Chameleon (20 page)

In the end, Jamieson found a space some two hundred metres down the road. He was a bit close to the entrance to one of the driveways but not close enough, he reckoned, to constitute a real obstruction so he left the car and started to walk back towards the church. He could hear singing coming from the hall that was tacked on to the side of the main building and he could see lights on inside. He checked his watch. It was five minutes to ten. Maybe they would finish at ten?

Jamieson strolled up one side of the street and down the other. It was a nice evening. The gardens of the large houses had obviously benefited from the soaking they had had earlier in the day and the mixed scent of the flowers was heavy in the still evening air. It made him think of Kent and Susie. He was wondering how to go about telling her that he would not be coming home at the week-end when he saw that people were beginning to emerge from the church hall. He took up a position almost opposite the entrance to the hall and waited for Thelwell to emerge.

At first, the pavement outside the church was crowded with groups of people laughing and discussing how the evening had gone and Jamieson had to keep his wits about him to avoid missing Thelwell among the people he saw moving off. As the minutes passed and the crowds thinned, Jamieson found himself considering that somehow he had missed him. The slamming doors and starting cars were now becoming less frequent. The avenue was returning to its accustomed peace and quiet and he had still not seen Thelwell come out.

It was another ten minutes before a woman, carrying a bundle of papers under her arm and a key in her mouth, turned round as she emerged and locked the door. Jamieson, feeling bemused but still fairly confident that he had not missed Thelwell among the earlier crowds, approached her and excused himself.

'I was rather hoping to catch Gordon Thelwell this evening,' he said pleasantly. 'Could I have missed him?'

'Oh no,' exclaimed the woman. 'Mr Thelwell wasn't here this evening.'

'Oh,' said Jamieson working at keeping the surprise off his face.

'Are you sure?'

'Mr Thelwell hasn't been coming to practice for some time,' volunteered the woman. 'He's too busy at the hospital these days I understand. He's a surgeon you know. They've been having a bit of trouble with one thing and another.'

'Of course,' replied Jamieson distantly. 'I should have considered that.'

Jamieson sat behind the wheel of his car with another unpleasant discovery to digest. All these choir practises that Thelwell said he had been going to were a fabrication. A lie. What had he really been doing on these evenings? Where was he tonight? Was it relevant to the problem at the hospital?

Jamieson drove round in circles for a while, trying to make sense of it all before deciding finally to drive to the street where Thelwell lived. It was now his intention to confront Thelwell openly with what he had discovered. He parked the car on the other side of the road some fifty metres along from Thelwell's house and settled down to wait.

At eleven thirty, his vigil was rewarded. Thelwell's dark green Volvo estate car turned into the street and Jamieson prepared to get out of his car. He had expected Thelwell to park outside his house on the street or at least to get out to open the gates in front of his drive. On this pretext it had been his plan to intercept him on the pavement. But, in the event, Thelwell swung his car in towards the gates and they opened automatically at the signal from some device on the car. By the time Jamieson reached the house the gates had closed again and Thelwell was putting the car away in the garage.

Light spilled out into the garden from the open front door and Thelwell's wife was framed in the doorway. 'You're late dear,' Jamieson heard her say.

'The practice went on a bit longer than I thought and then I had a quick drink with Roger Denby,' replied Thelwell.

Thelwell was a very plausible liar, thought Jamieson. He had sounded perfectly natural when replying to his wife. He considered whether or not he should confront Thelwell there and then in front of his wife but then decided against it. For the moment it was enough for him to know that Thelwell had been lying to everyone, including his wife. He walked back to his car thoughtfully and drove back to the hospital.

The phone in his room was ringing when Jamieson got in. He hurriedly unlocked the door and rushed over to snatch it from its cradle, feeling certain that the caller would hang up the moment he touched it. It was Sue.

'Where have you been?' she asked. 'I've been trying your number for ages.'

'I had to go out,' said Jamieson weakly.

'Daddy has invited us to have dinner with him on Saturday. I said we'd be delighted.'

'Sue, there's a problem.'

'What do you mean?'

'I don't think I can come home this week-end.'

'But ...' Sue's voice trailed off into silence.

'I'm sorry, really I am but the way things are going I just can't get away.'

'I see,' said Sue distantly. 'That's a pity. I had something to tell you.'

'Really? What?'

'It will have to wait for some time when you're not so busy.' The phone went dead.

'Shit,' said Jamieson quietly. It was unlike Sue to be like that. She must be very disappointed.

Jamieson was up at seven. He was washed, shaved and out of his room by seven thirty and had breakfasted. He was in his little room in the Microbiology department by eight. The morning cleaners were emptying waste paper baskets outside in the corridor. They pooled all the waste in a large bin which they wheeled around the department on a small wheeled bogie.

'It's getting so you are afraid to go out at night,' he heard one of them say.

'My Stan won't let me,' declared the other positively. 'Not after last night. It was less than quarter of a mile away from us!'

'Makes you think don't it.'

Jamieson felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. 'Last night? What had happened last night? He opened the door of his room and one of the cleaners clutched her arms across her chest in fright. 'Oh my God!' she exclaimed. 'You gave me such a fright. I thought for a moment you were him!'

'Who?' asked Jamieson.

'The maniac. The ripper,' replied the woman.

'You said something about last night,' said Jamieson.

'The swine killed another woman last night. I was just telling Ruby here. It was only half a mile down the road from where I stay.'

'Another woman?'

'Young lass. She'd just said good night to her boy friend. The bastard must have been waiting for her.'

'What are the police doing? That's what I want to know,' exclaimed the other woman angrily.

'Too right. It isn't safe to cross your door these nights. Them with their free uniforms and rent allowances.'

'And they retire on a big pension at fifty. My brother-in-law's boy Ronnie joined the police and I know for a fact...'

Jamieson withdrew from the conversation and closed his door. He could feel the pulse beating in his temple. He fought with his imagination but it insisted on giving him another nightmare thought to consider. There had been another death in the city and it had occurred on a night when Gordon Thomas Thelwell had said he was at choir practice. But he hadn't been. Jamieson knew that for a fact.

The enormity of what he was considering kept Jamieson paralysed in his seat while he worried about it. Could Thelwell not only be deliberately causing the deaths of women patients at the hospital but could he ... could he possibly be the psychopath who was slaughtering women in the city? Could Thelwell be the ripper?

Jamieson started to think in practical terms and that meant obtaining hard evidence. He wondered about a correlation between the other killings and Thelwell's choir practice nights. Perhaps he could find out from St Serf's? He would think about that later. For the moment, his immediate priority was to obtain the surgical listing for the day in gynaecology. He called the theatre sister.

'Mr Morton is operating at ten. Will you be attending?'

Jamieson said that he would and said that on no account was the operation to begin without his being present.

'Very well doctor,' replied the sister, her voice betraying the puzzlement that she felt.

Jamieson called Blaney in the Central Sterile Supply Department and asked about the availability of spare instrument packs for surgery in gynaecology.

'We have about a dozen,' Blaney replied.

'I need three.'

'When?'

'Right now. I'm coming across to collect them.'

When Jamieson returned with the instruments he saw Clive Evans arrive in the car park and waited for him in the doorway to the lab. 'I want you to come with me to theatre this morning. Does that present any problems?'

'No I don't think so,' replied Evans. 'Are you going to tell me why?'

'I want you to remove some instrument packs and screen them for bacterial contamination.'

'If you say so,' said Evans. 'These ones too?' he asked seeing what Jamieson was carrying.

'No. These are the ones they are going to use,' said Jamieson. 'They just don't know it yet.' He looked at his watch and added, 'I'll stop by your office in fifteen minutes. We'll go up to Gynaecology together.'

Jamieson returned to his room and called Sci Med in London. Miss Roberts said that no one was available at the moment could he leave a message? Jamieson said that he needed to know the time of death of last night's killing in Leeds as soon as it was established. Miss Roberts said that she would pass on his request.

Jamieson's heart sank when he got to theatre and found Thelwell scrubbing up. Thelwell spoke first. 'I take it there's no objection to my being present as an observer in my own theatre?' he said acidly.

'None,' said Jamieson flatly. 'Provided that your swabs are still negative, you've applied nasal barrier cream, and you don't approach the table directly.'

'My swabs were always negative.' said Thelwell through tight lips. 'But I've used Naseptin as I always did in the past in any case.'

Jamieson joined Thelwell at the basins and started to scrub his hands and forearms. Clive Evans did the same.'

'I see we have a member of our esteemed Microbiology Department present,' sneered Thelwell. 'To what do we owe this honour?'

'I am here at Dr Jamieson's request,' said Evans without emotion.

'Ah yes,' said Thelwell with what for him, passed for a smile.

The surgical team of Phillip Morton, an assistant, the anaesthetist, the theatre sister and a junior nurse were waiting when Thelwell, Jamieson and Clive Evans joined them.

'May we begin?' asked Morton.

'Not yet,' said Jamieson. He turned to the theatre sister and asked, 'Sister will you please show me the instrument packs for this morning's operation.'

The nurse showed Jamieson the packs without comment and he examined the numbers. He had to swallow when he saw that they were different from the numbers on the packs that he had found in the cupboard the night before. These ones were the ones that had been missing from the cupboard! These were the ones that Thelwell had collected from CSSD personally! They must have been put into the cupboard at some time during the night. Jamieson went over to the cupboard and looked for the packs that had been in there. They had gone.

Jamieson turned round and said to Morton, 'I want you to use these instruments this morning.' He nodded to the packs that Evans was holding. 'Dr Evans is going to take the other ones away for analysis.'

'What on earth is going on?' exclaimed Morton.

'I'm sorry. Explanations will have to wait,' said Jamieson. 'Please just do as I ask.'

'Very good,' said Morton with a shrug of his shoulders.

'Wait!' interrupted Thelwell. 'Might I remind you all that this is still my department and my theatre. I demand to know what is going on!'

'Call it simply a spot check on surgical instruments,' said Jamieson. 'You have no objection to that have you Mr Thelwell?'

Jamieson could see the burning anger in Thelwell's eyes over the mask. 'I prefer to be kept informed of these things,' said Thelwell. 'Is that too much to ask?'

'Spot checks wouldn't be spot checks if they were advertised,' said Jamieson.

'May I proceed?' asked Phillip Morton with more than a trace of impatience in his voice.

'Of course,' said Jamieson. 'We are just leaving.'

As Clive Evans reached the door of the theatre he collided with Thelwell who had turned to leave at the same time. The instruments he had been carrying were scattered all over the floor outside the door.

'Clumsy oaf!' snorted Thelwell and disappeared out through the swing doors. Evans turned to face Jamieson, looking bemused. 'He deliberately barged into me!' he exclaimed.

Jamieson looked at the knives, scalpels and forceps lying all over the floor and sighed in frustration. The tests for sterility would now be useless. Evans began picking up the instruments. 'What do you want done with them?' he asked.

'Return them to CSSD for cleaning and sterilising,' said Jamieson. 'I'm going to have a word with Mr Thelwell.

Jamieson was furious at what Thelwell had done but he was also afraid of what it inferred. If Thelwell had deliberately bumped into Evans, it must mean that he had done it to prevent microbiological examination of the instruments. It had been a clever thing to do on the spur of the moment. Quick thinking, clever and devious. Wasn't that how Ryan had listed the hallmarks of the psychopath?

Jamieson found Thelwell in his office opening letters. His secretary had not been in the outer office so Jamieson had simply pushed open the door which had not been properly closed. At first Thelwell was unaware that he was standing there. He was obviously still in a temper and it showed in the way he was opening the envelopes with what a silver paper knife. He inserted the blade at a corner with momentary precision and then ripped each envelope open with a single upwards slash. Jamieson cleared his throat and Thelwell stopped what he was doing and looked up.

'What do you want?' he snapped. 'Or is it another spot test?' He punctuated the remark with a snort.