Quite Ugly One Morning (18 page)

The second worst day of Stephen Lime’s life had actually started quite well. Lying in his bed, thumbing through the copy of
Asian Babes
he had bought on the way home last night, he had happened across a spread on a little cracker who quite exquisitely reminded him of that young girl who worked in the newsagent’s where he bought his cigars.

The ensuing toss was easily the most satisfying sexual experience he had enjoyed in years.

After that he got up and dressed, and made his way downstairs to the kitchen, where he helped himself to a frugal breakfast of six Kellogg’s Pop Tarts and a mug of decaff. Sitting at the table, he learned from the radio that overnight, England had won the test match down under with several wickets to spare, and felt that all was well in Heaven and on Earth.

Leaving the dishes for Mrs Branigan, who would be in later on, he picked up his briefcase and his beloved portable and got into his company Mercedes. He popped some Phil Collins into the CD player – God that man could write brilliant songs, especially that lovely, touching one about the homeless – and drove to work.

Things sort of deteriorated after that.

First he had to sit through an incredibly tedious meeting with some consultants, an interminable moan-in about funding and bed availability that just proved his theories about medical staff’s inexhaustible capacity for whining. And why weren’t these miserable sods on the wards, that’s what he really wanted to ask. He didn’t pay them to sit in meetings all day, complaining about their lot and trying to tell
him
how to run a hospital.

Then he had found a letter on his desk signed by about two dozen house officers and SHOs, yet another gripe about the state of their on-call accommodation. He really could not believe the sheer temerity of these people. They got these bloody rooms for nothing – what did they expect, the Ritz? And of course it contained the usual digs about the
comparative opulence of the administration offices – yawn – where managers were only in nine to five, as opposed to the whole nights and weekends
they
had to spend on-site – snore snore.

So there’s a bit of mould on the ceiling. Call the cops. Bloody hell. The lazy bastards were supposed to be on the wards, not snoozing away in their on-call rooms.

He told his secretary to print out the standard reply about how patient care had to be the first priority when it came to budgetary allocation, and therefore the Trust couldn’t afford to squander money upgrading accommodation that already met BMA minimum standards (i.e. the rooms had a bed, a table and a telephone).

But the real trouble started with a call from David Forbes.

‘David. What the bloody hell are you doing? I’ve told you never to call me here. Have you forgotten how disastrous it could be if someone found out we knew each other?’

‘Here, don’t get shirty with me, mate,’ came the indignant reply. ‘The reason I’m having to call you there is to try and
avert
a fucking disaster. We’re looking at a mass bail-out by our proposed investors.’

‘What?’

‘Maybe you’d like me to call you back at home tonight, when you’re not at work and the project’s dead in the water.’

‘Don’t get huffy, David. Tell me what’s going on.’

‘Nothing’s going on. That’s the fucking problem. It’s the sound of silence, Stephen. It scares the shit out of people.’

‘But you told me they were queuing up for a slice of this.’

‘They were. But they can only put up with so much nudge-nudge, wink-wink. They appreciate that there’s been a need for discretion, but they were hoping for some kind of announcement by now. You know yourself how enthusiastic they were about the project, but the longer this goes on, the longer
nothing
goes on . . . the more they’ve been thinking I’m talking out of my arsehole.’

This was very bad news indeed.

‘And they’ve been talking to each other, Stephen,’ Forbes continued. ‘Confidence is low. The whisper is that there’s a hotel project in Bristol getting off the ground, and a few of them are thinking of putting their cash into that instead. The
potential’s not as great, they know that, but it’s all out in the open right now. There’s even fucking brochures printed – architects’ plans, the works. Now you know how these people think. If one or two of them bail out and go for the Bristol deal, they’ll
all
fucking bailout.

‘They’re sitting at their desks, thumbing through glossy brochures and I can’t give them a bloody thing other than that we’ve got an undisclosed city-centre location in Edinburgh. You have to make an announcement. I’m not prepared to watch millions of pounds disappear through you dragging your heels over closing this dump just because you’re worried about protests from a few doctors and nurses. Where’s your balls? You don’t need to announce the land deal, for fuck’s sake, just the closure would be enough. Then I can go to them and show them the site, drive it home to them that it’s for real.’

Forbes was right, he knew. And he
had
planned to make the announcement. In fact it would have been made by now but for that bloody idiot Mortlake buggering up the Ponsonby thing. His blood was boiling at having to listen to Forbes make that crack about being scared of protests from fucking doctors and nurses. He would happily ride roughshod over the bastards and turn two deaf ears to all complaints, but the delay had nothing to do with them. Forbes had no idea of the dangers he had negotiated – and was still negotiating – to make this thing possible, but that was no consolation.

The truth was, between them they didn’t even have the three mill needed to buy the land, never mind the money it would take to develop it, and if the investment didn’t materialise, it was all for nothing. The GRR would still close, no question, but there would follow months, maybe years of waiting for a buyer for the site, all the time having to listen to whining about how it could be used for patient care or some other useless crap. Maybe just the consolation of a small kickback from whoever they agreed to sell to. But no money-spinning hotel and conference centre, no cut of the purchase fee, and not even the satisfaction of putting the Trust into the black.

Suddenly the pressure was on, a clock was ticking.

Enough pussyfooting around. The police had signally failed to make any progress on the Ponsonby case and he had waited long enough to see where the cards would fall.

He’d have to set the wheels in motion, force his own hand.

‘Tell them,’ Lime said firmly. ‘Tell them what the site is, show them the maps. And assure them I’m announcing the closure first thing on Monday morning.’

‘Good man,’ said Forbes. ‘Bloody good man.’

Now there was no going back.

His heartbeat was picking up pace from the sudden exhilaration, the feeling of events moving again towards his long-planned success after the temporary limbo of recent days. However, the threat of what could go wrong was now realler than ever, and it was vital that he remained alert and on top of things.

He felt nervous and paranoid. Nervous was a bad thing because it showed, it told tales. He would have to calm himself, present his usual air of assuredness. Paranoia was all right, as he had to remain on-guard against every possibility.

It was this that led him to boot up the computer. He had a feeling there might still be some communication he had sent to Forbes among his files somewhere. It was encrypted, so no one could read it, but now that all systems were go it would be wisest to wipe it from the system altogether. Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite remember what its name would have been, so he’d have to open up the likeliest-sounding documents and check them out.

There was something slightly different about the list of files, he was sure; something he just couldn’t quite put his finger on but which was not exactly as it should be. Never mind. There was a file called ‘FSD-DF’ that seemed to ring a bell. He double-clicked on it and reached to gulp a mouthful of tea as he waited for the programme to launch. When he looked up, the document was on-screen, indeed a potentially very embarrassing letter to David Forbes at Four-Square.

He was just about to delete it when it occurred to him that the computer had not asked for his decryption password, just gone ahead and opened the document. He clicked the window closed and looked again at the list of files in his private folder. They were all tagged as ‘Wordsmith doc’s when the encrypted ones should have been tagged as ‘Cryptlock doc’s.

It was a bloody nightmare.

Someone had opened his files.

Someone had acquired his password. In fact, all of his passwords.

Someone was snooping on him.

Then in one horrible moment he realised not only who it was, but – in answer to what had been niggling at him since yesterday – where he had seen him before. It was that journalist, that Jack Marylebone or whatever he was called, who was supposed to be giving the Trust a good press in some Yank rag. He had looked distantly, hazily familiar when Medway had introduced them yesterday, but although he couldn’t think where from, there was a tone of discomfort about the memory. Medway had said he lived in the States and was just back over on holiday, but the face had bothered him nonetheless.

Now he knew.

It was the bloke in the newspaper, the
Evening Capital.
The picture on the front page the night the Ponsonby story broke, when he had crapped in the bloody bath. He was the neighbour, the man being led away by the cops.

Mother of Christ.

He took some deep breaths, trying to slow his heart and stop himself from trembling.

Right. Damage limitation.

This bloke had been at the files and he would now know about the GRH and the Capital Properties deal. He would also probably have figured out Forbes’ and Four-Square’s part in it all. However, this Marylebone wouldn’t know about his own share, as that was too well hidden and certainly couldn’t be gleaned from what was on the computer files. So all Marylebone would really have on him was passing on some inside knowledge, maybe at the outside an accusation of favouritism and impropriety in accepting a low bid for the GRH from a firm he seemed to have a connection with.

But the very reason Marylebone would have been at the files at all was that he had somehow linked him with Ponsonby, and that was what was most dangerous. It was extremely unlikely that the hack could have worked out what the link was, but it was still possible that he had, or that eventually he might.

It didn’t bear thinking about. But he
had
to think about it.

The bodies were all long buried, and there was nothing incriminating to be found about them anyway. Ponsonby was
dead, so he couldn’t squeal, and if he had squealed before he died, the game would be up by now. So the only way anyone would suspect something would be if they noticed that an inordinately large proportion of deaths at the GRH were of long-stay patients.

Again, it was extremely unlikely, but still possible, and therefore couldn’t be ignored. And worse, as this bloke had been into the computer system, there was a worst-case scenario that he already knew and even had this stuff on a disk as proof. The medical records of the patients concerned were, mercifully, not computerised, but the bed-usage files could tell Marylebone all he needed to know.

But either way, there was a solution.

You couldn’t tamper with the computerised medical records; once you had OKed an entry, it was permanent. You could add but you couldn’t take away, to stop clinical staff from ever trying to cover up a mistake. However, the bed-usage files were a different story. He could go in and change them right now, swap names of legit elderly medical discharges from wards on the RVI with the dead GRH long-stay ones. That way, even if on a million-to-one shot, Marylebone had found out – and even if he had copied the files – his information would be useless, as the Trust’s own computer system would contradict it.

He called up the bed-usage files and requested the GRH.

The computer beeped a rebuke.

GRH bed-usage files in use. User: sslaughter.

No, he thought.

No no no no no.

Because (no no no no) wasn’t that (no no no no) the name of (Jesus Christ no no no) . . . hadn’t he heard Jeremy (no no bloody fucking hell no no no) mention the name (no no no no no) . . . joking about it, how the divorce would take her (oh God please no please no) from the illustrious name of (Jesus Jesus Jesus bloody fucking bloody hell) Ponsonby to the ridiculous and embarrassing (aaaaaaaaarrrrghhhh) Slaughter?

Lime got up and ran to his private chief executive bathroom and was retchingly, convulsively sick, emptying his stomach in three voluminous dispatches and going on to suffer several subsequent spasms of the dry heaves.

He crouched with his arms around the pan, breathing heavily, sweating malodorously and watching the world
spin. When the walls eventually returned to a stationary position, he got up and went to the sink, splashing his face with cold water.

He felt very faint, his head a cacophony of hysterical voices. He wandered out of his office and downstairs in a trance-like daze, and headed out to the hospital gardens to get some air. Twenty minutes of pacing and wandering in the cold failed to produce quite the desired effect, so he walked out of the RVI grounds and down the street to the nearest pub, where he ordered and instantly knocked back a straight triple gin.

That was better.

He had to think straight, remain calm, work out all the options and possibilities, and only then decide what action to take.

First of all, he mustn’t just accept apparent evidence at face value and imagine the absolute worst. After all, wasn’t Ponsonby’s ex an anaesthetist? The RVI was a notoriously labyrinthian hospital and the anaesthetists had always been whining about not being able to find half of the patients they were scheduled to be gassing the next day, as they had to discuss the anaesthetic with them in advance. Consequently, when the computers came in, the anaesthetists had requested – and been grudgingly given – access privileges for the bed-usage files to help them keep track of where their patients were.