Pestilence by Ken McClure Page A

Saracen bit his lip and agreed. Involvement with the Development Committee was rapidly becoming the jewel in Garten’s crown of excuses for avoiding work. This would be the third all day meeting he had attended in the past month.
    Saracen sensed political ambition awakening in Garten and thought the man well qualified. All front and no substance. He was the right age and held the right status in the community to present well in the political arena. The more usual background of business success was provided, in Garten’s case by his father-in-law, Matthew Glendale, a wealthy and prominent local builder. It was a connection that had cost Garten dear for, for Mildred Glendale, Garten’s wife, had achieved uniqueness in Saracen’s mind as the most unpleasant woman he had ever met. Tremaine, on meeting her, had summed her up succinctly with the comment, ‘sensitivity of a dead pig, manners of a live one.” Saracen might have argued with the ethics of such a remark but not the accuracy. From time to time Saracen had wondered if Garten might have been different had he not married the malicious Mildred but he concluded not. To be so lazy and parasitic demanded congenital short-comings not just acquired ones.
     
    Chenhui Tang smiled when she saw Saracen come through the swing doors of A&E. She touched her head with her hand and said with a strong accent, “Your head…it is all right now?”
    “Fine,” smiled Saracen. Conversation with Chenhui invariably involved a lot of smiles. They filled in the gaps where words should have been. “Are we busy this morning?”
    “Yes, yes, busy,” said Chenhui with an exaggerated series of nods and smiles.
    Saracen liked Chenhui and thought that she would make a good doctor. He respected her for that and would have liked to have known her better but the communication barrier between them was just too great. He had visited her once in her room at the doctors’ residency and had found it full of tutorial books on the English language. They had occupied an entire shelf along one wall, a monument to complete failure, he had thought at the time.
    Alan Tremaine, who had been on duty during the night, signed off officially and handed over responsibility to Saracen with a report on the night’s ‘business’. There had been an accident in the local brewery resulting in several cases of severe scalding, a motor-cycle accident resulting in a fatality, the pillion passenger. The Police were still trying to contact relatives. They would probably turn up during the morning.
    Saracen nodded and checked up on the present location of the burns cases in anticipation of phoned inquiries. “Anything else I should know?”
    “The Police brought in a man at three this morning. He had ‘collapsed’ in the cells; hit his head on something…”
    “Did it wash?”
    “No other bruises on him.”
    Saracen nodded.
    “The X-Rays were OK, just knocked himself out.”
    “Good. Off you go then.”
     
    As the doors closed behind Tremaine, Chenhui came up to Saracen looking harassed. “You come please!” she said.
    “I come,” smiled Saracen and followed her to the treatment room to begin another day.
     
    The mid-morning admission of a housewife who had overdosed on Valium made Saracen wonder about Timothy Archer and how he was getting on. He had decided not to ask Nigel Garten about the Myra Archer case lest this be misconstrued, or more correctly, construed as unwarranted interference or even implied criticism. He did however resolve to check up on the case details recorded in the admission book when he got the chance.
    He got the chance in the early afternoon when a lull developed. Nurses were chatting as they polished and tidied instrument trays and re-stocked cupboards and shelves. Chenhui sat with one of her English language books, her mouth moving silently. Saracen flicked through the pages of the admissions book and scanned down the entries for the evening of the twelfth. His index finger