by John Collee
The voice was familiar – Kingsley scrutinized the face – strong red hair, heavy brows and thick moustache. 'I can't remember our having met before; are you a patient of mine?'
'We've not met before, Mr Kingsley. I've spoken to you on the phone.'
Now Kingsley placed the thick Highland accent. 'You're Roland Spears.'
Spears nodded slowly.
Kingsley came to stand above him. 'Well,' he said, ‘I’m afraid I don't have time to . . .'
'This won't take a minute,' said Spears, barring his way.
Kingsley considered the other's large hands and muscular shoulders. 'I suppose I can report you to someone for this kind of strong-arm tactic.'
'Frankly,' said Spears, 'I don't give a fuck.'
The word still jarred with Kingsley. He returned to his desk and reached for the phone. Spears beat him to it.
'What do you want?' said Kingsley tautly.
'Just the truth,' said Spears. 'I know you think it's the press who've dropped you in this shit but, believe me, unless the public gets some information on this thing, it can only get a whole lot worse.'
Kingsley released the receiver. He looked at his watch. Rhona would be in soon. 'There's nothing they need to know.'
'Crap,' said Spears. 'Just how dumb do you think the public really are? There's been intense medical interest in these cases. Your former pathologist, Dr Mukesh, was given a substantial grant to research my wife and five others – research which had barely been started when he died in violent circumstances. Doesn't that suggest he was on to something?'
'I doubt it,' said Kingsley.
Spears pressed him. 'But you think it's possible?'
'Anything's possible,' said Kingsley.
'Do you think he was murdered?'
'Mr Spears, why don't you ask the police that?'
'I have.'
'What did they say?'
'Accidental death.'
'That's what I say then.'
Spears's eyes fixed on him. 'After he died, was his research continued?'
'It has recently been suspended.'
'Completed?'
'Suspended,' said Kingsley.
Spears picked up the stone paperweight. 'Do you think it would be possible for me to interview Dr Mukesh' s successor?'
'No,' said Kingsley.
'Just a few . . .'
'No,' said Kingsley more forcibly.
'He's not fallen in the harbour as well?'
Kingsley flinched. Spears was not a man to tread gently on other people's sensitivities, and Kingsley realized that to have any hope of keeping him away from Dhangi he required to tell him a version of the truth. 'As you're obviously not going to be put off, here's the situation . . .' Kingsley slowed, choosing his words carefully. 'The present line of research had nothing to do with Dr Mukesh – it's Dr Dhangi's and always has been.' He studied Spears's face to see if he responded favourably to this truth, realizing as he did so that it was, in fact, another lie. Swallowing, he continued. 'However, Dr Dhangi is . . . intensely secretive about his work . . . and has never allowed the experiments to be duplicated.' Still Spears's visage displayed neither belief nor disbelief. Kingsley elaborated. 'This pathological shyness makes the situation extremely delicate – premature publicity seriously damages our chances of success. That,' here he looked directly at Spears, 'is the truth.'
Spears was nonplussed: 'And I suppose you're happy with the state of affairs?'
'It's a compromise.'
'You're bloody right it's a compromise.' Spears had risen to his feet. Now he leant over Kingsley's desk, banging the paperweight on its surface. 'Your own wife has been successfully treated. There's people out there who can probably be cured as well. Meanwhile you think you can sit here playing bloody God deciding who will and who won't die for the sake of some fucking reclusive scientist who you don't want to offend.' Spears's thick index finger was an inch from Kingsley's face. 'Morally, Kingsley, I think you stink. You're playing around with something you can't handle and if you ask me you deserve everything that's coming to you.'
With that he turned and barged out of Kingsley's office. The door slammed against the wall as his feet thundered through Rhona's working area and into the corridor.
Kingsley closed the door quietly and returned to his desk. A profound emptiness had come to occupy his whole person and he felt that his powers of judgement were failing him. He knew for certain that Spears was right – the storm was breaking – it could only be a matter of days before his story was national news. Even now he was aware of the silent pressure from his local colleagues, which had somehow evolved from the silence of sympathy. They were waiting for him to act. He'd been challenged and they were waiting for the reply. The time-honoured reply, redolent with logic and professionalism which calms hysterical mothers, soothes grieving relatives and silences crying babies.
Kingsley was aware, hopelessly and finally, that he had none to give.
What could he do? He could have Dhangi arrested. But on what grounds? He could accuse Dhangi openly of withholding scientific information. But on what evidence? Dhangi' s apparent eccentricity would simply compound the popular belief that Kingsley's own mind was unbalanced by recent stress. They would see Dhangi as a shabby scapegoat for his own mismanagement of a discovery vital to research. Easiest of all for himself, he could force Dhangi to leave the hospital, but in terms of the loss to humanity that last resort would still constitute in Kingsley's mind an act of historical selfishness. As he saw it now, his only course of action was to allow the situation to develop, to sit tight and try to weather the storm. With luck, before Dhangi was panicked into leaving, he might yet expose his hand. If, as was more likely, Dhangi did flee the hospital he could be legitimately pursued and questioned in connection with the research.
Kingsley was aware of the flaws in this approach – that with Dhangi's disappearance he could not be sure he would be released from the healing power; that Dhangi, once lost, might never be retrieved again; that, panicked by publicity, Dhangi could resort to further atrocities. And as for the present, Kingsley realized that his own silence could only fuel suspicion against himself, that in denying the existence of these miracles he was merely endorsing his own apparent responsibility for them. As these insights occurred so they were lost in the endless circuit of argument and counter-argument. Now, like a prisoner forced to pace a darkened cell for hours on end, he was no longer aware of, or interested in the possibility of release. More than anything he wanted to rest, to forget, to be left alone.
Two more days passed. Outside their house the plainclothes policemen continued their protective surveillance, changing shifts every six hours, thanking God for small mercies like the car heater and thermos flask. Christmas approached – every day shorter and colder than the previous one.
Dhangi now arrived in the mortuary at dusk and stayed there long into the night. Cranley would arrive there in the morning and leave mid-afternoon. They rarely met. This was cold comfort to Cranley. His life had been founded on that mortuary and the curtailment of each working day infuriated him almost as much as the desecrations he found on his arrival there each morning. Now, having avoided Dhangi for three or four weeks, his incapacitating fury had distilled into an acid of hate and resentment.
At five o'clock, displaced once more, he sat with William in the moth-eaten comfort of the porters' lodge. A fierce coal fire glowed in the twisted grate, burning one side of his face as he scowled at the table. He swilled down another draught from his mug and drew again on the cigarette.
'I wouldn't worry yourself about him,' said William.
'I’m not worried about him. He's got to go, that's all.'
'Just ignore him, Mr Cranley. If he wants to do all the work himself just you let him. He'll get sick of it soon enough.' William leant forward on the table. His shiny serge suit took the strain. He guzzled his own coffee and smacked his fat red lips.
'It's not that I'm worried about,' said Cranley. 'You don't know
what he gets up to.'
'What does he get up to?'
'He's in that mortuary all hours.'
'I've seen the light on. You know what doctors are like – maybe he's researching.'
'That bugger's not researching. I know what he does and it's not researching.'
William adjusted his waistband.
'He didn't look an over-pleasant character.'
'Never says a word. Just damned insolence. Looks at you with that glaikit expression of his. Hacks away at the bodies willy-nilly. I asked him how he'd like his own body to end up looking like that.'
'What did he say to that?'
'Didn't say anything. Doesn't bother him.' Cranley raised his cup. The coffee jiggled against his mouth and ran down the sides of his cheeks. He rattled the cup back into its saucer.
'I mean, Holy God.' He stared at the glass. 'He doesn't even examine them any more.'
'Researching,' said William.
'He's not researching. All hours he's in there.'
'Simple then,' said William. 'He's for the sack.'
'It's no use.'
'What d'you mean, no use? If the bugger won't do what he's supposed to, he's for the bloody sack.'
'I've spoken to Kingsley,' said Cranley. 'I told him all that. I told him how he hashes up the corpses, told how he won't let me do my job. The mortuary's a pit, a real bloody pit. I told him how Dhangi lets himself in the mortuary and stays there till all hours.'
'What did he say?'
'He didn't say anything. He gave that bugger the job and he won't be told he's wrong.'
'Tell him again.' William stroked the great hairs that protruded from his nose. 'Tell him again,' he repeated. 'Mr Kingsley' s a fair man, he'll listen to reason.'
'Not with this one he won't,' said Cranley, 'not with this one. Kingsley won't sack this one.'
'Tell him what you told me.'
'I have. He just hums and haws. He won't listen. He's all wrapped up with the bloody cancer cures and he won't listen.'
'Well, there's nothing wrong with curing cancer.'
Cranley was suddenly aflame. 'You can't cure cancer. It's not natural. You either cut it out or it kills you. That's the way it is.'
'Aye,' said William. And the conversation was suspended.
Cranley hoisted himself from the table and left.
The great brown clock ticked in the entrance hall. Cranley sidled up the steps to casualty. The nursing station was festooned with mistletoe. The cubicles lay empty. As Cranley rounded the corner there came a burst of laughter from the kitchen. He turned and limped down the corridor. Outside, the cold sliced through his thick black suit.
The light was on in the mortuary.
Cranley climbed the steps, tried the door. It was locked. He brought out his key. His coat hung in the anteroom. Light filtered through from the dissecting room. There was no sound. Cranley waited, listened and limped through. No sign of Dhangi.
Cranley walked slowly to the slab. He looked down at Mrs Pearson. His careful stitching of that afternoon had been slit open. The lungs had been gouged out, revealing the shiny ribbed runnels inside her chest. Dhangi had taken the heart to the dissection bench. It lay on the cork, still uncleaned, crudely macerated, as if some animal had been chewing at it. Cranley walked slowly to the far end of the room, his nailed shoes grating on the tiles. He stopped in front of Dhangi's makeshift shrine and brooded darkly over the garish pictures of snakes and demons, blue-throated gods with their hour is, white lotus flowers and the pot-bellied acolytes of each shining idol. Cranley took the joss-sticks from their holders and broke them, scattering their splintered remnants on the floor. He wrenched the pictures from the wall, gathered them and ripped them across, then ripped the halves into quarters. The scraps of card fell at his feet mixed with daubs of blood and human grease. Cranley extinguished the candles and crushed them on the floor, then took each cheap tin candle-holder in turn and twisted the metal upon itself.
When he had finished he walked back to the door, scuffing through the evidence of his iconoclastic fury. He switched out the light and locked the door carefully behind him.
It was seven-thirty when Dhangi let himself back into the mortuary. On the mat inside the door something caught his eye – a fragment of a picture. He picked it up and rushed into the mortuary. A flick of the switch and the neon lights sprung into life. Dhangi clutched at the door jamb for support, then flung himself forwards, weeping, scrabbling on the floor among the fragments of metal, candle-wax and paper.
Chapter 21
Sheila Kingsley stepped out of the bath, wrapping a towel around herself. She parted the curtains to check there was no one outside. No one holding a silent vigil under the street lights. No nervous stranger vacillating in the front drive. She walked through to the bedroom.
'You sure you want to go to this?'
'I'm sure I don't want to go to it,' said Kingsley. He was standing in front of the mirror in his shirt tails, squinting over his chin, trying to insert a collar stud.
'Here, let me.'
She took it from him, placed the stud on the dresser, lifted his shirt and wrapped her arms around his waist.
'That's not helping.'
'What's it like being Jesus?'
'Come on, we'll be late.'
She picked up the stud.
'Lift your chin!' She put in the stud and smoothed his collar.
'What's going to happen to us?' she said.
'How do you mean?'
'When people know about you.'
'Nothing's going to happen to us.'
She took off the towel. Kingsley pulled on his trousers.
'Maybe it won't come to that. What are you going to wear?'
Sheila Kingsley dropped the slip over her head and picked up her dress.
'This. Can you do me up?'
*
The snow fell on Constitution Street and was sloshed and bruised from the cobbles. It settled on the statue of Douglas Calder and on the black stone of the hospital, a veil of powder, making crazy catherine wheels of the street lights. It fell across the oblong, burning windows and on the railings and on the crammed car park. As they opened the door of the car, the muted throbbing of disco music emerged from the hospital to meet them.
Kingsley ran a finger under his collar and wished he'd had a drink before they left. Short drew up as they were getting out.
'Alistair,' he said. 'The therapeutic magician of North Edinburgh. You 've been hiding from me.'
'Pressure of work,' said Kingsley.
Rhona stepped out from the passenger seat.
'Hello, Mr Kingsley.'
'You can call him Alistair,' said Richard Short. 'He's not famous yet. You know Sheila, don't you?'
They were standing in the porch. William opened the front door. Richard Short thrust a huge cigar into the porter's top pocket.
'Right,' he said. 'Where's the party?'
'Straight on through, sirs.'
Rhona was wearing a medium length black dress which fitted her bottom like the skin of a plum.
The old Victorian hall had been decked up in streamers and coloured paper. A makeshift bar had been erected under the balcony. In one corner Reckless Rod's Lothian Roadshow was pumping out music. Chairs and tables had been commandeered from the canteen, restricting dancers to the centre of the hall. The old hall never looked quite at ease in this guise – too essentially sober for such frivolity, like Ned Collins, the gynaecology consultant, disco-dancing.
They edged through the tables. Heads turned towards them. Kingsley nodded vaguely in acknowledgement, but he felt remote from all this, an isolation more insurmountable than his seniority or his shyness had ever imposed.
Short was navigating Sheila and Rhona towards the bar. Kingsley stood alone on the edge of the dance floor in his own carapace of responsibility, confusion and guilt. He was almost relieved to notice McReady in some vast orange garment, trundling towards him through the dancing couples like a Cairngorm snowplough.
'Hello, sis.'
'Are you not drinking, Mr Kingsley?'
'I've just arrived.'
McReady took him by the arm, her voice low and conspiratorial.
'Well, before you get too carried away, can I just talk shop a wee moment. I got a phone call from Mrs Leslie, the sarcoma lady. She says she won't come in for her op. She says the lump's going away.'
Kingsley nodded numbly.
'You don't seem over-concerned.'
'It's party night, McReady. Can I get you a drink?'
'I'm just on Perrier water.' She pronounced it to rhyme with terrier.
'But you'll have a whisky in it?'
'Just a wee one.' McReady forged a path for them across the dance floor.
Richard Short was on his second beaker of Martini. His free hand fluttered round Rhona's black dress like a humming-bird in search of nectar. Kingsley summoned a burst of bonhomie. 'Is this man bothering you?'
'Not yet,' said Rhona.
'I'm buying for sister here.'
'I'll get them.' Richard Short leant gingerly over the bar. Its surface was already swimming with alcohol. 'Doubles?'
'Singles.' Kingsley added: 'McReady's on a diet and I'm on call.'
The music took a classical turn and Kingsley asked Sister McReady for a Viennese waltz, reckoning that she was a woman to be partnered while genteel dancing was being catered for. Two years previously he'd landed McReady for a Strip the Willow and vowed never to repeat the experience.
Three dances later, Richard Short and Rhona were still at the bar. Kingsley went to find his wife. William, puffing his huge Churchill, had finally joined the party. Cranley, always a man for the country dancing, remained conspicuous by his absence.
Richard Short picked up the bottle of Martini. 'Another drink, Rhona?'
'You won't get me to comply with your unreasonable requests, you know.'
'What's unreasonable about screwing on my office table?' he asked.
She smiled involuntarily and put a hand over his mouth.
On the far side of the room Sheila Kingsley declined a subtler offer and went to find her husband. He was standing in the side door with his hands in his pockets looking out into the courtyard; high black architecture round a black square of sky. A light was on in the mortuary.