found it I would say that the woman's murder was completely unconnected to the soldiers'… She was pregnant, by the way, four months.' He paused: he decided to tell Bobby his own hypothesis. 'If you want my opinion, that scalpel was deliberately placed there. Not to implicate Dr Quiroga… But to implicate me.'
'For God's sake! Now you're being absurd. Who would do such a thing?'
'Dr Cruz or Dr Wieland. Or both of them.'
Bobby laughed, his confidence suddenly returning. 'You're saying they murder some peasant woman and then place one of your scalpels by the body? It makes no sense. These are men of genuine standing in the community. No, no.'
'I don't say murder. But they're more than capable of, of taking an opportunity to try and disgrace me. Cruz has many contacts with the police. Tondo police bring many fight victims to the hospital. To Cruz's wards.'
'I can't accept that.'
'They are completely unscrupulous and sworn enemies of mine.'
'This is fantasy. Pure melodrama.'
'I have to tell you what I think. They want to discredit me and they don't care how. I don't say they murdered the woman. There's a cholera epidemic in the provinces. Dozens of people die every week. And God knows how many spare bodies Cruz has in his fiendish laboratory. He could have -'
'No, stop. This is completely out of control. My dear Carriscant, these are ravings, nonsense. I'm surprised at you, old fellow, I always had you placed as a cooler, more collected type of person.'
'I'm convinced that scalpel was stolen from my operating theatre.'
'Look, I think we're jumping too far ahead. Damn rain's rotting our minds. Growing mildew.'
Carriscant decided to leave it at that. He was satisfied, however: his confession had achieved something unexpected. Bobby's relief at his accusations had been manifest, and too enthusiastically rebuffed. He was convinced now that the theft of the scalpel from his theatre was carried out by none other than Chief of Constabulary Paton Bobby.
THE SUTURED HEART
Annaliese Carriscant spooned honey on to another triangle of toast and licked the spoon before returning it to the pot. She's eating too much, Carriscant thought, putting on more weight. There was a small bulge of flesh, an incipient double chin, growing beneath her jaw. With a sour pang of clarity Carriscant saw how unattractive his wife was, all of a sudden-how pinched, despite her new corpulence, how bland. Beside Delphine, she was – He pushed away his plate of chicken and rice. How could she eat toast and honey, slice after slice, all evening?
'I have to go to the hospital,' he said.
She looked at him, impassivity shading into contempt, he thought.
'I won't wait up.'
Carriscant pulled the dressing back over the wound. The patient was an Englishman, an officer in the coast guard, who had developed a large bronchocele or goitrous cyst on his neck which had grown to the size of an aubergine and which had been removed two days previously. He was still weak, but he appeared to be making progress. Carriscant moved on to the next bed but was interrupted by one of the nurses, Sister Encarnacion, who had hurried into the ward.
'Dr Carriscant, please, ward eleven. An emergency.' Carriscant followed her quickly along the corridor in the direction of the western wing of the hospital. Ward eleven was one of Dr Cruz's wards. As he left his own area of the hospital it was like crossing a frontier, he thought, or travelling backwards through time. At the extremities of his sphere of influence were the trestle tables with the enamel basins of disinfectant and carbolic soap, the trays of lime powder on the floor into which everyone entering his wards from Cruz's was obliged to step. Even the quality of the air seemed to change: here were old smells of putrefaction and unchanged linen and unwashed bodies. The corridors were grubby, the floors unswept, the walls printed with fingermarks and the greasy shine of human contact. Cruz still believed firmly in the airborne transmission of disease, that infection was caused by foul and noxious currents of air and as a result all the windows and doors of his wards were tightly sealed. Sister Encarnacion pushed open the door of ward eleven and led Carriscant into a long room, foetid and close, divided into cubicles, wooden walls floor to ceiling, with one bed inside each stall. The aim being, Carriscant supposed sardonically, the better to impede the noisome breezes that were killing 60 per cent of Cruz's patients. The nurse showed him into a cubicle and Carriscant peered down at a young man, a Filipino, who, he saw at once, had only a few days left to live.
'What's happened here?' he asked.
Sister Encarnacion explained that the man had been reroofing his hut, had fallen and had impaled himself on the bamboo fence that surrounded his garden. A sharp sliver of bamboo had entered his body just below the breastbone and had travelled upwards to pierce the heart.
A waterproofed canvas bag full of ice was resting on the man's chest. Carriscant lifted it off to reveal the heavy bandaging beneath. To his surprise he saw a rubber tube extending from the bandages leading into a glass bottle which was half full of blood. Drips fell from the tube's end.
'What's this?'
'A drain from the pericardium.'
'What?' This made no sense. Carriscant felt the man's pulse, very faint and irregular.
'What operation has Dr Cruz performed here?'
Sister Encarnacion told him, and added that Dr Cruz had been highly pleased with the result and had wanted the patient closely observed. A messenger had been despatched to Cruz's house, but the doctor would surely not arrive in time and seeing that Dr Carriscant was in the hospital…
Carriscant was amazed, more than amazed. Some more questioning elicited the facts that Cruz had opened the man's chest and exposed the sac that contained the heart and that had been pierced by the bamboo sliver. He had sewn up the wound in the pericardium leaving a trocar pushed into the heart cavity to drain it. Carriscant looked at the man. His face was blanched and pallid, covered in sweat, and he was breathing with difficulty. Cruz may have sewn up the wound in the pericardium but it was clear that the heart had been pierced also. There must be a tiny wound in the heart still pumping blood into the cavity, too much for any drain. Soon the pressure of the blood filling the heart cavity would stifle, and silence the beating, or else the lungs would give out, as the blood had probably flowed into the thoracic cavity too, crowding the lungs. There was nothing he could do. He turned away, frustrated and angry, and paced up the ward looking into the other cubicles, noting the grime on the shuttered windows. Most were empty: in one bed was a dead body, the sheet pulled over the face. Two other cubicles contained patients – a young boy and a young man – both had ice bags on their chests.
'What's this ward for?'
'Only chest wounds. Dr Cruz has asked that this be kept exclusively for chest wounds.' Sister Encarnacion looked unhappy. 'We get too many criminals, Dr Carriscant. The police from Tondo bring them here when they are injured in fights. Dr Cruz has asked only for those with chest wounds. The worst sort of individual… ' She lowered her voice. 'We're not used to this in the San Jeronimo. Not at all.'
It was only as he approached the rear of the Sieverance house that Carriscant's thoughts turned to something other than Dr Isidro Cruz and his daring new operations. He had hired a carromato to take him to Uli-Uli, a village just beyond the Palace, and had trudged back towards the Calle Lagarda before leaving the road and making his way across country towards the cul de sac and its sumptuous residences. The sky was largely covered but from time to time a three-quarter moon appeared between the shreds of cloud to light his way. He reached the rear hedge bordering the Sieverance garden without serious mishap. One slithering fall down the banked dyke of a rice paddy had soaked a shoe and muddied a trouser leg, but otherwise he was in good order as he pushed his way through the thick cogal and hibiscus bushes and crept across the moon washed garden towards the house.
And once again he asked himself what exactly he was hoping to achieve and as always the realisation came that it was the effort itself that provided the justification. It was inertia that finished him: to be doing something, however pointless, however foolish, was crucial. So he took up his position behind a dense humped mass of bougainvillaea that had engulfed a wooden pergola and waited. Perhaps she would venture out on to the azotea for some fresh air and he would be able to call discreetly to her. Even to glimpse her would be sufficient reward.
