Death Before Time (21 page)
Wednesday. Fraser woke with a snap – the alarm had gone off an hour ago, but he’d muted it and closed his eyes again, just for a couple of minutes ...
He jumped out of bed. He was tired, his head ached and the room smelled of Tom’s cheroots. And it was a quarter past nine.
He groaned: he’d have given anything for a shower ...
He swallowed some Paracetamol, splashed water over face and under pits and dragged on some clothes. Cleaned his teeth and ran out of the flat.
“Good of you to drop by,” Edwina murmured as he arrived.
“I’m sorry, Edwina, I – “
“Let’s get started, shall we?”
The ward round, followed by the morning clinic. Fraser watched her throughout – her professionalism was beyond doubt, but was there also a coldness, a callousness even?
“
Symptomatic
treatment
only
,
I
think
…”
“
Just
make
him
comfortable
and
let
the
family
know
…”
“
I
think
it
would
be
cruel
to
attempt
to
treat
this
condition
…”
Jo drove him down to Tom’s hotel at lunchtime. She’d brought a large shopping bag with her. He asked what was in it and she said wait till they got there.
Tom had laid on some sandwiches, half of which Fraser ganneted within five minutes of his arrival.
“Well, has your subconscious come up with anything while you were asleep?” Tom asked him.
He swallowed. “If it did, the whisky killed it. How about you?”
“Something, maybe.” He drew a breath. “Let’s assume they’ve got a virulent culture of the bug, never mind how for the moment – they’ve got to put it into some sort of spray and get it into the victim’s lungs, right?”
Fraser gulped some coffee. “However they’re doing it, they’d be seen eventually, like Jo was.” The Paracetamol hadn’t helped much and his head felt like suet.
Tom leant forward. “But what if it was a part of something that happens anyway? Something that’s done routinely to patients, maybe even something they do themselves. They use inhalants, don’t they?”
“Yeah, but that’s after they get pneumonia, not before.”
“There must be
some
things they have before.” He turned to Jo, who’d been silent until now. “Any ideas, Jo?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
They looked at her.
“Glandosalve.”
“But that’s not an inhalant,” Fraser said after a pause. “It’s just a saliva replacement for a dry mouth.”
“I know, but it’s used before patients get ill, isn’t it? And if you spray a suspension of bacteria into your mouth, you’re going to inhale some of them, aren’t you?”
Fraser half lifted a foot to kick himself …
of
course
you
are
…
“And what could be easier than swapping a Glandosalve dispenser without being noticed?” Jo added, driving the nail home.
“What do you think Fraser?” Tom asked.
“It’s certainly a possibility …”
An’
you
were
wonderin’
why
they
were
so
free
an’
easy
wi’
the
stuff
… “But exactly how we go about proving it, I don’t know.”
“We need to get hold of one,” Tom said. “One that’s been used by a victim, obviously …”
“That’s goin’ to be difficult,” said Fraser, “Since you can bet your life they’ll have stopped operations again for the moment.”
“What happens to them when they’re used up?”
“Into a sharps bin and off to the incinerator, like everything else. The last one would have been Mrs Stokes, and that’ll have gone by …”
A horrible suspicion occurred to him as Jo said,
“Well, maybe I can help you there.” She opened the shopping bag and took out a sharps bin, wrapped in clear polythene.
“From Mrs Stokes?” Tom asked in wonderment.
She nodded. “I used it to get rid of the injection materials and wheeled it over to the side of the ward. It was still there.”
“Jo, you’re a wonder – I’ll get it up to the forensic lab this afternoon.”
“But do we know the Glandosalve dispenser’s in there?” Fraser asked. “You didn’t open it, did you?”
“Not on your life. I shone a torch through the hole though, and counted at least three of them.”
Tom put an arm round her and kissed her. Fraser told himself not to sulk.
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t find it,” he said.
They looked at him enquiringly.
“Bein’ kissed by Tom.”
“Jealous?” Tom enquired.
Fraser shook his head.
Tom continued, “Well, there’s not much more we can do now till we get a result from it.”
“Then what?” asked Fraser.
“Depends on the result - if it shows us how the killings are done, we go to the police, by which I don’t mean we stroll down to the nearest nick, we do it through Marcus.” He looked at Fraser - “When are you seeing Helen again?”
“Tomorrow evening.”
“Not much fun for you I daresay, but you’d better go through with it. We don’t want to spook her.”
Fraser nodded shortly. “What about Jo, making sure she’s not attacked?”
“I’ll go back to the nurses’ home with her, check over her car and escort her while she’s on night duty.”
“There’s a limit to how long we can go on like this,” Jo said.
“Well, I’m hoping that once we hear from the lab, we’ll be able to start feeling collars.”
“What if we’re not?” Fraser said.
“What if you’re hit by a meteorite on the way back? Talking of which, shouldn’t you be going?”
Fraser looked at his watch, said, “Oh Christ!” and leapt for the door.
He recovered his car easily enough, but it was ordained that there should be a traffic jam in the town centre and he was twenty minutes late.
“Dr Tate’s been looking for you,” her secretary informed him. “She’s doing the afternoon clinic now.”
“Could you tell her I’m here as soon as she’s finished with the patient she’s with?”
Five minutes later, he went in. She regarded him without expression. “You can take over now,” she said. “But I want to see you as soon as you’ve finished.”
The clinic lasted about an hour and then he went to her office.
“Shut the door and sit down,” she said. Then: “What has got into you, Fraser? You’re treating this place like some sort of convenience, you come and go as you please, you’re late twice today and if I hadn’t been here, God knows what would have happened. Have you got some sort of personal problem?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Well?”
“I – I need some money, urgently,” he improvised. “It’s keeping me awake at night and this afternoon, I was with the bank manager.”
“Can you tell me why you need this money?”
“It’s for my mother.”
Her expression told him he’d used this once too often … she knew he was lying, she knew that he knew, and he had a sudden conviction that it
was
her behind everything …
She said, “You cannot allow family problems to affect your medical responsibilities. I hope you succeed in solving your problems, whatever they may be, but this cannot happen again. If it does, you’re out. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
It was hard for him not to burst into maniacal laughter – he was late because he was trying to arrange her downfall, and she was disciplining him for it …
“Good. You may now resume your duties.”
The door clicked behind him and he leaned against the wall for a moment –
“Problems?”
He turned to see Helen, who’d just come out of her own room. He motioned her a little way down the corridor.
“I was late back from lunch and Edwina’s just given me a bollockin’ for it.” He grinned at her. “I can’t stop, I’ll see you tomorrow evening if not before.”
That evening, he played darts, but his heart wasn’t in it and he left as early as he could. He felt utterly drained and fell into bed, but not to sleep. Images chased through his mind: Was he right about Edwina? What was he going to say to Helen tomorrow? If Edwina was in it, she and Helen must have compared notes … what if the sharp’s bin showed nothing?
After an hour, he gave up and took a sleeping pill, something he avoided if possible. When at last he slept, it was to dream of Frances.
“It’s all right,” she said to him. “I’m better now – really.” And that was all.
He awoke, wept briefly, then went back to sleep again. And in the morning, he felt completely refreshed.
The day passed. He didn’t dare go to Tom at lunchtime, but phoned him. Tom told him that the sharps bin had arrived at the lab yesterday, but there was no news yet.
He’d dreaded seeing Helen all day, but when he went round in the evening, her greeting was no different from usual. She didn’t say anything about the picture gallery door. He took her for a drive, some whim making him take the road to the Wansdyke. He stopped at the crest of the escarpment.
The sun, almost red, was balanced like a ball on the rim of the distant hills. The coarse grass of the scarp below seemed to pulsate with green, but lower down, it became dull and down still further, where the scarp met the plain, it was a dull misty blue.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
The red sun lit her face – half nature, half sculpture.
She’s
beautiful
, he thought,
and
a
killer
…
why
?
Does
she
know
that
I
know
?
She caught him looking at her and smiled sadly.
They went to a pub where, incredibly, he found no difficulty in chatting with her. She simply liked being with him, he realised, and because of that, he found no difficulty in being with her.
She
knows
, he thought,
she
knows
everything
…
When he dropped her off, she didn’t ask him inside. She kissed the side of his mouth, said, “Love you, Fraser,” and was gone.
*
Friday. Tom phoned him in the morning.
“We’ll come to you, is one o’clock OK?”
“You’ve got some news?”
“Some. I’ll tell you then.”
He and Jo were waiting in Tom’s car behind the block. They followed him upstairs and into the flat.
“Well, what is it?” he demanded.
Jo sat in the armchair as Tom began to speak.
“One of the three Glandosalve dispensers in the sharps bin had a small plastic attachment fitted round the jet, so that when it was operated, some of the contents were sucked out by the Bunsen effect – you know what I mean by that?”
Fraser nodded impatiently. “What was in the attachment?”
“Not very much by this time – all right, all right – “ He held up his hand as Fraser threatened to strangle him.
“The small amount of liquid still there was a maintenance medium containing a heavy suspension of pneumococci. These were cultured and found to be ampicillin resistant – “
Fraser let out a sigh –
“However,” Tom continued deliberately, “After what you’d said, I asked them to check whether they had capsules. Apparently, they didn’t. Are you absolutely sure that pneumococci without capsules can’t cause pneumonia?”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s going on? This
has
to be the way they’re doing it … could some of them mutate?”
“Maybe, eventually. But it wouldn’t give rise to the kind of rapid, overwhelming infections we’ve been seeing. It could take weeks.”
Jo said from the armchair, “Could the patients be given something to make them susceptible, some sort of immunosuppressant?”
“I suppose so,” Fraser said slowly, “Although I’ve no notion of what. I’ll do some research on it.”
“This afternoon?” Tom asked.
“I’ll try.”
After a slight pause, Tom continued, “This
must
be the answer, there’s no point in setting it up otherwise … I’m going to have to go ahead on what we’ve got.”
“How d’you mean, go ahead?”
“I’m going to tell Marcus what we’ve got and recommend that Helen St John, Tate, Singh and Armitage are arrested tomorrow.”