George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt Read Online Free

findings and then they can have the inquest. And once there’s evidence we’ve had just the one suicide at Old East, people’ll shut their goddamn mouths about the other two.’
    ‘Maybe,’ said Hattie diplomatically. She stretched as she got to her feet. ‘Listen, I’d better get back outside and see what’s what. Life’s a bit easier here now with those two new nurse practitioners on triage, but I have to keep an eye out all the same. See you later?’
    ‘Uh-huh.’ George was at the door. ‘At the presentation for old Hunnisett, if that’s what you mean.’
    ‘Where else?’ Hattie brightened then. ‘Maybe we’ll pick up a bit of news about who’s to be our new Medical Director.’
    ‘I hope so. It’ll give people something else to gossip about for a change,’ George said. ‘Especially Sheila Keen. I’ll gag that woman if it’s the last thing I do.’
    ‘Phooey,’ Hattie said good naturedly. ‘You know she’s not all that much worse than the rest of us. Just better at digging out the facts and spreading ’em around, that’s all.’
    ‘I’m not so sure,’ George said grimly. ‘I’ll tell you this much: if I can’t stop her tongue over this poor Frean girl, I swear she’ll be the next suicide for people to talk about. I’ll drive her to it, see if I don’t.’
    ‘Yeah, sure.’ Hattie managed a fair imitation of George’s American accent. ‘I’ll believe that when it happens. See you at the meeting then. Now get out of here!’
    George got.

2
              
    The Board Room was in festive mode, which George always found rather depressing. The fact that the imposing furniture had been pushed into different positions to clear the centre of the space, and that trays of sad-looking vol-au-vents and sausages and curly sandwiches had been dotted about, didn’t make it any less lowering, with its heavy dark-panelled walls and looming deeply varnished portraits of long-dead benefactors and faded red Turkey carpet. The room was one of the relics of the days when Old East had been a famous voluntary hospital supported by public contributions and staffed by lofty doctors in frock coats and subservient nurses in a great deal of starch. Now, as a National Health Acute Trust, Old East had sprouted a shabby array of portakabins put in to be temporary but becoming ever more permanent as the increase in work swiftly outstripped the money available to run the place properly, and concrete extensions which sat sullenly in all their stained grey hideousness against the red brick of the original foundation in a way that made both of them look even uglier and more dilapidated than they were. If that were possible.
    But in the years since George had come to work at Old East she, like the rest of the staff, had become inured to the surroundings. It would have been agreeable to work in a wonderland of modern chrome and tile with broad well-windowedrooms and corridors, but since they didn’t, they learned not to see the way the place really looked. They settled instead for the fascination of the work that went on inside these unprepossessing premises and an absorbing interest in the people who did it, both of which were very vibrant indeed.
    Looking around the room now George could see that two of the research fellows, Frances Llewellyn and Michael Klein, had already arrived and was amused. The Royal Eastern Clinical Research Institute had been set up just a year ago by the now departing Professor Hunnisett, and he had been very successful in attracting both money to run it and good people to work in it. There was no way the research fellows already
in situ
were going to risk losing their plum places at the Institute’s table. If Hunnisett was going, the identity of his successor would be a matter of huge importance to all of them. George watched as they clustered round the rather pompous figure of the old man and was glad she wasn’t into research. Being Old East’s pathologist as well as Forensic