Chameleon (4 page)

'I think that's why I married you,' said a woman's voice from under the covers. 'Your infectious sense of optimism.'

'I think you have just talked yourself out of a cup of tea,' said Richardson.

'I take it back,' said the voice lazily.

Richardson smiled. 'You should have been a politician with such limpet-like adherence to principle,' he said. 'Tea or coffee?'

'Tea. You're up early.'

'I've got a lot on and that chap from London is coming today, you know, the one I told you about,' said Richardson still looking out at the rain.

'The government investigator,' said Claire Richardson with mock solemnity.

'That's the one.'

'What is he exactly? A bureaucrat?'

'No, I understand he's medically qualified. He's from some body called the Sci-Med Monitor.'

'Do you think he's going to make any difference?'

Richardson shrugged and rubbed his chin again. 'Normally, I would have said no, but who knows? Right now I'm willing to agree to anything before someone else dies needlessly. We've tried everything we can think of to find the source of the infection but we keep coming up with blanks.'

'Frustrating.'

'And embarrassing,' added Richardson. 'It's making me look a complete fool, as Thelwell never fails to point out.'

'They can't blame you,' said Claire. 'You've covered every test in the book and you're one of the most experienced bacteriologists in the region.'

'Counts for nothing when women start dying and I can't tell them why.'

'You've still no notion at all where the infection might be coming from?'

'None.'

'Isn't that a bit odd?'

Richardson gave a bitter laugh and said, 'You're beginning to sound like Thelwell.'

'I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. It just seems strange that you haven't managed to find the source when you said yourself that it was an everyday sort of bug and there's such a lot known about it.'

Richardson looked at his wife's worried face and smiled. He said gently, 'I know you didn't and you're right, it is strange. That's what makes me feel that we haven't missed anything in the tests. The bug isn't hiding somewhere in the hospital, it's being carried by a member of staff.'

'But surely you've tested all the staff?'

'Of course,' agreed Richardson. 'And they were all negative.'

'Back to square one.'

Richardson nodded and turned away as a loud click from the kitchen told him that the kettle had boiled.

'How is your new assistant settling in?' Claire called through to him.

'Evans? He's first class,'

Claire Richardson smiled affectionately at her husband as he returned carrying a tray with her tea and biscuits on it. She said, 'You say that about all your staff. You're a big softie, John Richardson.'

'Nonsense,' said Richardson gruffly. 'He's an excellent microbiologist and he has certainly taken a weight off my shoulders.'

Claire Richardson smiled at the unease her husband always displayed at any suggestion of a compliment. There was a definite mannerism associated with it. He would reach up his left hand to rub his neck as if he had an itch there. She had never mentioned this to him. 'If I were thirty years younger I could fall in love with you all over again.' she said.

'What some women will say to get tea in bed,' muttered Richardson shuffling out of the room.'

* * * * * * * * * *

Jamieson swung the car in through the gates of Kerr Memorial and was waved to a halt by a uniformed man. He had to sit still while the man made a detailed inspection of his windscreen and then indicated that he should wind down his window.

'No permit,' said the man as if it were a death sentence.

Jamieson reached into his inside pocket and produced the ID card that he had been provided with by Whitehall. The man looked at the photograph and then at Jamieson. He repeated this operation three times before committing himself to reading what was on the card. This he did with a thoroughness that Jamieson felt sure would have been a credit to an accountant at the Bank of England. The man handed him the card back and stretched himself to his full height. 'Not in my instructions,' he said, putting his hands behind his back and standing tall like a human wall.

'I beg your pardon,' said Jamieson when he felt that no more was forthcoming.'

'My instructions are clear,' said the man. 'No one comes through these gates without a permit authorised and signed by the Hospital Secretary. You'll have to leave.'

Jamieson looked at the man and the man diverted his eyes to stare into the middle distance which officialdom always finds so compelling. Jamieson bit his tongue and reversed the car out through the gates. The rain on the rear screen made it more difficult than it might otherwise have been and did nothing to improve his temper. 'What a start', he muttered. The "full authorisation of Her Majesty's Government" and I can't get through the bloody gates... '

He found a parking place after a five minute hunt through the streets and switched off the engine with a sigh. He gave himself a couple of minutes to see if the rain might ease off before starting on the half mile walk back to the hospital but the slight lightening in the sky he thought he detected had disappeared. The rain got heavier and Richardson's mood grew blacker as his hair got wetter. He flirted with the paranoid thought that the man on the gate had been primed to make things awkward for him, part of the lack of co-operation he was prepared for but then he dismissed the thought. That would be just too childish. Wouldn't it? He avoided looking at the man on the gate as he passed through on foot, feeling like a captured soldier being forced to parade through the streets of his conqueror. He started to follow the signs for 'Administration'.

'Do you have an appointment?' asked the woman in response to Jamieson's request to see the hospital secretary. She spoke with a nasal whine that made her even less attractive than the fact that she was decidedly round shouldered and had a parchment dry skin. Her hair was tied up in a tight, grey bun and her spectacles hung from a gold chain.

'Not exactly but I think you will find he is expecting me.'

The woman gave a humourless smirk as if she had caught Jamieson out and said. 'Mr Crichton does not see anyone without an appointment.'

Jamieson, his hair still wet from the walk and his temper barely in check took out his ID card and put it down with slow deliberation on the desk in front of the woman. Struggling to keep rein on his tongue, he said. 'Just tell him I'm here ... please.'

The complacent smugness of a minor minion began to waver and was replaced by uncertainty. 'I'll have to check,' she stammered and then turned on her heel to disappear through another door still clutching Jamieson's card. She returned a few moments later with a short man trailing behind her. He was holding Jamieson's card in his left hand while pressing a large white handkerchief to his nose with the other. Jamieson had to wait until the man had finished wiping his nose before he spoke. 'Perhaps I can help?' said the man.

'Are you the hospital secretary?'

The man gave a self-deprecating little smile and said, 'Actually no, I'm Mr Cartwright. I'm afraid Mr Crichton does not see anyone without an appointment.'

Jamieson's frustration got the better of him as a small pool of rain-water built up around his feet. He leaned on the desk counter and said solicitously, 'Mr Cartwright, will you please inform Mr Crichton that I am here and do it now!'

Cartwright's manner changed to one of barely suppressed outrage. His authority had been challenged and he bristled with indignation.

Jamieson saw the woman stiffen in preparation to support her colleague in a fresh campaign of obstruction and decided to attack first. 'The Home Office, in conjunction with the Department of Health and Social Security, have sent me all the way up here to see your hospital secretary and you two have apparently decided to stop me. In the interests of what I might say about this in my report, I suggest that you ... re-consider?'

For a moment it looked as if Cartwright was prepared to argue the point but then he capitulated and left the room. The woman avoided Jamieson's eyes and returned to her typing.

A painfully thin man, well over six feet tall with a large, almost totally bald head, and wearing glasses that seemed too small for him entered the room and handed Jamieson back his card. He smiled and held out his hand. 'Dr Jamieson? I'm Hugh Crichton. I've been expecting you. You look soaked.'

Crichton took Jamieson into his office and offered him whisky, an offer that Jamieson felt inclined to accept but decided not to at four in the afternoon. He noticed that Crichton's complexion had a distinctly yellow tinge to it and wondered if alcohol had played a part in that.

'Something else perhaps?'

'A parking permit would be nice.'

Crichton threw back his head and laughed. 'Oh I see. You've had a brush with our Mr Norris. I'm sorry, I should have foreseen that. We'll fix that right away. Crichton pressed a button on his intercom and asked the woman at the end of it to make out a permit for Jamieson. He kept his finger down on the button and asked Jamieson, 'Tea? Coffee?'

'Tea, please.'

While they waited for the tea to arrive Crichton asked Jamieson what he would require in the way of facilities at the hospital.

'A room, a telephone, access to medical records, possibly lab space.'

Crichton nodded and said, 'Well I think I anticipated most of these. I've arranged for you to have an office in the administration block and Dr Carew, our medical superintendent has requested that individual consultants co-operate with you in providing suitable space for you in their domains should you require it. I've also taken the liberty of having the housekeeper prepare a room for you in the doctors' residency. I didn't know if you would want to stay in the hospital or not?'

'I would,' agreed Jamieson. 'I'm grateful.'

'Not at all. Perhaps you would like to go there now and dry off a bit before getting started?'

Jamieson finished his tea and said that he would.

'And then what?' asked Crichton. 'Where would you like to start?'

'I'd like to have a word with Dr Carew first if that's convenient.' replied Jamieson.

'I anticipated that too,' smiled Crichton. 'Dr Carew has pencilled you in for five.'

It was Jamieson's turn to smile. He said, 'Perhaps you should just tell me what else you anticipated and we can work from there.'

'I thought you might want to have a word with Doctors Thelwell and Richardson so I've organised a little get-together here in my office at six. You can get to meet people informally over a sherry and make your own arrangements for tomorrow.'

'Fine,' said Jamieson.

Crichton pressed the button on his intercom and leaned towards it to say, 'Dr Jamieson will be staying in the residency. Will you inform the housekeeper and ask Miss Dotrice if she would be so kind as to show Dr Jamieson the way.'

Jamieson thanked the assistant who had accompanied him to the residency. He closed the door behind him and breathed out a long sigh. The room was depressingly spartan and functional but it had all he needed. A bed, a table, a chair, a telephone, a reading lamp - Jamieson switched it on to counteract the gloominess - and a small bathroom that had obviously been added fairly recently. It had been made by simply partitioning off a corner of the room. Jamieson ran himself a bath and took off his clothes. He felt the old, iron radiator and found it cold, the towel rail was equally arctic. There was a solitary wall heater on the wall above the bath and he pulled the cord to switch it on. He was mildly surprised when the slight groaning noise it made indicated that it was in working order.

Jamieson put his foot into the water and savoured the warmth for a moment before stepping into the tub and immersing himself so that only his face and the tops of his knees were above the water. He let out a sigh of satisfaction and, unwilling to move lest he destroy the moment, lay still and watched the steam drift upwards to the high, cracked ceiling. The strain of the motorway journey and the hassle of petty obstruction started to drift away.

The hypnotic silence was broken by the shrill ring of the telephone and Jamieson closed his eyes in disbelief. He considered ignoring it for a moment but ignoring a ringing telephone can be impossibly hard on the nerves and there was always the possibility that it was Sue calling to see if he had arrived safely. He stretched out his right hand and grabbed the chrome handle at the back of the bath to pull himself to his feet.

He had almost reached the vertical when the handle suddenly came out of the wall and he fell heavily backwards to splash down into the water. He jarred the base of his spine and hit his left elbow hard against the side of the tub. The curse that sprang to his lips was suddenly frozen as he saw what was happening above him. A wave of fear swept over him. Five feet up on the wall, the heater had come away from its mounting and was hanging delicately by what Jamieson reckoned could not be more than a millimetre of screwnail on either side. The bar that had come away in his hand had opened up the entire wiring channel in the wall and destroyed the plaster behind the heater.

Even as Jamieson stared up at the glowing element, almost afraid to breathe in case it fell into the water and electrocuted him, he saw it move a fraction. In the background the telephone still rang. A feeling of panic urged him to pull himself up and over the side of the bath but through this fear he realised that this would be entirely the wrong thing to do. It would almost certainly be fatal. The heater was balanced so finely that the slightest vibration would cause it to fall.

The water! He must get rid of the water in the bath! If he could do that before the heater fell on him then perhaps he could escape the short circuit that would kill him.

Cautiously he felt with his big toe under the water for the bath plug while his eyes remained glued to the red bar above him. He found the retaining chain and manipulated it between his toes to apply pressure. He felt the links bite into the soft skin between his toes as the plug refused to budge at first but pain had become a secondary consideration. He continued increasing the pressure until he felt the plug give and heard the water start to gurgle away down the drain.