Quite Ugly One Morning (14 page)

Hmmm, thought Parlabane.

He copied these and several other files on the same subject to his own disk. It was at that point that he came across a file which would not respond to ‘thatcher’, and saw that the file had not been updated for some months, meaning Hijack could offer no assistance.

Parlabane’s eyes narrowed. People changed their favoured password from time to time, sure, but what was suspicious was that there were several earlier files which
had
been encrypted with ‘thatcher’.

A one-off, separate password meant top secret, no question. And Parlabane was pretty sure that whatever it contained would be headline news.

He knew the password could be absolutely anything, but figured that if he had a chance it was to follow the pattern and hope Lime had too. He keyed in ‘major’, and was met with a loud bleep and a screen message: Incorrect password. Attempts remaining: 2. Cancel. Retry.

‘Fuck,’ he said, angry at his political stupidity. Someone with a hard-on for Tebbit and Thatcher would probably not want to put Major in the same bracket.

He hit C for Cancel, in the hope that if his next attempt was wrong, it would start back at three guesses.

Suddenly remembering who had played the starring role in this fiasco, and who Lime might therefore be grateful to, he keyed in ‘bottomley’.

Beep. Incorrect password. Attempts remaining: 1. Cancel. Retry.

‘Arse.’

The cancel option was only for getting out of the loop, back into the main network environment. To get three more guesses, he’d have to shut right down and re-boot, but it was
a laborious pain in the arse, and could take him all night if he had to make his way through all the cabinet ministers who were ‘one of us’ until he got lucky. There was also the danger that a third wrong guess might have further security consequences, such as freezing the system or setting off some kind of alarm. He knew he could little afford that, but he could even less afford to remain ignorant of what was in that file.

He paused, took a deep breath and composed his thoughts.

Thatcher. Tebbit. Who would be third in that sequence? Who was equally nauseating, xenophobic, frighteningly right-wing and likely to be lionised by a prick like Lime?

Yes.

‘portillo’.

David Forbes

Four-Square Developments

Brewery Road

Romford

Dear David,

All systems go. I can now confidently predict that the site will become available inside a year. However, I must stress that this information is of the utmost secrecy, and must be kept strictly between ourselves at this stage. While a few rumours about the future of the place being in doubt could be trouble enough at my end, the discovery that anyone outside the Trust knew about this would be politically uncomfortable, to say the least . . .

Parlabane had seen enough. He copied the file and closed the machine down, then tucked the disk into his utility bra, removed the photo and its holder from in front of the video camera, and crawled to the window. He wiped his footprints from the sill, nimbly climbed out, shut the window with his foot, got hold of the cord and hauled himself back up to the roof.

No one had seen him, no one had heard him, and he had left no traces.

Except for forgetting to re-encrypt all of Lime’s files.

‘And all because, the lady loves . . .’ Sarah sighed, watching Parlabane climb back in through the on-call room window.

‘Fuck, I forgot the chocolates,’ he said, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He pulled the polo-neck off and unclipped the utility bra, removing the vital disk from it before folding it in two and stuffing it into his duffle bag.

He wiped at his back and chest with the discarded polo-neck. ‘I’m always amazed that I can get this sweaty when it’s so fucking cold out there. I’m manky as well. You’d think people would show burglars a wee bit more consideration and give their roofs a wipe down now and again. Don’t suppose there’s any chance of a shower?’

Sarah pulled a towel out from inside the wounded-looking chest of drawers and threw it to him.

‘Follow me,’ she said.

‘What, you’re supposed to use this place?’ he asked, surveying the fetidly grotty bathroom. ‘I’ll need to have a wash after being in here. Not quite in the same class as the executive bathroom facilities over in that nice admin block.’

‘You are not telling me they’ve got showers in there,’ Sarah said gravely.

‘Of course,’ Parlabane continued. ‘Possibly for washing Clive off you when he’s finished showing you round. Shiny new Royal Doulton stuff. In case you’re feeling in need of a freshen-up after strenuously sitting on your arse in a meeting for a few hours.’

He looked at the ceiling above the shower cubicle.

‘Jesus. Look at that mould. Another fortnight and that thing’ll have evolved into a higher life-form. I’m not sure I’m brave enough to have a shower in here. How do you manage?’

Sarah shrugged. ‘It seems the lesser of two evils when you’ve just been up to your elbows in puke, blood and God knows what else trying to intubate some poor sod. It’s still close, though.’

Parlabane looked again at the cubicle’s interior, the cracks and lines running through it making it look like an Ordnance Survey map of the Himalayas. ‘Well, I suppose it’s also the lesser of two evils when you’ve got those tell-tale “just been up on the roof, breaking into the building” streaks of soot and grime on your face and hair. Have a seat and I’ll tell you the latest while I’m at it. And I want you to jump in if the thing on the ceiling goes for me.’

Sarah locked the door then pulled down the lid of the toilet seat and sat down, while Parlabane started the water running and got undressed. She made great play of looking in the other direction while he was facing her, but stole a glance and smiled bashfully to herself when he turned his back to climb into the cubicle before pulling the plastic curtain across.

‘So what’s the story?’ she asked.

‘It’s your George Romero’s place,’ he said, over the sound of the water on the ceramic. ‘They’re closing it.’

‘The bastards. The fucking bastards. Well, it’s not a huge surprise. They’ve always wanted to, but I didn’t think they’d have the nerve just to go ahead and . . .’ She shook her head. ‘Bastards.’

‘That’s only the start. They’re not just closing it, either – they’re flogging it. They’ve got a buyer lined up, Capital Properties. I saw a memo from Stephen Lime to Timothy Winton – he’s the chairman of the Trust but I think it’s kind of a sinecure thing. Lime’s the one with all the real clout.

‘Anyway, they figure the site is worth about five mill, but Lime’s recommending they accept a bid of three. This is because one, a done deal would take the steam out of closure protests, and two, the cash would put the Trust instantly into the black and make heroes out of the suits. And to those I think we can probably add three, Capital Properties will be making it well worth Lime’s while to accept their bid. Maybe Winton’s too. But it goes without saying that all the suits are being pretty furtive about the whole thing.’

‘And well they might,’ Sarah said. ‘When they were seeking Trust status they gave assurances that they weren’t going to close it, but we all knew that they’d find their way round to it soon enough.’

‘Why would they want to? Is it always half-empty?’

‘Quite the opposite. It’s always completely full. Full of expensive geriatrics who can take up beds for months or even
years at a time, and whose only financial contribution to this long-term care has been paying tax and National Insurance for the best part of fifty years on the understanding that they’d be looked after in precisely these circumstances.

‘You see, Jack, no matter what they get their PR people to say, or whatever slogans they put under their logos, the Trusts don’t give a shit about patient care. They only care about pounds, shillings and pence, and that’s why they were set up in the first place, and filled with accountants and bankers and a whole legion of grey zeroes in suits. It was illustrated by that arsehole chief exec down south who said a doctor’s first duty is to his Trust, then to himself,
then
to his patients. The name “Hippocrates” obviously never meant a great deal to this bloke. They see patients as commodities to be managed. Do it right and you turn them into cash cows. Do it wrong and they’re financial liabilities.’

‘How so?’ asked Parlabane, spitting water.

‘Well, ideally, what every trust in the UK would like is to have no geriatric patients, no medical patients, no one suffering from anything chronic and complicated, no one dying very slowly and expensively, no intensive care unit – just wards and wards full of young, fit patients awaiting elective surgery. Varicose vein ops. Palinoidal sinuses. Hernias. Quick, efficient, elective procedures with very little chance of post-op complication; easy to cost, easy to budget for. Elective procedures behave themselves on the balance sheets. Elective procedures make money. Geriatric admissions don’t do either. Poor old crumbles with no relatives willing or able to look after them, whose condition is something as incurable as its symptoms are irreversible: old age.

‘The more geriatric beds you have, the more of these money drains you must admit to your hospital. So everyone said that the first thing the Trust would do would be to shut the George Romero and open a scaled-down geriatric facility within the RVI. But they were pressed into giving assurances that they weren’t going to close geriatric beds “while they remained in demand”. Of course, that meant they would be trying out any way imaginable to reduce that demand, or reduce perception of that demand.

‘The clinical staff got leaned on to turf patients out to their families or nursing homes as soon as they could stand up, and were basically told not to admit anyone who didn’t look
like they would drop dead in an economically viable length of time – say, two days. But no matter what they do, the demand will never be reduced. The trouble is that so many beds are taken up by long-term patients, who you just can’t put in a home because their problems require proper, full-scale medical care. And not only can you not turf them out, but they reduce the number of beds available for shorter-term admissions. So presumably the Trust is going to sweeten the pill by saying that the money raised will help fund an “improved” geriatric unit within the RVI, which will have fewer beds but will deliver as much patient care “in real terms” as the GRH did. Is that it?’

‘Well, not quite,’ said Parlabane. ‘Ow! Shampoo in my eyes. Can you hand me a towel?’

Sarah got up and lifted the off-white terrycloth sheet, holding it in front of the shower curtain. Parlabane’s soggy and soapy hand appeared from round the mouldy, translucent plastic sheet and clawed the air until Sarah placed the towel in it.

‘Ta,’ he said, whipping it inside then popping it back out. ‘They
are
planning to reduce the number of geriatric beds and bring them all within the RVI,’ he said, ‘but I think the sweetener is more likely to be that the property cash and the consequent saving will be better spent on “other ways of delivering patient care”.’

Sarah snorted. ‘Yeah. They’ll make it sound like it’ll all be going on dialysis equipment, when it’ll really be buying a few more jobs for managers and some more fucking pot plants.’

‘But the thing is, Sarah,’ Parlabane continued, ‘the memo from Lime said the “bed-usage situation” had changed, and that the number of geriatric patients
had
been reduced.’

The sound of the water stopped, and Parlabane pulled back the curtain, rubbing his face with the long towel, which swung back and forth across his body.

‘It said something about . . . what was it? Natural wastage, which I took to mean patients snuffing it, and what was the other thing? I didn’t quite follow it. Placing? Something like that?’

‘Placement,’ Sarah said, shaking her head. And that’ll be the main thing. “Natural wastage”, as he puts it, is negligible. Crumbles never die. Don’t believe the hype about frailty. They live forever – and the crazier they are, the longer they live. So
the only way to get rid of them is placement. Buff and turf, as the yanks say.’

‘?’ said Parlabane’s look, amidst a flurry of towel and hair.

‘Buff them up, make them look healthy-ish. Then turf them into a home and fill the bed with someone less trouble before they can be sent back.’

‘Well here’s where our suspected villain makes his appearance,’ Parlabane said, wrapping the towel around his waist. And it looks like the big boss himself. There was a letter from Lime to a property developer down south, telling him the site would become available inside a year. Now, it’s dodgy enough that he’s noticed the patient levels are falling and he’s tipping a property developer the wink about the site before anyone even knows there are plans to close it, but according to the computer, that letter predated all memos about GRH bed-usage by several months.’

‘Oh my God,’ Sarah said, staring blankly beyond Parlabane with a look that made him fear the mould monster from the ceiling had indeed decided to get territorial.

‘What?’ he said.

‘Jeremy,’ she breathed, sitting down helplessly on the toilet with a bump. ‘I’ve just worked out his role in this sordid affair. Jesus.’

She stared into space, Parlabane waiting in excruciating limbo for her to collect her thoughts and elaborate.

‘Buffing and turfing on a grand scale,’ she said. ‘Lime was paying him to declare total crumbles fit enough to go into nursing homes. It wouldn’t matter if they collapsed in a gibbering, incontinent heap as soon as they were out the back of the ambulance, because by that time the bed would have been filled with a shorter-term admission, or more probably closed altogether.’

‘But wouldn’t it damage his professional reputation if patients he’d declared fit turned out to be complete messes?’

‘Not necessarily. The thing with crumbles is that they can
genuinely
switch from fitness to decrepitude or vice versa overnight. You’ll get some old dear with a few of her pages stuck together, brought in from a nursing home because of a chest infection. She looks like she’s at death’s door for a week, then one morning you come in and she’s drinking her tea and shrieking at imaginary cats. Equally, she might get her strength built up and appear to have made a complete
recovery, then cack it the first night she’s back in the home. The only damage Jeremy’s reputation would suffer would be if he sent a few like that to the same home and they noticed whose name was on the paperwork each time.’

‘And what happens to the patient, now that the bed’s no longer available?’

‘The nursing home has to get on the phone and try to get her a bed somewhere else – in another hospital, and therefore in another Trust. Jeremy reduces the long-term patient levels and they get to close the GRH and sell up to Kickback Properties Inc.

‘But why kill him?’ she wondered aloud. ‘He must have been blackmailing Lime – taking money for clearing the wards
then
threatening to blow the gaffe about the whole thing unless he gave him more.’

‘It’s more likely he was just killed
in case
he ever said anything,’ said Parlabane. ‘No blackmail, just covering tracks. Because I feel the stakes for Lime could be a lot higher than putting the Trust in the black and scoring a few K on the side from the property deal. He was talking to that company down south about the site a long time ago, before anyone knew it was remotely likely to become available, and the name of that developer is not the same as the one that’s bidding for the GRH. I’d be very surprised if Capital Properties didn’t turn out to be a front for a joint venture between Four-Square Developments and a Mr Stephen Lime, which would further explain why he’s recommending the Trust sells the site at a knock-down price. Where is this place anyway?’

Sarah unlocked the door. ‘Come on back to the room and get dressed. You can see it from there.’

Dawn was thinking about breaking, at the stage where it was rolling about under the sheets after its alarm had gone off, weighing up the pros and cons of getting out of bed. There was a glow of light from beyond the horizon, tinting the city in faint, shadowy hues, like a huge room lit by a lamp with a dimmer switch.

The castle cut the skyline with a tetchy cragginess, ill-tempered elderly resident of the district with a fragile tolerance of the newcomers to its neighbourhood.

And not far beyond the longest spines of its shadow, just past the borders of the Old Town, in the vicinity of law courts,
local government, big business and one of Europe’s busiest tourist honeypots, sat a crappy wee spread-out collection of prefabricated, low-rise bus shelters posing as a geriatric hospital.

Ah,’ said Parlabane, looking out of the window.

‘Get the picture?’ Sarah asked, redundantly.

‘I’m thinking international class hotel with extensive conference facilities, maybe a shopping complex,’ he said. ‘Underground parking, centrally located office spaces,
very
exclusive residential development . . . whatever. Except that the deal’s off if some wee scrote of a doctor opens his gub.

‘Acres of prime site in the centre of one of Europe’s most prestigious and historic capital cities for three mill. Now
that’s
a bargain worth killing for.’