The Aladdin Trial

by Abi Silver

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘After a few minutes I found a nurse – young girl, Asian, maybe Thai or Philippino – the one who spoke at the trial. I asked her where Barbara, my mother, was. She seemed confused first of all and she came to the room with me. She looked at Mum’s notes and then she asked me to wait a minute. She disappeared for maybe around fifteen minutes. When she came back she said I shouldn’t worry but Mum had gone for a walk with the physiotherapist, she had felt breathless and he had taken her to see one of the doctors. She said I could wait but she couldn’t be sure how long it would be before she was brought back up.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I waited another ten minutes or so, I stuck the roses in water and put them next to her bed.’ Joe hesitated. He had snapped the stem off one as he unwrapped them and he had suddenly felt vulnerable. He remembered he had looked across at the bed and imagined Barbara sitting there, brandishing a paintbrush, admonishing him for his carelessness in destroying a work of nature, as she used to do when he was a boy. He had thrust the decapitated bud into his pocket to hide it from further scrutiny.

  ‘When she didn’t come back, I left,’ he said.

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘You tell me, as you seem to have all the details. It was around half an hour after I arrived, all told. Look, can I go now please? We’re having a barbecue.’

  ‘You aren’t going anywhere. Why didn’t you tell us any of this first time around?’

  ‘What difference would it have made?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘When Mum ended up dead I thought you’d try to pin it on me. Like I said, we didn’t get on very well and people know I have a temper. I wanted to say something, like when your officer first came around. Then, when I heard how much money she had, and that she kept me in her will after all, I was even more worried how it would look.

  ‘Even then, I decided I would tell if you asked me again, to “help the enquiry”, but you never did. You didn’t ask me any more questions, you didn’t ask me to give evidence at the trial. So I kept shtum. Thought I’d let you find out where she had gone, but you didn’t.

  ‘It wasn’t as if I knew what had happened to her anyway. I just knew she wasn’t there. I’ve told you all I know now, so if you’re going to keep me here I want to call Janice and I want my solicitor.’

  Dawson exited the room smartly and rejoined Judith and Constance.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you think?’ Judith replied.

  ‘I think once a scumbag always a scumbag,’ Dawson said.

  Constance remained glued to the glass, watching Joe. He had lit his cigarette despite the clear ‘No Smoking’ sign taped to the door, and was leaning back in his chair, blowing his smoke up towards the ceiling.

  ‘He could easily have killed her,’ Judith replied. ‘Were there any prints of his in the staff room?’

  ‘Not that I know of, but you could open that door with your shoulder and the railing had been wet if you remember.’

  ‘Why didn’t we pick up his prints in her room?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose that if there’d been a print on the door handle it might have been covered up by all the people who opened and closed the door after him. And maybe he just sat down on the bed, so no prints.’

  ‘On the wrapping from the flowers?’

  ‘We tried that at the time, looked at everything in the bin and the vase. We didn’t get any prints. It doesn’t matter really, now he’s admitted he was there.’

  Judith began to pace the room, folding her arms and tapping her fingers to her mouth. After a few turns she stopped.

  ‘He says he spoke to Lottie, the nurse. We need to talk to her again. She didn’t tell us any of this. She’s hiding something. We knew she was a bit flaky but I put it down to nerves and pressure from her superiors to downplay her friendship with Ahmad. But maybe it was much more than that.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the physiotherapist. You remember we wanted to call him for the trial and you said he had gone back to Italy?’

  ‘Yes. We had a contact number for him at a hospital in Milan. We tried a few times and then we gave up. We also wrote to him but never heard back.’

  ‘What was his name?’ Judith asked.

  ‘Filippo Adamo,’ Constance replied. ‘I found him on Facebook during the trial.’

  ‘Did you contact him?’ Judith asked.

  ‘No. I…well, you said we didn’t need him then.’ She grabbed her phone and scrolled through until she found an image of a smiling young man. ‘Here. I’ll message him now.’

  Within five minutes of sending her message Constance was speaking to the Italian physiotherapist. When she hung up, she was very serious.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He says he never met Mrs Hennessy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He says she was on his list of patients to visit post-op that day. He went up to her room and, like Joe, he found it empty. He says he brought her up some crutches so they could practise walking but, as she wasn’t there, he just left them leaning on the chair.’

  ‘I knew that was strange,’ Judith replied, thumping her fist down hard against her thigh.

  ‘He says he eventually got hold of one of the doctors, a junior doctor. He doesn’t remember his name and the doctor assured him that Mrs Hennessy didn’t need any physio. He was pretty cross as he had a long list of patients to see and he spent ages looking for her.’

  ‘And his leaving?’

  ‘Yes, that’s also suspicious. He says the day after Mrs Hennessy died, he had an email from HR. He says he still has it and he’ll forward it to me. But it said that they had been offered another physiotherapist on some new government scheme, free of charge and they had to take him because of the cost saving. Filippo was on a six-month contract with only one month to run. They agreed to pay the extra month so he worked till the end of Sunday and then packed up and left.’

  ‘So Barbara Hennessy wasn’t in her room at 8pm, someone wrote in her medical notes that she saw the physiotherapist, which wasn’t true and it looks as if the physiotherapist was encouraged to leave pronto so no one could check with him. Did anyone give evidence they saw her in her room after her operation?’

  ‘Only Lottie. No. Dr Wolf did too, didn’t he? I am sure he did. He said he saw her at 7pm.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. He talked about prescribing her a painkiller. But, Connie, just focusing on Lottie… When we saw Shaza, do you remember that she said she’d seen Lottie when she was in the hospital on the Thursday morning. She gave the impression that Lottie was around on the ward when she arrived, and later on when she left with Suzy Douglas. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  Constance turned to face Judith. ‘Yes. You’re wondering how Lottie could have been in Mrs Hennessy’s operation if she was back on the eleventh floor.’

  Judith nodded. ‘There might be a perfectly good explanation for all of this, but we need to find out.’

  ‘So we call in this Lottie for questioning?’ Dawson asked.

  Judith shook her head. ‘No. I think we need to be much more inclusive than that. If there’s an issue here, it goes beyond Nurse Li.’

  63

  Janice Cooper sat alone in her bedroom with the curtains closed. There was only half an hour till her guests would arrive and she had finished preparing all the salads and desserts. She ran her fingers across her belly and grimaced.

  Lying on the bed were the scattered petals of a red rose; she had found it in Joe’s jacket pocket a few minutes earlier. She had wanted matches to light some candles in Joe’s absence and her fingers had curled themselves around it, dried up and shrivelled but still mostly intact. Joe had never bought her roses so it was obviously meant for – or received from – some admir
er of his.

  She knew that people said ‘once a cheater always a cheater’ but she had really believed Joe had changed. He had been so attentive since he proposed, and had seemed genuinely happy with the prospect of them starting a family together.

  Janice remembered her words to Tracy at her engagement party and bile rose up in her throat. She had promised that she would leave if Joe deceived her again; now he had, she simply needed to decide if she had the courage to do so.

  * * *

  Kyla Roberts sipped a lychee Martini on the deck of the cruise ship. She could see Craig splashing around in the pool; she would join him in a few minutes but, for now, she was working on her tan. She was on a seven-day trip around the Mediterranean, courtesy of a one-off ‘golden handshake’ from Joe for her hard work on recent unspecified projects.

  She thought back with delight to the day that the police and Trading Standards had raided their office; the looks on their faces when they realised that all the systems were locked down and that they would not be able to extract any information from the computers. Of course, later on, head office had negotiated via its legal representatives and revealed a small amount of spotless data, after complaining bitterly about the unwarranted investigation.

  She was sad to be moving on though. She had liked the set up in Mill Hill. But Craig hadn’t appreciated the looks Joe had given her once or twice when he had come to the showroom to work his IT magic, and she appreciated that to lose Craig, a man of many talents, would be very careless indeed.

  * * *

  Brian Bateman sat in his office cutting and pasting different names and addresses onto the pro forma letter he had prepared. He had not appreciated quite how many different clients, current and former, he would have to contact, and the task was likely to take him the best part of a week, if not a little more. Predictably, he carried out his activities in a regimented way, as agreed with Judith, giving little thought to any potential consequences or fallout.

  First of all, he was tackling the next of kin of testators whose funds were sitting in his overseas account, providing them with the name of an independent solicitor to whom they could go for advice on the will he had drafted for their nearest and dearest. He was also making it clear that, if they chose not to take up alternative advice, then they could nominate a charity to which the languishing funds could be donated.

  Once that was complete, he had agreed to contact all those, still living, for whom he had provided his special brand of designer-will, offering them a more straightforward alternative, or the charitable option.

  Of course, he had been forced to scrap any prospect of retiring this year. But he comforted himself with the realisation that he would almost certainly have become quickly bored, and that they were unlikely to make his breakfast the way he liked it in many Spanish cafés. And he was still young and full of energy, and charged with new ideas for how to ease his clients’ difficult path through the vagaries of life and death.

  64

  David Wolf’s displeasure at the interruption to his evening could not have been clearer if he had written it on a piece of paper and held it in front of Judith’s face. Even so, he was polite, if direct.

  ‘Miss Burton, you are not the police and I don’t want to see you. Please go. I have to set off shortly on my last round of the day.’

  Dawson loomed behind in Judith’s shadow.

  ‘Hello, Dr Wolf. Sorry to disturb you. Miss Burton is here with me this time. Miss Lamb has gone to fetch some of your staff with one of my other officers. They’ll be here in just a moment.’

  David stroked his moustache.

  ‘Can you tell me what this is all about? I have just explained that I have patients to see.’

  ‘No sir. But if you wait a few minutes all will be revealed. Is there a larger room we can use, do you think? There are going to be a fair few of us. And could you call your wife please, and ask her to join us too?’

  ‘Dr Bridges?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  David headed out into the reception area. The clinics had finished for the evening and they waited there for the others to arrive. He poured himself a cup of water from the fountain.

  Some light footsteps in the corridor heralded the arrival of Constance with Nurse Li. And PC Brown followed shortly afterwards with Steven King and Hani Mahmood. Jane Bridges took another five minutes to arrive. Dawson nodded amiably towards Judith to begin.

  ‘This is outrageous,’ Hani fumed. ‘We have sick patients to administer to. I demand to know what on earth is going on that you should treat me and my staff in this reprehensible way.’

  ‘Please, everyone, let’s sit down,’ Judith said. ‘I will try to keep this brief but that depends a little on each of you. I am afraid that we are back here talking about Mrs Hennessy’s death, and some of you know more than you have let on. I will start with Nurse Li.’

  Lottie shivered as her name was called.

  ‘Nurse Li. Can you tell everyone here how you spent the morning of Thursday the 11th of May, the morning Mrs Hennessy had her operation – just in general terms, to start with.’

  ‘She was in the operating theatre, like I told you,’ David interrupted.

  ‘Nurse Li?’

  Lottie gazed around the room for salvation, which did not materialise.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Wolf. I didn’t want to lie to you,’ she began. ‘I took Mrs Hennessy to theatre but then I went back to the ward. I had to do double-shift that day; other nurses were ill. I asked Steven and he said it was all right.’

  ‘I said we would manage without her,’ Steven acknowledged with a shrug.

  David turned to his wife. ‘So who was in theatre for Mrs Hennessy?’ he enquired, wide-eyed.

  Judith glared at him. ‘You mean you weren’t there either, Dr Wolf?’

  He glanced at Hani, who was staring from one member of his team to the next in astonishment.

  ‘David, what is going on? In the report you said you had the usual team in theatre. Was that not true?’ Hani’s words rebounded off the walls accusingly.

  David sighed but before he could reply his wife took over.

  ‘Hani didn’t know about any of this,’ she said quickly, standing up and taking centre stage. ‘We have new targets from management,’ she explained, ‘and we decided, David and I, that the only way we could meet them, with our current number of doctors and nursing staff, was by running operations simultaneously with skeleton staff. Aladdin allowed us to do that. David was never in Mrs Hennessy’s operation. Steven presided, with my help. When Lottie was stretched, we released her to help on the ward. Aladdin did all the work. We could call David if we needed him.’

  ‘So, David, let me get this straight,’ Hani asked, barely controlling his anger. ‘You were never in Mrs Hennessy’s operation. You left her in the hands of that machine and Steven, a one-year qualified doctor?’

  ‘The operation was simple,’ David replied. ‘Aladdin could do it blindfold. And Jane was present, a highly experienced anaesthetist. And I thought Nurse Li was there too.’

  ‘But Nurse Li returned to the ward, as we have heard, and then Dr Bridges was called away?’ Judith said. ‘That’s recorded in the report you provided.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So Steven was left alone.’

  ‘Only for ten minutes or so.’ All eyes shifted to Steven, who gulped audibly. Then he lowered his head into his hands.

  ‘It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left him,’ Jane continued, ‘but I had another emergency and Mrs Hennessy was routine. I had to prioritise.’

  ‘I should’ve been able to manage,’ Steven cried in exasperation. ‘As soon as Jane left, the monitors went haywire. I tried to stabilise her but we’d given Aladdin control of everything. I couldn’t stop it in time.’

  ‘What do you mean exactly?’

  Jane stepped in
again. ‘David told you that Aladdin is more sophisticated than the older models; that, if we wanted, we could pretty much hand medical procedures over to Aladdin. What he didn’t tell you is that this is what we have been doing, on the simpler operations, for the last six months or so.’

  ‘No!’ Hani called out.

  ‘It’s no big deal. We tell Aladdin what the plan for the operation is and he performs it. We key in the weight, height, age of the patient, and Aladdin works out all the doses of oxygen, anaesthetic and any other drugs, and monitors and adjusts them throughout the operation. Again, it’s just one step on from what we’ve done before, handing over autonomy to Aladdin to free up nurses and anaesthetists. We can override him but it takes maybe sixty seconds to kick in, and Steven didn’t have a lot of practice in how to do this. Lottie or one of the other senior nurses would usually operate the manual override.’

  ‘And the incisions, removing the bone which Dr Wolf so meticulously described for us in court?’

  ‘All Aladdin. And it was done very neatly.’

  ‘What did you find when you returned to theatre after your emergency call?’

  ‘Mrs Hennessy was dead.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ David leaped up and staggered towards his wife. She took two steps backwards but then held her ground.

  ‘So had Aladdin malfunctioned?’

  ‘It was a combination of human error and the machine. Steven had keyed in the figures incorrectly at the start, leading to one hundred times the usual dose of Propofol, the anaesthetic. The instructions are unclear primarily because they have been translated, but the machine should have picked this up straight away and corrected it, as it also monitors the depth of anaesthesia. For some inexplicable reason, it didn’t. In Mrs Hennessy’s case she was given this huge dose and the machine kept on increasing the dose as she went deeper to sleep.’

  ‘The anaesthetic killed her so quickly?’

  ‘Yes, that dose would have led to toxic levels building up in a matter of minutes, and her heart suddenly stopped. Since the incident, I spoke to the manufacturer and corrections have been made to the Aladdin algorithm to make sure the problem won’t occur, or if it does it will be immediately detected and corrected. I did everything I could, with Steven, to revive Mrs Hennessy but we failed.’ For the first time Jane’s voice cracked mid-sentence. Her husband was staring at her in horror.