Ken McClure - Fenton's winter

"I'm a respectable married woman," protested Mary Tyler.

"They're always the worst," grinned Saxon.

"As you are here Nigel…" said Fenton in a tone of voice that put Saxon on the defensive.”What are you after?" he asked suspiciously.

"Your blood," said Fenton. "Quite literally." He told Saxon that he was collecting blood samples from 'volunteers' to run some new tests on the Saxon Analyser. It could even lead to a sale, he confided. Saxon agreed as did Mary Tyler, Ian Ferguson, Alex Ross and four of the others.

"When?" asked Saxon.

"Before you leave if that's all right?" said Fenton. Saxon said that it was but seemed a bit dubious about the whole business. He came back after collecting the report from Charles Tyson and was led into a small side room by Fenton. "Slip off your jacket and roll up your sleeve." Saxon did as he was bid and sat down with his arms on the table in front of him. He looked nervous.

Fenton finished rummaging in a drawer and joined Saxon at the table holding a piece of rubber tubing in his hand. "I'll just wrap this around your upper arm," he said. "Perhaps you could hold it there?" Saxon reached across and held the tubing in place while Fenton slapped the inside of his arm to make the veins stand out. He slipped a sterile needle on to the end of a disposable ten ml. syringe, swabbed the exposed area of Saxon's arm with an alcohol impregnated swab and pushed the needle smoothly into the vein. Dark red blood flooded into the syringe until it had reached the ten ml. mark then Fenton withdrew it and pressed another alcohol impregnated swab over the site of entry. "Just hold that there for a moment," he said to Saxon.

With the sample safely in its container and the container in the fridge Fenton held Saxon's jacket for him while he put it back on. Saxon said, "I hope my father appreciates what I do for our company!"

He suffixed the remark with a loud laugh but Fenton noticed the beads of sweat along Saxon's forehead. He really had been afraid.

It was nearly a quarter past seven when Fenton finally got through with his day's work. Thinking that he was the last one left in the lab he was surprised to see a light on under one of the doors when he came downstairs. It made him feel a little uneasy. He crossed the hall quietly and listened outside the door for a few seconds. There was no sound from inside. He opened the door cautiously and looked in startling Alex Ross who had been sitting writing. "Good God, you nearly gave me a heart attack," said Ross.

"Sorry. You're here late this evening."

"The monthly accounts," said Ross. "I didn't have time during the day."

"Fancy a drink?"

"Good idea," said Ross, putting down his pen and rubbing his eyes. "I've had quite enough for one day."

The two men walked the short distance to the Thistle Arms and joined the early evening drinkers. It was a grimy little pub that relied much more on the custom of regulars than passing trade. Little or no concession had been made to decor and it remained essentially a Scottish man's pub, a place where still the presence of a woman would be frowned upon. The solid Victorian bar counter was highly polished but bore the scars of countless generations of carelessly stubbed cigarettes while the floor was covered in linoleum that had once been green but was now an indeterminate dark shade under the dim, inadequate lighting.

Several solitary drinkers sat at tables along a wall, their faces bearing tell tale signs of a life that had been none too kind; escape lay in the amber fluid in front of them. A few small groups chatted at the bar, men on their way home, some still carrying the badges of their trade. A railway guard in his gendarme's cap, a security guard with his hat moulded to suggest that he was really Burt Lancaster in Submarine Alley, an insurance agent in grubby raincoat with battered briefcase. A noisy group of students sat in the corner, savouring the haunts of the working man but retaining their university scarves as an insurance of distance.

The two barmen were of the old school, spotless white aprons and hands that were never idle, constantly wiping imaginary spillages from the counter, eyeing the levels in the glasses along the bar, anticipating where the next order would come from. The smaller of the two, narrow shouldered and bespectacled, looked up as Ross and Fenton approached. "Still cold outside?" he asked.

"Freezing," said Ross. He ordered whisky for them both.

As they stood at the bar Fenton ran his eye along the gantry noting that nearly all the space was taken up by whisky, a good range of single malts and nearly every known blended variety. Other spirits were represented by solitary bottles. The contents of the glasses along the counter reflected the stock on the gantry, and probably constituted the reason for it, with the traditional 'half and a pint' clearly to the fore. He took comfort from the fact that some things never seemed to change. It might be a sociologist's nightmare but in certain places in Scotland drinking remained a man's game.

Ross threw back his head and drained his glass, declining Fenton's offer of a second drink and pleading 'hell from the wife' as a legitimate excuse. Fenton wished him good night and ordered another for himself. The barman handed him a copy of the evening paper to look at and said that Rangers had bought another English player.

"Really?" said Fenton, not having any interest in football but feeling obliged to display some reaction.

"Not that it will do them any good," said another man at the bar, taking the strain off Fenton and diverting the barman's attention.

Fenton drank up his beer and went to the lavatory. It was a dingy, brick-built cellar that had been painted so many times that the grouting between the bricks had all but disappeared. Rust clung to the pipework and old iron cisterns fixed to the wall above the urinal. He stood there, head tilted to one side to read the graffiti and heard the door open behind him. But no one joined him at the wall.

Feeling more comfortable Fenton zipped his fly and turned round to find two men standing there, they were looking straight at him. The older of the two, a thickset man wearing leather jacket and jeans came towards him, the other remained leaning against the exit door. Without saying anything the first man swung his fist into Fenton's stomach with a power that suggested he might once have done it for a living. Fenton's eyes opened wide as he doubled over but only in time to meet the boot that was directed up into his face. His cheek bone shattered in a haze of pain.

The whole affair seemed to be being conducted in absolute silence, no jeers, no insults, no words, just the cold, professional application of pain. The boot swung in again, this time into Fenton's ribs, overloading his appreciation of agony; he felt consciousness slip away from him. The frustration of not even being able to protest vied with the pain for his receding attention as he slid slowly down the wall, feeling the porcelain of the urinal cold against his cheek before his face finally came to rest in the gutter at the bottom. The stench that filled his nostrils made him vomit weakly, adding to the cocktail of blood and urine. The boot thudded into him again but it was by now a long way from Fenton who had drifted off into oblivion.

Fenton emerged sporadically from the darkness to snatch an occasional sight or sound, a flashing blue light was reflected in glass somewhere, rain drops caressed his forehead, a hand touched him gently. There was a moustache…a cap…a siren that never faded into the distance, search light beams on a low ceiling, voices, but far away…very far away.

Fenton surfaced from the blackness and opened his eyes to find everything still and bright. He stared upwards till the object he had elected to focus his attention on resolved itself into a light fitting. There were dead flies in it. He took a deep breath and, in doing so, attracted the attention of a nurse who now saw that his eyes were open. Her voice was soft and gentle. "So you're back with us," she said