Chameleon

by Ken McClure

'Just checking up on some overdue lab reports,' said Evans by way of explanation when he saw Jamieson.

  'Did you find them?' asked Jamieson.

  'Not yet. What can I do for you?'

  'I wanted to talk to you about correlating your efforts with the Public Health people so that you don't start getting in each other's way,’ said Jamieson.

  'When will they come?' asked Evans.

  'Tomorrow morning.'

  'Perhaps I could have a word with their chap before they start and we can agree on not duplicating each other's work.'

  'Good idea. I'll bring their people across to the lab when they arrive,' said Jamieson.

  'Was there something else?' asked Evans seeing that Jamieson was lingering on.

  'When did you last check the surgical steriliser in CSSD?' asked Jamieson.

  Evans looked surprised. 'This morning. Why do you ask?'

  'Was it all right?'

  'Perfect. It always is. I don't see what you are getting at.'

  'This lab has so far failed to find the contaminating organism in the theatres, the wards, the air samples or anything else for that matter. Correct?'

  'I'm afraid so,' said Evans.

  'As I see it there are only a limited number of ways this infection problem can come about. One is that some person is carrying the infection and passing it on to the patients undetected.'

  'Like Thelwell.'

  'Like a carrier,' agreed Jamieson. 'Another way would be for the instruments or dressings in theatre to be contaminated.'

  'That's impossible,' said Evans. 'They are autoclaved in sealed packs.'

  'So the lab never bothers to check them, right?'

  'There's no need.'

  'You check the machines but you don't check what comes out of them.'

  'There's no need,' repeated Evans.

  'I want you to carry out a spot check on an instrument pack from the gynaecology theatre.'

  'When?'

  'I'll tell you when.'

  'You're the boss,' said Evans but he said it in a way that made it plain that he thought what he was being asked to do was a waste of time.

  Jamieson understood his point of view but did not tell him about Thelwell having collected the instruments from CSSD. It would have been too easy for Evans to read his mind and know what he was thinking. For the moment that was too terrible to be voiced out loud. If the instruments were at fault, the contamination must be occurring after they had been sterilised. That meant that it was not accidental. The contamination had been deliberate! Women were not dying of an unfortunate, accidental infection at Kerr Memorial. They were being murdered.

  NINE

  The possibility that Gordon Thomas Thelwell might actually be interfering with the sterility of surgical instruments before they were used in theatre was an idea so horrendous that Jamieson had great difficulty in even considering it without his sub-conscious sending up a stream of objections and telling him that there must be some mistake. Such a thing just could not be. This was the stuff of surreal nightmares, the province of the lunatic asylum. It had to be some wild figment of his imagination born out of his intense dislike of the man but still the thought would not go away.

  Later, as he lay on the bed in early evening, staring idly up at the ceiling, something inside Jamieson's head kept telling him that he had to consider it. He had to think everything through logically and without emotion. He did not have the right to dismiss anything out of hand, however repellent the notion might be. Apart from anything else it was his job to consider all the possibilities. He should do it coldly and dispassionately and eliminate each of them one by one. Jamieson started out on the process feeling that he was starting out on a journey that he had very little heart for.

  It was a fact that Thelwell had collected surgical instruments personally from the CSSD. To Jamieson's way of thinking, there could be no valid reason for him to have done so. The man was a consultant surgeon, not a porter, not a theatre orderly but a surgeon. If he had gone to pick them up personally then it could only have been because he had had some strong personal reason for doing so. He had wanted to get his hands on them before they reached the operating theatre. Why? What did he want to do with them? Jamieson knew that the answer would not appear out of the blue. This was something he would have to investigate. The time for thinking was over. It was time to do something.

  Jamieson knew the reference numbers that were marked on the packs that Thelwell had collected earlier from CSSD. He had made a mental note of them when he examined the graphs from their sterilising records. He would go up to the Gynaecology Department and look for them. But first he had to make sure that Thelwell was no longer around. He checked his watch and saw that it was eight o'clock. The chances were that the surgeon had gone home ages ago but just in case he called the switchboard and asked them to page Thelwell. After a wait of two minutes the switchboard confirmed that Thelwell was not in the hospital.

  Jamieson entered the Gynaecology Department by the side door deciding that the fewer people who saw him the better. He did not resort to hiding in corners but did however, pause at the head of the stairs until a nurse's footsteps had faded into the distance before turning the corner and hurrying quietly along the corridor. The gynaecology theatre was right at the far end. Two swing doors, each with a circular glass window and scrape marks where trolley handles had worn away the paint led through to an outer chamber where the orderlies brought their patients on operating days. Here they would be handed over to the care of the theatre team.

  A vague smell of anaesthetic mingled with a stronger odour of disinfectant as Jamieson entered the main theatre and turned on the lights. The room was instantly bathed in bright, shadowless light. Although the air temperature was at least seventy degrees the stainless steel and ceramic tiling made the room seem cold. The gas cylinders on the anaesthetics trolley, scratched and scarred on their surface through continual re-cycling, seemed incongruous amidst otherwise unblemished metallic perfection. Jamieson rested his hand on a black oxygen cylinder with its white top and looked about him. A metal cupboard caught his eye and he remembered Thelwell telling him on his tour of the department that this was where the instruments were stored.

  Jamieson was conscious of the sound of his own heart beating as he crossed the theatre floor and knelt down to open the cupboard. There were six packs of instruments inside. He examined each in turn and checked its number. Packs twelve to seventeen were present. Packs eighteen to twenty-four, the packs that Thelwell had taken from CSSD earlier in the day, were missing!

  Jamieson closed the door slowly and put his hand to his forehead to massage it absently with his fingertips as he thought what to do next. It was already clear that Thelwell had not brought the instruments directly to the theatre. What had he done with the missing packs? Again, there was no way that Jamieson was going to come up with the answer by thinking about it. This matter had gone far enough. He would confront Thelwell face to face and ask him what the hell was going on. He returned to the residency and asked the switchboard for Thelwell's home number.

  One of Thelwell's daughters answered. 'Father is out this evening. He has a choir practice. Whom shall I say called?'

  'Don't bother. It's not important,' said Jamieson. He replaced the receiver.

  Jamieson felt deflated. He had prepared himself mentally for the confrontation and now it hadn't happened. He had been thwarted by a choir practice. Frustration started to gnaw at his stomach. Thelwell seemed to go to a lot of choir practices, thought Jamieson, St Serf's Church, he remembered, the Te Deum. This would, he decided, not wait till morning. He would go along to the church and talk to Thelwell when he came out. He had put on his jacket and was about to leave his room when the phone rang.

  'Macmillan here.'

  'Who?'

  'Macmillan… Sci Med, London.'

  Jamieson apologised. He was more up-tight than he thought.

  'The information you asked for. The bones belonged to one Mary Louise Chapman
, reported missing by her husband last night. She was twenty eight years old and five months pregnant. Forensic identified her from dental records.'

  'That was quick,' said Jamieson.

  'Reports of missing women have taken on a new dimension in that particular city at the moment,' said Macmillan. 'All the stops are pulled out.'

  'Of course,' said Jamieson. 'But it was still very quick.'

  'In truth, the police suspected it might be Louise Chapman. They found her car parked in a lane at the back of the hospital.'

  'I see,' said Jamieson.

  'Am I to presume that this might have some direct relevance to your investigation?' asked Macmillan.

  'It's possible,' said Jamieson. I'm not sure.'

  'It sounds as if things up there are not as straight forward as one might have imagined?' said Macmillan.

  'That's true,' said Jamieson, hoping that he would get away with not saying any more for the present.

  'Need any help?'

  'Not yet.'

  'Keep in touch.'

  Jamieson had obtained the address of St Serf's Church from the phone book. The good thing about looking for a church, he mused as he turned off into a leafy avenue west of Harden Road, was that you could see it a long way off. The spire of St Serf's had guided him for the last half mile until now when he was faced with having to find a parking space among the Volvos and other quality cars that were lined up outside the church hall. It was that kind of an area, pleasant, comfortable, pretty. The church itself stood in a well-tended graveyard and had Virginia creeper growing along its south wall. At the moment it was green but Jamieson could imagine it turning to red in the autumn and complementing the yellow leaves which would fall from the birch trees by the boundary wall.

  In the end, Jamieson found a space some two hundred metres down the road. He was a bit close to the entrance to one of the driveways but not close enough, he reckoned, to constitute a real obstruction so he left the car and started to walk back towards the church. He could hear singing coming from the hall that was tacked on to the side of the main building and he could see lights on inside. He checked his watch. It was five minutes to ten. Maybe they would finish at ten?

  Jamieson strolled up one side of the street and down the other. It was a nice evening. The gardens of the large houses had obviously benefited from the soaking they had had earlier in the day and the mixed scent of the flowers was heavy in the still evening air. It made him think of Kent and Susie. He was wondering how to go about telling her that he would not be coming home at the week-end when he saw that people were beginning to emerge from the church hall. He took up a position almost opposite the entrance to the hall and waited for Thelwell to emerge.

  At first, the pavement outside the church was crowded with groups of people laughing and discussing how the evening had gone and Jamieson had to keep his wits about him to avoid missing Thelwell among the people he saw moving off. As the minutes passed and the crowds thinned, Jamieson found himself considering that somehow he had missed him. The slamming doors and starting cars were now becoming less frequent. The avenue was returning to its accustomed peace and quiet and he had still not seen Thelwell come out.

  It was another ten minutes before a woman, carrying a bundle of papers under her arm and a key in her mouth, turned round as she emerged and locked the door. Jamieson, feeling bemused but still fairly confident that he had not missed Thelwell among the earlier crowds, approached her and excused himself.

  'I was rather hoping to catch Gordon Thelwell this evening,' he said pleasantly. 'Could I have missed him?'

  'Oh no,' exclaimed the woman. 'Mr Thelwell wasn't here this evening.'

  'Oh,' said Jamieson working at keeping the surprise off his face.

  'Are you sure?'

  'Mr Thelwell hasn't been coming to practice for some time,' volunteered the woman. 'He's too busy at the hospital these days I understand. He's a surgeon you know. They've been having a bit of trouble with one thing and another.'

  'Of course,' replied Jamieson distantly. 'I should have considered that.'

  Jamieson sat behind the wheel of his car with another unpleasant discovery to digest. All these choir practises that Thelwell said he had been going to were a fabrication. A lie. What had he really been doing on these evenings? Where was he tonight? Was it relevant to the problem at the hospital?

  Jamieson drove round in circles for a while, trying to make sense of it all before deciding finally to drive to the street where Thelwell lived. It was now his intention to confront Thelwell openly with what he had discovered. He parked the car on the other side of the road some fifty metres along from Thelwell's house and settled down to wait.

  At eleven thirty, his vigil was rewarded. Thelwell's dark green Volvo estate car turned into the street and Jamieson prepared to get out of his car. He had expected Thelwell to park outside his house on the street or at least to get out to open the gates in front of his drive. On this pretext it had been his plan to intercept him on the pavement. But, in the event, Thelwell swung his car in towards the gates and they opened automatically at the signal from some device on the car. By the time Jamieson reached the house the gates had closed again and Thelwell was putting the car away in the garage.

  Light spilled out into the garden from the open front door and Thelwell's wife was framed in the doorway. 'You're late dear,' Jamieson heard her say.

  'The practice went on a bit longer than I thought and then I had a quick drink with Roger Denby,' replied Thelwell.

  Thelwell was a very plausible liar, thought Jamieson. He had sounded perfectly natural when replying to his wife. He considered whether or not he should confront Thelwell there and then in front of his wife but then decided against it. For the moment it was enough for him to know that Thelwell had been lying to everyone, including his wife. He walked back to his car thoughtfully and drove back to the hospital.

  The phone in his room was ringing when Jamieson got in. He hurriedly unlocked the door and rushed over to snatch it from its cradle, feeling certain that the caller would hang up the moment he touched it. It was Sue.

  'Where have you been?' she asked. 'I've been trying your number for ages.'

  'I had to go out,' said Jamieson weakly.

  'Daddy has invited us to have dinner with him on Saturday. I said we'd be delighted.'

  'Sue, there's a problem.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I don't think I can come home this week-end.'

  'But…' Sue's voice trailed off into silence.

  'I'm sorry, really I am but the way things are going I just can't get away.'

  'I see,' said Sue distantly. 'That's a pity. I had something to tell you.'

  'Really? What?'

  'It will have to wait for some time when you're not so busy.' The phone went dead.

  'Shit,' said Jamieson quietly. It was unlike Sue to be like that. She must be very disappointed.

  Jamieson was up at seven. He was washed, shaved and out of his room by seven thirty and had breakfasted. He was in his little room in the Microbiology department by eight. The morning cleaners were emptying waste paper baskets outside in the corridor. They pooled all the waste in a large bin which they wheeled around the department on a small wheeled bogie.

  'It's getting so you are afraid to go out at night,' he heard one of them say.

  'My Stan won't let me,' declared the other positively. 'Not after last night. It was less than quarter of a mile away from us!'

  'Makes you think don't it.'

  Jamieson felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. 'Last night? What had happened last night? He opened the door of his room and one of the cleaners clutched her arms across her chest in fright. 'Oh my God!' she exclaimed. 'You gave me such a fright. I thought for a moment you were him!'

  'Who?' asked Jamieson.

  'The maniac. The ripper,' replied the woman.

  'You said something about last night,' said Jamieson.

  'The swine killed another woman last
night. I was just telling Ruby here. It was only half a mile down the road from where I stay.'

  'Another woman?'

  'Young lass. She'd just said good night to her boy friend. The bastard must have been waiting for her.'

  'What are the police doing? That's what I want to know,' exclaimed the other woman angrily.

  'Too right. It isn't safe to cross your door these nights. Them with their free uniforms and rent allowances.'

  'And they retire on a big pension at fifty. My brother-in-law's boy Ronnie joined the police and I know for a fact…'

  Jamieson withdrew from the conversation and closed his door. He could feel the pulse beating in his temple. He fought with his imagination but it insisted on giving him another nightmare thought to consider. There had been another death in the city and it had occurred on a night when Gordon Thomas Thelwell had said he was at choir practice. But he hadn't been. Jamieson knew that for a fact.

  The enormity of what he was considering kept Jamieson paralysed in his seat while he worried about it. Could Thelwell not only be deliberately causing the deaths of women patients at the hospital but could he… could he possibly be the psychopath who was slaughtering women in the city? Could Thelwell be the ripper?

  Jamieson started to think in practical terms and that meant obtaining hard evidence. He wondered about a correlation between the other killings and Thelwell's choir practice nights. Perhaps he could find out from St Serf's? He would think about that later. For the moment, his immediate priority was to obtain the surgical listing for the day in gynaecology. He called the theatre sister.

  'Mr Morton is operating at ten. Will you be attending?'

  Jamieson said that he would and said that on no account was the operation to begin without his being present.

  'Very well doctor,' replied the sister, her voice betraying the puzzlement that she felt.

  Jamieson called Blaney in the Central Sterile Supply Department and asked about the availability of spare instrument packs for surgery in gynaecology.

  'We have about a dozen,' Blaney replied.

  'I need three.'