After Effects by Catherine Aird Page B

hope it does.’ Byville gave an unamused laugh. ‘They’ve already been to the police.’
    Dr Beaumont raised his eyebrows and decided against getting out of the lift at the floor which he’d been heading for. ‘On what grounds?’ he asked carefully, as they continued upwards.
    â€˜God knows.’ Byville grimaced. ‘The next thing they’ll be doing is talking to the local newspaper. The editor would enjoy that.’
    â€˜It would be a great pity,’ observed Edwin Beaumont in his usual measured way.
    â€˜It would.’ In contrast with most of the other consultants on the staff of the two hospitals, Roger Byville was a controlled, rather colourless man, but even he sounded heated now. ‘St Ninian’s gets quite enough bad publicity as it is from the antics of that maniac, McGrew. We don’t need any more.’
    Dr Edwin Beaumont glanced at the lift indicator and sighed. ‘Our Dan doesn’t exactly help the healing image, does he?’
    Byville scowled. ‘I can never see why the surgical people don’t shop him. I would. Gives the whole place—let alone the profession—a bad name.’
    â€˜Not our headache, though,’ said Beaumont, one physician to another, and unmindful, too, of Edmund Burke’s famous dictum that for evil to flourish it was only necessary that good men do nothing.
    â€˜Thank God it isn’t,’ said Byville.
    â€˜I’ve heard,’ advanced Beaumont cautiously, ‘that even the Three Wise Men don’t know what to do about him next.’
    â€˜I never did hold with that idea.’ Roger Byville sniffed contemptuously. ‘Catch someone as egocentric as Dangerous Dan being told by three of his professional colleagues—’ It was well known that Daniel McGrew didn’t admit to having peers ‘—that he’s not doing his job properly—’
    â€˜Well—’
    â€˜And then his pulling his socks up. I don’t know about you, but I don’t call that likely, myself.’
    â€˜Quite,’ agreed Dr Beaumont, although that wasn’t the way in which he himself would have described the remit of the three distinguished surgeons who were summoned when a Calleshire consultant showed signs of what were euphemistically described as ‘human failings’. ‘Quite,’ he said again.
    â€˜And I still don’t see why,’ grumbled Byville, ‘I should have to pay whopping insurance premiums for medical defence just to keep clowns like McGrew out of trouble.’
    â€˜No, Roger.’ Beaumont paused and then with more relevance than was perhaps tactful said, ‘This heart failure of yours—’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜Is it going to mean,’ asked Beaumont delicately, ‘trouble?’
    â€˜Not if I can help it,’ responded Byville. ‘Oh, I know she was on Paul’s Cardigan Protocol but that wasn’t what killed her.’
    â€˜No, no, I’m sure,’ said Beaumont hastily.
    â€˜And I told that detective inspector so.’
    â€˜Paul isn’t going to like it, though, all the same.’
    â€˜No, he isn’t.’ Byville nodded his agreement to this. ‘Not one little bit. He’s very keen on his precious test results for Cardigan is our Paul.’
    That, decided Dr Beaumont, was one way of putting it but he did not say so aloud.
    Roger Byville looked up as at long last the old lift wheezed to a halt at the top floor of St Ninian’s. ‘Got a moment to spare yourself, Edwin? I’ve got an interesting spleen on Lorkyn Ward. Come and have a look at him with me, if you’ve time. A young man of twenty-five, who’s been ill for two weeks. He insisted on being shipped over here from Berebury so the family could visit … I’m afraid he’s not doing very well.’
    â€˜That you, Shirl?’ The land-line from Berebury on the St Ninian’s switchboard sprang