not a damned thing. Grant Buchan had not told him anything that could possibly be of help in solving anything. Jenny was in as much trouble as she ever had been. He drew to a halt as he reached as far east as he would travel and took a last look at the grey northern water before turning to head south. It was cold but it was dry and the wind would be behind him.
Jenny was in the flat when Fenton got back. They held each other for a long time before either spoke. 'I found your note,' said Jenny. 'Did you find out anything?'
'Nothing,' admitted Fenton. 'What's been happening here?'
'The police released me this afternoon but I have been told not to leave the city and the hospital have suspended me.'
Fenton could see that Jenny had been crying a lot, her eyes were puffy and red. 'Morons,' he said. 'Absolute morons.' He drew her even closer.
'The funny thing is,' began Jenny, half laughing half sobbing, 'I can see their point of view. How could the hospital killer come into contact with Jamie… unless it was me?'
'That's what we must figure out,' said Fenton with all the reassurance he could muster.
'We're not terribly good at figuring things out. Remember?' said Jenny.
'We'll do it,' said Fenton.
They lay still in the darkness taking pleasure in their closeness. Fenton's fingers intertwined with Jenny's, his thumb gently tracing an ellipse on the back of her hand. Her shallow breathing was like music.
In the small hours of the morning Fenton lay awake while Jenny lay beside him fast asleep. She had been mentally exhausted but reassured enough by his presence to fall into a sound sleep, her head still against his shoulder. For the first time in many hours she had felt safe, safe from the strange and the unknown, the overweight men in crumpled suits who smelled of sweat and down market after shave. The men who sneered at everything she said, the red faces who shouted at her, mocked her, accused her. Surely these men could not have been policemen? Policemen were quiet, well mannered, helpful; they told you the time and gave you directions, patted children and inspired confidence, not fear. How she had been afraid, she had never known such fear.
The disorientation caused by being taken to a strange place full of hostile men had destroyed her self confidence in one fell swoop. Her initial stance as an outraged citizen demanding her rights in a free country had collapsed within minutes leaving her confused and afraid. A pleading note had crept into her voice as the ordeal had continued and she had been filled with a desperate desire to please her inquisitors, to say yes to anything that would breach the seemingly impenetrable wall of hostility. Only an innate strength of character stopped her from travelling along that road, but she had seen it and seen it clearly.
Fenton sighed in the still darkness of the room as once again his thoughts came to nothing. What was the connection? Just what was it? Only one fact stared him in the face like an ugly mongrel, there had been no opportunity at all for the hospital killer to reach Jamie directly. He squeezed Jenny's hand involuntarily as the unthinkable crossed his mind. Something was wrong with his train of thought, he decided, something basic.
An hour later, and after much mental wrestling, Fenton came up with a new hypothesis. It was forced on him by the facts. There was no killer, no lunatic, no psychopath. It was a disease! A bacterium or a virus! A virus had destroyed the clotting mechanism in the blood of all the people who had died. Why not? New diseases were being discovered all the time. Legionnaires' disease, Lassa fever, AIDS. The more he thought about it the more obvious and possible it seemed. The virus must be endemic in the hospital, lurking in unseen corners, just as the Legionnaires bug had hidden in the showers of an American hotel. Jenny must have carried it home and infected Jamie. The fact that not everyone was susceptible to it would be typical of viral infection. Everything pointed to it being a virus…except Neil Munro.
The Kraken of Neil Munro, burnt flesh peeling from his face, rose up from Fenton's subconscious to slow him down. No virus had pushed Munro into the steriliser. A compromise was demanded. Neil had been murdered, of that there was no doubt, but the others? No, it had to be some kind of infective agent. All he had to do now was prove it.
Jenny turned in her sleep and Fenton kissed her lightly on the shoulder. The question now was how he should go about substantiating his theory. Elementary. It was first year student stuff. You isolate the thing and show it does what it does by sticking it in to laboratory animals. But how to get his hands on infected material.. that was the real question and that was going to be quite a different matter.
He would need material from the people who had died, tissue, serum, and for that he would need help, top brass help and that meant Tyson…or did it? He was still smarting from the way he had made a fool of himself over the Doctor David Malcolm affair. He did not want it to happen again. Could he possibly do it alone?
It occurred to Fenton that maybe it had been done already! Perhaps the Pathology Department had already screened tissue from the victims for infective agents? If that were so then his suggestion would be about as popular with Pathology as his last one had been with the Police. That would be the last straw. He could just see MacDougal, the consultant pathologist and not the most patient of men, sneering at him and saying, 'Do you imagine that we are all stupid down here Fenton?'
He glanced at the digital clock on the bedside table. Ten past four, four hours before he would get up and go to the hospital, four hours in which to decide. Outside the wind began to rise and moan through wires on the roof. The bedroom window rattled as it denied entry to the night. Thoughts of a commando style raid on the Pathology Lab conjured up visions of being caught and the implausible explanation that he would have to offer to the police. Inspector Jamieson's superior little smile appeared in the glow from the clock. There had to be another way.
The other way presented itself as an obvious little idea that made Fenton feel stupid for not having thought of it sooner. The Medical Records Department! He could simply go along and request the file on one of the victims. There might not be one for Susan Daniels or the Wilson woman but there would certainly be one for the Watson boy for he had been a patient at the time. His file would contain a full post mortem report and details of all the lab tests requested.
Fenton got up at seven and was in the lab by eight. He had left Jenny sleeping, partly because she needed the rest but partly to avoid any discussion about what he was going to do. He got straight to work on his excuse for the medical records people and thumbed through the day book until he found the last entry for Timothy Watson, a blood glucose estimation. He copied down details of the result and took a virgin report form from Liz Scott's desk. Using two fingers and a great deal of concentration he tapped out a stuttering copy of the original report before getting ink over his hands as he altered the date stamp to match the date of the request in the day book. He now had his excuse, a biochemistry report to insert into the Watson Boy's file.
The Medical Records Department was situated in the Administration Block and smelled of dust and old cardboard. It had a blue carpeted floor that deadened the footsteps of two young girls as they moved up and down narrow gangways between towering rows of patients' files. Cecil McClay looked over his glasses as Fenton entered through the swing doors and approached his desk. He continued writing and finished the sentence before saying, 'Yes?'
McClay managed to endow the single word with the suggestion that Fenton was intruding but Fenton had been prepared for it for he knew McClay of old. The man had been Medical Records Officer at the Princess Mary for over twenty years and, like many time servers, had assumed proprietorial rights over his department. To him medical records were an end in themselves. Outsiders wanting to see them were a nuisance to be discouraged wherever possible.
Had Fenton been on a legitimate errand McClay's attitude might have been as a red rag to a bull but, as it was, he was sweetness and light. He apologised for the inconvenience and asked if he 'might possibly' take a look at the file on Timothy Watson.
'Your authority?'
'My own, I'm Fenton, Biochemistry. I have a report to add to the file. It must have been overlooked.'
'Leave it there. I'll see that it's entered.' The eyes dropped down behind the glasses.
'Actually…I really would like to make sure that this is the only one we overlooked…' Fenton hoped his smile looked more genuine than it felt.
McClay considered for a moment then swung round in his chair and said to one of the girls, 'Hilary! Watson, Tee, March three, Ward four.'
The girl handed the file to Fenton with a look that promised more than a cardboard file should he choose to
