Donor (17 page)

Although he could get practically anything he wanted in the way of specialist equipment and expert advice from Sci-Med, it would take a little time and he couldn’t wait. He had to know right now, even if it was just to eliminate the notion from his head. What he needed most was a radiation detector, a Geiger counter or something along those lines.

He looked at his watch. It was just after eleven thirty. Unless there was some kind of emergency at Médic Ecosse there was every likelihood that the Radiology Department would be empty and unmanned at this time of night. A radiographer would be on call but probably not on the premises. He could get hold of a radiation monitor there. He threw back the covers and swung his legs out of the bed.

Rather than sneak into Médic Ecosse unobserved, he decided he would drive quite openly into the car park and tell Reception he had come back to check some figures for a report he was working on. He didn’t think that would arouse too much suspicion and might even chalk up some brownie points for the civil service. A stay of about fifteen minutes would seem about right. That should give him enough time to get down the back stairs and along the corridor to Radiology. His cover story would account for his carrying a briefcase – it should be big enough to hold the monitor and some protective gear. What if the department was locked for the night? He couldn’t risk a break-in, he decided. If it was locked he’d abort the plan and make his request through Sci-Med in the morning.

As he walked from the car park up to the main door of the hospital he wondered if there was any chance that there’d be no one at the Reception desk. Of course not: the desk was run like everything else in Médic Ecosse, very well. Not only was there a smiling receptionist on duty, but there were two uniformed security men in the hall, silver-haired but fit-looking and alert. Despite the fact that the receptionist recognized Dunbar and greeted him by name, one of the guards still asked to see his ID.

‘I won’t be long. I just came back to check on some figures,’ said Dunbar to the receptionist.

‘And I thought you people drank tea all the time,’ she smiled.

‘A cruel myth,’ said Dunbar with a backward glance and a half-smile as he headed for the double doors leading to the main corridor.

He climbed the stairs to his office and became aware that his palms were sweating. It was some time since he’d done anything like this and he was nervous. He switched on the light in his office and put his briefcase on the desk. His heart was thumping. Did he really want to do this? Maybe he’d lost his nerve. There was, however, no doubt in his mind that he still had a yen for an occasional walk on the wild side, if only to ask questions of himself.

With his pulse rate still rising, he opened his office door and looked out into the corridor. It was deserted. He stepped out and went quickly and quietly along it until he reached the head of the back stairs. Another pause to listen for any signs of activity but there was still nothing. Médic Ecosse was sleeping.

He was halfway down the stairs when suddenly he heard voices; they were getting louder. His first fear was that whoever it was might turn into the stairwell and find him there. He was debating whether to run back upstairs, when the sound of trolley wheels registered. They couldn’t bring a trolley up the stairs. Reassured, he continued down to the bottom landing and shrank into the shadows in a corner from where he could see through the round glass window in the door.

The trolley party comprised four people. All wore blue cotton surgical garb with masks obscuring their lower faces. Dunbar could tell only that two were male and two female. Lying on the trolley was a young girl of five or six. Her eyes were closed and a drip-feed into her arm was being held up by one of the nurses as they waited for a lift at the door opposite the stairwell. The child seemed peacefully asleep but, in view of the lateness of the hour and the surgical dress, he supposed it more likely that she had been prepped for surgery. ‘Good luck,’ he whispered as the lift arrived and the doors slid open to spill light on to her pale little face. The doors closed. Dunbar watched until the indicator told him the party had stopped on the second floor, then edged out into the corridor and went quickly on down to Radiology.

The wide blue doors, which had earlier been propped open to permit the easy passage of trolleys, were closed, and Dunbar prepared himself for the worst. It would be in keeping with everything else about Médic Ecosse if the department had been responsibly and securely locked for the night. He looked to both sides before trying the handle; it moved all the way down. He pushed gently and the door opened. Swallowing hard, he slipped inside and closed it behind him.

He was in complete darkness with only the sound of his own breathing for company. He remembered that there were no outside windows in Radiology, so switching on the lights would not be a give-away. The light would show around the edges of the door, of course, but there was little reason for anyone to come here at this time of night. It was a chance he would have to take. He ran the palm of his hand up the wall, found the panel and clicked on all four switches.

For some reason the room’s equipment looked threatening. The X-ray guns were waiting for him to make a move before turning on him. The immobilizing straps on the scanner bed were only pretending to hang lifeless. They were snakes, ready to ensnare him should he stray too close, waiting to secure his limbs and forehead like steel bands before feeding his body into the dark maw of the scanner, a black hole leading to …

Get a grip! thought Dunbar, raising his eyes to the ceiling. He really was out of practice at this sort of thing. He tried to remember where he had seen the radiation monitoring equipment. In a cupboard somewhere – Svensen had brought it out to demonstrate his new toy. But in which room? He walked around slowly, hoping for inspiration, and found it when he looked into Svensen’s office. He remembered the radiologist opening the cupboard to the left of his desk and taking out a monitor.

Dunbar opened the cupboard and found three monitors. Two were mini-monitors for the routine checking of surfaces. The third was more sophisticated, with accurate metering capacity for measuring dosage. One of the mini-monitors would suit his purpose admirably. It comprised a rectangular metal box about eight inches by four with what looked like a microphone clipped to its top surface; this was the probe. It was attached to the main unit by about three feet of spring-coiled cable. There was a single control knob on the side to alter sensitivity settings and to provide a battery check. Dunbar turned it to this position and the needle swung upwards, well past the red line on the meter; the battery was in good condition. He unclipped the probe and moved it around. Random intermittent clicks from normal background radiation indicated that the monitor was in working order.

He turned his attention to the idea of protective clothing. If a small thing like a monitor was missing, people would assume someone else was using it or that it had been left in another room. It would be a while before anyone realized it wasn’t in the department. The same applied to protective gloves. He would take just one. He debated taking one of the heavy aprons worn by the radiographers, but decided it was too bulky and would be too easily missed by the staff. The last thing he wanted was for them to come in in the morning and see that there’d been a break-in. He’d make do with the monitor and the glove.

He took a last look round to make sure that everything was as he’d found it, before clicking out the lights and listening for a moment at the door. Everything was quiet. He slipped out into the corridor and made his way back to his office. He let his breath out in a long sigh as he put the things he’d taken into his briefcase and secured the catch. So far so good. There was no denying that he’d got quite a buzz from the whole thing. He walked confidently past the reception desk and said good night with a friendly smile. The adrenalin was coursing through his veins.

As he neared the Barneses’ street, Dunbar checked that he had the keys ready in his pocket. It was the third time he’d done it; they were still there. He frowned as he remembered the security light outside the house; it would come on when he walked up the path. Despite the lateness of the hour, this might alert the neighbours. People would not come out to ask questions at this time of night; they would phone the police.

That was the last thing he needed. He tried to remember the angle the light was set at. It had come on almost as soon as he opened the garden gate, so the detector beam must be set high. He should be able to slip under it if he made his approach from the side of the house along the wall.

He parked the car well away from the bungalow and outside a house whose high conifer hedge meant that the residents wouldn’t be able to see it. He didn’t want it reported as a suspiciously parked vehicle. He walked briskly and purposefully along the street, a man with a briefcase, not the kind of figure to arouse suspicion. There would be no lingering outside the Barneses’ house, no furtive looks to right and left and no hesitation.

With only one backward glance to check that no one was coming, he scissored his legs over the corner of the Barneses’ fence and dropped to a crouch in the shrubbery. He remained motionless for almost a minute, just looking and listening. No lights had come on in any of the nearby houses. There was no sound of voices.

Mr Proudfoot’s house was in darkness. Hopefully everyone was asleep. Dunbar moved silently up to the corner of the building and pressed himself to the wall. He stared at the intruder detector above the door as he edged closer. Some of these things had heat sensors as well, he reminded himself, but it was now or never. With the keys ready in his hand he moved directly under it and opened the door as quickly as he could. He was inside and the light still hadn’t come on.

He closed the curtains of the living room. They were reassuringly heavy and he made sure there were no cracks before switching on his torch. As a further precaution he kept his body between the torch beam and the window area as he opened his briefcase and took out the radiation monitor. He set it to its most sensitive setting and held the probe in front of him as he moved round the room.

Click … click … click click … Nothing to worry about, just background levels. He moved towards the cupboard by the fireplace where Cyril kept his camera gear. Click, click, clickety, clickety, clickety. The frequency of the clicks started to rise and the signal was markedly stronger. The blood was pounding in his ears as he homed in on the source. It was a white plastic telephone junction box fixed to the wall.

He moved away from the box and put the probe down on the floor, where it sat giving occasional clicks as it returned to background levels. He brought out the protective glove from his briefcase, along with a screwdriver to remove the cover of the box. With the heavy glove on his right hand making dexterity a lot more difficult, he undid the two starpoint screws retaining the cover and removed it. There was nothing inside.

He frowned and brought the monitor up to the front of the box again. Once more the clicks increased in frequency and the needle swung round on the meter. There was only one explanation; the box did not contain a source of radioactivity at the moment … but it had done recently.

The monitor Dunbar was using was a simple one. There was no way he could tell anything about the radiation source from it save for its current level and range. Holding the probe in front of him, he backed away until he was about eight feet from the junction box and the slowing clicks indicated he was out of range. He had to think what to do now. He hadn’t counted on this situation arising at all. He shone the torch around the junction box area and then followed the thin telephone cable leading to it. The cable ran straight through without interruption. There was no need for a junction box at all; it was a fake; it was unnecessary.

The sole purpose of the box had been to house the radiation source. Someone had deliberately installed it there in order to expose Sheila Barnes and her husband to the effects of radiation damage. Or had Sheila alone been the real target? Because surely this was Médic Ecosse’s doing. They just had to be the number-one suspect. Radiation sources weren’t exactly freely available over the counter but they were common enough in hospitals, where a wide range of isotopes was used for tracing and treatment purposes.

He looked again at the empty box. The source – and therefore the evidence – had been removed, presumably when it had done its job and Sheila and her husband had been taken into hospital. Was that it? Were they now going to get away with it? Was there nothing he could do to prevent that? He reminded himself that the monitor was still registering so there must still be traces of the substance in the box. Maybe that would be enough to identify the isotope and trace its origins.

As he wondered how he could take some sort of sample from the inside of the box he remembered Sheila’s make-up tray in the bedroom. Among the things she kept there was a series of little brushes. One of those would be ideal. He went and selected one, then turned his attention to finding a suitable container. His first thought was a plastic 35mm film container from Cyril’s camera cupboard but plastic would not contain the radiation too well. He would need better shielding. His next thought was to try some kitchen foil. He brought some through from the kitchen.

Very carefully, to avoid dust rising into the air and him inhaling it, he brushed out what little debris there was inside the junction box and collected it on a square of foil. He folded it over into a little packet and checked the outside with the monitor. The reading was still high. The foil was too thin to block the radiation even when folded into several thicknesses; he needed better shielding.

He was facing the depressing thought that he might have to wait until Sci-Med sent up a suitable container before it would be safe to transport the sample, when he remembered that the bungalow was quite old. Although it was unlikely still to have any original lead piping in it after all the health scares of a few years ago, it might have remnants of these days. It was worth looking. He took the torch through into the kitchen and examined the piping under the sinks. It was modern. Copper, steel and plastic. The same applied to the bathroom.