Fenton's winter

by Ken McClure

  "Oh my goodness," said Jenny in a dizzy blonde voice, "My grommet sprocket! Whatever shall I do?"

  "Well, yer gonna need a new one, and that's fifty nicker for a start. An' if yer globbin shaft's gone as well, that's another fifty, and then there's me time…"

  "Good gracious I didn't realise it was so serious, however can I pay you? I'm only a poor little nurse…" Jenny rubbed her hand gently up and down Fenton's leg.

  "Well missus…I think we can come to some arrangement. Steady! I'll fall off this ladder."

  Jenny paid no attention. She slid her hand into Fenton's crotch. "Heavens, what's this?" crooned the dizzy blonde voice, "Could this be the globbin shaft? Seems to be in excellent condition." She started to pull down Fenton's zip.

  "Jenny, for God's sake…"

  FOUR

  The following morning brought yet more wind and rain and Fenton, who had harboured a lifelong hatred of wind, found his patience strained to the limit. "Will it never let up!" he growled as he opened the curtains to look on wet roofs and whirling chimney pots. "Another wrestling match with the bike."

  Jenny was about to point out the merits of four wheeled transport but then thought better of it for there was no need, she reasoned. She looked at the black sky. Another couple of weeks of this and it could be a nice little Ford by the Spring.

  Fenton arrived at the lab with water running off the front of his leathers like a mountain stream. The letter box in the heavy front door of the lab rattled in the wind as he stood in the outer hall peeling them off with hands that had gone numb with cold. He hung them up as best he could and opened the inner glass door, blowing his fingers in an attempt to restore circulation.

  "And Jack the shepherd blows his nail…" said Ian Ferguson.

  "Pardon?"

  "Shakespeare," said Ferguson.

  "Oh," said Fenton, following him into the common room where he found Alex Ross speaking to Mary Tyler.

  Mary Tyler had previously been employed on a part time basis in the department but had been coerced back into working full time by Charles Tyson since the demise of Neil Munro and Susan Daniels. "Good morning Mary, back to getting up early in the morning eh?" Mary Tyler replied that, with three young children, she was always up early. Fenton poured himself some coffee and warmed his fingers on the mug.

  Charles Tyson arrived, brushing the rain from the shoulders of his overcoat as he put his head round the common room door. He asked that Fenton go up to see him when he was ready. Fenton allowed Tyson enough time to reach his office and take off his wet things before joining him. He waited patiently while the consultant organised his papers and settled into the seat behind his desk. "It's about the Saxon report," said Tyson still rearranging piles of paper.

  "I left it on your desk," said Fenton.

  "The sterilising records are missing from it."

  "What sterilising records?" asked Fenton.

  "We have to include details of how we sterilised the plastic samplers for the machine."

  "I didn't find any records among Neil's things."

  "Damn. He must have been aware of the fact."

  "Perhaps they are still down at the Sterile Supply Department?" suggested Fenton.

  "Would you check and let me know?"

  Fenton said that he would, adding that he was just about to go up to the administration block anyway. He would call in to see Sister Kincaid on his way back. "Nigel Saxon told me that they were confident of getting a license for their machine by the end of the month," he said.

  "I heard that too," said Tyson. "And from the number of phone calls I've been getting from the Scottish Office about this damned report I don't think he is being overly optimistic. All the stops have been pulled out for Saxon.

  "Friends in high places?"

  Tyson grunted.

  "It's funny when you think about it," said Fenton.

  "What is?"

  "The Scottish Office with their trouser legs rolled up."

  Tyson smiled but did not say anything.

  Fenton saw from a ground floor window that the rain had slackened off and decided to sprint up to the main hospital without changing out of his lab coat. He ran up the drive and took the stone steps three at a time to reach the shelter of the main entrance. A domestic, dressed in green overalls, was polishing a brass plaque set in the wood panelling, placed there in remembrance of some long forgotten names. The woman looked down at his feet and the muddy prints he had just made on the mosaic floor. "Sorry," he said. The woman shook her head and returned to her polishing without comment. A nurse was having an argument over laundry baskets with a porter as he passed along the main corridor.

  "I'm telling you! Ward ten gets…" The voices trailed off behind Fenton and merged with new sounds, clangs from ward kitchens, children's yells, hurrying feet. He reached Jenny's ward just as she was crossing the corridor with a steel tray in her hand.

  "What brings you out of your ivory tower?" she asked.

  Fenton told her that he was on his way to the administration block to sort out some misunderstanding over service contracts taken out on lab equipment.

  "What's the problem?" asked Jenny.

  "Archaic equipment and no money to replace it."

  "So what's new? Do you have time for a cup of tea?"

  "A quick one."

  Fenton was sipping his tea in the ward side room when a student nurse came in looking ashen faced. Jenny put down her cup and got to her feet. "What's the matter?" she asked.

  Another nurse came into the room. "It's Belle Wilson," she said, "She's dead. I think she killed herself."

  "The ward maid," said Jenny in answer to Fenton's look. They followed the second nurse next door to the sluice room where a small, middle aged woman, dressed in green overalls, was lying slumped over one of the large white porcelain sinks. Her eyes were wide and lifeless, her right arm dangled limply in the sink in a pool of red.

  "She cut her wrist," said the nurse.

  Jenny felt for a pulse in the woman's neck but knew that it was useless. She was quite dead.

  Fenton stared at the marble white face under the crop of recently dyed red hair and thought that she looked like a clown lying over a theatrical basket.

  "I'll phone the front office," said Jenny quietly.

  Fenton was left alone in the room. He looked more closely at the woman's wrist. There was something odd about it. He looked even closer. The cut was not in her wrist at all. It was in the palm of her hand! He went to find the nurse who had discovered her and asked, "What was Belle Wilson doing before she cut herself?"

  The nurse was taken aback, "I'm not sure," she stammered.

  "Think!" said Fenton.

  "Eer…eer…Cleaning vases. I remember now Staff Nurse asked her to wash out the flower vases."

  "Where?" asked Fenton looking about him. "In here?"

  "Next door," said the nurse, "In the broom cupboard."

  "Show me."

  Fenton followed the nurse into a small, dark, wood panelled room that smelt strongly of Lysol. His foot hit noisily off a metal bucket before the nurse had had time to find the light switch behind a forest of brush and mop handles. They saw the broken glass on the floor. Fenton knelt down to gather the pieces.

  "She must have dropped one," said the nurse, still puzzled at Fenton's behaviour.

  "Any more bits?" asked Fenton.

  "There by the sink."

  Fenton picked up a jagged piece of glass from the draining board and saw the red stains on it. He swore under his breath.

  "I don't understand," said the nurse.

  Belle Wilson cut herself accidentally on the broken vase and bled to death from a cut on her palm. She didn't deliberately cut her own wrist. She was murdered. She's another victim of that bloody lunatic."

  Fenton found Jenny in the sluice room and told her what he had discovered. She approached the body and bent over the sink to examine the dead woman's hand. She could now see that, as Fenton had said, the river of red emanated from a
deep wound on her palm, not her wrist. "Look at the blood in the sink," said Fenton.

  "What about it?"

  "It's still liquid. It hasn't clotted."

  The police were on the scene quickly, being already on hospital premises with a mobile incident room that had been parked behind the administration block since the death of Neil Munro. Fenton called Tyson at the lab to say that he was going to be delayed and why. He was still on the telephone when Inspector Jamieson came into the duty room and found him there. He waited till Fenton had put down the receiver then continued to look at him without saying anything. Fenton could almost hear his mind working.

  "Well, well, Mr Fenton," growled Jamieson, "A bit out of our way aren't we?"

  "I was just passing," said Fenton limply.

  It was another forty minutes before Fenton was allowed to leave the ward and continue on up to the management offices, an errand that he now had little patience for, knowing how far behind with his work he was slipping.

  Fenton was waiting for a clerk to return with the relevant file when Nigel Saxon appeared at his elbow and read the frustration in his face. "Trouble old boy?"

  Fenton told him what the problem was. Saxon was less than sympathetic. "I love hearing about problems with our competitors. Now, if you were to buy a Saxon Analyser…"

  "This is the National Health Service," said Fenton by way of an answer.

  "What on earth is going on?" asked Saxon noticing people scurrying about. Fenton told him.

  "Another one? Dear God."

  Fenton asked Saxon what he was doing there.

  "Lunch with the health board, their way of saying thank-you for the disposables." said Saxon.

  "Bon appetit," said Fenton.

  The clerk returned with the service contract file and Fenton flicked through the pages to find the relevant section with Saxon looking over his shoulder. "Damnation," he said softly, "The company are right; there's a clause excluding the main transformer board. We'll have to pay."

  Two orderlies were loading a steriliser with goods taken from a metal trolley as Fenton entered the Central Sterile Supply Department. They lined up the heavy cage with the rails on the floor of the chamber and slid it slowly inside, taking care that nothing tumbled off. On the other side of the room three women, wearing white overalls and hair nets, were sifting through a massive pile of forceps, wrapping each pair individually and placing them in an assembly tray. Fenton walked over to them. "Sister Kincaid?"

  "In her office," said one of the women, pointing with the instruments she held in her hand.

  Moira Kincaid looked up from her desk as Fenton's shadow crossed the glass panel on her door. She motioned him to enter and asked to what she owed the honour of a visit. Fenton told her what he was looking for and got a positive reaction. "They are here," said Moira Kincaid. She opened her desk drawer and withdrew a pink cardboard folder. "I didn't know what was to happen to them but they are all in here." Fenton flicked through the papers and said, "This seems to be what's required."

  "They are just simple record sheets of the sterilising cycles used for Dr Munro's samplers. They are all the same, just the standard run."

  "Pieces of paper to you and I Sister," said Fenton, "But a career to some others not a million miles from here." He was still angry about a contract exclusion that he felt the administrators should have picked up on at the time of signing. Through the glass panel he saw a porter come into the sterilising bay and speak to one of the orderlies. Shortly afterwards the orderly burst into the office. "Have you heard Sister? There's been another murder!"

  Moira Kincaid looked at Fenton who nodded and said, "A maid in ward twelve."

  As he left the office and closed the door behind him Fenton heard a warning buzzer sound and the ventilation fans turn on. He paused to watch the orderlies he had seen earlier lower their face visors and pull on heavy gauntlets. They manoeuvred a trolley into position and the door to one of the autoclaves swung open letting steam fill the white tiled area like a Turkish bath before the fans started to deal with it. They locked their trolley on to the guide rails and pulled out the load cage, grunting with the effort as one of the wheels refused to engage properly. Fenton saw the number above the autoclave and realised that this was the steriliser that had been used in Neil Munro's murder. He shivered involuntarily at the thought. Even with its huge mouth open and its insides empty the shiny steel cavern seemed full of menace. Just a machine, he reasoned. It had no mind of its own. It was only obeying orders but whose orders? That was the question.

  Fenton walked out through the swing doors and climbed the stairs to ground level wondering just what it was about the Sterile Supply Department that he disliked so intensely. As he reached the top of the stairs he realised what it was; it didn't have any windows. It was situated in a basement and lit entirely by artificial light, white fluorescent light that made everyone look sickly pale.

  Charles Tyson was taking news of the latest death badly. Fenton thought that he had never seen him look so ill and was very much aware of the change that had come over Tyson since the start of the killings; the man had aged quite visibly. The pastel shirts that he favoured now seemed several collar sizes too large and a universal greyness had descended on him, making even the stubble shadow on his face seem grey against the winter pallor of his skin. Fenton had begun to wonder whether or not the strain was the only reason for the change or whether there might be some underlying clinical reason for it.

  Fenton respected Tyson. He did not know if he liked him for the truth was that he hardly knew the man. He doubted whether anyone did for Tyson was a very private person. As head of department he was excellent but that was the only role anyone had ever seen him play. Neil Munro had told him once that Tyson had served in the army and had seen active service in Korea but that and the fact that he was not married was about the sum total of his knowledge of the man.

  "Seems fine," said Tyson looking through the folder that Fenton had brought him. Fenton told him about the problem with the service contract. "How much is it going to cost?"

  "Seven hundred pounds."

  "All because somebody in the office didn't read the small print. This will practically wipe out all the benefit the hospital gained from the free supply of plastic disposables from Saxon Medical," said Tyson shaking his head.

  "You could kick up hell at the next board meeting," said Fenton.

  Tyson shook his head again and said, "No, they would only close ranks. Besides I don't want to antagonise the management at the moment. I was thinking of trying for one of these new analysers for the lab. Rumour has it that there's some charity money up for grabs."

  "What are the chances?" asked Fenton.

  "Who knows? Actually, I was thinking it might strengthen our case if we could reuse the plastic samplers. They work out quite expensive if we have to throw them away each time."

  "I could run some tests," suggested Fenton.

  "You have enough on your plate at the moment," said Tyson.

  "It shouldn't take long," said Fenton I could get the lab staff to volunteer a few drops of blood, run the samples through the analyser, autoclave the samplers a few times then re-run the samples. Compare the values before and after sterilising?"

  "If you really think you could manage?" said Tyson thoughtfully.

  "No problem," said Fenton.

  It was late in the afternoon, as Fenton was trying to cajole Mary Tyler into providing a blood sample for the new tests, that Nigel Saxon came into the lab to collect a copy of the final report on the Blood Analyser. "Don't give into him Mary whatever he's after," joked Saxon. "Now, if you would care to have dinner with me this evening…"

  "I'm a respectable married woman," protested Mary Tyler.

  "They're always the worst," grinned Saxon.

  "As you are here Nigel…" said Fenton in a tone of voice that put Saxon on the defensive.”What are you after?" he asked suspiciously.

  "Your blood," said Fenton. "Quite literally." He told Sa
xon that he was collecting blood samples from 'volunteers' to run some new tests on the Saxon Analyser. It could even lead to a sale, he confided. Saxon agreed as did Mary Tyler, Ian Ferguson, Alex Ross and four of the others.

  "When?" asked Saxon.

  "Before you leave if that's all right?" said Fenton. Saxon said that it was but seemed a bit dubious about the whole business. He came back after collecting the report from Charles Tyson and was led into a small side room by Fenton. "Slip off your jacket and roll up your sleeve." Saxon did as he was bid and sat down with his arms on the table in front of him. He looked nervous.

  Fenton finished rummaging in a drawer and joined Saxon at the table holding a piece of rubber tubing in his hand. "I'll just wrap this around your upper arm," he said. "Perhaps you could hold it there?" Saxon reached across and held the tubing in place while Fenton slapped the inside of his arm to make the veins stand out. He slipped a sterile needle on to the end of a disposable ten ml. syringe, swabbed the exposed area of Saxon's arm with an alcohol impregnated swab and pushed the needle smoothly into the vein. Dark red blood flooded into the syringe until it had reached the ten ml. mark then Fenton withdrew it and pressed another alcohol impregnated swab over the site of entry. "Just hold that there for a moment," he said to Saxon.

  With the sample safely in its container and the container in the fridge Fenton held Saxon's jacket for him while he put it back on. Saxon said, "I hope my father appreciates what I do for our company!"

  He suffixed the remark with a loud laugh but Fenton noticed the beads of sweat along Saxon's forehead. He really had been afraid.

  It was nearly a quarter past seven when Fenton finally got through with his day's work. Thinking that he was the last one left in the lab he was surprised to see a light on under one of the doors when he came downstairs. It made him feel a little uneasy. He crossed the hall quietly and listened outside the door for a few seconds. There was no sound from inside. He opened the door cautiously and looked in startling Alex Ross who had been sitting writing. "Good God, you nearly gave me a heart attack," said Ross.