As a leading researcher in the field, Ross would almost certainly have a Home Office licence for animal work. That being the case, Dunbar started to view his discovery as bizarre rather than sinister. But why had the animal been brought here to the hospital? Surely Ross’s research labs must have their own animal autopsy and dissection facilities — unless, of course, the cuts in his budget had forced him to seek alternatives. Was that it? Dunbar was considering this when he heard voices in the corridor. He mustn’t be discovered in the mortuary. That would call for explanations he didn’t have.
He looked about him for somewhere to hide but there was nowhere. The only furniture was a simple table, which was too narrow to hide him from view if he got under it. That left the mortuary fridge… He opened the fridge door and looked at the inside of the clasp. It had a standard through-bolt release pin, which meant it could be opened from the inside in emergencies; not that emergencies would be common inside a mortuary fridge.
The voices were getting louder. There was no time for hesitation. He gripped the beam along the top of the interior frame and swung his legs up on to the top tray beside Angela Carter-Smythe. He wriggled round on to his stomach in the confined space and stretched down to ease the door shut. It clunked softly on to its clasp and he was suddenly in complete, suffocating darkness.
He squirmed down the tray, trying to get as far from the door as possible, but he was still vulnerable to a casual upward glance from below. To combat this he manoeuvred himself into the tiny gap between the top of Angela’s body and the ceiling of the fridge and lay still on top of the dead woman, as if locked in some hellish embrace.
As the minutes passed and there was no sound from outside, he started to have doubts. Was it silent because of the heavy insulation on the fridge doors and walls, or was there really no one out there? After all, the voices needn’t have been those of people on their way to the mortuary.
The fridge door suddenly opened and light flooded in. Dunbar froze. He saw that the head cloth had fallen away from Angela’s face. Please God no one had come for her! He held his breath.
With unutterable relief, he heard the lower tray being slid out. The pig was removed, to the accompaniment of much grunting and groaning from its bearers.
The fridge door slammed shut again, causing a sudden rise in internal air pressure that hurt Dunbar’s ears. When the buzzing stopped, he found himself in deep, dark silence again. He was surprised at how quickly the air inside the fridge was used up. Although it was cold, he was soon aware of a film of sweat forming on his forehead and of starting to feel generally uncomfortable. Time to leave.
He started to wriggle his way up to the front again, inevitably becoming less and less reverential towards Angela as he manoeuvred awkwardly in the confined space. He finally reached the bulkhead over the door and stretched down his right arm to grip the release pin on the clasp. There was just enough room for his arm if he kept it in one orientation, but when he tried to turn it to grip the pin properly he couldn’t do so and was forced to bend his wrist round at an unnatural angle. To his horror, the pin came clean away and fell with a clang on to the empty tray below.
Fear gripped him like a vice. His throat tightened and his head filled with nightmare thoughts. He was trapped. There wasn’t room for him to get down between the top tray and the wall of the fridge. The pin must be at least two feet below the limit of his reach, not that he could see it in the dark, anyway. Panic welled up in his throat but throwing in the towel and yelling for help would be of no use. The insulation on the fridge would reduce any sound to a murmur, and in any case there was no one out there to hear it. He’d be yelling his way into eternity and using up the limited air supply even faster.
He rolled on to his back and tried to get his wits back. He ran through his surroundings in his head, the framework, the dimensions of the trays, the gaps between the trays and the walls, the gap between his body and the ceiling. There was only one chance, he concluded. If he could dislodge the top tray and tip it up so that it fell down through the frame, giving him access to the lower tray, there was a chance he could get out of this mess. The trouble was, both he and Angela were lying on it.
There wasn’t room to dislodge it sideways, he reckoned. It would have to be dislodged front to back and then twisted so that it fell diagonally through the frame. The chance of achieving this seemed so slim that he didn’t want to think about it. He simply started trying. He felt that the bones in his fingers must snap as he applied more and more pressure to the metal tray in an attempt to lever it and the combined weight of two bodies over the end of the frame. At the third attempt he managed it, sweat running down his forehead and stinging his eyes despite the cold. Fear was triumphing over temperature.
The next thing was to edge the tray forward. This time his arms had to take the strain as he took as much of his own weight as possible off the tray by pressing his hands against the side walls. He hooked his feet over the back edge of the tray and inched it slowly forwards so that as much of it as possible rode up on the front lip of the frame until it was stopped by the door.
Dunbar took a breather. He was literally poised between life and death. His right foot was going to decide the outcome of his predicament. If, when he thumped it down hard on the bottom edge of the tray, the tray didn’t twist and go crashing down through the gap, complete with Angela and himself, he could forget any other plan. There wouldn’t be any.
He took a moment to focus all his attention on the toe of his shoe. There could be no drawing back in deference to pain. Every ounce of strength he possessed had to go into the kick. He slowly raised his foot until his heel was stopped by the ceiling — a pitifully small length of travel. He brought his foot down with all the force that fear and focus could muster. The tray twisted and went down through the gap, bottom first. Dunbar and Angela finished up in a semi-erect embrace, leaning against the door.
Dunbar eased the tray slowly out of the way and tried to prop Angela up in the corner so that he could feel for the pin. After a few seconds, the searching palm of his right hand made contact with the pin. He felt his way up the back of the door until he found the hole for the pin, keeping his left index finger in it until he had the pin in place. He inserted the pin and gave it an almost despairing thump with the heel of his right hand. The clasp released and the door swung slowly and mockingly back. Dunbar put his hands down on the floor outside and dragged himself free. He lay on the floor for a few moments, breathing deeply and looking back at the maw of the fridge that had so nearly become his tomb.
His relief at being alive gave way to considerations of his present predicament. He had to put things back in order in the fridge and return Angela to her upper berth. He got somewhat unsteadily to his feet and pulled her fully out of the fridge. It took only a moment for him to restore the fallen tray to the top runners and slide it in. When he was satisfied it was running true, he slid it half out again, lifted her up and fed her slowly on to it. He closed her eyes with his finger tips and replaced her head cloth. ‘Requiescat in pace, Angela,’ he said. He slid the tray home and closed the door.
As he recovered from his ordeal, Dunbar turned his attention to the question of the pig and what had happened to it. He was almost certain that it had been taken to the post-mortem suite along the corridor. The chains above the operating table, he now knew, must be animal hoists. The question was, could he find out what exactly they were doing to it there without being discovered?
The affair in the mortuary fridge had taken a lot out of him; he had no heart for more heroics, but he did think he could get into the ante-room outside the PM room without being seen. Once in there, he might be able to see something of what was going on inside.
Dunbar went through his usual routine of listening at the door before opening it and then cautiously looking up and down the corridor. Luck was still with him. He ran along to the door to the PM suite and listened for voices again. He couldn’t hear anything but this was a bit of a gamble. If there was someone in the suite he’d better have his story ready. Nothing too elaborate, he decided. Better to play the bumbling English civil servant just having a look around the hospital. He opened the door; there was no one there. He entered quietly and looked through the glass panel in the door leading to the scrub room. Three jackets were hanging on pegs on the wall. Taking a deep breath, he moved through the scrub room and sidled up to the glass panel in the door leading to the PM room itself.
He saw what he supposed he had expected: an autopsy being carried out on the pig. Three gowned and masked figures were working on the carcass, which was secured to the table by leather straps. Its insides were exposed through a sweeping incision from its throat to its genitals. The huge operating light above the table illuminated the scene with a brilliance that made the scarlet hellish bright.
Dunbar was puzzled. Why should the three people at the table be fully gowned, gloved and masked for an animal autopsy? Such precautions were more appropriate for work on a living patient, when aseptic technique was
