Chapter Fourteen

The crimson pinhead-sized light on the card-reader turned green in response to Philippa’s badge. There was a soft click as the glass doors leading out of the hospital back exit unlocked. The shrill as they opened reminded her of the eerie image at the conclusion of that cryptic video.

Just as Rob Gadra had described, the anaesthetists’ mess was not far but the exterior of the grey portacabins was bleaker than she had imagined. Her warm breath nullified the cold that stung her palms but offered minor protection from the bite of the winds dousing the rest of her body.

Her brain bounced like a tennis ball between Shinji’s wellbeing and the ongoing puzzle of clues and sudden lack of death, something she did not understand. Had she missed the second test somehow? Or had she passed it without realising?

One theory did surface however, that could explain what had happened: Eric Pails was the killer but he had been detained by security before he could strike again. Thus, the tests were over and she just had to see the night through… How Philippa wanted to believe it, and the longer this period of morbid inactivity continued, the better the chance it could ring true.

It was not uncommon for there to be a brief lull in A&E attendances around this time. Had it not been for her precarious circumstances, Philippa would be diligently seeing those patients waiting for her team’s medical opinion, if not reviewing the ones Karan had already clerked. Some registrars described it as a catch-up period and it made her skin crawl not being able to ensure everything was in perfect order. Tonight, she was in dire need of this lull to avoid losing control of the shift.

There was something else behind her visit however, something other than the data-gathering exercise, that was drawing her to speak with the anaesthetist. She just couldn’t pinpoint what.

Her leather loafers clanged against the soaking metal stairs as she made her way to the uppermost portacabin. The staircase was slippery and she had to steady herself on more than one occasion.

Philippa Haven was exhausted. Had she really only worked five hours of the shift? How was she going to make it through the next eight?

This must be it, she thought when she arrived at the entrance.

There was a window but it was too distant and the awkward angle at which it had been installed, prevented Philippa from peering inside.

Was he there?

Aside from the gentle rustling of leaves, there was not another sound to her ears. A timid fox appeared from some bushes below and sneaked stealthily across the hospital grounds.

The eroded ash door stood before her, with its paintwork requiring intensive exfoliation like flaky, eczematous skin.

She placed a hand on the chrome handle then gasped and jerked it back. It was not because the handle was freezing cold but the recent precipitation had unveiled a dangling cobweb extending from the hinges down to the card-reader.

Her body halted but her heart raced on ahead. Philippa Haven did not hate spiders, she was petrified of them. She gripped onto the railings to catch her breath. Her eyes flitted around. Where was the spinner lurking?

But there was no sign of a fearsome arachnid and with the nearest lamppost several metres away it was always going to be a challenge to spot the black-bodied beast. She shuddered and gave her shoulders a firm shake in case the spider had landed on them without her knowing.

I’ll have to come back later she thought turning on her heels. In the distance, an ambulance arced its way towards the hospital entrance, it’s blue lights flashed tellingly.

‘Hey look who it is!’ said a familiar voice as she began her descent.

Philippa had not heard the door open. Her shoulders relaxed a little and she felt the crevices straighten out on her forehead.

When she turned to face Rob, the door was gaping.

He stepped out, wearing faded red scrubs, onto the steel landing, his body shielding her from her biggest phobia lurking somewhere close to the door.

She caught a glimpse inside the cabin. There was nobody else there. The interior appeared appealingly cosy.

‘Come on in, it’s freezing out here.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You know Philippa,’ he began, closing the door behind him, ‘you’re the first medical registrar that’s ever accepted my invitation.’

Philippa found herself having to conceal a heavy disappointment.

‘But that’s probably because you’re the first I’ve ever asked,’ he added with a cynical laugh, as if screening Philippa for a response.

She refused to give much away but it did lighten her up.

‘You’re not a feminist, are you?’

‘No, why?’

‘Well… welcome to the hideout of the only all-male anaesthetic department in the country. It’s not much but at least we have a sofa and a TV. What do you guys have, over in medicine?’

‘Oh actually…’

‘I’ll stop you right there,’ he said, raising a palm, ‘I know you guys don’t even have a mess here, I was just rubbing it in. Coffee? It’s good I promise you.’

When her mother suggested she should find a cheeky chappy, she didn’t know if Rob Gadra fitted such a description. He was annoying but not the kind to repulse her.

‘Yes, I think I need one.’

‘Looks it from here too,’ Rob said with a wink. ‘How do you like it usually – the coffee, I mean of course?’

‘Very funny: black please, one sugar.’

Philippa received the coffee gratefully with both hands. The conduction of heat was comforting.

The sofa showed signs of hoariness with its stains and patches of visible stitching. It gobbled up anything that sat on its wilting turquoise cushions. The coffee machine in comparison, was a gleaming diamond in the cabin, the etched brand still clearly legible and steel buttons, free from the chronic abrasion by fingertips.

‘All-male huh?’

He pushed his blonde hair back. ‘It makes a pleasant change to have a female visitor here,’ he teased. ‘How’s your shift going?’

‘It could be better,’ Philippa admitted.

‘To be fair to this place, most of the staff are pretty friendly,’ he said. ‘It’s just so damn busy – in medicine; I’m not speaking for myself here.’

‘It is.’

‘I don’t know how you guys do it,’ Rob commented when Philippa’s bleep went off for the nth time. ‘That bloody bleep is exactly the reason why I went into anaesthetics instead of medicine. It would drive me up the wall. Here you can use this phone to call back.’

Philippa dialled the extension.

It was a nurse on a different ward trying to get hold of Justin.

She directed her colleague to the correct number.

The mistaken bleep; they were the finest kind.

‘But I’ve tried that bleep a few times already.’

‘He’s with an unwell patient at the moment,’ she replied and casted her mind to Shinji Nyarko. How was he? ‘Is it urgent or can it wait ten minutes?’

‘I suppose it can wait. Thanks.’

Philippa passed the phone like a baton to Rob, who replaced it and remained loitering by the worktops.

‘This is Liberian coffee,’ she pointed out.

‘Wow that’s impressive, Miss Coffee-connoisseur.’

‘Coffee; it’s how I got through medical school.’

Rob laughed. ‘Same here.’

‘It smells like the one Justin had earlier.’

‘He might only be a first-year but he’s a smart lad. Told me he wants to do anaesthetics eventually and knows where the best coffee in the hospital is!’ He pointed to the coffee machine.

‘Taken him under your wing already?’ For the first time tonight, a partial smile broke across Philippa’s face. Being inside the portacabin away from the hullabaloo of the hospital certainly wound things down a notch, not to mention the continued lack of cardiac arrest call. It was ten-to-two.

‘You hear about this?’ he said suddenly with a gesture towards the television.

‘No, when did it happen?’

‘A few hours ago.’

‘There was a news report about the typhoon near China earlier.’

‘This sinkhole looks pretty frightening though. Sounds like there are few of them in this Russian town. Six-hundred-feet in depth… is it me, or are natural disasters occurring more frequently nowadays?’

‘Perhaps,’ Philippa replied. But the catastrophic images failed to miniaturise her own predicament and she was fervent about discovering what link the anaesthetist had with the AWOL patient.

‘So, what’s up? You came for a specific reason or just a chat?’

I wish it was the latter, she thought. Philippa took another sip of her coffee and felt an immediate recuperation. This was her first oral intake since last evening’s unflattering dinner. ‘It’s about Eric Pails.’

‘Ah… that…’ Rob struggled to complete his sentence with an appropriate word. ‘Why do you mention him of all people? Has he been admitted again?’

‘He’s gone missing – absconded.’

He choked on his coffee, but quickly grabbed some hand towels and mopped up the spillage over the counter and television.

‘Evidently the name hits a raw nerve?’

Rob shrugged. ‘Just be careful with him.’

Philippa leaned forwards. ‘Why?’

‘Because you’re a cute but vulnerable lady – I wouldn’t want you getting hurt,’ he said, strolling towards her. He took an adjacent seat on the sofa.

‘Cute,’ Philippa chortled.

‘I like freckles and brunettes.’

The cabin was sizzling and the hot drink probably didn’t help. When Philippa stared into the anaesthetist’s smouldering blue eyes, his gaze would sear her from inside.

‘I can look after myself.’

‘I’m sure you can,’ he said confidently. ‘But if I was a gambling man, I’m sorry, I’d bet my life on Eric Pails, if you were pitted against each other.’

‘What has he done that makes you so scared of him?’ she asked, turning away from him ever so slightly.

It was Rob’s turn to blush.

Philippa suspected he didn’t do that often.

‘What have you heard about him?’

Philippa replied, ‘I’ve been told about the time he stabbed a nurse with one of his drug needles.’

‘He should have been locked up after that, I tell you.’

‘What about you though? Gemma mentioned something about you having a run-in with him.’

He chuckled. He had a warm, infectious laugh.

‘It was around ten months ago,’ Rob began explaining. He stretched his legs, walking to the nearest window, the one that Philippa had tried to see through earlier. He gestured at a towering oak. ‘I caught a man hiding outside the hospital, right behind that tree, with his back to me. It was Eric Pails. He was on his phone – like talking on it, but acting really dodgy, as if he was trying to hide from someone. So, I went down to listen in. You’d never believe what he was doing.’

‘What?’

‘He was making phone calls to the ward he had absconded from; I think it was Medical Three.’

‘As in going through switchboard, like as an external call?’

‘I don’t know, either through switchboard or directly, if he knew the extension. He was asking for the nurse. No idea if it was a stupid prank or if there was some end-gain.’

‘What did you do?’

‘He was telling the nurse or whoever it was to stop trying to find him so, I called him out. Said to him: Oi! What do you think you’re doing?’

‘How did he respond?’

‘He went psycho on me. Put a fist to my face and gave me a blackeye.’

‘No way…’

‘I just about shoved him off me and ran back up here. Closed the door in the nick of time. Otherwise, who knows what could have happened to me.’

This man had committed enough crimes against staff, why was he not barred from the hospital?

‘He started banging on the door in an attempt to smash it down before trying to climb over to this window and do the same. Thank God for phones in here; security came in time and dragged him away,’ Rob said. As if his description of events was making him sound less macho, he felt the need to justify things: ‘I was close to hitting him myself and probably would have knocked him out but you know how it is, I’d have been portrayed as the bad guy.’

She thought she had heard everything she needed to know. Everything pointed to this man being the culprit and once he was found, all would be solved. She should check with security that he hadn’t already.

But as she readied herself to eject off the sofa, Rob Gadra suddenly added: ‘He’s really simple up here.’

‘What do you mean?’ She took another sip of coffee.

‘Aside from the psychiatric history, he left school after year eight I was told. Didn’t know who his parents were. Never went to college or university, no qualifications and what stood out from my brief kerfuffle with him, was his terrible English and the mobile phone he was using – one of those old classic flip phones with no internet, no camera I seem to remember, not even a colour-screen!’

Terrible English… ancient mobile phone…

The person behind the call and email was an intelligent being, a technophile, as Shinji Nyarko had inferred. And this was a pre-meditated attack on her. Surely, this ruled out somebody who was as impulsive as Eric Pails?

Philippa Haven rubbed her hair furiously between her fingers.

If Eric Pails wasn’t responsible, then whoever was remained at large, somewhere inside the Princess Royal Hospital.

‘But enough about Eric Pails,’ Rob added, ‘far creepier stuff happens in this hospital…’