Death Before Time

by Andrew Puckett

  “No. The CPS said there wasn’t enough evidence.”

  “Then he didn’t have a record.”

  “Let’s say his history, then.”

  “Why should any of us have known about that?” He looked at Tom carefully. “Mr Jones, it was originally my understanding that you didn’t believe this theory of Callan’s either – are you now saying that you do?”

  “No, I’m not saying that,” Tom replied. “What I’m saying is that I know it to be the truth.”

  A heartbeat’s pause, then: “A remarkable conversion, if I may say so.”

  “Not really. I always believed it. Now, I know.”

  Woodvine looked at him askance. “Then it would seem that you’ve been less than honest with me – with any of us, in fact. I’d be interested to know exactly how you know.”

  Tom said, “As well as Dr Callan, we’ve had a nurse working undercover for us at the hospital.” He told him how they’d isolated the ampicillin resistant pneumococci from a dying patient and then saved the life of another by giving her cefataxin.

  “You have been underhand, haven’t you?” Woodvine said when he’d finished. “However, fascinating though it may be, that doesn’t amount to anything like proof.”

  “Possibly not, although it’s very strong circumstantial evidence, as is the doctored artificial saliva device we found, the one used to give Mrs Stokes her infection. Definitive proof has been more difficult to come by.”

  “Perhaps for the very good reason that there isn’t any.”

  “That may have been the case before,” Tom said easily, “But not now. After the attempt on Dr Callan’s life, the police took his story more seriously and yesterday, they searched Armitage’s and Miss St John’s houses a little more thoroughly and found a cache of the doctored devices. Now, that really is strong circumstantial evidence, wouldn’t you say?”

  Woodvine spoke carefully. “What I would say is that I only have your word for that. And also no guarantee that if this evidence exists at all, it wasn’t planted there by Dr Callan. Or even yourself.”

  “You’re clutching at straws. We can also show that Armitage and St John were killed on the order of the person who arranged for them to come here in the first place.” Tom wasn’t completely sure about that, but felt the time was right to say it …

  “This is surreal – “ Woodvine was still smiling – “What possible motive could anyone have for that?”

  “The Trust, of which you are Chairman, was at grave risk of overspending two years ago, due to the St James’ debacle and the Euro conversion. Philip Armitage’s plan saved nearly ten million pounds, which was enough to get you out of the immediate trouble. His redesigned hospital was only about half the original cost, and since then, has saved about a million and a half a year. That’s the motive. The ostensible motive.”

  “Of course,” he continued before Woodvine could say anything, “Philip Armitage and Helen St John weren’t in it for the money. They were idealists who genuinely believed that euthanasia for the hopeless cases was the only way forward. And when they realised they were going to be caught, they planned to confess and use their trial as a platform for their ideals. Armitage even wrote and told you he wasn’t going to involve you, which is how you were able to use his postscript when you had him killed.”

  After a pause, Woodvine said, “I think that you’re seriously deranged, Mr Jones.” He stood up. “I’d like you to go now, please.”

  “Your father was called Robert, wasn’t he?” said Tom, not moving. “Sir Robert. And your grandfather Henry? Sir Henry. Both knighted for services to the state.”

  “Are you seriously trying to suggest that as a motive for me?”

  “Certainly. You wanted this knighthood more than anything in the world, and you knew it was yours – ostensibly for guiding the Trust through troubled waters without scandal or overspending. You wanted it so much,” Tom said slowly, trying to control the anger he still felt, “That you were prepared to connive at the deaths of 150 people to get it.”

  Woodvine gave a short laugh. “How could I have possibly known about Armitage’s activities in Southampton?”

  “You met Armitage five years ago there on one of your fact finding trips. Mrs Peacock, who was a manager there at the time, remembers introducing you to him.”

  Woodvine shrugged. “I may have met him, but – “

  “As for his activities, you were told about them, in your capacity as a chief magistrate, by Superintendent Hayes, who was in charge of the case, as an example of justice not done.

  “Later, you made it your business to find out everything you could about him. You saw his article in Community Care and it gave you an idea. You sought him out and put a proposition to him, which he foolishly accepted. You left the article on Fleming’s desk, knowing that it would end up with Fitzpatrick. Then all you had to do was congratulate him on his brilliant idea when he suggested head-hunting Armitage.”

  Woodvine shook his head pityingly. “And I suppose I somehow arranged for Callan to visit Patrick so that I could set up the – er – bushwhackers.”

  “Indeed. You did that as you’ve done everything else, by suggestion and manipulation, so that you were always in the background.”

  Woodvine went over to the door and opened it. “Mr Jones, I shall be reporting you to the authorities. And now, I should like you to leave my house, please.”

  Tom still didn’t move. “I shall be reporting to the authorities as well. The police know that it’s you and are actively looking for proof. They’ll almost certainly find it. Even if they don’t, you will not be getting your knighthood, not ever. You will be eased off the Bench and all the other positions you hold; in fact, you will never hold any position of influence again in your life. And those around you will gradually become aware that there is something unwholesome about you. You will become a nothing.”

  Woodvine said, “You don’t have the power to do any of those things.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” agreed Tom, “I don’t.” He smiled wolfishly. “But my boss does.”

  “Even if you’re right, which I very much doubt, you will be giving me a non-punishment for a non-existent crime.”

  Tom leaned forward. “We both know that what I’ve said is substantially true, and that one way or another, you’re going down for it. But we also know that it was not originally your idea, that someone in the Department put you up to it, someone who knew your – “

  “What Department are you talking about?”

  “The Department of Health – “ It wouldn’t hurt to say that much – “Where you have friends. Are you going to let this particular friend get away with it? Getting you into this mess and leaving you to braise in it.”

  He was studying Woodvine’s face as he spoke, but there wasn’t the flicker of a suggestion that any of it meant anything to him …

  He said, “For the last time, will you leave my house, now, or am I going to have to phone the police to eject you?”

  Tom got to his feet and walked to the door. Woodvine followed him into the hall as Tom opened the front door and let himself out.

  He walked down through the scented pergola to his car, got in and drove away. He drove to where Marcus and the police were waiting in the van.

  “Hard luck,” said Harris. “You couldn’t have done any more.”

  Tom nodded. “He probably guessed I was wired.” He divested himself of the bug and handed it over. “And now I’m going outside for a few minutes if you don’t mind.”

  He walked a little way from the van and lit a cheroot.

  Marcus joined him.

  “He was right Tom, you couldn’t have done any more.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.” Then – “God,” he said, “I hate the thought of them getting away with it.”

  “They won’t. Or at least, Woodvine won’t – I can deliver most of what you promised him. And you never know, our friends back there might find something to nail him with.”

 
“I don’t think they will, though,” said Tom. “And the other bastard’ll get off with nothing … “

  Marcus said quietly, “I’m hoping that won’t be entirely true either. I shall drop words into selected ears and then frame the kind of report that’ll let him know that I know … ”

  “You’d better watch your back, then - we both had,” Tom added reflectively.

  “That’s where the choice of ears and the words I use in the report come in,” Marcus said. “Chosen with discretion, I hope it’ll stop him, and anyone else, contemplating anything like this again. And also bugger up the promotion or any other hopes he may have had. We both know how that hurts the great and good.”

  Tom smiled. “What about your own prospects – it won’t do them a lot of good either. Shoot the messenger and all that.”

  “Fortunately, it doesn’t bother me.”

  Tom nodded. He knew that was true.

  *

  George Woodvine watched Tom go, his face still devoid of any expression, then he shut the door, turned and walked slowly back to the drawing room.

  There seemed to be cloud forming round his head. He poured himself a drink to dispel it, then another.

  The cloud swirled round and round and he heard a voice calling from the hall: George, come here …

  His feet dragged him unwilling into the hall and over to the portrait of his father. He looked up at him. His father raised his hand, pointing, his lips moved and he spoke in his cold, unemotional voice.

  “I told you that you were a failure George, that you would let us all down, and I was right.”

  When the girl came to see what all the noise was about, she found George Woodvine jumping up and down and shrieking as he beat the image of his father’s face with a marble figurine.

  If you enjoyed Death Before Time you might be interested in A Fatal Cut by Priscilla Masters, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from A Fatal Cut by Priscilla Masters

  26 June 1987

  It was supposed to have been a joke. Something said in jest when they were stiff and sticky from sitting too long in a hot examination room. It had not been meant to be taken seriously.

  But he had taken it seriously.

  His question. ‘What will you do if you fail your A levels?’

  Her answer. Flippant. ‘Shoot myself. I will. I’ll shoot myself. I’ll feel such a failure. I won’t know what else to do. Not to get in to do the right degree would be worse than death. There wouldn’t be any point them offering me another course. There isn’t anything else I want to do with my life.’

  His eyes, opened as wide as they could go. Fringed by dark, girlish lashes. ‘Would you really? I mean, shoot yourself.’ A pause. ‘How would you get hold of a gun?’

  And so easily it had progressed further than she had meant it to. Much further. ‘Easy. My uncle’s got a gun. He doesn’t even keep it locked up like you’re supposed to. He’s ever so careless.’

  His interest, feigned she knew afterwards. ‘What does he use it for?’

  ‘Clay pigeons.’

  ‘Does he keep it loaded?’

  ‘No. Even he’s not that negligent. He keeps the pellets in a special box at the bottom of the gun cabinet!’

  So she had spread the noose on the floor in a perfect circle, and watched him step inside it without understanding. Anything.

  ‘Who is your uncle?’ Asked without deliberation, casually.

  ‘My mum’s brother. Lives a couple of doors away from us.’ She echoed his question back at him. ‘What would you do, Sam? If you failed? If you didn’t get in?’

  It was the question that had dominated that whole summer. What they would do if...?

  ‘The same.’ His answer had been said with enough empty bravado for her to believe she could safely disregard it.

  ‘You wouldn’t.’ She’d said it scornfully, with derision. ‘I bet you wouldn’t.’

  He’d held out his hand. ‘I bet I would.’

  She’d stood up then, brushed the newly mown grass from her skirt. ‘I don’t know why we’re having this stupid conversation. We’ll both pass.’

  But he’d fallen silent and looked away from her, beyond the playing fields of the King Edward the VI School – which hated losers – towards the skyline and the university across the road. Students’ Union block, tall clock tower, gracious Victorian buildings, waiting for the successful.

  If not earlier, she should have known then.

  23 July 1991

  The surgeon was sweating. His paper cap and facemask were already damp. Dewdrops of sweat shone on his forehead, picked out by the operating lights overhead.

  The theatre sister watched him. She glanced over his shoulder at the list of names written on the whiteboard, all cases set for this afternoon. He couldn’t be ill. There were six more patients lined up, the next probably already in the anaesthetic room, nervously preparing to sink into oblivion. The others would even now be having their pre-med on the ward. The operations must go on. But not without the surgeon.

  He was still sweating.

  Opposite, and to his left, stood the registrar, new the week before. A Greek. In his luminous eyes she saw he had noted the surgeon’s condition and she read his own misgivings: that he wouldn’t be able to handle the remaining cases. Not alone. She guessed – whatever his references said – that he’d performed only minor solo ops before moving to England. He didn’t have the skill of the operating consultant.

  She took another surreptitious look at the surgeon. Sweat was trickling towards his eye. Unable to wipe it himself he was blinking rapidly, his gaze drifting away from the open wound. She sensed it was a struggle for him to concentrate on the operation. He was even having difficulty holding the scalpel handle accurately. Instead of holding it delicately, like a fine fountain pen, he was grasping it in his hand like a ham-fisted amateur, his face flushed with effort. The theatre sister glanced round for some explanation. Maybe the problem was the heating. It was always kept warm in here in deference to the still figure on the operating table. She called the theatre porter across and asked him to turn the air-conditioning dial down by three degrees. Then, using a pair of long, angled forceps, she dropped a sterile gauze swab into the student-nurse’s hand and asked her to wipe the sweat from the surgeon’s brow.

  He couldn’t do it himself without contaminating his gloves. And that would mean abandoning the entire operation and having to rescrub, while the patient waited and bled.

  Silently the student nurse moved behind the green-gowned figure and wiped the sweat away with the gauze. The surgeon should have been grateful for this courtesy. Normally he would have been.

  But today the act seemed to annoy him. He half turned from his patient and snarled at the nurse, so violently that she dropped the swab onto the sterile green towels. There was a horrified silence, broken only by the rhythmic rise and fall of the ventilator. Everyone knew. The swab, touched by the nurse’s ungloved hands, was contaminated. And now the green towels were too. And the green towels surrounded the gaping open wound; flesh unprotected by skin. True, only a hernia repair but nevertheless a deep slice through the skin, muscle and blood vessels of a living person. A living person now exposed to infection through the clumsiness of a member of staff. The silence emanating from the surgeon was both tense and angry. Breathing heavily, his hands remained poised a few inches above the ‘dirty’ swab as though the air around it was also infected.

  The theatre sister rescued the situation. Muttering a swift, ‘Sorry, sir,’ she placed a spare pair of artery forceps into the nurse’s shaking hand so she could retrieve the gauze swab without crossing the invisible barrier of sterility. Then, using another pair of long artery forceps, she draped a fresh green towel across the suspect patch before shooting the unfortunate nurse a comrade’s look of sympathy. They’d all gone through the same experience at least once before. A tetchy surgeon, a hot day, a stuffy theatre, complicated surgery.

  Only this was none of those th
ings. ‘Pinky’ Sutcliffe had a reputation throughout the hospital for being calm and even tempered, a cool professional who tended to limit his conversation to demands for instruments and spasmodic explanations to teach the medical students. A snarl from him was out of character. For him to sweat he must be hot – or ill. The theatre sister frowned. The case on the table was not complicated, bread and butter work in a healthy subject. So far.

  The entire theatre suddenly fell quiet as though all the staff sensed something was not quite right. For a couple of seconds even the ventilator seemed to be holding its breath. Over her mask the sister’s black eyes scanned the operating room, trying to hunt down the cause of the surgeon’s poor humour. Her gaze rested first on the registrar. An incompetent import, but with a steady hand for holding retractors. No more was demanded of him. The problem was not here. She glanced across the room at the two medical students. Fourth years. One a plump male, the other a small female. Both were dressed appropriately in theatre greens and white leather clogs, and that was as far as their involvement in the proceedings went. They were leaning against the far wall, sharing some private joke. Mentally she tut-tutted. A perfect chance to study the anatomy of the rectus sheath and they were more interested in the gossip of the day. She watched them giggling, for a fleeting second almost envious of their lack of responsibility in the proceedings. She took in the male student’s arm lightly resting round the girl’s shoulders. They seemed to have no worries. Her eyes moved back to check the surgeon’s face and her alarm intensified. He was staring down into the wound as though struggling to focus. Oblivious to the medical students. His distress was nothing to do with them.

  She shifted her attention to her side. A thin, shy figure in white cotton, hands subserviently tucked behind his back – like a member of the royal family – or someone who did not know quite what to do with them. The theatre porter. Quiet and unobtrusive as a ghost. Earnest, new, inoffensive. However seriously the porter took his job no one really took much notice of him, least of all the surgeon. She smiled at the thought that the theatre porter could possibly be responsible for Pinky Sutcliffe’s uncharacteristic behaviour. She was still smiling as her eyes rested speculatively on Bill Amison. Tall, muscular, blond, the anaesthetist was, as usual, struggling with The Times crossword, paying the patient the very minimum of attention. He looked up for an instant and caught her gaze. She gave him a broad wink which he returned before glancing meaningfully across at the surgeon. His message was clear, what’s up with him today?