The Drowners (2 page)

‘As you probably know,’ he said, ‘Sue has called in to say Alex Hastings has meningitis.’ He held up a hand as if to quell a panic despite the fact no-one in the room moved or spoke. ‘I understand this is a worrying development, but I am taking professional advice and have been assured there is nothing to cause us concern. Now, Alex has not been here for the last two weeks and so Sue is our only possible point of contact.
Some of you will have worked with her but some probably have nothing to do with her … Yes?’

Eddie stuck his hand up. ‘All due respect, Garry, but if this is contagious it could have passed via any one of us. And look – we’re all here now together.’

There was a general murmur and some shuffling of feet as the staff pondered this sobering thought.

‘Perhaps with hindsight we should have remained – more isolated,’ said Gordon.

Paul Malcolm, an energetic and idealistic young officer who dealt with the younger clients, joined in. ‘Does it count as an industrial injury if we catch it?’ He looked around and continued. ‘Only I got scabies from a client once and that didn’t, but meningitis is a bit more serious.’

Margaret, who was sitting next to him, leaned a little further away and screwed up her face in disgust. ‘That’s really not nice,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure we need to know things like that.’

‘Yeah, a bit too much detail there Paul,’ said Eddie.

‘If we could get back to the matter in hand,’ Garry shouted above the rising voices. The phone on the main table began to ring and after a moment Pauline rose to answer it. Silence fell as everyone tried to hear what was being said.

‘Yes, yes, I see. Thank you,’ she said, before replacing the receiver.

‘Was that the county medical officer?’ Garry asked. Pauline nodded. ‘Well, that call was for me. You should not have taken it.’

Pauline blinked at him and shook her head. ‘You seemed to be waiting for me to answer it,’ she said finally, as an uncomfortable silence stretched between them. ‘He seemed eager just to deliver his message and get off the line so I didn’t have much choice.’

Garry’s face twisted into a frown and his lips turned pale as he clenched his teeth together.

‘I do not expect to be addressed like that in front of my staff,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could remember that in future. Now, what did he say please?’

Pauline was almost white with anger but she took a deep breath as she controlled her temper.

‘It would appear to be non-contagious if Alex has viral meningitis,’ she said. ‘However, if it is bacterial then there is a high risk of infection and we should all watch out for the warning signs.’ Her voice was steady but her clipped tones would have been clear warning for any man more perceptive than Garry.

‘Well that’s not much help,’ he said, ploughing on
heedlessly
. ‘Do we know what sort it is?’ He stared at Pauline as if she was concealing this information and she felt a rush of fury at the way he was behaving. Years of patience, restraint and diplomacy trembled and began to crumble, leaving only the desire to say exactly what she thought of him, in front of
his staff
and hopefully so loud anyone still outside in the car park heard her too.

‘Perhaps I can help here,’ said the ever-tactful and always reliable Gordon softly. ‘We didn’t know the questions to ask until now, did we Garry?’

He continued, reminding them all that Garry had made the call to the medical officer in the first place. ‘So now I can have a word with Sue and see if she knows. In the meantime perhaps we should all return to our offices and erm, await our fate, so to speak.’

For a moment it looked as though their senior was going to ignore this way out of the confrontation but then he nodded and said, ‘Yes, you should all go and wait until we have some more information. In the meantime the building will remain closed as a precaution.’ He spun around and was gone before anyone could respond, leaving Pauline fuming – but still employed.

Sue spent a frustrating half hour on the telephone trying to speak to the doctor who had attended that morning. The call had gone to a central switchboard, she was informed, and taken by the ‘duty professional’ next in line. They could
probably locate him but, really, they were very busy and it would take a while, so perhaps she would prefer to speak to her own surgery?

‘Bloody HELL!’ she yelled, slamming down the receiver. ‘Of all the pompous, patronizing, self-opinionated, unhelpful bitches …’ There was a groan from upstairs and she hurried to her friend’s side. Alex was lying on her back, the bed covers in disarray.

‘Say what you think,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t hold back.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. How are you
feeling
?’ Sue fussed around the room, checking the curtains were closed to keep out the light and trying to straighten the bed.

Alex opened her eyes and flapped a hand at her. ‘How the hell do you think I’m feeling? I feel like someone’s come in and mugged me in the night and left me with hot nails in my eyes.’ She licked her dry lips and added, ‘Can I have
something
to drink? I’m so hot – look, leave the covers please. I just need some water.’

Sue laid her hand on Alex’s forehead. She certainly felt as if she was running a temperature.

On the way back from the kitchen with a glass, Sue seized the forehead thermometer off the table. Alex had propped herself up in bed and grabbed the glass, sucking greedily and emptying it in a few seconds.

‘More,’ she said, holding it out with an unsteady hand.

‘When I’ve done this,’ said Sue, trying to get the plastic strip to lie flat on Alex’s head. Alex flinched and turned away, dropping the glass as she burrowed into the pillow. At that moment the phone rang downstairs and Sue hurried to answer it muttering angrily to herself.

‘Yes?’ she snapped as she snatched the receiver from the holder.

‘Sorry, have I caught you at a bad time?’ asked Gordon.

Sue sighed and felt herself slump as she dropped into a chair by the front window.

‘To be perfectly honest, Gordon, this whole day is turning into one of the worst I’ve had for a long while.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve got some questions from “he who wants to be obeyed”,’ said Gordon.

‘I don’t expect I’ll be much help,’ said Sue. ‘I can’t even get hold of the doctor we saw this morning. Alex looks awful and seems to be developing a real fever and I can’t leave her to get whatever I’m supposed to get with an illegible prescription!’

There was a pause as Gordon digested this information.

‘Do we know if it’s viral or bacterial?’ he asked finally.

‘Oh bloody hell, how am I supposed to know?’ Sue snapped. ‘I found a medical encyclopaedia in Alex’s room with these flow chart things in it, but it keeps telling me to seek urgent medical attention – which I am trying to do, but with remarkably little success may I add.”

There was another pause and Sue could almost hear Gordon nodding as he considered this.

‘Your best option is probably to get her own surgery to call round and check on her,’ he said. ‘I’d write out the questions you need answering and you can get them to decipher the prescription too. Between you and me I’d spice it up a bit – not too much so they whisk her into hospital but say she’s beginning to really suffer with the headache and is shaking a bit – something like that. They should come round straight away and hopefully we can sort out how to help you both. At the moment I’m stuck in here like the Prisoner of Zenda whilst Garry does his best to alienate the entire office.’

Sue took a deep breath to steady herself and thanked him before ringing off and trying their local surgery. She didn’t like playing dumb but it seemed to get results, especially when dealing with the more arrogant members of the medical profession, and another doctor was at the door within the hour.

At her desk in the probation office Lauren slammed the phone down in disgust and was treated to a warning frown from Pauline.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just Dave’s cancelled this afternoon. There’s been some incident he says so he’s got to work.’ She
clambered down from her special chair and headed for the tea room at the back of the main office. ‘I was looking forward to that too. Anyone want a cup?’

Pauline held up a hand and gestured Lauren back to her desk.

‘Enough everyone,’ she said. ‘Just because we’ve no clients in today doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do. We can all use a day catching up, so come on, get on with it please.’ She turned back to the front door as there was a knocking followed by rattling of the handle. Sighing in frustration she crossed the lobby and peered through the narrow reinforced window.

‘Go home,’ she mouthed at a young man with thinning gingery hair who was staring back at her. The unfamiliar figure knocked again, more urgently this time, and twisted at the handle again. ‘I said GO HOME!’

‘I was told to report here today,’ came a plaintive voice through the heavy door. ‘I’m supposed to start at 9.30.’

‘I don’t care. Come back tomorrow and we’ll log you in. Now go away and stop bothering us.’ Pauline turned her back on the pleading face and marched into the office, the inner door slamming behind her.

‘Never known anyone be so eager to meet their probation officer,’ said the irrepressible Lauren.

Pauline snorted. ‘Well, keep an eye on him will you? I don’t like the look of him much. There’s something a bit odd and we don’t know who the hell he is. Just our luck, a new client today. It’s not a good start and it looks so unprofessional.’

At these words the office transformed into a picture of industry. Heads down and fingers flying over their
typewriters
, the women focussed on the case notes and reports before them. Pauline was generally a good supervisor, strict but fair, but the one thing she hated was anything she deemed ‘unprofessional’. Lauren risked a glance out of the window, her large brown eyes following the forlorn figure as it shuffled across to an exceptionally large and beat-up car parked in the corner of the staff car park.

‘Well, the first thing we do tomorrow is put him straight about
that
,’ came Pauline’s voice from behind her. The figure opened the driver’s door and slumped into the front seat. After consulting his watch he reached under the dashboard, pulled out a tin and proceeded to roll a very thin cigarette.

Pauline huffed impatiently. ‘So now he’s going to sit there and we can’t even go out and tell him to move. This is ridiculous.’ She glanced down and added, ‘Well, we’re stuck here so you might as well get on with your work Lauren.’

Reluctantly, Lauren clambered back on to her chair and began to thumb through the files beside her. It had started out as a half-day filled with promise but was going downhill rapidly.

Out on the Somerset Levels PC Dave Brown was too busy to regret his ruined birthday plans. A fast-track graduate, he had ploughed through his first two years as a beat officer as efficiently as he could. Older PCs with more years behind them had started off treating him with wariness. After all, how many supposed high fliers chose the Somerset force to launch their glittering careers, they joked. PC Brown just nodded and smiled and kept on doing the best job he could. He volunteered for the unpleasant shifts and dirty jobs just enough to be noticed, but not so often his colleagues would accuse him of sucking up to the seniors, and slowly his determined and intelligent approach earned him a measure of respect amongst his peers. His breakthrough had come just six weeks ago with the kidnapping of Lauren by Derek Johns, a dangerous and violent gang leader bent on avenging the suicide of his youngest son whilst in police custody.

It was Dave Brown who had correctly identified the murder weapon from a tiny clue at one of crime scenes and he who had put together a whole slew of different events to track down the killer. He had arrived at the cottage where Johns was hiding out in time to help Lauren’s rescuers and had secured the scene, preserving the evidence that Derek Johns had been the victim of an accident and Lauren had
acted in self-defence. Lauren had been terrified she would be charged over Johns’ death and he had spent an increasing amount of his time off duty with her, offering reassurance and support as she came to terms with her ordeal.

Now, for the first time, he found himself at ease in the sometimes strange and insular world of Highpoint and the Levels, partly due to the growing acceptance of his peers and partly as a consequence of his new-found friendship with Lauren. Pausing for a moment he felt a flash of
disappointment
at letting her down, but a shout from the canal bank focussed his attention once more.

‘Something over here Sarge,’ called one of the search team.

The sergeant looked up and waved in acknowledgement before turning back to the rest of the men.

‘Right, keep at it you lot. I want every inch of this area combed and marked off on the map. Don’t touch anything now, just call me. You!’ He beckoned Dave over. ‘Come on, Constable. You’re supposed to be good at this sort of thing. You’re with me.’

Dave stood up gratefully easing his aching back as he stretched and hurried in the direction of the find. Behind him a couple of uniformed PCs exchanged glances before bending to their task once more.

‘What have you got?’ the sergeant demanded. An
unfamiliar
PC from the Taunton station was crouched beside the path running the length of the drainage ditch. In front of him was an old, battered leather wallet, its contents roughly stuffed into the main pocket. ‘Any name or address? Don’t touch it man!’

The PC jerked his hand back as the sergeant bent over and opened the wallet gingerly, using a stick. A bank note fluttered out and danced along the path in the freshening breeze. Dave was off after it as fast as he could go, feeling in his pocket for a clean handkerchief as he ran. The note lifted in the wind, turned over and wafted out over the water just as he grabbed one corner. Holding it away from his body he carried his prize back to the sergeant and together they eased
it in to a clear plastic bag. Nodding his approval the sergeant held up the note, now sealed away from any more outside contamination, and whistled softly.