Dust to dust

THIRTY-TWO

Steven returned to his flat and called the duty officer at Sci-Med. ‘I need this information ASAP. St Raphael’s Hospital employed a Polish nurse until recently; her first name was Iwona. Everything was above board so there should be no difficulty getting the information — but don’t approach St Raphael’s directly. I need to know her full name, how long she was at St Raphael’s, the official reason given for her leaving and which Public Health lab might have been involved in her demise if any. Get people out their beds if you have to.’

‘Will do.’

Steven was woken just after four a.m. by the duty man, who made a joke about including him in his ‘get people out their beds’ instruction.

‘Very funny,’ said Steven. ‘What’d you get?’

‘Iwona Tloczynska was employed at the hospital for four and a half months between December last year and the start of April. She came with excellent references and was working as a theatre nurse. She was highly thought of until a problem arose and the staff were screened as part of an investigation into post-operative infection. Iwona was found to be unsuitable for continued theatre work and subsequently decided to return home to Gdansk with what was described as generous severance pay.’

‘Excellent,’ said Steven. ‘Did you find out who did the screening?’

‘In the first instance it was the small hospital lab, but then it was referred to the private lab that does the microbiological work for St Raphael’s. When they confirmed it was MRSA, sub-cultures of the organism were passed on to the Public Health authorities and the reference lab at Colindale in north London in compliance with the rules about these things.’

‘Brilliant,’ exclaimed Steven.

‘Just what my mother always said,’ replied the duty man.

Knowing that the people the duty man had disturbed during the night might well be complaining to colleagues about their rude awakening and, in doing so, alerting the opposition, Steven was at the Colindale lab before nine a.m., waiting for the staff to arrive. Once he’d established his credentials, it took less than fifteen minutes for the technicians to provide him with a glass vial containing the MRSA isolated from Nurse Iwona Tloczynska. Another twenty minutes and the culture was in the hands of the labs used by Sci-Med for scientific analysis and a comparison with the strain of MRSA he’d brought back from Afghanistan was under way.

Steven was at the Home Office before John Macmillan arrived. When he did, he took one look at Steven and said, ‘You’re looking smug, Dunbar. It doesn’t become you.’ He swept past into his office, leaving Steven swapping amused glances with Jean Roberts.

‘Send him in,’ said the small loudspeaker on Jean’s desk.

Steven related the events of the previous evening to Macmillan and told him of the successful detective work of the duty officer through the night.

‘The Pink Puffin, you say,’ said Macmillan, foraging around in the papers on his desk. ‘Wasn’t it a blessing you spend your evenings there…’

‘I don’t spend my…’ Steven had began before he saw the smile on Macmillan’s face. ‘I was following up an idea.’

‘And a bloody good one as it turned out. Well done. Mind you, I’m not sure the lab will agree. They spent all last night analysing donor samples from the north and now they’ve got even more work to do. I understand we should be getting the donor results around noon today.’

Steven glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll go get some coffee, stretch my legs. See you at noon.’

He took a favourite stroll through St James’ Park, enjoying the signs of spring and wondering idly what the year might bring. Spring had always been his favourite season, bringing with it signs of new growth and new hope. He found autumn heart-achingly sad and winter too icily sterile to engage with. Summer was more often than not disappointing but spring was full of optimism, the overture to the year.

He started to think again about the identity of Patient X and how the human cost of so much secrecy could ever be justified. Who in this world could be considered so important that keeping leukaemia a secret was worth the lives it had now either cost or ruined?

No one, he concluded, but there were clearly people out there who disagreed: powerful people, people with influence, the sort who got away with things. He knew they existed because he’d seen them do it often enough in the past. He’d felt the anger and frustration of watching the guilty walk free because it was ‘not in the public interest’ to pursue the matter further or ‘not in the interest of the state to prosecute’. It would be nice if, just this once, they — whoever they were — were held to account for what they’d done. Perhaps a first step towards that goal was to be found in the lab report on Michael Kelly.

Macmillan already had the report open on his desk when Steven got back to the Home Office. He took off his glasses and leaned back in his chair. ‘It’s pretty much what we feared,’ he said. ‘Michael Kelly was blood group A, rhesus positive and a near perfect tissue match for Patient X.’

‘Shit,’ said Steven.

‘Well,’ sighed Macmillan. ‘I think we’re at throw-a-six-to-restart time, eh?’

‘I just don’t get it. There has to be something special about Kelly. Group A, rhesus positive blood is the second most common group in the country. Just about every second human being in the street has it.’

‘There’s the tissue match too,’ Macmillan reminded him.

‘True,’ said Steven, ‘but you still wouldn’t need to scour the civilian and military medical records of an entire nation to come up with the match they’ve got here.’ He held up the lab report. ‘Bone marrow donors are much more plentiful than organ donors. It would be different if they were looking for a heart or a liver or any vital organ for Patient X but they weren’t… they were attempting to save someone with terminal leukaemia… someone whose identity had to be kept secret at all costs. Why? We’re still missing something…’

‘The discovering of what I’ll leave in your capable hands,’ said Macmillan, getting up from his chair. ‘I’ve got a meeting.’

‘Can I hold on to the report?’

‘Please do.’

Steven returned to his flat and spent a frustrating afternoon trying to see what was special about Michael Kelly. Reading and rereading the lab report didn’t help: there was nothing unique about Kelly. The bottom line was that he was an ordinary squaddie with a common enough blood and tissue type who’d contracted an MRSA infection after donating his bone marrow. The attempted cover-up of what had happened and why he’d actually died was, to use Macmillan’s word, amateurish, but the serious fact remained that anyone expressing the faintest interest in Kelly or the circumstances of his death was in danger of losing their life…

To break up a train of thought that was going nowhere, Steven phoned Louise at the University of Newcastle to ask how she was getting on with her analysis.

‘It should be complete the day after tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to email the report to you?’

Steven stalled for a moment. The day after tomorrow was Friday. On impulse, he decided he would go up to Scotland and spend the weekend with Jenny. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘If it’s okay with you I’ll drop by the lab on Friday.’

‘A long way to come,’ said Louise.

Steven told her of his weekend plans and they spoke for a bit about Jenny, her circumstances and where she lived.

‘That’s a lovely part of the country,’ said Louise. ‘A perfect place to grow up. My parents have a holiday cottage there… near Southerness?’

‘Know it well. Beaches that go on for ever.’

‘Aren’t they wonderful?’ said Louise, sounding pleased to be speaking to someone who shared her affection for a part of Scotland so often neglected by the tourist guides. ‘My brother and I adored our holidays there. In fact, now that you’ve mentioned it, I may go there myself this weekend. It’ll be the first time this year. I always like opening the cottage up after the winter: it’s like lifting the lid of a chest full of childhood memories. It’s a bit early for my folks; they’ll probably wait till it warms up a bit. They’re not as young as they were.’

‘Well, I’m glad I’ve sorted your weekend as well as my own,’ Steven joked. ‘See you Friday.’