Chameleon

Jamieson shook his head and said thoughtfully, 'I'm not sure. There seem to be a number of unusual results.'

'How unusual?'

'Three of the biochemical tests don't seem match the text book response.'

'It's not that unusual to come across the occasional one,' said Moira.

'But three?'

'That's a bit much,' agreed the girl.?Any ideas?' asked Jamieson.

Moira smiled and said, 'Dare I suggest… experimental error?'

'You mean I mucked up the tests?' said Jamieson with a wry smile. 'Maybe you're right. I'm a bit of an amateur at this sort of thing.'

'Would you like me to repeat them for you?' asked Moira. 'Give you a second opinion?'

'You're serious?'

'Of course. It's no trouble really.'

'You're an angel,' said Jamieson.

'Problems?' asked Clive Evans coming into the lab and seeing the two of them with the test tubes.

Jamieson told him.

'That's nothing to worry about, happens all the time,' said Evans. 'Sometimes I think if I ever come across a bug that matches the text book in every response I'll give a sherry party for the lab.'

'I thought it was me,' said Jamieson. 'Moira said she'd repeat the tests for me.'

'Relax. I'm sure your tests worked fine. There are lots of atypical strains around.'

'I thought three differences were a bit much Dr Evans,' said Moira.

'It's not common I'll grant you but I have seen it happen before,' replied Evans.

Moira shrugged and silently deferred to Evans' greater experience.

Harry Plenderleith was none too happy about working out his shift in the place where a man had died less than twelve hours before. He did not have to imagine where they had found the body for there was still a chalk mark on the floor that the police had left and a brown stain in the concrete where the blood had collected in a puddle. It all made him very unsettled and he whistled a lot to cover the fact that he was nervous. He had never liked the dead man. Trotter and they had never seen eye to eye about anything. Now that he was dead the possibility that his spirit was still hovering around played with Plenderleith's imagination as he checked that number two fire had been completely extinguished.

Plenderleith put on his protective face mask and started to rake out the ashes creating clouds of dust as he did so. He had scarcely begun when the rake caught something heavy and it clattered out into the ash can making him put down the rake for a moment and reach into the ashes to recover the object. It was a long bone. He dusted it off and examined it by holding it against his person in various ways until he decided that it had come from an upper leg. 'Poor bugger,' he whispered under his breath and resumed raking the floor of the furnace. More bones clattered into the can and Plenderleith grew uneasy. He had come across the occasional bone before when these sealed sacks from surgery had been brought down from the theatres but this seemed all out of proportion. His unease finally peaked when the last artefact rolled out into the can and lay there in the ash.

Plenderleith didn't make much sense on the phone and the hospital telephonist had to tell him to calm down.

'But there's been a bloody murder I tell you!'

'Start again, you found some bones while you were cleaning out the furnace?'

'Human remains! That's what they are!'

The telephonist, who had turned aside for a moment to consult with someone, came back on the line and said, 'My supervisor says that that is not unusual. You should have been told about amputation waste when you were given the job.'

'Amputation waste!' exclaimed Plenderleith. 'You mean they amputated this bugger's head?'

'So the fall didn't kill him?' asked Chief Inspector Ryan.

'Only if he fell at eighty miles an hour,' replied the police pathologist.

'What are you saying?'

'The indentation on his head is too deep for an accidental fall but it matches the cast of the fire door so either someone took the door off its hinges and hit him with it or else they slammed his head against it to make it look as if it were an accident.'

'Thank you Doctor.' said the policeman. He was about to say something else when he was interrupted by another man who had come into the room. They spoke in a huddle for a few moments before the policeman said to the pathologist. 'I'm afraid we've got something else for you.'

'Never a dull moment,' replied the man laconically.

'A pile of bones from the furnace our late friend here was tending. A body was cremated in it.'

'Never rains but it pours.'

'The jigsaw puzzle is on its way over.'

Jamieson was still in the lab when he heard that the accidental death of Archie Trotter had become murder. Moira Lippman told him. She had heard the rumours at lunch time in the staff canteen. They had started to fly when a police incident 'room' was set up in the grounds outside the boiler house.

'What about motive?' asked Jamieson.

'That's the really grisly bit,' said Moira. There's a story going around that they found some human bones in the incinerator this morning.'

'That doesn't necessarily mean that…'

'But it was a whole body.'

Jamieson adopted a suitable expression. He was pretending to be an outsider to all that he was hearing but the suggestion of murder in the hospital made him look for a suitable excuse to return to his room and call the switchboard. He got through to Sci Med in London and told them that he wanted to be kept discreetly informed of all developments in the case. He was assured that the local police would be informed of his interest and instructed accordingly.

Moira was on the phone when Jamieson returned. He heard her sound relieved and thank someone before putting down the receiver. 'I was just checking on my sister in law,' she said.

'Everything OK?' Jamieson asked.

'Yes but she's not sure when they're going to operate yet. There's a bit of a back log.'

'Where's Dr Evans?'

'He's in Dr Richardson's office,' replied the girl.

Jamieson left Moira Lippman and came along the corridor to climb the stairs up to the ground floor. As he reached the top of the stairs he heard a clap of thunder and paused to look out of one of the corridor windows at the darkening sky. A figure on the other side of the courtyard caught his attention. It was Thelwell. He had just come out of the door that led to the Central Sterile Supply Department.

Jamieson frowned as he wondered what a consultant surgeon was doing there. He reflected that this was the second time he had had occasion to wonder this of Thelwell. The first time was when he had seen him in the vicinity of the lab on the night that Richardson died. The function of the CSSD was to sterilise dressings and surgical instruments. What possible reason could Thelwell have had for being there? After a couple of minutes consideration Jamieson decided that he would have to satisfy his curiosity. He would make it his business to find out what Thelwell had been doing there.

The heavens suddenly opened and rain began to hammer mercilessly against the window, all but obliterating his view of the courtyard outside. He paused in the shelter of the front door and waited until the deluge had stopped. His reasoning that such heavy rain could not last long was proved right when after three minutes the sky started to lighten and the rain eased off sufficiently to let him sprint across the courtyard to the entrance of the Central Sterile Supply Department.

Jamieson felt the humidity in the atmosphere hit him and saw the moisture condensing on the tiled walls as he opened the front door of the CSSD and walked along the thirty metres or so of corridor that led to a pair of heavy swing doors equipped with brass handles. STERILISING HALL said the sign above them. The humidity increased