Fenton's Winter (12 page)

Puzzled as to what the fault
could be Fenton brought some step ladders across to the fume
cupboard and climbed up to inspect the motor housing. It seemed in
good condition. He then moved on to the filter block in the chimney
stack and found the source of the problem. The fire damper had
closed. Fire dampers were fitted as a safety measure to fume
cupboards. In the event of a fire in the lab they isolated the
chamber and prevented flames from reaching highly volatile
chemicals via the flu. In this case the damper had apparently
closed of its own accord and rendered the fan ineffectual.

The satisfaction that Fenton
felt at discovering the cause of the problem was immediately
replaced by distinct unease when he saw why the damper had closed.
The retaining clips were missing. He searched the area at the base
of the filter block but failed to find them. There was a chance
that they had snapped and fallen down inside the flu but there was
also a possibility that they had been removed deliberately.

Fenton came down the ladders
and rested his foot on the bottom rung for a moment while his mind
raced to find a motive for sabotaging the fume cupboard. After all
nothing drastic would have happened if he had gone ahead and poured
the acid down the drain - an unpleasant whiff of acid fumes perhaps
but nothing too serious unless . . .

Fenton's gaze fell on the drain
he been about to pour the acid down and a dark thought crossed his
mind like a cloud across the moon. Wondering if paranoia were
getting the better of him. He squatted down and examined the pipe
leading down from the drain. He was looking for signs of recent
dismantling. He failed to find any but remained uneasy. He had to
know for sure. He fetched a spanner from the lab tool box and undid
the coupling at the head of the bend. Gently he slid out the curved
section of pipe and looked inside. His fingers were shaking
slightly as he saw signs of a chemical lying in the trap.
Cautiously he sniffed the end of the pipe and recognised the smell.
It was potassium cyanide!

If he had poured acid down the
drain on top of cyanide crystals when the extractor was
non-functional the whole lab would have been filled with
hydrocyanic gas within seconds and everyone in it would have
died.

Everyone in it? thought Fenton.
He was the only one in it and where was Saxon? He had been gone for
ages.

Nigel Saxon came in to the lab
carrying a tool box. "Couldn't find the damn thing. It was under
the back seat."

"Really?" said Fenton looking
Saxon straight in the eye.

"Good God. What's happened?"
asked Saxon as he caught sight of Fenton's face. "You look as if
you've seen a ghost."

"There's something wrong with
the fume cupboard," said Fenton.

"Is that all?" asked a puzzled
Saxon.

"There are cyanide crystals in
the drain."

"You mean the drain is
blocked?"

Fenton stared at Saxon for a
full thirty seconds before saying, "If I had poured acid down
it..."

Saxon shook his head and said
apologetically, "I'm sorry. I'm not a chemist. What are you trying
to say?"

Fenton was desperately trying
to appraise Saxon's behaviour. He seemed genuine enough. But did he
really not know what the consequences would have been? Had it
really been coincidence that Saxon had chosen that particular
moment to be out of the room?

Fenton's head was reeling. Had
someone really tried to kill him? He searched desperately for
another explanation but all he found was a new suspicion. He faced
the possibility that the incident in the pub had been no accident
either, no act of mindless violence as the police had called it. It
appeared that someone wanted him out of the way and whether it was
temporary or more permanent did not much seem to matter. But why?
Whoever it was must think that he knew more than he did. How ironic
if he were to end up being killed for something he never knew in
the first place.

The flat was empty when Fenton
got in for Jenny had gone to visit some of her old flat mates. But
Fenton was glad of the time it gave him to calm down. His hands
still shook a little and his insides still felt hollow but a stiff
whisky helped fight the symptoms and prepared him to confide in
Jenny when she did come in.

"But why?" exclaimed Jenny when
Fenton told her.

"I keep telling you I don't
know," maintained Fenton.

"Who knew you would be in the
lab today?" Jenny asked.

"Lots of people. We discussed
it at the dinner party the other night."

"So it has to be one of the lab
staff?"

"Or Saxon," said Fenton. "He
picked that very moment to disappear."

"What about when he came back?"
asked Jenny. "Did he look guilty?"

"No," conceded Fenton.

"What other possibilities are
there?"

"I suppose it is just possible
that the damper failed for some technical reason.

"And the cyanide crystals?"

"Coincidence? We use cyanide a
lot."

"I think I prefer that notion,"
said Jenny.

Fenton preferred it too. He
just did not believe it.

Jenny was still sleeping when
he left for work next morning. She had not stirred when he kissed
her so Fenton tip-toed out of the room, taking great pains to close
the door quietly behind him.

It felt good to be back on the
bike again although his ribs still hurt when anything more than
light pressure was required on the handlebars. He gunned it up the
outside of a long queue of cars in Lothian Road and joined the
leading one at the traffic lights. They changed and Fenton was just
a memory to its driver before the man had had time to engage first
gear.

Charles Tyson arrived in the
car park at the rear of the lab as Fenton was heaving the Honda on
to its stand. They exchanged pleasantries and walked into the lab
together. There were two engineers from the hospital works
department working on the fume cupboard and Tyson paused to ask
what was wrong. He asked Ian Ferguson but it was Fenton who
answered. "It broke down yesterday," he said.

By ten o'clock Fenton felt as
if he had never been away for, within minutes of sitting down at
his desk he had picked up the threadsand was back in the old
routine. Hospital biochemistry kept him fully occupied until
Wednesday when he found some time to chase up those who had
volunteered to give blood for the Analyser tests. Charles Tyson was
the last on the list. Fenton withdrew the blood, ejected the sample
into two plastic tubes and took them along to his lab. He brought
out the relevant rack from the fridge and placed Tyson's samples in
the last two holes. He now had the required number of samples to
begin the tests.

As he made to put the rack back
in the fridge he noticed something odd about Tyson's specimen in
the second tube. It was still unclotted. He withdrew both tubes and
shook them gently, one should have remained quite fluid for the
test tube had anti-coagulant in it but the other contained nothing
save for the blood. It should have clotted. Fenton looked at his
watch and saw that ten minutes had passed since he had taken the
sample. Far too long! He raced along the corridor and burst into
Tyson's room, getting a startled look from both Tyson and Liz Scott
who was taking dictation. "Your blood isn’t clotting," he blurted
out.

Tyson looked at the inside of
his arm and said, "It isn't bleeding. It stopped normally." Fenton
still looked doubtful. Tyson said, "Probably a dirty tube...but
just to make sure, pass me a scalpel blade will you."

Fenton opened a glass fronted
cabinet and removed a small packet wrapped in silver foil. He
handed it to Tyson. Liz Scott screwed up her face and said, "What
on earth..." as Tyson slit through the skin of his index finger and
watched the blood well up. He dabbed it away with the clean swab
that Fenton handed to him and checked his watch. Fenton and Liz
Scott watched in silence as Tyson continued to dab blood away. At
length he said, "There, it's stopping. See? Quite normal."

Fenton let out a sigh of relief
and said, "Thank God, I thought for a moment that you were number
five." Now able to think of more mundane matters he realised that
he was short of one blood sample and said so.

"Perhaps Liz?" Tyson suggested,
turning to look at the secretary who screwed up her face before
agreeing with more than a little reluctance. "I hate needles," she
said as she rolled up the sleeve of her blouse.

"Look up," said Fenton, before
inserting the needle smoothly into the vein and drawing back the
plunger. "There now, that didn't hurt did it?" Liz Scott agreed
that it hadn't. "Just hold the swab there for a minute or so," said
Fenton placing the gauze over the puncture mark, "then you can roll
down your sleeve."

Fenton brought the tubes back
to his lab and held them up to the window. One of them remained
fluid while the other was clotting normally. He put them in the
fridge to wait with the others until later. He would run them
through the Analyser in the evening when everyone had gone and
Jenny had started her shift on night duty.

Fenton came downstairs to the
main lab to see what lay in store for him and read through the
request forms from the wards. "I don't believe it," he said out
loud as yet another request for a lead count appeared in the lists.
"Twelve...fourteen...sixteen bloods for lead! What's going on?"

Alex Ross gave a thin smile and
said, "You've got Councillor Vanney to thank for that."

"Vanney?"

"He's been opposing an
extension to the ring road; his latest tack is to scaremonger about
lead pollution from car exhausts if the new road goes ahead. You
know the sort of thing; IQ will drop by fifty points if you walk
too near a Volkswagen Polo. He's been calling for the screening of
all children living near the first stage of the road."

"What's his real reason?"

"The more cynical among us
might suggest that the new road would screw up a development of
luxury flats that Vanney and Sons are building on the south
side."

"Turd."

"He's a powerful turd." said
Ross.

"Who are the 'Tree Mob'
Alex?"

Ross was taken by surprise at
the suddenness of Fenton's question. What was more, he seemed to
Fenton to visibly stiffen. "What made you ask that?" he
stammered.

"The other night at the party
you suggested that Saxon Medical had got special treatment because
of the 'Tree Mob.' Who are they?"

Ross put his hands to his
forehead and said quietly, "One day my big mouth will be the death
of me."

"I don't understand," said
Fenton.

"I've said too much already,"
said Ross.

"You can't leave me hanging,"
Fenton protested.

Ross looked doubtful then took
a deep breath and said, "There's an organisation called the
Cavalier Club which is currently trendy with the establishment.
Their emblem is an oak tree. It's supposed to represent the tree
that King Charles hid up when he was hiding from the
roundheads.

"But what has that got to do
with Saxon getting preferential treatment from the Department of
Health?"

"There are a lot of powerful
people in the club. They scratch each others' backs and what's
more, they consider themselves to be above the law. Rumour has it
their influence is growing all the time."

"But a club?" protested
Fenton.

"More a society really."

"If you say so," said Fenton.
"How come I haven't heard of it?"

"You were in Africa for a long
while."

Fenton found it hard to believe
what Ross had told him but one thing stopped him from saying so. He
had remembered that the medallion that had fallen from Nigel
Saxon's pocket in the car park had had a tree motif on it. He said
nothing to Ross.

Fenton nursed his dislike for
politicians all through the procedure for lead estimation for it
was the least popular test in the lab. True to form his hands got
covered in blood; they always did with lead tests. He was washing
them for the umpteenth time when the phone rang and Ian Ferguson
said, "Tom, it's Jenny."

Fenton finished drying his
hands and took the receiver. "Don't tell me," he joked, "You just
called to say you loved me?" The smile died on his face when he
heard Jenny sobbing. "What's wrong? What's the matter?"

"I'm at the police station..."
said Jenny before she broke down again.”They're holding me..."

Fenton couldn't believe his
ears. "Holding you? What are you talking about? You're not making
sense."

"The murders, the police think
I did them."

Fenton was reduced to
spluttering incredulity. "Is this some kind of joke? What are you
talking about? How can they possibly think you did them?" He heard
Jenny take a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm herself, then
she said, "My brother Grant's boy, Jamie, you remember, the one who
was down in Edinburgh? He's dead. He bled to death! Oh Tom, I'm
scared. Please come."

The phone went dead before
Fenton could reply; he clattered the receiver down on its rest then
snatched it up again and called Jamieson.

"Nurse Buchan is at present
helping us with our inquiries Mr Fenton," said the gruff voice at
the other end of the phone.

"Come on man! I'm not the
bloody press. What's going on?"

"I am afraid I have nothing to
add sir," said Jamieson.

"Well, can I see her?"

"No you can't."

"Is brain death a prerequisite
for the Police Force?" snarled Fenton.

"I must warn you sir
that..."

Fenton slammed down the
receiver. His immediate thought was to rush round to the police
station and demand to see Jenny but the fact that he was in the
middle of the lead tests prevented him from doing something, which
he realised after a few minutes thought, would have been pointless.
The police would not be impressed by histrionics. What Jenny needed
was expert help, the help a lawyer could give. He went to speak to
Tyson.