‘I see,’ said Dunbar. ‘Why don’t you come in? I’m sure Cyril wouldn’t mind in the circumstances.’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Proudfoot, immediately relaxing and stepping inside.
‘Do you know where it is?’ asked Dunbar.
‘Oh yes. Cyril keeps his photographic equipment in this little cupboard here.’
Proudfoot bent down and pulled open a small cupboard door to the left of the hearth. ‘Here it is,’ he announced, pulling out a leather camera case. ‘I’ll just put his back, though I don’t know what he’s going to say when he hears they didn’t find anything wrong with it. He’s been having problems with spoilt film. Three have come back completely fogged. It’s been driving him up the wall.’
‘Probably a defective batch.’
‘I think he tried more than one,’ said Proudfoot.
‘You’re both keen photographers, then?’
‘It’s our hobby. Birds mainly, but Cyril liked atmospheric stuff too, you know, derelict cranes in the old shipyards along the river, girders against the sky, twilight of an industry, that sort of thing. Maybe it had something to do with his illness, sic transit gloria mundi and all that.’
Dunbar nodded.
‘We’re planning a trip down the Clyde to Arran in the spring.’
‘Sounds nice,’ said Dunbar, but somehow he didn’t think Cyril would be going.
Dunbar decided to take Sheila Barnes’s journal back to the hotel. That way he could photocopy anything he thought relevant, and return the journal later in the week. He stopped on the way and bought a bottle of gin and a litre of tonic water. He had no wish to go out or to spend the remainder of the evening in the shallow fraternity of the hotel bar, but he did need something to take the edge off the day.
After a long shower, he wrapped himself in a dark-blue towelling robe and poured himself a drink. He placed it on the bedside table while he got comfortable on the bed and opened Sheila Barnes’s journal. He had assumed that it would be a personal diary in which she mentioned the patient at the centre of her allegations but it proved to be much more comprehensive than that. She had kept notes about the progress of all the transplant patients she had nursed during her career. She had obviously been a dedicated, professional nurse, who cared deeply about the people in her charge, and they had played a major role in her life. There was genuine concern in the pages of her journal and it wasn’t specific to any one patient.
When he came to the time when Kenneth Lineham’s transplant had gone wrong, he could feel her involvement reach out to him from the page. The sudden rise in temperature leading to fever and delirium, the successive changes of immuno-suppression therapy which had proved ineffectual, the anguish of the boy’s parents, the consultations with colleagues and the growing belief that her patient had been given an incompatible organ. Her initial reluctance to voice her fears and then the relief when she finally did. It was there in black and white and there was nothing hysterical about it.
After the boy’s death, the journal recorded her bitter disappointment that her observations were not taken seriously and her anger at being considered neurotic. Her gradual disenchantment with the establishment became obvious as it closed ranks against her. There was a record of a subsequent meeting with a local journalist who seemed interested at first in what she had to say but then did not follow up with a story.
Dunbar was struck by the similarity between what Sheila Barnes had written and what Lisa Fairfax had told him the previous evening. It worried him; he couldn’t dismiss it as coincidence. It wasn’t just the end result that had been the same. The details struck him as being identical. He leaned his head back on the wall for a moment and looked up at the ceiling before continuing to read.
The operation on Kenneth Lineham had been performed by a Doctor Phillip Cunningham, James Ross’s senior registrar at the time. According to Sheila Barnes, he had taken the boy’s death badly, as had all the staff, and had even agreed with her privately that the severity of the rejection suggested that there was something wrong with the donor organ, but he had been reluctant to voice this openly at the time, preferring instead to accept the official view that it had just been one of those things. After all, the lab reports from both the donor’s hospital and Medic Ecosse agreed that the organ was compatible, so there was nothing more to be said. He had a career to consider.
Sheila’s journal went on to record her departure from Medic Ecosse, her fall into ill health, the subsequent diagnosis of her cancer and then her husband’s and the full hell of radiotherapy and chemotherapeutic treatment. Dunbar felt exhausted when he finished reading. He now knew Sheila Barnes to be a woman worthy of respect and a credit to her profession. Despite her shoddy treatment at the hands of the Medic Ecosse authorities there was surprisingly little anger or bitterness against those who had chosen to ignore her allegations and who had dismissed her as a misguided neurotic. The only time she showed any signs of spleen was when she thought an Omega patient was getting more attention than her dying transplant boy. She wrote of ‘mercenary toadies falling over themselves to chase the cheque-book’.
Dunbar closed the book and rubbed his fingers lightly over the cover for a few moments before getting up to pour himself another drink. He wondered what he was going to tell Sci-Med in his first report due at the end of the week. A couple of days ago, before he had met the two nurses, it would have been easy. He’d have reported that the nurses’ allegations were probably without foundation. His own inspection of the set-up at Medic Ecosse had shown it to be a centre of medical excellence, well organized, well managed and under no pressure. It was just an unfortunate coincidence that two transplant patients had experienced fatal but non-specific rejection problems.
Now things had changed. He couldn’t dismiss the nurses’ claims as being neurotic or malicious or even, more kindly, as the result of over-involvement with their patients. His computer search for other such cases, and its failure to come up with any, was also a factor that had come back into play. He wouldn’t be returning to London just yet. He would simply have to report that his investigations were continuing.
Ingrid was already in the office when Dunbar got in next morning. ‘How was your afternoon?’ she asked.
Dunbar looked at her inquiringly, then remembered telling her he was going to see the sights of Glasgow. ‘Very interesting,’ he replied.
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t get you an itemized costing for the Omega patients but I did manage to get some more information on what they were in for and when.’
‘That was good of you. I’m obliged.’ He took the file and slipped it into his briefcase.
‘What’s the plan for today?’
‘I thought we might take a look at the figures for the Radiology Department. I thought the running costs were a bit high in proportion to patient charges.’
‘You think patients should be charged more for their X-rays?’ asked Ingrid.
‘Or overheads should be cut. Maybe you could get a printout of staffing levels in Radiology and their rates of pay?’
‘Of course. Anything else?’
‘I’d like to take a look at the unit, get a feeling for the place, see what facilities they have. Would you contact the head of department and ask when would be a convenient time?’
‘Will do.’ She picked up the phone.
‘Dr Svensen says any time you like,’ she said a few minutes later. ‘They’ve got the service engineers in this morning, so they won’t be taking patients until this afternoon. You couldn’t have picked a better time.’
‘Good,’ replied Dunbar.
‘Want me to come with you?’
‘I don’t think so. Why don’t you concentrate on getting the figures and I’ll have a poke around on my own.’