And again it happened, just a few steps from the top; that certainty she was not alone. Now she knew it had to be somewhere ahead of her rather than behind, and moved forwards. Her shoes clicked on the stair-tread and she bent and pulled them off, then, barefoot, moved very carefully along the corridor.
She saw it at once: the door to the Beetle cupboard was open. It couldn’t have been open when she came in, could it? She’d have noticed, surely. She stopped and tried to remember, closing her eyes to see the scene as it had been when she first arrived, and realized that she hadn’t looked along the corridor. She had come in and made straight for the stairs; if the cupboard door had been open she wouldn’t have known, because she simply hadn’t looked in that direction.
Mrs Glenney, she thought, the night cleaner. Had she left it open? Hardly. With her overblown sense of her own importance in the maintenance of security, she would never do that. And she had no cause to be in that cupboard, anyway. It contained stores of various kinds, bottles of reagents, slides, unused equipment, spare parts, stationery: the assorted materials of day-to-day life in a laboratory; and she frowned, trying to think if there was anything potentially valuable there. But then, she reminded herself, she hadn’t imagined there was anything valuable in her files and someone had broken in and rifled those …
She crept over to the cupboard and looked in. She did not know it as well as the junior staff, whose job it was to see to the maintenance of supplies to each work-station, but well enough, and now she tried again to summon up her special gift of memory by closing her eyes so that she could see in the pinkish dark behind her lids the way the cupboard usually looked. She let her memory range over the shelves, browsing among them, opening her eyes from time to time to check the reality against her memory. As far as she could tell, there was just one bottle out of place, on the top shelf; not hard to see since it had left a gap like that in a five-year-old’s teeth. She closed her eyes again to try and read the label.
Hydrochloric Acid. That was what had been in there. Just a Winchester bottle of hydrochloric acid, of which they used a great deal for various purposes; why on earth should she be worried about that? Someone must have taken the bottle out to refill a bench-sized bottle and just not returned it. All she had to do was go into the big lab and look for it. And for whoever else might be there …
She went to her own office first, opening the door with great stealth, to arm herself with the only thing she had in the place which might make a weapon: a rather battered but very large golf umbrella she kept in a corner in case she was called out to a body on a rainy day and had to examine it in situ. She’d spent enough miserable hours with rain dripping down her neck not to know the value of such an item. Now, as she picked it up and held it tightly round the middle, she was deeply, burningly grateful to her own good sense in providing it.
Then she went as softly as she could, with her heart beating like a drum, to the big laboratory.
17
The door was closed but not locked and she eased it open carefully, her own pulse pounding in her ears so loudly that it seemed impossible that others couldn’t hear it too for miles around, a fearful notion she pushed firmly to the back of her mind. The familiar smells came out at her, acrid and caustic at the same time: iodine and formaldehyde and methylated spirits and the faint sweetish scent of Festival, which was the disinfectant applied to floors and worktops, and somewhere deep below all that coffee, and… something else. She couldn’t place it, but knew it to be unusual in this setting. There was the sound of the refrigerators too, and the soft hissing of various other items of machinery and — she stopped and closed her eyes, listening hard. Another unfamiliarity: a thick dragging sound, swift and roughly rhythmic. She opened her eyes and, abandoning any attempt at being quiet and careful but still clutching the umbrella, shot forwards in the big room and round the front end work-bench end to look into the space beyond. No one was there. She twisted her body and pulled back to run to the next bench end and then on to the last. And there she saw him.
He was sitting on the floor, his legs outstretched and his back to the bench, with both hands flat on each side of him, his eyes closed. He was struggling to breathe, his mouth pulled apart in a great rictus, yet held wide open. The sound was much clearer now, choked and painful. She slid to her knees beside him and leaned over to stare into his face, which was pallid and sweating, with a blueish tinge to the lips and eye sockets, though his cheeks and forehead had sprung a rich red rash. His eyes were closed.
‘Jerry!’ she cried. ‘Jerry, for God’s sake, what happened?’
Now the smell was even thicker and she thought she recognized it; indeed her own eyes were beginning to water. She pulled Jerry by one arm so that he opened his eyes and stared at her blearily; he tried to shake his head and speak, all at the same time, as his breathing became even harsher, but he couldn’t. She let go of him and ran across the lab towards the big window, one of six which lit the space. The long pole normally used to operate the high section, which was the only part that would open, was, of course, not there. It was one of the lab staff’s constant moans that wherever the pole was most wanted was always the place where it wasn’t, and she could have screamed with the frustration of it as she looked over her shoulder at Jerry again.
He had slumped a little sideways and it seemed to her that the sound of his breathing was thinner, with even less power to it, and in panic she lifted her umbrella and hurled it hard against the window. The panes shook but held; she cast around for a heavier weapon, and settled on one of the lab stools. She picked it up by one leg and virtually threw it at the window; this time it shattered in a great shower of glass and noise and the room seemed to fill with the outside air.
But Jerry still had not moved. She ran to the phone and scrabbled for the dial, muttering aloud as she did so, not knowing what the words were, but realizing later that they had been in some sort of sense a prayer; and dialled.
By the time she got an answer from the switchboard she was almost screaming with urgency and it took her valuable seconds to make the girl comprehend that she was in the lab, that there was an emergency and she needed the crash team at once, but at last the girl understood and George was able to drop the phone and run back to Jerry.
But there was little she could do as she crouched there except hold him so that his airway was obstructed as little as possible, and listen with every part of herself for the sound of the team arriving. Around her the lab sat serene and familiar except for the shards of glass on the floor, and the smell which she had noticed before; now she lifted her head and, still holding Jerry carefully, craned her neck to look at the bench above them.
Clearly he had been refilling a reagent bottle of his own. This, she thought, must be one of the days on which he chose to come to work early. Jerry often did, she knew, particularly after an evening when he had been left to lock up and therefore had the keys. Yesterday had been such an evening, and she stared at the bottles and tried to imagine how it had been here this morning.
He would have come in with his work plans in his mind, and seen that his bottle needed refilling. It was something the junior was supposed to do, but somehow she never managed to keep up with all of them. Sheila often complained because she had to do her own.
And then George caught her breath because she realized that they were not sitting beneath Jerry’s work-station, but Sheila’s. His own area was further down the bench. Twisting her head to look, she saw that he had his microscope — the familiar old-fashioned one that he loved to use — already pulled forward, with rows of slides set in all the available space around it. So he had needed to do something with a chemical and rather than rearrange his own area had poached on Sheila’s. Why not, when she was off sick anyway? George could almost hear his voice explaining cheerfully that that was what he had done, and she looked down at him and murmured, ‘It’s all right, Jerry. Hold on, honey. They’re on their way.’ And looked back up at the bottle.
There w
as a small one with a funnel beside it. Had it been used to pour something into the bottle or just opened for that purpose? She sniffed hard and the smell filled her nostrils and she blinked at the irritation, and looked again. Beside the small bottle, which was turned in such a way that she couldn’t see the label, was another bigger one, a Winchester. The Beetle cupboard bottle, she thought. The hydrochloric acid. And then she knew just what had happened and how and felt a sense of deep sick terror. ‘Not again,’ she said aloud. ‘Oh, Christ, not again!’
Beneath her hand Jerry stirred and she was at once all attention. ‘It’s OK, Jerry, they’re coming.’ Then, as she heard the clatter and the crashing down the corridor, she cried, ‘They’re here!’ She lifted her chin and shouted and went on shouting until the door burst open and they came rushing in.
The next fifteen minutes were, as far as she was concerned, bedlam. There were four of them from the Accident and Emergency crash team and within a matter of seconds they were at work. Adam Parotsky, whom she recognized as the senior houseman on A & E, set himself at Jerry’s head as two of the others eased Jerry into position flat on his back with a hard pillow beneath his shoulders and Adam reached out one hand to the senior nurse who was part of the team. At once she slid a laryngoscope into it and then, as Adam set to work, followed up with the necessary tubes and attachments.
The sound of Jerry’s breathing shifted, lost some of its harshness and then finally was replaced by the hiss of the oxygen cylinder which was at once attached to the laryngeal tube to take over the breathing task. His face began to become a more normal colour, losing the pinched blueness that had been so terrifying, and after a few moments he opened his eyes and stared up at Adam’s upside-down face above him. His gaze was clearly an appealing one and Adam grunted, ‘It’s all right, you’ll be fine now. Just hang on in there.’
Once the breathing was right the team relaxed and George with them. The nurse mopped at Jerry’s eyes, putting drops into them, for they were reddened and watering copiously. Adam looked at George and said, ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Or at least — Look, I came in early this morning to do some work of my own and realized after a while there was someone else here. I went looking — I thought it might be another break-in — and found Jerry like this. I broke the window to help him get better air.’
She indicated it and one of the others in the team murmured, ‘Quick thinking,’ and she glanced at him.
‘Oh,’ she said and nodded as she recognized the young anaesthetist, James Corton. ‘Thanks, but believe me it was a reflex action. I don’t even know if it did any good. And then I called you. You’ve managed to deal with him in good time, I think, haven’t you? I was terrified his tissues would swell so much he’d lose his airway altogether.’
‘He bloody nearly did,’ Adam said. ‘Look, is this tube OK, Corton? Even though you couldn’t do it yourself, I’d be glad if you’d check before we move him to the recovery unit on A & E to sort out any remaining problems.’
James, in response to George’s brows lifted in query, raised his right hand apologetically. ‘I twisted my wrist in a difficult intubation last night, so I asked Adam to deal with this one. It looks fine to me.’
George had checked for herself, not waiting for James. It might be his responsibility as the anaesthetist in the crash team to intubate but every doctor worth the label could manage that, after all. Adam had done the job perfectly; Jerry’s easier breathing and greatly improved colour were an index of how effective he had been.
Jerry rolled his head and George said quickly, ‘No, Jerry. Keep still. And don’t try to talk, you ass, you’ve got a laryngeal tube in. Be patient.’
He stared at her and then rolled his eyes again, upwards this time. She looked at him, frowning, then understood.
‘I think I’ve worked it out,’ she said quietly. ‘It happened when you refilled your reagent bottle?’
He closed his eyes in an agony of frustration as the nurse tried again to mop at them, but he moved his head once more to push her away. A little affrontedly, she stood back as George came and leaned above him.
‘It’s all right,’ she said softly. ‘I think I know what it is you’re trying to say. I can smell it too. I’ll be careful. I’ll check what happened and, Jerry’ — he was still staring up at her beseechingly — ‘don’t worry. I’ll keep a close eye not only on you but on Sheila too. I know this is her work-station, as well as you do. And her reagent bottle.’
He closed his eyes, clearly in relief, as the porters arrived. There was another bustle as he was shifted to a trolley and his breathing apparatus carefully stowed, and then he was taken off by the troop of them. But Adam turned back at the door and looked at her just as they reached it. ‘Have you any idea what caused this?’ he asked bluntly.
‘Give me a little time and I might have more than an idea. Proof perhaps,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to do some investigating. But I think I can guess. Chlorine gas.’
He nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. A hell of a thing to happen in a professional lab, isn’t it? I thought everyone would know of the risk.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ George snapped. ‘This wasn’t carelessness or ignorance, believe me. My staff know which chemicals they can and can’t mix. Someone did something to make this happen — but, like I say, let me investigate. I’ll let you know if I identify anything that’ll affect Jerry’s treatment. Meanwhile, regard it as chlorine-gas poisoning.’
‘Will do,’ Adam turned to go, leaving only James Corton lingering.
‘Chlorine gas?’ he said anxiously, staring at her with that wide shy gaze of his. ‘That’s very bad.’
‘Yes,’ she said shortly. ‘Very.’
‘An accident, though, surely? I thought it was something that happened often, accidents with chemicals?’
‘Not in my lab, it doesn’t,’ George said. ‘Anyway, as I say, I’ll be checking it out. So, thanks for getting here so fast.’
He went pink. ‘Oh, it was just routine. I mean, we were the A & E crash team. And anyway, I couldn’t do much, what with my wrist like this and …’
He went, leaving behind him the ghost of his uneasiness. Poor bastard, George found herself thinking. He’s got to go a long way to get the self-confidence he’ll need to be any good in this game. Then she forgot him as she turned to contemplate Sheila’s work-bench.
Properly speaking, if she suspected some sort of meddling she should call the police. She knew that. If someone had tampered maliciously with the contents of the Beetle cupboard — she even thought she knew when it had happened — then a criminal offence had been committed, and she had no right to go nosing about before a SOCO had been to check over the scene and to mark the evidence. But that would take so long and by the time someone had come from the nick and mobilized the SOCO, the last vestiges of the chlorine gas she could still smell would be gone. She looked up at the broken window and the scudding clouds that showed there was a brisk breeze out there and made up her mind. She’d be careful and she would make her own checks, and then call the police.
She wore gloves, collecting them quickly from the mortuary, and set to work. She handled each of the bottles very carefully, turning them so that she could see their labels and then replacing them precisely as they had been. And then with great delicacy she made a couple of tests of her own on the contents, first of the bottle which had clearly been removed from the Beetle cupboard and then of the smaller work-bench bottle. To make extra sure, she then checked the content of every other bottle at every work-station labelled Hydrochloric Acid, writing down her findings at each stage of the process in her own notebook.
She was barely halfway through when the big doors outside clattered open. She lifted her head and swore softly. It was Alan who appeared at the door of the lab and came round to stare at her in amazement as she crunched from place to place over the broken glass. She looked at him and shook her head quickly.
‘No, Al
an,’ she said as he opened his mouth to release the inevitable flow of questions. ‘I can’t explain now. You’ll have to be patient. Meanwhile, keep everyone out of here till I’ve finished, will you? Then I promise I’ll explain as much as I can.’
He closed his mouth, nodded, and went. She was deeply grateful to him. A good chap in every way, she thought; I’m lucky to have him on the team. I must tell him so. And went on with her work.
By the time she had finished, closed her notebook and bagged the phials of liquids she had collected from the various bottles, all of them carefully labelled in her neatest handwriting, it was well past nine. She came out into the corridor to find it filled with a group of subdued but intensely curious staff. She did the only thing she could and told them as succinctly as possible just what had happened.
‘It seems there’s been a third attempt on Sheila,’ she said. ‘Only this time it was Jerry who got into the line of fire. Someone got in here — I think it happened before the break-in, by the way; there was one night, I discovered, when a stranger tried to get in — went into the Beetle cupboard and meddled with the bottle labelled Hydrochloric Acid. It had been emptied and refilled with common-or-garden bleach in a strong concentration.’
There was a sharp hiss of sound as several people drew breath and she nodded grimly.
‘You’re ahead of me. Whoever it was then emptied the reagent bottle on Sheila’s bench of almost all of its hydrochloric acid, leaving just enough to make a reaction with bleach, but not enough to work with. He worked out she’d have to refill her bottle —’
‘And when she put bleach on top of hydrochloric acid …’
‘Exactly. It released chlorine gas and damned nearly choked Jerry to death.’
There was a stunned silence and then they all began to talk at once, but it was Alan who said it, most clearly.
Fourth Attempt Page 17
