John Harvey - Cutting Edge

Salt had screamed at the scrub nurse in theatre, fumbling with a clamp instead of slapping it down into his hand and the poor bugger on the table into a bleed that had his kidneys bobbing around like a coxless pair catching a crab. Of course, he’d apologized to her afterwards, no excuse for snapping like that and she’d said, no, it had been her fault, her fault entirely, but it had been her eyes that had told the truth.

Interesting, the way they were polarizing, attitudes towards him inside the hospital. Well, not interesting at all, really, take that back, more what you’d expect. Most of the nurses, female ones, the secretarial staff, social workers, their sympathies were with Helen, the other woman, used and then abused. Whereas the men-some of them it was nudge, nudge, wink, wink, sly old goose keeping a bit going on the side and pretty much getting away with it; others who’d found themselves on the receiving end of Helen’s tongue, they thought he was well shot of her. All brimstone and spare the treacle.

There was a message on his desk-he’d swear his secretary’s handwriting had become more crabbed since this had come out into the open-would he please get in touch with a Superintendent Skelton as soon as possible?

Soon as he felt up to it: later.

Right now what he needed was a brisk walk, fresh air. He knew some surgeons who kept a silver flask topped up with one form of spirits or another, a quick tipple between jobs to keep the hands steady. Or so they claimed. One of his former colleagues, now gone to meet the great consultant in the sky, hadn’t been above grabbing the mask when no one was looking and having a furtive go at the ether. Nine operations a day, that man, matter of routine. Of course, it had killed him. Heart. Four years short of fifty. Wife had remarried within six months, junior surgeon. New blood. Probably something going on there beforehand as well. Truth were known, they were all at it. Most of them. Human nature. What was that play? Restoration. Damn. English teacher had them read it at school. One that got the sack. Way of the World , that was it. True enough.

Bernard Salt stopped at the slip road to the car park and for only the second or third time since it had happened, he was thinking about the incident that evening after talking to Helen. A sound like a footstep, a movement, definitely a movement, and close, close to him. But then someone he knew had come along and after that, nothing. Which was in all probability what it had been.

Except …

That houseman, Fletcher, then Dougherty, it hadn’t seemed anything that concerned him, that might impinge on his life, touch him at all. And then that young girl, the one who’d been an ODA. He had never wanted to admit to himself that there might be a connection.

Then he turned back towards the hospital and saw the two men standing close to the entrance, neither of them men that he recognized as such, but the way they stood and waited, you didn’t need to know their name.

“Superintendent Skelton,” said the taller man, showing his card. “This is Detective Constable Patel. We appreciate that you have a busy schedule, but we were wondering if you could find time to talk to us. It may not take very long.”

Salt made a brief nodding motion, almost imperceptible. “I have a cholecystectomy scheduled, which I should imagine, barring complications, will take an hour to an hour and a half. After that …”

“Will be fine,” said Skelton. “There are other matters we can be checking into while we’re here.”

Salt didn’t ask what these might be; some of them he thought he might guess.

“Cholecystectomy,” said Patel, “an operation to remove the gallbladder, is that right?”

“Yes,” said Salt, “it is. Absolutely.”

“What did you get your degree in?” Skelton asked as they were walking into the hospital.

“Mechanical engineering, sir,” Patel said, holding the door to let the superintendent step through.

“Rightly or wrongly,” Bernard Salt was saying, “the impulse is always to calm the patient down, give something to deal with the residue of the pain, basically ensure as little agitation as possible. Last thing you want them to do, dwell upon what happened. Difficult enough to forget, I should have thought, without willingly reliving it all the time. No, you can apologize, you can try to explain.”

“Smooth it over,” suggested Skelton.

“Absolutely.”

They were in the consultant’s office, Skelton and Salt facing one another from the two comfortable chairs, Patel off to one side on a straight-backed chair with a leather seat. Among the questions he wanted to ask, why wait until someone else gave us this information, why not come forward with it yourself? The sister who did point them in this direction, what were her motives? Another of a different kind, what was Skelton’s degree in? But he remembered somebody saying, the superintendent was not a graduate at all. When Skelton had entered the Force, relatively few recruits had been graduates; even fewer had been Asian, black.

“There is always, I suppose,” Skelton was saying, “the danger of legal action in cases such as this?”

Salt tapped his fingers together, brought his heavy head forward once.

“And so to do anything which might seem to be accepting liability …”

“Quite.”

Skelton let his glance stray towards the window. After the brave showing of sunshine, today’s skies had reverted to an all-over anonymous gray. “I believe there was an instance, four years ago. An … er … laparotomy, if I have the term correctly.”

“An exploratory examination of the abdomen,” said Patel.

Salt glared at him with something close to hatred.

“The patient claimed to have been awake throughout the operation,” Skelton continued. “Damages were sought from the health authority, who settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. You were the surgeon in charge of that operation.”

“The patient,” Patel said, less than comfortable with both of the older men staring at him, “was in a ward on which Karl Dougherty was working as a nurse.”

Salt shook his head. “I can only take your word for that.”

“It is true,” said Patel. “Dougherty himself remembers the incident and, as far as we have been able, we have checked the records.”

“I’m sure you have,” said Salt, a tone neither quite accusation nor patronization. “And I am sure you have discovered that in November of last year, during an appendicectomy, the anesthetic was found not to be functioning correctly and the operation was abandoned.”

Skelton looked across at Patel and Patel, who had come across no such information, nodded wisely.

“Only a few months before the operation to remove the gallbladder,” Skelton said, “there was considerable adverse publicity around a woman who claimed to have been conscious while giving birth by Caesarian section.”

“Certain newspapers,” Salt said, “I am sure sold a great many extra copies.”

“Not only were the health authority sued, but also the surgeon in charge and the anesthetist. I think that is correct?”

“In the light of that,” Skelton went on, “it’s reasonable to imagine the authority, the hospital managers, would be very loath to attract similar publicity so soon again. Quite apart from the financial loss, what might seem to the general public like a falling away of professional standards, that would be something to be avoided at all costs.”

“Not at all costs, Superintendent. There is no sense of anything having been covered up. And as for this hospital, I can assure you that, cheek by jowl, our record in these cases compares very favorably with others of a similar size.”

“I’m sure it does.”