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‘Hm!’ Geraldine continued to glare at her assistant, even as she unbuttoned and pulled off her white work coat. She dropped it in the middle of the floor and picked up her handbag from the nearby chair. ‘That requires a wash,’ she said dismissively, before walking across the room, out of the far door, and off down the stairs. Lucy said nothing.
Downstairs, Geraldine Payne emerged from the front door which she shared with two other dentists, an osteopath, and a homeopath, and turned left. She walked a dozen paces, and then turned left again into St John’s Street. She walked north along its western pavement until she reached a side-street where she stopped and fell into conversation with – remarkably – the self-same Sarah Russell who had exited her dental surgery only two minutes prior to her. A casual observer would have seen them engage in an intense, and at times animated conversation, though quite what they were talking about would have been hard to divine as they spoke in low tones, conscious of the fact that other persons beside themselves used this highly priced street to pass from the city centre of Oxford to the environs of Wellington Square and Little Clarendon Street with its university offices and trendy shops and eating and drinking establishments. However, while most of the passing pedestrians walked obliviously on, one slowed and then stopped. This not so casual observer did so because he knew them both.
Joseph Tull was an eighteen-year-old for whom the expression disconsolate youth might have been especially coined. His hair hung diagonally across his face as if it couldn’t be bothered to do anything else, his one mode of movement was a slow slouch, and even now he was running ten minutes late for his five o’clock tutorial at Cornforth College. Cornforth was not, as its name might have implied, a part of the university. Rather, it was one of a number of private educational establishments which had taken root in the city, trading on the kudos that an Oxford address gave them. Joseph Tull knew Sarah Russell via his parents, though he also knew her as an officious and unsympathetic administrator of Cornforth, and he knew Geraldine because she was his dentist too. And right now his dentist was hugging his college’s administrator. It might have been merely a hug of friendship or comfort, though Joseph’s suspicious nature doubted it. And then he smiled. For even from a distance he could see that Geraldine Payne’s hand, which had started high on Sarah Russell’s shoulder blade, was slipping gradually downwards, towards her waist, and then even further until it came to rest, albeit briefly, on her right buttock.
‘Glad to see you’re working hard!’ Joseph didn’t need to turn round. He knew Lucy Tull’s voice only too well.
‘Hi, Sis!’ he said, apparently unconcerned by her sarcastic greeting. ‘People watching is more fun,’ he continued, ‘especially when you know both parties.’
He nodded towards the two figures further up St John’s Street, who had now disengaged from their close encounter. Sarah Russell was resuming her walk north, towards Wellington Square, while Geraldine was retreating into the side alley, her mobile phone in her hand.
‘Don’t call me Sis,’ she snapped. ‘You know I hate it!’
‘I do,’ he agreed, as he moved off himself up St John’s Street. ‘See you, Sis!’
Dr Alan Tull left his surgery at 3.45 p.m. This was earlier than usual on a Wednesday, because although he never had an afternoon surgery on that day, he liked to use the time to catch up with his administrative tasks. And normally, as he cycled home, he did so with a sense of pleasure at another day over, for he was not a man for whom work was the only thing that mattered. He liked his job, even loved it at times, but he liked not being at work too. Today, however, he would have given anything to be working late rather than going home early to the meeting that he knew awaited him.
It took him approximately seven minutes to cycle home, home being a spacious and comfortable house in the very desirable Bainton Road, overlooking to the front the sports grounds of St John’s College, and to the rear the canal. Negotiating entry to the house took very nearly another five minutes: entry through the front door; unlocking and unbolting of the back door; unbolting the side gate and wheeling the bike through it; bolting the gate again; and then locking the bike to the immovable object of a metal bar that he had had fixed on to the back wall of the house. Alan Tull had no intention of making the life of either bike thieves or house breakers easy.
He had barely re-entered the house when he heard the doorbell ring violently. He started, despite the fact that he was expecting a visitor, and then walked reluctantly through the kitchen, along the short corridor, and across the hall.
‘Good afternoon, Graham,’ he said as he opened the door, trying to pretend that it was just a social visit.
The man who stood framed in the entrance was, in contrast to the angular Alan Tull, short and stocky. The doctor knew that he could be little over 30, yet he had already conceded much ground in the battle against baldness, not to mention the battle of the bulge. What remained of his hair was still defiantly black, but despite the circumstances Alan Tull was sufficiently vain to feel smugly pleased that his own grey hair
was more abundant even at his age. ‘Do come in,’ he said with a welcoming gesture.
Graham Drabble gave a curt grunt and thrust himself past his host into the hall. ‘Is anyone else here?’ he demanded.
Alan Tull shut the door, and shook his head. ‘Just me.’
‘In that case, let’s get it said here, and then I’ll go. I’ve no wish to stay longer than I must.’
‘It’s good of you—’ Alan began, but he never completed his ingratiating response, because Drabble had launched forcefully into the attack.
‘I want you to resign, Doctor, and if you don’t, I will make it my job to run you out of the medical profession.’
Alan Tull gulped. He had been expecting a rocky ride, but the bluntness of Drabble’s approach caught him unawares, and he felt a surge of nausea rise from his stomach. ‘Please, Graham,’ he said feebly. ‘Let’s talk about it calmly, reasonably.’
‘I’m perfectly calm, Tull,’ Drabble replied loudly, ‘and I have thought things through with all of my reason. Just answer this one question. Are you going to resign?’
‘Of course not!’ came the reply, less feeble this time. ‘Everyone makes mistakes from time to time.’
‘From time to time!’ There was incredulity in his voice. ‘The fact is, Tull, that for six months you misdiagnosed my mother. It took you half a year to refer her for a scan, and because of your incompetence she’s going to die long before she should have done. And none too pleasantly, either!’ His voice, at first a noisy bluster, had become strident with distress. ‘Either you resign, or I’ll hound you until you’re struck off the medical register.’
Tull felt his heart pounding. It was fear, and he knew it, though part of him – the rational part – told him that he had no reason to be afraid because he couldn’t possibly be struck off for what had happened. But he knew he could have done better, should have spotted it sooner. He felt guilty about that. ‘Graham,’ he said, summoning up all the shreds of assertiveness that were scattered around his body, ‘the BMA is not going to find against me for this. You know they won’t. I’m sorry, really sorry, but no good will come of this. I’ve known your mother for years. She’s been a patient at the practice for almost as long as I’ve been a GP. What we should be doing is concentrating on providing her with the best possible care. It’s amazing what can be done, nowadays.’
Drabble laughed, a single high-pitched explosion that ricocheted around the room with such force that Tull almost ducked to avoid it. ‘Next thing is you’ll be telling me that she was your favourite patient!’ And Drabble laughed again.
‘I don’t have favourites.’ Alan Tull prided himself on his professionalism, and even in the midst of stress this controlled his reaction. ‘Of course, I care a lot about my long-standing patients. I get fond of them. That’s only natural.’
‘You get fond of them!’ The tone of Drabble’s statement made Tull look at him sharply. He might be a bit bumbling, but Tull was no fool, and instinctively he realized that their conversation was leading into deeper, more dangerous waters.
‘Would you rather I hated them?’ he retorted, but he was floundering. He was paddling in the sea, the water was up to his knees, the sand was sucking at his feet and the tide was coming in.
‘Fondness is a dangerous thing,’ Drabble was saying. ‘Especially when the object of your fondness is a vulnerable, trusting woman, and you are unable to keep your feelings under control, Doctor. I was looking on the web only the other day. It’s amazing how many GPs get struck off for sexually abusing their patients.’
Tull gulped, and his mouth gaped, but at first no sound came out, as the sickening reality of where this was all leading dawned on him. His right hand pulled distractedly at his thinning hair, until finally some words came. ‘What are you accusing me of,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Because I can assure you I have never—’
