Fourth Attempt

by Claire Rayner

  Not to be outdone, Jerry shouted at the same time: ‘She just won’t listen. I told her this time it was a genuine accident, that it was an oversight by the cleaner and no harm was intended to anyone —’

  ‘Shut up!’ shouted George. She glared at them and even took a menacing step forward. They duly shut up and stood looking sulkily at her but both were clearly still steaming with rage.

  ‘Jane.’ George looked at the little group in the corner of the lab. ‘You tell me what happened. Oh, Louise, for heaven’s sake, honey, stop crying so that we can hear ourselves think! What happened, Jane?’

  ‘Louise slipped and fell,’ Jane said. At the sound of her own name, Louise started to wail even more loudly and Jane half hugged her, half shook her. ‘Now, Louise, do stop. You’ve been X-rayed and no harm’s been done. If you just relax, then the painkillers they gave you in A & E will take over and you’ll feel much better. The taxi’ll be here soon, I’m sure, and you can go home.’

  ‘What happened?’ George cried, her own voice rising so that she contributed as much noise as any of the others, and Alan shook his head in exasperation.

  ‘All right, I’ll explain,’ he said crisply. ‘Jane, love, help Louise out to the corridor, will you? Jerry, take the stool with them so that Louise can sit down when she gets there. Wait with them till the taxi comes. It shouldn’t be much longer. I’ll explain it all to Dr B.’

  Jane obeyed and, after a moment, so did Jerry. Sheila, who was now looking less agitated but still belligerent, relaxed a little and arranged herself on a stool by her own bench, sitting with folded arms to listen.

  ‘It’s really very simple,’ Alan said wearily. ‘Louise slipped on the wooden floor outside, on the bit at the top of the stairs. She came down rather hard, I admit, and screeched blue murder. So I got Jerry to take her over to the A & E department and report it as an accident to a member of staff, and went and had a look at the floor myself to see if there was a reason for the fall. I found a wide patch of floor that had been coated with wax polish but hadn’t been buffed off. So, I sent for the woman who supervises the cleaners — you know, Mrs Fletcher — and she said it was clearly down to the night staff, since we don’t have daytime cleaners, and she’d look into it. She rang me back a little while ago full of apologies and said she’d phoned Mr Bittacy, who’s in charge at night, and he’d said the usual cleaner, Mrs Glenney, is off sick, so they had a temp here last night and it was one they knew to be unreliable and who’s done precisely this before — put down polish on a patch of floor and forgotten to buff it off. So she’s for the chop, and Mrs Fletcher says Bittacy’ll probably get his knuckles hard rapped too for not supervising better. And that’s all there is to it, honestly. Louise is all right, just a slightly bruised buttock and no bony injury at all, but you know our Louise — calls herself highly strung. Bloody silly little fusspot, if you ask me. Anyway, she took it into her head it was another attempt at killing people in the lab and was sure she was the intended victim, no matter what I said. And then Sheila came in —’

  ‘And when I heard what had happened, I agreed with Louise,’ Sheila snapped, unable to keep silent another moment. ‘We don’t have accidents in this department, dammit. It’s always deliberate and it’s always people after me! And as for Louise thinking it’s her they want, who does she think she is? The Queen of Sheba?’

  ‘Now you can see why Louise was still bawling,’ Alan said, even more wearily. ‘She took it hard that Sheila didn’t sympathize with her conviction she was a target.’

  ‘As if she would be!’ Sheila fumed. ‘What possible reason could anyone have for trying to hurt her? With me, it’s different. I know all sorts of things about all sorts of people. I am in charge of all the path, records here for staff as well as patients and it’s understandable someone thinks I have a secret about them. But her? God, do me a favour!’

  ‘There’s no need to show off about —’ George began and then stopped and stared blankly at Sheila. ‘What did you say?’

  Sheila was startled in her turn. ‘Eh? What do you mean, what did I say? Just that Louise is stupid thinking anyone has it in for her, the way they have for me.’

  ‘Staff as well as patients,’ George said, her eyes glazed as she concentrated. ‘Staff as well as patients. Of course. I’ve known that all along but not really thought about it. I just thought it was the way you gossiped that got to people. But storing path, records, for staff as well as patients …’

  Sheila looked at her and then at Alan, clearly totally mystified, and then shrugged. ‘Well, of course we do. We always have.’

  ‘Yes,’ George said, still thinking. Then she pulled herself out of her reverie to concentrate on the here and now. ‘Yes! Alan, are you satisfied this was a genuine accident?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely! This woman who worked here last night is famous for slipshod work. The only mystery is why she wasn’t sacked ages ago. It’s just our bad luck our regular Mrs Glenney was off.’

  ‘Mrs Glenney,’ George said and slid back into her own thoughts. Mrs Glenney. She could see her, standing there and pontificating about the way she managed when people who shouldn’t be in the lab came there, after she’d been so unwilling to let George into her own office. She’d said something then, something that at the time had meant nothing, but now it had enormous significance and George felt elation burst into her chest as she realized what it was.

  ‘Sheila!’ she cried. ‘I love you!’ And startled the little woman by hugging her extravagantly. ‘You too, Alan. You’re great!’

  ‘Delighted to hear it,’ Sheila said acidly. ‘I’m sure we’re both very gratified.’ Alan said nothing. He just stood stolidly looking at George.

  ‘It’s all right, I haven’t gone crazy.’ George was jubilant. ‘It’s just that I’ve suddenly realized — Well, jigsaw pieces, you know. Jigsaw pieces.’

  Jerry came back into the lab followed by Jane. ‘She’s gone home,’ he reported. ‘I thought she’d calmed down. What do you think, Jane?’

  ‘Oh, she’ll be all right. She just needs people to make a little fuss of her. She has a rotten time at home and she regards us as a sort of surrogate family. So when people here don’t pay attention when she’s upset she takes it hard.’ It was Sheila she looked at as she said ‘people’.

  Sheila ignored her, speaking purposefully to George. ‘So, what is it that we’ve jigsawed for you, Alan and I?’ she demanded.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly explain.’ George smiled brilliantly. ‘I’ll tell you in due course, though, I promise. Look, I have some more — other places to go. Can you hold the fort here for a while longer, you lot?’

  ‘Of course,’ Alan said quickly. ‘It’s really rather quiet. Or was till this fuss blew up.’

  Sheila let her face become wistful. ‘It’s understandable that I should get upset,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a lot to put up with.’

  ‘We know you have, Sheila,’ Jerry said. ‘And you’re not the only one. But making a lot of noise and being unsympathetic to poor old Louise helps no one, least of all you.’

  Still squabbling but a little more amiably now, they drifted back to their benches. George went off to her office with Alan in tow. ‘Alan, something’s come up that I’d like time to look into. If I take my bleep — and I promise not to ignore it the way I have sometimes in the past — do you mind holding on here till I get back?’

  ‘I’ve got plenty to do,’ he said. ‘And Jane and I had planned to go out to eat tonight so that’s all right. No hurry to get away if there’s no cooking to do.’ He stopped then and said a little shyly, ‘You’re investigating this case, are you? The attempts on Sheila?’

  ‘I certainly am.’ She was glittering with it, she was so sure she was on the edge of the answer. ‘And the other three as well.’

  ‘They really were murders then?’

  She sobered. ‘Yes, I’m afraid they were. There seems little point in pretending otherwise. Though quite how Pam Frean was murdered I’m not sure. That she
hadn’t intended to commit suicide I’m sure of now. That note she was supposed to have left must have been a — Well, it’s all too easy to forge notes on computers, of course. And she certainly had drowned. There was no evidence in the body to suggest any other method of killing as I recall. She’d taken a lot of diazepam before she did it — Perhaps I should reword that: before it was done, but I’m not sure how … I suppose he held her under. Though there were no bruises I can remember … but I can’t check her notes because of course they were stolen.’ Her words drifted away as she slid back again into her own thoughts.

  ‘We’re turning into a regular chamber of horrors here,’ Alan said. ‘We’ll be able to open the doors and show them our own black museum any day now. Roll up, roll up, see the car park where the car didn’t catch fire. See the poisoned chocolates that didn’t work. See the bottle of hydrochloric acid that didn’t kill the technician! See the patch of polish that wasn’t a trap!’

  ‘But some people were murdered, Alan,’ she said gently. ‘Lally Lamark died and so did Tony Mendez as well as Pam Frean.’

  ‘I know. It’s all the other trimmings that seem so silly. Better you than me looking at it, that’s all I can say. Give me a nice mucky post-mortem any day. I’ve got one down there to do this afternoon, if that’s all right with you? Traffic accident yesterday, died in the ward this morning, less than twenty-four hours after admission.’

  ‘Yes, please, Alan,’ she said, fervent in her gratitude. ‘You’re an angel.’ And she kissed his cheek lightly and he laughed and went away, leaving her free to get on with her own work. Or rather, she thought as she tucked her bleep into her white coat pocket, checking punctiliously to see she was switched on, Gus’s work. But he’ll be pleased, I know he will, at what I’ll sort out. And I know all the way through to my middle that I’m going to.

  She started in Laburnum Ward in a spirit of contrariness, because she was sure she’d do better chasing her other line of investigation. But then she reminded herself, as she hurried through the courtyard along the walkway, grateful for the little shade it threw at this, the hottest time of the day, I was always the same. Saving the favourite part of my dinner to eat last. Except it wouldn’t be precisely last. After the business of talking to people she would have to search Sheila’s files of staff test records. But until she knew more about those people involved she wouldn’t know what she was looking for. So, she told herself frankly, get on with it, lady!

  She walked up to the nurses’ station on Laburnum as casually as she could and nodded her head at the duty nurse. ‘Dr Klein about?’

  ‘Sorry, no. He’s away, I think.’

  ‘Ah. Any idea where? And when he’ll be back?’

  The nurse shrugged. ‘He’s not really one of the staff, you know. I mean, he spends most of his time on his research, so I don’t keep track of him the way I do some of the others who do more with patients.’ She hesitated. ‘Dr Zacharius might know where he is.’

  George hadn’t thought about Zack much lately, but now she did. She stood there, her eyes slightly narrowed as she pondered then, nodding briskly at herself, she said to the nurse, ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Dr Zacharius.’ She tried not to snap, but the nurse wasn’t being very helpful. She was standing with her head down over her paperwork, with her shoulders hunched and her lips pursed. A nice-looking girl, George noted, with rich red hair pulled back into a tight pigtail pinned on top of her head and a thick pale skin dusted prettily with freckles; or she would be pretty if she didn’t look so sulky. ‘Where will I find him?’

  ‘Oh.’ The nurse looked up and her face filled with the ready flush that afflicts fair-skinned people so easily. ‘He’s around, I s’pose. You’ll have to look for him.’

  Now what, George thought as she set off to look in all the side bays and treatment rooms of Laburnum Ward, was that all about? If I didn’t know better I’d say that girl had a thing about Zack. Maybe he’s given her reason to? Has he been flirting with her the way he flirted with me?

  She explored that thought to see whether she minded, and whether it hurt, much as one might press a dubious tooth with an exploring tongue to see if it was still painful. To her relief, it wasn’t, and she went on with her searches cheerfully. Let Zack have all the fun in the world with his red-headed nurse, if that was what was going on; it mattered not a whit to George. She had Gus and an interesting case to look into. What more could any woman want?

  It was a comfort to feel so free of what had been an irritating experience, like having a burr caught in your hair which refused to be dislodged. It shows too how much more comfortable I am again with Gus, she thought as she reached the end of the ward and the room the researchers used as their special office, if I can be so relieved to be free of other entanglements. As the word came into her mind she remembered Pam Frean and felt a deep twinge of pity for that poor dead girl. And angry on her behalf, as well. Oh, this case had to be cracked. And soon!

  Zack was in the office, his head bent over a microscope, but he straightened as she came in and welcomed her warmly.

  ‘Well, hello! I thought you’d banished me to the outer wastes.’

  ‘What crazy notion is that? Why should you think that?’

  ‘Because I haven’t seen you since last Monday week, that’s why,’ he said at once. ‘I’ve been counting the days.’

  She felt her lips quirk. ‘Really? With that nice little redheaded nurse outside to help you do it?’

  ‘Hey, hey!’ he said. ‘What is this? Jealous, I hope and pray? Or just —’

  ‘Just observant,’ she said.

  ‘Well, even if you were right — and I take the fifth and refuse to answer any questions on that issue on the grounds I might incriminate myself — so what? You don’t want me, do you? You’ve got your policeman, haven’t you? What do you say to that?’

  She treated him to a brilliant smile. ‘The answer is no and yes. I don’t want you, not in that sense, and I do have my policeman.’

  ‘In the Biblical sense, I hope,’ he murmured.

  She flushed. ‘None of your business.’

  He grinned lazily. ‘I guess not. OK, to something that is my business. Did I come off with a clean bill of health after all your policeman’s check of me back home?’

  She went a little pink with embarrassment. ‘Hell, yes.’

  ‘I knew I would.’ He sounded smug. ‘But I guess it was reasonable for you to do it.’

  ‘Once the idea — Once we were worried, of course we had to. But truly’ — she held out her hand — ‘no hard feelings, I hope?’

  He seemed to consider for a moment and then held out his hand. ‘Not at all. Friends again?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Still ready to help me with my research?’

  She laughed. ‘Wow, you’re single-minded, my friend! Sure, if I can. Are you ready to help me with my investigation?’

  His eyes sparkled suddenly. ‘Try to stop me! What can I do? Crawl over the floor with a magnifying glass? I always fancied that.’

  ‘No, of course not. Just answer a few questions. Um, off the record.’

  ‘I’m not a journalist! I don’t make records.’

  ‘I mean, don’t tell anyone else I asked you these questions. This is meant to be in confidence.’ She gestured. ‘These four walls and you and me, just the six of us, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I’m trusting you.’

  He held up both hands in mock submission. ‘I promise you can!’

  She nodded. ‘All right. You’ll see — well, Michael Klein, what do you know about him?’

  He stared at her, nonplussed. ‘Mike Klein? You can’t mean he’s — I mean, Mike Klein? He wouldn’t bite the cherry off the end of the cocktail stick, for Chrissakes.’

  ‘Maybe not. But just tell me, how much do you know about him?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not a hell of a lot. I mean, I saw his CV when he joined — we all saw each other’s — and he has
a respectable history in his field. And we’re colleagues, working for the same Institute. More than that, what can I say?’

  ‘Is he’ — she tilted her head — ‘honourable?’

  ‘Well, you sweet old-fashioned thing, you! What does that mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean! Is he straight up, would he cheat or cut corners to get what he wants? To do what he wants?’

  He thought for a while, clearly treating the question with respect. Then he said, ‘Wouldn’t we all? If you’re doing research you care about it. And if idiots get in your way …’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Well, you, um, push them aside. Or climb over them.’

  ‘And Mike’s like that?’

  ‘He might be. I have no evidence that he is, or that he isn’t. It’s just the way researchers are in my experience.’

  ‘Would he …’ She swallowed. ‘Would he experiment with human subjects without full permission from a Research Ethics Committee?’

  There was a long silence and then he said, ‘Oh, shit! Is that what you’ve discovered about him?’

  ‘I don’t say I have. I’m just asking.’

  He sighed, a genuinely sad sound. ‘It’s possible, I suppose. He might.’

  ‘Let me ask you another hypothetical question. If he had, and if he was found out, what would be the result?’

  ‘All hell would break loose,’ Zack said confidently. ‘Unsanctioned human experiments have overtones of Nazi Germany and the way Stalin treated political dissidents as psychiatrically ill and dosed them into idiocy. No one nowadays would stand for that.’

  ‘And here at Old East, at this Institute? What would happen?’

  ‘Out on his ear,’ Zack said succinctly. ‘Christ, George, is that what lies behind all this? Has he been illicitly experimenting?’

  ‘Zack, I don’t know. I just wanted to get some information. You have to understand that I wasn’t making any sort of accusations. Just asking in a general sort of way.’ She had a moment of inspiration, a vision of how she could reduce the light she was shining on Klein. ‘What about Frances, for example? Could she ever cut corners that way? I’m checking up on all research people, you see.’ Would he see what a tenuous link that was? She hoped not. Fortunately he was far too self-aware even to think about it.