seemed like for he went quite white and his hands started to tremble violently. It was some time before he could speak. Jamieson waited patiently for the onslaught to begin.

  'What right have you to say such a thing?' rasped Thelwell hoarsely.

  Jamieson was taken aback by Thelwell's reaction to what he had said for, even by Thelwell's standards, the result had been dramatic. He had the distinct feeling that Thelwell's exaggerated reaction to any kind of criticism might indicate some underlying clinical disorder. He said, 'Mr Thelwell, this kind of conversation is getting us nowhere. I suggest we talk again after your series of tests and after the police investigation into Dr Richardson's death.'

  'What investigation? The man committed suicide.'

  'That's for the police to decide when they have gathered all the facts.'