Murder and Malpractice

by Mairi Chong

  ‘Thanks,’ said Cathy, taking the plate and placing her own cup of coffee down. As she did so, she finally found the courage required and slipped the syringe from her pocket. While Brenda’s back was turned, and apparently unnoticed, she injected the full contents into Julie’s mug of coffee next to her own. It was only five-millilitres of tap water and it probably wouldn’t even cool the coffee that much.

  Cathy smiled. She then took a bite from the cake. It was dry and stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  It proved that it could be done though. James was surely not the only person in the frame, no matter what the police thought. Cathy headed out on her visits with a spring in her step, knowing that she was on track to clearing James’s name.

  24

  Come mid-afternoon and with a lull in activity, Cathy walked to the front reception and slipped behind the desk. Julie and Michelle were occupied printing out repeat prescriptions, but Michelle looked up and smiled.

  ‘Calmed down a bit now, Dr Moreland,’ she said.

  Cathy nodded. ‘Thank goodness. Listen, girls, I wanted to ask a couple of questions about that morning. Have you got a minute? I’m trying to find out what on earth happened that day, especially if the police are taking it upon themselves to pull us in for questioning now. Who knows, they might drag me off next.’

  Since her experiment that morning, Cathy had thought a good deal. She had at least proved that the coffee might have been tampered with upstairs without necessarily drawing attention to the fact. Not happy to make assumptions too hastily though, Cathy considered when other than this, the coffee might have been poisoned. James had taken the cup from Michelle; it seemed, and had walked down the stairs to Mark’s room. Had he met anyone in the stairwell? This was a point that needed clearing up.

  Cathy also wondered for the first time, if Mark had left his room unattended at any point following James’s visit with the coffee. If the mug had been left on Mark’s desk, this too, might prove a potential opportunity to add a lethal dose of whatever it was that killed him. As the reception desk looked out almost directly onto the doctors’ corridor, Michelle and Julie were the most likely to have noticed any unusual activity that day.

  Michelle snorted. ‘Well, Dr Moreland, what do you want to know? We’re next to useless and totally unobservant, aren’t we Julie? I’m sure that’s what the police thought when they questioned us.’

  Cathy grinned. ‘I just wondered if you remember Dr Hope leaving his room after Dr Longmuir had brought down the coffee? Perhaps he went to the toilet or into another room, and left his own door ajar?’

  ‘You’re forgetting,’ Julie said. ‘We’d put the phones over by then. We were upstairs for some of that time taking our own coffee break.’

  ‘Of course,’ Cathy nodded. ‘But when the whole drama kicked off, you were on reception again, weren’t you? I know it was quiet, because it was only the last few patients left, but can you remember seeing anything unusual?’

  Michelle shook her head. ‘I wish I could think of something,’ she said apologetically.

  ‘Not to worry. It was just an idea,’ Cathy said. ‘Now, I need another bit of help.’

  It had bothered Cathy that Mark could have drunk poison and apparently called in a patient afterwards. How he continued consulting while feeling unwell, she didn’t know. Perhaps there was something he had written in the notes, something to indicate his mood or his demeanour, that might help?

  Michelle rolled her eyes.

  ‘I know,’ Cathy said, ‘but bear with me. Dr Hope’s list, the morning he died. I wondered if he’d written anything in the notes that might give me a clue as to how he was. He had his coffee, and then assuming he didn’t leave his room, and we have no evidence he did, he continued consulting. I just wonder how he was feeling.’

  Michelle got up and followed Cathy back through to her own consulting room.

  ‘Are you doing a bit of proper digging?’ the receptionist asked, and Cathy smiled.

  ‘Hardly that, but I feel we can’t just sit around waiting for the police to come back and arrest another one of us.’

  Michelle nodded. ‘I can get Dr Hope’s patients up on your screen if you can wait a minute or two.’

  Cathy gestured for her to sit, and the young receptionist typed her username and password into Cathy’s computer with impossible speed, and then began scrolling through the previous days’ patient lists. Finally, she came to the right day, and moved the viewfinder along the screen, bypassing both Cathy’s column, and James’s lists, before she came to Dr Hope.

  ‘There,’ Michelle said. ‘That’s his morning surgery. Brenda said that the police took a print-out too, but they didn’t ask to look at any of the patient files. I think Brenda was glad. She wasn’t sure about patient confidentiality.’

  ‘I think we’d have to waive that right, given that someone died,’ Cathy said.

  Michelle got up. ‘Obviously, he had less booked in than you and Dr Longmuir,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’ Cathy asked. ‘How so?’

  ‘He was supervising, remember? Well, he was meant to be, but that boy Tom, didn’t turn up. Don’t think he’s as keen as he made out at the start.’

  ‘Of course,’ Cathy said thoughtfully. For the first time, it occurred to her that Mark might not have been the intended victim.

  ‘Well, I hope that you can come up with something,’ the receptionist said.

  She walked to the door and Cathy had already seated herself and was scrutinising Mark’s list. Some names she knew, and others she’d not come across before.

  ‘Can I access this like I would a normal surgery, Michelle?’ she asked without looking up.

  ‘Yes of course. Just click on it as you would usually, and the notes should appear. The view is a bit different because it’s in my account and not a doctor’s view.’ Michelle re-crossed the room and bent over the keyboard. ‘Look here, these are the early morning ones. He saw, wait a minute, he saw five before he’d blocked himself out for coffee. See that’s like you all do on your screens. Now, here are the ones after coffee break.’ Michelle scrolled down the screen. ‘There you are. All the late morning’s appointments. See the ones in red? Those are the ones he never got to and I had to reallocate. All the white ones were patients he saw.’

  ‘Michelle, thank you, that’s perfect,’ Cathy said.

  Cathy returned to the screen and began to scroll through Mark’s last morning. It felt strange. Cathy’s thoughts returned to that fateful day and the dreadful hours after Mark had seen these people. Surely only he could have been the recipient of the poison that day, even if the trainee Tom, had been there. Cathy considered how the surgery might have run, with Tom perhaps taking it in turns with the GP to see the patients. Their coffee break would not have been affected though, she thought. Mark always remained in his room, and as far as Cathy was aware, the trainee had always gone upstairs and taken his mug of coffee to drink by the back door. Cathy wasn’t hugely impressed to find that the boy was a smoker. Hardly a good example to set his patients, she had thought when she saw. No, it seemed that had Tom come in that day, the only difference might have been that Mark could have been able to alert the boy that he was unwell. Cathy doubted that even this would have made a difference. Once he had swallowed the poison, he was beyond any heroics.

  She peered at the screen, her hand hovering over the computer. She clicked the mouse twice and then opened up a patient file, but this soon had to be halted because her phone rang and Michelle told her that her first two patients were in the waiting room and one had already complained that she hadn’t been seen. Reluctantly, Cathy closed the window that she had been looking at and opened up her patient list for the day. She strode out into the corridor determined to catch up and to get through the morning’s patients as quickly as possible in order to return to her investigation.

  She was all apologies and politeness, smiling at her first disgruntled customer, and by the time her patient left the room, they were pacified and mar
ched out through the front door clutching the prescription that they had wanted.

  Cathy rattled through her list, and if she was brutally honest, she didn’t give her customers her full attention. She kept thinking about Mark’s final day and the last few people he must have spoken to. Could there be something in the notes; a message, or an indication as to why he had died?

  By the time her allotted break came, Cathy had caught up. She did not, however, go upstairs as she normally would, but instead closed her door and went back to the computer. There were only three patients highlighted in white. They were the ones that she was interested in. Maybe Mark had written something, or perhaps, if she spoke with them, they might tell her if he had been acting strangely after his coffee break.

  Cathy opened the first patient’s records and scanned down to Mark’s summary for that morning’s consultation. As she read, she could almost hear her partner’s voice. Poring over Mark’s words, she tried to feel how he might have felt as he typed.

  ‘Dysuria and frequency for 24 hours. Simple, uncomplicated UTI. Discussed risk factors, prescription: Trimethoprim. Discussed wasted appointment – THIS COULD HAVE BEEN DEALT WITH OVER THE PHONE!’

  Cathy smiled. Well, Mark had clearly been his usual self for that consultation at least. She had to say she agreed with his sentiment regarding the urinary tract infection, but it was a little unprofessional to actually record the final line in the notes. Cathy decided that there was nothing to be gained, and closed the file. Moving on, she opened the next, and knowing the patient’s name, scanned the text.

  ‘TATT, postmenopausal, overweight. TFTs and FBC checked last time - normal. Breathlessness on exertion?? Nil on PE. ECG and CXR and RV by me or Dr M with results. ??Psychosomatic – husband died last month.’

  Cathy hadn’t heard that the patient’s husband had died. She paused a moment and thought of her. They had been a lovely couple. She would give her a call later and see how she was doing. Still, there was nothing unusual in what Mark had said, so she continued.

  She opened the final patient’s file and found that her hands were trembling. Ridiculous, she said to herself. But in reality, she knew that this had to be it; her last chance to see what Mark had been thinking that morning. His last written words. She followed the records down the page, to the final line and paused. In some ways, she was disappointed not to find more. She had perhaps expected too much. Mark had recorded just two words during his final consultation. Cathy read and reread them.

  ‘DRUG SEEKER.’

  She closed the patient’s file and rested back in her chair, closing her eyes. There was really nothing for it, she had to dig further.

  25

  Cathy had the address scrawled on a torn corner from her prescription pad and, having let Michelle know she was going out on a house visit, she set off. She had shut the computer files down in her room earlier, knowing that what Mark had recorded that day wasn’t right. To just type two words seemed so out of character for the meticulous man she knew. Everything about him had been perfect; his appearance, his record-keeping. Cathy smiled remembering how she had walked into his room one day and had found him brushing his teeth at the sink.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she had asked.

  ‘They expect us to be flawless,’ he had told her, ‘and I don’t like to disappoint.’ He had pushed past her then and then rudely looked her up and down. That was Mark all over though.

  Before leaving the practice, Cathy had sat in her room for some time, wondering what she should do, but the answer was obvious. She must visit the patient, the last person Mark had spoken to, and see what he could tell her. Cathy wondered what she might find. Mark would have had his coffee by the time he had seen this man. He would have seen two patients before him, and should have seen more after, but following the ‘drug seeker’s’ consultation, as Mark had worded it, the doctor had been unable to continue and had been taken unwell. Cathy supposed that this put the patient in the frame as much as anyone in the practice. What if the poison, or whatever it had been, had not been administered in the coffee? Cathy thought about this, and regretfully decided that this was perhaps wishful thinking. It would be a great relief to find that none of the practice staff had been implicated in the accidental, or even, as it seemed to look now, deliberate death, but it did seem improbable.

  Whatever, she must see what this man had to say. Even if he could confirm that Mark was looking unwell, or perturbed, that might indicate his mood at the very least. She wondered if the police had done, or were doing the same. They had the same list of patients as she did, after all. She hoped they were doing something, anything to move the investigation on further.

  Cathy knew the practice catchment area very well. It was a reasonably affluent place overall but had some pockets of poverty that were quite startling in contrast. Of the six-thousand patients they had registered, probably around twenty had a serious drug problem. It seemed that heroin was most commonly misused. Ironically, it had been what had attracted Cathy to the practice originally. She had taken an interest in drug misuse during a psychiatric attachment as a junior doctor and felt that with her knowledge in this area, she might offer the practice fresh eyes on the problem.

  She knew that such patients were draining on resources, time, and on staff morale often. Both she and her partners had discussed it at length before her extended leave of absence. Cathy knew that few made it off the drug and few integrated successfully back into society to hold down employment. It was something she was frustrated by as a doctor but something with which she was still keen to assist. But that would have to wait for now.

  Cathy glanced down at her prescription pad, which lay on the passenger seat beside her. She recognised the address and knew it was in one of the less salubrious areas, which was hardly surprising, given Mark’s comment in the notes.

  It felt good to have a purpose. Cathy depressed the button by her door and her window slid down. The wind on her face felt good. Her hair had only been roughly tied and loose strands flicked back and whipped against her face. She opened her mouth wide and swallowed the cold air, something she had done as a child. She knew James hadn’t killed Mark. She was going to prove it and she was going to be the one to sort out this mess. Mark’s death had been awful, but life would go on and the practice would recover. She could see her and James enjoying interviewing potential candidates together and choosing a well-rounded replacement. Someone who would truly fit in. The team would be tight, and after all of the trauma, they would stick together. After an obligatory settling period, she and Fraser might after all, set up that much-needed methadone clinic and the practice would thrive.

  As it turned out, the flat wasn’t easy to find. It was in a council estate and most of the house numbers weren’t visible, either worn away, or they had never been there in the first place. Cathy drove up the street, her enthusiasm waning with every frustrating minute. Eventually, she asked someone walking their dog, and was pointed in the right direction. She turned the car awkwardly. Cathy hated these narrow streets. Finding a number close to the one she was looking for, she pulled in to the side and got out to continue on foot. She found the flat, but only because the number was painted on a bin sitting at the side of the pavement.

  Feeling that she should look official, she got her doctor’s bag from the car and pushed the flimsy iron gate. She climbed the concrete stairs looking at the doors for the number. The stairwell had been used for a multitude of purposes, an improvised toilet by the smell of it. A child’s buggy sat outside one door and some crushed beer cans and a split bin bag was outside another. She heard a dog barking and realised it was coming from the house she was looking for. Sighing, she rang the bell.

  Cathy met the dog first. She shielded herself partially with her bag.

  ‘Oh hello, I’m Dr Moreland. I’m looking for …’ She looked at her scrap of paper. ‘A Euan Saunders?’

  ‘Come in, Doctor,’ said the woman, as she grabbed the still barking animal by the neck. �
�So sorry about the dog. He’s all noise, but he’d never hurt you. Come through.’ The woman turned and called through to who, Cathy presumed was her partner.

  Euan was sitting on an oversized leather sofa, watching the television. The room itself was tidy but smelt strongly of nicotine. Euan struggled to get up and holding his back, he gasped. He was a clean-shaven man of about forty years, but cigarettes and possibly other addictions had not done him any favours. Cathy noted the yellow, stained fingers and the slight tremor. She guessed his weight must be only around nine stone, making his BMI dangerously low.

  ‘Sit down, Doctor,’ said the woman, following her in, and closing the door. The dog could still be heard barking, but the sound was now muffled. ‘We’ve not seen you before, have we, Euan? What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Dr Moreland,’ Cathy said, and sat down. The leather sofa hissed.

  ‘So, what can we do for you, Doctor?’ the woman asked. ‘We heard about the little problem at the surgery the other day.’ Turning to Euan, her tone changed. ‘Well, tell her what he said, then.’

  ‘Shut up Lorraine,’ the man replied. ‘Let her say what she has to say. But if it’s some sort of an apology, you can forget it. I’m writing a complaint even if the bastard’s dead.’

  Cathy grimaced. ‘You heard then,’ she said.

  ‘All over the bloody town, and even on the news this morning, wasn’t it? They’re all saying what a great man he was, just in the shop down the road they were saying it. Maybe I should speak to a few of the newspaper folk and tell them what he was really like.’ Euan crossed his arms tightly over his chest.

  Cathy sighed. She could see how things had escalated that dreadful morning, and could understand if Mark had fallen out with this man. ‘Dr Hope died. It was a tragedy,’ she said simply, pausing and almost goading him to contradict her. The man before her rolled his eyes but didn’t speak. ‘And I’ve come because I think that you were his last patient. Possibly the very last person to see him alive.’