Fenton's Winter (14 page)

"Only Jenny," Buchan answered,
making Fenton wish that he had not asked. "Do you think I could see
Jamie's room?"

"He is in it."

The answer shook Fenton rigid.
He had not considered that the boy's body might be in the
house.

"We got him back yesterday,"
said Buchan quietly. "Mona wanted to have him home once more before
he goes away...tomorrow."

Fenton nodded silently, a lump
coming to his throat at Buchan's distress. "I'm sorry," he said
softly, "I just thought that if I saw his things I might notice
something that you may have overlooked. But in the
circumstances..."

Buchan stood up. Without saying
anything he motioned to Fenton to follow him.

Fenton had to duck his head to
accommodate the slope of the roof at the head of the narrow stairs
before they entered Jamie's bedroom. The room was cold and smelled
of dampness, old dampness, dampness that had been seeping through
the thick stone walls for years. It had invaded the furniture and
fabric, leaving the same musty odour that Fenton associated with
the seaside boarding houses of his youth. The little white coffin
was bathed in pale grey light from the tiny dormer window that
faced north to the sea; Jamie looked like a marble cherub. Fenton
bowed his head and stood still for a moment in sadness.

"We haven't moved anything,"
said Buchan.

Fenton looked about him. It was
a boy's room, trains, boats, planes, an unfinished Lego model. The
Millenium Falcon stood on its window-sill launching pad, ready to
transport the plastic figures beside it to some far off galaxy.
Jamie's Jedi sword lay on his pillow. "He was Luke Skywalker," said
Buchan.

An anguished cry came from the
stairs. The rumble of footsteps stopped with Mona Buchan framed in
the doorway, her eyes burning with anger. Fenton was transfixed by
the look of hatred on her face, white flecks of spittle pocked her
lips as she turned on her husband. "What in God's holy name
possessed you?" she demanded, "To let this...this animal near our
son?" Buchan looked shaken. "And you," she hissed at Fenton, her
voice a coarse rasp, "How dare you...how dare you."

Mona Buchan's anger soared
beyond the bounds of all reason and, unable to contain herself any
longer, she flung herself across the room, fingernails bared, blind
to everything except Fenton, the object of her hatred. As she
lunged forward her foot caught the edge of the trestle bearing
Jamie's coffin and sent it crashing to the floor to spill him out.
Clad in his white shroud he lay there like a sleeping china doll
among the toys.

Mona Buchan's rage evaporated.
She collapsed to her knees and broke into uncontrollable sobbing as
she rested her cheek against her dead son. Fenton knew that he
would never be able to forget the sight. "Go!" said Grant Buchan,
"Just go."

The Honda was the centre of
attraction for a group of small boys when Fenton returned to the
harbour and their Star Wars gear suggested that they might have
been contemporaries of Jamie. There was something familiar about
one of the boys, thought Fenton, but he could not think what.
Perhaps he was a relation of Jamie's. A brother? He could not
recall if the Buchans had more than the one child. "Your name isn't
Buchan is it son?" he asked.

"No Mister. He's deid."

"Yes," said Fenton reliving the
awful scene in the bedroom.

Fenton got on the bike and
fastened the chin strap of his helmet.

"Can I have a hurl on the back
Mister?" asked the boy, resting his hand on the handlebars.

"Another time," said
Fenton.

Fenton did not look back as he
reached the top of the hill above the village; he gave a cursory
glance to the left for traffic then joined the main road to head
for Fraserburgh at an easy pace for concentrating was difficult. He
stopped at a harbour cafe in Fraserburgh hoping that eating would
help alleviate the awful emptiness he felt inside but it did not.
He gazed out of the window at the boats nuzzling the quayside but
all he saw was Jamie's lifeless body.

As he headed east on the coast
road Fenton reflected on what his visit had achieved. Nothing, he
decided, not a damned thing. Grant Buchan had not told him anything
that could possibly be of help in solving anything. Jenny was in as
much trouble as she ever had been. He drew to a halt as he reached
as far east as he would travel and took a last look at the grey
northern water before turning to head south. It was cold but it was
dry and the wind would be behind him.

Jenny was in the flat when
Fenton got back. They held each other for a long time before either
spoke. "I found your note," said Jenny. "Did you find out
anything?"

"Nothing," admitted Fenton.
"What's been happening here?"

"The police released me this
afternoon but I have been told not to leave the city and the
hospital have suspended me."

Fenton could see that Jenny had
been crying a lot, her eyes were puffy and red. "Morons," he said.
"Absolute morons." He drew her even closer.

"The funny thing is," began
Jenny, half laughing half sobbing, "I can see their point of view.
How could the hospital killer come into contact with Jamie . . .
unless it was me?"

"That's what we must figure
out," said Fenton with all the reassurance he could muster.

"We're not terribly good at
figuring things out. Remember?" said Jenny.

"We'll do it," said Fenton.

They lay still in the darkness
taking pleasure in their closeness. Fenton's fingers intertwined
with Jenny's, his thumb gently tracing an ellipse on the back of
her hand. Her shallow breathing was like music.

In the small hours of the
morning Fenton lay awake while Jenny lay beside him fast asleep.
She had been mentally exhausted but reassured enough by his
presence to fall into a sound sleep, her head still against his
shoulder. For the first time in many hours she had felt safe, safe
from the strange and the unknown, the overweight men in crumpled
suits who smelled of sweat and down market after shave. The men who
sneered at everything she said, the red faces who shouted at her,
mocked her, accused her. Surely these men could not have been
policemen? Policemen were quiet, well mannered, helpful; they told
you the time and gave you directions, patted children and inspired
confidence, not fear. How she had been afraid, she had never known
such fear.

The disorientation caused by
being taken to a strange place full of hostile men had destroyed
her self confidence in one fell swoop. Her initial stance as an
outraged citizen demanding her rights in a free country had
collapsed within minutes leaving her confused and afraid. A
pleading note had crept into her voice as the ordeal had continued
and she had been filled with a desperate desire to please her
inquisitors, to say yes to anything that would breach the seemingly
impenetrable wall of hostility. Only an innate strength of
character stopped her from travelling along that road, but she had
seen it and seen it clearly.

Fenton sighed in the still
darkness of the room as once again his thoughts came to nothing.
What was the connection? Just what was it? Only one fact stared him
in the face like an ugly mongrel, there had been no opportunity at
all for the hospital killer to reach Jamie directly. He squeezed
Jenny's hand involuntarily as the unthinkable crossed his mind.
Something was wrong with his train of thought, he decided,
something basic.

An hour later, and after much
mental wrestling, Fenton came up with a new hypothesis. It was
forced on him by the facts. There was no killer, no lunatic, no
psychopath. It was a disease! A bacterium or a virus! A virus had
destroyed the clotting mechanism in the blood of all the people who
had died. Why not? New diseases were being discovered all the time.
Legionnaires' disease, Lassa fever, AIDS. The more he thought about
it the more obvious and possible it seemed. The virus must be
endemic in the hospital, lurking in unseen corners, just as the
Legionnaires bug had hidden in the showers of an American hotel.
Jenny must have carried it home and infected Jamie. The fact that
not everyone was susceptible to it would be typical of viral
infection. Everything pointed to it being a virus...except Neil
Munro.

The Kraken of Neil Munro, burnt
flesh peeling from his face, rose up from Fenton's subconscious to
slow him down. No virus had pushed Munro into the sterilizer. A
compromise was demanded. Neil had been murdered, of that there was
no doubt, but the others? No, it had to be some kind of infective
agent. All he had to do now was prove it.

Jenny turned in her sleep and
Fenton kissed her lightly on the shoulder. The question now was how
he should go about substantiating his theory. Elementary. It was
first year student stuff. You isolate the thing and show it does
what it does by sticking it in to laboratory animals. But how to
get his hands on infected material . . . that was the real question
and that was going to be quite a different matter.

He would need material from the
people who had died, tissue, serum, and for that he would need
help, top brass help and that meant Tyson...or did it? He was still
smarting from the way he had made a fool of himself over the Doctor
David Malcolm affair. He did not want it to happen again. Could he
possibly do it alone?

It occurred to Fenton that
maybe it had been done already! Perhaps the Pathology Department
had already screened tissue from the victims for infective agents?
If that were so then his suggestion would be about as popular with
Pathology as his last one had been with the Police. That would be
the last straw. He could just see MacDougal, the consultant
pathologist and not the most patient of men, sneering at him and
saying, "Do you imagine that we are all stupid down here
Fenton?"

He glanced at the digital clock
on the bedside table. Ten past four, four hours before he would get
up and go to the hospital, four hours in which to decide. Outside
the wind began to rise and moan through wires on the roof. The
bedroom window rattled as it denied entry to the night. Thoughts of
a commando style raid on the Pathology Lab conjured up visions of
being caught and the implausible explanation that he would have to
offer to the police. Inspector Jamieson's superior little smile
appeared in the glow from the clock. There had to be another
way.

The other way presented itself
as an obvious little idea that made Fenton feel stupid for not
having thought of it sooner. The Medical Records Department! He
could simply go along and request the file on one of the victims.
There might not be one for Susan Daniels or the Wilson woman but
there would certainly be one for the Watson boy for he had been a
patient at the time. His file would contain a full post mortem
report and details of all the lab tests requested.

Fenton got up at seven and was
in the lab by eight. He had left Jenny sleeping, partly because she
needed the rest but partly to avoid any discussion about what he
was going to do. He got straight to work on his excuse for the
medical records people and thumbed through the day book until he
found the last entry for Timothy Watson, a blood glucose
estimation. He copied down details of the result and took a virgin
report form from Liz Scott's desk. Using two fingers and a great
deal of concentration he tapped out a stuttering copy of the
original report before getting ink over his hands as he altered the
date stamp to match the date of the request in the day book. He now
had his excuse, a biochemistry report to insert into the Watson
Boy's file.

The Medical Records Department
was situated in the Administration Block and smelled of dust and
old cardboard. It had a blue carpeted floor that deadened the
footsteps of two young girls as they moved up and down narrow
gangways between towering rows of patients' files. Cecil McClay
looked over his glasses as Fenton entered through the swing doors
and approached his desk. He continued writing and finished the
sentence before saying, "Yes?"

McClay managed to endow the
single word with the suggestion that Fenton was intruding but
Fenton had been prepared for it for he knew McClay of old. The man
had been Medical Records Officer at the Princess Mary for over
twenty years and, like many time servers, had assumed proprietorial
rights over his department. To him medical records were an end in
themselves. Outsiders wanting to see them were a nuisance to be
discouraged wherever possible.

Had Fenton been on a legitimate
errand McClay's attitude might have been as a red rag to a bull
but, as it was, he was sweetness and light. He apologised for the
inconvenience and asked if he 'might possibly' take a look at the
file on Timothy Watson.

"Your authority?"

"My own, I'm Fenton,
Biochemistry. I have a report to add to the file. It must have been
overlooked."

"Leave it there. I'll see that
it's entered." The eyes dropped down behind the glasses.

"Actually...I really would like
to make sure that this is the only one we overlooked..." Fenton
hoped his smile looked more genuine than it felt.

McClay considered for a moment
then swung round in his chair and said to one of the girls,
"Hilary! Watson, Tee, March three, Ward four."

The girl handed the file to
Fenton with a look that promised more than a cardboard file should
he choose to follow it up. He smiled and took it to a vacant
desk.

The post mortem findings were
brief; Timothy Watson had died from loss of blood. Cross reference
was made to the haematology report which described high
anti-coagulant activity in the sample and complete failure of the
clotting mechanisms in the boy's blood. No mention was made
anywhere of specimens having been taken and sent for bacterial or
viral investigation. His idea was still valid. Everything was yet
to play for.