by Ken McClure
'What facts? What are you suggesting?'
'I'm not suggesting anything but they will probably want to know why you were seen near the bacteriology lab at eight o'clock last night.'
Thelwell turned so pale that Jamieson thought he must faint. He did not but he appeared to grow very weak. He clutched the edge of the table. 'By whom?' he whispered.
'By me,' replied Jamieson.
'I see.'
Thelwell hung his head and there was silence in the room for what seemed like an eternity before he spoke again. 'I don't suppose you will believe this but I just went there to have it out with him about the test. I didn't intend to but when I was passing the hospital on my way to choir practice I saw his light on and I called in on him.'
'And?'
'He was dead when I went in, hanging from the beam like a carcase in a butcher's shop.
'Why didn't you call the police?' asked Jamieson quietly.
'Because of what people would think. Because of what you are thinking now.'
'What I think is not important. It's the police you have to convince.'
Gordon Thomas Thelwell was questioned by the police for over two hours that same afternoon. He was allowed to go home shortly after five and Jamieson, who had been waiting for the outcome at the lab, took a call from Ryan. 'We've let him go,' said Ryan.
'What convinced you?' asked Jamieson.
'The PM report suggests that it could have been suicide. There were no other signs of injury and the man had been under severe stress. It would have been better if he had left a note but there we have it. If we don't have a murder we can't have a killer.'
'What did you think of Thelwell?' asked Jamieson.
'A weirdo,' replied Ryan. 'If you ask me Richardson wasn't the only one suffering from stress in that hospital of yours.'
Jamieson had a short meeting with Carew to discuss the re-scheduling of the surgery lists in Gynaecology and the continuing microbiological investigation into the cause of the outbreak.
'Doctor Evans will be in charge of Bacteriology until a locum consultant is appointed. Phillip Morton will continue to operate in Gynaecology but only on emergency cases meantime.’
'I've requested that a small team from the Public Health Department be called in to help with the investigation,' said Jamieson.
'What exactly will they be doing?' asked Carew.
'Just what Richardson's people have been doing all along,' replied Jamieson. 'Taking swabs from all the likely places in the theatres and wards and hoping to get lucky. The more people we have doing it the better our chances.'
'Do you still want the Pseudomonas culture?' asked Moira Lippman when Jamieson came into the lab on the following morning.
Jamieson, who had temporarily forgotten about the biochemistry he had planned to carry out, thought for a moment and then decided that he might as well go ahead with the tests. It would give him something to do while he waited to see if the surgical infection problem would re-occur. He said that he did and would make a start immediately. Moira Lippman smiled and helped him to gown up.
Jamieson found the lab work therapeutic, a brief respite from wrestling with the greater problems of the hospital. He was not familiar enough with the protocols involved in setting up the tests that he could perform them without thinking, so he had to concentrate on what he was doing and refer to lab manuals where necessary. While he was doing that he could not think about anything else.
Just before he was about to return to the residency in late afternoon, Jamieson had a call from Thelwell. His heart sank when he heard Thelwell's voice but the surgeon had calmed down considerably since their last meeting. 'What can I do for you Mr Thelwell?' he asked.
'I have just had my second negative swab result from the Public Health Service lab,' said Thelwell.
'I'm delighted to hear it,' said Jamieson.
'I would now like to return to my lists,' said Thelwell.
'Three negatives are needed, Mr Thelwell,' said Jamieson, feeling as if he had just lit a fuse.
'This is bureaucratic nonsense and you know it!' declared Thelwell.
'We've already been through this. Three please, Mr Thelwell,' said Jamieson.
Thelwell put the phone down on Jamieson.
'And you Mr Thelwell,' said Jamieson under his breath as he put his own receiver down.
EIGHT
It was later than he had intended when the man reached the basement flat. He had hoped to be out on the streets that evening but circumstances and the meddling of outsiders had decreed that he had other things to do first. He tried to salvage some comfort from the thought that at least, he would be indoors and out of the rain. It had been raining heavily for the past six hours and the streets were flooding as storm drains gradually became overloaded. He put down his umbrella and shook the worst of the rain from it before opening and closing it quickly several times to clear away some more. It made the sound of a flight of crows taking of in the darkness.
Before he took off his coat the man knelt down in front of an old gas fire and succeeded in lighting it with the third match. The blue flames were interspersed with fans of yellow where the radiants had cracked over the years and the hearth was littered with spent matches. After warming his hands for a moment he hung up his coat on the back of the door and donned his apron, mask and gloves. He switched on the lamp above his work bench. It was a bit early for the next phase of the project but not impossible, he decided. He brought out a series of small glass vials from the fridge and made a start.
As the hours passed and everything went according to plan he started to relax a little. He was under pressure but that just added to the excitement. The greater the danger the greater the thrill. What idiots people were. But he mustn't become complacent, he cautioned himself. If the second phase was going well then he should be thinking ahead to the third and even the fourth. And then there was the problem of the meddler from outside. A permanent solution might have to be found for him soon but there was no immediate need for action. He mustn't rush at things. He would give the matter some thought. He got up from the bench and started to put everything away again.
He had taken off his protective clothing and rolled up his sleeves before washing his hands and forearms thoroughly when a knock at the door interrupted him. He froze at the sound and remained absolutely silent as his heartbeat quickened. A beaker of water which was still simmering above the blue flame of a Bunsen burner on his work bench sounded uncommonly loud. He hadn't made any mistakes up till now, he told himself. There was no need to panic. It couldn't possibly be the police. There had to be some perfectly innocent explanation.
Perhaps, if he remained quiet and didn't answer the door, whoever it was would go away. He stared at the boiling water and wondered if it could be heard outside the door as the glass beaker jumped again on its gauze support as the water bubbled inside it. Thirty seconds passed before the knock came again and the man swallowed. His mouth had gone dry with nerves but there was still no need to panic, he told himself. He would answer the door. There had to be a perfectly simple explanation for who was there and why.
He removed the plug from the wash-hand basin and closed the bathroom door behind him as he came out. He took a quick look around the room to ensure that nothing had been left lying around. A box of surgical gloves was still sitting there on the table. He moved them out of sight and walked slowly towards the door. He stopped half way and returned to the simmering beaker of water. He removed a jar of instant coffee from a cupboard above the sink and stood it beside the beaker to create a motive for the boiling water. He opened the door to find a woman standing there.
'I'm so sorry to bother you at this late hour but I saw your light on and it» s the only one in the street,' she said.
'Yes?' answered the man non-committally.
'My car has let me down and the phone box on the corner has been vandalised. I wonder if I might possibly use your phone?'
The man stared at her silently for a moment lo
oking for signs of deceit. Had this bitch been sent for a reason? Was she here to trap him? She had all the signs. Red lips, white teeth, large breasts. Her eyes were blue and they were smiling at him, taunting him, daring him to smile back. He resisted knowing that any sign of weakness on his part would only escalate her efforts to ensnare him. He could smell her scent. He stiffened as he noticed the swelling on her stomach. She was flaunting her past but he was ready. 'Of course,' he said. 'Come in.'
The woman entered and the man closed the door behind her, shutting out the sound of the rain.
'Where…?' began the woman.
The man pointed to the table where the telephone sat and the woman smiled and brushed lightly past him. He stiffened as her arm made contact with him on the way past. God, she was good this one, much more subtle than the whores but just as evil. He felt the hardness begin and swallowed as she picked up the receiver. Her back was to him. He could see the line of her underwear through the material of her skirt where it stretched across her buttocks. She moved her weight to the other foot and turned to smile at him while she waited for the number to ring through. The smile faltered a little when he did not return it and she turned to face the wall again.
The bitch was beginning to suspect that he was on to her little game and that pleased him. He wanted her to know. He wanted her to be afraid. He walked over to where the beaker of water was simmering.
'Darling? It's me. The bloody car's packed in and I…'
The woman's voice changed to a scream as a cascade of boiling water hit the back of her neck. She dropped the phone and slumped to her knees with her hands behind her head, trying to bury her face between her thighs in a futile attempt to escape the agony. She sucked in air in great gulps but found it impossible to scream again. Shock had paralysed her larynx. Too late she tried to cover her face as another container was emptied over her. This time it was cold but within seconds it had turned to fire and acid fumes filled her nostrils. Her eyes became burning embers as hitherto undreamed of levels of pain became reality. Her previously unblemished skin started to peel and smoulder. Her lips swelled to twice their normal size and her blistered tongue grew too large for her mouth. She whimpered like a wounded animal as she crawled around the floor looking blindly for a way out of the nightmare.
The man replaced the dangling receiver with its distantly calling voice and smiled thinly for the first time. 'Now I can see what you really look like,' he hissed. 'Now that the powder and the paint have gone I can see the real you. You're ugly! Evil! He went to the bathroom and came back wearing his apron and carrying his instruments.
The floor was awash with blood and the man now had a corpse to dispose of before morning. Easier said than done. If he could reduce the cadaver to packages of manageable size his options would be wider. The immediate problem lay in the fact that he did not have a saw in the flat. He had knives that would deal with flesh and sinew but not with bones. He could not risk leaving the apartment to go fetch one; he would have to break the bones instead.
The first leg was the worst. He did not know how much pressure to apply and consequently needed three or four attempts before making the break. He changed his technique and pressed a block of wood into service as a bridge, placing each limb in turn on the bridge so that a sharp blow from the heel of his right foot made a clean snap.
Sweat was running off him by the time he had the body cut and packed into six plastic sacks. The next question was what to do with them. Burial in some out of the way place was the obvious thing but just as he had no call to keep a saw in the basement likewise he had no reason to have a spade. He had no way of digging a hole even if he could think of a good lonely spot. He considered the alternatives of a river or a canal perhaps but both had their drawbacks.
Contracting noises were coming from the gas fire which he had switched off. He looked at the scorch marks on the old radiants and thought, Fire! That would be best solution of all, not a domestic fireplace but a furnace or better still, an incinerator.
Lots of places had incinerators but only two kinds of establishment had incinerators where the discovery of human bones would not cause an immediate outcry. Crematoria and, much more conveniently, hospitals!
First he would have to get his car. He did not normally bring his car to the flat, preferring the anonymity that public transport afforded him. Cars had numbers attached to them. A sudden icicle of fear climbed the man's spine. The woman had had a car! That was why she had come to the door in the first place! The police would be looking for her car! Her husband would have contacted them after her phone call had been cut off. How could he have been so stupid as to overlook the car? The woman's words came back to him, 'the only light in the street'.
The man almost sprinted over to the door and switched the light off. He stood in the darkness, his breathing made uneven with threatening panic. Think! he commanded himself. Don't panic. Think! The police did not routinely patrol the street outside. There was an excellent chance that neither they nor anyone else would have had reason to come into the street and across the car but he would have to move it. It was too close for comfort. His next thought was that he couldn't. It had broken down!
Once again the man had to get a grip on himself as he felt circumstances close in on him. There was a chance that the problem with the car was associated with all the rain they had had in the last few hours. Water in the electrics perhaps? There was only one way to find out. He rummaged through the woman's handbag and found the car keys, noting the Volkswagen emblem on the fob. He put on his coat and then slipped on a fresh pair of surgical gloves. He didn't want to leave any prints on the vehicle. He opened the door slightly. All was quiet outside. The rain had stopped but gurgling sounds coming from the down pipes on the side of the building said that it had only done so recently.
The car was parked at the far end of the street. It was a dark blue Volkswagen Polo. This pleased him. There had to be thousands of dark coloured Polos around the city. He opened the driver's door and undid the bonnet catch. The dirty state of the engine told him that it had been some considerable time since anyone else had done so. It was a typical 'second car' that didn't get too much in the way of maintenance, the little woman's 'run around' for shopping and taking the kids to school. It had no status value other than to exist, unlike the 'master's' Cavalier or Sierra which would shine like the sun and merit instant attention at the slightest cough.
The man removed the distributor cap and cleaned the inside with his handkerchief. He prised the contacts apart and slid a corner of the handkerchief between them to dry them out. He replaced the cap and wiped the plug leads and the main lead from the ignition coil. Satisfied with what he had done, he dropped the bonnet back down and tried the starter. The engine whirred into life and settled down to an idle.
Things were going well again. The man's confidence was returning. Perhaps he could now kill two birds with one stone? The car was generally dirty. It was quite difficult to read the registration plates as it was. With a bit more dirt applied to the rear one and a corner snapped off the front one he could risk driving it across town. He wouldn't need to fetch and use his own car at all. He turned the vehicle in a jerky three point turn, through unfamiliarity with the Polo's clutch and drove it along to the step leading down to the flat. Checking thoroughly that none of the bags was leaking, the man lined them up by the door and then loaded them quickly and quietly into the back.
At three thirty am a figure clad in white tunic and trousers and wearing a surgical mask and cap wheeled a trolley into the boiler house of Kerr Memorial Hospital. The attendant on duty put down his paper and got up from the table which he shared with an open paper bag containing sandwiches and a half full bottle of milk.
'What do you want then?' he asked suspiciously.
'This lot's for the fiery furnace,' mumbled the figure in white.
'At this time? You know the regulations. The proper containers at the proper time.'
'This is different.'
&n
bsp; 'What way different?'
'A bad car smash. These bits and pieces are what them upstairs had to take off.'
'So they can wait till morning. Rules is rules.'
'You don't understand. One of the victims has AIDS.'
The boilerman visibly withdrew and scowled. 'I ain’t touching them,' he growled, looking at the bags.
'You don't have to,' said the man in white. 'Just open up the door and I'll bung them in.'
The boilerman appeared to swither for a moment before relenting and saying, 'You're on. He led the way through to the furnace room and opened one of the three metal doors that stood side by side. 'Put them in this one,' he said. He stood by as the figure in white, now orange against the glow from the fire, heaved the bags, one by one, into the flames.
'Where did you say this accident was?' asked the boilerman.
'On the ring-road.'
'Must have been one hell of a crash if they had to take off all them limbs. Funny I didn't hear anything about it on the radio.'
'I suppose they’re not releasing the news until the next of kin have been informed.'
'That'll be it,' agreed the boilerman, accepting the plausible explanation. 'Drive like maniacs some of these buggers do. Probably pissed out their minds as well. It's the innocent buggers they run in to I feel sorry for. Just goes to show, you never know when your time is coming.'
The man in white looked over his mask at the boilerman, the light from the fire flickering in his eyes. He didn’t say anything but there was something about his look that made the boilerman feel a little uneasy. Maybe it was the firelight, he told himself. 'Do you want a cup of tea or something?' he asked.
'No thanks. I best be getting along,' said the man. He stepped forward to close the furnace door.
'You can take your mask off now,' said the boilerman.
'What?' asked the figure in white.
'Your mask. You've still got it on.'
'Oh,' replied the man in white with a weak attempt at a laugh. 'It becomes a habit in the unit.'