Timothy's chest was re-opened and the flesh held back by retractors. 'Ye gods,' murmured Rogan, 'He's awash…Suck please!'
Rogan's assistant started clearing the blood with a vacuum suction tube while he himself dabbed with cotton swabs. A nurse changed the transfusion pack for the second time.
'Mop!' Rogan inclined his head for Rose Glynn to wipe away the sweat from his brow but only to see it reappear almost immediately. Rogan was losing the battle and the tension in his voice conveyed that fact to everyone. Tension like laughter was infectious.
'He's leaking like a sieve.' Exasperation took over from anxiety as Rogan realised that there was nothing he could do. 'There's something wrong with his blood damn it…I can't stop it.'
Four minutes later the heart monitor lapsed into a long, continuous monotone. The tension evaporated leaving silence in its place. 'Thank-you Sister,' said Rogan quietly. He lowered his mask and took off his gloves, this time slowly and deliberately. 'Get some blood to the haematology lab will you.' His assistant nodded. Rose Glynn looked at her student nurse and saw that her eyes were moist. She had planned to have words with the girl about her earlier giggling episode. She resolved not to bother.
Malcolm Baird, consultant haematologist at the Princess Mary, phoned Rogan personally next morning but only to say, rather cryptically thought Rogan, that there was to be a meeting of all consultants at eleven thirty in the medical superintendent's office to discuss the Watson case. He should bring his case notes.
Charles Tyson was last to arrive at the meeting and got the least comfortable seat as his just desert. He apologised for his lateness but did not offer up any reason. Cyril Freeman, medical superintendent at the Princess Mary for the past seven years opened the meeting with a short history of Timothy Watson's illness leading up to his admission. Rogan was invited to follow and duly gave his account of the operation and the subsequently tragic, and ultimately fatal, internal haemorrhage. He sat down again and Baird got to his feet to make his report. 'A thorough haematological examination of the blood sample taken from the boy Watson has shown conclusively that all coagulation potential had been lost, just like Daniels in fact. A massive dose of an anticoagulant drug is indicated.'
Tyson leaned forward putting his elbows on the table to support his head. 'So the bastard has started on the patients now,' he said.
Anger vied with gloom and despondency around the table.
'What the hell are the police doing anyway?' demanded George Miles from Radiology.
'Running round in circles if you ask me,' said Rogan.
'It's not easy in a case like this,' said orthopaedic surgeon Gordon Clyde.
'I didn't say it was,' snapped Rogan.
Freeman intervened to prevent further disharmony. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'We have one overriding and immediate problem to discuss.' All eyes turned to him. 'We have to stop the press from finding out about the Watson boy. If the papers get hold of this there will be blind panic amongst patients' relatives.'
'And people would be right to panic,' said Tyson.
'Would you mind explaining that remark?' asked Rogan.
Tyson said calmly, 'Let's not pretend that we are taking steps to prevent unnecessary panic. The truth is we are quite powerless to prevent another killing. This hospital is entirely at the mercy of a lunatic.'
The desire to argue was stillborn on the lips of Tyson's colleagues; it was left to Fenwick to break the silence. He said, 'We have, of course, discussed the option of closing the hospital with the police and local authorities but we simply cannot do it. We are too big, there are too many patients to transfer and, as the police point out, the staff who went with our patients would almost certainly include the killer. We would just be transferring the problem.'
'So we sit tight and do nothing?'
'Yes, and hope the police come up with something,' said Fenwick. The frown on Rogan's face suggested a feeling shared by the others.
What about the Watson boy's parents?' asked Tyson. 'They are bound to talk to the press.'
Fenwick looked uneasy. He fidgeted with his pen before saying quietly, almost inaudibly, 'They don't know.'
'What?' exclaimed Tyson and Clyde together.
'They are not in possession of the full facts surrounding their son's death, just that the boy died after post- operative complications.'
'But that is…' Rogan was interrupted by Fenwick.
'Don't lecture me on ethics Mr Rogan,' he said firmly. The police suggested this course of action and I agreed. There is no way we could expect the parents to suppress their anger and keep this matter quiet. Just how much you tell your own staff I leave to your discretion.'
'I suggest nothing,' said Clyde.
'I think Tyson might disagree with you,' said Fenwick.
Tyson looked over his glasses and nodded slowly. He said, 'So far, my department has taken the brunt of the strain in this affair. We have lost two people and have had to live with the fear that this psychopath had a particular grudge against the lab and, worse, that he might actually be one of our number. This latest death makes both these things less likely. I think that at least some of my people should be told to lessen the tension. A murmur of agreement filled the room.
'Sorry Tyson,' said Clyde, 'I didn't think.'
Tyson left the meeting and walked back along the main corridor past the room where Susan Daniels had died. Two nurses were standing talking outside it, laughing about some idiosyncrasy in one of their colleagues. Tyson excused himself and squeezed past. The voices dropped to a whisper as he did so making him reflect on how often this had happened in the past. It was part of being a hospital consultant; people tended to stop speaking when you came near.
By the time he had left the corridor and battled back to the lab against the wind and spitting rain he had decided to tell Alex Ross, Ian Ferguson and Tom Fenton about the Watson boy's death.
The relief that Fenton felt on hearing that the killer had struck somewhere else was followed almost immediately by a wave of guilt at having found a child's death any cause for relief. His guilt doubled when he remembered that Timothy Watson had been the name of the child who had spoken to him in the corridor when Susan had died.
Before Tyson left the room Fenton asked him a question about Neil Munro's personal research project. Did he know what it was? Tyson replied that he did not. Fenton opened Munro's notes and pointed to a page heading; it said, C.T. 'It's just that I thought that this might stand for Charles Tyson?' he said.
There was a long silence while Tyson looked at the page. 'Doesn't mean a thing,' he said and left before Fenton had time to ask anything else.
Ian Ferguson came into the room and put some keys down on the desk, 'These were Neil Munro's lab keys. Alex Ross asked me to give you them. He said something about a locked cupboard?'
Fenton thanked him and added that he had asked Ross about a locked cupboard in Munro’s room that he had been unable to find a key for.
'If you find an electric timer in it let me know will you? Neil borrowed mine and I Haven't been able to find it since.' said Ferguson.
'I'll check right now if you like,' said Fenton and got up to lead the way to Munro's lab.
Ferguson looked on while Fenton tried the keys and found success at his third attempt. 'There's no timer here,' said Fenton.
'Damn.'
Fenton sifted through the contents of the cupboard while Ferguson stood by. Test tube racks, plastic tubes and beakers and several brown glass bottles with chemicals in them. He examined the labels. Potassium oxalate, sodium citrate, heparin, EDTA, Warfarin. 'What do you make of that?' he asked Ferguson.
'They're all anti-coagulants,' said Ferguson quietly.
Fenton nodded. 'Indeed they are,' he said softly.
'I don't understand,' said Ferguson.
Fenton did not reply for his mind was working overtime in trying to work out why Munro had been using anticoagulants at all and why they had been locked away out of sight. It must have had something to do with his
