them. I've got a way to go yet.'
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'I'm glad I have this chance to talk to both of you before you go
across to the ward for your treatment. Olive,' said Derek Simmers.
'It's early days yet, and I am not one to raise expectations unrealistically.
Nevertheless, when I see a positive indicator I can't keep it to
myself; that's just not in my nature.'
Neil Mcllhenney felt his wife's grip on his hand tighten suddenly,
to the point of pain. Excitement rose within him, but he fought to
keep it from showing on his face.
'I've had the result of the X-ray which was taken when you were in
last week. It shows a small but significant shrinkage in the area of the
principal tumour. After only a month of chemo, that's pretty good
going. It tells me that the tumour is especially sensitive to the type of
treatment which we're giving you, and encourages me to proceed with the rest of the course. The small downside is that your blood is
sensitive too; that shows in the various counts, especially platelets,
but there are things that we can do to manage that.
'On the basis of that I've scheduled another scan for two weeks'
time. If that shows further progress,' he smiled, 'I think we can give
you a week off to take that holiday we talked about at the start.'
Neil felt his hand tremble, but realised that it was being transmitted
by his wife's grip. 'Thanks for telling us that, Deacey,' she said, her
voice steady as always, and matter-of-fact. 'As a teacher, I've always
liked Fridays: I won't forget this one in a hurry.'
The neither,' said her husband, sincerely.
The consultant smiled at her, straight into her eyes. 'Breaking news
like this makes my day too,' he said. 'On you go now. They're for you
waiting across the road.' He showed them to the door. As he held it
open he glanced at Neil. 'There are two people waiting for me too,
upstairs in my office. Colleagues of yours, in fact; I have no idea what
they might want.'
Simmers waved his patients goodbye at the entrance to the clinic,
then turned the corner and sprinted up the stairs.
His visitors were seated in his tiny room when he arrived there. He
looked at them one by one with his physician's eye as they introduced
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themselves: Superintendent Pringle, middle-aged, heavily built,
florid, probably drank too much, arguably in the coronary at-risk
category; Detective Sergeant Steele, tall, strong-looking, around thirty,
physically at his peak.
'Good morning, gentlemen,' he said moving behind his desk as he
spoke. 'In what way can I help you?'
Pringle, in his turn, looked at the consultant, seeing a big, sturdy
man, yet struck at once by the softness of his eyes, which seemed to
betray a vulnerability in him. 'We'd like to talk to you about a patient
of yours, now unfortunately deceased; Mr Anthony Murray.'
Simmers frowned. 'Ah yes, poor old Tony. I heard that he had died.
A blessing really; he was being very difficult about going to the
Hospice, but that was the only place for him. In a very short time, he'd
have been in great need of the sort of pain control that they're used to
providing.'
'Did you expect him to die?'
The consultant stared at the policeman, wondering if he might be
mad. 'Of course I did, superintendent. He had advanced, metastasised
cancer which was beyond all treatment. Of course I expected him to
die.'
'No, sir, I mean did you expect him to die so soon?'
'Ah, I see. To be frank I didn't. I visited him at home fairly recently
- not something I do as a rule, but he was a neighbour and he was so
sensitive about his bag that he simply would not leave his house - and
he seemed frail, but still with us. He was away short of turning his
face to the wall, as cancer victims can do on occasion.
'However, that said, someone in his condition can deteriorate very
rapidly, so while I didn't expect it, when I heard he had gone, I was
not overly surprised. I'll miss him though: a good, gentle man. I liked
him very much.'
Stevie Steele spoke softly. 'You must miss more than a few people,
sir. I don't envy you your job, although I admire you for doing it.'
Derek Simmers looked at the young detective with a mixture of
surprise and gratitude. 'Thank you, sergeant,' he murmured, 'but the
fact is, I'm rotten at it.'
'We've been told the opposite, sir.'
'Ah, maybe you have, maybe you have. Speaking clinically, I
suppose that whoever told you that has a point. But they don't know
about my failings, though. I so admire colleagues like Nolan Weston.
I admire them their detachment, in the face of the most awful personal
tragedies. Christ, Nolan even operated on his first wife, poor Gay, to
find that she had a ferociously malignant tumour. I know how fond he
was of her, and yet he held himself together, he kept his detachment.
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'I find that almost impossible sometimes, and yet that's what my
job, as you put it, sergeant, is about. Inspiring and maintaining hope,
even on those occasions when there is none. You are, for your patients
and their nearest and dearest, a bridge across an abyss. Sometimes
you see them across, to recovered health, but all too often your
treatment is hopeless, and they fall in.
'It's worst of all when you know from the start what the outcome
will be.' As the policemen looked at him, they saw tears mist the
gentle blue eyes. 'Only this morning, I saw a patient, a couple in fact,
for I regard both partners as being in my care. I gave them what was
for them good news, and they thanked me with all their hearts.
'Yet I know that my patient will die, gentlemen. In all probability
within a year, for the very factor which is positive at the moment will
turn negative, and very soon. These are remarkable people, yet all I
can do for them is help them make the most of the very limited time
they have left together, knowing all the while, as I knew in Tony
Murray's case, what the end will be like.
'I hate situations like these, even more that I hate those when my
patients collapse into inconsolable fear. I tell you, the Oath we doctors
take has a lot to answer for.'
Simmers drew a deep breath and pulled himself up in his chair,
blinking to clear his eyes. 'I'm sorry for that outburst, gentlemen.
Please do me the favour of forgetting that I said any of it. All of us
have safety valves of a sort - although God alone knows where Nolan
Weston's must be!
'Now. Is there anymore I can tell you?'
Pringle shook his head. 'No sir, I don't think so.' He and Steele
rose, and eased themselves out of the tiny office.
As they turned to leave, Steele asked, casually, 'Out of interest sir,
did you know that Mr Murray had a niece in this department?'
Simmers nodded, vigorously, and smiled. 'Andrina, you mean? Yes
I did know that. She's a very talented young nurse. They tell me that
she's a wizard with a needle - a great gift in this place, I'll tell you.'
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'I'm pleased your boss could spare you for this job. Sergeant Garland,'
said Brian Mackie, as the car pulled away from the station in the
sleety afternoon rain which soaked the drab street.
'It's a pleasure, sir. I don't know what your force is like, but up here
in Grampian when you're asked to be the Head of CID's exec, you
don't turn it down. For all that, you know that you'll be tied to a desk
for the duration. That doesn't mean you have to enjoy that side of it.
'Whenever a request for assistance comes in, I always grab it for
myself, and just tell the DCS I'm doing it. Usually it's okay with
him.'
Mackie looked idly out of the window as Garland drove. He had
always had a soft spot for Aberdeen, despite its winter chills. There
was something about the orderliness of the grey granite city which
appealed to him.
The Aberdonian detective turned off Union Street into Broad Street, - then turned left past Marischal College. 'I did my asking around
yesterday just as you asked. I found this room-mate of his, the lad
Beano; his real name's Brian Litster.'
The superintendent grunted. 'Funny, that. I was called Beano at
school too.'
'Is that right sir?' said the sergeant, politely. 'As luck would have it,
we've got something on this one, an official caution for possession of
cannabis, just two weeks ago. The University doesn't know about it,
and he wants to keep it that way, so I'm pretty confident that he won't
have said anything to the boy Weston about your visit.'
'I've arranged to meet him in the Union at Robert Gordon's, rather
than at the College back there. That's where young Weston has most
of his classes.'
'Why not down your nick?' asked Mackie.
'I didn't want to scare him that much, sir; just make him a wee bit
nervous.'
'Fair enough. You've met him. I haven't.'
As he spoke. Garland reached Robert Gordon's, Aberdeen's second, technologically-based University. He parked in a space marked
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'Official Visitors Only,' flashing his warrant card at a curious janitor
as he and the Edinburgh superintendent stepped out.
As they stepped through the main entrance a tall, gangling youth
stepped out of the shadows beside the door. 'Sergeant Garland ...' he
began, anxiously.
'Hello Beano.'
'I've booked a tutorial room,' said the student, half whispering
even though the hallway was empty, save for them. 'I thought it would
be better, rather than being out in public in the reading room.'
'Fine,' the sergeant replied. 'This is Detective Superintendent
Mackie, by the way, from Edinburgh.' Mackie nodded a solemn
acknowledgement, but did not offer a handshake.
The boy led the way up a single flight of stairs, into a corridor and
along to the third door on the right. As they stepped inside Garland
flipped a brass catch, changing the word 'Vacant' to 'Engaged'.
'Second Wednesday in October,' Mackie barked, even as they were
taking their seats around the old wooden table, its varnished top
scarred with graffiti. 'Where were you, in the evening?'
'I can't remember,' Beano protested.
'Of course you can. It was the night before your room-mate was
told his mother was dead. Concentrate on that.'
The young man gulped, then burped. The hoppy smell of beer
filled the room. 'Pardon,' he mumbled and, for the first time, the
detectives realised that he was a little drunk. He screwed up his eyes
to emphasise that he was thinking.
'There was a party for First Years. The Drama Club staged it, so we
all went. We reckoned that there would be plenty of birds at it,' he
added with a gawky grin.
'Did Ray Weston go?'
'I suppose so..'
Mackie glared at the young man, forcing him to look back. It was
a skill which he had tried to learn from Bob Skinner. 'Your suppositions
aren't good enough, son. Now use that sodden brain of yours.
You share a room with Raymond Weston. Did he go to the Drama
Club do or did he not? I'm not here to piss about with you. Out with
it.'
Beano gulped again; for a moment the detectives thought that he
was going to be sick, but he steadied himself. 'No,' he said, almost
fearfully. 'No, Ray didn't go.'
'So where did he go?'
'He told me that he was driving down to Edinburgh. He has this
girlfriend down there.' He broke off for a quick leer. 'A cracker, he
says. She's a nurse; she lives in a flat with some other nurses but she's
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got a room of her own, so they're all right for ... you know what I
mean.'
Mackie nodded. 'I think I remember,' he said, dryly. 'But try harder.
Are we just supposing again or did he actually say that he was driving
home for a quickie with the girlfriend?'
As the policemen looked at him Beano began to shiver. 'You won't
tell anyone about this will you?' he begged. 'Especially not Ray.'
'Why not?' asked Garland, more gently than the superintendent.
'Are you scared of Ray, Beano?'
The student nodded, briefly.
'He didn't look very tough to me,' said Mackie.
'Well he's tougher than me!' the boy exclaimed, suddenly, almost
shouting at the policeman. 'He scares me. And he knows people.'
The Aberdonian looked at the boy. 'Was it Ray who gave you that
grass, Beano?' he asked, his gentleness gone.
'I bought it in a pub.'
'Don't bullshit me now,' the sergeant snapped, 'or I'm going straight
to your Principal. Then it'll be suspension, and your parents will
know why. Was it Ray?'
Brian Litster stared at the floor. 'Yes,' he whispered. 'He can get
other stuff too.'
'What kind of stuff?' asked Mackie, quietly.
'Pills; diazepam tablets, he says they are. He sells them.'
'And does he take them himself?'
'He smokes a wee bit of grass. He doesn't do anything else, though.
He just sells them; cheap, too. A pint for a pill.'
The boy looked up at Garland. 'Can I go now?'
It was Mackie who nodded. 'Yes, you can go, although I may want
to speak to you again, in Edinburgh. Thanks for your co-operation; I
mean that.
'Bear this in mind, though; if you were to decide that it might be
safer to tell your room-mate about our chat, and warn him, then you'd
be guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice. I'm sure my
boss would want to interview you himself about that. I tell you, son,
if Ray Weston scares you, then no way do you want to meet DCC
Skinner.'
Abruptly, Beano stood and bolted for the door, leaving the two
policemen staring at each other across the table. 'Bingo,' said Garland.
'Do you want Weston lifted?' he asked.
'Christ no,' said the superintendent. 'I want him watched, though,
every step of the way, as long as he's in town, and I want to know
whenever he heads back to Edinburgh. This boy's a very hot property,
all of a sudden.'
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'Sarah?'
She looked up from changing Jazz's Pampers. The
infant, his strong
legs getting straighter by the day, kicked and struggled as she fastened
the pad and slid him into his sleep suit. 'Yes?'
'Can I borrow that brain of yours?'
She picked up her son and held him out at arms' length. 'Sure, if
you'll take charge of this fellow for a bit. I know it's Lads' Night, and
you have to go in half an hour, but see if you can tire him out first.'
Bob accepted the burden, and without a word, hefted his chortling
son on to his shoulder, fireman style. 'I'll bet you'd fancy coming
along with me, wouldn't you, pal.' For many years, he had been one of
a small select band who gathered in North Berwick every Thursday to
practise their limited footballing skills in the Sports Centre games
hall.
He stood Jazz on his feet on the nursery floor and rolled a soft
rubber ball over to him. 'Let's see what you can do.' The toddler
swung his left foot at the ball, missed it completely and fell on his
padded bottom.
'Just like your dad,' said Sarah.
'Try the other peg,' said Bob. 'Puskas did okay, and one of his legs
was only for standing on.' He retrieved the ball and passed it again, to
his son's right. Jazz kicked out again, and made contact. 'There you
are. Know what, kid? I think I'll buy a set of goal posts for the back
garden, for you and Mark.'
'And for you, as well you know. Now, why do you need my brain?'
He smiled at his wife as he passed the ball back. 'It's to do with the
Weston and Murray investigations.'
'You're really getting your teeth into those, aren't you. I wonder if
Andy knows what a favour he did you by asking you to take them over
from him?'
'He didn't go that far. Like I said, he asked me to "give an
overview". I quote.'
'Listen, he knows you even better than you do, in some ways. What
he gave you was an open invitation to take over those investigations,
217
and just looking at you, I can tell you're doing just that. Now, what do
you want from me?'
Bob rolled the ball into the corner of the nursery, sending Jazz
chasing after it. 'I've been thinking about that heroin,' he began. 'The
stuff that was used to see Gaynor Weston on her way. We ran out of
leads from the hospital pharmacies, and officially, we're satisfied that
it didn't come from any of them. Given the priority that has been
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