Chameleon

'When I told Dr Richardson this morning about the PHS result he behaved very strangely.' said Carew.

'How so?'

'It was almost as if he expected it.'

'I don't understand,' said Jamieson.

'When I told him he turned ashen and had to sit down. Then he said, 'It's all my fault.'

'You mean he confessed to faking the swab test?' asked an astonished Jamieson.

'Not exactly,' replied Carew. 'He seemed somehow to be talking to himself when he said it. When I asked him what he meant he said that he now knew what had been going on and that it would all be over soon.'

'What did he mean?'

'I don't know and he wouldn't say any more. But now it seems quite obvious what he meant, wouldn't you say? He seemed quite ill, poor man.'

'I'm afraid,' said Crichton, 'that all the evidence points to Dr Richardson being responsible for deliberately engineering a positive swab test on Mr Thelwell. I think the pressure of continuing failure to find the cause of the outbreak must have pushed him too far and he saw a way of relieving it. By contaminating Mr Richardson's swab with the killer strain of Pseudomonas he would at once appear to have identified both the cause and the carrier.'

Jamieson noticed that Ryan had a bemused look on his face and caught his eye. 'Is this for real?' whispered Ryan during a lull and while Crichton and Carew carried on a conversation of their own.

'I'm afraid so,' replied Jamieson

'What's happened?' said a voice at the door.

Jamieson turned to see Clive Evans standing there.

'There's been… an accident,' replied Carew with what Jamieson thought was an air of melodrama worthy of a school play.

'Dr Richardson is dead. He hanged himself,' said Crichton.

Evans sank down into a chair and shook his head slowly. 'I don't believe it,' he murmured.

'May we ask what brought you here this evening doctor?' asked Carew.

'I'm on call,' said Evans distantly. 'I'm the duty bacteriologist. John was on this afternoon.'

Later on, Jamieson sought out Evans and found him working in his own lab. He had remembered that he had been in Richardson's office when Thelwell's swab had arrived. He also remembered that Richardson had delegated the test to Evans. Now he asked Evans about it.

The Welshman adjusted his spectacles and said, 'That's right, I inoculated the swab into two cultures.'

'Then what?'

'I don't understand,' said Evans.

'What did you do with the cultures? Did you keep them in your lab? Did you put them somewhere else? Did you read the results in the morning? Did you find and identify the Pseudomonas in them?'

'No,' replied Evans looking confused at the line of questioning. 'Dr Richardson said that he wanted to read the tests personally so I put the cultures in the incubator in his lab. He read the results. He found the Pseudomonas and made out the report.'

'Do you think it possible that Dr Richardson could have interfered with the cultures you put in the incubator?' asked Jamieson.

'What kind of a question is that?' exclaimed Evans.

'One I have to ask,' replied Jamieson.

'Anything is possible.'

'Could you tell by looking at the culture dishes whether they had been changed or not?' asked Jamieson.

'I suppose so,' said Evans hesitantly. 'I wrote something on the dishes in marker pen.

'Would you check please?'

Evans left the room briefly and returned with two plastic dishes. He said, 'These are the cultures from Mr Thelwell's swab.'

'Do they have your markings on them?'

Evans examined both sides of the dishes and said with some obvious reluctance, 'No they don't.'

'So Dr Richardson could have substituted different cultures for the ones you inoculated?'

'I suppose so,' agreed Evans with a pained expression. 'But why? What the hell is going on?'

'It has been suggested that Dr Richardson took his own life after having faked a culture result in order to implicate Mr Thelwell as being the cause of the recent infection problem in the hospital.'

'Good God,' said Evans slowly. 'He has been under a lot of strain recently. We all have.'

'You liked Richardson,' said Jamieson.

'Yes,' said Evans.

'But you do think now that he switched the cultures?'

'That's what it seems like and he was suffering from stress…’

'Suicidal stress?'

'Who's to say?'

Jamieson nodded his agreement but in his head he was remembering the furtive figure of Gordon Thelwell hurrying away from the vicinity of the lab just before he arrived.

Jamieson lay on the bed in his room and tried to think calmly and rationally. It was difficult; his mind was cluttered with doubts and suspicions. What had Thelwell been doing near the lab if he had not been to see Richardson at the lab? If Richardson really had faked the test results in order to take the pressure off himself and his department, why on earth had he behaved the way he had on the telephone when he himself had seemed to inject doubts about the result? Surely it would have been in his own interest to have made the report seem as conclusive as possible? Instead it was he who had wanted to delay the final report and talk to him first. What about? Jamieson wondered.

He got up and went over to the radiator to place his hands on it while he looked out of the window at the courtyard below. Perhaps it was the darkness or the rain or the gloomy buildings that encouraged the thought but he remembered the parallel that Ryan had drawn over their respective jobs. They were both seeking killers. Ryan was looking for a crazed psychopath while he sought the source of an unfeeling, mindless bacterial killer. Both were killing women in the city.

Jamieson took out a note book from his brief case and started to make notes about what he already knew. The infection at Kerr Memorial had been caused by a particularly virulent strain of Pseudomonas which was very difficult to treat. The organism had been isolated from the naso-pharynx of the surgeon in charge of the affected unit. That should have been the end of the story but at Kerr Memorial it seemed more like the beginning.

The bacteriologist who had identified the cause of the outbreak was now dead and the evidence suggested that he had taken his own life after faking the lab result which implicated the surgeon. Where did that leave things? Jamieson was reluctantly left to conclude that he would not now be going home. He was back at square one.

Perhaps it was even worse than that. Things had become even more complicated than when he had started the investigation. The infecting organism itself was becoming a bit of a puzzle for although it was an every-day sort of germ this particular strain seemed to be unique in terms of its virulence and resistance to treatment. The Sci- Med labs had failed to come up with any explanation for the virulence of the organism but for some reason the deceased Richardson had been less surprised about that than anyone else. Just what was it that Richardson had realised? And could that knowledge in some way be connected with his death? Jamieson pursed his lips in frustration as he failed to come up with an answer.

Jamieson decided he had better turn his attention to more immediate matters. His first job would be to see Thelwell in the morning and inform him that the ban on his operating was still in force despite his negative result from the Public Health Lab. While there was still some doubt over the tests, he would have to insist on three negatives in a row, taken on separate days and under supervision.

'This is ridiculous!' exploded Thelwell. 'The Public Health Service has completely exonerated me. It's quite obvious that Richardson fabricated the whole result in order to cover up his own incompetence. At least it's obvious to anyone with an IQ greater than that of an earthworm!'

Jamieson ignored the comment. He had come prepared for Thelwell at his worst and had not been disappointed. He was determined to keep his temper. 'Your single negative from PHS is insufficient to clear you and