Pulse(16)

‘Can’t you get a taxi?’

‘Grant, don’t be ridiculous. I’m quite capable of driving.’

I held my hand out for the keys and, reluctantly, he handed them over.

‘Please, be careful,’ he said. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

As if I would.

I don’t think Jeremy Cook was pleased to hear from me when I called him at eleven. After all, it had been he who had spilled the beans to the Medical Director that I’d been hiding in the linen cupboard.

‘Ah, hello, Chris,’ he said when I called him, the embarrassment thick in his voice. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Fine, thank you, Jeremy.’

‘How can I help?’ he asked.

Help? I thought. That’s a laugh. He’d hardly been much help so far.

‘I need some information for the police,’ I said.

‘The police?’

‘Yes, a policeman came to my home on Monday and asked me to get him the blood-test results and a copy of the medical file for the man who died in the department on Saturday evening. Do you remember?’

‘Yes,’ Jeremy replied. ‘The man with no name.’

‘Exactly. Normally I would come in and get the results myself but, as you must know, I have been barred from entering the hospital.’

That did nothing to lower the level of Jeremy’s awkwardness.

‘Why don’t the police go direct to the hospital admin?’ he asked.

‘I have no idea,’ I said. ‘But they’ve asked me to get them instead. You’re on ten till six today, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Make copies and I’ll collect them from you in an hour. I can’t come in so bring them out to me.’ I wasn’t giving him a chance to refuse. ‘I’ll be outside the main entrance in a light-blue Mini.’

‘OK,’ he said unsurely. ‘If I’m not too busy.’

‘If you are, send somebody else out. I’ve told the police that I’ll get everything to them by half past twelve today.’

‘OK,’ he said again. ‘In an hour, you say?’

‘Yes. Can you make the copies straight away?’ I asked.

‘I suppose so,’ he replied.

‘Good. See you in a bit.’

I hung up before he had a chance to change his mind.

It wasn’t only the police who wanted to see those blood results. I was pretty interested in them too.

Jeremy Cook appeared right on cue dressed, as always, in consultant’s purple scrubs. He looked around, saw me, and rushed over and thrust a buff folder through the open car window.

‘Must dash,’ he said. ‘There’s a suspected myocardial infarction arriving in two minutes.’

He hurried back inside without another word – and no awkward questions. Never before have I been pleased that someone was having a heart attack. As I drove out onto College Road an ambulance came the other way, lights flashing and siren blaring. Jeremy Cook was welcome to it.

I parked in a side street in Montpelier near the Queens Hotel and picked up the folder. My hands were shaking.

Jeremy had been busy. The folder contained not just the blood-test results and the medical file for the time when the man was alive, but also the preliminary report of the post-mortem examination of his body.

I had told Jeremy I’d promised to get everything to the police by twelve-thirty but that had been just a little white lie to encourage him to make the copies. I had all the time I needed to study them.

It was the blood results I was most interested in.

I stared at the paper with my heart racing and there it was in black and white.

Cocaine.

The blood-plasma concentration was 0.7 milligrams of cocaine per litre. Normally a minimum reading of at least 1.4 was required to be considered a lethal dose but, assuming the man had been several hours in the lavatory cubicle before being found, the initial dose would have been much higher. Cocaine has a blood metabolic half-life of about ninety minutes. So, in a three-hour period, the level would have dropped to only one quarter of the original. In four and a half hours it would only be one eighth.

However, it was the level of benzoylecgonine, or BZG, in the blood that was the real clincher. BZG is the primary metabolite of cocaine and it has a much greater half-life, remaining in the system long after the drug itself has ceased to be detectable. It is BZG excreted in urine that is used by the police or employers to give a positive test for cocaine. Scientists even monitor the concentration of BZG in the River Thames as a means of estimating the amount of cocaine consumed by the population of London.

In this particular case, the BZG in the man’s blood was over 8 milligrams per litre, indicating an initial cocaine dose several times greater than that required to kill him.

The junior doctor had been right: there was nothing we could have done to save him. The only surprising thing was that, given the levels, he had been still alive when he’d arrived at the hospital.

So I hadn’t killed him. Giving the adenosine had made no difference to the outcome.

I suppose I should have been elated but, in truth, I just felt empty.

I looked up from the papers and watched as a young mother walked along the pavement with a tiny newborn strapped to her chest. It gave me an enormous pang of regret. Our baby would have been a few months old by now – if only I had managed to get pregnant.