Bloodstains Read online

  Bloodstains

  Andrew Puckett

  ©Andrew Puckett 1987

  Andrew Puckett has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1987 by Doubleday

  This edition published in 2019 by Sharpe Books.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Prologue

  The whole room is covered in blood, it’s everywhere. On the walls and the floor — it covers the shelving. And rightly so since this is the Blood Bank of the Tamar Transfusion Centre. It is stacked in neat rows, this blood, in plastic packs whose translucence somehow robs it of its essentially violent quality, the vividness that can be both the giver of life, and the signal that life is ebbing away.

  The blood on the floor belongs to the latter category; beckoning like a crooked finger, it reaches from the head of the man who is lying there. It is absolutely still, perhaps it is already congealing in the cool air and yet it glistens like mercury, like a pool of spilt ink.

  The other man, the one holding the spanner, hears footsteps approaching. He drops it and runs for his life…

  Chapter One

  Ten Red Bottles/Hanging on the Wall — the jingle of the stupid advertisement was going round my head all night — Nine Red Bottles…

  I hadn’t realized in time to turn it off, hadn’t quite realized until it was too late, and by then the image was so firmly implanted that even though the television was dead, the jingle and the images went on. All night…

  It must have been an omen. Marcus’s call came after I had been brooding for a couple of hours in my office over some indigestible files, the images of those red bottles marching across them like a firing squad.

  ‘Tom, are you busy?’ He knew that I wasn’t.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve got something interesting here. Can you come up?’

  You can taste excitement over a telephone, and his infected me to the extent of taking the stairs two at a time rather than waiting for the lift.

  ‘Come on in, Tom,’ he called as I knocked, ‘Take a seat.’ He indicated the chair in front of his desk and leaned back in his own. ‘I think this is what we’ve been waiting for.’

  He grinned and sat up. ‘D’you remember all the fuss a year or so back when those three men were jailed for pinching blood from the Transfusion Service?’

  I went cold. ‘No.’

  ‘You must do, it was in all the papers.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. Well, these three blokes, a doctor, a laboratory manager and an industrial link man, managed to half-inch a hundred and fifty grand’s worth of blood from the West Thames Transfusion Centre. I never knew it was worth so much…’ The words blurred into a faraway scream as my face prickled in the prelude to schoolboy faint. I can’t do it…

  His voice came back into focus. ‘Anyway, Sir Edward quietly had a computer check run on all the other transfusion centres in the country to see whether we had any more public servants with entrepreneurial ideas and one in particular looks rather promising. We want you to go and have a look at it.

  My throat had stuck.

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Marcus, I can’t do it.’

  His eyebrows twitched. ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘I — I’m scared of blood!’

  He gave a grunt. ‘Well, it’s not my favourite—’

  ‘You don’t understand, I’m terrified of it. I faint when I see it.’

  ‘You’re having me on?’

  ‘No.’

  He stared at me, genuinely incredulous.

  At last: ‘But you must have seen plenty of it in the police.’

  ‘Not really.’ I searched for the right words. ‘It’s got worse since then. I — I could force myself at first, then I was transferred to the Fraud Squad where it didn’t matter.’

  After another pause, he asked quietly, ‘Have you seen anyone about this?’

  ‘A shrink, you mean,’ I said angrily. Oh yeah, they told me it was a phobia, like people who are scared of snakes or spiders, great help! Mine’s even got a name, Haemophobia.’ I stopped abruptly.

  ‘Is there no treatment?’

  ‘Only to learn to come to terms with it, or learn how to avoid it.’

  ‘And you’ve tried coming to terms with it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I lied.

  He tapped the desk with the end of his pencil. ‘Tom, we’ve got a problem.’

  ‘The problem’s mine,’ I snapped.

  ‘No, it’s mine too.’

  I appreciate your fatherly interest, but—’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody rude!’ He pointed the pencil at me. If you turn this job down after the trouble I’ve had setting it up, then I’m afraid you’re out.’

  ‘Then I’ m out.’

  He raised his eyes helplessly at the ceiling. ‘All right, all right. Tell me, I’m not just being nosey, do you always faint when you see it?’

  ‘Sometimes not, if I have warning.’

  ‘Doesn’t the fact that you’re full of the stuff bother you?’

  ‘Not so long as I can’t see it.’

  ‘In that case, don’t you think there’s a difference between seeing it leak out of a body, and seeing it in a bottle or something?’

  I swallowed. ‘I suppose there might be.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then. If it’s not so bad through glass or plastic, and the psychiatrist said to come to terms with it, this is your chance.’

  I shook my head. ‘Sorry.’

  A pause.

  ‘Any idea why you have this… haemophobia?’

  ‘No,’ I lied again.

  He returned to the attack. ‘Tom, you must do this job, for both our sakes. Can’t you see how important it is?’

  I stared silently back at him and he almost shouted in his exasperation.

  ‘Look, you’ll be too busy working out who’s stealing the blood to be worrying about blood itself.’

  ‘No.’

  Very well.’ He looked up at the wall clock. ‘I’ll accept that answer, and your resignation, at three o’clock this afternoon.’

  Jolly old sport to the last, I sneered inwardly — give the condemned man every chance…

  Then he did something unexpected. He extracted a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked a drawer in the side of his desk. I heard him finger through some files until, with a grunt, he pulled one out and handed it to me.

  ‘Read that in the pub over lunch, and don’t let anyone else see it.’

  I looked down at the slim manila folder that bore my name.

  ‘If your answer’s still the same at three, you’ll get no more arguments.’

  I stood up. ‘It will be,’ I said ungraciously.

  He shrugged. ‘Let me know at three,’ he said, and paid no further attention to me as I walked out.

  It was a very slim folder. I took the top off my beer and stood the glass on the copper-topped table before settling back in the corner to read.

  Thomas Alfred Jones, I read. Born London 1953. Height, five feet nine, slim build,
brown eyes, brown hair, no distinguishing marks. Divorced, no children. Well, I couldn’t argue so far.

  Had my parents known what they were doing when they named me Tom Jones? I wondered for the umpteenth time. It must have seemed a good joke in the halcyon days of early marriage, a chip off the old block and all that. Well, they couldn’t have been ‘wronger’ and the smiles must have faded quickly enough.

  Education: Paddington Primary School followed by Paddington Grammar until age 17, when ran away from home to join the Army just before taking A-levels. (How the hell did they know that?)

  Joined Police Force at age 20, promoted to Detective-Sergeant before resigning at age 30. Variety of jobs since, punctuated by unemployment, until present position with DHSS, Hannibal House.

  Well, well, my life summed up in a few monochromatic paragraphs, no hint of the colours that lay between.

  I flipped over the flimsy sheet to find a letter in familiar blue ink, my old chief,’ Superintendent Foxwell.

  … I should say he is just the person you are looking for, his experience with the Fraud Squad, both in the field and with computers, make him ideally suited for the post you have in mind. I must add that I was personally very disappointed when he left the Force and did my best to dissuade him…

  I quickly turned the page.

  Another flimsy, a copy of a report written by Marcus the year before, setting out his reasons for wanting to establish the post.

  The DHSS has a budget exceeding £30 billion per annum. A calculated loss of 0.33%, or £100 million per annum due to fraud and corruption could well be an underestimate. If we could save some of this by a combination of prevention and detection, it would provide the money to pay enough doctors and nurses to enable the Government to answer some of its critics…

  Clever Marcus, beating the political drum as hard as the humanitarian one.

  There were copies of administrative letters and then a last sheet which I read with growing surprise.

  It was a transcript of the interview board’s discussion and it seemed that Marcus was almost alone in wanting to appoint me.

  … what you refer to as a chequered career, I see as evidence of a survivor, the sort of character we are looking for… excellent reference, police training, experience with computers, with fraud and undercover work, a unique qualification… yes, I would be prepared to accept full responsibility if he were appointed…

  I remembered that interview.

  ‘Why did you leave the police force, Mr Jones?’

  ‘It was an attempt to salvage my marriage. My wife couldn’t stand the unsocial hours.’

  ‘But it didn’t work?’

  ‘No,’

  Well, I couldn’t really say: My wife then discovered it was me she couldn’t stand.

  ‘You seem to have had a variety of jobs since then.’

  ‘None of them really suited me.’

  I couldn’t say: it was the drink, it lost me more than just my driving licence.

  ‘But you think that this job would suit you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  And amazingly, I’d got it, because of Marcus. It was all that stood between me and the pit.

  And now I knew that Marcus needed me as well. To walk out now would expose him to a chorus of humiliation. We needed each other, and perhaps he was right, perhaps it was my chance to kill the past… No! No, I couldn’t do it.

  A shadow made me look up — it was him, Marcus.

  ‘D’you want a refill? he said, indicating my empty glass.

  I nodded.

  When he’d bought the drinks, he sat opposite me and we drank for a moment in silence. Then he said, ‘Not so many people in here as usual.’

  ‘No.’

  A pause, “Did you finish the file?

  ‘Yes.’ As I handed it back to him, I met his eyes. They were pleading with me.

  ‘Well?’

  Brown eyes they were, like mine, but there the resemblance ended, for he was one of the baldest men I have ever met. I think he was in his late forties, yet the semi-circle of hair that circled his head like an old-fashioned collar was black, no grey, like the thick moustache that hung from his heavy nose. His skin was London pale, like mine, yet held the clarity of health, and I realized as I looked at him that he was one of the very few people I actually liked.

  ‘Well?’ He repeated.

  ‘All right, I’ll do it,’ I heard myself say.

  His face lit up from within. ‘Good,’ he said softly. Then: ‘Let’s drink up and get back to the office.’

  For a moment I was filled with the purest elation: If I can do this, I can do anything…

  Then the chatter of the people in the bar faded until they were like children in a far-off playground.

  What have 1 done?

  Marcus touched my shoulder and I followed him out.

  I can’t do it.

  My legs were like wheels.

  But you must, you've just told him you will.

  The traffic became muted, there was just me and the lonely shrilling of the sparrows — and Marcus, I think he was saying something. And the scratchy wingbeat of a pigeon pushing its way through the plain trees in the bright summer afternoon.

  By the time we got back to Hannibal House, I had myself under control. You’ve done it before, I said silently, you just force yourself, a matter of willpower.

  We reached Marcus’s office, he waxed me to a seat, seized a box file and shuffled through its contents.

  ‘The West Thames incident,’ he said, opening a file and passing a newspaper cutting to me.

  The article was from the Guardian of July 1984 and was peppered with headings such as ‘Artery of Conspiracy’ and ‘Vein Glory’. The up-shot was that the three men, the laboratory manager from the Transfusion Centre, a consultant haematologist from the Heart Hospital and a contact man had stolen something like £100,000 donations and sold them to a Scandinavian drugs firm for an estimated £158,000 profit. The consultant got three years, and the others two each.

  ‘The amazing thing is,’ Marcus said as I handed it back, ‘that most of the blood was Time-expired, that is, too old to he used as actual blood. They extracted the plasma from it, in the consultant’s garage of all places, and sold that.’

  I fought to keep my voice steady. ‘If it was out of date, how come there was anything of value in it?’

  ‘Oh, apparently some of the components last indefinitely if you can get them out in time. However, as our three friends found to their cost, you have to be careful. Some of the plasma got infected with bacteria and spoilt, the drugs firm complained, and the whole thing came out.’

  ‘Unfortunate for them.’

  ‘Very. Well, as you can imagine,’ he continued, ‘this was all extremely embarrassing for the blood barons. Donor recruitment is difficult enough as it is, and when they heard that the people who’ve been setting themselves up as saints are really crooks, they say “Bugger that for a laugh” and stop donating.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that,’ I muttered, for something to say.

  ‘Well, our masters reacted quickly for once, starting with this.’

  He handed me a DHSS circular which said that in future all blood donations should be traceable from when they are taken from the donor until they are given to the patient.

  ‘Fair enough,’ I commented, handing it back.

  ‘Easier said than done, so next, the computerization of the Transfusion Service was sped up, while Sir surreptitiously ordered a statistical study on all Centres in the country.’

  ‘What were the parameters?’

  ‘Basically, he compared blood usage per unit population. You can study the details later. As I mentioned before, one Centre looked suspicious, Tamar in Devon.’

  ‘Then, last week, this arrived on sir’s desk,’ Like a rabbit out of a hat, he produced an opened brown envelope.

  The letter inside was headed ‘Tamar Blood Transfusion Centre’.

  Dear Sir (it read),

  We t
hink you should know that there are people here who are stealing blood, same as they did in London. We don’t work for the money we get for this to happen, we think you should do something about it.

  Yours truly,

  A Wellwisher.

  I glanced at the envelope. First class stamp, postmarked Tamar, Devon.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Marcus, as I handed it back.

  ‘Rather determinedly working-class,’ I said.

  ‘True, but are the contents real, or just spite?’

  ‘I’d say both,’ I said after a pause. ‘Somebody’s trying to drop someone else in it.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘The virtuous overtones, I’ve seen them before. “We think you should know…” and so on.’

  Marcus nodded slowly. ‘I agree. So now all we have to decide is when you go.’

  So this was it.

  ‘What about cover?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s been taken care of. The Centre was about to have a work study done on it—’

  I let out a groan.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I take it you want me to go as a work study officer?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, after tax inspectors they’re the most hated—’

  ‘Good cover, my boy, they’ll be so busy hating you, they’ll never suspect why you’re really there. Now listen, I’ve fixed something about work study under a Miss Heather…’

  ‘Marcus,’ I interrupted, you said that these centres are being computerized.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t it be better if I went as a computer officer, to see how they’re getting on?’

  He shrugged, ‘You could be right. Unfortunately, they’re expecting a Work Study Officer.’

  ‘It’d be a pleasant surprise for them.’

  He grunted. ‘You’d better sort that out with Miss Heather. Meanwhile, I think you ought to study this lot—’ The telephone on his desk rang, he said, ‘Excuse me’ and stretched out his hand.

  Sir Edward!’ As he uttered the name, he seemed to grow by two inches as though he were sitting to attention. I rose to leave, but he waved me back to my chair.