Click, Double-Click

by James Calum Campbell

  ‘Don’t you see I’m trying to help you? We can increase your pass rate at least by a percentage point. I know it’s modest but it might indicate an upward trend which will take you to your next appraisal. Otherwise we might have to let you go.’

  ‘That is outrageous. That is blackmail.’

  ‘I would be very careful if I were you of the language you use. There’s something else in that folder. Take a look.’

  It was a copy of the contract Stobo had signed five years previously. Stobo stared at it in bewilderment. He only stayed in the room with the reds and golds, the Art, the ticking clock, the big window, for a few minutes longer. He knew this because at this point Horton had produced a small sandglass and inverted it on the desk top. It served as a reminder that the veiled ultimatum Horton was issuing had a limited shelf life and an expiry date. The secretary, Muir Foye, was sitting in shadow.

  ‘You’re not really a team player, are you, Stobo?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Mm. And yet you must know that we at Clerk Maxwell operate very much as a team. Yes? After all, you signed up for it.’ Horton then directed Stobo’s attention to a single paragraph, a gagging clause, buried deep in the text. It had been added into everybody’s contract after a maverick lecturer had taken early retirement and made a speech at his leaving do after a few glasses of wine. ‘I just want to set the record straight on a few issues …’

  Stobo reread the paragraph. ‘I still don’t see the relevance.’

  ‘No? It’s just that, if we have to let you go, you’ll be left without recourse.’

  ‘I don’t think the union would see it that way.’

  Horton had raised his eyes to the ceiling. Suddenly Stobo realised the truth. Horton had the union in his pocket.

  He didn’t sign the chit. The last few grains of pink sand disappeared into the sump of the sandglass. Horton had gazed at him for a few seconds longer and then passed a remark which Stobo later had some difficulty recalling. It was a terse rejoinder, an abstract, key words: tenure, censure, dismissal, pension rights. Its import did not strike Stobo immediately. Getting a piece of bad news is a bit like stubbing your toe. The sharpness of the initial impact is quite tolerable; then it is followed by that dull, sickening, protracted thalamic ache. The ensuing onset of symptoms had been rather insidious: the loss of sleep, the early morning wakening, the loss of energy, appetite, motivation, the inability to concentrate. By the time you realise you have fallen into an abyss, it is too late; you have sunk down so deep that you cannot find your way out. Stobo’s GP signed him off with work-related stress. The convening date for the industrial tribunal had not yet been set.

  ‘So there you are, doctor. As far as I’m concerned, The Bottom Line’s on the back burner.’

  Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s time to draw a line. Give it up. Let it go. 145 scripts! The job had become too vast. Was The Bottom Line a warning? Was it a call to arms? Maybe this was the way terrorist organisations worked. There were little isolated cells, barely aware of one another’s existence, occasionally picking up a murmur. Vague, half-baked ideas floated around, all the more so in this age of the Internet. Pathogenic ideas hung in the air like spores waiting to be picked up, to find a conducive environment, to hatch, to multiply, to break loose. And the rest of us were really helpless to do anything about it. You can’t legislate for the flick of a switch in somebody’s head. I asked Stobo if he thought somebody was planning a Columbine on Clerk Maxwell.

  ‘I don’t know. But it doesn’t really matter. You can’t fight shadows. That’s why I’ve decided to take on Horton. To resist him. At least he’s tangible. I’m not going quietly. That’s all I can cope with. Maybe that’s why I came to see you that night in PMH. To pass the torch.’

  You can’t fight shadows. Maybe he was right. And, by implication, Pearson, Walkerburn, Hoddle, and all the others had been right. It had been paranoia. Here, amid the banal surroundings of a tumbledown cottage stacked full of paper and amid the scattering of the tea things, time to let it go. I looked at Stobo. I still thought of him as Bletchley. Stobo-Bletchley. He seemed perfectly stable in his mood – ‘euthymic’, as the psychiatrists would say.

  ‘So. Just to be clear: you’re not going to shoot up Clerk Maxwell?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I might murder Horton, but that’s another matter.’

  I laughed. ‘I might beat you to it. Well there you are. The Bottom Line solved.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  I had a very pleasant couple of hours with Mr Stobo. Our discussions were very frank and wide ranging, as the diplomatic attachés would say. We spoke of letters, of political affairs, of history, of culture. He was enormously well read. He was erudite. It occurred to me that the respective universes he and Horton occupied were utterly alien to one another. There was no point of interconnection. They could hardly mutually exist. I happened to mention that I, too, had recently been in Horton’s office, and had caught sight of two very sophisticated African visitors.

  ‘That would be “CLIMAX”. Clerk Maxwell International.’

  I couldn’t see how the acronym worked but apparently there was some fancy logo.

  ‘CLIMAX is Horton’s baby. Clerk Maxwell started as a modest tec in a rickety building in Davidson’s Mains. Then it outgrew its domain and attained university status and spilled over the bridge on to its present campus. Now we have an annex in London. There’s big money in the foreign student market. People from developing nations will pay a lot for a British education. In fact some of them pay so much that they think they are purchasing a degree by right. That can be a problem. We have students from Africa, Eastern Europe, the subcontinent, the far east.’

  ‘You’re critical?’

  ‘Of the students? Not at all. Many of them put our home grown lot to shame. But I am worried we are turning tertiary education into a sausage factory. There’s too much pressure. Our students need time and leisure for contemplation and reflection. They need to be aware they are travelling in the Realms of Gold. Horton doesn’t know anything about that. He doesn’t know how desperately the students need to take their eyes off the computer screens and look up to the stars. But I fear it may already be too late. We’re even issuing tablets to the children at kindergarten. Give a toddler a brick and he won’t pick it up, he’ll paw at it to try and scroll down the screen. No. We must destroy this target-driven tick-box IT-orientated gimmickry. Slough it off!’

  He was back on his soapbox. He sensed it himself. ‘I’m sorry doctor, I’m turning purple. I have a tendency to overwrite. I must learn to murder my darlings.’ He sighed. ‘At any rate, it’s either Horton or me. One of us has to go.’

  And I had to go too. I was going to be late for work. I thanked him for the tea. I glanced at the typescript on the sheet of paper in the Lettera 22. I asked Stobo what he was working on. It was a piece on Orwell’s time in Jura.

  ‘I’m a great admirer of George. He saw it all coming – the death of language. What is Twitter if it is not Newspeak? The language of people who yell at their telescreens, shrunk to a series of incoherent tics limited to 140 characters. LOL! OMG!’ He stuck a finger down his throat.

  Stobo came outside to resume his wood chopping and to see me off. We shook hands. I suppose it was a form of closure. This man is okay, I thought to myself. Yet there was something nagging at me. Maybe I just don’t like a sense of abandoning unfinished business. I said, ‘I told the police about The Bottom Line.’

  ‘They must have thought you were certifiable.’

  ‘Do you mind if I tell them about the 145 scripts?’ If I told Horton he’d have an apoplectic fit. And Chief Superintendent Hoddle? It didn’t bear thinking about. But bite the bullet. Dot the is and cross the ts.

  He shrugged. ‘As you please.’

  I turned the car round and started off back down the potholed track towards the west gate. I could see the brown corduroy figure recede in my rearview mirror. So, what was my formulation? Student prank. Hadn’t Forb
es said as much? Wily old Forbes, with his years of experience. He had taken one glance at The Bottom Line and remarked, ‘Student prank.’ In the meantime I had flustered and blustered around and caused no end of confusion and mayhem. What a pity we hadn’t been in old Middlemore the night Stobo-Bletchley fronted up. Sue, my old pal the liaison psychiatrist, would have shot through for a quick word and laid a hand on my arm and said, ‘Relax Al, there’s nothing to this.’ Her assessment would have made mine look hopelessly pedestrian. And I recalled a remark Sue once made while giving a lecture on the assessment of the suicidal patient.

  Whenever you interview a depressed patient, there is a question you should never omit. Ask, do you ever get high?

  I reached the west gate house and turned back out on to the main highway, barely conscious of a vague sense of unease. I hadn’t asked Stobo if he ever got high.

  XIX

  ‘MacTaggart wants you in the board room.’

  ‘I don’t think so. ELSCOMF is adjourned.’

  ‘Prof Pearson’s there.’

  ‘I’ll just change.’

  ‘I think they want you now Alastair.’ The staff nurse looked nervous, distractible.

  ‘But I’ll miss the handover.’ I was so slow on the uptake.

  ‘Now, Alastair. Here’s Cecilia to take you along.’

  Cecilia Bentley was the Patient Advocate. Oh lord, not another complaint. I didn’t know her very well. She was a large, rumbustious woman who donned her mantle of hearty bravura like a suit of armour to protect her from the incessant torrent of abuse pouring in over the parapets day in day out. But even she was a bit low key. I asked her what I had done now, and I wasn’t reassured when she replied briefly that Professor MacTaggart would explain.

  At the board room, Cecilia knocked and went ahead. The Patient Safety Committee was sitting. There was a full complement. Even then I didn’t think this was anything out of the ordinary. There must have been a critical incident. Something would have happened on the floor. This would be a fact-finding mission. I was a witness.

  MacTaggart, seated at the head of the table, looked up briefly from his blotter. He didn’t smile.

  ‘Sit down.’

  MacTaggart and I were at the top and bottom ends respectively of the mahogany expanse. If it had been a dinner party I would have proposed the health of the sovereign, and MacTaggart would have led the speeches. But this was not going to be a merry occasion. It slowly dawned on me; this was an interview without coffee. Cecilia sat to my left. Forbes was on my right. The members of the committee I did not know stared at me with vague curiosity. Those with whom I had a working relationship kept their eyes fixed on their agendas. As I sat, Forbes laid a hand on my sleeve and gave a gentle squeeze. MacTaggart began with his customary expedition.

  ‘This extraordinary meeting of the Patient Safety Committee is now convened. Dr Cameron-Strange, it has come to light that some of your out-of-hours activities may be adversely affecting your professional performance and, as a consequence, posing a threat to patient wellbeing, not to mention the reputation of this institution, and the good name of the medical profession as a whole. I am referring to some work you undertook on a locum basis at PMH –’

  ‘I wasn’t moonlighting. I undertook that shift in a response to a request through official channels.’

  MacTaggart raised his voice sharply. ‘I’m not talking about the shift. I’m not talking about shoring up Trubshaw, though God knows why anybody would want … Well, I’m talking about the unhealthy obsession you have acquired over the pursuit, one might even say the stalking, of a particular patient, and your incessant badgering, in a wholly unofficial capacity, of various public servants. You can consider yourself very fortunate if you are not charged with a whole raft of misdemeanours: mischievous misuse of police time, conduct unbecoming the medical profession, harassment of public officials, unlawful entry into private premises, identity theft, and fraud.’

  ‘He’s got to you, hasn’t he?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Horton. He’s reached you.’

  ‘You were specifically instructed not to pursue your outrageous false hare. Professor Pearson specifically ordered you not to –’

  Forbes spoke up. ‘That’s not quite true, Angus. I merely gave some advice. I had no idea this thing was going to run away.’

  ‘Well with all due respect Forbes, I think you’re being a little disingenuous. When a consultant gives his junior a piece of advice I think he may be justified in assuming the advice will be taken, unless the junior is intent on committing professional suicide, don’t you?’

  There was a sharp collective intake of breath round the table. It occurred to me that the last time this committee had met in plenary session as now, it was to confront an anaesthetist who had been so hooked on fentanyl that he was giving himself a fix every hour on the hour. Following the meeting, the anaesthetist had been suspended. Suspended – an unfortunate way of putting it. He promptly went home and hanged himself. There had been the hell of a stink.

  ‘Sorry! Sorry!’ The Patient Advocate broke the silence. ‘This is not a court of law. We are not here to blame anybody. I’m sorry, but we’re here to help somebody.’

  She was referring to me. She was the Patient Advocate. I was her patient. I was the focus of attention, and yet I had an odd sense that my presence was quite immaterial to the proceedings. I was just an impartial witness to a box-ticking exercise.

  ‘Quite. At any rate, doctor, you are suspended from working in this hospital until further notice.’

  ‘Sorry! Sorry! Dr Cameron-Strange is not being suspended. He is to be signed off sick. Work-related stress.’

  ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather be suspended. I’m not sick.’

  MacTaggart opened his hands in a take-it-or-leave-it gesture. He couldn’t have cared less. He just wanted me out.

  ‘Sick or not, you are required to attend Dr Chaudhury before you leave. He’s expecting you.’

  Chaudhury was the head of psychiatry. They didn’t want another hanging.

  The unblinking eyes of the committee stared down at me impassively.

  I took the remains of The Bottom Line out of my pocket and placed them on the table.

  ‘Very well. If I am to be removed, you must be responsible for taking this forward. I tracked down Bletchley –’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ barked MacTaggart with real fury.

  I unfolded the crumpled sheet of A4. ‘We think there may be about one hundred and fifty leads …’

  ‘Desist!’

  The Bottom Line, abused, battered, and crumpled as it was, finally disintegrated. I suddenly saw myself as the committee saw me, a bereaved and broken man howling incoherently over some totemic fetish. Forbes laid a hand on my arm and said gently, ‘Let me look after this for you. I’ll take care of it.’ He gathered the remnants of paper and quietly confiscated them. MagTaggart snapped, ‘Dr Chaudhury. Now.’

  ‘That’s fine. I’ll clear my desk.’

  ‘No you won’t. That has already been done for you. Leave your ID and swipe card on the table. Your personal effects will be returned.’ I wasn’t even going to be allowed back into the department. Personal effects. I was dead already. I stared stonily down the length of the room at MacTaggart. Forbes said in a low voice, ‘I’ll have your things dropped off at the flat. I’ll call you.’ He didn’t look up.

  24dn: Heavy metal executant,

  or maybe executioner (6)

  XX

  I pushed the Yale key into the lock at Thirlestane but the door was already open. I stepped into the dull entrance hall. There was dead silence. I called. ‘Caitlin?’ The flat was mute.

  I glanced at the fish tank. Tallulah was lying motionless, just below the surface, belly up. Some noxious effluvium seemed to seep out of the floor boards and through my feet to ascend into my body.

  Search the flat. It didn’t take long. I sat down in the front room and stared at the wall for ten minutes. Then I gl
anced at my watch. I was amazed to find it was not yet midday. The whole of the rest of the day yawned at me vacuously.

  She should have left a note. Would she take the train down to Cheltenham? I should really phone Eric and Sally but what if she wasn’t planning to go home? They would be beside themselves.

  I sent her a text.

  Katie where R U? Call me, Al.

  I folded my phone away and wandered about the flat, sensitised, wired for a response, wanting to hear that chirpy double bleep as a lover longs to hear from a loved one. Nothing. I tried her again on the land line. My hands were trembling as I tapped out the number. I got voice mail. I left a brief message telling her to call.

  She’d cleaned the place up. I suppose I should have been grateful but I was mortified. She had obliterated herself. She’d left the set of keys I’d given her in a little brass jug beside the late Tallulah. Maybe that was why Tallulah was belly up. She had died of a broken heart.

  In the kitchen, she had taken all the dishes out of the dish washer and stacked them away. All the work surfaces had been wiped. In the bathroom all the porcelain and glass and chrome shone. There was bleach down the loo. All around the flat she had dusted and vacuumed. I wanted the place to be a mess and I wanted to find a note scrawled in her rounded girlish hand. ‘Gone for a walk. See you for tea! XXX’

  Abruptly the door bell rang. Thank God.

  I threw the door open. It wasn’t her.

  They were standing together quietly at the door, two men in suits. My first thought was that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses or maybe representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Maybe they were just selling toilet brushes. But there was an air of officialdom.

  ‘Dr Cameron-Strange? Major Forster. Special Branch.’ He flashed a card momentarily. It disappeared as if by sleight of hand. ‘This is my colleague Dr Parkinson. May we come in?’ He sensed my hesitation. ‘It concerns your recent enquiries. We may be able to help.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Clerk Maxwell.’