Fenton's Winter (8 page)

Jenny was sitting at an angle
on the sofa, her stockinged legs crossed and her elbow resting on
one knee with her hand supporting her chin. She was wearing a close
fitting dress in royal blue, the very plainness of which
accentuated her smooth skin and high cheek bones. Her silky blonde
hair was swept back from her face and held tightly with a dark blue
clasp. Round her neck she wore the gold pear drop locket that
Fenton had given her for Christmas.

"You look good," said
Fenton.

"You're no slouch yourself Mr
Bond. Did you call the cab?"

A thick sea mist lay on the
still water of the Firth of Forth as they got out of the taxi in
the village of South Queensferry, some eight miles from the heart
of Edinburgh. The lights of cars high above them on the Forth Road
Bridge twinkled in and out of the fog while the huge, red painted
spans of the famous old railway bridge towered silently up into the
damp air. The regular drone of fog horns was the only thing to
break the silence as they crossed the road to look over the sea
wall.

"It's creepy when it's like
this," said Jenny looking down at the unbroken surface of the
water.

"But nice," said Fenton.

They entered the bar of the
restaurant to find it practically deserted. "Thursday night," said
the barman by way of explanation. "Nothing happens on
Thursdays."

"Except elections," said Fenton
as he and Jenny were drawn to a large coal fire like moths to a
flame.

They finished looking at the
menu and ordered before lapsing into silence for a few moments.
Jenny held her drink between her palms. She said, "A child died in
theatre yesterday did you hear?"

"I heard," said Fenton, feeling
uncomfortable.

"Do you know anything about
it?" asked Jenny.

Fenton stayed silent.

"Oh dear," said Jenny, I see
that you do.

"Jenny I..."

"Don't say anything. Just
listen. Today at lunch I heard Rose Glynn, mention 'excessive
bleeding' then later I heard someone else say that the haematology
report wasn't available. I put two and two together and came up
with four."

"Three," said Fenton, "Timothy
Watson was the third victim. I felt so awful just now when you
asked and I couldn't tell you."

"Relax, you didn't. I worked it
out for myself. So the killer is not someone with a grudge against
the lab?"

"No, it's someone who murders
five year olds."

Jenny noted the bitterness in
Fenton's voice and was forced to ask. "You didn't know the boy did
you?"

"Well enough to be able to put
a face to the name. He was running around the main corridor the day
Susan Daniels was murdered."

They left the restaurant just
after ten thirty and crossed the road to take a last look at the
water.Fenton picked up a handful of gravel and began to flick it
idly into the water with his thumbnail. As they leaned on the
railings Jenny said, "You know, when you think about it, it's a
strange way to kill people isn't it? Anti-coagulants?"

"That's how they kill
rats."

"Rats?"

Fenton flicked some more gravel
into the water and watched the rings spread. "That's how rat poison
works. It knocks out the clotting mechanism in their blood; one
scratch in the sewers and they bleed to death."

A ship's siren sounded out in
the Forth. They peered into the swirling mist but saw nothing.
Jenny said, "I just don't see how the drug could have been
administered, can you?"

"Rats have to eat it, so maybe
it was mixed into the victims' food or drink. I can't see anyone
having an injection without knowing it."

"Unless the victim was a
patient who was having injections all the time, or a child who
trusted anyone in uniform."

"Susan wasn't a patient or a
child and she wasn't having injections," said Fenton.

"Are you sure?"

The question made Fenton think
before saying, "No, I suppose I'm not, come to think of it. All of
us in the lab get protective vaccines from time to time because we
handle so much contaminated material."

Jenny said, "Just suppose Susan
had been given a large dose of anti-coagulant instead of say, an
anti-typhoid injection. She wouldn't have known would she?"

"That would make our killer a
doctor or a nurse, someone with access to the wards and the
staff."

"Can you find out if Susan did
have any inoculations shortly before her death?" Jenny asked.

"It will be in the lab
personnel files."

"I could try to find out who
has been on duty in the staff treatment suite over the past few
weeks."

"I've just had another
thought," said Fenton, pausing for a moment to see if it made sense
before committing himself. "The staff treatment suite is next to
the Central Sterile Supply Department, where Neil was killed."

"And anti-coagulants are not on
the restricted drugs list; they're not kept under lock and
key..."

"So they would be readily
available and the killer would not have to account for them..."

"Let's suppose some more," said
Jenny, the adrenalin now flowing fast. "Suppose Neil went to the
Sterile Supply Department to see Sister Kincaid and found that she
wasn't there. We know she wasn't; she was at lunch. He went next
door to look for her and stumbled on the killer messing with
injection vials."

"So the killer murdered Neil to
keep him quiet? Makes sense."

"It also makes it a man," said
Jenny, "I can't see a woman overpowering Neil can you?"

"No, and there was no sign of a
weapon having been used. You are right; it had to be a man, and a
powerful man at that. Neil was no seven-stone weakling."

At seven fifteen next morning
Jenny left for the hospital, leaving Fenton still in bed. They had
arranged to meet at lunch time to discuss progress in what they had
agreed to find out. Fenton rose at eight, washed, dressed and sat
down at the kitchen table with orange juice and coffee to read 'The
Scotsman' which had popped noisily through the letter box while he
was shaving. He scanned the front page for mention of the hospital
and was relieved to find only a few lines near the bottom to the
effect that inquiries were still continuing into the sudden deaths
of two members of the biochemistry department.

Finding the silence oppressive
he turned on the radio. ‘1-9-4-Close to you...' droned the jingle
as Fenton took his glass and cup to the sink. The sound of the
'current number four in the charts' filled the kitchen briefly
before he changed the waveband and found Vivaldi instead. He tidied
away the dishes and wiped the work surface where he had spilled
orange juice.

The minute hand on the kitchen
clock moved jerkily on to eight thirty as Fenton switched off the
radio and checked that he had his keys in his pocket before
leaving. He tried to keep the noise of his feet on the stone steps
down to a minimum as he descended but they still echoed around the
stair well; the noise reverberated off the high ceramic walls.

Fenton waited until ten
o'clock, when he knew that Liz Scott, the lab secretary, would be
at her busiest then went downstairs to the office. "Good morning
Liz, I just want to check when my next T.A.B is due...Don't worry,
I can find it myself."

"Thanks, I'm snowed under at
the moment."

Fenton took the keys that were
handed to him and approached the filing cabinet by the window. The
sound of rain against the grimy, barred window all but obliterated
the noise of the top drawer being pulled out. He flicked through
the index cards till he found what he was looking for. Daniels,
Susan...Age...Weight...Height...Blood Group...X-Ray
Record...Inoculations! Last entry...T.A.B. vaccine given
on...Fenton's heart missed a beat. February fifteenth! Two days
before she died! He steeled himself to present a calm exterior when
he turned round and handed the keys back to Liz Scott. "'Find what
you wanted?" she asked without looking up. Fenton said that he had
and returned upstairs. Instead of going to his own lab he went into
Neil Munro's room and sat down for a moment. Should he tell someone
what he had discovered? And, if so, who? Tyson? Jamieson? It was
too soon to say anything he decided; he needed more to go on. He
would wait until he had seen Jenny at lunch time.

Fenton took out the chemicals
and equipment he had removed from Munro's locked cupboard and
spread them out on the bench in front of him. He re-arranged a
number of plastic test tubes into a symmetrical pattern on the desk
top and idly balanced two small beakers in the centre while he
considered what he knew. Munro had requested blood from the
transfusion service and he had been working with anti-coagulants.
These two factors made him feel very uneasy. But what else was
there to go on? A meaningless series of figures in a notebook and
the letters C.T. which Charles Tyson said were nothing to do with
him...So what did they stand for?

Fenton was balancing a third
beaker on top of the other two when the door opened and the pile
collapsed. Nigel Saxon stood there. "Sorry, did I do that?" he
asked.

Fenton reassured him and
admitted that he had just been playing with the tubes.

"I see," said Nigel Saxon, but
sounded as though he didn't really. "I hate to keep pressing you
like this but..."

"I know, the report on the
analyser." said Fenton.

"Have you managed to look at
Susan's final figures?"

"I've been through them.They
seemed fine apart from one failure, a patient named Moran. Susan
wrote that no analysis was obtained. Were you with her when this
test was performed?"

"Neil Munro and I were both
there," said Saxon. "We decided that the ward must have sent the
sample in the wrong kind of specimen container."

"It happens," agreed
Fenton.

"Was that the only thing?"

"Everything else seems
fine."

Saxon smiled broadly and said,
"Good, then we'll still get our license by the end of the
month."

"That soon?" exclaimed Fenton
in amazement.

Fenton's surprise took Saxon
aback and he flushed slightly in embarrassment. "Sometimes the
wheels of bureaucracy can turn quite smoothly you know." he
said.

"Saxon Medical must have a
magic wand," said Fenton.

"A plastic one," said
Saxon.

As Saxon made to leave Fenton
said, "The Moran sample, it was run through the conventional
analyser wasn't it? I mean as well as the new one?"

"I presume so".

"Same result?"

"As far as I know."

Fenton met Jenny at one
o'clock. She was standing at the main gate as he walked up to the
hospital from the lab. She smiled as she saw him but had to wait to
allow an ambulance to pass before crossing the road to link her arm
through his. "Where shall we go?" she asked.

"Let's walk for a bit," said
Fenton. They didn't speak until they had left the noise and bustle
of the main road and turned down a side street. "How did you get
on?" Jenny asked.

"Susan Daniels had a TAB
inoculation two days before she died." said Fenton. "It looks as if
you could be right."

"I don't think I really want to
be," said Jenny. Fenton asked her if she had managed to come up
with anything.

"Sister Murphy has been in
charge of the staff treatment room for the past three months."

"Old Mother Murphy? Florence's
batman?"

"The very same."

"Doesn't sound too hopeful."
said Fenton.

"There's more." Jenny had to
pause for they had rejoined the main road and a bus roared past
them making conversation momentarily impossible. When it had passed
she said, "The doctor doing the staff inoculations is one of the
new residents, Dr David Malcolm. He's been doing it for about a
month and what's more...he is the resident on ward four, Timothy
Watson's ward."

"Do you know him?"

"By sight. He's about six feet
tall and broad with it."

Fenton halted in his stride to
allow a woman pushing a pram to pass them, he caught up again. "Do
you know any more about him?"

"Only that it's his first
residency and that he hasn't asked any of the nurses out."

"Maybe he's married."

"No."

"Gay?"

"If he is he's not the
effeminate type I'm told."

The sky darkened and Fenton
felt the first spot of rain on his cheek as another brief respite
from the weather came to an end. The man in front of them stopped
walking in order to put on a plastic raincoat. An old woman
threatened Jenny's eyesight as she struggled to put up her
umbrella. Fenton pushed it gently out of the way as they passed
getting a dirty look for his trouble. They took refuge in a small
cafe where the air was already dank with the condensation from wet
clothing. The coffee was lukewarm and instant. "What do we do now?"
Jenny asked.

"Tell the police," replied
Fenton.

"I'm glad you said that," said
Jenny. "This business scares me to death."

When they returned to the
hospital Fenton left word at the administration block that he would
like to see Inspector Jamieson as soon as the policeman found it
convenient. Jamieson duly turned up at the lab at half past two as
Fenton was loading blood samples into a centrifuge. He watched what
Fenton was doing for a few moments before moving across to the
bookcase and peering through the glass doors in order to read the
titles while he waited. He quickly tired of that and moved to the
window.

Fenton closed the lid of the
centrifuge and set the timer to run for ten minutes before pressing
the start button and crossing the room to wash his hands in the
sink. Jamieson still had his back to him; he was silhouetted
against the cold grey light in the window.

"Sorry about that," said Fenton
apologising for the delay. Jamieson turned round and smiled
dutifully. "How can I help you?" he asked.