Ken McClure - Fenton's winter

The flat was empty when Fenton got in for Jenny had gone to visit some of her old flat mates. But Fenton was glad of the time it gave him to calm down. His hands still shook a little and his insides still felt hollow but a stiff whisky helped fight the symptoms and prepared him to confide in Jenny when she did come in.

"But why?" exclaimed Jenny when Fenton told her.

"I keep telling you I don't know," maintained Fenton.

"Who knew you would be in the lab today?" Jenny asked.

"Lots of people. We discussed it at the dinner party the other night."

"So it has to be one of the lab staff?"

"Or Saxon," said Fenton. "He picked that very moment to disappear."

"What about when he came back?" asked Jenny. "Did he look guilty?"

"No," conceded Fenton.

"What other possibilities are there?"

"I suppose it is just possible that the damper failed for some technical reason.

"And the cyanide crystals?"

"Coincidence? We use cyanide a lot."

"I think I prefer that notion," said Jenny.

Fenton preferred it too. He just did not believe it.

Jenny was still sleeping when he left for work next morning. She had not stirred when he kissed her so Fenton tip-toed out of the room, taking great pains to close the door quietly behind him.

It felt good to be back on the bike again although his ribs still hurt when anything more than light pressure was required on the handlebars. He gunned it up the outside of a long queue of cars in Lothian Road and joined the leading one at the traffic lights. They changed and Fenton was just a memory to its driver before the man had had time to engage first gear.

Charles Tyson arrived in the car park at the rear of the lab as Fenton was heaving the Honda on to its stand. They exchanged pleasantries and walked into the lab together. There were two engineers from the hospital works department working on the fume cupboard and Tyson paused to ask what was wrong. He asked Ian Ferguson but it was Fenton who answered. "It broke down yesterday," he said.

By ten o'clock Fenton felt as if he had never been away for, within minutes of sitting down at his desk he had picked up the threads and was back in the old routine. Hospital biochemistry kept him fully occupied until Wednesday when he found some time to chase up those who had volunteered to give blood for the Analyser tests. Charles Tyson was the last on the list. Fenton withdrew the blood, ejected the sample into two plastic tubes and took them along to his lab. He brought out the relevant rack from the fridge and placed Tyson's samples in the last two holes. He now had the required number of samples to begin the tests.

As he made to put the rack back in the fridge he noticed something odd about Tyson's specimen in the second tube. It was still unclotted. He withdrew both tubes and shook them gently, one should have remained quite fluid for the test tube had anti-coagulant in it but the other contained nothing save for the blood. It should have clotted. Fenton looked at his watch and saw that ten minutes had passed since he had taken the sample. Far too long! He raced along the corridor and burst into Tyson's room, getting a startled look from both Tyson and Liz Scott who was taking dictation. "Your blood isn’t clotting," he blurted out.

Tyson looked at the inside of his arm and said, "It isn't bleeding. It stopped normally." Fenton still looked doubtful. Tyson said, "Probably a dirty tube…but just to make sure, pass me a scalpel blade will you."

Fenton opened a glass fronted cabinet and removed a small packet wrapped in silver foil. He handed it to Tyson. Liz Scott screwed up her face and said, "What on earth…" as Tyson slit through the skin of his index finger and watched the blood well up. He dabbed it away with the clean swab that Fenton handed to him and checked his watch. Fenton and Liz Scott watched in silence as Tyson continued to dab blood away. At length he said, "There, it's stopping. See? Quite normal."

Fenton let out a sigh of relief and said, "Thank God, I thought for a moment that you were number five." Now able to think of more mundane matters he realised that he was short of one blood sample and said so.

"Perhaps Liz?" Tyson suggested, turning to look at the secretary who screwed up her face before agreeing with more than a little reluctance. "I hate needles," she said as she rolled up the sleeve of her blouse.

"Look up," said Fenton, before inserting the needle smoothly into the vein and drawing back the plunger. "There now, that didn't hurt did it?" Liz Scott agreed that it hadn't. "Just hold the swab there for a minute or so," said Fenton placing the gauze over the puncture mark, "then you can roll down your sleeve."

Fenton brought the tubes back to his lab and held them up to the window. One of them remained fluid while the other was clotting normally. He put them in the fridge to wait with the others until later. He would run them through the Analyser in the evening when everyone had gone and Jenny had started her shift on night duty.

Fenton came downstairs to the main lab to see what lay in store for him and read through the request forms from the wards. "I don't believe it," he said out loud as yet another request for a lead count appeared in the lists. "Twelve…fourteen…sixteen bloods for lead! What's going on?"

Alex Ross gave a thin smile and said, "You've got Councillor Vanney to thank for that."

"Vanney?"

"He's been opposing an extension to the ring road; his latest tack is to scaremonger about lead pollution from car exhausts if the new road goes ahead. You know the sort of thing; IQ will drop by fifty points if you walk too near a Volkswagen Polo. He's been calling for the screening of all children living near the first stage of the road."

"What's his real reason?"

"The more cynical among us might suggest that the new road would screw up a development of luxury flats that Vanney and Sons are building on the south side."

"Turd."

"He's a powerful turd." said Ross.

"Who are the 'Tree Mob' Alex?"

Ross was taken by surprise at the suddenness of Fenton's question. What was more, he seemed to Fenton to visibly stiffen. "What made you ask that?" he stammered.

"The other night at the party you suggested that Saxon Medical had got special treatment because of the 'Tree Mob.' Who are they?"

Ross put his hands to his forehead and said quietly, "One day my big mouth will be the death of me."

"I don't understand," said Fenton.

"I've said too much already," said Ross.

"You can't leave me hanging," Fenton protested.

Ross looked doubtful then took a deep breath and said, "There's an organisation called the Cavalier Club which is currently trendy with the establishment. Their emblem is an oak tree. It's supposed to represent the tree that King Charles hid up when he was hiding from the roundheads.

"But what has that got to do with Saxon getting preferential treatment from the Department of Health?"

"There are a lot of powerful people in the club. They scratch each others' backs and what's more, they consider themselves to be above the law. Rumour has it their influence is growing all the time."

"But a club?" protested Fenton.

"More a society really."

"If you say so," said Fenton. "How come I haven't heard of it?"

"You were in Africa for a long while."

Fenton found it hard to believe what Ross had told him but one thing stopped him from saying so. He had remembered that the medallion that had fallen from Nigel Saxon's pocket in the car park had had a tree motif on it. He said nothing to Ross.

Fenton nursed his dislike for politicians all through the procedure for lead estimation for it was the least popular test in the lab. True to form his hands got covered in blood; they always did with lead tests. He was washing them for the umpteenth time when the phone rang and Ian Ferguson said, "Tom, it's Jenny."