"Well missus…I think we can come to some arrangement. Steady! I'll fall off this ladder."
Jenny paid no attention. She slid her hand into Fenton's crotch. "Heavens, what's this?" crooned the dizzy blonde voice, "Could this be the globbin shaft? Seems to be in excellent condition." She started to pull down Fenton's zip.
"Jenny, for God's sake…"
FOUR
The following morning brought yet more wind and rain and Fenton, who had harboured a lifelong hatred of wind, found his patience strained to the limit. "Will it never let up!" he growled as he opened the curtains to look on wet roofs and whirling chimney pots. "Another wrestling match with the bike."
Jenny was about to point out the merits of four wheeled transport but then thought better of it for there was no need, she reasoned. She looked at the black sky. Another couple of weeks of this and it could be a nice little Ford by the Spring.
Fenton arrived at the lab with water running off the front of his leathers like a mountain stream. The letter box in the heavy front door of the lab rattled in the wind as he stood in the outer hall peeling them off with hands that had gone numb with cold. He hung them up as best he could and opened the inner glass door, blowing his fingers in an attempt to restore circulation.
"And Jack the shepherd blows his nail…" said Ian Ferguson.
"Pardon?"
"Shakespeare," said Ferguson.
"Oh," said Fenton, following him into the common room where he found Alex Ross speaking to Mary Tyler.
Mary Tyler had previously been employed on a part time basis in the department but had been coerced back into working full time by Charles Tyson since the demise of Neil Munro and Susan Daniels. "Good morning Mary, back to getting up early in the morning eh?" Mary Tyler replied that, with three young children, she was always up early. Fenton poured himself some coffee and warmed his fingers on the mug.
Charles Tyson arrived, brushing the rain from the shoulders of his overcoat as he put his head round the common room door. He asked that Fenton go up to see him when he was ready. Fenton allowed Tyson enough time to reach his office and take off his wet things before joining him. He waited patiently while the consultant organised his papers and settled into the seat behind his desk. "It's about the Saxon report," said Tyson still rearranging piles of paper.
"I left it on your desk," said Fenton.
"The sterilising records are missing from it."
"What sterilising records?" asked Fenton.
"We have to include details of how we sterilised the plastic samplers for the machine."
"I didn't find any records among Neil's things."
"Damn. He must have been aware of the fact."
"Perhaps they are still down at the Sterile Supply Department?" suggested Fenton.
"Would you check and let me know?"
Fenton said that he would, adding that he was just about to go up to the administration block anyway. He would call in to see Sister Kincaid on his way back. "Nigel Saxon told me that they were confident of getting a license for their machine by the end of the month," he said.
"I heard that too," said Tyson. "And from the number of phone calls I've been getting from the Scottish Office about this damned report I don't think he is being overly optimistic. All the stops have been pulled out for Saxon.
"Friends in high places?"
Tyson grunted.
"It's funny when you think about it," said Fenton.
"What is?"
"The Scottish Office with their trouser legs rolled up."
Tyson smiled but did not say anything.
Fenton saw from a ground floor window that the rain had slackened off and decided to sprint up to the main hospital without changing out of his lab coat. He ran up the drive and took the stone steps three at a time to reach the shelter of the main entrance. A domestic, dressed in green overalls, was polishing a brass plaque set in the wood panelling, placed there in remembrance of some long forgotten names. The woman looked down at his feet and the muddy prints he had just made on the mosaic floor. "Sorry," he said. The woman shook her head and returned to her polishing without comment. A nurse was having an argument over laundry baskets with a porter as he passed along the main corridor.
"I'm telling you! Ward ten gets…" The voices trailed off behind Fenton and merged with new sounds, clangs from ward kitchens, children's yells, hurrying feet. He reached Jenny's ward just as she was crossing the corridor with a steel tray in her hand.
"What brings you out of your ivory tower?" she asked.
Fenton told her that he was on his way to the administration block to sort out some misunderstanding over service contracts taken out on lab equipment.
"What's the problem?" asked Jenny.
"Archaic equipment and no money to replace it."
"So what's new? Do you have time for a cup of tea?"
"A quick one."
Fenton was sipping his tea in the ward side room when a student nurse came in looking ashen faced. Jenny put down her cup and got to her feet. "What's the matter?" she asked.
Another nurse came into the room. "It's Belle Wilson," she said, "She's dead. I think she killed herself."
"The ward maid," said Jenny in answer to Fenton's look. They followed the second nurse next door to the sluice room where a small, middle aged woman, dressed in green overalls, was lying slumped over one of the large white porcelain sinks. Her eyes were wide and lifeless, her right arm dangled limply in the sink in a pool of red.
"She cut her wrist," said the nurse.
Jenny felt for a pulse in the woman's neck but knew that it was useless. She was quite dead.
Fenton stared at the marble white face under the crop of recently dyed red hair and thought that she looked like a clown lying over a theatrical basket.
"I'll phone the front office," said Jenny quietly.
Fenton was left alone in the room. He looked more closely at the woman's wrist. There was something odd about it. He looked even closer. The cut was not in her wrist at all. It was in the palm of her hand! He went to find the nurse who had discovered her and asked, "What was Belle Wilson doing before she cut herself?"
The nurse was taken aback, "I'm not sure," she stammered.
"Think!" said Fenton.
"Eer…eer…Cleaning vases. I remember now Staff Nurse asked her to wash out the flower vases."
"Where?" asked Fenton looking about him. "In here?"
"Next door," said the nurse, "In the broom cupboard."
"Show me."
Fenton followed the nurse into a small, dark, wood panelled room that smelt strongly of Lysol. His foot hit noisily off a metal bucket before the nurse had had time to find the light switch behind a forest of brush and mop handles. They saw the broken glass on the floor. Fenton knelt down to gather the pieces.
"She must have dropped one," said the nurse, still puzzled at Fenton's behaviour.
"Any more bits?" asked Fenton.
"There by the sink."
Fenton picked up a jagged piece of glass from the draining board and saw the red stains on it. He swore under his breath.
"I don't understand," said the nurse.
Belle Wilson cut herself accidentally on the broken vase and bled to death from a cut on her palm. She didn't deliberately cut her own wrist. She was murdered. She's another victim of that bloody lunatic."
Fenton found Jenny in the sluice room and told her what he had discovered. She approached the body and bent over the sink to examine the dead woman's hand. She could now see that, as Fenton had said, the river of red emanated from a deep wound on her palm, not her wrist. "Look at the blood in the sink," said Fenton.
"What about it?"
"It's still liquid. It hasn't clotted."
The police were on the scene quickly, being already on hospital premises with a mobile incident room that had been parked behind the administration block since the death of Neil Munro. Fenton called Tyson at the lab to say that he was going to be delayed and why. He was still on the telephone when Inspector Jamieson came into the duty room and found him there. He waited till Fenton had put down the receiver then continued to look at him without saying anything. Fenton could almost hear his mind working.