Ken McClure - Crisis

‘Not in that state you won’t,’ whispered Bannerman in the dark.

The hotel was too small to have a night porter or indeed any night staff that would warrant the front door being left open. Bannerman saw that it was locked when he came downstairs.

‘Was there something?’ asked the manager, who had just locked up and was preparing to turn in for the night.

‘I thought I might go out for some fresh air,’ said Bannerman.

‘At this time?’ exclaimed the man, looking at his watch but more by gesture than any real desire to see the time.

‘Insomnia,’ replied Bannerman. ‘I’m a slave to it.’

The man gave Bannerman a key and requested that he lock up when he returned.

Bannerman said that he would.

The air was cold but mercifully still as he hurried along the deserted streets of Stobmor to the cottage hospital. Although it was after one-thirty in the morning and there were no lights on at all in the surrounding streets, Bannerman still felt as if a thousand eyes were watching him. He kept close to the shadows all the way and checked behind him before turning into the doorway of the hospital. He felt a surge of relief to be in the dark of the entrance porch. He got out the key MacLeod had given him and inserted it in the lock. It wouldn’t turn.

Bannerman withdrew the key and re-inserted it, three times in all but it refused to turn. He cursed and tried one last time but to no avail. He was on the point of leaving when it suddenly occurred to him what the trouble was. He was trying to unlock a door that was already unlocked! He turned the handle and the door opened. MacLeod must have forgotten to lock it earlier!

Bannerman felt embarrassed that he had not thought of trying the door first. It confirmed his suspicion that he had no talent for cloak and dagger activities. What was required was a cool calculating mind. He was a bundle of nerves and his pulse rate was topping a hundred and twenty. He tiptoed into the room where MacLeod said that he would leave the equipment he would need for the brain biopsy on Turnbull. There was enough light coming in from the street lamps for him to find it without trouble. Surgical gloves, 50 ml capacity disposable syringes, wide-gauge needles, alcohol impregnated swabs and a range of specimen containers. Everything he needed to extract a sample of the dead man’s brain.

Bannerman’s pulse was still thumping as he collected the equipment together on a stainless steel tray and prepared to take it down into the cellar. As he lifted it he heard a sudden thumping sound from somewhere in the building. He nearly dropped the tray. Had MacLeod come back after all? The noise happened again and Bannerman was prompted to call out, ‘Dr MacLeod? Is that you?’

There was no reply.

Bannerman felt unease grow inside him until it tightened his stomach muscles. For God’s sake get a grip! he told himself. There are sounds in all buildings at night. Central heating noises, fridges switching on and off. You can hardly be afraid of the dead, you’re a pathologist for God’s sake! Get down into that cellar, get the needle biopsy over and done with and you can be on your way to Edinburgh in the morning.

Bannerman opened the door to the cellar and moved forward cautiously. He couldn’t risk putting on a light until the door was safely closed behind him for fear that it would be seen from the street. Once more, he noticed the sudden change in temperature as he descended the stone steps. Another sound! A small shuffling sound. Surely it couldn’t be rats at the body? He listened for the tell-tale scurry of paws. Silence. stood on the second last step and looked around the cellar. Nothing moved in the floor area lit by the single lamp but there were several dark corners. The sheet covered corpse lay undisturbed on its bench in the middle of the room. There was however, one loose fold of sheet on the right side of the head. Bannerman could have sworn that he had tucked the sheet round the head securely. He stared at it, his mind racked with unease.

He laid the instrument tray down by the side of the body and took off his coat. He rolled up his sleeves and put on a pair of surgical gloves, stretching his fingers and snapping the material back on his wrists to make sure the fit was perfect. He donned a second pair. There was no point in taking any risks with a disease as deadly as this. He fitted one of the wide-gauge needles aseptically on to a syringe and put the sterile plastic needle guard back on while he unwrapped the head of the corpse.

As he touched the sheet Bannerman experienced a moment of sheer terror; the corpse suddenly sat up straight. He could do nothing but stare wide eyed and open mouthed at the unfolding nightmare before him. The corpse’s head, still covered with the sheet, turned slowly towards him and suddenly hit him full in the face with a vicious head-butt. Pain exploded inside Bannerman’s head and consciousness was lost in a galaxy of stars.

Bannerman came to with a blinding headache and the taste of grit in his mouth. He sat up slowly, spat the dirt out and gingerly touched his face to discover that his nose had been broken. He let out a grunt of pain as the bone moved under the skin. There was a good deal of congealed blood on his face but, as far as he could determine, there was no further serious damage. His ribs felt fine and his teeth were intact so it seemed that the assault had been confined to the single head-butt that had laid him out. He looked about him and saw that he was now alone in the room. The ‘corpse’ had gone.

Painfully, he got to his feet and deduced from the stiffness in his limbs that he must have been lying in the same position for some considerable time. He had to pause half-way up the stairs and knelt for a moment when he felt consciousness start to slip away from him again. He tried putting his head between his knees to improve blood circulation but a protest from his aching head overruled the move. He compromised by resting for a moment before continuing upstairs to telephone Angus MacLeod.

‘Who did you say did it?’ said MacLeod, thinking that he hadn’t heard right.

‘The corpse, well, of course, it wasn’t the corpse, it was someone pretending to be the corpse. Oh Christ, just get over here will you,’ he snapped. He immediately regretted it but, for the moment, the pain in his head was dictating his behaviour. He found a bathroom and examined the damage to his face in the mirror. The blood made it look much worse than it actually was and he recoiled from the sight that met him. He looked as if he had just been a spectacularly unsuccessful contender for the heavyweight championship of the world. ‘Lucky punch Harry,’ he murmured in true British heavyweight style. ‘Lucky punch.’

MacLeod arrived and called out his name.

‘In here,’ croaked Bannerman.

MacLeod came into the bathroom and immediately took over. ‘Let me do that,’ he insisted. ‘Come through here. It’ll be more comfortable.’ He led Bannerman to one of the treatment rooms where he set about cleaning up his face and resetting his broken nose. ‘You’re going to have two lovely black eyes in the morning,’ he said. ‘You can get dark glasses at MacPhail’s in the High Street.’

‘Thanks,’ said Bannerman sourly. ‘I found the front door unlocked when I arrived. Did you forget to lock it?’

‘On the contrary, I distinctly remember locking it,’ said Macleod.

Bannerman nodded. ‘I should have thought of that,’ he said. ‘Whoever broke in tonight was inside when I arrived. It never even occurred to me to think that someone had picked the lock. ‘I assumed you had left it open.’

‘Should I call the police?’ asked MacLeod.

‘I don’t think so,’ replied Bannerman, thinking the local constabulary would make of it all.