Fenton's winter Read online

  The bilirubin result chattered out of the printer. Fenton looked at it and compared it with the standard graphs on the wall. "Well, young…" He checked the name on the request form, "John Taylor, aged three days, you won't be going home for a little while yet." He called the maternity unit with the result and asked the nurse who took the call to read it back to him. "Check."

  Finding that he was making little or no progress with Munro's book Fenton decided to make some coffee and came downstairs to switch on the electric kettle in the common room. The front door rattled in the wind as he came down the spiral stairs and crossed the hallway. He paused in front of one of the lockers to look at a photograph stuck up on one of the doors. Summer '86, said the caption in Dymo tape. It had been taken on the lab staff picnic in July, one of the few occasions Fenton could remember when a planned outing in Scotland had coincided with a dry sunny day. The good weather had made all the difference to the occasion and the smiles on the faces in the photograph said it.

  Fenton looked at Neil Munro, relaxed, smiling and now dead; Susan Daniels in Tee shirt and shorts, young, carefree and now dead. He thought about Susan's death and on what Alex Ross had said. Surely it couldn't have been murder. But the thought had been voiced; it would not go away. Two people in the lab murdered? Considering the notion, albeit briefly, spawned another thought that was even colder than the icy wind that sought entrance to the hall through the cracks round the door. If two people in the lab had been murdered did that not suggest that the killer was one of the lab staff? One of the people in the photograph? Impossible, he decided and went to the common room.

  The phone rang as he drank his coffee; he swivelled in his chair to pick up the receiver. Four blood samples were on their way. The phone was to ring twice more that afternoon for the same reason keeping him busy till a little after seven when things seemed to quieten down. He began toying with the idea of going home, deciding finally to give it till seven thirty before committing himself. At twenty to eight he phoned Jenny to say that he was on his way and then called the switchboard to say where he would be should his bleep fail.

  The smell of cooking greeted him as he opened the door of the flat making him think how nice it was to come home to a warm bright apartment instead of the cold, dark silence that he had been used to before Jenny.

  "How was it?" Jenny asked.

  "Busy," Fenton replied, grunting as he pulled off his motor-cycle boots. "You?"

  "It quietened down a lot this afternoon but we had one admission for the by-pass op."

  Fenton washed his hands and joined Jenny at the table.

  "I've got some bad news Tom," said Jenny.

  "What?" asked Fenton.

  "I'm going on night duty soon."

  Fenton made a face. "What does that involve?" he asked.

  "Four nights on, three off."

  "Well, at least the bed will never get cold," said Fenton, "There will always be one of us in it."

  Jenny came towards him and put her arms round his neck. "And we'll still make sure that there are plenty of occasions when there are two."

  They finished their meal and shared the washing up before sitting down in front of the fire to drink their coffee. "Did you manage to make anything of Neil's research notes?" Jenny asked.

  Fenton replied that he had not but, on the other hand, he had not had that much time to look at them.

  "Do you think that Neil was on to something important?"

  Fenton shrugged and said, "There's no way of knowing until we decipher the notes but I wish I knew what he wanted the blood for."

  "Blood?"

  Fenton told her about the request Munro had submitted to the Blood Transfusion Service and how the requisition had not gone through normal channels.

  "Why would he have done that?" asked Jenny.

  "Another question without an answer," said Fenton.

  "I suppose when you think about it that was quite like Neil. He kept things very much to himself didn't he?"

  Fenton agreed and gave a big yawn. Jenny smiled and said, "Was that some kind of hint?"

  Fenton kissed her lightly on the forehead. "Early night?"

  "Nice idea."

  Fenton was taking off his second sock when his bleeper sounded from the chair his jacket was stretched over. He put his head in his hands before looking at Jenny who was already in bed. "God, you'd think they knew."

  Fenton fastened the strap of his crash helmet and looked out of the window, shielding his eyes from the glare of the room lights. The look on his face when he turned round told Jenny that it was still raining.

  "Take care."

  It was six in the morning when Fenton returned. Jenny was already out of bed and putting on her uniform; she stopped buttoning her dress when Fenton came in and walked over to him. "Bad night?" she asked putting her arms round his neck.

  "One thing after another," said Fenton.

  Despite his tiredness Fenton still felt aroused by Jenny's nearness. He kissed her hard on the lips and felt her respond after initial surprise.

  When they parted Jenny said, "At six in the morning on a cold, damp winter's day?"

  "Any time and any day," said Fenton drawing her close again.

  Jenny giggled and Fenton slipped his hand inside the top of her uniform to feel the warm swell of her breast. Pushing her back on to the bed he felt the muscles of her face relax as he pressed his mouth down on hers. Her lips parted to let his tongue probe the soft warm inside. "I want you," he murmured.

  "I believe you, I believe you," Jenny giggled, struggling with his trouser zip to free him. She raise her bottom slightly to let him pull her panties down half way then raised her knees as he knelt over her to pull them down the rest of the way. He let his erection rest between her calves as he looked down at her. "I love you Jenny Buchan…God knows how I love you." He ran his hands gently up the inside of her thighs.

  Jenny looked at her watch. "Duty calls," she said. There was no reply from Fenton. She raised herself on her elbows and looked at him; he was fast asleep. She got up quietly from the bed and smoothed her uniform then, looking at Fenton again, she smiled and bent down to kiss him lightly on the forehead before leaving.

  …

  Tyson called a meeting of the lab staff on Wednesday afternoon in the common room. The wind and rain that had lashed Edinburgh for the past week had still not abated and the windows rattled as he looked around to see if everyone was present. Fenton was missing, delayed by an urgent blood test, but he arrived before anyone had been sent to fetch him. He entered to find Tyson and Inspector Jamieson looking grim.

  "We are now in possession of the post-mortem report on Susan Daniels," said Tyson. "Inspector Jamieson obtained it from the fiscal's office this morning. Susan did not suffer a miscarriage as some of us had imagined. She wasn't pregnant. She died because the normal clotting mechanisms of her blood were no longer functional. She had received a massive dose of an anticoagulant drug so that when she started bleeding there was no way of stopping it. It seems unthinkable that she administered the drug to herself which leaves us with the unpleasant, but inevitable alternative, that she was murdered." Tyson paused to let the hubbub die down. Fenton looked at Ian Ferguson who returned his glance. The nightmare was coming true.

  Jamieson rose to put everyone's fears into words. There had been two murders in the hospital and both victims had been members of the Biochemistry Department. As both killings were apparently without personal motive the possibility that there was a psychopathic killer at large in the hospital, and with a particular grudge against the lab, had to be faced. Jamieson concluded by saying, "I'm sure I don't have to tell you but, if you have the slightest suspicion, the vaguest notion, of anything not being quite right, tell the police. We will be here in the hospital. Nothing is too trivial.

  The possibility that the killer might actually be one of the lab staff was not mentioned but it ran through everyone's mind. The staff of the lab was small, sixteen in all including the two women who w
ashed the glassware. There were no convenient strangers to suspect. Everyone knew everyone else, or so they thought.

  Another day passed and the work of the lab went on as usual, it had to, but the atmosphere had changed dramatically. The light, good humour which had made it such a pleasant place to work in disappeared overnight. Neil Munro and Susan Daniels had gone and in their place had come fear and suspicion. The constant comings and goings of the police only served to heighten the tension as they returned to ask the same questions time and time again.

  Fenton's spirits hit a new low on Friday at Neil Munro's funeral. The unrelenting wind and rain swept through an unkempt cemetery as they lowered Munro's coffin into the ground with prayers that were carried away on the wind and a handful of earth that spattered irreverently on the lid and turned to mud almost immediately. Tyson, Ross and Fenton, the three representatives from the lab, went to a nearby pub afterwards and drank whisky without speaking as water still trickled down the back of their necks and wet grass from the graveside clung to their shoes.

  Fenton got home at six to find Jenny already there. "It was that bad?" she asked, reading his face.

  "That bad," Fenton agreed quietly

  "Do you want to stay home and brood about it or shall we go out?"

  Fenton thought for a moment then said, "We'll go out. Somewhere noisy."

  They had no trouble finding a noisy pub in Edinburgh on a Friday evening. They picked one near the west end of Princes Street that proclaimed 'Live Music Tonight' and pushed their way through the throng to the bar. Jenny watched the changing expressions on Fenton's face as he tried unsuccessfully to attract the barmaid's attention. He had the most expressive of face of anyone she had ever known. His eyes could sparkle with good humour one moment and turn to dark pools of sadness the next. His mouth, wide and generous, always searched for a reason to break into the boyish grin she loved so much. As he turned away from the bar she smiled quickly to conceal the fact that she had been watching him. "Hey, look," said Fenton, pointing with his elbow, "They are just leaving."

  Jenny saw the couple who were about to rise and led the way over to the table. Fenton followed, holding their drinks at shoulder level to avoid being bumped and saying, "Excuse me" at appropriate intervals. He laid the glasses on the table then took off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair before sitting down to look around at the Friday night people. Groups of girls, groups of boys, all pretending to be engrossed in their own conversations but being betrayed by constant side-long glances, the occasional loner, more interested in the alcohol than the company, couples old, couples young.

  Intermittent and discordant tuning noises suddenly coalesced into a solid wall of electric noise, wiping out conversation like a shell burst. "Release me!" demanded a spotty youth through his over amplified microphone as he gyrated inside black leather trousers. 'Satan's Sons,' proclaimed the gothic script on the bass drum. Fenton exchanged painful glances with Jenny, his head reeling against the sheer volume. He saw her mouth move but could not lip read the comment. The song ended leaving their ears ringing in the sudden quiet. "I feel a hundred years old," said Fenton.

  "Let's go," said Jenny. They finished their drinks and got up to leave as the spotty youth prepared to launch his second front.

  The wind had dropped and the air smelled fresh and sweet as they emerged from the smoke and noise on to the still wet street. "I think a trifle more sophistication is called for at your age," said Jenny with a smile.

  They walked for a while before turning off along a wide, sweeping Georgian terrace where most of the houses had been turned into hotels, each engaged in a neon struggle with its neighbour to attract attention. They decided on the 'Emerald Hotel' and found the bar to be uncrowded and, more important, quiet. Green shaded table lamps and oak panelling on the walls suggested a country house library.

  "How are things in the lab?" Jenny asked.

  "Terrible," said Fenton, "Nothing is said but suspicion is rife. One of the juniors brought me a cup of coffee this morning and I actually toyed with the idea of pouring it down the sink when he had gone, just in case."

  "But surely the killer could be an outsider?"

  "I suppose so but it's obvious that the police are concentrating on the lab."

  "What do you think?" asked Jenny.

  Fenton shook his head. "I have no idea, no idea at all."

  On Monday the secrecy contrived at by the police and hospital authorities came to a sudden dramatic end. 'Mystery Hospital Deaths' in The Scotsman became, 'Maniac Stalks Hospital Corridors' in the Daily News and ensured that the hospital switchboard was jammed all day with calls from anxious relatives seeking reassurance. Tyson called the lab staff together to warn against talking to reporters and making things worse. The official line was to be that two members of staff had died in suspicious circumstances and the police were investigating. No details were to be furnished. But too many people in the hospital knew the details. Tuesday morning brought, 'Steriliser Horror,' and, 'Girl Dies in Pool of Blood.'

  The idea of a psychopathic killer being at large in a city hospital fired the imagination of the front page of every newspaper in the country. Radio and television reporters interviewed anyone with even a remote connection with the Princess Mary and the Chief Constable of Edinburgh appeared on television, in full dress uniform, to assure a worried public that matters were well in hand and a speedy arrest could be confidently expected.

  In private, Inspector Jamieson could not share his superior's optimism. With no obvious logic or motive behind the killings police routine was largely useless. Their best hope lay in the possibility that the killer might get over confident and reveal himself in the process. Of course there was always the chance that the murderer, like Jack the Ripper, might just stop but he would not be betting his pension on that. Special passes were hurriedly printed and issued to staff and relatives to allow them to cross the police picket at the gates which had been mounted to keep the morbidly curious at bay.

  Fenton was speaking to Nigel Saxon about the enforced delay in completing the paperwork for the Saxon Blood Analyser when Ian Ferguson came into the room. Ferguson was obviously surprised to find Saxon there and said, "Sorry, I just wondered if I might have a word."

  Saxon got to his feet, "No problem. I was just going anyway."

  Ferguson stood to one side to allow Saxon to pass then closed the door. He seemed embarrassed.

  "What can I do for you?" Fenton asked.

  "'Fact is," faltered Ferguson, "Well…I've decided to apply for another job. Can I put you down as a referee?"

  Fenton stared at him for a moment for it was the last thing he had expected to hear from Ian Ferguson. "What's the problem?" he asked.

  Ferguson looked at his feet. He said, "There's a job going at the Western General. I quite fancy a change. More experience and all that…"

  "And you are scared," said Fenton.

  Ferguson looked as if he were about to argue but then he simply sighed and said, "Aren't you?"

  "Yes," said Fenton.

  An uneasy silence reigned for a moment before Ferguson said, "You must think I'm a right coward."

  Fenton turned to face him. "I don't think that at all. I'll even give you a good reference but, what I won't give you is a round of applause. There are three hundred children in this hospital and if you leave we will be three under strength. We'll manage but it will be that much harder on those of us who stay."

  "Well," sighed Ferguson, "I hadn't quite thought about it that way. You don't beat about the bush do you?"

  The question was rhetorical but Fenton chose to reply anyway, “No, I don't."

  Charles Tyson put his head round the door as Ferguson left. "What was all that about?" he asked, feeling the atmosphere in the room."

  "Ian is thinking of applying for another job."

  "That would be a pity," said Tyson. "He's one of the best we have."

  "It would also leave us up shit creek without a paddle," added Fent
on.

  Tyson grimaced at Fenton's expression and said, "A fact I'm sure you managed to convey to him with admirable clarity."

  Fenton grunted.

  “ Did Nigel Saxon see you about the report?" Tyson asked.

  "Yes, but I'm still up to my eyes. It will have to wait."

  "Fair enough," said Tyson. "The patients come first."

  It was after seven when Fenton got home. He arrived to find Jenny in particularly attentive mood. "Do I have to guess what you are going to ask or are you going to tell me?" he asked.

  "It's Mrs Doig's fan heater. I said that you would have a look at it. There's a smell of burning."

  "Sure," said Fenton.

  "I love you," said Jenny.

  Mrs Doig was their next door neighbour, a woman in her seventies who lived alone with two cats and her memories. Jenny had adopted her as a personal responsibility with Fenton providing the technical back-up, changing tap washers, mending fuses and the like.

  They finished their meal and went next door, Fenton carrying screwdriver and pliers. The old woman was clearly pleased to see them and bade them enter. "You'll have a cup of tea?" she asked. Fenton was about to decline when Jenny nudged him, knowing how much the old woman liked to feel she was doing something for them. Fenton removed the back of the fan heater as the women chatted but still found time to observe Jenny in action. Whereas he himself would adopt a cheerful air and make forced conversation about the weather Jenny was quite sincere in her care and concern for the old woman. She would joke with her, tease her, cajole her into laughter until her spirits rose visibly and she would begin to speak freely. Fenton felt a lump come to his throat. He knew that Jenny would like them to marry and have children. If only he could get over the awful mental block of associating marriage with the agony of losing Louise, the unreasonable yet undeniable feeling that he would be tempting fate.