Pestilence (16 page)

“Yes?”

“Don’t go calling Garten or anyone else for that matter. If you do I’ll know about it and go straight to the police.” Saracen put the phone down before Wylie had had a chance to reply, confident that Wylie would not call his bluff. He was too scared.

Jill rang at four thirty. She said, “I don’t really have a good reason for calling you again. I just wanted to know how you were.”

“That was nice,” said Saracen softly, “I appreciate it. I’ve got to go out tonight to see Cyril Wylie.”

“The pathologist?”

“That’s right, but I should be through by nine thirty or so. I’ll come round then if that’s all right with you?”

“Of course it is.”

Saracen had no sooner replaced the receiver than it rang again. It was Sister Melrose from the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital. “You asked to be kept informed about Dr Tang Doctor?”

“She’s come round?” asked Saracen.

“No, she died ten minutes ago.”

“I see,” said Saracen hitting the flat calm of depression. “Did she recover consciousness at all before she died?” asked Saracen.

“Briefly.”

“Did she say anything?”

“Most of it was Chinese but there were a few English words. The nurse wrote them down.” There was a rustle of paper before Sister Melrose read out, “Six days, more than six days, too long, not Myra Archer.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you Sister.”

Saracen thought about what he had heard but could make no sense of it although he did remember that the words were similar to those Sister Turner had reported hearing when Chenhui was ranting at Garten during her ‘breakdown’. Six days? Too long for what? he wondered and what was ‘not Myra Archer’? Maybe after seeing Wylie he would understand. He looked at his watch.

When Saracen left the flat shortly after eight thirty in the evening it had started to rain. It was light at first but before he had reached the County Hospital it had become the kind of deluge that emptied the streets of people and only the hiss of the tyres broke the persistent rattle of the rain.

The County Hospital stood on the Southern edge of Skelmore and comprised a collection of chalet-like buildings in red sandstone connected by glass windowed corridors that had obviously been added at a later date. It had originally served as a sanatorium for consumptives before streptomycin had all but wiped out the scourge of tuberculosis and, at that time, the hospital had stood at a discrete distance from the town. Passing years and spreading housing estates had brought the town right up to its boundary fence.

Saracen drove through the entrance and turned left to head for the Pathology Unit. Water cascaded off the chalet roofs and threatened to overflow from open culverts. The Pathology Unit was situated well away from the main hospital and lay in a slight dip in the grounds screened from view by a ridge of Poplar trees. A notice at the turn-off said simply, ‘Private’. This was to deter wandering patients and their visitors from approaching the circle of buildings that included the hospital mortuary.

Saracen drove slowly past the sign and turned into the courtyard. Only one other car was there, a dark blue Rover that Saracen took to be Wylie’s. He parked close to the back door so that he would be exposed to the rain for as short a time as possible in his dash to the entrance.

Warn air and the smell of formaldehyde greeted him as he entered the building and immediately evoked memories of the incident at the mortuary in Skelmore General. He had been to the Pathology Unit before but always in daylight. At night it was unpleasantly atmospheric.

All the lights were on but there was no sign of anyone about. This was not unexpected for he knew that Wylie would be alone but he also thought that Wylie would have heard him arrive. As it was, he found himself looking into rooms at empty benches and dust-covered typewriters. Not wishing to relinquish the psychological advantage he believed that he had over Wylie, Saracen refrained from calling out the pathologist’s name.

Half way along the passage he heard something metallic fall on to what sounded like stone but he knew instinctively that it would be marble because the sound had come from the turret room at the end of the building, the Post Mortem examination suite. Saracen walked deliberately towards the tall doors, clenching his teeth slightly for he had not bargained on this. He pushed open one of the doors and stood there as if unwilling to cross the threshold.

Wylie looked up from the table and smirked when he saw Saracen standing there. Saracen looked at him but did not say anything. He found the scene bizarre. Wylie and the cadaver he was working on were caught in the bright light from the huge, saucer shaped overhead lamp like actors on some hellish stage. Something viscous dripped from Wylie’s gloves as he removed his hands from the chest cavity and straightened up. “Come in,” he said, “And shut the door behind you. Don’t want this bloody smell pervading the whole building.”

Saracen closed the door quietly and walked towards the table, stopping some feet away to avoid being splashed. “Thought you’d be used to the smell by now,” he said.

Wylie gave a bitter laugh and said, “Thirty-four years and I still hate it” He threw a used scalpel on to the tray beside him and cursed as it missed the intended container and clattered on to the floor. Saracen noticed the slur in his voice.

“Where the…” Wylie muttered as he looked about him in irritation before rummaging through a pile of instruments and extracting the one he wanted. He looked up at Saracen and gesticulated with the knife in his hand. “Tell me Doctor,” he demanded, “Have you any idea…have you any bloody idea what it’s like to spend thirty years of your life doing…this?” He looked down at the cadaver in disgust. “Have you?”

Saracen had no wish to imagine but he was learning a lot about Wylie. His drinking made some kind of sense now and even the bitter, abrasive personality. The man hated his job; he had spent his entire career doing something he loathed. With thirty years of resentment and disgust inside him how else could he be. It took a few moments for the full horror of Wylie’s position to become apparent to Saracen. Many people in life found themselves doing things for a living that they had little heart for but when the thing happened to be pathology? It didn’t bear thinking about. “But why?” he asked incredulously.

Another bitter laugh from Wylie. “Why? Why? What does it matter why any more. How many of us ever have any control over what we end up doing?”

“But this…” Saracen looked at the almost hollow cadaver and then at Wylie but Wylie had no wish to pursue the subject any more. He stripped off his gloves and threw them into the chest cavity. He nodded to the corpse and said to Saracen in a voice that had recovered its old arrogance, “Do you know what he died of Doctor?”

Saracen shook his head.

“Old age,” said Wylie. “Like the last one I did and the one before that and probably the next one. But no one is allowed to simply die of old age in our society. Oh no, society insists that I cut open any one who dares to and then I’m obliged to come up with something suitably scientific sounding to stick on the death certificate. The public are encouraged to think that senility is some kind of medical condition that can be cured if you throw enough money at it. Clowns! And do you know what this chap’s relatives put in the local rag death notices? Sleeping, only sleeping! Christ! Does he look only sleeping to you? Donations please to heart research. That’s what did it! Not the fact that his heart was worn out like the rest of him. Christ! He was blind, deaf and crippled with arthritis but they figure that with a bit more heart research he could have been ‘saved’. Christ!” Wylie hung his head over the corpse and shook it as some deep inner frustration were struggling to free itself. Saracen watched in silence.

After a few moments Wylie recovered and looked up at Saracen. “Mark my words,” he said, “They want to hang on to these tower blocks. Ten years from now they are going to need them to store psycho-geriatrics in, all plugged in to their little machines. Beeping only beeping. “Wylie broke into raucous laughter and Saracen could not make up his mind whether the man was just drunk or mentally unbalanced. Either way he felt uneasy and wanted to put a stop to things. He said, “I came here to discuss something else Doctor.”

The sneer returned to Wylie’s face. He said, “Of course you did. You came here to find out why I signed for two of the buggers without doing the butchery first.”

“There was more to it than that,” said Saracen. “You didn’t even see the bodies did you?”

All the aggression seemed to disappear from Wylie. He sagged at the shoulders and said quietly, “I had no choice.”

“Garten?” asked Saracen.

“Garten,” agreed Wylie. “He made it clear that if I didn’t go along with what he wanted and provide him with reports he would have me dismissed and then struck off for gross professional misconduct. The shame, my wife, my daughter - she’s just become engaged. I had no choice; you must see that, he would have ruined me.”

Saracen nodded, unwilling to say anything in case he broke the flow from Wylie. Even by the alcoholic standards Wylie’s changes in mood and demeanour were dramatic and emotionally confusing for Saracen. He felt anger, disgust, pity, sympathy, all in the space of a few short minutes but now, as a strange calm seemed to settle over Wylie he felt something else, something very close to fear.

Wylie said without the trace of a slur in his voice, “I couldn’t let him do that, no more than I can allow you…”

The threat was plain enough and Saracen felt his adrenalin begin to surge. The immediate problem was that he could not identify where the threat lay. He had expected Wylie to lose his temper, bully, bluster and in the end, threaten but with what? He had envisaged loud, empty threats but here was Wylie, very calm, very confident and very frightening.

Wylie reached under his instrument tray and pulled something out from underneath. He asked, “Do you know what this is?”

Saracen drew in his breath as he saw the gun appear in Wylie’s hand but, almost immediately his alarm changed to bemusement when he saw the tiny hole in the muzzle. “It’s an air pistol!” he exclaimed with a mixture of relief and ridicule in his voice.

Wylie did not flinch. He waited a moment and then pulled the trigger. The metallic slap of the report echoed in the quiet of the high, tiled room.

Saracen felt a sudden sharp pain in his thigh and looked down to see the dart protruding from his trousers. “What the…You idiot Wylie! What the hell do you think you are playing at with that bloody toy?” He started towards Wylie but stopped because his leg felt numb and he almost lost his balance. The feeling filled him with panic as he realised there must have been something special about the dart. “What? What did you?…”

Wylie was staring at him dispassionately. He said, “The dart was loaded with a muscle relaxant Doctor, courtesy of our veterinary friends who use it to pacify large animals. In a moment you will be totally paralysed, in fact, if I inadvertently used too much your heart will stop but that will be inconvenient. Let’s hope I got it right.

By now Saracen had sank to the floor, unable to combat the fatigue and growing numbness in his limbs as the poison spread. He pressed his palms against the cold marble but his elbow joints remained useless. He could still think clearly but his body would not respond to the fevered signals that his brain was sending. Everything, including breathing, was becoming laboured and difficult.

“Don’t waste your time,” said Wylie who was now standing over him. The words made sense inside Saracen’s head but they sounded as if he were inside a cathedral. He could see Wylie’s Wellington boots only inches from his face as he lay on his left cheek. They were splattered with blood from the cadaver he had been working on.

Saracen tried to speak but the muscles in his face would not respond. Wylie seemed to read his mind. He rolled Saracen over on to his back with his foot and looked down at him. “You must be wondering what is going to happen to you now,” he said.

The words echoed in Saracen’s head as he struggled to move his mouth but only succeeded in moving his lower jaw to bring his teeth together. He repeated the action like a wooden puppet as he looked up at Wylie’s face above the long, blood stained gown.

“Your death will be painless,” said Wylie matter of factly. “You are about to commit suicide in a state of deep depression following your suspension from your position at Skelmore General. Wylie’s eyes hardened; they were bloodshot and moist with anger as he hissed, “I did not spend thirty years in the slaughterhouse for some busy-body to come along and destroy it all.” He started to remove his gown, turning his back on Saracen to walk over to the laundry bin. “Carbon monoxide,” he announced. “That’s how it is going to happen. We are going to go for a nice drive in the country in your car, then we’ll find a quiet spot and I’ll connect up the exhaust pipe to the interior. I’ll turn the engine on and leave you. Nice and simple. A routine, everyday kind of suicide that the Police will hardly take notice of.”

Wylie had replaced his Wellingtons with worn, suede shoes and had returned to stand over Saracen who was still moving his mouth like a fish out of water. Wylie gave a short laugh and said, “Do you know what the final irony is going to be?” He paused for an answer that could not come and then said, as if confiding a secret, “I will be detailed to carry out the Post Mortem examination on your body! I will be asked to slice open your flesh, turned pink with carboxy-haemoglobin, and asked to for my professional opinion! Now there’s a scene to conjure with.”