After Effects (10 page)

Greatly daring, Dilys Chomel said, ‘I'm afraid what we're giving her doesn't seem to be doing her much good.'

‘I don't suppose it is,' said Byville dispassionately.

‘But—'

‘Most of these people,' said Byville, a medical nihilist if ever there was one, ‘die from an overwhelming infection.'

‘She's just not responding,' said Dilys worriedly.

‘A mild infection in a person without a spleen progresses to a major one very quickly. That's her trouble—' He broke off as his call-pager started bleeping. ‘You'd better tell the husband I'll talk to him. After he's visited her, mind you, not before. That's something you'll soon learn, Dr Chomel. Not to give bad news before the relatives see the patient. Tell 'em on their way out and let them have time to sleep on it and get their faces straight before they visit again.'

‘Thank you, sir—'

But Dr Byville was already on his mobile telephone. ‘Gledhill? Hello, yes, I've heard. It's bad news, all right. What's that? Right, I'll come over to you now.' He turned back to Dilys. ‘I'm going to Gilroy's at Staple St James. If you can't get hold of me, ring Martin Friar at Kinnisport. He'll have to stand in for Paul over there.'

Dr Dabbe, the Consultant Pathologist at Berebury, welcomed Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby to his domain with his usual affability. ‘Keeping me busy today, gentlemen, aren't you? Two police cases in one day.'

‘We're not sure yet if Muriel Galloway is a police case,' said Sloan cautiously. ‘There's a
post mortem
because there are certain allegations that she died as a result of a drug trial.'

‘So do most patients, Sloan,' said Dabbe cheerfully.

‘I'm not sure, Doctor, that I—'

‘You could say, Sloan, that everyone who dies while they've been taking medication has been taking part in a drug trial.'

‘Really, Doctor?'

‘Well,' said Dabbe mischievously, ‘the drugs have been tried, haven't they, and not worked.'

‘Tried and failed, you mean?' Crosby looked interested at last.

‘Right,' said the doctor.

‘Or trial and error.' The constable caught the pathologist's drift more quickly than usual.

‘Hit and miss often describes it better.' Dr Dabbe reached for his green operating gown.

Sloan was not disposed to argue with him. After all, the pathologist was in a better position to know that than anyone else.

‘Otherwise known,' continued the pathologist robustly, ‘as “treating empirically”.'

‘What is being alleged in the case of Muriel Galloway, Doctor,' he said, ‘is that her death was hastened by her taking part in what I am informed is called the Cardigan Protocol and perhaps—' he coughed, ‘it is not yet known if this was so—the drug that is being tested in that Protocol.'

‘Ha!' said the pathologist, looking alert. ‘Nice point, that, Sloan. And who may I ask, does know? Now that Meggie's dead, too, I mean.'

‘It is believed,' said Sloan carefully, ‘that Dr Meggie did not know.'

‘Ah, a double-blind trial. That's as it should be, of course,' said Dabbe. ‘So who does know?'

‘I understand,' said Sloan, ‘that the pharmaceutical chemists, Gilroy's, over at Staple St James, have a list of those numbered bottles of tablets which contained the substance code-named Cardigan—'

‘Which may or may not have been dangerous,' mused Dabbe, putting on a green surgical cap.

‘—and those numbered bottles with tablets which appeared identical and which contained an inert substance.'

Dr Dabbe stroked his chin. ‘And presumably poor old Meggie had a list of patients and the numbers on the bottles they have been given—'

‘Yes, Doctor,' said Sloan steadily.

‘Without knowing t'other from which?' said Crosby, who didn't like
post mortems
and was never in a hurry for them to get started.

‘Right. And ne'er the twain set of matching numbers shall meet,' continued Dabbe, ‘until the trial's well and truly over, I take it.'

‘So I am told, Doctor.' Sloan cleared his throat and added, ‘As a matter of interest, Gilroy's have their set of numbers and we—that is, the police—are holding Dr Meggie's figures for the—er—time being.'

Dr Dabbe cocked an eyebrow.

‘Found in his car,' said Sloan succinctly. ‘On the seat beside him. The Scenes of Crime people are still there. We'll get the body here for you as soon as we can, Doctor.'

‘Alas, poor Meggie,' said Dr Dabbe.

‘Quite so,' said Sloan.

The pathologist became suddenly brisk. ‘Right, let's look to the lady then—'

It was the best part of an hour before Dr Dabbe straightened up and pulled off his surgical gloves. ‘Left ventricular failure, Sloan, and myocardial degeneration.'

‘Natural causes—' That, thought Sloan, mindful of another appointment, would at least help him in dealing with Gordon Galloway.

‘No doubt about it,' said the pathologist easily. ‘She'd had a new hip and she'd had her tonsils and adenoids removed when a child but that's about it. Just what you'd expect in a woman of her age with her history.'

‘No sign of any test drugs?'

‘No sign of them having killed her,' qualified Dabbe, ‘but I'll be reporting on the sections and specimens I've taken. There's certainly nothing macroscopic—'

‘Macro—' Detective Constable Crosby was having his usual trouble with his notes.

‘Opposite of microscopic, old chap. Means what you can see with the naked eye.'

The notes that Detective Inspector Sloan was making were mental ones. And he already suspected that there was more to this situation than met the eye, naked or otherwise.

‘You're late back, Sloan,' barked Leeyes, when the two policemen returned to the police station at Berebury.

‘Yes, sir,' agreed Sloan. That writer—George Bernard Shaw, he thought it had been—who had said, ‘I never apologize' could not in the nature of things have ever met Superintendent Leeyes but his advice still held good.

‘That son of the woman who died—'

‘Gordon Galloway?' divined Sloan.

‘Him. He's been waiting for you.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘For a long time.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And he's pretty cross.'

For once the superintendent was not exaggerating. Gordon Galloway was very cross indeed and made it clear he was not used to being kept waiting.

‘I'm sure I don't know what I pay my rates and taxes for, Inspector,' he began, every inch the busy man.

‘No, sir.' Sloan resisted the temptation to refer him to the Town Hall for an answer to that question.

‘Especially when something like this happens, Inspector. It's an outrage.'

‘Yes, sir.' Of the four humours of mankind, there was no doubt which one fitted this short, portly man. It was choler.

‘I tell you, Inspector, it's absolutely disgraceful. There's no other way of describing it. Disgraceful. The very day my mother died, too, and while she was being experimented on.'

‘The pathologist,' began Sloan, ‘has—' but he got no further.

‘First, I find my poor mother being used as a human guinea-pig on her last few days on earth—'

‘I am informed, sir, that—'

‘And then when we get home from the hospital I find the ultimate insult.'

‘Where did you say, sir?'

‘At home.'

‘At home?' Sloan reached for his notebook. This was different.

‘While my wife and I are over at the hospital making—er—the arrangements about my late mother, what happens?'

‘What?' demanded Sloan crisply. He wouldn't want to be Gordon Galloway's secretary. That was one thing he was certain about.

‘On my garage door,' said Galloway.

‘What was on your garage door?' On second thoughts, he wouldn't want to work for Gordon Galloway in any capacity.

‘This … graffiti. Quite unspeakable.'

‘What did it say?' asked Sloan. There was after all graffiti and graffiti. And probably a generation gap between Gordon Galloway and whoever put it there.

‘Someone had written “No experiments on animals” all over my garage doors.'

‘Anything else?' asked Sloan quickly.

‘It called me …' said Galloway, turning a nasty shade of puce, ‘Me! A medical collaborator.'

CHAPTER TEN

Treat persons who profess to be able to cure disease as you would fortune-tellers.

‘So?' said Superintendent Leeye.

‘So I've sent Crosby back to the hospital,' said Sloan, ‘to ask Dr Chomel whether she was paged or made a telephone call about Muriel Galloway while she was stitching up Darren Clements, and within his hearing.'

Leeyes grunted. ‘It won't only be him. You'll have to look out for the rest of his mob.'

‘We're doing that—'

‘Ten to one you'll find any one of a dozen of 'em could have written on Gordon Galloway's garage door.' He sniffed. ‘If they can write, that is.'

‘And sir,' Detective Inspector Sloan turned to something else, ‘I think we are going to find that the Coroner is going to request a
post mortem
on Abel Granger of Willow End Farm.'

‘You do, do you?' growled Leeyes. ‘And are you going to tell me why or wait until I work it out for myself?'

‘He was on Dr Meggie's Cardigan Protocol, too,' said Sloan.

‘I see. And because he's died, too, you think—'

‘No, sir. It's not me. It's Dr Angus Browne. He says he won't sign the death certificate. Not since he's heard about Dr Meggie.'

‘Hrrrmph.' The superintendent blew out his cheeks.

‘Crosby didn't get any joy out of the switchboard operator at St Ninian's Hospital either. All she will say is that she was rung up early and asked to tell his underling that Dr Meggie wouldn't be in.'

‘Not a lot of help, that, Sloan.'

‘No, sir.' Sloan glanced down at his notebook.

‘And as far as we can ascertain the last person that Dr Meggie would seem to have spoken to as he left the hospital yesterday evening is an artist—'

‘An artist?' The superintendent's bushy eyebrows went up upon the instant.

‘—who is working on a mural in the front entrance hall.'

‘They didn't used to have artists—'

‘Something, sir, to do with some scheme for brightening up older hospitals with—er—artistic efforts.'

‘So what's this artist painting, then?' demanded Leeyes truculently.

‘Actually, sir, this morning he's been working on some mice—'

‘Mice!'

‘Mice.' What they could have done with, decided Sloan, was Bruce Bairnsfather's Old Bill. ‘Laboratory mice.'

‘I don't know what the world is—'

‘Adrian Gomm, that's the name of the artist, sir,' hurried on Sloan, ‘says he's bringing the mice in because he thinks they're part of medicine, too.' Sloan still felt that Old Bill would have done it much better.

‘Part of medicine?' snorted Leeyes.

‘Yes, sir,' said Sloan, resisting a strong temptation to add ‘Eye of newt, and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog' himself.

‘I've heard of dormice for whooping cough,' said Leeyes, ‘but surely we've come further than that by now? Why should mice come into the picture—'

‘Because he says they're sufferers in the cause of medicine, too, sir.' Sloan's own first exchange with Adrian Gomm had also been quite combative. ‘He thinks his mural should represent both the good and the bad in modern medicine.'

‘If you ask me, Sloan,' countered Leeyes swiftly, ‘he'll have his work cut out to do that.'

‘The whole mural, you see, sir, is meant to be allegorical—' And he, Sloan, was meant to be enquiring into the deaths of Muriel Galloway and Paul Meggie and quite possibly old Abel Granger as well. But he didn't say so: he had his pension to think of.

‘I suppose that's something, Sloan,' grunted Leeyes. ‘At least it's better than having open-heart surgery on view.' He stopped and glared at his subordinate. ‘Or has he got that in as well?'

‘Not yet,' said Sloan cautiously. ‘What he has got is the bad on the left and the good on the right—that's traditional, he says, just like the theatre stage.'

‘It may be traditional in art,' Leeyes said flatly, ‘but let me remind you, Sloan, that down here at the police station the bad is all around us.'

‘Yes, sir.' As Sloan understood it, that was the miasma theory of crime writ large. He probably felt the same way about medicine. ‘As I was saying, sir,'—Sloan hoped that that point was being taken too but doubted it—‘the artist says he talked to Dr Meggie as he left the hospital last evening and he seemed quite cheerful then.'

‘Whereabouts on the mural is he putting the mice?' asked Leeyes.

‘In the middle, sir.'

‘They piebald or something?'

‘No, sir. White.'

‘Can't he make up his mind which side to put them on, then?'

‘It's not that, sir,' Detective Inspector Sloan took a deep breath and said, ‘Adrian Gomm says he's put the mice in the middle because they're both a good and a bad component of research.'

‘Tell me, Sloan,' said Leeyes, ‘what is Detective Constable Crosby making of all this?'

‘Not a lot,' said Detective Inspector Sloan truthfully.

Dr Angus Browne of Larking might have hedged about when talking to the family of his patient at Willow End Farm but he had done no such thing when he had been interviewed by the police in his own consulting room.

‘No, Inspector, I was not called to see Abel Granger during last night, nor did I send for Dr Meggie until later in the day. The first message I had was sent here by the family to my surgery round about nine o'clock.'