‘Fine,’ he said calmly. ‘You’ll need to do that for a few days before your ears can be syringed.’ Checkmate.
‘OK, doc. See you next week, or maybe earlier.’ And from her lips it sounded like a threat.
Alice, accompanied by Eric Manson, scanned the waiting room looking for a safe seat. Most of the chairs were occupied by pallid, handkerchief-wielding adults, each exhaling lungfuls of germs, in dire need of medical help to cure them of their recurring bouts of flu. The warm air would be thick with seasonal viruses and possibly, God forbid, even swine flu or whatever latest deadly pandemic was going the rounds.
Taking the first available seat he saw, Manson sat down next to a feverish-looking young man who was wiping his nose, rheumy-eyed.
‘How about over here?’ Alice whispered to her colleague, gesturing towards a possible sanctuary, a small recess with a couple of old people seated together in it, the old man’s stick resting between his bandy legs. Thinking that this was bound to be a safer bet, she manoeuvred her way through the sneezing patients to a chair beside the old couple. With luck they would be attending for geriatric, non-contagious problems such as dry skin, varicose veins or ingrowing toenails. Looking puzzled and slightly irritated, the Inspector followed, sitting down beside her and immediately picking up a dog-eared copy of Hello.
However, no sooner had he sat down than a harassed mother, with three children in tow, parked herself on the remaining chair in the recess. Sighing, she set the two larger infants down at her feet and began jiggling the baby up and down on her lap. The toddlers, both as pale as chalk, soon started investigating, then sucking, the nearby collection of coloured building blocks. The baby, meantime, a torrent of mucus pouring from its nose, seemed determined to clamber from its mother’s lap onto Alice. Feeling no urge to cuddle it, she leant away, keeping her eyes fixed firmly on her magazine. Other people’s children held no allure for her, even when healthy.
Initially the mother kept a tight grip on the child, physically restraining it and pointing at pictures in a book to entertain it. Every so often she put a hand to its red forehead until, unexpectedly, she turned to Alice and said, ‘Could you keep him for a second or two, just while I go to the toilet? I don’t like taking him in there with me.’
Despite her fear of catching flu or something far worse from the baby, Alice answered faintly that she would. She was ashamed to voice her terror of infection, and too cowardly to refuse such an apparently reasonable request.
Once on her lap, the baby looked up into her face for a few seconds, registered mild alarm, and then began bawling inconsolably at an ear-splitting volume. She tried everything she could think of to quieten him, jiggling him up and down, putting her arms around him, making comic faces, all to no avail. Everyone in the room now seemed to be staring in their direction.
‘You’ve had children, Sir, what should I do?’ she whispered in desperation.
His eyes never leaving the picture of a pouting Angelina Jolie, Manson said, ‘Try Incy Wincy Spider or something…’
‘I don’t know it.’
‘Then try “Round and round the garden”.’
‘I don’t know that either.’
‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake!’ he replied, his ears now hurting from the constant screeching. Flinging down the magazine, he scooped the startled child from her lap.
‘Incy Wincy Spider climbed up the water spout, down came the rain…’ he sang.
Suddenly the baby sneezed loudly, showering him with a fine spray of green snot, and simultaneously made a strange parping noise below.
Fortunately, at that point, the mother returned and a nurse’s voice announced, ‘Eric… Eric Manson?’ Hearing his name, the Inspector dropped the baby like a hot brick onto its mother’s knee and he and Alice rose simultaneously, following the nurse down the corridor to the doctor’s consulting room.
Still finishing off the notes for his last patient, Doctor Paxton signalled for them to come in. This appointment would require his full concentration, he thought. It was not the sort of thing he was used to, and if possible he hoped it would not be repeated. Turning from his computer he said, ‘And how can I help you, officers?’
‘We need information about a patient of yours, Gavin Brodie.’
‘Yes, that’s what I had understood from the call. But what exactly do you need to know? A copy of his records was sent to the pathologists, and I provided someone from St Leonard’s with a list of the drugs he was taking.’
A nurse knocked on the door, waited and then came in with a cup of steaming coffee.
‘Would you mind if I had it?’ the doctor asked, ‘I’m already behind schedule.’
‘No problem, on you go,’ Eric Manson replied, eying the drink longingly and then looking around the room, his eye caught by a large, full-colour illustration of the inner ear or, possibly, some reproductive organ.
‘The prescriptions for Nortriptylene and Oramorph… what quantity of each drug was contained in each bottle?’ Alice asked.
‘You mean if it was full? I don’t know, not off the top of my head. The pharmacy would, though. I could get the information from them for you,’ he said, sitting back in his chair and taking a sip from his cup, then putting it back carefully in its saucer.
His telephone rang and, apologising silently, he picked it up. ‘I can’t speak, love… no, really. A patient. I’ll call you later… yes, promise.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, turning his attention back to his visitors.
‘When did he last get a new supply of each drug?’ Alice asked.
‘Both were new on the Friday, the Friday before he died. He’ll have hardly used any by the Saturday night. We could calculate the exact amount left – obviously I know his daily dosage. So once we know what the bottles contained we could work out what was left for the junkies or whatever…’ So saying, he made an expansive gesture with his right hand and sent his coffee cup flying.
‘Bother! Sorry, sorry,’ he said quickly, taking some paper tissues from the box on his desk and starting to mop the spillage up.
‘Would Mr Brodie have been able to open either of the bottles if he wanted to?’ Eric Manson enquired, watching the doctor beadily as he dabbed ineffectually at a sodden sheet of paper.
‘No, I don’t think he would have had the necessary co-ordination. But I must admit I’m not sure about it, he might have managed.’
‘Would he have understood what was in any of his bottles, would he have known that it was his medicine or whatever?’
‘Well,’ he paused in his cleaning, clearly applying his mind to the question, ‘I doubt it. But maybe? He was pretty far gone, but you just never know with those patients, do you?’
‘Well, we certainly don’t, doctor, that’s why we came to you,’ Eric Manson said truculently, annoyed at the man’s inability to provide them with any black or white answers, any certainties.
Smelling the unmistakeable delicious aroma of chips, Alice looked round the murder suite in search of the source, ignoring for a moment the remaining soggy ham-salad sandwich in its triangular box on her desk. She had made a bad choice, but perhaps whoever had been to the chippy might be interested in a swap.
Thomas Riddell, the Family Liaison Officer, who was making one of his rare visits to the office, was glued to his computer screen and appeared to be making do with soup from a plastic cup. No luck there, then. At the other end of the room, Alistair Watt was leaning against his desk, carefully picking out lumps of apple from his fruit salad and throwing them in the bin.
‘Eleven sodding bits out of twenty,’ he complained, scowling in disgust at the pink, watery mess that remained.
Alone among the company, DI Manson was not having his lunch. He was standing with his back to them all, staring out onto Arthur’s Seat, and his sausage roll was getting cold on the window sill.