‘Then you work here?’ said Sandy. ‘A doctor?’
‘Sort of.’ The man held out his hand and said, ‘Steven Dunbar.’
‘Sandy Chapman. That’s my wife, Kate, just starting lap two in the green Williams Renault, known to us as Esmeralda.’
Dunbar at once recognized the name ‘Chapman’ from his conversation with Clive Turner, and smiled.
Esmeralda came slowly past with Kate looking anxiously out of the window. ‘When can I stop?’ she asked.
Both men laughed at the look of mock anguish on her face.
‘Any time,’ replied Sandy. ‘Just don’t stall the engine.’
She brought Esmeralda to a halt and listened to the idle speed for a moment. Satisfied that it was steady enough, she got out and joined Sandy.
‘Kate, this is Dr Dunbar.’
‘Hello,’ said Dunbar. ‘I’m not really a doctor here — more of a civil servant. I look after the government’s financial involvement in the hospital.’
‘Sounds interesting,’ said Kate politely.
‘Then you wouldn’t have been too keen on taking our Amanda on for free?’ suggested Sandy.
‘On the contrary, I’m delighted we have,’ said Dunbar.
‘Thanks for the push,’ said Sandy.
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Dunbar.
He watched as Kate and Sandy got into Esmeralda and drove off, waving to them as they disappeared out of the gate. He was glad he had okayed their daughter’s admission. He must have misjudged Medic Ecosse’s referral policy when he suspected that they were taking only straightforward ‘show-business’ cases to use for self-promotion.
There was one strange thing though. He’d just come from the press reception for the jaw-operation patient, and at it there had been no mention of the hospital taking on a free NHS transplant case. Why not? Why miss the opportunity to gain some good publicity?
The reception hadn’t been as bad as he’d feared. The patient was an ordinary girl from the local area, who hadn’t suspected for a moment that she was being exploited. She seemed to enjoy being the centre of attention, turning this way and that at the request of the photographers, posing with the staff and with the local councillor for the area, who had seized on the occasion to make political capital. Dunbar remembered him. He was the Labour councillor who had taken every opportunity to express his opposition to private medicine at the meeting between the Scottish Office and the hospital. Now here he was, smiling into the cameras with his arm round the star patient, doing his best to create the impression that he had been the prime mover in the whole affair.
None of this made Dunbar angry because, as Ingrid had said, the bottom line was sound enough and the bottom line was that the girl had been given a new and better life because of the operation. The hospital was going to get some positive publicity that would do no one any harm and if a local politician grabbed the chance to promote his own interests, what the hell? That’s what politicians did. That was the way the world worked. Nature abhorred a missed opportunity in the world of self-interest.
That was why it was so surprising that there had been no mention of the Chapman girl. A transplant was a much bigger deal than the relatively minor jaw surgery they had just been celebrating. He’d ask Ingrid about it after the weekend. In the meantime, he was going to drive over to Bearsden to return Sheila Barnes’s journal.
He was almost halfway there when he started to have doubts. Was there any point in returning the journal to the house, when it seemed certain that neither Sheila nor her husband would ever return there? On the other hand, he would feel guilty about hanging on to it. It was far more than just a diary of events; it said so much about the woman herself. He decided that he’d return it to Sheila in person. He’d take it down to Helensburgh at the weekend and tell her how useful it had been.
As he headed back to town, he found himself thinking about Lisa Fairfax. He really should have told her about Sheila Barnes — who she was and what she’d claimed. But he was so used to telling people nothing more than they needed to know that he’d kept quiet. But the knowledge that someone else had made the same allegation as she had about Medic Ecosse would have been a comfort, and if anyone deserved to feel better Lisa did. She didn’t have much of a life with no job and being at the constant beck and call of a deranged mother. On impulse, he drove over to her flat and pushed the entryphone button.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Steven Dunbar. Can I come up?’
‘I suppose so,’ answered Lisa a little uncertainly.
The door lock was released and Dunbar climbed quickly to the third floor.
‘I didn’t expect to see you again,’ said Lisa, ushering him inside.
Dunbar looked to right and left as he entered the hall.
‘She’s asleep,’ said Lisa.
‘I was passing,’ he lied. ‘There’s something I didn’t tell you the other day that I think I should have. Something about Sheila Barnes.’
‘Sheila Barnes?’ repeated Lisa. ‘She’s the nursing sister you asked me about. You wondered if I knew her.’
‘That’s right. She left well before you started at Medic Ecosse, but what I didn’t tell you was that she had a very similar experience to yours. She said much the same thing about a patient who died in the transplant unit in her time.’
Lisa looked at him as if trying to decide whether or not she should be annoyed at not having heard this before. ‘You mean I wasn’t the only one?’
‘No, you weren’t,’ confessed Dunbar. ‘That’s really why I was sent up here to Scotland. There were two of you who maintained that patients had been given the wrong organ in transplant operations.’
‘Did they treat her like an idiot too?’
‘No one took her seriously either,’ agreed Dunbar. ‘Unfortunately, both she and her husband are suffering from cancer. She’s dying. I went to see her in the hospice she’s in, down in Helensburgh.’ He explained about the journal. ‘She wanted me to see the entries she made at the time of the incident.’
‘Did you learn much?’
‘They were very detailed. In the end I was struck by how similar her version of events was to yours.’
‘So you might even believe us?’
‘I’m finding it difficult not to.’
‘Good. Did you say Sheila’s husband had cancer too?’
‘He’s in the same hospice.’
‘How strange, and what rotten luck. I hope they’re able to comfort each other.’
Dunbar silently acknowledged a nice thought.
Lisa got up and turned down the heat on the electric fire. ‘Don’t you ever miss being a practising doctor?’ she asked.
‘Not a bit. I didn’t really like it, I had no feel for it, I gave it up. Simple as that.’
She smiled. ‘What a remarkably honest thing to do. I’ve known lots of doctors who have no feel for it but giving it up is the last thing on their minds. They’ll be hanging in there till it’s carriage-clock time with a vote of thanks from the poor sods who managed to survive their ministrations.’
‘It’s hard to escape once you’ve started,’ said Dunbar.
‘Maybe,’ agreed Lisa. ‘Would you like a drink?’
He nodded. ‘I would. It’s been a long day.’
Lisa poured them both gin and tonic, handed one to Dunbar, then sat down again.
‘Why did you really come here?’ she asked with sudden directness.
The question took him aback. ‘To tell you about Sheila Barnes. I thought you had a right to know.’
‘But I don’t have a right,’ said Lisa. ‘You were under no obligation at all to tell me, so why did you?’
‘I thought you should know anyway,’ said Dunbar. It sounded weak, even to him.
‘Was it pity? Pity for my situation?’
‘I…’
‘I don’t like people visiting me out of pity. I don’t need it.’
‘It had absolutely nothing to do with pity, I promise,’ he said quietly. ‘I simply enjoyed your company last time and since I know no one else up here, I looked for an excuse to come back.’
‘That’s better,’ she said after a slight pause to consider.