‘Lisa!’ came a cry from the bedroom. ‘Where’s my breakfast? I want my breakfast!’
‘Coming, Mum,’ replied Lisa without taking her eyes off Dunbar.
Dunbar automatically looked at his watch. It was 10 p.m. He got up and said, ‘It’s time I was going anyway. Would it be all right if I popped back again? Sometime soon?
She looked at him doubtfully for a few moments before saying, ‘Providing you don’t bring pity with you.’
‘I’ll bring gin,’ said Dunbar.
NINE
Dunbar watched Newsnight on the television in his room, then switched it off. The silence was broken by the sound of rain on the window, at first a gentle, irregular patter but then quickly becoming a harsh rattle that made him go over to the window to look out briefly before closing the blinds. He decided on an early night.
As he lay in bed, he looked back on the evening. He was glad to have re-established contact with Lisa. He liked her a lot, not least because of her obvious care and concern for other people. Like Sheila Barnes she was a born nurse. It wasn’t something you could instil in people through qualification and training. It had to be there at the start. He had particularly liked her hope that Sheila and her husband could give comfort to each other in their dying days.
It was an aspect of the situation he himself hadn’t considered, although there was something about it that had been niggling away at him. Lisa was right; it was strange that both Sheila and her husband had contracted cancer at the same time; the matron at The Beeches had also remarked on it. Neither of the Barneses had ever smoked, yet both had developed a particularly virulent form of lung cancer at almost exactly the same time. It was as if they had been simultaneously exposed to some sort of trigger mechanism, although in the leafy suburb of Bearsden that possibility seemed remote. The area did not exactly abound with chemical factories pumping out toxic fumes. They didn’t live next door to a nuclear power station, and he couldn’t imagine the rafters of Bearsden bungalows dripping with blue asbestos.
On the other hand… He remembered the nosey neighbour, Proudfoot, and the problem with Cyril Barnes’s camera… only there wasn’t a problem with Cyril’s camera. The repair company had reported nothing wrong with it, despite the fact that films kept coming out ruined as if they had been exposed to light… or maybe something else. Dunbar sat up in bed, now fully alert. Light wasn’t the only thing that could ruin photographic film. Exposure to radiation would damage it in exactly the same way… and prolonged exposure to radiation would almost certainly cause cancer in a human being… or two human beings if they were exposed to it together.
Was it possible? Was it conceivable that Sheila and her husband had been exposed to a radiation source in their own home? Questions queued up in his mind. What could it be? Where was it and how had it got there?
Dunbar tried convincing himself that such a possibility could not be real. Surely it was a flight of fancy on his part, an academic exercise, a tribute to his powers of imagination but too bizarre to be real… wasn’t it? He found he couldn’t stop thinking about it. The seed had planted itself in his mind and insisted on growing. Sleep was now out of the question. He had to know. He had to find out for himself. But how? He would need specialist equipment for this kind of investigation.
Although he could get practically anything he wanted in the way of specialist equipment and expert advice from Sci-Med, it would take a little time and he couldn’t wait. He had to know right now, even if it was just to eliminate the notion from his head. What he needed most was a radiation detector, a Geiger counter or something along those lines.
He looked at his watch. It was just after eleven thirty. Unless there was some kind of emergency at Medic Ecosse there was every likelihood that the Radiology Department would be empty and unmanned at this time of night. A radiographer would be on call but probably not on the premises. He could get hold of a radiation monitor there. He threw back the covers and swung his legs out of the bed.
Rather than sneak into Medic Ecosse unobserved, he decided he would drive quite openly into the car park and tell Reception he had come back to check some figures for a report he was working on. He didn’t think that would arouse too much suspicion and might even chalk up some brownie points for the civil service. A stay of about fifteen minutes would seem about right. That should give him enough time to get down the back stairs and along the corridor to Radiology. His cover story would account for his carrying a briefcase — it should be big enough to hold the monitor and some protective gear. What if the department was locked for the night? He couldn’t risk a break-in, he decided. If it was locked he’d abort the plan and make his request through Sci-Med in the morning.
As he walked from the car park up to the main door of the hospital he wondered if there was any chance that there’d be no one at the Reception desk. Of course not: the desk was run like everything else in Medic Ecosse, very well. Not only was there a smiling receptionist on duty, but there were two uniformed security men in the hall, silver-haired but fit-looking and alert. Despite the fact that the receptionist recognized Dunbar and greeted him by name, one of the guards still asked to see his ID.
‘I won’t be long. I just came back to check on some figures,’ said Dunbar to the receptionist.
‘And I thought you people drank tea all the time,’ she smiled.
‘A cruel myth,’ said Dunbar with a backward glance and a half-smile as he headed for the double doors leading to the main corridor.
He climbed the stairs to his office and became aware that his palms were sweating. It was some time since he’d done anything like this and he was nervous. He switched on the light in his office and put his briefcase on the desk. His heart was thumping. Did he really want to do this? Maybe he’d lost his nerve. There was, however, no doubt in his mind that he still had a yen for an occasional walk on the wild side, if only to ask questions of himself.
With his pulse rate still rising, he opened his office door and looked out into the corridor. It was deserted. He stepped out and went quickly and quietly along it until he reached the head of the back stairs. Another pause to listen for any signs of activity but there was still nothing. Medic Ecosse was sleeping.
He was halfway down the stairs when suddenly he heard voices; they were getting louder. His first fear was that whoever it was might turn into the stairwell and find him there. He was debating whether to run back upstairs, when the sound of trolley wheels registered. They couldn’t bring a trolley up the stairs. Reassured, he continued down to the bottom landing and shrank into the shadows in a corner from where he could see through the round glass window in the door.
The trolley party comprised four people. All wore blue cotton surgical garb with masks obscuring their lower faces. Dunbar could tell only that two were male and two female. Lying on the trolley was a young girl of five or six. Her eyes were closed and a drip-feed into her arm was being held up by one of the nurses as they waited for a lift at the door opposite the stairwell. The child seemed peacefully asleep but, in view of the lateness of the hour and the surgical dress, he supposed it more likely that she had been prepped for surgery. ‘Good luck,’ he whispered as the lift arrived and the doors slid open to spill light on to her pale little face. The doors closed. Dunbar watched until the indicator told him the party had stopped on the second floor, then edged out into the corridor and went quickly on down to Radiology.
The wide blue doors, which had earlier been propped open to permit the easy passage of trolleys, were closed, and Dunbar prepared himself for the worst. It would be in keeping with everything else about Medic Ecosse if the department had been responsibly and securely locked for the night. He looked to both sides before trying the handle; it moved all the way down. He pushed gently and the door opened. Swallowing hard, he slipped inside and closed it behind him.