The Consultant's Italian Knight Read online

  ‘Sounds like it might be show time,’ Ralph declared as the distant wail of a siren split the air.

  It did indeed, Mario thought, as he saw the nurse and the auburn-haired doctor disappear back into the treatment room. It also meant their man was still alive, and with a sigh he stretched out his long, denim clad legs. It was going to be a long night.

  ‘According to his passport, his name’s Duncan Hamilton, and he’s nineteen years old,’ one of the paramedics declared, desperately trying to restrain the arms and legs of the young man who was thrashing about wildly on the trolley. ‘When security at the airport said they suspected he might be a body-packer, we just bagged him, and did a scoop and run.’

  ‘Symptoms?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Severe agitation, BP 160 over 90 and rising and he started fitting just as we pulled up outside.’

  Kate bit her lip. Absorption of large amounts of cocaine caused agitation, hypertension and seizures, but Duncan Hamilton’s symptoms could be due to other conditions, too. If she knew for certain that it wasn’t a leaking cocaine packet she would immediately have started him on naloxone, but the drug would have no effect on a patient suffering from a massive overdose.

  ‘Did he have anything else on him apart from his passport?’ she asked hopefully. ‘Maybe a medic alert disc detailing a preexisting medical condition?’

  The paramedic shook his head, and Kate swore under her breath.

  If Duncan Hamilton was a body-packer then it certainly sounded as though one of his packets had burst, but she needed more than a suspicion. She needed certainty.

  ‘Mr Hamilton—Duncan,’ she said, leaning as far over the young man as his writhing body would allow. ‘Do you know where you are, and what’s happening to you?’

  A low moan was her only reply, and she gave up on the preliminaries and went for the straight approach.

  ‘Duncan, how many packets of cocaine did you swallow?’

  ‘I didn’t…I haven’t swallowed anything,’ the young man gasped as Terri finished cutting off his clothes and began placing plastic suckers on his chest to link him to the heart monitor.

  ‘Duncan, if one of your packets has burst you could die,’ Kate persisted, ‘so tell me the truth. How many did you swallow?’

  For a moment she didn’t think he was going to answer, then he muttered, ‘Hundred. Swallowed a hundred.’

  Hell-fire, and damnation. The average lethal dose of cocaine hydrochloride was 500 milligrams. Body-packers commonly swallowed packets containing at least 12 grams each, and Duncan Hamilton said he’d swallowed a hundred of them. If just one of them had burst then more than twenty-four times the lethal dosage was seeping into his body, affecting his central nervous system, and respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

  ‘OK, Terri, we need to calm him and cool him down fast!’ she exclaimed as the paramedics wheeled their stretcher out of the cubicle. ‘I want 5 milligrams midazolam, supplemental oxygen, his head, neck and chest kept cold with cold water, and can you get me a fan? If we can control his agitation and temperature we might be able to get his BP down. If not…’

  The sister’s eyes met hers, and Kate knew what Terri was thinking. Duncan Hamilton could code at any minute, and with so much cocaine travelling through his body the chances of pulling him back were slim.

  ‘I’ll get the fan,’ Terri said but, to Kate’s dismay, the minute the sister had gone Duncan Hamilton wrenched the ambu-bag from his face.

  ‘Need to…tell you something,’ he said, his breath coming in great, ragged gulps.

  ‘Later—you can tell me later,’ Kate declared, desperately trying to get the ambu-bag back in place but he fought her all the way.

  ‘Important!’ he exclaimed, grasping her wrist tightly. ‘Have to tell you. Names…Important names. Bolton…Faranelli—’

  ‘Duncan, will you please let me put this back on you,’ Kate insisted, seeing the heart monitor starting to display an increasingly erratic tracing.

  ‘Mackay…Di Angelis…And addresses—I have addresses. You must hear the addresses.’

  ‘OK—OK, I’m listening,’ Kate replied, hoping that the quicker the young man told her whatever he wanted so desperately to tell her, the sooner she might be able to re-affix the ambu-bag.

  ‘6 Mount Stewart Street…12 Picard Avenue…’

  Oh, shut up, Kate thought as Duncan rambled on and she scarcely listened. He was dying, and yet he was giving her what sounded like the entire contents of the telephone directory.

  ‘Did…did you get all that?’ Duncan Hamilton demanded eventually, and Kate nodded.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she lied, sighing with relief as she snapped the ambu-bag back in place, but neither it, nor the fan Terri brought, nor the sedation, reduced Duncan Hamilton’s soaring temperature.

  ‘If we don’t get his temperature down soon he’s going to develop hypothermia,’ Terri declared, worry plain in her voice. ‘Will I start him on lidocaine?’

  ‘It won’t help,’ Kate replied, no less concerned than the sister was. ‘It produces similar effects on the myocardial cell membrane to cocaine. I’ve used sodium bicarbonate for tricyclic antidepressant overdoses and it worked with them so maybe…’

  She didn’t get a chance to finish what she’d been about to say. Duncan Hamilton suddenly gave an odd breath, and the heart monitor let out a low and constant tone. He’d coded, and immediately Kate hit him squarely in the centre of his sternum, then glanced across at the monitor. Nothing. No change. The heart line remained resolutely flat.

  ‘Paddles, Terri!’ she exclaimed.

  Swiftly, the sister handed them to her, and equally quickly, Kate rubbed the defibrillating paddles together with electrical conducting gel. It was on occasions like this she wished she was six feet tall instead of five feet nothing. To successfully shock a patient you had to lean over the examination trolley, place the paddles in exactly the right place, then press down really hard, but the trolleys had metal rails and if any part of you touched them…

  ‘Instant cardiac arrest, Kate,’ she muttered, standing as high on her toes as she could. ‘Stand clear, Terri!’

  The sister stepped back from the trolley, Kate pressed the paddles down as hard as she could on either side of Duncan Hamilton’s chest, and he convulsed briefly.

  ‘Nothing,’ Terri said, her voice tense.

  ‘I’ll tube him,’ Kate declared. ‘The ambu-bag’s not enough any more, so I’ll tube him and then I want the power up to 300.’

  Terri waited until Kate had inserted an endotracheal tube down Duncan Hamilton’s throat, then upped the power on the defibrillator paddles to 300, but though Duncan Hamilton’s body convulsed again when Kate placed the paddles on either side of his chest the monitor reading didn’t change.

  ‘IV bolus of 500 milligrams of beryllium,’ Kate said in desperation. ‘Power up to 360 joules.’

  Again, and again, she placed the defibrillator paddles on either side of the young man’s chest, but no amount of electricity kick-started the young man’s heart and eventually she stepped back from the trolley, and switched off the current.

  ‘You did your best, Kate,’ Terri declared, watching her. ‘It’s just…’

  ‘This time we didn’t win.’ Kate’s eyes clouded. ‘I know.’

  ‘Look, why don’t you take a break, grab yourself a cup of coffee?’ the sister suggested. ‘I’ll clear up in here for you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Kate replied. ‘I just want…’

  ‘A few minutes alone with him,’ Terri finished for her. ‘I understand.’

  And Terri did, Kate thought. The sister knew how much she hated losing a patient—any patient—and this man was so young. Nineteen, the paramedic had said. Nineteen, and his whole life should have been ahead of him, but now…

  Tears pricked at the back of her eyes, and desperately she tried to blink them away. It wasn’t like her to break down like this, and if the other consultants at the hospital could see her they’d have a field day.

&nbs
p; ‘Head of A and E isn’t a suitable position for a woman,’ they’d whispered when she’d got the job three years ago. ‘And thirty-two’s far too young.’

  Maybe they’d been right, she thought as she gently closed Duncan Hamilton’s eyes, and whispered, ‘I’m sorry—so sorry,’ as she always did when she lost a patient. Maybe if she hadn’t been quite so driven, quite so determined to prove she was up to the job, but the glossy magazines had said she could have it all, and she’d believed them.

  She’d kept on believing them even when John had started muttering that he hardly ever saw her. She hadn’t even worried when he’d begun booking himself on seminars without talking to her about them first, but her morning’s post had burst her illusory bubble once and for all. You couldn’t have it all. Or, at least, she couldn’t.

  ‘Did you forget something, Terri?’ she said, wiping her eyes quickly with the back of her hand as she heard the sound of the cubicle curtains opening behind her.

  ‘I’m not Terri.’

  He wasn’t. He was the dark-haired, olive-skinned man from the waiting room and, as he advanced towards her, she wondered why she had ever thought him attractive. Up close, with a twoday stubble that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a convict, and a good sixteen inches taller than she was, he looked even more intimidating than he had at a distance.

  ‘I’m sorry, but we don’t allow friends or family members into this part of A and E,’ she said with a calmness she was very far from feeling. ‘If you’d care to wait outside—’

  ‘I’m not a friend or family.’

  That didn’t surprise her. In fact, she had a sudden horrifying suspicion that he was probably the man who had put Duncan Hamilton into A and E in the first place.

  ‘If you’re not a friend, or family, you’ll definitely have to wait outside,’ she said. ‘Somebody—’ hopefully not her ‘—will be able to give you an update on Mr Hamilton’s condition in a few minutes.’

  The man glanced down at Duncan Hamilton.

  ‘Not much need of an update when he’s rather obviously dead,’ he said. ‘What I’m more interested in is what he might have said to you before he died.’

  That didn’t sound good, and neither did the way this man was looking at her.

  ‘We don’t give out information to non-relatives,’ she declared, ‘so will you please go back to the waiting room.’

  He didn’t look as though he was going to. In fact, a look of distinct irritation appeared on his face and, as he reached inside his leather jacket, every police drama she had ever seen on TV suddenly flashed into her mind.

  He was going to kill her. He was Duncan Hamilton’s fixer, or agent, and though his accent was surprisingly Scottish he was probably a member of the Mafia as well, and he was going to kill her.

  But that didn’t mean she had to give in without a fight, she decided.

  ‘OK, I’ve tried polite!’ she exclaimed, snatching a syringe from the instrument trolley beside her, ‘but polite is clearly something you don’t understand. This syringe contains a sample of your friend’s blood and if I’m not very much mistaken he’s probably HIV positive. Come one step closer to me and you’re going to be HIV positive, too.’

  He glanced down at the syringe, then at her. ‘That syringe is empty.’

  Damn, and blast, but she’d picked up the wrong one.

  ‘It’s…plasma.’ She bluffed. ‘Plasma is a part of blood, but it has no colour—’

  ‘Lady, that syringe is empty, and I am…’ He reached inside his jacket again, and she closed her eyes.

  This was it. She was dead, finished, history, and she could see the newspaper headlines now.

  Forty-five-year-old, divorced female consultant…because the newspapers always got your age wrong…murdered at the General Infirmary. Ms Kate Kennedy was found lying in a pool of blood having been shot at close range by—

  ‘…Inspector Mario Volante.’

  Her eyes flew open to see the man was holding out a police identity badge towards her and felt more foolish than she’d ever done in her life.

  ‘You’re a policeman,’ she said faintly. ‘But you…’

  Quickly she bit off the rest of what she’d been about to say. Maybe he was undercover, and it was part of his brief to look scruffy. And then again, maybe she was just an idiot.

  ‘You thought I was some sort of hit man, didn’t you?’ he said, his mouth twitching into a smile, and she flushed.

  ‘What else was I supposed to think?’ she demanded. ‘You appear out of nowhere, looking like…’

  ‘Like what?’ he said, clearly confused, and the colour on her cheeks darkened.

  ‘The way you’re dressed…All the policemen I’ve ever seen have worn uniforms, with caps, and badges, and…and stuff.’

  ‘I’m CID, Drugs Squad, as is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Evanton. We don’t go in for uniforms, and caps, and badges, and…stuff.’

  He was laughing at her. She knew he was, and nobody—but nobody—laughed at Kate Kennedy.

  ‘You don’t sound Italian, Inspector Volante,’ she said tersely, and his eyebrows rose.

  ‘I was born in Aberdeen to an Italian father and a Scottish mother, but even if both my parents had been Italian that doesn’t mean I have to sound like I’m auditioning for a part in The Godfather.’

  It was a rebuke, and a just one. It also, she thought, explained his amazingly blue eyes.

  ‘Let’s cut to the chase, Inspector Volante,’ she declared, tossing the syringe back onto the instrument trolley. ‘As you so correctly noticed, Mr Hamilton is dead, so neither you nor your colleague is going to get any information out of him.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you before he died?’

  ‘Just some names and addresses—nothing that made any sense—and now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a waiting room full of sick people—’

  ‘I want to hear what he said.’

  ‘And didn’t you hear what I said?’ she exclaimed. ‘It was just a random list of names, and addresses, and I’m busy. B-U-S-Y.’

  He squinted at her name tag.

  ‘Dr Kennedy, I’m busy, too,’ he said, his tone even, ‘and if you don’t give me ten minutes of your time I’ll take you downtown and book you for obstruction and, believe me, that will take a whole lot longer than ten minutes particularly if we include the strip search.’

  He meant it. She could tell from the cold, hard gleam in his blue eyes that he meant it, and she gritted her teeth.

  ‘OK. All I can remember him saying—’

  ‘Not here,’ he interrupted. ‘I want somewhere quiet—private—where we can’t be overheard. What’s through there?’ he added, nodding at the door at the end of the treatment room.

  ‘A store cupboard.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  Not for her, it wasn’t, Kate thought, as Mario Volante steered her into the cupboard and shut the door. If she’d thought he was big and intimidating in the treatment room, it was as nothing to how big and intimidating he felt when he was standing toe to toe with her in a cupboard.

  ‘Cosy, isn’t it?’ he said, as though he’d read her mind, and her chin came up.

  He was laughing at her again—she knew he was—and she’d had enough of him laughing at her. More than enough.

  ‘Look, can we get on with this?’ she demanded.

  ‘Fine by me,’ he said, extracting a small black notebook from his pocket and elbowing her in the ribs in the process. ‘OK, tell me exactly what Hamilton said.’

  With an effort she forced herself to think of nothing but the few minutes she’d spent alone with Duncan Hamilton.

  ‘First he told me some names. Di Angelis was one, and Mackay was another. Fascali—’ She frowned. ‘No, that’s not right. Faranelli. Yes, that was it. Faranelli.’

  ‘Any other names?’ he said, his pen flashing across the page of his notebook.

  ‘There was one more. It was the name of a town, but…’ She thought hard, and eventually shook her head
. ‘I’m sorry, it’s gone.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. It might come back to you later. Tell me the addresses.’

  ‘Inspector Volante,’ she protested. ‘Duncan Hamilton had pulled off his ambu-bag, and I was trying to get it back on again so I wasn’t really listening.’

  ‘Please,’ he insisted. ‘Anything you can tell me—anything at all—might be vitally important.’

  His blue eyes were fixed on her, searching, intent, and she swallowed hard. Concentrate, Kate. Concentrate.

  He has beautiful eyes.

  No, not on that. Concentrate on remembering what Duncan Hamilton told you.

  ‘He mentioned a house in Mount Stewart Street,’ she said quickly. ‘Number 6, I think. And somewhere in Lansdowne Drive. Number 4—or maybe it was number 5. Then there was 55 Cedar Way, and somewhere in Picard Avenue, and…’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t remember any more.’

  ‘You’ve done very well,’ he replied, snapping shut his notebook.

  ‘I just wish I could have saved Duncan Hamilton’s life,’ she murmured.

  ‘Once a packet bursts, it’s odds on that the body-packer will die.’

  ‘Then why in the world would anyone choose to do it?’ she protested, and he shrugged.

  ‘Because money can be a very powerful persuader if you’re poor and up to your eyeballs in debt.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And they don’t all do it for the money,’ he continued. ‘Some of them are offered safe passage into a country that wouldn’t take them if they tried the legal, immigration route, and others do it because their family members are being held as collateral to ensure their cooperation.’

  ‘But that’s blackmail,’ she gasped, and he smiled a smile that held no warmth at all.

  ‘Welcome to the twenty-first century, Doctor.’

  ‘Are you always this cynical?’ she exclaimed before she could stop herself, and his eyebrows rose.

  ‘No, I’m not. According to a very reliable source, I’m also occasionally a complete and utter bastard.’

  ‘Then maybe it’s time you got out more,’ she said, not bothering to hide her sarcasm. ‘Opened your eyes, smelt the flowers, and saw what a beautiful world this can be.’