‘Hurry up with that other unit, demanded the doctor who’d asked them all to leave a few minutes earlier.’
Dewar moved round to where the ventilation unit that had been breathing for Sandra, had been moved back out of the way. The doctor in charge was now administering mouth to mouth through the plastic airway tube already inserted in her throat.
Dewar idly examined the detached flexible tubing leading from the unit, not knowing what he was looking for or even what exactly the fault had been. The machine seemed to have been running normally before he’d left the unit. He distinctly remembered seeing the bellows moving up and down and hearing the unit’s distinctive clicking noise when Le Grice opened the door to come out of Sandra’s room.
Something caught his eye where the tube attached to the metal outlet pipe on the side of the machine. His blood ran cold as he examined it more closely. The plastic tube had been cut cleanly at two places on its circumference. There was no danger of it falling apart or even of appearing abnormal but at least half the air being pumped out the machine would escape to the atmosphere rather than go into Sandra’s lungs. Someone had tried to kill her right under their noses and that someone had to be the Frenchman, Pierre Le Grice. He was the last person to have been with Sandra.
Dewar took a moment to calm himself. Le Grice was standing outside in the corridor with the others. If he had the arrogance to do what he’d done in the circumstances he probably had the nerve to gamble that no one would work out what had gone wrong just yet. And when they did there would be a good chance that it would be construed simply as a leaking hose. None of the medical or nursing staff would be looking for deliberate sabotage
The absolute priority now was to arrest Le Grice quietly and efficiently without any fuss or dramatics in a hospital. He stood back out of the way for a moment as a new respiratory unit was wheeled into place and connected to the electricity supply.
‘We’re losing her,’ came a voice from the ordered scrum round Sandra. ‘Please hurry.’
For a moment Dewar found himself mesmerised by the scene. He was seemingly invisible to the others in the room as they concentrated on the job. He could feel Sandra Macandrew’s life hanging in the balance and he was filled with anger and frustration as he had the awful feeling he was about to witness the moment of her death. The background bleeps became a monotone, the oscilloscope spikes became a featureless plane but the team kept working on.
A single bleep, a single spike on the scope, then nothing. Two beeps. A surge of optimism, a few more irregular bleeps then rhythmic harmony.
‘We’ve got her back. Thank you everyone.’
Never had electronic sound seemed so sweet, thought Dewar as the bleeps from the heart monitor became even and regular again, the hiss and click of the ventilator, music to his ears.
Dewar joined the others outside. ‘Touch and go for a moment there,’ he said. ‘But she’s okay again.’
‘Thank God,’ said Malloy. This was echoed by the others.
Dewar caught Le Grice’s eye and in that one moment the game was lost. Dewar’s own eyes gave him away. The two men held eye contact for a moment then Le Grice turned on his heel and started running along the corridor.
‘Quick! After him!’ shouted Dewar, all hope of a quiet civilised arrest gone to be replaced by the urgency of the situation. ‘He tried to kill Sandra!’
The two uniformed men from the door took off after Le Grice. Grant barked into his radio that back-up was required urgently at the hospital. He gave a description of Le Grice and ordered that the exits should be covered first.
Dewar took Malloy aside and said, ‘You’ve got to get back to the institute and close down your lab, Quarantine all Le Grice’s stuff. Above all else make the place secure even if it means shutting the whole institute down.’
Malloy seemed stunned. ‘I just can’t believe this is all happening,’ he complained.
‘Just do it!’ insisted Dewar. He turned to Grant and said, ‘Maybe it would be an idea to get some men to the institute just in case Le Grice gets away and tries to go back there. He’s blown it; he’s got nothing to lose now.’
Grant nodded his agreement and radioed for a patrol get to the institute and guard the doors. ‘I’d better let hospital security know what’s going on,’ he said, going off in search of an internal phone.
Dewar stood, looking down from a corridor window to the busy streets below. ‘Would Le Grice have made it to the outside in time? he wondered. And if he had, what then? The police already had details of his car obtained from Malloy and relayed by Grant, his description would be circulating faster than a rumour. He was trapped in the middle of the city, surely he couldn’t get far before they picked him up.
All the exits were now covered, Grant reported. There had been no sightings of Le Grice in the vicinity of any of them. ‘I think maybe we were too late,’ he said. ‘But he won’t get far.’
Dewar nodded at the confirmation of what he’d just been thinking but didn’t reply. He was thinking ahead; he knew that Le Grice couldn’t get far; Grant knew he couldn’t get far but Le Grice was a clever man. He’d probably worked that out too. So what would a clever man do in the circumstances? he asked himself. Stay put, was the answer.
‘What’s on your mind?’ asked Grant.
‘I think he’s still in the hospital,’ replied Dewar.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘He’s clever and he’s got nerve. Coming here today and doing what he did shows that. It’s my guess he’s found somewhere to lie low. He’s going to tough it out until the rest of us start believing he’s got clean away. then getting out will be a whole lot easier.’
‘I don’t fancy trying to search the whole hospital,’ said Grant. ‘This place probably has rooms the staff don’t even know about.’
Dewar nodded and agreed, ‘It’s not feasible. But if you keep men on all the exits we’ll at least pen him inside until he’s forced to do something rash.’
‘Like take a patient hostage,’ said Grant.
‘I wish you hadn’t said that,’ said Dewar. ‘He hadn’t considered the possibility.
‘Like you said, he’s got nothing left to lose. His career’s over and he’s looking at life if the girl dies. Not much less if she doesn’t.’
‘I think that situation might arise if you send in teams of uniforms to scour the place,’ said Dewar. ‘If we leave him alone he’s going to be happy biding his time. That gives us a window of a few hours while he thinks his plan is working.’
‘So what do
‘We get plans of the hospital and see if we can figure out where he might be holed up. We know where he started out from. Let’s see if we can think like him.’
The clerk of works for the hospital came up with plans after ten minutes during which Grant managed to negotiate an office to work from down on the ground floor. Dewar examined them on his own until Grant returned from briefing the men on the doors to be doubly vigilant. Le Grice wasn’t going to try to run past them after all this time — twenty minutes had passed. They should be on guard for some sort of disguise.
‘Any thoughts?’ asked Grant on his return.
Dewar traced his finger along a line on the paper. ‘This is the corridor we were in. Le Grice took off along here and disappeared from sight at this corner.’
Grant leaned closer, his forefinger edging towards Dewar’s. ‘Gotcha,’ he said. ‘So he had two choices. He either came down these stairs or he turned right through this door but that leads to nowhere, a circular staircase by the look of it inside a round tower. No way out at ground level.’
‘Which would you have taken?’ asked Dewar.
‘Down these stairs, without a doubt,’ said Grant. ‘He’d just started to make a run for it. His adrenaline would be pumping and he’d be making for the outside. Coming downstairs gives him several choices; three corridors to choose from and several exit points.’
‘But maybe he was smart enough to work out that he still wasn’t going to make it even at that early point in the proceedings.’
