he investigated how the free transplant referrals had been funded. Confidentiality about the Omega patients was strict, but Ingrid, when pressed, had come up with the information that there had been three; she had also given net profit figures for their stays. Dunbar couldn’t remember whether or not she had included dates for them. He wanted to see if he could correlate these dates with the acceptance of free-transplant patients.
He found the information on Omega patients she had given him. The dates of their stays at Medic Ecosse were included. He then got out the list of free NHS referrals and checked one list against the other. He found exactly what he was looking for. The admission of each Omega patient coincided with the acceptance of a free transplant patient. This confirmed that it was possible that the Omega patients had provided cash for the transplants, but it did not tell him why Ingrid had been unsure about the correlation. She had always been fiercely protective of Medic Ecosse, so should have jumped at the chance to point out how philanthropic they had been in spending Omega cash on charity patients. It was out of character. He was missing something.
His mobile phone rang. It was the matron at The Beeches in Helensburgh.
‘Dr Dunbar, I thought that, being a friend, you’d like to be told that Mrs Barnes died peacefully at three o’clock this morning. I’m sorry.’
‘Thank you for telling me,’ sighed Dunbar. ‘I appreciate it, and thank you for all you did for her. Did her son manage to come and see her before she died?’
‘No, he stayed away. Perhaps you’d like details of the funeral arrangements?’
Dunbar said he would. He wrote them down.
Ingrid came in after lunch to check if he had any work for her. When he said no, she smiled her superior little smile and said, ‘You know, I don’t think you’re an accountant at all.’ She sat on a corner of the desk and rested both hands on one knee.
Dunbar felt himself go cold. He tried to appear calm as he asked, ‘What do you imagine I am, then?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Some kind of detective perhaps?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘You pulled my personnel file.’
Dunbar was painfully aware that she was watching his reaction. ‘Did I?’ he said.
‘All personnel files record date and time of last access. It’s a data-protection measure. The last request for access to my file came from the computer in this office.’
‘I think it’s you who are the detective,’ said Dunbar with a smile that he hoped looked relaxed. ‘You’re quite right. I did access your file. I wanted to know a bit more about you.’
‘Why?’
‘When I asked you about some clinical tests on a transplant patient, you seemed to know all about them. I was curious. Having a computer beside me made it possible to satisfy my curiosity.’
‘And what did you discover?’
‘That you’re really a trained nurse,’ replied Dunbar. It was a gamble. He had simply told the truth.
‘I was,’ agreed Ingrid.
‘Then we’re two of a kind,’ said Dunbar. ‘I’m a doctor who doesn’t work as a doctor, and you’re a nurse who doesn’t work as a nurse.’
‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ said Ingrid. ‘Quite a coincidence, really.’
She left the room and Dunbar let out his breath in uneasy relief. It was short-lived. Almost immediately, he started to wonder how many of the other files he’d accessed had some kind of tag on them. He thought back. He’d been careful not to make any inquiries about either Lisa or Sheila Barnes on the hospital computer system, so that was all right. He’d certainly never tried to access anything at all about the dead children; that really would have been a giveaway. A lot of the information he’d used was on the disks originally supplied; there had been no need to access the mainframe so, again, no one would have been able to follow what he was doing unless… How did Ingrid know he’d pulled her file? To check the access record on it, she’d have had to examine her own file. Why had she done that? Or was there some other way she could have found out?
He was aware of the blood pounding in his ears as he started to check the back of the computer monitor. Please God, he was wrong but… There were a power-supply cable, a networking cable for connection to the mainframe and for access to printers — and a third cable. He stared at this third cable and felt his pulse rate rise. He couldn’t be sure, but a good guess said that this thin grey cable was supplying an auxiliary monitor. Someone was watching everything he brought up on screen.
The thought of it made him feel vulnerable until he thought it through calmly and came to the conclusion that he was still relatively safe. He’d played the role of a nosy accountant quite conscientiously, particularly at the beginning when he had constantly sought facts and figures to compile seemingly endless tables of income and expenditure. He had, of course, asked Ingrid to get him bits of information from time to time: estimated costs of transplants, a list of free referrals from the NHS, and more recently about the funding link with Omega patients.
So why had she let the cat out of the bag about his pulling her file? Had she been instructed to do it to see what his reaction would be? Had someone else been upset by something he’d asked about? He had the uncomfortable feeling that that might be the case. He suspected he’d come a little too close to something he wasn’t supposed to know about. It was all the more uncomfortable because he didn’t know what it was.
‘How is she, Doctor?’ Sandy asked as he and Kate were shown into Ross’s office for an update on Amanda’s condition.
‘All is not gloom,’ said Ross with a smile. ‘We’re now making considerable progress with Amanda.’
‘How so?’
‘I could give you the technical details but I suggest that you go up and see for yourselves,’ said Ross conspiratorially.
‘All right, we will,’ said Sandy, and without further ado a nurse took them up to Amanda’s room.
Amanda was sitting up in bed when they entered. She seemed alert and clear-eyed, and her smile when they walked in all but wiped out the despondency of the last few days and did more to raise their spirits than anything else that had happened in a long time. Sandy felt a lump come to his throat as he watched Kate hug Amanda and look up at him over the child’s shoulder.
‘You’re looking wonderful,’ she said to Amanda, holding her tightly. ‘You must be feeling better. Are you?’
‘I’m fed up,’ complained Amanda, but she said it in such a normal voice — so different from the tired whimper they had been used to in the past weeks — that Kate and Sandy burst out laughing.
‘Fed up?’ asked Kate, seeing the puzzled look that came to Amanda’s eyes and not wanting to hurt her feelings.
‘They won’t let me out of bed to play with the doll’s house,’ said Amanda.
‘Maybe tomorrow,’ said the nurse.
‘That’s what grown-ups always say,’ complained Amanda, to more laughter.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Sandy said to the nurse. ‘She’s looking so well today.’
‘The doctors have been making progress with the tissue-degradation problem and now they seem to have got the dialysis just right,’ she replied. ‘Much better than anyone dared hope. Everyone is very pleased with her. She’s quite a star.’
Sandy took over from Kate and hugged his daughter. ‘It’s just so good to see my little princess looking and feeling like her old self.’
The nurse went out and the three of them continued to chat happily about anything and everything. Amanda demanded to know how Sandy was getting on with the doll’s house he’d promised her. He assured her that plans for it had been drawn up and construction was under way.
‘With lights,’ she reminded him.
‘In every room,’ said Sandy.
As time went by, Kate noticed that Sandy had gone quiet. He seemed lost in thought.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked as Amanda leafed her way through a colouring-book to find an elephant she wanted to show them.
He shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know. I suppose I’d started to think this might not happen. I was on the verge of giving up hope and now…’
‘Let’s not analyse anything too deeply. Let’s just be thankful,’ said Kate softly.
