Ken McClure - White death

‘Steven Dunbar.’

‘Gavin Houston,’ said the smiling young man at the desk. ‘Welcome. I’ll show you to your room.’

Steven had been a bit apprehensive about what a B amp;B that Jean Roberts and her sister enthused about might turn out to be, but the place was clean, modern and comfortable. It even had wireless broadband available which he used to connect his laptop to Sci-Med to check for any messages. There were none.

Despite having given it some thought, Steven had not yet decided on his first move in the investigation. He wanted to avoid crossing swords with the local police but didn’t think that should be a real problem: they had already written Scott Haldane’s death off as suicide and closed the book on it. They would have no great inclination to take what his wife was saying seriously. He lay down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling while he thought through his options.

Judging by what he’d learned from the files, Scott Haldane’s widow, Linda, might not be the best person to interview first. She was clearly unwilling to even consider the possibility of her husband having committed suicide. Virginia Lyons’ daughter, Trish, was currently very ill in hospital so the fate of their GP would not be uppermost in her mind. That just left the medical practice where Haldane had worked. Steven thought he might be able to get a feeling for what had gone on in the disagreement over Trish Lyons’ treatment by speaking to someone there and perhaps get someone to throw some light on ‘green sticker’ patients while he was at it.

A phone-call later and Steven had arranged to meet with Dr James Gault at the practice in Bruntsfield after evening surgery. Bruntsfield was a part of the city that Steven knew well — a nice area about a mile south of the city centre and about three miles from where he was at the moment. Seeing that it had stopped raining, he decided to walk there. It would give him the chance to re-acquaint himself with the city and also afford him some exercise at the end of a travel day with all the enforced inertia that had entailed — especially as it would be uphill all the way.

Steven was a little too early when he reached Bruntsfield Links, the pleasant, green area near to the street where the surgery was located, so he sat down on a park bench and watched the world go by for a few minutes. A child’s ball landed at his feet and he picked it up to return it to the child who came to retrieve it but stopped some distance away. ‘Hello,’ he said.

The child gave him a suspicious look and snatched up the ball when Steven rolled it to him. His mother called out and it was possible to pick out the anxiety in her voice. He thought it sad that speaking to anyone in the park was a definite no-no for children these days. Steven got up and started to walk towards the surgery, wondering whether the threat to children now was really any greater than it had been in the past or was it perhaps just the perception of it that had changed? He suspected the latter but there was no time to ponder any longer. He’d reached the front door of the surgery.

‘What can I do for Sci-Med?’ asked James Gault, examining Steven’s ID and settling back in his chair.

‘I’d appreciate hearing your views on Scott Haldane’s suicide. You must have known him well?’

‘I did… or at least I thought I did. It was as big a shock to me as it seems to have been to everyone else. I would have thought he’d be the last person on earth to take his own life. He had everything to live for.’

‘That’s what I keep hearing,’ said Steven. ‘No skeletons in the cupboard?’

‘None that I know of. I always found him a perfectly straightforward chap who cared deeply about his patients — more than me if truth be told,’ Gault added with a snort.

Steven gave him an enquiring look and Gault said, ‘Call it the cynicism of my years. Forty years of dishing out pills and writing prescriptions can take the shine off youthful zeal.’

Steven nodded. At least the man was honest. ‘I understand there was some disagreement over the treatment of a child patient in the practice — a girl with a skin complaint?’

‘Not really a disagreement,’ said Gault dismissively. ‘The child’s mother wanted us to pull out all the stops for a condition that I regarded as trivial and harmless. We do not have unlimited resources in the NHS — something I failed singularly to get across to her. In the end she asked for a change of doctor and Scott took her and her daughter on to his list.’

‘I understand this child is now seriously ill?’ said Steven.

Gault nodded. ‘Although not as a result of the original complaint,’ he stressed. ‘An accident with boiling water, I understand.’

‘Her mother doesn’t seem to think it was an accident.’

Gault gave him a look that said, she wouldn’t. ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ he said.

‘If the child were to confirm that she did do it deliberately and it was connected with the way she felt about her skin problem, would it alter your view of Dr Haldane’s death at all?’

‘What are you getting at?’ asked Gault suspiciously.

‘Dr Haldane’s wife is convinced that her husband was murdered and his death was linked in some way to this child’s problems. I suppose I on the other hand was considering that he may have taken his own life over feelings of guilt for what had happened to the girl and for not having referred her for psychiatric assessment. Would you consider that a possibility?’

‘No way,’ said Gault. ‘Neither of us saw the need for psychiatric involvement at any stage. The girl had a harmless condition but was being given a hard time over it at school. End of story as far as I’m concerned. She was scalded in an accident, something that played no part in Scott’s death.’

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Steven, getting up to go. ‘You’ve been very helpful. Oh, by the way… who or what are green sticker patients?’

‘No great mystery,’ said Gault. ‘A number of children from schools all over the country were exposed to tuberculosis at a school camp they were attending in the Lake District — TB is a growing hazard these days with children coming to live in this country from all over the place. Appropriate steps were taken and the children are being monitored as a precaution. They have green stickers on their medical records — hence the name. Any time they appear in the surgery with a problem, a report has to be made and sent off with their records for updating, filing, cross-referencing or whatever the trillions of NHS pen-pushers do these days with the information they keep demanding.’

‘I see,’ smiled Steven. ‘I understand Trish Lyons is a green sticker patient?’

‘She is,’ agreed Gault.

‘Dr Haldane’s wife claims that this caused problems in some way for her husband.’

‘It might well have done if her records weren’t available when he was looking for them — in fact, come to think of it, that might well have happened. The girls in the office would have sent them off the first time she appeared here in the surgery with her skin complaint.’

‘So Dr Haldane being annoyed about this would be perfectly understandable in your view?’

‘Absolutely, having your patient’s medical records lying in some bureaucrat’s office when you need access to them had me spitting tacks too.’

Steven thanked Gault again and left. He walked back across the green sward of the links and into the Bruntsfield Hotel where he ordered a gin and tonic and sat down by a window in the lounge to consider what he’d learned. Sci-Med had no interest in whether Scott Haldane had committed suicide or not although his own view was that he possibly had. In his experience, suicide victims often had a deeper, darker side to them than they ever showed to the world and the act often came as a complete surprise to those around them, even to those who knew and loved them most — a bit like serial killers who were nearly always described by neighbours as being quiet and polite, keeping themselves very much to themselves.