by Rob McCarthy
‘So, unless I can tempt you with a job in A&E,’ Kinirons went on, ‘I suggest you have a few more bottles of Fiji water in the near future.’
Harry laughed and Traubert came back over, shaking his head.
‘I’ve got to head in,’ he said, pulling his coat on. ‘Neuro think there’s a case of Guillain-Barré in A&E.’
‘Was he OK?’ said Harry. ‘Whitacre?’
‘He’s saying that there might have been other people involved, people other than Charlie. Are you still in touch with the police? Is that true?’
Harry looked across at Whitacre, who was draining his current pint, and saw his eyes briefly harden as they met his own.
‘It’s not clear,’ Harry said. ‘They’ve passed it over to a specialist team who deal with child abuse and that sort of thing. But all being well, Solomon will be awake and talking next week. Hopefully they’ll get a lot from him.’
‘How’s he doing?’ Kinirons said.
Traubert made a forlorn frown. ‘The plan’s to give him a trial off the ventilator tomorrow. You know how it is, patients who’ve been on the unit that long, it might be difficult. But we’ve got to try. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘I’ve got to head in.’
‘Well, looks like that’s us, then,’ said Kinirons. ‘George here is my chauffeur.’
Harry shook both of their hands and walked with them to Traubert’s car. When he came back inside the pub was loud with noise, its focus the table of Lahiri’s colleagues from Burgess Park. Duncan Whitacre was at the centre of the circle. He was on his feet, obviously drunk, his wife trying to calm him down as he shouted at one of his colleagues.
‘. . . fed up of this bullshit!’
‘Come on, Duncan, please, let’s just go home.’
‘I’m not going anywhere!’ Whitacre roared. ‘All of this is a sham! Room full of sad losers, deluding themselves!’
The hairs on Harry’s neck stood on end. He knew what was driving the rage inside Whitacre, and he knew that it was only a matter of time before it erupted out.
‘Mate, why don’t you get some fresh air?’
The suggestion came from one of Lahiri’s school friends, said in the kind of condescending voice that could only inflame the situation. Whitacre swept the empty glasses off the low table, spitting as he did so.
‘Look at you! All of you! Standing around, patting yourselves on the back, telling each other what a good man he was! Well, you’re all full of shit! Do you want to know what kind of man James really was? Do you?’
Harry rushed forward, trying to be as non-threatening as possible, but the table was between him and Whitacre, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop him delivering the punchline.
‘He was a fucking nonce!’ Whitacre bellowed. ‘Him and that black bastard Charlie! Kiddie-fiddlers, both of them!’
Half of the crowd were caught speechless, in shock, while the others – the younger, drunk, male half – charged him. The first punch came from a doctor Harry and Lahiri had lived with at university, catching Whitacre awkwardly on the right ear, before two of Lahiri’s school friends bundled him to the ground. Somewhere in the melee, Whitacre’s wife erupted into tears. At the edge of the crowd, Lahiri’s mother wailed loudly and collapsed into her husband’s arms.
As people rushed into the scrum, four of Whitacre’s work colleagues pulling him away, Harry backed off slowly, finding himself near the door with Tammas and his nurse. Harry looked down at him.
‘You. Never really. Know. Anyone, do you?’ Tammas said.
‘We knew James,’ Harry said. ‘And he wasn’t that.’
He looked over at the fight, which the bar staff were breaking up, and felt the tears come again.
‘I’m getting out of here, boss,’ he said.
‘Good idea,’ Tammas said.
He walked to his car, got in, and pulled away too fast, gravel spinning out of the wheels and the car stalling. He punched the dashboard and swore, checking his mirrors to see if it was safe to set off again. It was clear, apart from Duncan Whitacre, stooped over on a kerb, crying and vomiting.
Harry put the car in gear and clamped his foot down.
Noble called him when he was well into London, on the A3, after she’d finished work. She was in the pub, or rather outside it, smoking, and wanted to know if he had any plans that evening, suggesting she bring a curry over to his place. Just for the convenience, she said, because she had a meeting at eight on Monday morning at the station on Borough High Street, and Harry’s flat was just up the road. Eventually, they got on to talking about the funeral and the wake, and how the ugly accusations had come out.
‘I wish we’d have just been able to say goodbye. Give him a day of respect before all the accusations started.’
‘We’ll know eventually,’ Noble said. ‘It’s just a matter of time. These investigations don’t get results overnight, you know that.’
‘I know,’ said Harry. ‘I just wish Whitacre had kept his fucking mouth shut. I mean, what are his parents supposed to think now?’
Harry had wanted to have a few private moments with Lahiri’s parents, maybe to apologise by proxy, but the mood had been unendurable. He would call, or write, or something.
‘No idea on when Idris will wake up?’ Noble said. ‘He’ll know who’s responsible. CAIT are preparing to interview the others, too. If Lahiri’s innocent, we’ll clear him.’
‘They’ll try and take him off the ventilator tomorrow,’ Harry said. ‘Well, that’s the plan, anyway. There’re no signs of brain damage, but it could be a week before he’s ready to talk. Maybe longer.’
Harry was navigating the roadworks by the north end of Clapham Common, so it took him a while to realise she hadn’t responded.
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘It’s nothing,’ said Noble. ‘I’m tired.’
‘No,’ said Harry. ‘What is it?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’
‘If it’s about Idris, you should tell me now,’ he said, ‘and you will.’
A loud roar burst out of the static on the hands-free. Harry suspected Noble was in one of the pubs by Walworth station, waiting for him to get home, and a football team had just scored. Once the noise subsided, he heard her take a deep breath.
‘I had a word with one of the DIs from CAIT today,’ Noble said. ‘They did HIV testing on Lahiri at the post-mortem, and on Charlie Ambrose, too.’
Harry was sure that she didn’t know he was holding his breath.
‘They’re both seronegative,’ said Noble. ‘So unless Idris and Best got HIV from some other source, they figure there’s someone else involved. They’ve gone back to square one now, looking at everyone in the Saviour Project again.’
Harry hit the dashboard with a flat palm.
‘Why the hell wouldn’t you want to tell me that?’ he shouted, changing lanes. ‘It’s more evidence that he’s innocent! You people have nothing on him!’
‘I didn’t want to get your hopes up,’ said Noble. ‘It might still turn out that he was involved. I don’t want you to hurt any more than you have to if things go that way.’
Harry thought about that, and how he was just regressing to the worst kind of human behaviour, demanding to see the world in black and white because it was easier that way.
‘How far away are you?’ Noble said.
He ignored her.
‘He’s not a rapist,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to prove that to you. He’s not.’
Silence again. The traffic was sluggish, particularly for a Sunday afternoon, and Harry felt the frustration starting to build.
‘What’s going to happen to Idris?’ Noble said after a while. ‘After he’s discharged?’
‘If I have anything to do with it, he’ll go straight into psychiatric care. The Maudsley has a specialist adolescent unit, we’ll refer him there. After what that kid’s been through, it’s what he needs.’
‘I meant with being HIV-positive. What’s his life expectancy?’
Harry hit a red light and yawned. ‘It’s unusual for someone so young to present with such a serious lung infection, so that suggests he’s particularly susceptible to the disease. He must have been infected three years ago, at least. But with modern therapy, HIV is a chronic disease rather than a life-shortening one. It’s like having diabetes. More of an inconvenience than a disability, really.’
‘Inconvenience?’ said Noble. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’ve got to have monthly blood tests, take about ten pills a day,’ he said. ‘Some of the medications need to be kept refrigerated, little things like that.’
Noble said something, but Harry didn’t hear it. His own voice was echoing back to him like a hallucination. Some of the medications need to be kept refrigerated. And then another man’s voice, as patronising as ever. He felt the colour draining from his face. It was how realisations like this always happened, like a drop of cold rain striking his head as he stepped outside.
‘Fiji water,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Frankie, I need you to meet me at the hospital,’ he shouted into the phone. ‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’
The light went green and he indicated left, moved into a bus lane, cut up a taxi, accelerated along the tarmac, watching the road. Rummaged in his door pocket for his doctor-on-call card, slid it onto the windscreen for all the good it would do. He’d take the back road, Acre Lane to Brixton, and then on to Camberwell.
‘Harry, what the fuck?’ said Noble.
He could tell from the sound that she was getting into her car, starting it. A speed camera flashed as Harry went past it, doing fifty in a thirty zone.
‘I’ll explain in a second,’ he said. ‘Get driving and get some back-up. Then call me, and I’ll explain. Do it, now!’
With that he hung up, and accelerated.
Harry parked on a double-yellow outside A&E, leaving the car unlocked, running to the entrance, where Noble waited for him. James Lahiri was an innocent man, he was sure, but that could wait. There was a guilty man who didn’t know they were coming for him. He started talking as they headed into A&E. For what felt like the tenth time, Noble was trying to understand his logic.
‘He’s got a fridge in his office?’ she said, struggling to keep up as he paced through the department. ‘You want me to arrest someone because they’ve got a fridge in their office?’
‘HIV medication needs to be refrigerated,’ Harry said. ‘That’s what made me realise. But everything else fits. He used to be an A&E consultant, back when they set up the Saviour Project. He told me that’s how he knew Whitacre. He’d have known Ambrose, too.’
‘Harry, I can’t arrest someone on that!’ Noble shouted.
‘Why not?’ said Harry. ‘It all makes sense. He must have used the computer that Lahiri was still logged on to to delete Idris’s penicillin allergy. He couldn’t have risked doing it from his own account, because he knew it’d be audited.’
She followed him through the main hospital and up the East Wing staircase at a run, heading towards the second floor.
‘How do you even know he’s here?’ she asked.
‘He’s on call today,’ Harry said. ‘He was at the funeral. I told him we’d find out who was behind everything once Idris woke up.’
He rounded the corner, sliding to a halt in the corridor between the medical and surgical sections of the ICU. He was still in the black funeral suit, his shirt glued to his chest and back with sweat. The name on the plaque on the office door in front of him taunted him, as if reminding him of his failure, the fact he’d been blind for so long. Dr George Traubert, Clinical Services Director, Emergency Department & Perioperative Care.
On the drive up, Harry had realised that he’d been missing it all along. On the night it had all started, George Traubert had twice screwed up with Idris. First, he’d taken minutes trying to find a vein, even attempting a venous cutdown, a procedure decades out of date, while every second the teenager was bleeding to death. Then he’d spent so long trying to intubate him that Kinirons had had to step in. Harry had derided both as acts of a doctor out of his depth, but as the thoughts circled in his head he realised the truth was far more sinister.
Traubert hadn’t lost control, he’d known exactly what he was doing. Because he never wanted Solomon Idris to wake up. Exactly the same when he’d kept asking Harry how everything was going, whether the police were any closer to finding out who was behind his shooting. Again, Harry had found it merely annoying, when in reality Traubert had been checking up on whether or not he was safe. You sick bastard, Harry thought.
‘Harry! We need a warrant! Harry!’
He tried the door handle. It was locked.
‘Harry, if he’s guilty and we need to prosecute then I can’t use any—’
Harry looked at Noble. He wasn’t a copper. It wasn’t his job to preserve the chain of evidence or turn a portfolio over to the CPS. He was running on a much baser instinct than that. He swung his body into the office door and the lock gave way with a crack.
‘For fuck’s sake, Harry!’
He leapt round Traubert’s desk, finding his way in the dark, knocking over a sheaf of papers. Noble came in behind him, switched on the light. Harry found the mini-fridge, sat in chrome metal between the rows of medical textbooks, the Porsche logo embossed on the bottom-right corner. Yanked the door open, and the light from inside illuminated his face, refracted by the polygonal water bottles, which Harry grabbed, sweeping them out onto the carpet of the office until the fridge was empty.
Apart from the single leaf of kitchen roll on the bottom shelf. Harry closed his eyes and lifted it up.
‘What is it?’ Noble asked.
Harry opened his eyes and saw the pill boxes, processing the names. Entricitabine. Atazanavir. Drugs that were keeping George Traubert alive, preventing the virus inside him from consuming his immune system. The same virus he’d transmitted to Keisha Best and Solomon Idris during years of rape and sexual abuse. He lifted the boxes and read off the colour-coded labels on the ampoules. Diazepam, for injection. Ketamine. There was no good reason for a consultant to have sedative drugs like those in his office. And then the one at the bottom, a single dose of Mifepristone, the abortion pill. Just in case the first one didn’t work. He should have got rid of it by now, Harry thought – Keisha Best and her child were long dead. It was a mistake, and one which would help put Traubert in prison. Where he belonged.
‘Bastard!’ Harry shouted. ‘Bastard!’
Noble pulled him out of the way, her own eyes settling on the medication boxes at the bottom of the fridge.
‘Is that enough to make an arrest?’ Harry said, realising now that he was shouting. ‘Ring the officer who’s with Idris!’
Noble’s face went white. ‘There isn’t one. We stood them down after we got Ambrose.’
‘Fuck!’
She stepped forward, trying to calm him down. ‘There’s officers on the way, Harry, we’ll get him, don’t you worry.’
But he was already gone, out of the office, sprinting for the ICU, bursting through the doors into the nurses’ station. The chief nurse, Valdez, stared at him, and Harry realised he was still in the black suit he’d worn to the funeral. He looked down the corridor towards Idris’s side room, scanning the windows for the tall, stooping figure of Traubert. He wasn’t there, but neither was the patient.
‘Where’s Idris?’ he demanded.
Valdez looked at him, smiling.
‘Oh, you’ve just missed him,’ she said. ‘He’s gone to the CT scanner.’
He gripped her around the shoulders, his forehead burning with rage. Shouted a question that he already knew the answer to.
‘Who’s with him?’
Valdez laughed. ‘Harry, calm down, he’s fine. The registrar’s busy in A&E, so Dr Traubert said he’d escort Idris himself.’
‘Angie, listen to me! Fast-bleep security and get them up to CT now!’
He spun and ran, swearing and cu
rsing as he did so. While there was a CT scanner directly below them in A&E, it was kept free for emergencies, so non-urgent scans would take place in the radiology department in the South Wing. To get there, Traubert would need to wheel Idris to the lift lobby Harry had just come out of, go down, take him along the main hospital corridor to the South Wing lifts, and then up to the first floor.
Harry took the steps in the East Wing stairwell four at a time, jumping from landing to landing. Harry had told Traubert at the funeral that they would know everything when Solomon Idris woke up, and Traubert couldn’t let that happen. He’d tried to ensure that in A&E, and again when he’d deleted his allergy, but it hadn’t worked. There were too many people in an ICU to walk in and kill someone without suspicion, even if you were a consultant. He had to get somewhere where he’d be alone with Idris, and he could do it then. Not the CT scanner itself – there were radiographers and nurses who’d be suspicious and raise the alarm. But any of the corridors along the way would be fine.
He got to the main hospital corridor, his legs beginning to ache, his muscles tiring. Tried to think like Traubert. Everything the bastard had done so far had been misdirection, calculated to point as far away from him as possible. Setting up Lahiri, getting Ambrose to do the dirty work. If he was going to murder Idris in cold blood, he’d do it in a way which would look like natural causes, or a complication of his condition. These were the actions of a man who planned to kill, get away with it, and keep on fucking teenage girls and boys, not the desperate last stand of someone who knew the game was up.
Harry turned a corner in the corridor, hearing Noble shout behind him. The South Wing lift lobby was about a hundred metres ahead, off to the left.
‘Uniform are on their way!’
Out of hours, the hospital’s emptiness was eerie, particularly along the main corridor, which hosted the outpatient departments, the canteen, the lecture theatres and coffee shops that were the focus of activity in daylight hours. Most of the time, Harry found the stillness of weekend and night shifts comforting, relaxing, even serene. Now, the loneliness was forbidding. Somewhere ahead of him, a doctor was waiting to murder his patient, unseen, and the only noise Harry could hear was the machine gun fire of his feet on the vinyl floor, and the panting of his breath.