Chameleon

EIGHT

It was later than he had intended when the man reached the basement flat. He had hoped to be out on the streets that evening but circumstances and the meddling of outsiders had decreed that he had other things to do first. He tried to salvage some comfort from the thought that at least, he would be indoors and out of the rain. It had been raining heavily for the past six hours and the streets were flooding as storm drains gradually became overloaded. He put down his umbrella and shook the worst of the rain from it before opening and closing it quickly several times to clear away some more. It made the sound of a flight of crows taking of in the darkness.

Before he took off his coat the man knelt down in front of an old gas fire and succeeded in lighting it with the third match. The blue flames were interspersed with fans of yellow where the radiants had cracked over the years and the hearth was littered with spent matches. After warming his hands for a moment he hung up his coat on the back of the door and donned his apron, mask and gloves. He switched on the lamp above his work bench. It was a bit early for the next phase of the project but not impossible, he decided. He brought out a series of small glass vials from the fridge and made a start.

As the hours passed and everything went according to plan he started to relax a little. He was under pressure but that just added to the excitement. The greater the danger the greater the thrill. What idiots people were. But he mustn't become complacent, he cautioned himself. If the second phase was going well then he should be thinking ahead to the third and even the fourth. And then there was the problem of the meddler from outside. A permanent solution might have to be found for him soon but there was no immediate need for action. He mustn't rush at things. He would give the matter some thought. He got up from the bench and started to put everything away again.

He had taken off his protective clothing and rolled up his sleeves before washing his hands and forearms thoroughly when a knock at the door interrupted him. He froze at the sound and remained absolutely silent as his heartbeat quickened. A beaker of water which was still simmering above the blue flame of a Bunsen burner on his work bench sounded uncommonly loud. He hadn't made any mistakes up till now, he told himself. There was no need to panic. It couldn't possibly be the police. There had to be some perfectly innocent explanation.

Perhaps, if he remained quiet and didn't answer the door, whoever it was would go away. He stared at the boiling water and wondered if it could be heard outside the door as the glass beaker jumped again on its gauze support as the water bubbled inside it. Thirty seconds passed before the knock came again and the man swallowed. His mouth had gone dry with nerves but there was still no need to panic, he told himself. He would answer the door. There had to be a perfectly simple explanation for who was there and why.

He removed the plug from the wash-hand basin and closed the bathroom door behind him as he came out. He took a quick look around the room to ensure that nothing had been left lying around. A box of surgical gloves was still sitting there on the table. He moved them out of sight and walked slowly towards the door. He stopped half way and returned to the simmering beaker of water. He removed a jar of instant coffee from a cupboard above the sink and stood it beside the beaker to create a motive for the boiling water. He opened the door to find a woman standing there.

'I'm so sorry to bother you at this late hour but I saw your light on and it» s the only one in the street,' she said.

'Yes?' answered the man non-committally.

'My car has let me down and the phone box on the corner has been vandalised. I wonder if I might possibly use your phone?'

The man stared at her silently for a moment looking for signs of deceit. Had this bitch been sent for a reason? Was she here to trap him? She had all the signs. Red lips, white teeth, large breasts. Her eyes were blue and they were smiling at him, taunting him, daring him to smile back. He resisted knowing that any sign of weakness on his part would only escalate her efforts to ensnare him. He could smell her scent. He stiffened as he noticed the swelling on her stomach. She was flaunting her past but he was ready. 'Of course,' he said. 'Come in.'

The woman entered and the man closed the door behind her, shutting out the sound of the rain.

'Where…?' began the woman.

The man pointed to the table where the telephone sat and the woman smiled and brushed lightly past him. He stiffened as her arm made contact with him on the way past. God, she was good this one, much more subtle than the whores but just as evil. He felt the hardness begin and swallowed as she picked up the receiver. Her back was to him. He could see the line of her underwear through the material of her skirt where it stretched across her buttocks. She moved her weight to the other foot and turned to smile at him while she waited for the number to ring through. The smile faltered a little when he did not return it and she turned to face the wall again.

The bitch was beginning to suspect that he was on to her little game and that pleased him. He wanted her to know. He wanted her to be afraid. He walked over to where the beaker of water was simmering.

'Darling? It's me. The bloody car's packed in and I…'

The woman's voice changed to a scream as a cascade of boiling water hit the back of her neck. She dropped the phone and slumped to her knees with her hands behind her head, trying to bury her face between her thighs in a futile attempt to escape the agony. She sucked in air in great gulps but found it impossible to scream again. Shock had paralysed her larynx. Too late she tried to cover her face as another container was emptied over her. This time it was cold but within seconds it had turned to fire and acid fumes filled her nostrils. Her eyes became burning embers as hitherto undreamed of levels of pain became reality. Her previously unblemished skin started to peel and smoulder. Her lips swelled to twice their normal size and her blistered tongue grew too large for her mouth. She whimpered like a wounded animal as she crawled around the floor looking blindly for a way out of the nightmare.

The man replaced the dangling receiver with its distantly calling voice and smiled thinly for the first time. 'Now I can see what you really look like,' he hissed. 'Now that the powder and the paint have gone I can see the real you. You're ugly! Evil! He went to the bathroom and came back wearing his apron and carrying his instruments.

The floor was awash with blood and the man now had a corpse to dispose of before morning. Easier said than done. If he could reduce the cadaver to packages of manageable size his options would be wider. The immediate problem lay in the fact that he did not have a saw in the flat. He had knives that would deal with flesh and sinew but not with bones. He could not risk leaving the apartment to go fetch one; he would have to break the bones instead.

The first leg was the worst. He did not know how much pressure to apply and consequently needed three or four attempts before making the break. He changed his technique and pressed a block of wood into service as a bridge, placing each limb in turn on the bridge so that a sharp blow from the heel of his right foot made a clean snap.

Sweat was running off him by the time he had the body cut and packed into six plastic sacks. The next question was what to do with them. Burial in some out of the way place was the obvious thing but just as he had no call to keep a saw in the basement likewise he had no reason to have a spade. He had no way of digging a hole even if he could think of a good lonely spot. He considered the alternatives of a river or a canal perhaps but both had their drawbacks.

Contracting noises were coming from the gas fire which he had switched off. He looked at the scorch marks on the old radiants and thought, Fire! That would be best solution of all, not a domestic fireplace but a furnace or better still, an incinerator.

Lots of places had incinerators but only two kinds of establishment had incinerators where the discovery of human bones would not cause an immediate outcry. Crematoria and, much more conveniently, hospitals!

First he would have to get his car. He did not normally bring his car to the flat, preferring the anonymity that public transport afforded him. Cars had numbers attached to them. A sudden icicle of fear climbed the man's spine. The woman had had a car! That was why she had come to the door in the first place! The police would be looking for her car! Her husband would have contacted them after her phone call had been cut off. How could he have been so stupid as to overlook the car? The woman's words came back to him, 'the only light in the street'.

The man almost sprinted over to the door and switched the light off. He stood in the darkness, his breathing made uneven with threatening panic. Think! he commanded himself. Don't panic. Think! The police did not routinely patrol the street outside. There was an excellent chance that neither they nor anyone else would have had reason to come into the street and across the car but he would have to move it. It was too close for comfort. His next thought was that he couldn't. It had broken down!

Once again the man had to get a grip on himself as he felt circumstances close in on him. There was a chance that the problem with the car was associated with all the rain they had had in the last few hours. Water in the electrics perhaps? There was only one way to find out. He rummaged through the woman's handbag and found the car keys, noting the Volkswagen emblem on the fob. He put on his coat and then slipped on a fresh pair of surgical gloves. He didn't want to leave any prints on the vehicle. He opened the door slightly. All was quiet outside. The rain had stopped but gurgling sounds coming from the down pipes on the side of the building said that it had only done so recently.

The car was parked at the far end of the street. It was a dark blue Volkswagen Polo. This pleased him. There had to be thousands of dark coloured Polos around the city. He opened the driver's door and undid the bonnet catch. The dirty state of the engine told him that it had been some considerable time since anyone else had done so. It was a typical 'second car' that didn't get too much in the way of maintenance, the little woman's 'run around' for shopping and taking the kids to school. It had no status value other than to exist, unlike the 'master's' Cavalier or Sierra which would shine like the sun and merit instant attention at the slightest cough.

The man removed the distributor cap and cleaned the inside with his handkerchief. He prised the contacts apart and slid a corner of the handkerchief between them to dry them out. He replaced the cap and wiped the plug leads and the main lead from the ignition coil. Satisfied with what he had done, he dropped the bonnet back down and tried the starter. The engine whirred into life and settled down to an idle.

Things were going well again. The man's confidence was returning. Perhaps he could now kill two birds with one stone? The car was generally dirty. It was quite difficult to read the registration plates as it was. With a bit more dirt applied to the rear one and a corner snapped off the front one he could risk driving it across town. He wouldn't need to fetch and use his own car at all. He turned the vehicle in a jerky three point turn, through unfamiliarity with the Polo's clutch and drove it along to the step leading down to the flat. Checking thoroughly that none of the bags was leaking, the man lined them up by the door and then loaded them quickly and quietly into the back.

At three thirty am a figure clad in white tunic and trousers and wearing a surgical mask and cap wheeled a trolley into the boiler house of Kerr Memorial Hospital. The attendant on duty put down his paper and got up from the table which he shared with an open paper bag containing sandwiches and a half full bottle of milk.

'What do you want then?' he asked suspiciously.

'This lot's for the fiery furnace,' mumbled the figure in white.

'At this time? You know the regulations. The proper containers at the proper time.'

'This is different.'

'What way different?'

'A bad car smash. These bits and pieces are what them upstairs had to take off.'

'So they can wait till morning. Rules is rules.'

'You don't understand. One of the victims has AIDS.'

The boilerman visibly withdrew and scowled. 'I ain’t touching them,' he growled, looking at the bags.

'You don't have to,' said the man in white. 'Just open up the door and I'll bung them in.'

The boilerman appeared to swither for a moment before relenting and saying, 'You're on. He led the way through to the furnace room and opened one of the three metal doors that stood side by side. 'Put them in this one,' he said. He stood by as the figure in white, now orange against the glow from the fire, heaved the bags, one by one, into the flames.

'Where did you say this accident was?' asked the boilerman.

'On the ring-road.'

'Must have been one hell of a crash if they had to take off all them limbs. Funny I didn't hear anything about it on the radio.'

'I suppose they’re not releasing the news until the next of kin have been informed.'

'That'll be it,' agreed the boilerman, accepting the plausible explanation. 'Drive like maniacs some of these buggers do. Probably pissed out their minds as well. It's the innocent buggers they run in to I feel sorry for. Just goes to show, you never know when your time is coming.'

The man in white looked over his mask at the boilerman, the light from the fire flickering in his eyes. He didn’t say anything but there was something about his look that made the boilerman feel a little uneasy. Maybe it was the firelight, he told himself. 'Do you want a cup of tea or something?' he asked.

'No thanks. I best be getting along,' said the man. He stepped forward to close the furnace door.

'You can take your mask off now,' said the boilerman.

'What?' asked the figure in white.

'Your mask. You've still got it on.'

'Oh,' replied the man in white with a weak attempt at a laugh. 'It becomes a habit in the unit.'

'What unit's that then?' asked the boilerman.

'The… A amp;E team.' replied the man after a moment's hesitation.

'I could have sworn I knew all the porters in A amp;E,' said the boilerman but I don't think I've seen you before. You sound a bit posh to be a porter. You're not one of them medical students are you? Playing at being a worker?'

'No.'

'You'll have to sign this,' said the boilerman, handing over a record sheet. It was clipped to a dog-eared piece of board. A blunt pencil was attached by a length of string. 'Print your name on the left, sign on the right. In between, write down what you put in the fire and who authorised it.'

The man accepted the board and wrote quickly and untidily. He handed it back.

'You've still got your mask on,' said the boilerman as he tried to read what the man had written. He tilted back his head so that he could look through the lower portion of his glasses as he held the paper up to the light. 'I'm beginning to think I've got a personal hygiene problem.' He looked at the man and caught his stare. The mask stayed put. 'I can't read the authoriser's name. What does it say?'

'Dr Mullen.'

'Dr Mullen isn't on duty this evening,' said the boilerman quietly. 'I saw him go off at five.'

Again came the stare over the mask. There was no firelight to blame this time. There was something evil about the look in these eyes. 'Who are you?' whispered the boilerman, taking a step backwards and reaching up the wall for the telephone. 'What's your game?'

The fist landed perfectly on the boilerman's chin and the man in white reached out to catch the falling man before he hit the ground.

He laid out the prostrate figure gently and looked about him. He would have to get this exactly right. He was approximately the same height as the boilerman so he could use himself as a measuring aid. He planted both feet apart on the ground in front of the furnace and measured the distance between his feet and the fire door by stretching out his body and moving himself forward with his hands on the ground. When his head reached the fire door he marked the ground with the toe of his left foot and stood up. Next he laid down a fire rake at the spot he had just marked. Someone his height tripping over the rake at that particular spot would pitch forward and hit their head off the iron door.

The man dragged the unconscious body of the boilerman over in front of the furnace and angled it before the fire door. It would have to be done with one blow. He brought the body up into as near a kneeling position as he could manage and held the head in both hands before bringing it back slowly and then slamming it forwards against the iron door with all the strength he could muster. There was a sickening crack and he felt confident of success. He felt for a carotid pulse and was alarmed to detect a faint beating but it grew weaker by the second until suddenly it stopped altogether and the boilerman was dead. The man arranged the limbs of the corpse in keeping with a trip over the rake and a subsequent accidental blow to the head on the furnace door. He checked that everything else was in order, collected his trolley and left silently.

There were two police cars parked near the hospital front office when Jamieson left the residency to walk to the microbiology lab in the morning. He asked Moira Lippman about them when he got in.

You didn't hear about the accident last night?' asked Moira.

'No. Tell me.'

'Archie Trotter, the night-shift man in the boiler house had an accident last night. He fell and hit his head off the furnace. He was dead when they found him this morning.'

'Poor man, there seems to be a jinx on this place,' said Jamieson.

'Don't say that,' exclaimed Moira. 'My sister in law is being admitted for her operation today.'

'Sorry. I'm sure she'll be OK.

'How did your tests turn out?' asked Moira, seeing that Jamieson was examining the tubes he had inoculated the day before.

Jamieson shook his head and said thoughtfully, 'I'm not sure. There seem to be a number of unusual results.'

'How unusual?'

'Three of the biochemical tests don't seem match the text book response.'

'It's not that unusual to come across the occasional one,' said Moira.

'But three?'

'That's a bit much,' agreed the girl.?Any ideas?' asked Jamieson.

Moira smiled and said, 'Dare I suggest… experimental error?'

'You mean I mucked up the tests?' said Jamieson with a wry smile. 'Maybe you're right. I'm a bit of an amateur at this sort of thing.'

'Would you like me to repeat them for you?' asked Moira. 'Give you a second opinion?'

'You're serious?'

'Of course. It's no trouble really.'

'You're an angel,' said Jamieson.

'Problems?' asked Clive Evans coming into the lab and seeing the two of them with the test tubes.

Jamieson told him.

'That's nothing to worry about, happens all the time,' said Evans. 'Sometimes I think if I ever come across a bug that matches the text book in every response I'll give a sherry party for the lab.'

'I thought it was me,' said Jamieson. 'Moira said she'd repeat the tests for me.'

'Relax. I'm sure your tests worked fine. There are lots of atypical strains around.'

'I thought three differences were a bit much Dr Evans,' said Moira.

'It's not common I'll grant you but I have seen it happen before,' replied Evans.

Moira shrugged and silently deferred to Evans' greater experience.

Harry Plenderleith was none too happy about working out his shift in the place where a man had died less than twelve hours before. He did not have to imagine where they had found the body for there was still a chalk mark on the floor that the police had left and a brown stain in the concrete where the blood had collected in a puddle. It all made him very unsettled and he whistled a lot to cover the fact that he was nervous. He had never liked the dead man. Trotter and they had never seen eye to eye about anything. Now that he was dead the possibility that his spirit was still hovering around played with Plenderleith's imagination as he checked that number two fire had been completely extinguished.

Plenderleith put on his protective face mask and started to rake out the ashes creating clouds of dust as he did so. He had scarcely begun when the rake caught something heavy and it clattered out into the ash can making him put down the rake for a moment and reach into the ashes to recover the object. It was a long bone. He dusted it off and examined it by holding it against his person in various ways until he decided that it had come from an upper leg. 'Poor bugger,' he whispered under his breath and resumed raking the floor of the furnace. More bones clattered into the can and Plenderleith grew uneasy. He had come across the occasional bone before when these sealed sacks from surgery had been brought down from the theatres but this seemed all out of proportion. His unease finally peaked when the last artefact rolled out into the can and lay there in the ash.

Plenderleith didn't make much sense on the phone and the hospital telephonist had to tell him to calm down.

'But there's been a bloody murder I tell you!'

'Start again, you found some bones while you were cleaning out the furnace?'

'Human remains! That's what they are!'

The telephonist, who had turned aside for a moment to consult with someone, came back on the line and said, 'My supervisor says that that is not unusual. You should have been told about amputation waste when you were given the job.'

'Amputation waste!' exclaimed Plenderleith. 'You mean they amputated this bugger's head?'

'So the fall didn't kill him?' asked Chief Inspector Ryan.

'Only if he fell at eighty miles an hour,' replied the police pathologist.

'What are you saying?'

'The indentation on his head is too deep for an accidental fall but it matches the cast of the fire door so either someone took the door off its hinges and hit him with it or else they slammed his head against it to make it look as if it were an accident.'

'Thank you Doctor.' said the policeman. He was about to say something else when he was interrupted by another man who had come into the room. They spoke in a huddle for a few moments before the policeman said to the pathologist. 'I'm afraid we've got something else for you.'

'Never a dull moment,' replied the man laconically.

'A pile of bones from the furnace our late friend here was tending. A body was cremated in it.'

'Never rains but it pours.'

'The jigsaw puzzle is on its way over.'

Jamieson was still in the lab when he heard that the accidental death of Archie Trotter had become murder. Moira Lippman told him. She had heard the rumours at lunch time in the staff canteen. They had started to fly when a police incident 'room' was set up in the grounds outside the boiler house.

'What about motive?' asked Jamieson.

'That's the really grisly bit,' said Moira. There's a story going around that they found some human bones in the incinerator this morning.'

'That doesn't necessarily mean that…'

'But it was a whole body.'

Jamieson adopted a suitable expression. He was pretending to be an outsider to all that he was hearing but the suggestion of murder in the hospital made him look for a suitable excuse to return to his room and call the switchboard. He got through to Sci Med in London and told them that he wanted to be kept discreetly informed of all developments in the case. He was assured that the local police would be informed of his interest and instructed accordingly.

Moira was on the phone when Jamieson returned. He heard her sound relieved and thank someone before putting down the receiver. 'I was just checking on my sister in law,' she said.

'Everything OK?' Jamieson asked.

'Yes but she's not sure when they're going to operate yet. There's a bit of a back log.'

'Where's Dr Evans?'

'He's in Dr Richardson's office,' replied the girl.

Jamieson left Moira Lippman and came along the corridor to climb the stairs up to the ground floor. As he reached the top of the stairs he heard a clap of thunder and paused to look out of one of the corridor windows at the darkening sky. A figure on the other side of the courtyard caught his attention. It was Thelwell. He had just come out of the door that led to the Central Sterile Supply Department.

Jamieson frowned as he wondered what a consultant surgeon was doing there. He reflected that this was the second time he had had occasion to wonder this of Thelwell. The first time was when he had seen him in the vicinity of the lab on the night that Richardson died. The function of the CSSD was to sterilise dressings and surgical instruments. What possible reason could Thelwell have had for being there? After a couple of minutes consideration Jamieson decided that he would have to satisfy his curiosity. He would make it his business to find out what Thelwell had been doing there.

The heavens suddenly opened and rain began to hammer mercilessly against the window, all but obliterating his view of the courtyard outside. He paused in the shelter of the front door and waited until the deluge had stopped. His reasoning that such heavy rain could not last long was proved right when after three minutes the sky started to lighten and the rain eased off sufficiently to let him sprint across the courtyard to the entrance of the Central Sterile Supply Department.

Jamieson felt the humidity in the atmosphere hit him and saw the moisture condensing on the tiled walls as he opened the front door of the CSSD and walked along the thirty metres or so of corridor that led to a pair of heavy swing doors equipped with brass handles. STERILISING HALL said the sign above them. The humidity increased even more as Jamieson pushed open one of the doors and turned left as instructed by the arrow. He was forced to run his finger round the inside of his collar as he approached the figures in white.

'Who's in charge here?' he enquired, raising his voice to be heard above the hiss of steam and also to compensate for the fact that the man he was asking was wearing a full face visor. The man pointed to a green door and Jamieson followed his direction and knocked.

'Come.'

Jamieson entered to find a large, well built man seated at a desk so small that it seemed to emphasise his bulk. He held a pen in one of his fat podgy hands and was ticking off items on a list. Like the others, he was wearing white cotton trousers and a white surgical tunic top with a vee neck. Dark chest hair reached above the centre of the vee. There was a strong smell of aftershave in the room, not expensive, just strong.

'I understand that you are in charge here?' said Jamieson.

'Who wants to know?' asked the man.

Jamieson said who he was.

'Charge Nurse Blaney,' said the man, leaning across the desk and offering his hand. Jamieson shook it and noticed how soft and flabby it was.

'How can I help you?'

'Mr Thelwell was here a few minutes ago,' said Jamieson.

'Yes.'

'What did he want?'

Blaney’s expression changed to one of suspicion. He said, 'I don't think I can discuss…'

Jamieson had been prepared for the response. He interrupted by saying. 'If you call Mr Crichton on extension 2631 he will tell you that I have the right to ask these questions.

'I'll take your word for it,' said Blaney. 'Mr Thelwell likes to collect his own instrument packs.'

Jamieson felt his throat tighten. He had to clear it before asking, 'What exactly does that mean?'

'Mr Thelwell insists on picking up the instruments that go to his theatre himself.'

'Has he always done this?'

'Just for the past couple of months.'

'He just comes down here and takes away his instrument packs?' asked Jamieson.

'He does more than that,' replied Blaney. 'He likes to monitor the sterilising process.'

'What exactly does he do?' asked Jamieson.

'He checks the temperature and pressure gauges during the autoclave cycle, monitors the graph recorder, waits till the instrument packs come out then takes them up to his theatre.'

'Did Mr Thelwell say why he does this?' asked Jamieson.

'A safety precaution,' replied Blaney.

'A safety precaution,' repeated Jamieson thoughtfully.

'That's right,' said Blaney. 'Is something wrong?'

'No… nothing,' said Jamieson but his mind was turning cartwheels. The revelation that Thelwell was an intermediate in the chain of events that brought sterile instruments from the supply department to the theatres was something that he hadn't reckoned on.

'Mr Thelwell is a very conscientious man. He leaves nothing to chance,' said Blaney. 'Even though Dr Evans puts these machines through their paces every week and the graph recorders are always spot on, he likes to see things for himself.'

'Does Mr Thelwell just collect his own instruments?' asked Jamieson, trying to make it sound like a casual inquiry.

'No, he takes all the packs for gynaecology,' replied Blaney. 'There's nothing wrong in that is there?' he added in a slightly aggressive response to the frown on Jamieson's face.

Jamieson said that there wasn't but his mind was working overtime.

'Perhaps you would like to see the routine?' asked Blaney.

Jamieson looked at Blaney, smiled and then said, 'Why not.'

Blaney gave Jamieson a conducted tour of the sterilising hall, stopping at intervals to explain things when he thought it necessary.

'Do you always use the same steriliser for the instruments?' asked Jamieson.

Blaney nodded and pointed to one of the autoclaves. 'That one,' he said. 'All sterile supplies for Gynaecology go through that one.'

Jamieson looked at the dials on the front. He said, 'What would happen if the steam supply should fail?'

'The machine would reset itself and refuse to proceed with the cycle.'

'What if it should fail half way through a cycle?'

'Same thing. It would reset itself and the graph recorder would show the failure.'

'Is there a manual over-ride?' asked Jamieson.

'I don't understand,' said Blaney.

'Can you convince the machine that it has completed its sterilising cycle when it actually hasn't?'

'But who would ever want to do that?' asked Blaney.

'Can it be done?'

'No,' said Blaney. 'The automatic timer will not start until the temperature has climbed to a pre-set value and if at any time during the cycle the temperature should fall below that value, the timer would reset itself and refuse to start until the temperature had climbed again.'

Jamieson looked at the chart recorder on the front of the machine and said, 'Do you keep these charts?'

'Every one,' said Blaney.

'So if I were to ask you for the chart from the run Mr Thelwell has just been watching you could show it to me?'

'Of course.'

'I'd like to see it,' said Jamieson.

Blaney shrugged and asked Jamieson to wait while he fetched it from his office. He returned with a circular piece of graph paper. 'This is it,' said Blaney. 'Dated and initialled.' He traced the blue line on the paper with his forefinger and said, 'As you can see, it was a normal run. The temperature climbed steadily as the steam entered the machine and at 131 degrees centigrade the timer was triggered.' The finger traced a plateau on the graph. 'The temperature held steady until the timer cut out and here…' Blaney's finger began to drop with the blue line. 'is where the steam was shut off and the temperature started to fall.'

'Thank you,' said Jamieson. He made a mental note of the reference number on the graph before asking, 'How often is the machine checked?'

'Dr Evans checks it out every week, sometimes twice.'

'You couldn't ask for more than that,' said Jamieson.

Blaney smiled modestly and said, 'We do our best.'

Jamieson returned to the Microbiology department to pursue his original intention of going to see Clive Evans but his mind was now almost totally preoccupied with the fact that Thelwell was removing surgical instruments from CSSD and holding them in his personal possession before they were used. Why? Why? Why?

He found Evans in what had been John Richardson's office. He was sifting through some papers.

'Just checking up on some overdue lab reports,' said Evans by way of explanation when he saw Jamieson.

'Did you find them?' asked Jamieson.

'Not yet. What can I do for you?'

'I wanted to talk to you about correlating your efforts with the Public Health people so that you don't start getting in each other's way,’ said Jamieson.

'When will they come?' asked Evans.

'Tomorrow morning.'

'Perhaps I could have a word with their chap before they start and we can agree on not duplicating each other's work.'

'Good idea. I'll bring their people across to the lab when they arrive,' said Jamieson.

'Was there something else?' asked Evans seeing that Jamieson was lingering on.

'When did you last check the surgical steriliser in CSSD?' asked Jamieson.

Evans looked surprised. 'This morning. Why do you ask?'

'Was it all right?'

'Perfect. It always is. I don't see what you are getting at.'

'This lab has so far failed to find the contaminating organism in the theatres, the wards, the air samples or anything else for that matter. Correct?'

'I'm afraid so,' said Evans.

'As I see it there are only a limited number of ways this infection problem can come about. One is that some person is carrying the infection and passing it on to the patients undetected.'

'Like Thelwell.'

'Like a carrier,' agreed Jamieson. 'Another way would be for the instruments or dressings in theatre to be contaminated.'

'That's impossible,' said Evans. 'They are autoclaved in sealed packs.'

'So the lab never bothers to check them, right?'

'There's no need.'

'You check the machines but you don't check what comes out of them.'

'There's no need,' repeated Evans.

'I want you to carry out a spot check on an instrument pack from the gynaecology theatre.'

'When?'

'I'll tell you when.'

'You're the boss,' said Evans but he said it in a way that made it plain that he thought what he was being asked to do was a waste of time.

Jamieson understood his point of view but did not tell him about Thelwell having collected the instruments from CSSD. It would have been too easy for Evans to read his mind and know what he was thinking. For the moment that was too terrible to be voiced out loud. If the instruments were at fault, the contamination must be occurring after they had been sterilised. That meant that it was not accidental. The contamination had been deliberate! Women were not dying of an unfortunate, accidental infection at Kerr Memorial. They were being murdered.