The End of the Line E-Book

Gillian Galbraith

• Herausgeber: Polygon
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 313

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

After the death of leading haematologist Professor Anstruther, antiquarian book dealer Anthony Sparrow is tasked with clearing out his mansion of its books and papers. He soon begins to question the real circumstances of the old man's death: was he in fact murdered, and if so, who was responsible? The answer might be found in the personal diaries and letters which Sparrow unearths. But as he closes in on the answer, the perspective suddenly shifts and everything which he was sure about dissolves into darkness and shadows.

Leseprobe

THE END OF THE LINE

Gillian Galbraith grew up near Haddington in Scotland. For seventeen years she was an advocate specialising in medical negligence and agricultural law cases. Before qualifying she worked for a time as an agony aunt in teenagers’ magazines. Since then she has been the legal correspondent for the Scottish Farmer and has written on legal matters for The Times. Her debut novel, Blood on the Water, the first in her Alice Rice mystery series, was published in 2007 followed by five more: Where the Shadow Falls, The Dying of the Light, No Sorrow to Die, The Road to Hell and Troubled Waters. The Good Priest, a Father Vincent Ross novel was published in 2014.

She lives deep in the country near Kinross with her husband and daughter plus assorted cats, dogs, hens and bees.

This edition published in Great Britain in 2019 byPolygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh EH9 1QS

www.polygonbooks.co.uk

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978 1 78885 191 6

Copyright © Gillian Galbraith, 2019

The right of Gillian Galbraith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

Typeset by Polygon, Edinburgh

Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Douglas Edington

Lesmoir Edington

Robert Galbraith

Daisy Galbraith

Diana Griffiths

Dr David Sadler

Dr Harry Andrews

Tom Johnstone

Dr Mignon Ling

In memory of my fatherCaptain John Roderick Ross Edington

FIRST NARRATIVEby ANTHONY SPARROW

Although I am a bookworm, I am also a burying beetle. I named my burgeoning undertakers’ business in Fife (long since run by my minions) ‘Sextons’, after one. It’s a little joke of mine, understood by few and, in all probability, appreciated only by myself. The sexton beetle (genus: Nicrophorus, previously the much more descriptive Necrophorus) is a type of carrion beetle, a burying beetle. But I go one better than my six-legged colleagues, disposing not only of the corpse, but also of his effects. ‘Synergy’, I believe it is called, in business circles. I ‘clear’ the houses of the dead. The Quality dead.

Actually, with infinite care, I sift and sieve my way through their abandoned possessions, sorting the gold from the dross. For all I know, in the grander establishments, London dealers may have already had their pick (Garwoods, for example), but, even so, I doubt any of their paid experts venture far beyond the capital.

Suffice it to say that I have in the course of my clearances acquired many splendid volumes, including a first edition of Defoe’s Moll Flanders, admittedly in French and, mirabile dictu, a 1681 copy of Marvell’s miscellaneous poems. As a physician manqué (an exam crib, carelessly secreted in an Argyll sock, ended all my hopes and aspirations in that direction), my speciality is rare medical books, my prize being Mauriceau’s Des Malades des Femmes Grosses et Accouchées (3rd edition, 1681), all too lavishly illustrated. I will leave them all to my godchild, who, fortunately, has a strong stomach.

Less than six months ago, on the executor’s instructions, I cleared a white-harled former manse in Duddingston village, Edinburgh. A gentleman’s residence of substantial size, huddled in the shelter of Arthur Seat and overlooking the loch. Its owner, a bachelor like myself, had been killed; by a woman, the nearby newsagent told me, flashing an unattractive lopsided smile. ‘Shopped here, he had an account . . .’ the fellow added proudly. I nodded, eager to depart his strange-smelling little emporium.

‘A local woman . . .’

‘You don’t say,’ I lisped, raising an eyebrow and pushing an unruly edge of my paisley cravat under a lapel.

The dead man’s name was Professor Sir Alexander Anstruther, a retired haematologist, and the newspapers were packed with the details, although I was not privy to them at the time.

As you may imagine, when fingering other people’s possessions, perusing their bookcases, emptying their tallboys and manhandling their linen, a picture of the deceased invariably begins to emerge. That picture can only acquire further detail as one moves throughout their abode.

I characterise my clearing, loosely, as a type of sacrilege. All things once private, secret, hidden for a reason are suddenly revealed to me. Once or twice my finds have made me queasy (a pillow stuffed with grey, human hair), often uneasy; invariably there is something that surprises or shocks me. Commercial considerations aside, whatever I find I do not blab about it, recognising that the dead are vulnerable. The church organist tying a pale-blue bow carefully around her raunchy love letters does not expect the ribbon to be loosened by my rapacious fingers. But, I have taken no vow and there are exceptions. This Manuscript is one of them.

Anstruther’s Georgian manse was large and, unfortunately for me as I had to expend my vital energies in it, as cold as the grave. Entering the icy hallway by torchlight on my first visit, I inadvertently brushed against an array of swords, naval and military, which hung from the wall, jangling them together and my nerves with them. As I tried to still the blades, I saw, framed beside them, what looked to me like an old torn dishrag, hardly visible through the condensation on its glass. Luckily, the little ivory plate on the mount stated ‘Banner of Sir David Anstruther’. A family relic? The home of yet another ancestor-worshipper, I deduced, unsurprised.

You see, I do not need to advertise; work comes to me almost exclusively from the ‘plum-mouthed Mafia’ as I have, almost affectionately, christened them. A network of families stretching from Berwickshire to Caithness, all eschewing the local accent, invariably related to one another and quite capable of pouring out a mug of builder’s tea for me while sipping their own smoky Lapsang from transparent porcelain. In their turn, a cartel of Edinburgh WS firms drafts their wills, conveyances and trust deeds, when not otherwise engaged in fighting, like rats in a bag, to snatch custom from one another.

Fortunately, I am known to be ‘reliable’, ‘trustworthy’ and, so importantly, ‘cheap’ by all the denizens of the bag.

Unable to locate the power switch, I continued by torchlight. With its sole inhabitant dead, the rooms I wandered through, though still furnished, seemed to echo with my footsteps. The same old, faded chintzes that hung off the windows peeked out from below the sheets covering the battered, oversized armchairs and sofas. A masculine scent (peaty whisky mixed with mothballs?) hung in the still, stale air. It was a man’s house with not a cushion or valance in sight. And, I later discovered, this particular man cut his meat with a yellowing bone-handled knife, sported University silk ties and used, on a daily basis, a badger-hair shaving brush. When he entertained, depictions in oil of Sir Hamish Anstruther and his wife, by Watson Gordon and Partridge respectively, looked down on the guests in his dining room as they chased their stilton crumbs around their plates.

It did not take me long to realise that nothing in the place was new, comfortable or luxurious.

The extreme austerity of Anstruther’s lifestyle reached its zenith in his upstairs bathroom, a room larger than my bedroom. A cast-iron bath, with a loofah on the rack, stood opposite a mahogany-seated lavatory. The place had no heating of any sort, no shower, and grey linoleum, part perished, covered the floor. A bar of pink carbolic sat in its saucer on top of the cistern, one corner criss-crossed with tiny murine tooth-marks.

Despite seeing that ice had formed in the pan, I had to plump myself down on the mahogany tout suite (IBS, if you must know); and imagine my horror when flitting the torchbeam about idly, I came upon a roll of hard Izal lavatory paper! The men who used that stuff might have turned the globe pink and kept it pink, but, personally, I believe their loyalty was misplaced. Who sells it nowadays? My allegiance has always been to the Andrex puppy.

A tour of the kitchen only reinforced my baleful impression of personal asceticism. A flagged floor, wooden Edwardian cupboards instead of units, and pans made, if you can believe it, of aluminium! Putting my hand into one of the cupboards blindly, I shrieked out loud as my fingers brushed against a mouse’s skeleton in a trap. Under my touch, its translucent bones crumbled to dust. Leaning against a damp wall, and breathing deeply in and out to calm myself, I peered into the pantry; stone shelves, newspaper-covered, empty and musty. The place was lit by a single light bulb with no lampshade.

Beside the kitchen, a small study had been converted into a bedroom, presumably for use by the old fellow once he could no longer manage the steep staircase. The mean-proportioned hospital bed within looked fit for a child rather than an adult. It struck me then that only a monk, in an ostentatiously self-chastising order, could have felt at home in such an ill-lit, unadorned, poky little hole. Frankly, the presence of a hair-shirt tucked under the mattress, or perhaps a whip for self-flagellation would not have made me as much as blink. Perhaps, this minuscule fellow was some sort of penitent? Or was he simply asset-rich but income-poor like so many of my late clients? Or just plain odd?

The next door along the arctic corridor opened into his library, the largest room in the house. Mon magnifique prix. Every time I entered it, even in the sub-zero temperatures usually prevailing, the scent of decaying calf’s skin, linen and paper within it made me almost dizzy with desire. Shelf after shelf of leatherbound beauties. Book plates decorated the front pastedowns of virtually all the volumes in it, some marking Anstruther’s acquisition, some proclaiming them the property of his forebears. All depicted the Anstruther crest (a single armoured arm holding aloft a flail), the fading of the ink alone revealing which generation had added it to the collection. On one red-letter day, I unearthed, between a mound of university yearbooks and another heap of well-fingered haematological periodicals, an 1876 Culpeper’s Complete Herbal (full Morocco, minor foxing), a very valuable tome. With no one to witness me, I inhaled deeply.

Despite such a library, I made hardly a pound on the Anstruther job. Why was this, you might well inquire? Vulgar curiosity, in truth, plus the fact that the man had been what I once yearned to be: a physician. And not just any old quack, but a real and unusually eminent one. My subsequent researches revealed that he had been the kingpin, so to speak, in charge of, monitoring and treating all the haemophiliacs in Edinburgh and the Lothians. So, once I had catalogued his collection, I spent far too long reading his work papers, poring over them, fantasising, and they were as plentiful as the stars above. Everywhere in the house, cupboards overflowed with them, drawers had become immoveable with them and carrier bags bulged, or burst, with them. It was as if there had been an explosion in a paper factory. In amongst some of the sheets of paper were what looked, on first viewing, like thousands of little yellow butterflies. Actually, Post-it notes, each with a scrawl in black ink on it.

By the back door lay a couple of clear polythene bags with blue and white police labels attached to them, returned effects following the trial, I assumed. Glorying in my privilege, I made free with them too. In one of them, I found an intriguing book.

Those of you who think my job dull, lack imagination. In saying that, I hope I do not sound embittered but, all too often, I have seen the eyes of some middle manager in life insurance, pet food or the construction industry glaze over at a drinks party or dinner as they discover my ‘trade’. I may not ‘touch base offline’, ‘punch puppies’ or ‘action’ anything very much but, think – leather handcuffs concealed in the late Countess’s Regency commode? A set of crumbling milk teeth in a matchbox or a collection of mantraps in a cellar? Our effects really do give us away, and the dead are so much less aggressive than the living; accessible, non-judgemental and, invariably, undemanding.

Everything about this man intrigued me, and he was a fellow bibliophile. More importantly, he had been murdered. A trick cyclist would, if they got their hands on me again, peer over their half-moon glasses and murmur ‘Obsession!’ But, so what, I would parry. The evenings are long; I am not a knitter, have no interest in macramé or bowls or curling (God forbid). So, time well spent, I say.

As I sifted and sieved my way through the contents of the manse, I made a most exciting find; the dead man’s journal. Once opened, I consumed it, and was, in turn, consumed by it. And, as I turned its pages (together with its copious insertions), an all too vivid impression of the fellow’s last days began to emerge. His personality shone through; I got to know him, intimately, in his fragile state, beset by unbearable pressures. Plainly, by the time he wrote it he was well into his dotage, but, reading his words, I felt the growing menace haunting him, the dread that, day after day, was darkening his shuttered little world. Closing the journal, I felt compelled to find out more about him, about his end.

I did not have to imagine the man himself. On his sun-faded walnut writing desk, in the second, larger of the two studies, lay a slightly curled photograph of him taken outside the Palace. Apparently unaccompanied, he was exhibiting his KBE decoration for the photographer. A small, dark-haired man with large, deep-set eyes, sloping shoulders and disproportionately big hands and feet. Interestingly, his feet were flat, like mine, set at exactly ten to two. Yet another thing we had in common.

Other surfaces, including the soot-stained mantelpieces in the drawing room, dining room and upstairs bedroom all had framed photos on them, mostly black and white, but I did not find out who any of the individuals were. Family photos, I would guess. One, I now suspect, may have been of his younger sister, Isabel. A pretty girl.

Later in the clearing process, a particular letter I found by chance, stopped me in my tracks and gave me an unexpected entrée to one of the main protagonists in this melodrama. So, my curiosity knowing no bounds, I decided to use the opportunity that had been presented and follow up the dead man’s story for myself; engage in a little research, a little gentle digging. I freely admit it, I enjoy burrowing. And as I burrowed deeper and deeper, the edges of something new and unexpected began to appear. In fact, my antennae began to vibrate uncontrollably. From then onwards, everything else in my life paled, seemed insignificant, wan, no more than a distraction.

The documents that I reproduce for you below are ordered precisely as the old man’s story unravelled itself to me. The astute amongst you will notice that in including some of them, I have betrayed a trust. I make no apology. ‘Dead Men Tell No Tales’ as they used to say in the Westerns of my youth. Someone has to do it for them.

In undertaking this exercise, I have found myself in the unaccustomed role of editor. Prior to this publication, my professional writing and editing experience has been limited to the pages of Rare Books catalogues; factual, focussed works involving an impoverished vocabulary, copious punctuation and too many parenthetical sentences. Consequently, I feel singularly ill-equipped for the role I have thrust upon myself. However, my interventions have been slight, amounting to little more than the sprinkling of a few commas and full-stops and, for clarity’s sake, the adoption of a more conventional use of the paragraph.

By now, you may be wondering where, precisely, I found the Professor’s journal. It was secreted in the concealed drawer of a small George III cabinet by his bed. As an ancient, red cough jujube had deliquesced over it and the base of the drawer containing it, I know the police cannot have had access to it. The text of the journal was in his handwriting, the insertions were in the form of printed material that had been stapled to the lined pages. I reproduce them all below in typed form. Like our dear departed, I am an old technophobe, but in the 1980s I did forsake my Parker for a spanking new electric Olivetti.

Anthony Sparrow

JOURNAL of PROFESSORALEXANDER ANSTRUTHER

14th February 2014

Henceforward, you must be my memory.

The one that once served me so well is, in my ninetieth year, beginning to forsake me. Dysfunctional, no longer retaining my shopping list, though, gratifyingly, holding onto the more risqué of my old med school mnemonics including ‘Two Zulus Buggered My Cat’ (the branches of the facial nerve). That reminds me, I must get my Rubenesque carer, Irma, to buy:

– Strawberry Jam and Peanut butter

– Electric razor

– Green bananas

– Tena pants

– Polo mints

– 2 light bulbs

I have begun this aide memoire because a date for the Goodhart Inquiry into the ‘Tainted Blood’ scandal, as the press will insist on calling it in their banner headlines, has, finally, been fixed (18th April 2014). Who is this Lord Goodhart? Self-righteous editorials assure me that their readers ‘demand’ to know how the public blood supply became contaminated by the HIV/AIDS virus. Do they, indeed? Judging by the Inquiry’s remit, the victim groups including, doubtless, my torturers, the ‘BAD BLOOD BRIGADE’ must have been dancing in the street. The Terms of Reference are vast, quite vast, stretching back into the mists of history.

I have not yet been summoned but, sure as eggs is eggs, I will be. There can be no show without Punch. Fear, and prudence, dictate that I MUST consult with the three other Profs and Ken Peat. Gavin Threadneedle too, if he’s still with us. All of us who treated those poor haemophiliacs who died from AIDS will find ourselves revolving on the same spit. I must also look out my records, my files from the Royal Hospital etc. from 1970 onwards; enumerate, tabulate, catalogue and re-file in chronological order.

My life will not be my own.

It does not really matter but, nonetheless, I feel I must record that today, my sweet dog died. For over a year, neither she, nor I, have been able to go for walks, but I loved whispering into her soft, silky ears and felt I had someone who listened to me, understood me. Loved me, actually. I will have no more dogs. You, journal, will be my sole confidante. I will talk to you and, like Lucky, you will not answer back. Yet again, Darling Irma forgot to water my plants.

BP 152/90

16th February 2014

Today I saw the first of the Profs, Jimmy Ward. Or, more accurately, the bits of him that are left. I greeted him cheerily, saying, ‘You look like death warmed up, old man!’. He stared at me, equally aghast, his marked arcus senilis having made his brown eyes blue (as the lovely Crystal Gayle used to sing), and then led me inside the furniture storeroom that passes for his home. To think for the entire twenty-five years that I was Prof of Haematology Medicine in Edinburgh he remained in charge in Glasgow, despite his notoriously short fuse. Margery was slumped, slack-jawed, in an armchair, apparently asleep, so we went to his ‘den’. Notwithstanding their antiquated central heating system, it was fearfully hot, but he insisted that the blow heater should remain on. We discussed the following:

1. The problem of large blood donor pools

2. Blood donor selection in the ’80s

3. Haemophilia therapy in the ’80s

4. The history of HIV/AIDS in our areas

5. The problem that is Dr Kenneth Peat

I have undertaken to go through my entire archive and find all papers within my possession relevant to topics 1–4. Jimmy is to do the same. He and I agreed that our Achilles heel will probably be Ken. His manners remain impeccable but, when in doubt, he takes the easy course and agrees to anything and everything. Maybe he is, indeed, ‘none the wiser’ as he constantly asserts? Under aggressive cross-examination he might, to use non-technical parlance, throw us all to the wolves. Jimmy looked fearful simply at the mention of his name. Then, sucking in his teeth, he said, ‘And there’s Lottie, too’.

‘Nurse Taylor? What’s the problem?’

‘She’s petrified. Since those bastards in Infectious Diseases poached her in 1981, she’s forgotten everything. Could you do an aide memoire for her? The shortest of short. Say, condition, treatment and emergence of AIDS risk?’

‘Why me?’

‘My scribe,’ he jerked his head back in Margery’s direction, ‘has gone on strike. Nothing fancy, just the basics, eh? Remember, warmth was always Dottie Lottie’s strong point, she was full-bodied but not very full-brained.’

Then he winked. Actually, I now think it was a tic, as he did it twice when pontificating about the Protein Fractionation Centre. Soon, the oppressive heat of the den began to get the better of me; yawning and excessive blinking was turning to sleep. Luckily, the bolshie scribe then teetered in with mugs of tepid black coffee rattling on a tray for us, and all but went arse over tit on the way out of the room, catching her foot on a distinctly mothy kilim.

[sheet stapled to diary]

COPY –

Haemophilia A is a bleeding disorder. The sufferer’s blood is deficient in a protein (known as Factor VIII) necessary for the normal clotting process. Without sufficient Factor VIII prolonged bleeding may occur; serious consequences, including death, may follow from internal bleeding into the brain or gut.

Up until the 50s treatment was bed-rest or, sometimes, transfusion with blood or plasma. By the ’50s plasma could be separated into its component parts and by the 60s treatment with cryoprecipitate began. Cryoprecipitate was the solid residue left when frozen plasma was thawed. It had been found to contain high levels of Factor VIII. Combining the cryoprecipitate from between 10 to 15 plasma donations provided sufficient Factor VIII to stop haemorrhages. However, it had to be administered in hospital.

The next advance in treatment was through the use of Factor VIII concentrates. They were being commercially produced in the USA and the UK by the 70s. Concentrates had many advantages over cryoprecipitate and the lives of haemophiliacs treated with them became much easier and their life expectancy almost normal.

The concentrates were made from pooled blood donations. A single batch, manufactured in Scotland by the NHS, might require the pooling of 3–4,000 donations. Batches in the USA could be made from ten times as many donations. Concentrates, made from large pools of donated blood, were known to carry a risk of transmitting blood-borne viruses such as hepatitis. The larger the pool, the larger the risk.

In 1981 reports from America of homosexual men suffering from either a rare form of pneumonia or a rare type of cancer (Kaposi’s sarcoma) and, in both cases, impaired immune function, were being published in the medical press. Both the cancer and the form of pneumonia were opportunistic infections, i.e. infections taking advantage of a weakened immune system. By the end of the year a homosexual man (a known traveller to the USA) in the UK was discovered to have developed the same syndrome, as had an intravenous (IV) drug user in the USA. By mid-1982 three haemophiliacs in the USA were found to have the same rare form of pneumonia. By the end of 1982 there was a report of what appeared to be a case of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) in a 20-monthold child in San Francisco. The child had received multiple blood transfusions.

That evening, I began to reacquaint myself with the precise chronology of the earliest haemophilia treatments, but little went in and within less than an hour I was too exhausted to read further. After a couple of whiskies, I took my courage in my two hands and phoned Ken. Having discussed his snowdrop collection and, in code, the miseries resulting from prostate treatment, I moved on to our knowledge of the problem of cross-contamination with the AIDS virus of the donation pools. One bag with the virus infecting the whole bally lot. ‘Tainted Blood’, in short. Just to see what he might say, I also asked him about the regime in Aberdeen. Perhaps not unexpectedly, if my provisional diagnosis of Lewy body dementia is correct, he can recall almost nothing of any significance about it, despite the fact that it was his own show. HE was the man in charge. But he said, with no apparent recollection of the fate of Hitler’s underlings, that he simply ‘obeyed orders’. Rather pathetically, he appears to imagine that this will save him, repeating it ad nauseam to me. As if that was not bad enough he was prepared to assent to all sorts of gibberish I punted. Testing again, I observed how fortunate it was in Scotland that we did not require to give our patients the American stuff. ‘Oh, I did,’ he replied, airily, apparently blithely unaware of the significance of what he was saying, ‘I used it all the time. Our NHS stuff was cheaper, of course, but I used it as and when.’

Poppycock, utter poppycock! Thank God, those sorts of questions will be fired at the Scottish Blood Transfusion Service people, the suppliers and makers of the stuff, and not the likes of us. Their records will tell the truth. Nonetheless, the man is a danger to himself and others. He still sounds normal but he is not normal.

When we were Senior House Officers together, Ken was a beautiful Lothario, seducing every nurse in the Home. They christened him Dr ‘Hot Lips’. The last time I looked at him, I shuddered. In his features I recognised my own: tiny, lifeless eyes, bird’s beak and bones with parchment stretched across them. Together, we’d look like some anthropologist’s collection of shrunken heads. Dr ‘No Lips’ nowadays.

When I challenged Darling Irma with her failure to water my plants, she said I had not asked her to do so. She also told me, with unexpected vehemence, that it was me who had put the butter in the breadbin! My riposte was that I had found my Gentleman’s Relish in the oven. Smiling, knowing it disarms me, she tried, as she habitually does, to engage me in conversation using a previously successful lure, memories of the late lamented Lucky. I did not take the bait, firstly, because tears come to my eyes at the thought of my old chum and, secondly, because chatter-time is then substituted for work-time, and, as she leaves, I discover that my pills have not been laid out or my bed cover turned over.

These free council helper ladies are all very well but I think I shall advertise for a private helper. If I ask Darling Irma to as much as iron my shirt she declines, charmingly, on the grounds that she is a ‘Carer’ not a daily help. A butcher would have less meaty forearms. Rough Andrea, who comes at night to get me supper and help me undress, parrots the same nonsense. I will advertise in the Scotsman for a factotum. I cannot face the Inquiry on my own, I have over three hundred files, the contents of which need to be examined, précised, filleted, put back into chronological order, catalogued and re-filed. I can hardly open the study door, as two have already splurged their innards onto the floor. I do dislike using a biro but have no choice as Rough Andrea has mislaid my fountain pen.

BP 155/91

20th February 2014

Today I held a beauty contest. Actually, the one who reminded me of the young Kay Kendall did not win because she has no ‘O’ levels, or whatever they are now called. My factotum-to-be is a spinster lady, probably a little over one third of my own great age and her name is Jean Whitadder. She is rosy-cheeked, reads the Mail and does not want a full-time job because she plans to write, is doing a ‘Creative Writing’ course. An ex-librarian to boot. Maybe she will be able to help me on the computer? ‘Of course,’ she says, she is ‘a digital native’. Was I ever an analogue native, I muse? Her first task was to revive the plants and, to my delight, she deliberately watered-off the white fly. My scarlet begonia is spotless. I now have a trio of helpers.

After she left I realised who she reminded me of. Eurovision’s Dana, of ‘All kinds of Everything’ fame. Same heavily lashed eyes, Irish colouring and petite build. Taller than me now, but not when I was in my prime.

My house is like a fridge.

I am no longer sleeping well. As I try to drop off, I begin to rehearse how I will respond to questions from some imaginary, but oh so fierce, QC. After a couple of minutes of self-cross-examination, my striped pyjamas are wringing with sweat and my BP sky-rockets. One question always floors me. Not because I do not know the answer, but because the answer is so complex, requires sophisticated consideration and a clear head. The QC, towering over me with his black gown flapping, resembling a giant crow, says:

‘So, Professor Anstruther, on what date did you become aware that the Factor VIII you were prescribing to your haemophiliac patients, made from pooled blood donations, might be contaminated by the AIDS virus?’

I quiver, literally quiver. Does my awareness start when I learn that some new illness in the USA is affecting that clutch of gays, drug addicts and haemophiliacs? Or does it come when I learn of the possibility of transmission here, thanks to Laker’s cheap transatlantic flights? With awareness that this disease might be blood-borne and, oh so crucially, a virus, capable of infecting others . . . everyone, wiping out the whole of mankind? With awareness that the citizens of Scotland are all encouraged to donate their blood, nuns and junkies alike? A gift acceptable from anyone. Or the above in some combination, or all together, perhaps?

Then I panic about the meaning of the word ‘might’. What does the probability of contamination have to be? Winning the lottery twice, being struck by lightning, a hole in one or being born with red hair?

The QC waits for me to reply, clicking his knuckles like Karenin, eyes never leaving mine. Once I was silver-tongued – well, maybe brass-tongued – articulate, confident. Language was my forte. I addressed symposiums in echoing halls and broke no sweat doing so. Now it refuses to come at my command, hides, proffers meaningless sounds that pass, until they trip off my tongue, as meaningful. Even made-up polysyllabic drug names, the bane of the profession, once held no fear for me. Now, I confuse lose and loose, forget my own telephone number.

I despair.

I must produce a little list for myself (and Ken?) to memorise on why Factor VIII was so much better, until the emergence of AIDS, than the treatment it replaced (cryoprecipitate), so life-changing for my patients.

CRYOPRECIPITATE

– Painful administration

– Could only be administered in hospital

– Long preparation time (1–2 hrs)

– Difficult to administer to children

– Unpleasant side-effects

– Used only once a bleed had begun

FACTOR VIII

– Fairly painless administration

– Home therapy

– No preparation time required

– Easy to administer to children

– Few side-effects

– Prophylactic use

I must devise a mnemonic for each one, the lewder the better as time has proved old Prof Devine right. Smut sticks.

Tonight, before the Inquiry has even begun, a couple of house bricks were thrown through my windows, presumably by one or more of the victims or their relatives? I heard some high-pitched shouting outside, then one flew past me, almost grazing my ear. I dropped my empty sherry glass on the drawing-room floor. Thoughtfully, to simulate blood, the bricks had been dipped in some kind of red dye. I forwent a bath and set Rough Andrea to scrub the carpet. Housework, undoubtedly, but she did not decline. My fawn Axminster now has two pink patches. The police lady on the phone, sounding like a Geordie, showed scant interest in the crime and someone MAY come to speak to me tomorrow. Is this the Bad Blood Brigade stepping up their campaign of harassment? Christ knows, their threatening letters make my blood run cold already. What will I say to the Police, if they do come? Nothing is simple. Every day I feel my strength waning, like snow under summer’s sun. I am far too old to fight back.

BP 158/91

23rd February 2014

Thanks to Jean and her computer ‘skills’ I can now ‘copy and paste’ onto a Word document. She has made me a card with instructions on it. As advised by her, we now have a printer machine too. I will staple everything I print from the Word into my journal. For, ‘In the beginning was the Word’!

Having opened another poison pen letter from my most regular ‘Bad Blood Brigade’ correspondent, I felt, I have to admit, ill with anxiety. My heart battered my ribs, and my vision began pulsating, in some extraordinary way, with each beat. I caught sight of myself in the hall mirror and did a double-take. A semi-bald, white-faced imp with Ribena-coloured lips seemed to be staring back at me.

In their customary fashion, they address me as ‘Murderer’. With the Inquiry looming into view, they are, I suspect, redoubling their efforts in an attempt to rattle me. It works. As I touched the envelope, my neck muscles went into spasm and my bowels turned to liquid (N.B. no Senokot tonight). Nauseous, I took myself off to bed and Jean did a number of useful filing tasks for me. All my correspondence with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (1970–1990) is now in chronological order and events, decisions, staff re-organisations etc, should appear more choate and comprehensible. She is a treasure. I will save her purely for ‘office’ work, Irma and Andrea can attend to the more menial tasks.

Jean complains about the cold. She has little on, a pelmet for a skirt. Perhaps I should turn the heating up on the days she comes? Sometimes I suspect that I become, like the tortoise in winter, a bit torpid myself.

I showed her a couple of extracts from my family pedigree book (Mackenzie of Lochail and Campbells of Inverdon). She scanned them into my printer. I’ve tried an experiment, myself, with another extract relating to my maternal great, great grandfather Bad Old Boswell, a rum cove, and should now be able to ‘copy and paste’ it. Let’s see.

OSSIAN BOSWELL (1811–1881)

9th of Merdiston and of Gruinbank

1811 Born on 22nd October

Educated at Eton and All Souls College, Oxford.

1833 About this year he bought the estate of Gruinbank in Ross-shire, from Mackenzie 6th of Gruinbank, a cadet of Mackenzie of Strathire.

This was an immense estate of some 88,000 acres and included a very fine deer forest and some superb salmon rivers. He seems to have spent much of his life at Gruinbank and there are many references to his eccentricities in a book called ‘Old Highland Characters’ by Adair, published by John Murray in 1919.

The following are some extracts:

On p. 112 Boswell is described as ‘An oddity, an ancient Sassenach who owned many thousands of acres, 45 or 50,000 of which included the best deer ground in Scotland . . . he was magnificently wealthy, by repute, but customarily dressed himself like an old Highland ‘puir bodie’ or beggar.’

When a stag shot by a neighbour on his own ground reached Gruinbank House on one occasion, Boswell is described as follows:

‘The old fellow came to the portal himself. He was clad all in ragged, faded tartan but sported an embroidered Moroccan fez on his head, the many gems on it glittering in the sunlight. Protruding from his muddy, red and white hose was an oversized sgian-dubh. Spying the stag, he ordered two of his servants to convey it to his kitchens and, as if by way of thanks for the gift, gave several cheers for himself and tossed the garron a carrot. He then departed to his own quarters, having bestowed no notice whatsoever upon the donor.’

On p. 132 it is described how ‘he attended an assembly in the area, drank unaided the entire contents of the punch bowl before demanding to dance with his host’s son, a bachelor of a mere nineteen, in a fashionable quadrille. The other guests remonstrated, but were unable to dissuade him from this course of action. Having completed the quadrille to his own satisfaction, he departed the room, tossing coinage to those gathered outside and demanding “a final fling” from a one-legged beggar woman.’

On p. 156 it describes how he tried to drain a loch on his estate, called Loch Na Beiste, as it was reputed by his tenants to house a monster or water kelpie. He appeared in a caricature in Punch