Fenton's Winter (10 page)

"I was just passing," said
Fenton limply.

It was another forty minutes
before Fenton was allowed to leave the wardand continue on up to
the management offices, an errand that he now had little patience
for, knowing how far behind with his work hewas slipping.

Fenton was waiting for a clerk
to return with the relevant file when Nigel Saxon appeared at his
elbow and read the frustration in his face. "Trouble old boy?"

Fenton told him what the
problem was. Saxon was less than sympathetic. "I love hearing about
problems with our competitors. Now, if you were to buy a Saxon
Analyser..."

"This is the National Health
Service," said Fenton by way of an answer.

"What on earth is going on?"
asked Saxon noticing people scurrying about. Fenton told him.

"Another one? Dear God."

Fenton asked Saxon what he was
doing there.

"Lunch with the health board,
their way of saying thank-you for the disposables." said Saxon.

"Bon appetit," said Fenton.

The clerk returned with the
service contract file and Fenton flicked through the pages to find
the relevant section with Saxon looking over his shoulder.
"Damnation," he said softly, "The company are right; there's a
clause excluding the main transformer board. We'll have to
pay."

Two orderlies were loading a
sterilizer with goods taken from a metal trolley as Fenton entered
the Central Sterile Supply Department. They lined up the heavy cage
with the rails on the floor of the chamber and slid it slowly
inside, taking care that nothing tumbled off. On the other side of
the room three women, wearing white overalls and hair nets, were
sifting through a massive pile of forceps, wrapping each pair
individually and placing them in an assembly tray. Fenton walked
over to them. "Sister Kincaid?"

"In her office," said one of
the women, pointing with the instruments she held in her hand.

Moira Kincaid looked up from
her desk as Fenton's shadow crossed the glass panel on her door.
She motioned him to enter and asked to what she owed the honour of
a visit. Fenton told her what he was looking for and got a positive
reaction. "They are here," said Moira Kincaid. She opened her desk
drawer and withdrew a pink cardboard folder. "I didn't know what
was to happen to them but they are all in here."Fenton flicked
through the papers and said, "This seems to be what's
required."

"They are just simple record
sheets of the sterilising cycles used for Dr Munro's samplers. They
are all the same, just the standard run."

"Pieces of paper to you and I
Sister," said Fenton, "But a career to some others not a million
miles from here." He was still angry about a contract exclusion
that he felt the administrators should have picked up on at the
time of signing. Through the glass panel he saw a porter come into
the sterilising bay and speak to one of the orderlies. Shortly
afterwards the orderly burst into the office. "Have you heard
Sister? There's been another murder!"

Moira Kincaid looked at Fenton
who nodded and said, "A maid in ward twelve."

As he left the office and
closed the door behind him Fenton heard a warning buzzer sound and
the ventilation fans turn on. He paused to watch the orderlies he
had seen earlier lower their face visors and pull on heavy
gauntlets. They manoeuvred a trolley into position and the door to
one of the autoclaves swung open letting steam fill the white tiled
area like a Turkish bath before the fans started to deal with it.
They locked their trolley on to the guide rails and pulled out the
load cage, grunting with the effort as one of the wheels refused to
engage properly. Fenton saw the number above the autoclave and
realised that this was the sterilizer that had been used in Neil
Munro's murder. He shivered involuntarily at the thought. Even with
its huge mouth open and its insides empty the shiny steel cavern
seemed full of menace. Just a machine, he reasoned. It had no mind
of its own. It was only obeying orders but whose orders? That was
the question.

Fenton walked out through the
swing doors and climbed the stairs to ground level wondering just
what it was about the Sterile Supply Department that he disliked so
intensely. As he reached the top of the stairs he realised what it
was; it didn't have any windows. It was situated in a basement and
lit entirely by artificial light, white fluorescent light that made
everyone look sickly pale.

Charles Tyson was taking news
of the latest death badly. Fenton thought that he had never seen
him look so ill and was very much aware of the change that had come
over Tyson since the start of the killings; the man had aged quite
visibly. The pastel shirts that he favoured now seemed several
collar sizes too large and a universal greyness had descended on
him, making even the stubble shadow on his face seem grey against
the winter pallor of his skin. Fenton had begun to wonder whether
or not the strain was the only reason for the change or whether
there might be some underlying clinical reason for it.

Fenton respected Tyson. He did
not know if he liked him for the truth was that he hardly knew the
man. He doubted whether anyone did for Tyson was a very private
person. As head of department he was excellent but that was the
only role anyone had ever seen him play. Neil Munro had told him
once that Tyson had served in the army and had seen active service
in Korea but that and the fact that he was not married was about
the sum total of his knowledge of the man.

"Seems fine," said Tyson
looking through the folder that Fenton had brought him. Fenton told
him about the problem with the service contract. "How much is it
going to cost?"

"Seven hundred pounds."

"All because somebody in the
office didn't read the small print. This will practically wipe out
all the benefit the hospital gained from the free supply of plastic
disposables from Saxon Medical," said Tyson shaking his head.

"You could kick up hell at the
next board meeting," said Fenton.

Tyson shook his head again and
said, "No, they would only close ranks. Besides I don't want to
antagonise the management at the moment. I was thinking of trying
for one of these new analysers for the lab. Rumour has it that
there's some charity money up for grabs."

"What are the chances?" asked
Fenton.

"Who knows? Actually, I was
thinking it might strengthen our case if we could reuse the plastic
samplers. They work out quite expensive if we have to throw them
away each time."

"I could run some tests,"
suggested Fenton.

"You have enough on your plate
at the moment," said Tyson.

"It shouldn't take long," said
Fenton I could get the lab staff to volunteer a few drops of blood,
run the samples through the analyser, autoclave the samplers a few
times then re-run the samples. Compare the values before and after
sterilising?"

"If you really think you could
manage?" said Tyson thoughtfully.

"No problem," said Fenton.

It was late in the afternoon,
as Fenton was trying to cajole Mary Tyler into providing a blood
sample for the new tests, that Nigel Saxon came into the lab to
collect a copy of the final report on the Blood Analyser. "Don't
give into him Mary whatever he's after," joked Saxon. "Now, if you
would care to have dinner with me this evening..."

"I'm a respectable married
woman," protested Mary Tyler.

"They're always the worst,"
grinned Saxon.

"As you are here Nigel..." said
Fenton in a tone of voice that put Saxon on the defensive.”What are
you after?" he asked suspiciously.

"Your blood," said Fenton.
"Quite literally." He told Saxon that he was collecting blood
samples from 'volunteers' to run some new tests on the Saxon
Analyser. It could even lead to a sale, he confided. Saxon agreed
as did Mary Tyler, Ian Ferguson, Alex Ross and four of the
others.

"When?" asked Saxon.

"Before you leave if that's all
right?" said Fenton. Saxon said that it was but seemed a bit
dubious about the whole business. He came back after collecting the
report from Charles Tyson and was led into a small side room by
Fenton. "Slip off your jacket and roll up your sleeve." Saxon did
as he was bid and sat down with his arms on the table in front of
him. He looked nervous.

Fenton finished rummaging in a
drawer and joined Saxon at the table holding a piece of rubber
tubing in his hand. "I'll just wrap this around your upper arm," he
said. "Perhaps you could hold it there?" Saxon reached across and
held the tubing in place while Fenton slapped the inside of his arm
to make the veins stand out. He slipped a sterile needle on to the
end of a disposable ten ml. syringe, swabbed the exposed area of
Saxon's arm with an alcohol impregnated swab and pushed the needle
smoothly into the vein. Dark red blood flooded into the syringe
until it had reached the ten ml. mark then Fenton withdrew it and
pressed another alcohol impregnated swab over the site of entry.
"Just hold that there for a moment," he said to Saxon.

With the sample safely in its
container and the container in the fridge Fenton held Saxon's
jacket for him while he put it back on. Saxon said, "I hope my
father appreciates what I do for our company!"

He suffixed the remark with a
loud laugh but Fenton noticed the beads of sweat along Saxon's
forehead. He really had been afraid.

It was nearly a quarter past
seven when Fenton finally got through with his day's work. Thinking
that he was the last one left in the lab he was surprised to see a
light on under one of the doors when he came downstairs. It made
him feel a little uneasy. He crossed the hall quietly and listened
outside the door for a few seconds. There was no sound from inside.
He opened the door cautiously and looked in startling Alex Ross who
had been sitting writing. "Good God, you nearly gave me a heart
attack," said Ross.

"Sorry. You're here late this
evening."

"The monthly accounts," said
Ross. "I didn't have time during the day."

"Fancy a drink?"

"Good idea," said Ross, putting
down his pen and rubbing his eyes. "I've had quite enough for one
day."

The two men walked the short
distance to the Thistle Arms and joined the early evening drinkers.
It was a grimy little pub that relied much more on the custom of
regulars than passing trade. Little or no concession had been made
to decor and it remained essentially a Scottish man's pub, a place
where still the presence of a woman would be frowned upon. The
solid Victorian bar counter was highly polished but bore the scars
of countless generations of carelessly stubbed cigarettes while the
floor was covered in linoleum that had once been green but was now
an indeterminate dark shade under the dim, inadequate lighting.

Several solitary drinkers sat
at tables along a wall, their faces bearing tell tale signs of a
life that had been none too kind; escape lay in the amber fluid in
front of them. A few small groups chatted at the bar, men on their
way home, some still carrying the badges of their trade. A railway
guard in his gendarme's cap, a security guard with his hat moulded
to suggest that he was really Burt Lancaster in Submarine Alley, an
insurance agent in grubby raincoat with battered briefcase. A noisy
group of students sat in the corner, savouring the haunts of the
working man but retaining their university scarves as an insurance
of distance.

The two barmen were of the old
school, spotless white aprons and hands that were never idle,
constantly wiping imaginary spillages from the counter, eyeing the
levels in the glasses along the bar, anticipating where the next
order would come from. The smaller of the two, narrow shouldered
and bespectacled, looked up as Ross and Fenton approached. "Still
cold outside?" he asked.

"Freezing," said Ross. He
ordered whisky for them both.

As they stood at the bar Fenton
ran his eye along the gantry noting that nearly all the space was
taken up by whisky, a good range of single malts and nearly every
known blended variety. Other spirits were represented by solitary
bottles. The contents of the glasses along the counter reflected
the stock on the gantry, and probably constituted the reason for
it, with the traditional 'half and a pint' clearly to the fore. He
took comfort from the fact that some things never seemed to change.
It might be a sociologist's nightmare but in certain places in
Scotland drinking remained a man's game.

Ross threw back his head and
drained his glass, declining Fenton's offer of a second drink and
pleading 'hell from the wife' as a legitimate excuse. Fenton wished
him good night and ordered another for himself. The barman handed
him a copy of the evening paper to look at and said that Rangers
had bought another English player.

"Really?" said Fenton, not
having any interest in football but feeling obliged to display some
reaction.

"Not that it will do them any
good," said another man at the bar, taking the strain off Fenton
and diverting the barman's attention.

Fenton drank up his beer and
went to the lavatory. It was a dingy, brick-built cellar that had
been painted so many times that the grouting between the bricks had
all but disappeared. Rust clung to the pipework and old iron
cisterns fixed to the wall above the urinal. He stood there, head
tilted to one side to read the graffiti and heard the door open
behind him. But no one joined him at the wall.

Feeling more comfortable Fenton
zipped his fly and turned round to find two men standing there,
they were looking straight at him. The older of the two, a thickset
man wearing leather jacket and jeans came towards him, the other
remained leaning against the exit door. Without saying anything the
first man swung his fist into Fenton's stomach with a power that
suggested he might once have done it for a living. Fenton's eyes
opened wide as he doubled over but only in time to meet the boot
that was directed up into his face. His cheek bone shattered in a
haze of pain.