Death Before Time

by Andrew Puckett

  In the corridor, Edwina said, “Can he stand another round of radiotherapy, Philip?”

  “I’m not sure. As you know, he’s specifically requested it - let’s see how he is when his symptoms are under control.”

  “He actually wants more radiotherapy?” Fraser asked.

  “He thinks it might give him an extra few weeks,” Edwina told him, “Which, of course, it might.”

  “Is it worth it?”

  She shrugged. “He seems to think so.”

  The next day, Harold Carter asked to see Fraser. He was looking a little better and Fraser told him so.

  “I feel a bit better, thanks – “ he swallowed – “ ‘Cept my mouth’s so dry I can hardly talk.”

  “Haven’t you got a glandosalve dispenser?” He looked on the bedside cabinet. “Yeah, here it is … “

  Glandosalve was an artificial saliva spray. Although expensive, it was used freely at Wansborough because the drugs they used there tended to cause a dry mouth. Fraser showed him how to use it.

  “That’s better,” Carter said, moving his tongue around his mouth. He looked shrewdly at Fraser. “Your name’s Callan, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what it says here.” Fraser indicated his badge.

  “From Glasgow?”

  “Aye, can’t you tell?”

  “I knew a bloke in the war called Callan. Jamie Callan.”

  Fraser smiled. “My grandfather was called Jamie. Callan’s a common name, though. So’s Jamie.”

  “Yeah, it was probably two other blokes.” He yawned. “I think I’d like to rest now, if you don’t mind.”

  Fraser wondered briefly whether Carter could have known his grandfather, why he’d shut off so abruptly – then he was called to see another patient and forgot about it.

  But that evening, over his pint, he found himself thinking about Jamie, the grandfather he’d never met; whose death, he was sure, had ramifications in his own life.

  Fraser’s father, John, had been a restless man, never able to hold a job for long and had eventually become an alcoholic. Fraser couldn’t remember much about him, since he’d died when he was ten, but one thing he did remember was what he’d said at Grannie’s one afternoon. Fraser was eight at the time and had asked who the man in the photo on Grannie’s sideboard was.

  “That’s your Grandad, laddie. He was a hero. He flew in bombers in the war and got a medal for saving a man’s life.”

  “Can I see it?”

  Grannie had taken a row of medals out of a drawer and Dad had shown him.

  “Can I have them one day?”

  Dad laughed. “They ought to go to Rob, since he’s older than you.”

  “What happened to Grandad?”

  “He was killed in 1944. Shot down.” John’s eyes had slid away. “When I was the same age as you …”

  Which probably answered for a great deal, Fraser thought now. In the end, none of the brothers had got any of the medals because John sold them a couple of years later when Grannie died. He’d died himself shortly afterwards, run over by a bus while he was drunk.

  *

  “Got a few minutes, doc?” said Harold Carter the next day.

  He was looking better, Fraser thought, there was even a little colour in his face against the crisp white sheets. For several seconds, he didn’t say anything, then, abruptly, he looked up - his eyes were a washed-out brown, but fever bright.

  “The Jamie Callan I knew came from Rutherglen in Glasgow, he had a wife called Jeanie and was shot down over Germany in 1944. That’s your grandfather, isn’t it?”

  “It could be,” Fraser said slowly.

  “It is. I’ve been thinking about it since yesterday and it all fits.” He paused. “Not only that, but you look like him and sound like him.”

  Fraser sat down in the chair by the bed. “It’s a hell of a coincidence,” he said, trying to take it in. Then: “Did you know him well?”

  “Put it this way – he saved my life.”

  A machine bleeped and a phone rang somewhere. Fraser said at last, “I knew that he saved someone’s life, Mr Carter. He got a medal for it.”

  “Well, it was me he saved an’ he deserved it. We were in bombers, he was the dorsal gunner, I was the tail gunner.”

  “Lancasters?”

  “Halifaxes. Not so well known, but I preferred ‘em.”

  He looked at Fraser long and hard, weighing things up in his mind, then he said, “I don’t believe in coincidence, so I’m going to do something I should’ve done years ago and tell you exactly what happened to him.” Another pause while he took a breath, then:

  “We were coming back from Germany and got hit by flak. The skipper thought he could get us home, but he was wrong and we came down in the North Sea. The plane sank, but everyone got in the dinghy, everyone except me, that is. I’d been knocked out and was still in the tail. Jamie came back for me, even though the plane was sinking.”

  He chuckled.

  “They thought we were drowned, ‘cos the plane had gone down, but then Jamie suddenly popped up in the water with me. We were picked up next day.” He sighed reflectively. “Christ, it was cold! They gave us a week off, generous bastards, then it was back into another Halifax and back off to Germany …”

  *

  They’d dropped their bombs, turned and were headed for home. Harold worked the hydraulic levers in the rear turret, searching the sky for nightfighters – then the whole plane shuddered as though hit by a pneumatic drill…

  There was a scream of agony in his earphones, then nothing. He flipped the switch on the mouthpiece –

  “Skipper, you OK?”

  No answer.

  “Jamie?”

  Nothing, except the note of the four engines rising as the plane slid into a dive…

  He could guess what had happened – a night fighter, probably a JU 88, had come up underneath them and raked the bomber along its length with explosive shells – its length except the tail, that is …

  He banged the release button at his belly and stumbled through the hatch into the plane. Nothing was recognisable; the shells had reduced the inside of the bomber to a smoking refuse tip. “Jamie! Jamie!”

  He struggled along the walkway and looked up into the dorsal turret - Jamie’s hand hung motionless, blood running down it and splashing into his eyes. He started climbing the ladder but a rung gave way and he fell back to the floor. The angle of the plane steepened and the engines began to howl.

  He got to his feet and was about to try again when a ball of flame whooshed at him, burning his eyebrows and hair - without thinking, he turned and ran …

  His parachute lay just outside the turret hatch … he reached it and in slow motion, threaded his arms through the harness, pulled the belt up between his legs and snapped the tongue into place – another fireball licked at him, then another – the plane was at forty degrees now, engines screaming their guts out …

  He turned, tried to pull himself through the hatch but the chute caught the top and he was stuck …

  Breathe out, he told himself, get lower, pull, pull … and he squeezed himself through.

  He sat, flicked the hydraulic lever and incredibly, the turret turned … and turned – then a freezing gale tore at him and he somersaulted into space …

  *

  “ … Just in time, I hit the ground just after the plane did. I was a POW for a year.”

  Fraser looked at the ordinary, insignificant little man, thought about the thousands of other ordinary little men who’d had to do extraordinary things.

  “Was it bad?” he asked. “The POW camp?”

  “Not really, ‘cept there was never enough food. We sat tight and in the end we were released by the Ruskis of all people.”

  He looked up at Fraser. “I meant to go and see your Grannie, tell her what happened, but time went by and after a while, I couldn’t. I was too ashamed.”

  “Why, for God’s sake?”

  “’Cos I didn’t save his life
after he’d saved mine. ‘Cos I ran away instead of helping him.”

  “Harold …” Fraser found himself calling him by his given name without thinking about it … “He was dead. There was nothing you could have done for him.”

  “But I didn’t know that at the time, did I? I just ran.”

  “If you’d hung round thinkin’ about it, you’d have been dead yourself.”

  “Maybe.” He gave a twisted smile. “But I’ll be dead soon anyway. All comes down to dust in the end, dunnit?”

  Fraser said, “What was he like, Harold? Would you tell me about him? I don’t know much, you see …”

  *

  It was as though his life had grown another dimension; all he’d known about his grandfather was that he’d been in the RAF and won a medal, and before that had been a dockie. Now, he knew why he’d won it, whose life he’d saved – suddenly, he’d acquired some history.

  “He had to fight to get out of the docks,” Harold told him. “Reserved occupation, y’see, and they didn’t want to lose him.”

  They’d met when they’d been assigned to the same crew and one of those strange friendships between a big man and a small man began.

  “He was larger than life, always fooling around, and yet you had the feeling it was all a bit of a front …he was always on about his wife and kids, especially when he’d had a few … kept a photo of them in his wallet …

  “I know he didn’t want to go back to the docks after the war. We had all kinds of plans – we were going to go to Australia and start an engineering firm, or a car sales business in the smoke, or a sheep farm in the north …

  “That was the thing about the war, once you’d done a job like we had as aircrew and been respected for it, there was no way you were going back to forelock pulling.”

  *

  This had been Harold’s problem when he’d eventually de-mobbed and gone back to the brewery where he’d worked before. They had expected him to go back to forelock pulling, and when he argued the point, he was sacked.

  He’d gone to Australia, intending to settle there; become a rep, got engaged, got jilted, came home again. He soon found another job and within a year, he was married and settled down.

  “It was a mistake,” he said. “The rebound.”

  He and Janet had one child, a daughter they called Christine. The birth was difficult, and afterwards, so was sex, for Janet.

  “She’d never liked it much anyway, an’ being a rep, I could get it elsewhere. So I did.”

  It was Christine who’d held the marriage together. Then, when she was seventeen, she’d become pregnant. She’d wanted to have the baby, but they’d persuaded her to have an abortion on medical grounds.

  “Another mistake - she became impossible after that and left home. We didn’t try to stop her and she vanished.”

  And vanished completely, so far as Harold was concerned. He knew Janet was still in touch with her, because she told him Christine was married and had a son. He and Janet had divorced, and when she’d later died, he hadn’t been able to tell Christine about the funeral because he’d had no idea where she was. He’d never heard from her since.

  “That’s why I want this radiotherapy, Fraser. I hired a private dick when I knew I’d got cancer, to find her an’ beg her to come an’ see me before I died. He’s traced her to America and says he’ll find her soon.”

  He looked up. “I haven’t been a good man, Fraser. I’ve been a rotten husband and father. But I want to see her and my grandson before I die; I want to tell her I’m sorry. That’s why I need a couple more months. Thing is Fraser, am I going to get them?”

  Fraser cleared his throat. “Aye, I think so, given a bit of luck, and you’re due that, Harold. You’re starting the radiotherapy tomorrow, aren’t you?”

  A nod.

  “Well, Dr Armitage wouldn’t have okayed it if he didn’t think it would work.” He paused. “There’s also the will to live. If you want to enough, you can do it.”

  “I do want to Fraser. Thanks.”

  After a pause, Fraser said, “Have you told Dr Armitage or Dr Tate about your daughter?”

  “No,” he said, “And I don’t want to. It’s no one else’s business. I only told you because of Jamie.”

  Fraser seriously thought about telling Philip or Edwina, or even Helen, but decided in the end to respect Harold’s wishes.

  He realised anyway as he brooded over his pint that evening that he didn’t want to tell Helen anything that might seem to increase the intimacy between them. He knew he wanted to finish the affair, regretted now ever having started it.

  Why? Was it guilt so soon after Frances?

  Aye, and it was getting worse, but that wasn’t all there was to it. After her initial coolness, he’d been surprised how quickly Helen had changed towards him …

  He found her cloying, claustrophobic even – the girlie way she spoke to him sometimes, the way she made too much of things, pressurised him … every time he went to her house, she tried to make him to stay the night, which was something he simply couldn’t do.

  And then there was the sex itself; she oozed sexuality and couldn’t get him into bed fast enough, and yet it always seemed to be so … perfunctory, over so quickly.

  He’d already started drawing away from her and now decided he’d break it to her before the weekend. Then, the next day, his brother Rob phoned him from Glasgow and told him their mother had broken her leg and was in hospital.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Couple of days ago. Thought you’d want to know.”

  “Aye, I would that. How is she?”

  “She’s no’ in pain now they’ve set the leg.”

  “Give her my love and …” He hesitated … “Tell her I’ll be up to see her.”

  “Aye,” Rob said sceptically, “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  “Just tell her – OK?”

  Fraser couldn’t really blame him for his attitude. He’d grown apart from his brothers from the moment he’d started doing better at school and was now almost estranged from them.

  Edwina gave him the rest of the week off and he drove straight up to Glasgow. Part of him, he realised, was glad of the excuse to put off speaking to Helen.

  The surprise and pleasure on his mother’s face when she saw him brought a lump to his throat. Rob and his other brother Eddie were there too. They solemnly shook him by the hand and Fraser began to think that maybe his family weren’t so bad after all.

  On Saturday night, the three of them went out and he told them about Harold and their grandfather.

  He’d driven back to Bristol on Sunday to check on his house, then returned to Wansborough on Monday to discover that Harold had died early that morning of pneumonia ...

  Chapter 9

  Fraser looked from Tom back to Marcus as he finished his story.

  “It hit me when I was standing there looking at his body,” he said. “He shouldn’t have died. None of them should.”

  “People do though,” said Tom. “All the time.”

  “Not this many - ” He took some sheets from his briefcase and handed them to Marcus.

  “That’s the death rate in Wansborough over the last year, and those are comparable death rates in ten other community hospitals across the country. The death rate in Wansborough is significantly higher – look ... ”

  Marcus put on his glasses and cast his eyes down the figures, then handed the sheets to Tom, “Is it statistically significant?”

  Tom studied them a moment before producing a calculator and tapping at the keys. “For these figures, yes,” he said at last, “Although ten isn’t anything like a large enough sample – “

  “It was hard enough getting that many,” Fraser protested.

  “And I’m not sure that you’ve used the best method,” Tom continued, “But yes, these figures do look significant.”

  Marcus turned back to Fraser. “D’you have anything else?”

  He shook his head. �
�Like I said, it was hard enough getting that much.”

  “You told us earlier that you don’t know who’s doing this – “ Tom again – “Can’t you narrow it down a bit? I mean, it’s got to be someone with patient contact, hasn’t it?”

  “Sure, but that still leaves you with seven doctors and at least three dozen nurses and health care assistants.”

  “What about the method being used?” said Marcus. “The ones you saw died of pneumonia – is it possible to give it to someone artificially?”

  “I can’t see how …”

  “You’ve told us about Dr Singh and his obvious dislike of you – what about him?”

  “He’d be at the top of my list,” Fraser agreed.

  “Of course, his dislike of you could just as easily be down to your relationship with Sister St John,” Tom observed.

  “It could.”

  “You told us earlier you were intending to finish that,” Marcus said, “Have you actually done so yet?”

  “No. Why?”

  “No reason, just wondering whether it had any effect on anything … “ He moved on – “You’ve done very well to put these figures together in so short a time, but before we take it any further, we must check them out for ourselves. Can you come back here on Monday morning?”

  “You can do it that quickly?”

  “We’ve got access to all that kind of information here on computer,” said Tom.

  “And contrary to popular opinion,” Marcus said, “Civil servants do occasionally work over the weekend.”

  Fraser thought for a moment. “They’re expecting me back Monday morning,” he said.

  “You told them you were seeing your mother, didn’t you, so why don’t you do that? I’m sure she’ll be pleased to see you. Go by train from here, phone them from Glasgow, tell them there’s a problem and that you’ll be back Monday afternoon - that’ll give you time to see us first. We’ll pay all your travel, of course,” he added.

  *

  “Well, what do you think?” Marcus asked Tom after Fraser had gone.

  “If his figures check out, and my gut instinct is they will, we should look into it.”