ever been this comfortable when it had been home to a well-to-do Victorian family. No trace of a fireplace could now be seen along any wall, in fact, the only trace of the original fittings lay in the ceiling where a plaster repair had failed to conceal the rose from which a chandelier had once hung. Fluorescent fittings were now bolted to the ceiling, incongruous against the cornice.
The bilirubin result chattered out of the printer. Fenton looked at it and compared it with the standard graphs on the wall. 'Well, young…' He checked the name on the request form, 'John Taylor, aged three days, you won't be going home for a little while yet.' He called the maternity unit with the result and asked the nurse who took the call to read it back to him. 'Check.'
Finding that he was making little or no progress with Munro's book Fenton decided to make some coffee and came downstairs to switch on the electric kettle in the common room. The front door rattled in the wind as he came down the spiral stairs and crossed the hallway. He paused in front of one of the lockers to look at a photograph stuck up on one of the doors. Summer '86, said the caption in Dymo tape. It had been taken on the lab staff picnic in July, one of the few occasions Fenton could remember when a planned outing in Scotland had coincided with a dry sunny day. The good weather had made all the difference to the occasion and the smiles on the faces in the photograph said it.
Fenton looked at Neil Munro, relaxed, smiling and now dead; Susan Daniels in Tee shirt and shorts, young, carefree and now dead. He thought about Susan's death and on what Alex Ross had said. Surely it couldn't have been murder. But the thought had been voiced; it would not go away. Two people in the lab murdered? Considering the notion, albeit briefly, spawned another thought that was even colder than the icy wind that sought entrance to the hall through the cracks round the door. If two people in the lab had been murdered did that not suggest that the killer was one of the lab staff? One of the people in the photograph? Impossible, he decided and went to the common room.
The phone rang as he drank his coffee; he swivelled in his chair to pick up the receiver. Four blood samples were on their way. The phone was to ring twice more that afternoon for the same reason keeping him busy till a little after seven when things seemed to quieten down. He began toying with the idea of going home, deciding finally to give it till seven thirty before committing himself. At twenty to eight he phoned Jenny to say that he was on his way and then called the switchboard to say where he would be should his bleep fail.
The smell of cooking greeted him as he opened the door of the flat making him think how nice it was to come home to a warm bright apartment instead of the cold, dark silence that he had been used to before Jenny.
'How was it?' Jenny asked.
'Busy,' Fenton replied, grunting as he pulled off his motor-cycle boots. 'You?'
'It quietened down a lot this afternoon but we had one admission for the by-pass op.'
Fenton washed his hands and joined Jenny at the table.
'I've got some bad news Tom,' said Jenny.
'What?' asked Fenton.
'I'm going on night duty soon.'
Fenton made a face. 'What does that involve?' he asked.
'Four nights on, three off.'
'Well, at least the bed will never get cold,' said Fenton, 'There will always be one of us in it.'
Jenny came towards him and put her arms round his neck. 'And we'll still make sure that there are plenty of occasions when there are two.'
They finished their meal and shared the washing up before sitting down in front of the fire to drink their coffee. 'Did you manage to make anything of Neil's research notes?' Jenny asked.
Fenton replied that he had not but, on the other hand, he had not had that much time to look at them.
'Do you think that Neil was on to something important?'
Fenton shrugged and said, 'There's no way of knowing until we decipher the notes but I wish I knew what he wanted the blood for.'
'Blood?'
Fenton told her about the request Munro had submitted to the Blood Transfusion Service and how the requisition had not gone through normal channels.
'Why would he have done that?' asked Jenny.
'Another question without an answer,' said Fenton.
'I suppose when you think about it that was quite like Neil. He kept things very much to himself didn't he?'
Fenton agreed and gave a big yawn. Jenny smiled and said, 'Was that some kind of hint?'
Fenton kissed her lightly on the forehead. 'Early night?'
'Nice idea.'
Fenton was taking off his second sock when his bleeper sounded from the chair his jacket was stretched over. He put his head in his hands before looking at Jenny who was already in bed. 'God, you'd think they knew.'
Fenton fastened the strap of his crash helmet and looked out of the window, shielding his eyes from the glare of the room lights. The look on his face when he turned round told Jenny that it was still raining.
'Take care.'
It was six in the morning when Fenton returned. Jenny was already out of bed and putting on her uniform; she stopped buttoning her dress when Fenton came in and walked over to him. 'Bad night?' she asked putting her arms round his neck.
'One thing after another,' said Fenton.
Despite his tiredness Fenton still felt aroused by Jenny's nearness. He kissed her hard on the lips and felt her respond after initial surprise.
When they parted Jenny said, 'At six in the morning on a cold, damp winter's day?'
'Any time and any day,' said Fenton drawing her close again.
Jenny giggled and Fenton slipped his hand inside the top of her uniform to feel the warm swell of her breast. Pushing her back on to the bed he felt the muscles of her face relax as he pressed his mouth down on hers. Her lips parted to let his tongue probe the soft warm inside. 'I want you,' he murmured.
'I believe you, I believe you,' Jenny giggled, struggling with his trouser zip to free him. She raise her bottom slightly to let him pull her panties down half way then raised her knees as he knelt over her to pull them down the rest of the way. He let his erection rest between her calves as he looked down at her. 'I love you Jenny Buchan… God knows how I love you.' He ran his hands gently up the inside of her thighs.
Jenny looked at her watch. 'Duty calls,' she said. There was no reply from Fenton. She raised herself on her elbows and looked at him; he was fast asleep. She got up quietly from the bed and smoothed her uniform then, looking at Fenton again, she smiled and bent down to kiss him lightly on the forehead before leaving.
…
Tyson called a meeting of the lab staff on Wednesday afternoon in the common room. The wind and rain that had lashed Edinburgh for the past week had still not abated and the windows rattled as he looked around to see if everyone was present. Fenton was missing, delayed by an urgent blood test, but he arrived before anyone had been sent to fetch him. He entered to find Tyson and Inspector Jamieson looking grim.
'We are now in possession of the post-mortem report on Susan Daniels,' said Tyson. 'Inspector Jamieson obtained it from the fiscal's office this morning. Susan did not suffer a miscarriage as some of us had imagined. She wasn't pregnant. She died because the normal clotting mechanisms of her blood were no longer functional. She had received a massive dose of an anticoagulant drug so that when she started bleeding there was no way of stopping it. It seems unthinkable that she administered the drug to herself which leaves us with the unpleasant, but inevitable alternative, that she was murdered.' Tyson paused to let the hubbub die down. Fenton looked at Ian Ferguson who returned his glance. The nightmare was coming true.
Jamieson rose to put everyone's fears into words. There had been two murders in the hospital and both victims had been members of the Biochemistry Department. As both killings were apparently without personal motive the possibility that there was a psychopathic killer at large in the hospital, and with a particular grudge against the lab, had to be faced. Jamieson concluded by saying, 'I'm sure I don't have to tell you but, if you have the slightest suspicion, the vaguest notion, of anything not being quite right, tell the police. We will be here in the hospital. Nothing is too trivial.
