He had just packed the containers away in his rucksack when he heard a loud crack and his stomach turned over. It took a few breathless moments before he realised that it had been one of the other traps triggering. With a bit of luck the next stage of his mission had just been accomplished for him. He climbed back over the drums at the back and dropped down into the narrow space between them and the back wall. For some reason he felt much more claustrophobic doing it this way around. He couldn’t help thinking that if the drums were to tip backwards, he would be trapped there like a nun walled up in a medieval convent.
Holding the torch in front of him, he inched his way along towards the damaged panelling, doing his best to protect his injured hand from buffeting on the way. He came to a sudden halt when he felt sure that something had moved near him and then he heard a metallic scraping sound. He moved his torch beam slowly upwards in an arc. At eye level, he picked out a rat’s hind legs scrabbling at the drum it was sitting on. It had been caught in a trap that had been left there but the impact of the trap had not been sufficient to kill it. Although badly injured, it was still desperately trying to free itself.
Steven squeezed himself round sideways so that he could reach into his jerkin pocket and bring out his knife. To open it, he required the help of his left hand, something that made him grimace in pain and whisper curses before the blade locked open and he inched towards the rat. Nausea at the thought was building inside him but knew what he must do. He rested his injured hand on the rat’s back and held it steady while he slipped the tip of the blade between the base of the trap and the animal’s throat where it was held fast by the bar. He closed his eyes and pushed the blade sharply forwards. The warm wetness on his hand and the sudden stop to the animal’s struggles told him that he’d been successful in cutting its throat.
Steven had to wait until he was outside the barn before he could put the dead animal into the plastic container he’d brought with him for the purpose. He cleaned his hands as best he could on the wet grass, secured his rucksack and picked his moment when the guard patrol allowed him to run back up to the perimeter fence and out on to the towpath. He set off back to the car, mission accomplished.
SIXTEEN
It was almost 2am when Steven reached the outskirts of Edinburgh. His injured hand had made changing gear painful all the way back and he began to doubt his earlier conclusion about there being no breaks involved. Maybe having it X-rayed would be a wise precaution, he thought. When he started to wrestle with another problem — just where he was going to get some ice to preserve the rat’s body until Sci-Med could get it to a pathologist — he saw how he could kill two birds with one stone. He changed his mind about returning to his hotel and started heading for the Accident and Emergency unit at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary.
After a wait of some fifty minutes behind a woman who had scalded her foot, two drunks with facial lacerations and a variety of twists and strains, he was seen by one of the duty housemen. He was a young man in his early twenties with bad skin, sloping shoulders and a stoop, as if the stethoscope draped round his neck were proving too heavy for him. He looked Steven up and down, taking in the dishevelled appearance and dirty clothes and pursed his lips. ‘What’s your problem?’ he asked brusquely.
‘I’ve injured my hand. I thought I should get it X-rayed, just in case there’s a break,’ Steven replied.
‘Well, I’m Dr Leeman and I make the decisions about what needs an X-ray and what doesn’t.’ snapped the houseman. He started to examine Steven’s injured hand roughly, making him wince in discomfort as he separated the knuckles and flexed the fingers individually. He did it dispassionately as if he were manipulating a practice dummy. ‘Now, don’t tell me,’ said Leeman with a sneer in his voice. ‘You were quietly minding your own business when this other guy set about you for no apparent reason, right? The fight wasn’t your fault in any way.’
‘There was no fight; I caught my hand in a rat-trap,’ replied Steven evenly.
‘Oh right! Not a drunken brawl, a rat-trap,’ the quiet sneer continued.
‘Not a drunken brawl… a rat-trap,’ repeated Steven in a measured, even monotone that signalled a warning. The nurse standing behind Leeman picked up on it but the houseman soldiered on in full sarcastic flow.
‘And now you want us to fix you up and get you signed off work for a week so you can spend it down the boozer with your mates, right?’
‘No, I’d just like my hand X-rayed to make sure there are no bones broken,’ replied Steven calmly.
Leeman looked at him but broke eye contact quickly. He now realised that he was making some kind of a mistake but didn’t know what exactly. He pretended to examine Steven’s hand more thoroughly while the nurse in attendance put her hand to her mouth to hide a smile.
‘Perhaps I will have it X-rayed,’ announced Leeman, self-importantly. ‘I don’t like the swelling over the third metacarpal.’ He took the admission sheet from the nurse and studied the details. He asked with feigned casualness, ‘What exactly is it that you do, Mr Dunbar?’
‘I’m a doctor,’ replied Dunbar.
The nurse’s hand went to her mouth again. Leeman was silent for a moment and he looked down at the floor. ‘You don’t exactly look like a doctor, if you don’t mind me saying so,’ he said, trying to recover lost face.
‘And you don’t exactly behave like one,’ replied Steven, making sure he didn’t get the chance. ‘Perhaps a career more suited to your personality might be an idea, say lighthouse keeper in the Arctic Ocean?’
‘Nurse will show you to X-ray,’ said Leeman, his face reddening and anxious to end the confrontation.
‘He had that coming,’ confided the nurse as they walked along the corridor. ‘He’s an insufferable little shit at the best of times. I keep hoping we’ll get Dr Ross from ER but all we seem to get are a succession of Alastairs who think they’re God’s gift to medicine when in reality they couldn’t pick their nose without poking their eye out.’
Steven smiled but didn’t add fuel to the flames. He did however wonder — and not for the first time — why so many people like Leeman, who clearly had so little time for the human race, should choose to become doctors.
‘I bet it really was a fight,’ said the nurse conspiratorially.
Steven insisted again that it had been a rat-trap but the nurse would have none of it and preferred to believe her own version. ‘I suppose we can expect the other guy later?’
‘Probably,’ said Steven, giving up. ‘Could I ask a favour of you?’
‘You could try.’
‘I’d like some ice, preferably in some kind of polystyrene container so it won’t melt on the way back.’
‘For your hand?’
‘Yes, I don’t have access to a freezer: I’m staying in a hotel.’
‘I’ll see what I can do while you’re having your X-ray.’
‘You’re an angel.’
‘That’s what they keep telling us.’
The X-ray confirmed Steven’s earlier finding that there were no broken bones in his hand: it was just badly bruised. He left A&E with an easier mind and a polystyrene box full of ice, just what he needed to pack the rat in before sending it off to London.
As soon as he got in, he sent off a coded message, asking that Sci-Med arrange to have a courier pick up the rat. He would leave it, suitably parcelled in the hotel’s Reception. He wanted toxicology carried out on it by the best forensic analyst they could find. As for the samples of weed-killer, he wanted them analysed to the same exacting standards. He’d provided details from the labels on the drums. He wanted to know if any of the samples deviated in any way from the stated contents.