First Blood

by Claire Rayner

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ George took the bottle back from him to put it in its appointed place among those she was sorting. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time someone put a poison in something else so that a person would take it without knowing it was harmful.’

  ‘Not one of these,’ Jerry said very positively. ‘I mean, look at ’em.’ He picked up the bottle again and shook one of the tablets on to his palm. ‘They’re coated. Even if someone knew how to make a pill like that – and it’s obviously a machine-made one – they wouldn’t be able to coat it to match, would they? And what about the size of it, anyway? I told you, he must have had around thirty of the twenty-five milligramme tablets to give him the tissue levels he had. That’d make one hell of a big pill.’

  ‘Maybe it was more than one.’

  ‘All right. So he – or she, whoever the person is trying to get rid of old Oxford – makes two or three of these pills, though God knows how, seeing they’re coated and all that. How can he or she be sure that Oxford’ll take them all at once? People don’t take three of these at a time, do they? I thought the whole thing was that they’re once-a-dayers. So it couldn’t have been these.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ George said. ‘I dare say it wasn’t one of these, or three of them. But he took it in something, so we have to check everything.’

  ‘Maybe whoever it was came and gave it to him,’ Jerry said. ‘Gave him a nice hot drink of milk and laced it with digitalis.’

  ‘No way. Remember the stomach contents? Absolutely empty. He hadn’t eaten for a long time before he went to bed. If he’d had something with milk I’d have found traces.’

  ‘Well, tea then, or coffee. Or a whisky and soda. No, dammit, not whisky. He was clear of alcohol.’

  ‘Completely. And why should he take a handful of digitalis pills anyway? Not that there’s any point in our even discussing it. I keep coming back to those stomach contents. Nothing there except a bit of mucus and gastric juices and enzymes. I’d swear to it he didn’t take a thing by mouth that could have hurt him within several hours of his death. If he’d swallowed those pills he’d have died before the last of them left the stomach, surely. And we’d have found them.’

  Jerry sighed. ‘It’s daft, anyway,’ he said lugubriously. ‘Didn’t you say the place was locked up? Burglar alarm set and everything?’

  ‘Exactly. No one came and tucked him in with a handy dose of poison and then left him. He put himself to bed after he’d locked up –’

  ‘Oh, I am enjoying this!’ Jerry said. ‘It’s just like being Inspector Morse.’

  ‘Except that we’re dealing with a real man who died. And that’s not fun, is it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Jerry said with a judicious air. ‘It is, really, seeing it was Oxford who’s involved. Everyone thought he was a shit so why pretend about it? The way he used to prowl around sticking his nose into everything, he was such a creepy old devil. Smarmy and nosy at the same time, him and his fundraising. Just a front for meddling.’

  ‘I know,’ George said. ‘I remember taking a scunner to him when he came crawling round me with his “let me know what I can fix for you” talk. So I suppose there won’t be many who –’

  ‘– won’t be glad to see the back of him,’ Jerry said. ‘Right.’

  George stopped what she was doing and stared at him. ‘People around here? At Old East?’ she said.

  ‘Heavens yes!’ Jerry picked up another pill bottle, the paracetamol this time. ‘Half the hospital, if you ask me.’

  ‘Then the person who did this could be someone we all know.’

  ‘Mmm?’ Jerry looked at her, his forehead crumpled. ‘I suppose so. What’s wrong with that? It’d be marvellous to uncover a villain here. I’d love it. You’re not going to go all soggy over this, are you Dr B.? You should find it more interesting to track down a person you might know, rather than just any old stranger. Adds a spice, I reckon.’

  ‘You would,’ George said, taking back the paracetamol and starting work again. ‘Look, take all these tablets and be very careful indeed with your readings and your recordings. I don’t want the police to be able to make the smallest complaint. We’re doing this instead of sending it off to the police forensic lab, to save time –’

  ‘And money, I’ll bet,’ Jerry said.

  ‘Probably. Anyway, it’s got to be superbly done, you understand me? I want no cock-ups.’

  ‘It’d never do to upset the Chief Inspector, would it?’ Jerry said wickedly. He took the pills and carried them over to his work station. ‘Is this all?’

  George, finding it easier to ignore his comment about Hathaway, said shortly, ‘You can see for yourself. That’s all the pill bottles. I’ll deal with the liquid doses myself. Let me have an answer as soon as you can.’

  The laboratory settled down to silence. Jane and Peter were still in the canteen on their afternoon tea break and Sheila was away somewhere around the hospital on one of her interminable administrative trips, and George thought, as she organized her equipment to start analysing her own samples, I’ll have to deal with her. She’s letting her taste for gossip get in the way of her work. It would be hard to complain to Sheila because although she was well known for her penchant for gossip and was frequently absent from the lab in the pursuit of it, she did her work with great skill and attention to detail; it was hard to find any fault in it, ever. Jane, who never stirred from her station except to go to meals and the lavatory, who never made a private phone call and whose only vice was allowing herself to be distracted by Jerry’s chatter, made far more mistakes and did far less work than Sheila ever had. All the same, George thought as she measured reagents into a test tube, I’ll have to speak to her.

  Jane and Peter came back and she put them to work, too, on some of the samples from Oxford’s flat. There was hospital stuff to get through, but nothing urgent, and the sooner she got all this out of the way, she told herself, the sooner she’d be able to see that the laboratory was working full tilt on hospital demands. But she knew that the real reason was that she wanted to show off to Gus Hathaway, wanted him to be amazed at the speed with which he got results back from George as compared with the police laboratory, and she despised herself for it. But she still did it.

  Sheila came back to the lab about half an hour later and George looked at her over her microscope with an enquiring air that made Sheila look stubborn at once.

  ‘I can’t help it if these wretched secretaries take so long about everything,’ she said. ‘I try to hurry them along, but they don’t know what the word efficiency means.’

  ‘Everyone’s out of step except me,’ sang Jerry sweetly into his microscope and Sheila glowered at him.

  ‘I’d like to see how you’d get on if you had to worry over the things I do,’ she said. ‘Dealing with that supply office is like dealing with a cloud on legs.’

  ‘All right,’ George said peaceably. ‘As long as whatever it is is sorted out …’

  ‘Not really.’ Sheila sniffed. ‘I’ve told the wretched woman to write to the manufacturers now and get me copies of all the paperwork. Then I’ll know where I am. I’m sick of her looking for it and not finding it. Let her go to the trouble of tracking it down and leave me to get on with my work.’

  ‘It’ll make a nice change,’ Jerry murmured and again Sheila glared at him.

  ‘Jerry Swann, if you want to –’

  ‘Enough,’ George said loudly. ‘That’s quite enough.’

  Behind them the door from the other lab opened and the young technician Sam put his head round it.

  ‘Er, Sheila,’ he said. ‘I thought I heard your voice. Please, could I have a word?’

  ‘What about?’ Sheila snapped, now thoroughly irritable. ‘Can’t you do anything without someone behind you all the time?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Sam said and then, as someone behind him apparently pushed him further into the room, ‘It’s something different. Not work. Well, not exactly. I wouldn’t have b
othered you but Tracy said I should.’

  One of the girls was standing behind him now and her face was set in a sort of stubborn yet excited look, and she said loudly, ‘It’s something that you’ve got to know about.’

  ‘Well, what is it?’ Sheila said resignedly, moving towards the door.

  ‘It’s those microscopes,’ Tracy began and nudged Sam. ‘Tell her.’

  ‘Oh, not again!’ George cried and put down her test tubes, rattling them in their stand in her hurry. ‘I don’t want to hear another word about the damned things. They were stolen, you all gave your statements to the police, they’ve been replaced and surely that’s an end of it. Do we have to keep on and on chewing over the same old –’

  ‘Of course we do!’ Sheila cried. ‘I have to have all the paperwork – the order-form copies and so forth – so that I can keep the file updated. Suppose they were stolen again? If I didn’t have all the paperwork, it’d be a complete mess!’

  ‘It is anyway,’ George snapped. ‘The important thing is we’ve got the things. To hell with the paperwork. Life’s too short to spend shifting pieces of paper from one place to another.’

  ‘But this is important!’ Tracy said as Sam tried to pull on her arm and get her away.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose it’s anything. I could have been wrong, anyway.’

  ‘You weren’t wrong,’ Tracy said firmly and looked at George. ‘The thing is, Sam looked at the microscope I got when they came back and he says it’s the same one.’

  ‘The same what? How do you mean?’ George said.

  ‘He recognized it.’ She nudged Sam again. ‘Tell ’em, do!’

  The boy was red and miserable, almost on the edge of tears, and he spoke directly to George, trying to ignore Sheila who was looking at him furiously. ‘I never meant to do any harm, it was an accident –’

  ‘Oh, shut up about that, Sam! No one’ll care about that now! Now we’ve got proof that – Look, shall I tell them?’

  The boy nodded weakly and Tracy turned. She stood with her feet set a little apart to brace herself and her hands shoved deep into her white-coat pockets to hide their shaking. She was very excited.

  ‘We’ve got definite proof that these microscopes were stolen and –’

  ‘But no one doubts that,’ George cried, bewildered. ‘That’s why the police were called and –’

  ‘– and the ones that have come back are the same ones. The stolen ones.’

  There was a short silence and then Sheila asked in a slightly stupefied tone, ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Sam had an accident with his, the day after it came. The first time it came, I mean. After we’d waited all those months for them. He dropped something heavy and chipped a bit of the enamel. He was ever so worried, said you’d kill him and –’

  ‘You’re damned right!’ Sheila said. ‘A new microscope? What’d you expect?’

  ‘So he got some touch-up paint. The sort you use for cars.’

  ‘And tried to hide the damage,’ George said, and made for the door. ‘Show me.’

  They all went into the big lab, Jerry and Jane following, even silent Peter being pulled from his stool in the excitement as Sam led the way to Tracy’s station.

  ‘There, you see?’ he said, pointing. ‘I’m ever so sorry, Sheila, honestly I am. It wasn’t my fault. I had one of the big weights and it sort of slid in my hand and hit the foot all sideways and there was this great chip and I thought, well, after a few months no one’ll remember and it’ll be all right. But then they were stolen –’

  ‘And when they were replaced we thought they were new ones, but then I saw this mark on mine and I said to Sam, it looks funny, this bit, and he looked and said it was his microscope because he’d fixed it.’

  ‘I spent hours over it,’ Sam said. ‘I’d never have forgotten what it looked like. I never will. That’s my microscope all right.’

  George was sitting at the microscope now and peering down at it. ‘Give me that hand magnifier,’ she said over her shoulder. Tracy handed it to her.

  There was a long silence while she looked through it at the mark Sam had shown her and then she put the magnifier down and sat silent, frowning down at it.

  ‘Sheila,’ she said after the long pause. ‘When these came back, who delivered them?’

  ‘I don’t know. I came back to the lab – I’d been somewhere – and found they were here. Jerry signed the delivery note.’

  George looked up at Jerry. ‘What sort of person brought them?’

  Jerry screwed up his face. ‘Oh, Lor’, Dr B. I can’t remember! Chap in overalls, the usual sort, you know.’

  ‘Had you ever seen him before?’

  ‘Not to my recollection.’

  ‘Did anyone else see him?’

  Jane lifted her head. ‘Me. Only I can’t say I noticed much. Ordinary sort of a man. Said, “Here’s your microscope, sign here,” and Jerry said, “I’ve got to have a copy,” and the man said, “Fine,” and gave him one and that was it.’

  ‘How were they brought here? On a trolley or carried or what?’

  Jerry pointed across the lab to one of the big trolleys they used to shift materials around the big room. ‘Just the usual sort.’

  ‘And he took it away with him afterwards?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  George shrugged her shoulders. ‘I haven’t the least idea. I just wanted to try to see how it was. Look, Sheila, the copy of the delivery note, I imagine you have it?’

  Sheila nodded. ‘Jerry left it on my desk. I’ll get it.’

  George pored over the piece of paper and shook her head. It was a piece of the hospital’s stationery, carrying the familiar letterhead, with ‘Supplies Department’ printed across the top left-hand corner in black print. She put it down on the bench and again shook her head.

  ‘It’s the usual sort of scribble, isn’t it? Three microscopes, replacement for invoiced items and no number to identify the invoice.’

  ‘That was what I kept telling that stupid woman in Formby’s office,’ Sheila said triumphantly. ‘I said if she numbered everything that went out of there she’d be able to track the things down. She just said she did and denied her system ever went wrong, but here we are with proof.’

  George had picked up the sheet again and now she frowned. ‘Sheila, have you any other supply department notes?’

  ‘Of course. But not to do with these microscopes.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Let me see what you have.’

  Sheila went away and everyone stood around George in awkward silence as they waited for her return. George was about to send them all back to work when Sheila at last came back and put a sheet of paper in front of her.

  ‘Ah,’ George said. ‘I was right.’ She felt a lift of excitement, the sort she used to feel when sitting exams and she had found the answer to one of the questions bouncing in her mind. ‘I knew I remembered.’ She ran her finger over the heading on the paper and said to no one in particular, ‘You see?’

  ‘See what?’ Sheila said crossly as the others leaned closer and peered.

  ‘Oh!’ It was Jerry who saw it first and he sounded startled. ‘It’s the wrong colour!’

  ‘Got it. This lettering’ – George touched the sheet that Sheila had just brought her – is in very dark blue, isn’t it? And very slightly raised, isn’t it? But this is black, and quite smooth.’ And she ran her finger over the heading on the delivery note that Jerry had signed.

  ‘It’s not a proper piece of stationery,’ Jerry said. ‘It’s a –’

  ‘I reckon it’s a photocopy,’ George said as she got to her feet. ‘Jerry, Peter, all of you, back to work. Sheila, you and I must go and see Formby over this. Right now.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Sheila said with great relish. ‘It’ll do my heart good to show those stupid people just where they’ve – Oh!’ And she stopped.

  ‘You’ve realized!’ Jerry said. ‘Imagine that! Sheila’s understood! It’
s not their fault, is it, if someone pinched a bit of their stationery and photocopied it to use for a theft, is it? You’ve been nagging that woman purple all this time and it wasn’t her fault at all.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sheila said again, blankly this time, and then very slowly her face began to flush and Jerry laughed delightedly.

  ‘Better if you go on your own, Dr B.’ he said. ‘Sheila’d not be much of an asset the way things are, would she? You go and sort it out yourself. It would be better, don’t you agree?’

  16

  ‘You can’t expect me to say nothing about it,’ George said in what she hoped was a tone of calm reason. ‘You called the police when they went missing. Now they’ve come back, obviously they have to know.’

  Formby was sweating and his eyes had a slightly exophthalmic look, as though the pressure inside his head were pushing them outwards into a bulge. ‘It’s not that simple,’ he said. ‘It’s obvious something’s gone very wrong in this office. I do all I can to keep it in order but when you’re dealing with entrenched staff practices’ – he threw a venomous glance over George’s shoulder and behind her the wail broke out again as May found more tears to shed – ’then you can’t always be as efficient as you’d like. If the police are called again, it’ll be a – a scandal!’

  ‘And if they’re not?’

  ‘It won’t make any difference! Oh, shut up, May, for Christ’s sake! You’re making enough noise to deafen the whole bloody hospital.’

  May let out another cry and got unsteadily to her feet. She went scrabbling for the door. ‘I’m not staying here to be insulted. I’m not staying. I said it wasn’t my fault and now you’re saying it is and –’

  ‘No one’s blaming you,’ George said wearily. ‘I told you, it’s just a mix-up as far as you’re concerned. The paperwork never had anything to do with what happened.’

  But it was too late. May was shrieking in full hysterics now. George jumped up, took the woman by the shoulders and held her firmly, trying to calm her, but she had to shout to make herself heard and that seemed to make May worse.

  It was Formby who stopped her. He came up from behind his desk and, with an almost vicious twist of his wrist, slapped May’s face so hard that the sound could be heard above her wails and red finger marks appeared on her wet cheeks. She gasped, hiccuped and retched, but fortunately didn’t vomit, and then settled to a low moaning. Formby said loudly, ‘Go and lie down, May. You’ll feel better later. Leave this to Dr Barnabas and me. Go on now.’