Kingsley's Touch

by John Collee

  Supporting himself on the railings, he squinted at the black tenements which rose on either side but recognized no landmark. The slums extended outwards in every direction, a dark web of streets and side streets bearing little relation to any conceivable street plan. Kingsley chose a direction at random and set off down it, making a conscious effort to avoid colliding with the wall on his left. The next intersection he reached was no more recognizable than the first. Kingsley chose another street and bowled down it, zigzagging between the irregularly spaced pools of lamplight. He arrived at a crippled phone box and leant against it to regain his breath. The endless ramifications of the black maze seemed to multiply on every side.

  'Dhangi,' he muttered as he set off again.

  A car appeared out of nowhere in a blast of light and deafening noise. He felt his way around the front of the bonnet. A door opened and someone shouted an obscenity at him, then it was gone and Kingsley was running, stumbling down a narrow black alley, his eyes fixed on the concentric haloes of a distant light. The caustic air seemed to condense at the back of his throat and drip into his chest. He kept his weight forwards and his feet moved automatically beneath him. 'Dhangi, Dhangi,' they repeated on the cobbles.

  He emerged into an octagonal courtyard. The single white street lamp at its centre was surrounded by a few vandalized saplings. Kingsley stumbled across and hung exhausted against it. 'Dhangi,' he mumbled, then, raising his head, 'Dhangi!' he shouted at the vacant sky. His words rebounded from the blinded buildings on every side. The lamp-post seemed to sway and topple like the mast of a sinking ship. 'Dhangi!' he called again, clinging to it grimly. 'Can you hear me? . . . You win! . . . OK? . . . I need you . . . I believe you!'

  He listened for a reply but heard only echoes of his own voice. Gradually the lamp-post righted itself, the alcohol momentarily deserted him and he cradled his fuddled, aching head in his hands.

  When, in the small grey hours, he finally found his car, there was an ugly orange scratch running down one side and the wing mirror had been bent sideways. Kingsley climbed in painfully and drove home in a dream. He still had thirteen days.

  At the hospital he recognized that attitudes towards him were changing. William, the porter, would give him a solemn nod as he entered and left. Jennings seemed keen to take over more and more of the operating responsibility. McReady seldom joked with him and patients who once knew him well now regarded him with uncertain deference.

  November gathered momentum.

  Now they rarely talked over breakfast. Outside, the front garden was almost naked; just a few limp leaves remained on the chestnut tree, like the flags of a defeated army. Sheila picked at a bowl of cornflakes. Her face was thinner. She looked up and met her husband's eyes, pulled the dressing-gown tighter and leant forwards. Her eyes were still puffy from sleep and her hair fell over her forehead. She pushed it back with one hand.

  'I got my appointment yesterday. Five days.'

  'That's good.' His words had the shallow, evasive joviality of an outgoing politician. She noticed how, over the past week, the area around his eyes had become blotched and lined.

  'You've got a mark on your collar.'

  Kingsley fingered it idly. He left for work without changing it. That afternoon there was a note from Rhona on his desk:

  ‘MR CRANLEY CALLED. DR MUKESH’S LOCUM LEFT YESTERDAY. MUKESH NOT BACK FROM STUDY LEAVE. CAN’T CONTACT HIM AT HOME. HAVE RUNG PERSONNEL.'

  The ultimate irony. Mukesh late back from leave, depriving them of a pathologist in the immediate future. He crumpled the note and returned to the more pressing issue. Five days. He rang up the Infirmary and caught Tony Cullen between operations. Cullen had been trying to contact him.

  'Bit of bad news, Alistair. The review X-ray shows a perceptible increase in the size of Sheila's tumour. It's growing faster than I anticipated. Not to worry though. She's on the list for Tuesday.'

  'I'm sorry, Tony, it's not going to be long enough.'

  There was a stupefied silence, then – 'What do you mean, not long enough?'

  'I want you to postpone the operation again.'

  'For Jesus' sake Alistair, you can't be serious. The woman's in increasing pain. She's already drugged to the eyelids to no effect. You're asking me to sit back and wait for that tumour to kill her.'

  'Just put it off, Tony.'

  'Give me one good reason.'

  'Because I ask you.'

  'You've got to be mad. Have you asked Sheila what she wants?'

  'She'll go along with me.'

  'Just wait . . . just wait a minute. I don't know if you understand the situation. This is a highly malignant tumour. I'm losing time every day.'

  'My time,' said Kingsley.

  'It's not your bloody time. The woman's putting up with the pain just to make you feel better. To what end? Nothing. You both look like ghosts. Sheila being poisoned and you happily banging nails into her coffin . . . Alistair, are you still there?'

  'Yes, I'm still here.'

  'The longer you wait the less chance she has of living. That's hard fact.'

  Kingsley considered that. Another hard fact presented itself: not having found Dhangi to date he was unlikely to come across him in the next few weeks.

  Cullen interrupted the silence.

  'She'll come in Monday for a pre-op workup – I'll operate Wednesday. OK?'

  'OK,' he said.

  In front of the social security the road widened into a triangle of cobblestones, bounded on one side by the wrestling hall and on another by the street-level harbour water. There was a long wooden bench where the alcoholics sat, their backs to the harbour. It was a cold day but they were still there, an ill-fitting collection of coats and half mitts. They swigged from a collection of bottles, largely meths in milk. Between drinks they would talk in short, ponderous exchanges, cough, and watch the social security. Occasionally one would toss a bottle over his head, now arcing through the crystal air to fall with a muffled splash into the dead harbour waters. The ripples spread outwards, continuing, still perceptible, to the warehouse opposite. They spread over the flat black waters, and five minutes later the ripples were gone, only the half-submerged neck of one more bottle gaping from the water like a feeding bird.

  Just below the bridge something disturbed the sweep of the spreading wave – a smooth, round object about the size of a half-submerged melon. A dock worker saw it as he crossed the bridge. Something in the shape of this floater made him stop and take a second look. It was not a melon, nor even a football. Looking into the murky water he realized with a sudden horror that the tatty fronding from its upper surface might conceivably be human hair.

  By lunchtime a line of pedestrians had strung out in a broken necklace along the edge of the dock. They sat on the bollards, stood champing by the railings and leaned, one foot cocked backwards, against the wall of the social security. The traffic had been diverted and the bridge was shut off by police barricades. Two police cars had arranged themselves within the enclosures. The frogmen stood around stamping their feet as the winch was set up on the balustrade, then both lowered themselves slowly into the water.

  Even from a distance the object they fished out of the harbour was distinguishable as a man's corpse, or at least part of a man's corpse. The body had been somehow severed in a crude diagonal line from one armpit to the opposite groin. The frogmen had attached a rope around its middle. Now, as they raised it on the winch, the torso dipped abruptly, head down, arms extended. A ripple of disgust spread round the spectators. Water ran from the ears and the mouth and the reddened, patchy hair. When they swung it on to the bridge one of the men posted to receive it turned away; the other cupped a hand over his nose and mouth. Close to, what skin that remained was mottled purple and yellow; the clothes had largely rotted away, as had the hair and eyes. The lopsided mouth gaped open, locked solid.

  The corpse was transported for forensic examination at the Infirmary. From the dental pattern they identified it conclusively as that of
Chandra Mukesh.

  Chapter 14

  There was a rolled-up newspaper protruding from the pocket of Cairney's sheepskin coat. As he sat down opposite Kingsley he took it out and put it on the desk between them. During their interview two uniformed policemen walked past his office window. The hospital was alive with blue uniforms. In the mortuary two policemen were grilling Cranley on Mukesh's movements prior to his disappearance. Cranley's sparse responses to their questions fell between the sucking and clattering of his false teeth. Cranley had seen a lot of death and mutilation, but the reports of the state of Mukesh's body had affected him. Now he didn't want to talk about it. He regarded a lot of the questioning from police and reporters alike as a desecration.

  Kingsley, similarly, had little to offer. He felt embarrassed by his ignorance of Mukesh. It highlighted how, over the past few weeks, he had perhaps been neglecting his duties as chief consultant. And there was a deeper, less tangible discomfort: an immediate sense of his own guilt.

  Inspector Cairns had treated the whole thing with his customary buoyancy.

  'Appreciate your help, Mr Kingsley.' He slotted the black leather notebook back into his inside pocket. 'Even the little pieces count – like cuisenaire rods. Did you ever have them? No? Well, nice seeing you again.'

  He made as if to go, then turned back, took the newspaper, and held up the front page.

  CANCER PIONEER IN BRUTAL MURDER SCARE - Roland Spears reports.

  'If you have to speak to Mukesh's relatives again, I'd play this kind of thing down. No real reason to suspect anything sinister. Personally, I think the fellow might just have had a few drinks, fallen in the harbour, then got caught in the mechanism of the swing bridge. It happens. We had one of those five years ago, remember?'

  'Yes, I do.'

  'Good. I think that should be the official line.' He turned to the door. As he reached the handle he turned back once more. 'D'you ever find that whatsisname, that other pathologist, the chap who'd been exposed to that virus?'

  'No, I never did.'

  Cairney turned up one corner of his mouth. 'Pity,' he remarked, 'you could probably use him now.'

  Kingsley spent the weekend at home digging the garden, working around the borders, straining and wrestling with the cold, black earth. The work was therapy, mindless. The shock of Mukesh's death became absorbed into the crushed despondency with which he regarded his lost chance with Dhangi, the inevitability of Sheila's operation and the loss of the personal qualities on which his self-esteem was founded. In his pursuit of Dhangi he had burnt all the sacraments of his upbringing – personal dignity, emotional restraint and professional objectivity. Now, without Dhangi, he as a Faust who had sold his soul and been given nothing in exchange.

  Tuesday morning: Sheila had been admitted the day before for a transfusion of blood and platelets. Kingsley lay in bed until six-thirty, then dressed and made himself some cornflakes and toast. The whole procedure, the placing of the cup in saucer, the assimilation of milk and coffee, and sugar, the washing of the few dishes and the sweeping of the crumbs from the table, seemed infinitely small and tedious.

  He was early this morning and the roads were even quieter than usual. He switched on the radio, to some amiable Radio Forth presenter who could drown out the outside world with his fatuous chatter. A rash of weed was breaking the surface of Blackford pond. The hill behind lay in a damp, black eiderdown of mist and foliage. He negotiated the new by-pass round the university precinct and passed the Infirmary, heavily aware of Sheila's presence there, like the house of an ex-lover. Descending to the town centre the grey roofscape stretched northwards. A series of Georgian boulevards took him to the top of the long, straight drag northwards. It narrowed as he progressed downhill towards the estuary; the fine sandstone office blocks were crowded out by cheap fronted shops.

  He had become accustomed to the tricks played on him by his sense of hope and did not allow himself to be affected by the figure loitering outside the main entrance to the Douglas Calder. The man stood quite still with his hands limp by his sides, as Dhangi had stood. In the morning twilight his features were an indistinct blur.

  Kingsley parked, took his briefcase and crossed the quadrangle. The face looked up. Kingsley drew closer. His intestines wormed into his chest.

  'You have a vacancy.' Dhangi's voice was even, betraying neither surprise nor smugness. Kingsley walked forwards. The hand which he held out to shake was trembling uncontrollably. Their palms touched. Dhangi's cold skin had the texture of candle wax. His haunted features were suddenly familiar. But when Kingsley caught sight, beyond Dhangi's shoulder, of his own reflection in the glass of the inner door, he barely recognized the drawn, pale mask which stared back at him.

  Chapter 15

  'I'll no work with him.'

  Kingsley took his hand from his forehead. 'Take a seat, Mr Cranley.' Kingsley gestured to the vacant office chair. Cranley declined. The black suit hung from his shoulders as if from a coat hanger. His clenched hands unconsciously adopted the military configuration – thumbs foremost.

  'Is there some specific reason why you dislike the man?'

  Cranley said nothing, only continued to stare at a point two inches above Kingsley's head. It seemed to him that Dhangi's appointment was conclusive evidence of Kingsley' s moral and mental collapse. 'He's no business here.'

  'Come on now, Mr Cranley. Dr Dhangi has fine credentials. He's an experienced pathologist. He's worked . . .'

  'The police are after him.'

  'The police have questioned him, as they've questioned all of us, in connection with Dr Mukesh's accident. Dr Dhangi himself is above suspicion. He worked closely with the police during his appointment in Leeds. He's a good man, very bright. He was among the pathologists on one of the Ripper cases down there.'

  'Aye, Mukesh was ripped.'

  'Look, Mr Cranley. I know you've been with the hospital for a fair time.'

  'Twenty-six years,' said Cranley.

  'I can understand that you feel you should have some say in what goes on in the mortuary.'

  'I've never asked much, sir.'

  'I know that, I know that, Mr Cranley.' Kingsley searched the panelled walls for inspiration. The pegboard covered in printed sheets, the rota list, the year planner, the printed fire regulations.

  His gaze returned to Cranley's bony fists.

  'I realize,' Kingsley looked at his own fingernails, 'I realize that Dr Dhangi may appear rather . . . neurotic. His behaviour is not, perhaps, instantly endearing . . . I know that he may not be your first choice of a workmate. But he does have a lot to contribute to the hospital . . . You'll eventually get on fine together. If Dr Dhangi appears at first rather uncommunicative, he'll still appreciate your expert advice on some aspects of dissection.' Kingsley smiled. Cranley finally abandoned the pretence of respect.

  'The only expert advice that bugger will get from me . . .'

  Rhona knocked and entered.

  'Just leave these on the table, thanks Rhona.'

  She deposited the letters in front of him. Cranley turned to watch the door snib shut. 'It's either him or me, sir.'

  'I'm sorry, Mr Cranley.'

  'Twenty-six years,' said Cranley.

  'I don't want to lose you, Mr Cranley. You're a fine assistant. We all know that. You're necessary here.'

  'But not as necessary as yon Hindoo bugger – is that it, sir?'

  'Listen, Mr Cranley. I don't expect you to understand my motives, but for reasons of my own I need to employ this man Dhangi, if only short term.'

  'How short term?'

  'I can't say that. I can only ask you to try and tolerate him for as long as necessary.'

  'I won't,' said Cranley abruptly, then his natural deference to rank won over his righteous indignation. He looked down at his knuckles, and removed them from Kingsley's desk, then wiped the green leather with the tips of his fingers. 'I'll not do it, sir. I'm sorry.'

  'I don't know why you're afraid of him, Mr Cranley.'


  Cranley's eyes came to focus directly on Kingsley's, bright as knives.

  'I'm not afraid of that man.'

  'Sorry, Mr Cranley, that wasn't intended as an insult.'

  'Well, I take it as one, sir.'

  'I apologize, Mr Cranley.'

  Cranley rubbed at his game leg. He had been called a coward once before. 'I'm not afraid of him,' he repeated.

  Kingsley was aware that he was pressing on a raw wound but he was too tired for diplomacy. 'So you'll stay with us?'

  The thick, brown veins stood out from Cranley's neck.

  'If he gives trouble he'll be out.'

  'If he gives trouble I'll hold myself personally responsible.' Cranley looked at him directly once more. With that, Kingsley's words became a promise. Cranley turned and left.

  When he had gone, Kingsley leant back in the leather upholstered chair and pressed his own temples. He was already experiencing the sensations Dhangi's first appearance within the hospital had produced – a rawness of the muscles of his arms and legs. Once these symptoms had debilitated him. Now they were not unpleasant, almost restoring. What had worked in him then was working now.