“I’m going to call Garten and tell him that you will be out of action for a few days. That should obviate our leader’s need for a morning laxative. He is going to have to come in.”
“Who are the housemen on A amp;E today?”
“Doctors Prahash Singh and Chenhui Tang,” Tremaine announced.
Saracen closed his eyes and pursed his lips silently.
“Exactly,” said Tremaine. “Neither outstanding in their command of English.”
“How is your Urdu and Chinese?” asked Saracen.
“Not good enough to practise in Pakistan or China,” replied Tremaine.
“Point taken,” conceded Saracen. “But push off now will you, I feel like death.”
Tremaine smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He turned as he got to the door and said, “If there’s anything you want, just yell out.”
Saracen nodded.
By late afternoon Saracen felt a whole lot better, so much so in fact that he signed himself out of the ward at four thirty, assuring Sister Ellis that he was now perfectly all right. The speed of his recovery had surprised even him but reinforced his view that he had been subject to some mild form of poisoning. When the substance had cleared from his system he had immediately begun to feel better, just as if he had been suffering from an alcoholic hangover. Now, all that was wrong with him was a sore head and not out of keeping with the minor knock that Tremaine had declared him to have taken.
Saracen had to walk round to the back of the hospital to collect his car which was still where the Gate Porter had left it the previous night. He was trying to remember what he had done with the keys when he came to the mortuary doors and paused for a moment to take comfort in the fact that everything looked normal again. There were no strange vans, no men in hoods and black visors and the door was securely locked. He examined the padlock and wondered for a moment about the door lock when a sudden whiff of ammonia filled his nostrils and made him reel back from the doors. “What on earth?” he exclaimed but the smell had already gone.
It was over so quickly that Saracen began to wonder if the smell had ever really been there at all for now there was no trace of it. On the other hand a breeze had sprung up with the stopping of the rain and that could just as easily have taken away the gas. He approached the doors again and sniffed. Nothing. It must have been his imagination, some trick of his olefactory system, still upset after the events of the night before.
Saracen shrugged and turned. He now remembered having dropped his keys beside the car in the darkness and went to look for them. Finding them in daylight presented no great problem and he was back at his flat within fifteen minutes, pouring himself a large whisky.
Saracen took a gulp before placing a Vivaldi album on the stereo and adjusting the volume before sitting down and picking up the local paper. The big news, as it had been for the past three weeks, was concerned with predictions of Skelmore’s success in attracting the giant Japanese company, Otsuji Electronics to the area. True, the final agreement had not yet been signed and there were other towns competing for the factory, notably in Scotland and the industrial North-East, but all the signs were that Skelmore was the favourite and it was all over bar the shouting. There was, in fact, nothing new at all in the newspaper story but, in this case, Saracen found the euphoric repetition excusable for this was more than just an industrial story; it was something that meant life for the whole area.
In the time that Saracen had been in Skelmore he had seen the industrial heart ripped out of the town. The giant steel works of Lever Hanah had closed, the iron foundry had gone and the local colliery had been declared no longer economically viable, and shut down after a bitter strike.
The economic depression had cast a great shadow across the area and it showed in the streets where boarded up shops and For Sale signs sprouted like weeds reclaiming the earth; it showed in the faces of the people in whom hope had been destroyed. A greyness and a passive submission to the yoke of hard times had replaced the air of cheerful optimism that had once been the hallmark of the town. Crime had risen, particularly cases of violent crime where larceny might have been the crime predicted to increase most. It seemed that people at the end of their tether ran on an extremely short fuse. Minor irritations became major bones of contention in a town without a future.
But then came the news of Otsuji and the prediction of not only five hundred jobs from the company alone but a great many more created through a knock on effect as smaller firms flocked to the area like pilot fish to satisfy the requirements of Otsuji for components and services. Already the building trades in the area were flourishing and new housing was springing up on every available plot of land. Capital was being ventured on the well proven assumption that prosperity and home ownership went hand in hand.
The new air of optimism was not confined to the private sector alone. New council departments with grand sounding names seemed to materialise overnight to deal with the floods of trade enquiries and brightly coloured brochures were being rushed off the press to extol the virtues of Skelmore and surrounding district as the development area of the future.
There was even talk of the hospital modernisation programme, which had been on ice for the last five years, being brought down from the shelf and dusted off. There seemed to be a real possibility that essential renovation work at Skelmore General might actually be carried out before the place fell down.
Skelmore General was a disgrace; at least it was a disgrace to anyone who believed in the highest standards of medical care, those befitting a nation that considered itself so abrasively often to be superior to the rest of the world. Of course, if you had lived in Britain for the last five to ten years then Skelmore General was fast becoming the norm in a health service at odds with government philosophy. Understaffing, low pay and impotent resentment manifesting itself in Trade Union bloody mindedness had all conspired to bring morale to a dangerously low ebb.
Even the Press seemed to realise this and had stopped whipping an all but dead horse. Stories of leaking ceilings and cockroaches in hospital kitchens no longer appeared under crusading headlines. It was a waste of time for there was no incompetence or laxity left to expose. Britain’s Health Service was simply falling to bits for lack of money.
Skelmore General felt the effects of economic stringency particularly badly because it had been a rambling Victorian slum of a building to start with. Its plumbing and electrics were antiquated and the style of its design with high ceilings and arches made it prohibitively expensive to heat. The same reason made it impossible to keep clean.
Frequent outbreaks of diarrhoeal illness in the wards was the norm and almost certainly due, though never admitted publicly, to dirty food standards. Ironically this problem tended to work in the General’s favour for any kind of outbreak that looked as if might be infectious allowed the hospital to unload affected patients on to the Infectious Diseases Unit of Skelmore’s County Hospital, a ploy that the County was only too well aware of.
On the last occasion of a transfer Saracen’s friend and opposite number, David Moss at the County Hospital had good naturedly claimed that anyone who farted too loudly in the General was in danger of finding themselves in an ambulance on their way to the County. Saracen had countered with the claim that Moss had deliberately pushed two of his geriatric patients downstairs during the previous week in order to have them admitted to the General’s Orthopaedic Unit.
Saracen was idly wondering what to do with his unscheduled two day break when the telephone rang; it was Nigel Garten.
“Hello James. I’ve just been up to Ward Four to see you, ‘found you’d flown the coop. How are you? All right?”
“I feel a lot better thanks.”
“Excellent. Nasty business all round really, still, can’t be too bad if you signed yourself out eh what?” Garten gave a forced laugh to augment his one-of-the-chaps act. Saracen could see what was coming. He was right.
“Soon be back in harness eh?” continued Garten, still forcing the laugh.
“Shouldn’t be too long,” agreed Saracen flatly. There was a pause.
“Any idea exactly…how long?” probed Garten.
Saracen smiled at being proved right. “A couple of days,” he said.
“Of course you mustn’t come back until you feel absolutely well again. I’m sure sick leave can be arranged.”
“I’m not taking sick leave Nigel; I’m due a couple of days off anyway.” Saracen left out the ‘at least.’
