Chameleon

only done so recently.

The car was parked at the far end of the street. It was a dark blue Volkswagen Polo. This pleased him. There had to be thousands of dark coloured Polos around the city. He opened the driver's door and undid the bonnet catch. The dirty state of the engine told him that it had been some considerable time since anyone else had done so. It was a typical 'second car' that didn't get too much in the way of maintenance, the little woman's 'run around' for shopping and taking the kids to school. It had no status value other than to exist, unlike the 'master's' Cavalier or Sierra which would shine like the sun and merit instant attention at the slightest cough.

The man removed the distributor cap and cleaned the inside with his handkerchief. He prised the contacts apart and slid a corner of the handkerchief between them to dry them out. He replaced the cap and wiped the plug leads and the main lead from the ignition coil. Satisfied with what he had done, he dropped the bonnet back down and tried the starter. The engine whirred into life and settled down to an idle.

Things were going well again. The man's confidence was returning. Perhaps he could now kill two birds with one stone? The car was generally dirty. It was quite difficult to read the registration plates as it was. With a bit more dirt applied to the rear one and a corner snapped off the front one he could risk driving it across town. He wouldn't need to fetch and use his own car at all. He turned the vehicle in a jerky three point turn, through unfamiliarity with the Polo's clutch and drove it along to the step leading down to the flat. Checking thoroughly that none of the bags was leaking, the man lined them up by the door and then loaded them quickly and quietly into the back.

At three thirty am a figure clad in white tunic and trousers and wearing a surgical mask and cap wheeled a trolley into the boiler house of Kerr Memorial Hospital. The attendant on duty put down his paper and got up from the table which he shared with an open paper bag containing sandwiches and a half full bottle of milk.

'What do you want then?' he asked suspiciously.

'This lot's for the fiery furnace,' mumbled the figure in white.

'At this time? You know the regulations. The proper containers at the proper time.'

'This is different.'

'What way different?'

'A bad car smash. These bits and pieces are what them upstairs had to take off.'

'So they can wait till morning. Rules is rules.'

'You don't understand. One of the victims has AIDS.'

The boilerman visibly withdrew and scowled. 'I ain’t touching them,' he growled, looking at the bags.

'You don't have to,' said the man in white. 'Just open up the door and I'll bung them in.'

The boilerman appeared to swither for a moment before relenting and saying, 'You're on. He led the way through to the furnace room and opened one of the three metal doors that stood side by side. 'Put them in this one,' he said. He stood by as the figure in white, now orange against the glow from the fire, heaved the bags, one by one, into the flames.

'Where did you say this accident was?' asked the boilerman.

'On the ring-road.'

'Must have been one hell of a crash if they had to take off all them limbs. Funny I didn't hear anything about it on the radio.'

'I suppose they’re not releasing the news until the next of kin have been informed.'

'That'll be it,' agreed the boilerman, accepting the plausible explanation. 'Drive like maniacs some of these buggers do. Probably pissed out their minds as well. It's the innocent buggers they run in to I feel sorry for. Just goes to show, you never know when your time is coming.'

The man in white looked over his mask at the boilerman, the light from the fire flickering in his eyes. He didn’t say anything but there was something about his look that made the boilerman feel a little uneasy. Maybe it was the firelight, he told himself. 'Do you want a cup of tea or something?' he asked.

'No thanks. I best be getting along,' said the man. He stepped forward to close the furnace door.

'You can take your mask off now,' said the boilerman.

'What?' asked the figure in white.

'Your mask. You've still got it on.'

'Oh,' replied the man in white with a weak attempt at a laugh. 'It becomes a habit in the unit.'

'What unit's that then?' asked the boilerman.

'The… A amp;E team.' replied the man after a moment's hesitation.

'I could have sworn I knew all the porters in A amp;E,' said the boilerman but I don't think I've seen you before. You sound a bit posh to be a porter. You're not one of them medical students are you? Playing at being a worker?'

'No.'

'You'll have to sign this,' said the boilerman, handing over a record sheet. It was clipped to a dog-eared piece of board. A blunt pencil was attached by a length of string. 'Print your name on the left, sign on the right. In between, write down what you put in the fire and who authorised it.'

The man accepted the board and wrote quickly and untidily. He handed it back.

'You've still got your mask on,' said the boilerman as he tried to read what the man had written. He tilted back his head so that he could look through the lower portion of his glasses as he held the paper up to the light. 'I'm beginning to think I've got a personal hygiene problem.' He looked at the man and caught his stare. The mask stayed put. 'I can't read the authoriser's name. What does it say?'

'Dr Mullen.'

'Dr Mullen isn't on duty this evening,' said the boilerman quietly. 'I saw him go off at five.'

Again came the stare over the mask. There was no firelight to blame this time. There was something evil about the look in these eyes. 'Who are you?' whispered the boilerman, taking a step backwards and reaching up the wall for the telephone. 'What's your game?'

The fist landed perfectly on the boilerman's chin and the man in white reached out to catch the falling man before he hit the ground.

He laid out the prostrate figure gently and looked about him. He would have to get this exactly right. He was approximately the same height as the boilerman so he could use himself as a measuring aid. He planted both feet apart on the ground in front of the furnace and measured the distance between his feet and the fire door by stretching out his body and moving himself forward with his hands on the ground. When his head reached the fire door he marked the ground with the toe of his left foot and stood up. Next he laid down a fire rake at the spot he had just marked. Someone his height tripping over the rake at that particular spot would pitch forward and hit their head off the iron door.

The man dragged the unconscious body of the boilerman over in front of the furnace and angled it before the fire door. It would have to be done with one blow. He brought the body up into as near a kneeling position as he could manage and held the head in both hands before bringing it back slowly and then slamming it forwards against the iron door with all the strength he could muster. There was a sickening crack and he felt confident of success. He felt for a carotid pulse and was alarmed to detect a faint beating but it grew weaker by the second until suddenly it stopped altogether and the boilerman was dead. The man arranged the limbs of the corpse in keeping with a trip over the rake and a subsequent accidental blow to the head on the furnace door. He checked that everything else was in order, collected his trolley and left silently.

There were two police cars parked near the hospital front office when Jamieson left the residency to walk to the microbiology lab in the morning. He asked Moira Lippman about them when he got in.

You didn't hear about the accident last night?' asked Moira.

'No. Tell me.'

'Archie Trotter, the night-shift man in the boiler house had an accident last night. He fell and hit his head off the furnace. He was dead when they found him this morning.'

'Poor man, there seems to be a jinx on this place,' said Jamieson.

'Don't say that,' exclaimed Moira. 'My sister in law is being admitted for her operation today.'

'Sorry. I'm sure she'll be OK.

'How did your tests turn out?' asked Moira, seeing that Jamieson was examining the tubes he had inoculated the day before.