Tangled Web

Five

The funeral parlour of J. Prosser and Son had stood in Mould Street, Caernarfon for more than seventy-five years, its black-painted frontage and discreet gold lettering boasting its credentials for Care and Concern in times of Bereavement. It was the sort of place where local people tended to hush their voices in passing, intimidated by the open Bible lying in the window on a cushion of maroon velvet in front of matching, heavy curtains. Young children might ask what lay behind the curtains but were seldom graced with an answer. If they were, they were told that it didn’t concern them; it was nothing for them to worry their little heads over.

It was therefore something quite out of the ordinary when John Prosser was woken up in the flat above the parlour at seven in the morning by someone hammering on the front door and demanding that he open up shop.

Wrapping his plaid dressing gown around him and hastily perching his half-moon specs on his nose, he hurried downstairs to tip toe through the cold gloom of a March morning and open the door. A thickset man in his late twenties with dark curly hair and an anguished expression stood there. His breath smelt of whisky and the bags under his eyes spoke of a lack of sleep.

‘Martin Griffiths?’ exclaimed Prosser. ‘What are you doing here, man?’

‘You’re burying my girl today, Prosser,’ said Griffiths, his speech a little slurred but his gaze steady enough.

‘And right sorry I am too,’ replied Prosser.

‘I want her to have my mother’s ring in the box with her, see.’ Griffiths brought out a small, scuffed, blue leather ring box from his jacket pocket and waved it in front of Prosser’s face.

Prosser frowned then said kindly, ‘It’s a bit late for that, man, the casket’s been closed. We’re all ready for the funeral this morning. Look, you’re upset and who wouldn’t be after losing their baby? Come in man, we’ll have some tea and I’ll call your wife and tell her you’re here.’

‘Don’t want no tea,’ insisted Griffiths, shrugging off Prosser’s attempt to take his arm, ‘I want my baby to have this ring with her. I need her to know I cared. I wasn’t there when she died. I was on the Cornwall run, away for three days, I was.’

Prosser nodded. He knew Griffiths was a long-distance lorry driver and that he’d been away when his baby daughter had fallen victim to cot-death syndrome.

‘Christ, if only I’d been there,’ continued Griffiths, his voice breaking. ‘I might have heard her cry out in the night. I could have picked her up and cuddled her... told her her daddy was there and there was nothing to worry about... But I wasn’t, was I? I was hundreds of miles away and she just slipped away in the night, crept out of our house, she did, out of our lives.’

Prosser felt a lump come to his throat. He’d seen a lot of grief in his time and become hardened to it behind a sombre professional front but there was something raw and undiluted about Griffiths’ pain that got to him. ‘Come inside anyway, man. It’s cold.’

Prosser led the way through the partitioned interior of the parlour to a small dark office, equipped with only a desk and three chairs. This was where Prosser consulted the newly bereaved over their choice of funeral ‘accessories’. A large, spiral-bound book lay on the desk with illustrations of coffins and their furnishings. Prosser pushed it to one side with the palm of his hand and rested both arms on the desk. ‘Look, man,’ he said. ‘I know you mean to do what’s for the best but you’re so full of grief that you’re not thinking straight.’

Griffiths put the ring box on the desk and opened it clumsily with thick callused fingers to reveal an old engagement ring: it was an emerald mounted in a cluster of small diamonds. ‘It was my grandmother’s and then my mother’s. She told me to give it to my lass when she got married but she’s not getting married, not now, not ever, so if you’ll just open up the box I’ll give it to her now.’

Prosser moved uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I don’t think you should do this Martin,’ he said. ‘It’s better you should remember your little lass as she was, not as...’ Prosser’s voice trailed off.

Griffiths frowned. ‘What the hell are you on about?’ he demanded.

Prosser wrung his hands in discomfort. ‘People working in medical science have to find out just how and why awful things like Megan’s death happen,’ he began. ‘If the doctors are to have any hope of stopping other people going through what you’re going through they have to investigate things... thoroughly.’

‘What are you trying to say, Prosser?’ demanded Griffiths, now becoming suspicious about Prosser’s obvious agitation.

Prosser wriggled in his seat again before saying, ‘The pathologists at the hospital had to carry out certain examinations on Megan...’

Griffiths’ eyes opened wide. ‘Are you telling me they damaged my Megan?’ he asked in a low, harsh whisper.

‘A post-mortem examination has to be done in such cases,’ replied Prosser quietly. ‘It’s the law, see, and a certain amount of... damage, as you put it, is inevitable.’ In truth he wasn’t sure what the case was with Megan Griffiths. He hadn’t collected the body personally so he hadn’t seen it. It was usual for the people at the hospital to make the body as presentable as possible after PM examination but on the other hand, viewing of the body was usually carried out at the hospital chapel, aided by suitable drapings and a glass partition screen.

‘I want her to have my mother’s ring,’ said Griffiths, digging in his heels.

Prosser could see that further argument would be pointless. Griffiths had clearly made up his mind and his overwhelming sense of grief and guilt was preventing him from hearing any rational argument. ‘All right,’ he said resignedly. ‘If that’s what you really want, she’s lying downstairs.’

Prosser, still in his dressing gown and slippers led the way through to the back of the premises, a cold room with a large barred window letting in the early morning light above a big, crazed porcelain sink where a velvet cloth lay steeping in stagnant water. He clicked on a light switch to the right of the one, dark-panelled door in the room before opening it up to reveal an arch leading to cellar stairs.

Prosser descended in slippered silence; Griffiths’ heavy shoes clattered slowly and irregularly behind him on the wooden treads.

The small white coffin containing Megan Griffiths’ body lay on a wooden bench with a white record card carrying her name and funeral details temporarily Sellotaped to the lid.

‘I urge you to change your mind, man,’ said Prosser, making a last attempt at trying to dissuade Griffiths. ‘You and your wife are young. There will be other babies, I’m sure.’

‘Open it.’

Prosser shrugged and took down a red-handled ratchet screwdriver from its clip on the wall above the bench to start undoing the lid. The tortured noise of the screws turning seemed unnaturally loud in the early morning quiet. It was easy for Prosser to construe this as a kind of protest. He lingered over the last one, still hoping that Griffiths might change his mind at the last moment, but Griffiths said nothing, his features set like granite. Prosser removed the last screw and placed it in line with the others before sliding off the lid and deliberately angling his body so that he was standing between Griffiths and the open coffin. He hoped this might give him the chance to take a quick look inside and perhaps even make a slight cosmetic adjustment if required before Griffiths had a chance to look inside.

There was an interval of less than five seconds before Prosser staggered backwards and dropped the lid on the floor with a clatter, his face filled with shock and horror. He let out a whispered, involuntary expletive and half turned to the side as if unwilling to accept the sight that had met his eyes.

Griffiths, bemused by Prosser’s reaction, looked first at Prosser and then at the coffin before stepping forward in trepidation to look inside for himself. ‘Sweet Jesus fucking Christ!’ he exclaimed, before gagging twice and throwing up on the floor. He sought the support of the cellar wall with his outstretched right arm.

Prosser recovered his composure first, although still badly shaken and having difficulty getting his breathing pattern to settle. The smell of Griffiths’ whisky-tainted vomit on the floor wasn’t helping. ‘There’s been some terrible mistake,’ he said, his voice hoarse and rapid. ‘I’ll get on to the hospital right away.’

Griffiths, wearing the expression of a man who’d just been afforded a vision of hell, looked at him distantly, ‘That’s right, boyo,’ he murmured, ‘A terrible mistake. You get on to that fucking hospital.’

By nine a.m., Prosser had established that the coffin had already been closed and screwed down when his driver had gone to collect it from the hospital so he had not seen the contents. Next to deny any knowledge of the problem was the mortuary technician at the hospital who told Prosser that he personally had not been on duty the previous day and that the man who had was off today. By nine fifteen Prosser had succeeded in getting through to hospital management and finally had the ear of a man who realised just how serious the complaint was and what the repercussions might be.

‘What exactly did you say was in the coffin?’ asked Ronald Harcourt, hospital manager at Caernarfon General.

‘Bits,’ replied Prosser, acknowledging the inadequacy of his description but failing to come up with an alternative.

‘What d’you mean, bits?’

‘Dismembered remains.’

‘Are you telling me that the child’s body had been dismembered?’ asked Harcourt, his voice rising with incredulity.

‘No, no... there was no child’s body,’ spluttered Prosser angrily. ‘Just bits, assorted human bits, lungs, kidneys, a heart maybe and I saw a finger among the mess.’

‘Bloody hell,’ exclaimed Harcourt, suddenly getting the picture. ‘Have you spoken to anyone in Pathology yet?’

‘Just a mortuary technician; he wasn’t on duty yesterday. No one else was in when I called.’

‘I’ll get on to them right away and get back to you. Give me your number.’

Prosser gave him the number and added, ‘The child’s funeral is at eleven. We need the body.’

‘Do the parents know about this?’

‘The father was present when I opened the box.’

‘Oh my God, worse and worse,’ gasped Harcourt. ‘Something tells me we’re in big trouble over this one.’

‘You speak for yourself,’ said Prosser. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. My driver collected the coffin in good faith and remember... the funeral’s at eleven.’

A frantic search of the mortuary fridge failed to come up with the body of Megan Griffiths. Harcourt stood beside consultant pathologist, Peter Sepp, becoming more and more agitated as he watched the proceedings. ‘What the hell am I going to tell the parents?’ he demanded in an angry urgent whisper.

Sepp’s expression was cast in stone. ‘There’s only one explanation,’ he said, as the head technician closed the fridge doors and gave a final shake of the head. ‘The child’s body must have got mixed up with the biological waste bag...’

Harcourt looked at him as if he couldn’t believe his ears. ‘The biological waste bag?’ he repeated slowly.

‘The bits we don’t need when we’re finished with them,’ said Sepp. ‘They go into a biological waste bag for disposal along with clinical refuse from the theatres.’

Harcourt gave himself a few moments to let nightmare images dissipate before asking, ‘Can’t you recover the child from the bag then?’

Sepp shook his head and looked at Harcourt directly. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘It gets taken to the incinerator every night.’

Harcourt felt himself go weak at the knees, as the full implication of what he was hearing became apparent. ‘Let me get this straight,’ he said, ‘You’re telling me that pathological... offal was put into Megan Griffiths’ coffin while her body was sent to the hospital incinerator in a biological waste bag?’

‘That’s what it looks like,’ agreed Sepp reluctantly.

‘Jesus Christ! How in God’s name could something like that happen?’ demanded Harcourt in a barely controlled whisper in deference to the fact that several of Sepp’s technical staff were still within earshot.

A shake of the head from Sepp, ‘I really don’t know,’ he said.

‘Christ the lawyers will be gathering like hyenas round a dead mammoth when they hear this,’ said Harcourt. ‘Find out who’s responsible. Blame has to be apportioned and seen to be apportioned otherwise we’ll all be tarred with the same brush.’

‘You’ll tell the parents?’ asked Sepp.

‘I can’t imagine a queue forming to compete for the privilege,’ said Harcourt sourly.

Harcourt’s pager went off and he picked up the phone mounted on the tiled mortuary wall. His expression suggested he wasn’t hearing good news. ‘Tell them we’ll issue a statement in due course,’ he snapped before slamming the phone back on its hook. ‘It’s started,’ he complained. ‘The father must have been on to the papers already. The Bangor Times wants to know if the rumours are true. Have we really lost a baby’s body? God, it’ll be TV and the nationals by lunchtime and something tells me they’re going to think losing the body would actually have been preferable to the truth when they find out.’

‘They’ll lap it up,’ said Sepp. ‘They’ll see it as a good human-interest story and milk it for all it’s worth. Tears make good television.’

‘We’d better have a meeting and agree on what we’re going to say,’ said Harcourt. ‘Damage limitation is the name of the game.’

‘I’ll call my staff together and see if I can find out what really happened.’

‘We need names,’ insisted Harcourt. ‘We must identify the culprit or culprits and be seen to act firmly and decisively. Those responsible must be sacked without delay.’

‘But it must have been a genuine mistake,’ insisted Sepp. ‘No one would want something like this to happen. The guilty party will be just as devastated as the parents, I’m sure.’

‘Won’t do,’ snapped Harcourt. ‘The press will need a human sacrifice, nothing less will do. They must be sacked.’

‘And their heads mounted on the hospital gates,’ added Sepp sarcastically.

‘And as it’s your department...’ continued Harcourt icily.

Sepp’s expression changed. ‘You think I should offer my resignation?’

‘In the circumstances, I think it might be the honourable thing to do, don’t you?’

‘Honourable?’ mused Sepp. ‘Where’s the honour in feeding a media circus? They wouldn’t know honour, or even common decency come to that, if it kicked them up the arse.’

‘That’s as may be,’ said Harcourt, ‘But we have to play the game over this one, present a solid front. The hospital’s good name is at stake. I want to be able to tell the Hospital Trust exactly what happened and what’s been done about it. That means finding out who’s responsible and getting rid of them whatever the extenuating circumstances.’

‘And me?’

‘Offer your resignation for the benefit of the press and we’ll decline it when the flak dies down.’

Sepp looked at his watch and said, ‘Time’s getting on, you’d better tell the parents there isn’t going to be a funeral.’

‘I’ll phone them from my office,’ said Harcourt, making to leave.

‘Maybe not such a good idea,’ said Sepp thoughtfully.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘If we’re into playing the media game, a phone call might be seen as callous. You wouldn’t want that.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ agreed Harcourt. ‘I’ll drive over there myself and tell them personally. I’ll get the address from Prosser.’

Pathology Department 1 p.m.

‘So that’s it?’ rasped Harcourt. ‘A monumental fuck-up and no one’s to blame? Just what do I tell the medical superintendent and the hospital Trust and what do I tell the tabloid scavengers baying at the gates? Just one of these things, folks?’

Sepp shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. ‘I’ve talked to all my staff and none of them can throw any light on this. I’m sorry but that’s the way it is at the moment.’

‘Then somebody’s lying,’ exclaimed Harcourt. ‘What about the mortuary technician who’s off today?’

‘I called him at home; he doesn’t know anything either.’

Harcourt sighed in frustration. ‘Somebody must know something,’ he insisted. ‘Have you gone through everything in chronological order from the time of the post mortem on the missing child?’

‘Of course.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. No one admits to having put the child’s body — or what he thought was the child’s body — in the coffin.’

Harcourt shook his head. ‘Who took the waste over to the incinerator then?’ he asked.

‘No one admits to that either. A thought that B had done it while B thought that A had done it and it turns out that neither of them did.’

‘Jesus! You do realise that the press are going to crucify us over a Pathology department where nobody knows what anyone else is doing. It’s clear that someone on your staff knows more about this than he or she’s letting on.’

Sepp bristled. ‘Or maybe it wasn’t someone on my staff at all,’ he snapped.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I’m simply pointing out that we don’t know for sure that one of my people was responsible.’

Harcourt looked openly incredulous. ‘You’re surely not suggesting that someone walked in off the street and did it for a laugh, are you?’

Sepp tried manfully to keep his anger in check. He spoke more slowly. ‘The fact of the matter is,’ he asserted, ‘that people are in and out of the Path department all day long. You must know that. I’m simply saying that it is not inconceivable that someone other than a member of my staff caused the mix-up.’

‘You’ve no security?’

‘It’s a mortuary not a bloody bank,’ snapped Sepp, finally losing patience with Harcourt’s aggressiveness.

‘All right, all right,’ said Harcourt, suddenly realising he was pushing Sepp too far and backing off. He made an open-palmed gesture with his hands and said, ‘Let’s not start fighting among ourselves, but if it was someone from outside your own staff, that would surely imply malicious intent rather than an innocent mix-up, wouldn’t it?’

‘I suppose it might,’ agreed Sepp.

‘Hard to believe.’

Medical Superintendent’s Office 2 p.m.

‘I suppose the parents took it badly?’ said James Trool, medical superintendent of the hospital as he poured chilled water from a carafe into the crystal glass in front of him on the table. He was an undistinguished looking man, large but with coarse features and a penchant for wearing light coloured suits and brightly coloured ties — a trait that had only surfaced when he’d married his second wife, Sonia, some two years before. It was a marriage that had surprised many because Sonia, an American, was almost twenty years younger than he was; beautiful and very wealthy in her own right. They had met when her daughter was admitted to the hospital after a bad car crash, the same crash that had killed her first husband.

‘You could say,’ replied Harcourt, fiddling with his cuff links and severely editing his answer. ‘The father called me an oily little bastard and assured me we wouldn’t be getting away with it, as he put it. He promised we’d be hearing from his lawyers.’

‘Par for the course,’ said Trool, with a hint of bitterness in his voice. He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, saying, ‘You know, I can remember a time when people faced up to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune without the need for counselling, or whatever they call it, and large injections of compensation.’ He endowed the words with extreme distaste.

‘I wouldn’t mention that to the press if I were you,’ said Harcourt.

‘Of course not,’ said Trool. ‘Our deepest sympathy will be extended to the family. Our hearts will go out to them... in an effort to minimise the damage their bloody lawyers are about to do to us.’

‘With respect Dr Trool, I think you’re being a bit harsh. It was a terrible thing to have happen to them.’ The speaker was a slight woman in her late thirties. She was Inga Love, director of nursing services.

‘Indeed it was, Miss Love but it was an accident. These things happen. No one meant it to happen. To use it as the basis for screwing money out of the hospital is damn nearly criminal in my book.’

‘Something tells me the Griffiths are not going to see it that way,’ said Harcourt.

‘Of course they’re not,’ snapped Trool. ‘We have been to hell and back,’ he mimicked. ‘We don’t want anyone to go through what we have gone through. It’s not the money that’s important, it’s the principle. Yugh! Makes me want to throw up.’

‘It can’t be easy to have something that awful happen to your child, Dr Trool,’ lectured Inga Love.

Trool grunted.

‘If I can just remind you,’ interrupted Harcourt, ‘I have to brief the press in fifteen minutes. Perhaps we could agree on our approach.’

‘The usual,’ said Trool. ‘Damage limitation. Thoughts with the family at this time, all our sympathy goes out to them. Tragic error, no excuses, a momentary lapse in a busy department, full investigation under way. Steps have been taken to ensure it never happens again, that sort of thing.’