Blood Work by Mark Pearson Read Free Book Online Page A

into it, her voice a hoarse whisper. 'I think I
might have been raped.'
    South Hampstead Hospital was built, like many
similar institutional buildings throughout the
country, in the mid-Victorian era. In the year 1860 to
be exact. It started life as a hospital for consumption
and other diseases of the chest and much of the old
Victorian architecture was still present, although new
buildings had been attached over the years, most
notably the teaching wing of the hospital which was
inaugurated in 1904. The majority of the property
was Grade II listed, now, which meant a lot of the
offices and consulting rooms were poorly heated,
relying on old, cast-iron radiators that the administration
hadn't yet managed to justify the expense of
replacing. What the rooms lost in terms of heat,
however, was more than made up for in terms of
ambience and in architectural charm.
    Jane Harrington's office was a testament to clutter.
The shelves lining her walls were jammed with
books, with papers, with articles clipped from
medical journals, with videos and DVDs and with a
poorly tended ivy or two in inappropriate pots. Her
equally cluttered desk sat beneath a bay window that
looked out over a small quadrangle, at the far end of
which stood the towered east wing of the original
hospital. The windows were leaded lights, the desk
was old oak and a visitor might be forgiven for
imagining they were in the study of a don from one
of the older colleges of Oxford or Cambridge.
    Jane hung up her telephone, shocked at what she
had heard. Kate Walker was more than just a dear
friend, she was like a younger sister to her.
    She drummed her fingers on her desk for a
moment, then snatched up her telephone and pushed
the button to connect with her administrative
assistant. 'Adrian, it's Jane. Can you cancel my
tutorials for this morning and rearrange as best you
can? Thank you.'
    She hung up again and looked out of the window
at a group of nurses who were walking across the
quad, their traditional black cloaks flapping in the
wind like a storytelling of ravens. She always thought
the collective noun rather odd. Less sinister, she
supposed, than a murder of crows. The cloaks were
originally coloured blue with the founding of the
hospital, but with the death of Prince Albert they had
been changed to black. Like the ties of Harrow
schoolboys, the colour was originally only to last for
a hundred years as a memorial to the German father
of nine, but like the school, again, South Hampstead
Hospital had stuck with it. Jane watched them
thoughtfully as they walked out of sight, hurrying out
of the persistent rain into the main part of the
hospital. She came to a decision and picked up the
telephone once more and punched in a number. 'I'd
like to speak to Dr Caroline Akunin please.'
    She waited for a moment while the call was put
through. 'Caroline. It's Jane Harrington. Have you
left for the frozen steppes yet or are you still on call
as a police surgeon?' She listened and nodded tersely.
'Good, I need a favour.'
    *
    The sight of a man's penis would not normally have
alarmed Valerie Manners. She was a nurse after all
and nearing retirement. She had seen more examples
of the male reproductive organ than most women of
her generation, even including those who had lived
through the free love era of the sixties and the wife-swapping
fad of the seventies. This one, however, was
attached to a raggedy man, and although not
impressive, was unpleasantly semi-priapic and being
wagged in her general direction as she cut though the
lower part of South Hampstead Common on her way
home after a late shift at the hospital. Caught off
guard, she ran off the path and through some trees
and bushes into open grassland, running uphill and
not looking back. She ran for three and a half minutes
and then stopped, realising that she wasn't being
followed. Panting for breath she leaned against a tree
and willed her wildly