Fourth Attempt

by Claire Rayner

  ‘That rabbit won’t run, ducks. Frean has to be dead because she got pregnant. And with the best will in the world, even the cleverest of female gynae. researchers can’t make other women pregnant.’

  ‘Tell that to the infertility unit,’ she said, laughing at him. ‘No, fair enough. Her apparent motive is not obvious. But I have a gut feeling strong enough to put her down as a suspect.’ She duly did, but didn’t tell him she’d got the gut feeling from talking with Zack Zacharius about the case. It seemed wiser. ‘And now we’ve got the three suspects, in order, with motives for three of the deaths. Next we have to look at some more headings. Like OPPORTUNITY and MEANS, and —’

  ‘Bugger that for a game of soldiers,’ he said with a sudden burst of energy. ‘There’s a lot of work before we can even begin to fill those columns in. We’ve done very well for tonight. I told you, come to bed!’ He twirled an imaginary moustache and flashed his eyes at her. ‘Come, my fair maiden, I will not be balked of my desires. I demand that you part with your womanly virtue instantly!’

  ‘Oh, Sir Jasper,’ she cried, throwing her clipboard on the floor beside her, ‘spare my maiden blushes!’

  ‘Some maiden!’ he said and kissed her.

  34

  Getting the MRSA testing for theatre and other surgical staff set up the next day was less easy than she had hoped it would be. First of all she had to get financial consent from Ellen Archer, the Business Manager for the Investigations Unit as a whole, and since she had recently had some major expenses for the Radiology Unit (who were clamouring to get their hands on a Magnetic Resonance Imager) George almost had to go on her knees to do it. The only way she could persuade her was by lying freely about an increase in cases of infection in post-operative patients sent home, about which she had heard in an informal manner from local GPs. And she prayed inside her head that Ellen wouldn’t take the time to check up and find out what a dreadful fabrication (and, incidentally, an insult to Old East’s surgical care) that was.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Ellen,’ she said then, inspired. ‘I can take a close look at the bit of forensic which is part funded by the police and Home Office, and see what I can push in there that belongs to us. It’s not exactly honest, but what the hell — if the police can’t take care of the sick occasionally it’d be a pretty poor show.’ She produced the very English phrase with aplomb and grinned broadly at Ellen who cheered up considerably at the thought.

  ‘If you can manage to do anything to stretch the edges of this bloody budget, I’ll be one grateful lady,’ she said. ‘It’s getting harder to do all I have to with the pittance I get’

  George promised to do her best and went off guiltily aware how much NHS cash she was spending on an operation that was more designed to help the police than Old East. But she comforted herself with the reflection that, after all, keeping a suspected hoaxer anaesthetist well away from patients while he was being quietly investigated had to be to the patients’ benefit.

  And then the actual work had to be done. She played with the notion of collecting all the swabs and then not culturing them, not even Corton’s, and just telling Corton he was a possible carrier, but she rejected it. Suppose there really was a MRSA carrier in the place? If she didn’t spot him now and he was noticed on a future screening … it didn’t bear thinking of. So she set to work grimly.

  Jerry looked surprised when she recruited him to help, as well as some of her junior staff, but went off obediently enough with his trays of swabs and specimen bottles, marshalling his assistants like an amiable sheepdog. He did very well indeed. When she checked with him at lunchtime, needing to know where she herself should take over, he grinned at her with great self-satisfaction, and reported, ‘I’ve done the lot. Every surgeon, every technician, every surgical nurse. I know the uvulas of the staff a great deal more intimately than I want to, and I’ve been retched at and coughed over like a right ’un. If I wasn’t afflicted with MRSA before I started and one of that lot has it, then I’ll sure as hell have it myself now. Lots of luvverly sick leave, hmm, while I get cleared of it?’

  ‘In your dreams,’ George said. ‘Seeing I can always put you on non-infection-area work if you happen to have a problem. Which I doubt. No Staph, organism would dare to come near you for fear of what it might catch.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch,’ Jerry said without ire. ‘Listen, how essential was this? I don’t think we have a problem here, have we? I’ve been asking around and I’m mystified. So’re the staff. I know there’s a lot of MRSA at some of the neighbouring hospitals, especially the geriatric ones, but us? The surgeons were a bit surprised too. Put out, I’d say.’

  ‘I’m trying to make sure we stay that way. Clean as the proverbial,’ said George quickly, mentally cursing herself for not telling Jerry some anecdotal tale for use with the staff before he set off. ‘Do tell them all if they ask. It’s a policy of perfection. I’m the sort that likes to mend the plumbing in good time rather than keep on mopping up puddles on the cellar floor.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Jerry said. ‘I’ll put that about. Or ask Sheila to do it. You know how she likes a nice opportunity to gossip.’

  They were sitting in George’s office as she looked through the lists of people he had swabbed, making sure that the sole object of her search had in fact been caught in the net, and she looked up at that. ‘Sheila,’ she Said thoughtfully.

  ‘It was a joke,’ Jerry said, holding up both hands in mock surrender. ‘I wasn’t trying to finger Sheila, believe me.’

  ‘It’s all right. But you have a point.’ It could be an idea, one way and another. But she said that to herself. ‘On your way, Jerry. Set up the cultures, will you? We really need fast results on this, and the sooner it’s out of the way, all of it, the better.’

  He went, and a short while afterwards George followed him oh-so-casually to wander around the lab until she ‘happened’ to find Sheila, who was in her little corner office filing some reports. For her own files probably, George thought crossly, and bit her lip. She would say nothing about it at present, but after all this was over that special file of Sheila’s, she told herself, would have to go. It just made no sense to waste time on it, not in a lab where her own files were so extensive, and which in any case was properly computerized. And Sheila’s collection appeared to act as a honey trap to the ill-intentioned, which was something they could all do without.

  She perched on Sheila’s desk as though for a comfortable gossip. Sheila, a touch suspicious at first, took some time to realize what George wanted, but once she did, relaxed wonderfully.

  ‘Oh, things are all right,’ she said in response to a question about the state of morale at the hospital. ‘It’s a bit better than it was when we first became a Trust, which is reasonable, I suppose. I mean, it couldn’t be worse! People seem to be getting used to the idea that we can do better things when we handle our own budgets, though they get fed up having to count the paperclips. And they get really fed up if they see other units wasting resources.’

  ‘Mmm,’ George said, with an air of having had a new idea. ‘I wonder if the surgical lot will see my MRSA tests as a waste of money?’

  ‘Probably,’ Sheila said. ‘They hate being swabbed anyway. Well, doesn’t everybody?’

  ‘Yes,’ George said. ‘Look, Sheila, do let me know if anyone says anything to you about it, will you? I’d hate to upset any of them, and I do want them all to know we’re doing it for the best possible reason. To maintain Old East’s high standards. We don’t have any MRSA at present, and we have to be really vigilant to keep it out. Do put that about, won’t you?’

  ‘You’re asking me to talk to people?’ All Sheila’s suspicions came back in a rush. George could see them glinting on every line of her sharp little face. ‘After all the fuss you made about my not having my nose to the grindstone here every minute that God sends?’

  ‘Well, why not?’ George slid off the desk and headed for the door. ‘It’s quicker and I dare say cheaper to let
you tell people than to get posters printed and shoved up on the noticeboards to be ignored or scribbled on.’

  Sheila’s face cleared. ‘Well, yes, exactly. That’s what I always say. You can’t beat word of mouth. And you never know what sort of news I can pick up. It can come in useful, general information. I’ll take a little stroll around later, shall I? Just to see how people are talking about the MRSA swabbings. Would that be a good idea?’

  ‘Why not?’ George said. ‘Why not? I’ll be most interested to know. And,’ she added as she reached the door, ‘I’m sure people are dying to hear how you’re getting on after all your awful experiences. And to know the police are hot on the trail.’

  ‘Are they?’ Sheila said eagerly. ‘Do they have a suspect?’

  ‘Oh, several, I believe,’ George said. ‘Of course, I don’t know any details, but I do know they’re hard at work on your case.’

  Sheila nodded seriously, looking hard at George to be sure she wasn’t just making soothing noises. ‘Someone tried to kill me, after all. Three times!’

  ‘So it would seem. Anyway, the police are really digging deep into every aspect of the situation. I think they’re on to something — they’ve got an air of suppressed excitement about them. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear they’ve really cracked it in the next couple of days.’

  ‘Well, it’s high time they did,’ Sheila said. ‘I’ll tell people that — they’ll be delighted to hear it. Ta for the information, DrB.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ George said sweetly.

  ‘She won’t be able to resist embroidering,’ George said to Gus when she reported her progress on the phone. ‘It seemed to me that getting our suspects stirred up could be no bad thing, I mean, unless they think they’re being suspected they’ll do nothing to cover their tracks, will they? Having Sheila going around talking artlessly about the progress of the investigation and how much effort you’re putting into it and how far you’ve got does no harm at all.’

  ‘I just wish it were true,’ Gus said. ‘But we’ve hit the buffers on it No leads anywhere. We’ve tried, God knows, but —’

  ‘I know,’ George said. ‘But she’ll still say you haven’t, and that’s the purpose of the exercise.’

  ‘I thought you asked her to talk to people about this testing you’re doing.’

  ‘Gus, for heaven’s sake, don’t you understand Sheila at all? She’ll have that at the bottom of her list. If she mentions the MRSA tests at all, I’ll be amazed. It’s the murders and what happened to her that excites her, and the more she talks the more uneasy our man will get, right? And the more likely to do something that’ll reveal him.’

  But the Sheila ploy didn’t seem to work. The week ended in the usual flurry of extra activity in the lab as they caught up with their workload and the weekend crawled by with no sign of anyone running for cover or being anxious about possible discovery. Gus had put all sorts of things in hand, with his detectives checking facts about Corton in every part of the country he claimed to have worked, and all medical schools where he might be known, and could do no more. And George fretted.

  Gus tried to persuade her to fill the time with some sort of pleasure, ranging from swimming (‘Too many people at the pool. It’ll be like Wall Street on a Bull market day,’ she said) to a concert at the Festival Hall (‘Too hot — and I can’t pretend to really enjoy Harrison Birtwhistle.’) and his favourite standby activity, bed (‘Gus, you’re verging on the obsessive!’ ‘Oh? And you’re being obsessively virginal.’) which last exchange at least had the virtue of making them both laugh. But laughing or not, she was restless, and it seemed to infect Gus too after a while.

  ‘Shall we go back to the checklist?’ George said after lunch on Sunday when the long afternoon seemed to stretch interminably in front of them.

  ‘Not enough information,’ he grunted. ‘We’ll have so many blanks on it that it’ll be like doing the crossword with yesterday’s clues for today’s grid. We just have to be patient. Did you know that’s a definition of great leadership? “Courageous, patience.” And everyone says I have great leadership qualities.’

  She ignored that. ‘This is killing me,’ she said and jumped to her feet to go over to the window-box to see if it had dried out. Since she had watered it just last night, it had not.

  ‘I doubt it,’ he said from the sofa and held out one arm. ‘Come and sit down, do. If it’s killing anyone, it’ll be our man.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ She came and sat beside him, leaning back on his shoulder.

  ‘I think he knows he’s very near the end of his road,’ Gus said. ‘Let’s do a recap and you’ll see what I mean. We can do that much, at least, if it’ll make you behave less like a giraffe on heat.’

  ‘How do giraffes on heat behave? And how would you know? You’ve never seen one.’

  ‘I can imagine, and they’d be like you. Long necks all aquiver with frustration. A recap, then?’

  ‘I’ll settle for anything that feels like doing something’

  ‘OK. This person has over the past few weeks been killing people. Why?’

  She pondered, but not for long. ‘He has a secret.’

  ‘He or she.’

  ‘Stick to he or we’ll drive ourselves potty. On this occasion I’m prepared to allow man to embrace woman.’

  ‘Thank you. OK, he has a secret, obviously. And it’s also obvious that it’s a secret that other people have found out. So, he has to kill them to keep his secret. Um, what sort of secret is it?’

  She peered round at him. ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘I think so. If it’s just a shameful secret, then I don’t think he’d have gone so far to hide it. Actually, I’m not sure there is such a thing as a shameful secret any more. People come out about their sexuality and their dabbling with drugs and drink and whatever, their prison records and assorted other peccadilloes like bullets out of guns. It’s getting very boring. Certainly no one’s ashamed of anything any more. So I reckon this has to be a profitable secret. Something that means big rewards if the secret can be kept.’

  ‘That sounds reasonable enough. OK. A profitable secret.’ She took a breath, unwilling to name him. ‘I suppose that includes young Corton. If he is a hoaxer, that is, and we can’t know that till your fellas report back on him. Though I’m not sure it does include him.’

  ‘I would have thought it did. Look what he gets from his posing. Status. Money. Security.’

  ‘What, as a junior doctor? Jesus, Gus, where have you been hiding for the past ten years? Junior doctors are paid less than peanuts and work all the hours God sends. As for security, there are fewer and fewer top jobs and more and more qualified doctors coming up for them. You really have to be the hottest of hot stuff to get a consultancy these days; most of the young doctors we get’ll be lucky if they finish up in good general practices. That’s where the real NHS action is these days. And the GPs don’t earn a whole lot either. Not like back home where all doctors are rich. Here they’re mostly struggling to keep up their mortgage payments. No, it’s not money with Corton. And all he has to do if someone spots he’s a fraud is get the hell out of Old East. He doesn’t use real references after all. So if he thinks he’s about to be fingered, he just hops it, gets a nice new name and applies for a job at some other sucker hospital, and starts all over again. Though why anyone should want to beats me! As you can see, there’s not a lot in it for real doctors, let alone for hoaxers.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said and stared at the ceiling thoughtfully. ‘But maybe he’s invested a good deal of effort into this particular bit of hoaxing? Perhaps he’s trying to equip himself with a real set of references? If he can get out of Old East with them he’s well on his way, surely? The old place has quite a good name in the doctoring trade, I’m told. And however few jobs there are, maybe he’ll be contented with a nice ordinary job as a very average GP somewhere, since he didn’t put in the ten years plus of studying to prepare him for it.’

  She was silent for a whi
le and then said unwillingly, ‘OK, I guess it’s just I don’t want it to be him. There’s something so, so —’

  ‘I know. Nice and vulnerable about him. Forget it. Let’s move on to the next. What’s in it for Klein?’

  ‘Money,’ George said promptly. ‘And professional disgrace. If he’s been using patients at St Dymphna’s as experimental material without the proper consents and protocols, then he’ll do anything to hide that fact. I believe the pharmaceutical people can provide a fortune for anyone who looks as though they’re going to produce a really new drug. He’s got a lot to lose if anyone spots him in some sort of misdemeanour. The big drugs people are very smart cookies —they won’t go anywhere near anything that’s dubious. He’d be out without a hope of a future with them if he was discovered, and he’s put something like ten years into this research of his, remember. It’s a major investment.’

  ‘What about Llewellyn?’ Gus said. ‘You were determined to include her.’

  ‘The same,’ George said. ‘Her investment in her work is just as big. You’ve no idea what they put themselves through, these researchers. They live on a corn cob and a dish o’ grits for years, they work all the hours there are, and at the end of it, what do they get? Either they hit the really big time and live high on the hog for the rest of their lives, or they just sink without trace, as someone else beats them in the search for whatever it is. For every Salk or Pincus who got there first with polio vaccine or the Pill, there were umpteen others who were left gasping on the beach. So she’s in the same position as Klein.’

  ‘And Zack.’

  She thought about that carefully. ‘Well, yes,’ she said at length. ‘I guess, yes. But you said —’

  ‘I know I did. I’ve investigated him and everything about him checks out. He’s bright to the point of being brilliant, according to the people at home in Canada. They’re convinced he’ll be a major high-flyer and —’

  ‘He talks about getting a Nobel,’ George said unhappily.