‘And me?’
‘Offer your resignation for the benefit of the press and we’ll decline it when the flak dies down.’
Sepp looked at his watch and said, ‘Time’s getting on, you’d better tell the parents there isn’t going to be a funeral.’
‘I’ll phone them from my office,’ said Harcourt, making to leave.
‘Maybe not such a good idea,’ said Sepp thoughtfully.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘If we’re into playing the media game, a phone call might be seen as callous. You wouldn’t want that.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ agreed Harcourt. ‘I’ll drive over there myself and tell them personally. I’ll get the address from Prosser.’
Pathology Department 1 p.m.
‘So that’s it?’ rasped Harcourt. ‘A monumental fuck-up and no one’s to blame? Just what do I tell the medical superintendent and the hospital Trust and what do I tell the tabloid scavengers baying at the gates? Just one of these things, folks?’
Sepp shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. ‘I’ve talked to all my staff and none of them can throw any light on this. I’m sorry but that’s the way it is at the moment.’
‘Then somebody’s lying,’ exclaimed Harcourt. ‘What about the mortuary technician who’s off today?’
‘I called him at home; he doesn’t know anything either.’
Harcourt sighed in frustration. ‘Somebody must know something,’ he insisted. ‘Have you gone through everything in chronological order from the time of the post mortem on the missing child?’
‘Of course.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. No one admits to having put the child’s body — or what he thought was the child’s body — in the coffin.’
Harcourt shook his head. ‘Who took the waste over to the incinerator then?’ he asked.
‘No one admits to that either. A thought that B had done it while B thought that A had done it and it turns out that neither of them did.’
‘Jesus! You do realise that the press are going to crucify us over a Pathology department where nobody knows what anyone else is doing. It’s clear that someone on your staff knows more about this than he or she’s letting on.’
Sepp bristled. ‘Or maybe it wasn’t someone on my staff at all,’ he snapped.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I’m simply pointing out that we don’t know for sure that one of my people was responsible.’
Harcourt looked openly incredulous. ‘You’re surely not suggesting that someone walked in off the street and did it for a laugh, are you?’
Sepp tried manfully to keep his anger in check. He spoke more slowly. ‘The fact of the matter is,’ he asserted, ‘that people are in and out of the Path department all day long. You must know that. I’m simply saying that it is not inconceivable that someone other than a member of my staff caused the mix-up.’
‘You’ve no security?’
‘It’s a mortuary not a bloody bank,’ snapped Sepp, finally losing patience with Harcourt’s aggressiveness.
‘All right, all right,’ said Harcourt, suddenly realising he was pushing Sepp too far and backing off. He made an open-palmed gesture with his hands and said, ‘Let’s not start fighting among ourselves, but if it was someone from outside your own staff, that would surely imply malicious intent rather than an innocent mix-up, wouldn’t it?’
‘I suppose it might,’ agreed Sepp.
‘Hard to believe.’
Medical Superintendent’s Office 2 p.m.
‘I suppose the parents took it badly?’ said James Trool, medical superintendent of the hospital as he poured chilled water from a carafe into the crystal glass in front of him on the table. He was an undistinguished looking man, large but with coarse features and a penchant for wearing light coloured suits and brightly coloured ties — a trait that had only surfaced when he’d married his second wife, Sonia, some two years before. It was a marriage that had surprised many because Sonia, an American, was almost twenty years younger than he was; beautiful and very wealthy in her own right. They had met when her daughter was admitted to the hospital after a bad car crash, the same crash that had killed her first husband.
‘You could say,’ replied Harcourt, fiddling with his cuff links and severely editing his answer. ‘The father called me an oily little bastard and assured me we wouldn’t be getting away with it, as he put it. He promised we’d be hearing from his lawyers.’
‘Par for the course,’ said Trool, with a hint of bitterness in his voice. He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, saying, ‘You know, I can remember a time when people faced up to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune without the need for counselling, or whatever they call it, and large injections of compensation.’ He endowed the words with extreme distaste.
‘I wouldn’t mention that to the press if I were you,’ said Harcourt.
‘Of course not,’ said Trool. ‘Our deepest sympathy will be extended to the family. Our hearts will go out to them... in an effort to minimise the damage their bloody lawyers are about to do to us.’
‘With respect Dr Trool, I think you’re being a bit harsh. It was a terrible thing to have happen to them.’ The speaker was a slight woman in her late thirties. She was Inga Love, director of nursing services.
‘Indeed it was, Miss Love but it was an accident. These things happen. No one meant it to happen. To use it as the basis for screwing money out of the hospital is damn nearly criminal in my book.’
‘Something tells me the Griffiths are not going to see it that way,’ said Harcourt.
‘Of course they’re not,’ snapped Trool. ‘We have been to hell and back,’ he mimicked. ‘We don’t want anyone to go through what we have gone through. It’s not the money that’s important, it’s the principle. Yugh! Makes me want to throw up.’
‘It can’t be easy to have something that awful happen to your child, Dr Trool,’ lectured Inga Love.
Trool grunted.
‘If I can just remind you,’ interrupted Harcourt, ‘I have to brief the press in fifteen minutes. Perhaps we could agree on our approach.’
‘The usual,’ said Trool. ‘Damage limitation. Thoughts with the family at this time, all our sympathy goes out to them. Tragic error, no excuses, a momentary lapse in a busy department, full investigation under way. Steps have been taken to ensure it never happens again, that sort of thing.’
Six
Any difficulty Gordon and Julie were having in making conversation was resolved on Tuesday morning when they both arrived at the surgery carrying copies of the local morning paper.
‘Have you seen it?’ asked Julie.
‘I could hardly miss it,’ replied Gordon, opening his paper to reveal the headline, Hospital Loses Baby’s Body! My Agony by Grief-stricken Mother.
‘It was the cot-death baby in Caernarfon,’ said Julie. ‘What a thing to happen to the parents on top of everything else.’
‘Whose patient?’ asked Gordon.
‘Jenkins,’ replied Julie, giving the name of a Caernarfon GP.
‘I got the impression that they still hadn’t managed to find the baby’s body when this went to press,’ said Gordon.
‘I didn’t pick up on that,’ said Julie, ‘but surely they did, I mean you can’t actually lose a body in a hospital.’
‘You’d think not.’
Julie came through to Gordon’s room after morning surgery was over. He could tell by the expression on her face that something was seriously wrong.