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Chapter 7

Rob

Rob Marwood climbs out of the black cab and shivers. London is a hell of a lot colder than St Lucia, that’s for damn sure. He makes the short trip across the pavement to the white stone steps of his apartment building, then picks up his wheelie case and carries it up to the front door. It feels weird to be back in crowded, dirty London again. His building’s five-storey, white-painted Georgian stone frontage, with its heavy black front door and matching iron balcony railings, is a far cry from the beach bungalow that he’s called his home for the last two weeks.

Letting himself in, he takes the lift to the top floor and enters his penthouse apartment. It’s spotless, as always, and bathed in the soft, amber glow of the setting sun. Rob smiles. He’s lived in a few places over the years, but this is definitely his favourite. And, he supposes, it should be. He’d hired the much sought-after designer, Jared Dominic, to gut the place and redesign it in a masculine yet light-filled way.

Leaving his wheelie case just inside the door, Rob walks across the dark hardwood floor of the entryway to the open living space. After all the travelling, he’s gasping for some caffeine. Thank God, his housekeeper Sandra has stocked the fridge and made sure there’s freshly ground coffee waiting for him to brew. Switching on the machine, he picks up the neat stack of post that Sandra’s left for him on the quartz countertop and flicks through the envelopes.

Credit card bill, wedding invitation to a distant cousin’s nuptials, bill, bill … His heart rate accelerates when he sees the official NHS Trust logo on the front of one of the envelopes. Ripping it open, Rob speed-reads the letter.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

This is a nightmare.

His hand trembles as he dials his lawyer’s number – his mobile, not his landline. Rob doesn’t want to have to faff around being put through by an assistant. He needs advice. Now.

‘Jefferson Barclay.’ The lawyer’s plummy tone sounds as self-satisfied as always.

‘Jeff, it’s Rob Marwood. There’s a problem.’

‘Rob, I thought you were off gallivanting in the Caribbean?’ chuckles Jeff.

‘I just flew back,’ says Rob, talking fast. He needs to get Jeff’s view. Needs help. ‘Look, I’ve just received formal notice. The patient’s wife has filed an appeal. They’re saying I was negligent. That I killed him.’ He glances back at the letter in his hand; the words seem to vibrate on the paper. ‘They’re saying further evidence has come to light; apparently there are several new witness statements alleging I was under the influence while on duty.’

‘I see,’ says Jeff. His tone is even: there’s no judgement but no support either.

‘What?’ asks Rob, becoming more exasperated. ‘You see what?’

‘It’s a figure of speech, old man,’ says Jeff, amicably. ‘Obviously I need to take a look at these new statements, but we faced down the previous investigation successfully, so I don’t think you need to be losing any sleep over this.’

‘Not lose any sleep? Jesus! This isn’t a slap-on-the-wrist situation. They’re saying I was high at work, Jeff. I’m invited to a disciplinary hearing in ten days’ time.’ Rob’s hand is shaking. He sets the phone down on the countertop and puts it on speaker. ‘They’re going to strike me off and throw me to the goddamn wolves.’

‘Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ says Jeff, his voice steady, calming. ‘They have to prove the negligence.’

Rob feels anything but calm. He shakes his head. ‘But I told the board already that it was a miscalculation. I’ve already put my hands up to that. And they said they weren’t referring it on any further. They said it was done, gone away.’

‘And it will be,’ says Jeff. ‘There were extenuating circumstances, I believe?’

‘Well … I … The patient notes weren’t very clear. We had a lot of emergencies coming in, stuff was coming through to me half completed or barely decipherable. It was like a bloody war zone …’

‘Exactly. And you’d been working a double shift, and it was the fourth time that week you’d done a double,’ says Jeff, smoothly. ‘You were dog-tired, but they needed you and you’re a loyal employee. I remember you told me there was a lot of sickness in the medical team so you were thin on the ground, and the patient was in a critical situation, yes?’

Rob nods. ‘Life or death. He was bleeding out. I had to put him under quickly so they could operate.’

‘Indeed, you were doing your best in extremely challenging circumstances,’ says Jeff, his tone soothing. ‘But in high-stress situations it’s easy to make mistakes, especially when you’ve not had the legal number of rest hours. You had an old sporting injury that was playing up, so you’d taken something for the pain. If, as they allege, you made a mistake, it was tragic, yes, but a mistake none the less. And your employer is the negligent party here, they were responsible for your welfare and the patient’s – they put you, their employee, in an impossible situation. They forced you to work far more hours than the law allows when you were already below par, without proper rest periods. Mistakes in that environment are sadly inevitable, and that is what we’ll argue.’

Rob’s silent for a moment, remembering the blond man in the Under Armour gear being rushed into theatre. He was an RTA victim, a rush-hour cyclist in his forties who’d been caught between an SUV and a bus, barely alive with his stats dropping by the second. There was blood everywhere. People were shouting. The lights in the theatre seemed overly bright, the machines overly loud, but that was probably due more to the bump of coke Rob taken to try to stay alert on the double shift he was working. He should’ve known coke on top of Fentanyl was a bad combination. He’s a bloody doctor. He should have bloody known.

‘Rob, you still there?’ asks Jeff.

He exhales hard. ‘I’m here.’

‘Look, I know it’s troublesome, but really don’t worry. We’re well prepared to fight this and I had the team work on a number of strategies. Why don’t you pop in to see me tomorrow morning, at, say, eleven? We’ll have a chat to set your mind at rest and start getting you prepped for the hearing.’

‘Okay,’ says Rob, feeling sick to his stomach. ‘What about my new job? I’m due to fly out in a few weeks. Should I tell the Dubai hospital board?’

‘I don’t think that’s necessary,’ replies Jeff, hastily. ‘Let’s see if we can squash this appeal first, shall we? There’s no need to scare the horses just yet.’

Rob’s left leg twitches, as if it wants to run. ‘Okay, yes, sounds good. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Good, good,’ says Jeff, the jovial bounce back in his tone. ‘See you at eleven.’

Hanging up, Rob puts his phone down on the counter beside the stack of post. He glances at the letter still in his hand and sees that it’s shaking.

What the hell am I going to do?

In the aftermath of the fatality, Rob had found out all he could about the patient. It’s amazing how much information you can find out about someone from Google, Facebook and the rest. He’d learned that the man had been forty-two when he died that evening on the operating table. He’d worked for a domestic abuse charity and volunteered every Friday night at a local food bank. He’d had a wife, Veronica, and two little girls: Bethany, aged 5, and Felicity, aged 7. They did a load of things together as a family – camping, wild swimming, horse riding, cooking. Rob had stared at the photos of them on Facebook for hours. They looked happy. So happy, Rob had been jealous of him even though the man was dead. His name was Angus Pearson and he had died within seconds of Rob injecting him with over six times the correct dosage of anaesthetic. All attempts to bring him back had failed.

Rob looks down at the letter in his hand and feels his stomach lurch. Whatever Jeff says, however confident he is about winning the appeal, Rob can’t see a way to clear his name. Deep down he knows he doesn’t deserve to, anyway.

He killed Angus Pearson.

As he puts the letter back into the envelope, Rob’s phone buzzes on the countertop beside him. He glances at the screen, now lit up with a text notification, and reads the message: They’ve found Hannah buried in the school basement. It’s awful. Call me. Lx.

For a moment it feels as if Rob’s heart has stopped beating.

Hannah? Found? In the school? Jesus.

This can’t all be happening.

It’s too much. Rob’s chest tightens and it feels as if the panic is going to overwhelm him. He hurries across to the drinks cabinet at the other end of the kitchen and curses Sandra for tidying the decanters from the counter. Removing the best stuff from the cabinet, he pours a generous measure into a tumbler and downs it in one, barely registering the sharp, fiery taste.

His hand trembles as he pours another. He gulps it down. Feels the fire this time.

And pours another.