Chameleon

'Because he thought it was all going to come out about us! When you followed him to my sister's place he thought it was inevitable. There was just no way a man like Gordon could have faced the scandal and ridicule. He was a very sensitive man you know.'

'Really, said Jamieson dryly.

The mist faded from Blaney's eyes and they turned to flint. 'Yes you bastard! Nobody really understood him!' Blaney struggled at his bonds but to no avail; the police had arrived.

Blaney was formally charged and taken away, in the first instance to have X-rays taken of his head injuries. Chief Inspector Ryan stayed behind to talk to Jamieson.

'Well that's one mystery solved,' said Ryan. 'At least we know now why your wife was attacked and once we've had a chat with Mr Blaney we might be able to clear up everything.'

Jamieson nodded but he was deeply troubled.

'Is something the matter?' asked Ryan, conscious of the fact that Jamieson was not sharing his euphoria.

'Before you arrived, I talked to Blaney about Thelwell's involvement in the hospital deaths,' said Jamieson. 'Blaney maintains that neither he nor Thelwell had anything to do with them.'

'Well, he would wouldn't he?' said Ryan.

Jamieson looked at Ryan and said, 'Yes, but the trouble is, I believe him.''

Jamieson lingered on alone in CSSD. He heard Ryan's car drive off as he sat down slowly at the desk beside the autoclaves and idly sifted through a pile of recorder charts. Much as he disliked Blaney he had to admit that what the Charge Nurse had said sounded like the truth. But if neither Blaney nor Thelwell had been involved in spreading the infection — and Thelwell had actually been guarding the instruments as he maintained — how could they have possibly become infected? Unless of course, they had never been sterilised in the first place? But that was ridiculous. He himself had seen the recorder chart from the steriliser run on the day Thelwell had collected the instruments and all the others for that matter.

Jamieson got up and walked towards the autoclave. He stood in front of the silent steel machine that Blaney had pointed out to him as being the one used for Gynaecology supplies. Not only had the chart record been spot on but Clive Evans had carried out the weekly test on the machine just before the run. Jamieson walked slowly up the side of the machine to the supply pipes at the back and ran his hand idly over the smooth copper pipework.

There was some extra pipework on this machine to facilitate the insertion of test thermocouples for monitoring the conditions inside the sterilising chamber. Jamieson traced the pipes and then noticed several smaller ones which led back into the machine. He was puzzled for a moment because he could see no obvious reason for them. He stared at them for a full minute then looked around for a screwdriver to remove the side panel of the machine. He found what he was looking for in a drawer marked, TOOLS, with adhesive Dymo tape.

With the metal shield removed, Jamieson could see that the small pipes ran along the outside of the sterilising chamber and were connected to the gauges at the front of the machine. But why? Why should it be necessary to reflect the readings on the monitoring equipment on the gauges on the front of the machine? Jamieson felt the blood start to pound in his ears as he retraced the pipes once more and followed the logic of the valves.

He found himself transfixed by the sight of two red valves in the left upper quadrant. Surely he must be wrong. He followed the circuit again and reached the same frightening conclusion. On this machine it was possible to isolate the sterilising chamber from its supply lines and still have the readings of pressure and temperature in the pipes at the back of the machine appear on the gauges and the chart recorder at the front. The chamber thermometer could read one hundred and thirty one degrees centigrade while the steriliser remained stone cold.

'Christ Almighty,' whispered Jamieson as he saw how it had been done. The instruments and dressings had been contaminated before they had gone into the steriliser then they had gone through a dummy run before being distributed. Blaney had been right when he had asked how he or Thelwell could have got hold of deadly bacteria. It would have taken a specialist for that… a microbiologist, a bacteriologist. Clive Evans was a bacteriologist! And once a week, Evans had come to CSSD, ostensibly to test the machine but in reality to contaminate a full steriliser load! It had been Clive Evans all along! Evans was the killer!

Jamieson's head was reeling. It had been Evans who had killed Richardson and Moira Lippman when they had begun to suspect him but Evans had expertly diverted suspicion towards the hapless Thelwell. It had been Evans who had faked the result of Thelwell's first test swabs knowing what this would do to the already strained relationship between Thelwell and Richardson. Ye gods! There was a hellish genius about his madness, for sheer madness it must be.

The thought made Jamieson remember Costello Court, the mental hospital that John Richardson had been in touch with before his death. He picked up the phone and asked for Sci-Med's number in London.

'I have to have the following information fast! I repeat fast! Was a Clive Evans ever a patient at Costello Court Hospital and if so why? I need to know all the case details. Call me back on…' He gave the CSSD extension number at the hospital.

It took twelve minutes for Sci-Med to return the call. It was Macmillan himself.

'I have just gone out on a limb for this Jamieson. You had better have a good reason for wanting to know this when this business is all over.'

'I have.'

'Dr Clive Linton Evans was a patient at Costello Court Hospital from July third last year to March fourteenth this year after suffering a severe mental breakdown. The breakdown followed his contracting a venereal disease from a prostitute. It was thought that he might not work again but an altruistic consultant at one of the northern hospitals took him under his wing and elected to oversee him through a period of rehabilitation. Apparently, medical opinion at Costello Court was bitterly divided over the Evans case. One psychiatrist on Evans' review panel even went so far as to suggest that Evans might be conning them all. The word 'psychopath' was mentioned but this doctor was overruled. I take it you have come across Dr Evans?'

'He's on the staff,' said Jamieson.

'I see,' said Macmillan. 'And do you think…'

'I know and I've just found out how he's been doing it. I'd better ring off and contact the police.'

'Is there anything we can help you with?'

Jamieson was about to say no when he had second thoughts and asked, 'Who was Proteus in Greek mythology?'

'Good Lord,' exclaimed Macmillan. 'Let me see… the sea god who changed his form at will if my memory serves me right.'

'That's exactly what I wanted to know,' said Jamieson and put down the phone. He could hear himself breathe in the silence as the awfulness of Evans' crime tested his own credibility to the limit. The current Proteus infection was a sick joke! Evans has been changing the infection at will! He had been deliberately engineering the bacteria before using them to contaminate dressings and equipment bound for the wards. He had been mutating them so that they would be resistant to treatment. Using a strain of Proteus for the latest outbreak and its inherent allusion to a Greek god in its name had been sheer arrogance, just like Ryan had predicted, the arrogance of a complete psychopathic lunatic!

The full meaning of the earlier biochemical test results now became clear to Jamieson. The bugs had differed from the text book values because they had been artificially mutated! Evans had deliberately induced genetic changes in the bacteria. He had done it to make them more virulent and virtually untreatable but the procedure would have induced many other mutations in the bugs at the same time. This is what Richardson and later Moira Lippman must have deduced!

Jamieson finally reached Ryan. 'Can you come back to CSSD at Kerr Memorial? It's urgent.'

Ryman was back within ten minutes and Jamieson told him everything. He showed him what he had discovered about the plumbing at the back of the steriliser. Jamieson had left the side shielding off the machine so Ryan could trace the pipes with his hand as it was pointed out to him what would happen when the wheel valves were altered.

'The mad bastard,' murmured Ryan.

Jamieson told Ryan about the report from Costello Court.

'Then why the hell didn't they put him under lock and key?' said Ryan angrily.