MacLeod was driving to work. It was 8.30 am on a Monday morning and he was due on duty in Cambridge at 9 am. He’d spent the weekend off duty in North London where he’d enjoyed himself. It had been a weekend of old friends, parties and sleep, which was in considerable contrast with life at the hospital which consisted of new friends, parties and no sleep.

MacLeod was in good time for work. He had to be punctual because he was on call that day. ‘On call’ meant that he was ‘on take’ in Casualty and was responsible for holding the cardiac arrest bleep. For MacLeod, apart from arrest bleep dramas, life on take in Cambridge was generally uneventful as there were very few admissions.

The traffic between North London and Cambridge hadn’t been too bad and, driving against the riptide of the commuter rush, MacLeod had the pleasure of contrasting the ease of his journey into Cambridgeshire with the view of cars queuing on their way into town. It wasn’t exactly schadenfreude but it was a near enough feeling that MacLeod embraced as he contemplated the lines of cars stacked neatly up against traffic lights and roundabouts. In his Mini, the heater rattled and clouds of damp air tainted with engine oil and exhaust gases gusted around the car. Heating the Mini was a balance of risks. The choice was between frostbite or death by carbon monoxide poisoning. When MacLeod felt close to suffocation he turned the heating off. When he could no longer feel his toes, the heater went back on. The Mini was a magnificent antique. Rust spots spattered the paintwork and an enamel AA badge decorated the radiator grill.

The countryside passed by pleasantly, the new green of the trees beautiful in the spring’s bright sunshine. The radio was on and the Today programme was in full flow. Some poor cabinet minister was being exquisitely tortured by an interviewer, who completely unreasonably was insisting that he had a straightforward answer to a simple question, an answer that was impossible to give if he wanted to maintain the prime minister’s confidence and remain in office. MacLeod and four million listeners had no sympathy at all for the minister’s pain. The interviewer ratcheted up the thumbscrews and the minister squealed …

‘If you could give me just a moment, I could answer your question …’

‘Certainly, Minister …’

But the answer related to a policy triumph in another unrelated area and was quite irrelevant to the interviewer’s question which was not surprisingly repeated. MacLeod chuckled as the minister squirmed.

The Mini passed on through Hertfordshire’s villages, through narrow roads designed for carthorses but not forty ton trucks, where the windows and walls of roadside houses were spattered with road kill, mud and grime. The Mini rattled over rumble strips, slowing at crossings, obeying the dire warnings that pedestrians, old people, deer, elephants, chickens and children were about to cross the road. ‘Beware’ and MacLeod braced himself, ready for the unshackled triceratops that was about to jump into his path.

In the bare countryside again, gulls wheeled over naked fields, calling, cackling, while a red tractor pulled a plough, earth spilling up and over its blades. In the cities and towns of MacLeod’s life, there were pavements and houses, shops and crowds. Every time that he drove out of London, he faced anew the revelation that England was not entirely urban and that there was a pastoral life unnoticed by urbanites.

Ten minutes passed and the interviewer’s incisions without anaesthetic on the cabinet minister ceased. It was time for the sports roundup and the programme continued with the chirpy news of yet another glorious England Test defeat, and onwards and upwards to a fabulous quarter-final tennis disaster. As the commentator joked with the defeated stars, MacLeod, looking in his rear-view mirror, noticed a car creeping closer and closer to his rear bumper. The proximity of the car agitated him. It was too close, and disturbed the even tenor of his journey to Cambridge. MacLeod accelerated a little to keep a safe distance between his Mini and the car on his tail. The road was single lane, narrowed by an arcade of trees. MacLeod lowered his window and shouted,

‘Overtake, you bastard!’ and, in response, a squadron of pigeons tumbled from the trees above.

But MacLeod’s pursuer couldn’t overtake; there was just no room on the road for two cars abreast of each other. The car edged closer.

‘Crikey,’ thought MacLeod, ‘he’s in a hurry.’ And he accelerated to get away.

But MacLeod was still not going fast enough for the driver of the Ford Mondeo who kept close to the Mini’s back bumper, too close, in MacLeod’s view, for safety. MacLeod put his foot down further on the Mini’s throttle. The speedometer registered 45 mph, quite fast enough in MacLeod’s view for a Monday morning drive in the country. But the man on his tail seemed dissatisfied with progress and made no concession to MacLeod’s increased speed. He was still there hanging on to the Mini’s bumper, too close for comfort.

‘What an idiot,’ thought MacLeod, ‘I’m not going any faster. He can nob off.’

The Mondeo edged closer and, with a sigh, MacLeod pressed down on the accelerator pedal and the Mini edged faster. The car was going at 50 mph which was almost at the antique’s limit. MacLeod had travelled at 60 mph, once, but that was when the car was a puppy and when MacLeod had been trying to terrify his mother into increasing his medical school allowance. As might have been predicted, his attempt at blackmail had failed badly and his allowance had been stopped.

The cavalcade of two cars sped into yet another Hertfordshire village and despite his efforts to shake off the Ford, the car was still glued to the Mini’s bumper.

‘What’s the guy on?’ MacLeod growled to himself, and for answer came there silence.

But still the car behind him was forcing MacLeod to go faster and faster, driving too close, pushing him to the car’s limit. There was no place in the narrow country lanes for the Mondeo to pass and so MacLeod responded to the maniac by driving a little faster and then a lot faster.

‘This is ridiculous! I don’t want to go faster.’

And MacLeod slowed to a sedate 45 mph which seemed to get the driver behind him even more irritated. By now he’d been pursuing MacLeod for at least ten minutes and at every point in the pursuit there had been no opportunity for him to pass. MacLeod wound the window down and cool country air swept into the interior. He rested his elbow on the sill and tried to relax but the guy behind him wouldn’t let him drive at a comfortable speed.

‘This is absurd!’

And MacLeod stabbed at the accelerator pedal, attempting to get away from the Mondeo’s embrace. But the attempt was useless and the driver of the Mondeo stuck close matching MacLeod’s speed with his speed. It was a duet for idiots, through bends and over zebra crossings, a duet for fools suddenly punctuated by the shrieking lunacy of a siren.

‘The police!’ MacLeod announced to the Today programme. ‘About time too! They’ll sort him out. The police are after the bugger.’

MacLeod looked smugly into his rear-view mirror, expecting to see a troop of police cars ringed around the Mondeo. But there were none. He couldn’t see a single patrol car nudging the speeding driver to the curb. However, what MacLeod could see when he looked in the mirror was a blue light on the roof of the Mondeo and a gesticulating Mondeo driver urging MacLeod to pull over to the side of the road. So MacLeod did as he was bid, but it was an indignant MacLeod who slowed down, a MacLeod roused to incandescence by the injustice of his situation. MacLeod was furious and he roared,

‘I’m innocent. The bugger pushed me into speeding. I was just trying to avoid being rammed. It’s an outrage! What a bastard!’ But to nobody’s surprise there was no reply from the Today program.

MacLeod and his Mini turned in to the side of the road. The Mondeo pulled up behind the Mini and a uniformed policeman got out of the car. The officer slammed the car door shut, put his helmet on and adjusted its tilt. Backlit in stroboscopic blue, the policeman strolled with some considerable deliberation towards MacLeod. The menace of his approach reminded MacLeod of a lion creeping up on an iguana.

The policeman stood by the passenger door of the Mini, and unleashed a notebook and a biro from his jacket pocket. He flicked open the book and, licking his thumb, turned to a fresh charge sheet.

Then he bent to look through the window at MacLeod, and MacLeod, staring at the policeman, saw an open-mouthed image of himself reflected in the eyes of the law. The policeman straightened up, and slowly, with heavy and deliberate footsteps, walked to the front of the car to take down the Mini’s registration number. MacLeod got out of the car and stepped on to the pavement. He watched the policeman writing in a laboured fashion, the heavily impressed biro marking the dimensions of MacLeod’s Hell-toasted misdemeanours. The policeman completed the entry in his notebook and looked up at MacLeod.

‘I must advise you, Sir, that you have committed an offence and that anything that you might choose to say will be taken down and used in evidence against you …’

The weight of the pause in the policeman’s statement was so heavy it seemed to MacLeod to exceed the known weight of the universe.

‘The bastard!’ he thought, ‘The evil black-hearted bastard. How could he do that to me? It was bloody well him that was speeding, not me. He made me go faster, the swine. Blasted police! There I was just tootling along minding my own business until he came along behind me and pushed me to go faster. And because he seemed to want to get past me and there was no bloody room to pass, I went faster. It was his blasted fault – not mine!’

The policeman, unaware of the tenor of MacLeod’s thoughts continued to make notes. Clouds of anger coalesced in MacLeod’s heart and bubbled up into a boiling storm of bilious black rage.

‘Anything I might choose to say? I bloody well do have something to say …’

And MacLeod with admirable presence of mind continued,

‘I was travelling to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge where I have to be on duty at 9 o’clock, and hold the cardiac arrest bleep …

MacLeod pointedly tugged at his coat sleeve and looked down at his watch.

‘…and you have made me late.’

The policeman stopped writing, looked up from his notepad and gawped at MacLeod, mouth wider than the Blue Nile.

‘Please write that down, officer. And don’t forget the last bit. I’ll repeat it for you just in case. And you have made me late. Got that have you? And you have made me late.’

The policeman gulped and, tipping his helmet back, scratched his head.

‘May I see your driving licence, Sir?’ And after checking the details, gave it back to him. ‘You may complete your journey, Sir.’

MacLeod returned to his seat shaking with indignation, vibrating with a fury made incandescent by the trap into which he’d been tipped by the policeman’s driving.

‘So bloody unfair …’ he thought, as he completed the final fifteen miles of his journey to Cambridge. But his mood calmed as the miles faded, and he rolled into the hospital car park only a few minutes late for handover.

It was a quiet Monday in Casualty with its usual roll call of drug overdoses, alcohol excesses and sexually transmitted diseases, all problems for which the nurses and doctors on duty for the day needed treatment before they could be reasonably expected to deal with the tidal wave of patients who swamped the waiting area. It was a relaxing day, otherwise, and MacLeod was able to go from Casualty to carry out a ward round of the thin-skinned, stick-boned mass of anorexic patients whom the professor was treating with infusions of a particular jungle juice. There was no logical basis for the infusions that any medical person apart from the bonkers professor could ascertain. But who on this earth would go against the views of a distinguished Cambridge professor?

The professor’s clinical standards were generally bizarre. He treated heart failure with laxatives and respiratory complaints with antidepressants. Patients with any serious illness who came under his care were subject to the oddest experimentation. As a result, the professor’s success rate was low, and few were cured by his approach to medicine. Word of the professor’s eccentricities got out, and it was whispered in the community that he was to be avoided at all costs, because his touch was the kiss of death. And the consequence was that, after a few years of professorial life at Addenbrooke’s, no GP referred any patients to the professor for review in outpatient clinics.

The professor’s only chance for new patient referral came when he was on emergency take. The emergency take rota was very rigidly structured at Addenbrooke’s. Every consultant had his regular day on call. The professor’s day on take was Monday, and counterintuitively, although Monday take started at 9 am on Monday, it finished on Tuesday at 9 am. Knowing of the madness of the professor of medicine, the local GPs avoided referring patients to Casualty on Mondays. The GPs’ patients were managed at home for as long as possible with the hope that prayer and the judicious application of antibiotics, poultices and diuretics would tide them over to the period when a rational hospital consultant with conventional thought processes would be in charge of casualty admissions. All the more mobile and sentient patients either opted for a bus trip to a neighbouring hospital for treatment or waited for the clock to hit 9 am on Tuesday before dialling 999.

In a way, MacLeod rather enjoyed his post as house officer to the professor, its quietness and absence of Casualty GP referrals was a beautiful interlude of tranquillity compared with the roaring pace of his previous post.

MacLeod’s Monday passed uneventfully; the two very ill patients who couldn’t possibly have put off admission because of the seriousness of their conditions and lack of mobility had been dealt with immaculately. Because there had been no other work to do, these two patients had been blessed by the quality of attention that the Queen or her consort might have received had they chanced to have been brought into Casualty. Investigations were ordered immediately, drips set up within moments and referrals to other services organised within panache and aplomb.

On her way out of Casualty on a lumbering trolley taking her to X-ray, half of Macleod’s admissions had cranked herself up on an elbow and said,

‘It’s wonderful, the NHS. Couldn’t have been better if I’d gone private, dear.’ And MacLeod had nodded his agreement.

So, for MacLeod, the day’s take had been a peaceful arrangement of leisurely diagnoses and academic discourse with his ribald colleagues, who were jealous of MacLeod’s gift of a peaceful take day. His colleagues rushed from one medical emergency to another whilst MacLeod had another coffee, scratched himself leisurely and got on with reading both Grazia and Hello magazines in great detail. MacLeod hoped that the material covered in these learned journals would help him pass his membership to the Royal College of Physicians, but this unfortunately was not very likely.

The only blip in the pleasant tenor of MacLeod’s beautiful days on the wards at Addenbrooke’s had a human form. That human form was embodied in the wart-enamelled person of a certain ward sister. Sister Crippen was rather short. Her uniform was unnaturally crisp, stiffened by pure thoughts and the ill wishes of past housemen. She was a straight-sided woman with a paranoid squint and a monstrous moustache. MacLeod wondered if the moustache had been dyed for gravitas. Sister Crippen’s hands were reddened by obsessive washing and her dandruff-flecked hair was pulled tight from her skull by the ferocious grip of a hair clip with a sidereal sparkle. None of her physical irregularities were her fault, of course, but they were a reflection of the ugliness of Sister Crippen’s miserable mind.

Sister Crippen was deeply religious, religious in an evangelical way that strove for the salvation of her staff nurses’ souls, a process that was regularly thwarted by the efforts of MacLeod to find his own salvation through those very same souls. Sister Crippen and MacLeod were engaged in an essential struggle for the souls of the staff nurses – she likened his efforts to those of the Devil whilst he likened her efforts to those of an uglier, more warty version of the same sort of thing. MacLeod’s aims were pure, his mind focusing on the political and intellectual development of those angels in female form. It was his ambition to help them realise their full potential, even if meant taking them to the pub to do so. As a result of this and many other of MacLeod’s selfless activities, Sister Crippen had come unfairly to the view that MacLeod was a simulacrum of a human whose external form clothed a cesspool of black pus and vomit and a heart on loan from Loch Ness.

Monday take night had been a night of unbroken sleep for MacLeod. Casualty had not called and the wards had been peaceful. It was ever thus working for the professor and such a contrast with the lives on take of his colleagues, where the bustle of disease in all its malevolence filled all their weary hours.

MacLeod got up early to make ready for the post-take ward round. He dressed, shaved, ate breakfast and then rushed to the ward to write up the notes and check results. MacLeod stood stooped over the notes trolley frantically updating his patients’ records. There was quiet on the wards, the patients tidied into their beds in expectation of the professor’s rounds. The ward clock raced to 9 am. The ward swing doors pushed open and the professor, ignoring MacLeod, strode into the ward, knocked on the door of Sister’s office and walked in, closing the door behind him.

Over the months of his house job, MacLeod had observed the professor’s routine to be entirely predictable. The professor consistently arrived on the wards at the stroke of 9 am keen to go round the admissions, concerned that he carried out his duties meticulously. It was MacLeod’s role to be on the wards when he arrived, to be part of the greeting party of doctors and nurses. The professor always wore grey, his single-breasted suit borrowed from a bank clerk, although his college tie was likely to be his own. The professor’s hair was parted on the right and slicked back with a good dose of pomade; his shoes gleamed and his footsteps had the crisp retort of shattering ice.

The door to Sister’s office swung open, and the professor, followed by a line of senior doctors and nurses, strode out into the ward and made their his way to MacLeod and the notes trolley. MacLeod straightened up to greet the professor and his jolly entourage.

‘Hello, Prof!’ was greeted by the curtest of nods.

The doctors and nurses clustered together around the notes trolley at the side of the tiny doctor’s desk in the centre of the ward. The professor pulled out the medical folder of the first of his three in-patients. He was obsessive in his review of the patients’ records. Stooped over the trolley, he rustled through the clerking notes and checked every single blood result, peering at the pages of medical records. As he flicked through sheaves of results, the professor seemed lost in his thoughts, rarely commenting on a patient’s management, only concerned that processes had been followed, and results noted and dealt with.

The professor’s ward rounds were formal and required that MacLeod should present each patient to the professor. He was not allowed to make his presentations with reference to the patients’ records – these were for the professor’s inspection. Each folder was opened in turn and spread out on the trolley. The professor thumbed through the notes and sought out MacLeod’s clerking. As MacLeod gave the patient’s history, the professor’s index finger traced MacLeod’s words on the page, his finger following his presentation line by line.

The day seemed strange and oppressive to MacLeod. The ward seemed tense. As MacLeod presented his first case to the professor, it felt as though the silence of the ward was following him and as if the eyes of the nearly dead and the merely sick were focused on him, as if pestilence and plague, sickness and malaise were hanging on his every word.

As the professor scanned the patients’ notes, the senior registrar, the two registrars, sister and two staff nurses stood to attention, waiting on his comments, attentive and professional. MacLeod was somehow not of that group. He was a stranger on the outside of the circle of doctors and nurses, a stranger observing Medicine’s manners.

MacLeod was amused to note that the posture of the senior registrar mirrored that of the professor, the senior registrar bent down over the notes trolley when the professor bent and straightened up when the professor stood up. The senior registrar glared at the registrars when the professor glared. His lips followed the professor’s questioning of the juniors, forming silent words that echoed his consultant’s words. The senior registrar smiled at the ward sister when the professor smiled at the frightful harridan, but unlike the professor’s smiles, his smiles were not returned by her. Sister Crippen stood stock still, her eyes only on the professor, the curl of her lips flickering only for the professor, waiting for his comments, a handmaiden for his needs.

MacLeod didn’t attempt any exchange of even the most superficial of courtesies with Sister Crippen. It was a waste of his time. She didn’t speak to him, unless forced by the most extraordinary circumstance. She didn’t look at him, except by accident. When MacLeod spoke, her demeanour became a fortress state of crossed-arm rigidity. Sister Crippen made it obvious that she loathed and despised him, hated him with a febrile candour, abhorred him with a rancid fervour. Sister Crippen’s feelings for MacLeod boiled and bubbled, and from the volcano of her opprobrium, sour clouds of rumbling rancour erupted and spilled out onto the ward linoleum. Sister Crippen avoided any sight of him, was deaf to his voice and only breathed air that had avoided his lungs. In his presence, her moustache bristled and her squint expanded to fill her face.

But regardless of Sister Crippen’s approbation, the ward round was going well. Two of the professor’s patients had been presented by MacLeod and no fault had been found. The professor had listened to the cases, agreed with the diagnoses and had supported the need for the investigations ordered.

‘Quite right!’ he’d said and this was equivalent to anyone else’s ‘Well done!’.

At this, the senior registrar sniffed and Sister Crippen shuffled and glared. MacLeod went on to present one of the previous week’s admissions, a poor old boy who’d been picked up unconscious on the street. The man had been found to have had a stroke and looked like he might never recover. MacLeod had phoned the man’s GP and had managed to get from him a history of poorly controlled hypertension. On that basis, the stroke was considered likely to have been haemorrhagic, and unfortunately that diagnosis was correct.

‘Good, good,’ said the professor stroking his chin and smiling broadly.

The professor seemed pleased with the diagnosis, and MacLeod thought, ‘How odd!’.

It was very strange to be delighted at misfortune of others, but it emerged that the reason that the professor was so thrilled was nothing to do with his pleasure at sharpness of MacLeod’s clinical acumen. No, the professor was simply pleased that the correct investigations had been carried out in the correct order.

It was now 9.30 am, and MacLeod was ecstatic that things were going well. There had been no hiccough on the ward round and with the final patient presented, the group of doctors and nurses were getting ready for the long drift around the patients. It was almost time for the meet and greet section of the professor’s regal procession from the throne room of his research laboratory to the bedsides of the sick. MacLeod knew that the professor enjoyed his rounds, liked the time spend standing over the sick, palpating this, listening to that, and all the while reminiscing, in his anecdotage about the famous clinicians who’d taught him as a student and junior doctor. And although he felt in his heart that he shouldn’t, MacLeod quite liked the stories, almost enjoyed the rambling relics of a time long since gone.

So, back to the patient and MacLeod continued his story of the poor old fellow with a stroke, the GP, the CT scan, the haemorrhage, the lack of recovery, the need to consider long-term social care, the wait for a possible secondary haemorrhage, which might be the best outcome all things considered. But it was the professor’s view that in the context of a stroke, it was early days. He felt that the patient shouldn’t be written off as there might be neurological recovery even though the present situation looked dire.

And it was just at that point that MacLeod’s bleep went off. The bleep punctuated the professor monologue on the possibility of late recovery from major stroke, but the professor carried on regardless, ignoring the bleep’s interruption. MacLeod seized the opportunity to take a stealthy glance at his bleep’s display and saw that he had an outside call. In MacLeod’s view, outside calls were the only reason to have a bleep, allowing the junior doctor additional contact beyond mobile phones with the outside world.

‘I’ll take that for you, Dr MacLeod.’

MacLeod was startled by the offer. It was Sister Crippen, who’d skipped around the notes trolley and was standing in front of him, hand outstretched to take the bleep from him and answer his call.

‘How extraordinary!’ he thought. ‘She never does that! Answer my bleep! Crikey! She’s more likely to throw a bedpan at me than answer my bleep.’

‘Thank you, Sister.’

Trying to suppress a look of amazement at this unusual generosity, MacLeod handed Sister Crippen his bleep. She took it from him, looked at the display and went to the ward office to take the call, stalking away from the ward round, the thump of her heels on the ward floor reverberating through the entire structure of the hospital, rattling the drip stands, shaking the beds and rocking the notes trolley.

The professor’s attempts to educate his juniors continued, with a history of neurosurgical intervention in haemorrhagic stroke. It seemed that the professor had personally known all the great clinicians who had made any sort of contribution to the subject. MacLeod looked around at his colleagues and noted the glazed look in their eyes as they daydreamed of anything, of anything other than the history of surgical interventions in haemorrhagic stroke.

The thump of Sister Crippen’s footsteps grew closer, and she re-joined the little group of doctors and nurses around the trolley. A smile played at the edges of her lips. MacLeod was curious to know the cause of this smile. He had not seen her smile before. MacLeod stared at Sister Crippen with puzzlement. And then Sister Crippen coughed violently. One of the junior registrars looked up at her, his attention caught by her coughing. She coughed again more loudly, and the rest of the group looked up and stared at her, apart from the professor, who was lost in his exposition of the causes, treatment and outlook of haemorrhagic stroke.

‘Ahemmmmmm!’ she spluttered.

Her coughing fit caught the attention of everyone from the professor to the ward clerk. The ward cleaner stopped mopping and the X-ray porter ceased pushing a wheelchair through the ward and looked at Sister Crippen. Every patient in every bed was transfixed. What was the matter with Sister Crippen? The coughing continued, until that point when even the professor stopped talking.

‘Are you all right, Sister?’ the professor asked solicitously. ‘Would you like a glass of water?’

The ward was hushed; all attention was concentrated on Sister Crippen. Silence reigned and, apart from the coughing, there was no other noise. And then, attention garnered, the coughing suddenly stopped. An unpleasant gleam appeared in Sister Crippen’s eyes. A complacent smirk crept over her face. Her squint became exaggerated. Sister Crippen’s moustache bristled. The professor looked anxiously at Sister Crippen and the registrars stared.

The eyes of all upon her, Sister Crippen turned dramatically to MacLeod and in the loudest of voices boomed,

‘Dr MacLeod, It’s the police. They want to speak to you.’

Sister Crippen smirked with the deepest satisfaction and the assembled team of doctors and nurses gawped at MacLeod.

It was as if Sister Crippen had been waiting for that call from the moment two months ago when MacLeod had set foot on her ward. With that call, which she had the foresight and intuition to take, she had been given the evidence that confirmed her view that MacLeod was deeply bad. Sister Crippen had always known in her heart that MacLeod was evil. She contemplated the options …

‘Is he a serial killer? Is he a thief? A murderer? Had he committed unspeakable crimes? Whatever his villainy, and he’s surely a criminal, here’s evidence that he’s up to no good, that he’s been responsible for the worst of crimes against humanity.’

And here, with this phone call, was the vindication that Sister Crippen had been waiting for. This call from the Baldock Police Station desk sergeant was the call that she had known would come, some time, some day. And that time was now – today was a good day for Sister Crippen. She had known all along that MacLeod was evil. And was satisfied now she was right.

Sister Crippen shuffled the sweet mass of satisfaction around in her mind and smirked. She felt very good. She felt very good indeed. Sister Crippen savoured victory; Sister Crippen sucked on righteousness, and victory and righteousness tasted like parma violets.

The doctors and nurses stared at MacLeod, and the patients stared at MacLeod.

‘Goodness!’ they thought.

‘What has he done?’ They were shocked. They felt anxious.

‘The police! The police calling the hospital! What on Earth has he been up to? What has he done! Bad boy! The police?’

‘Must be serious! Gracious! And goodness me, he’s touched me. That doctor, he’s had his hands on my bits.’

But there was no element of shock in Sister Crippen’s mind. She had always known her man. She had known him from the start, known that MacLeod was bad.

‘Those poor girls that he’s tempted! Well, don’t say that I didn’t warn them right from the start. I told them he was a villain. And now here’s that call from the police. They’ve caught up with him at last. He’s a criminal. They’ll come to get him shortly, come and take him into custody. He’ll be in prison for years.’

Sister Crippen’s smile extended beyond her face. It felt good to her that justice was at last on its way. It was such a relief to her that Her Majesty’s prison’s cells would be cosseting MacLeod in their unforgiving depths.

Sister Crippen decided that she would repeat her words now that she had everyone’s full attention.

‘The police, Dr MacLeod, the police,’ she echoed.

‘They’re on the phone. You’re wanted, you know.’

And the happiest of smiles spread joyously across her miserable face. Sister Crippen chuckled happily, her thoughts dallying with images of MacLeod in the dock, MacLeod in prison, MacLeod hanging by the neck …

‘You better take the call, Dr MacLeod,’ spluttered the professor.

MacLeod was puzzled, MacLeod was concerned, MacLeod was just a little bit worried about the unknown crime with which he was about to be confronted.

MacLeod walked to Sister’s office, the eyes of all of the patients, doctors and nurses following his progress. He opened the office door and took up the receiver from where it lay on Sister’s desk, amidst copies of ward nursing rotas and theatre lists.

‘Hello? This is MacLeod speaking.’

‘Sergeant Crabbe here. Baldock Police.’

‘How can I help you, Sergeant?’

‘Ah, Dr MacLeod! Good to speak to you, Sir. Just checking …’

‘Checking what, Sergeant?’

‘Well, Doctor, one of my officers was on traffic duty on Monday and he booked you for speeding … and your statement was rather unusual. So I thought that I’d better check that you were a bona fide doctor …’

‘I see, Sergeant. Well, I can confirm that I am who I say I am.’

‘Thank you, Dr MacLeod. Having called the hospital, checked with the switchboard and with your ward sister and yourself, I think then we can conclude that you are, indeed, a doctor and that you did in fact have a legitimate reason to be travelling rather faster than you should have been …’

MacLeod held his breath at this point in the conversation.

‘… and furthermore I am able to say that, in view of the circumstances and the nature of your statement, I am rather inclined to let the matter drop. We will not be pressing charges.’

‘Thank you, Officer.’

‘Goodbye, Doctor. And hopefully you won’t be speeding again, will you, Doctor?’

‘Certainly not, Sergeant.’

The phone line cut. MacLeod scratched his head and, with a grin, silently whooped to himself:

‘Victory! I beat the bugger. It’s a triumph of good over evil!’

MacLeod put down the receiver and returned to join the ward round where he found the doctors and nurses waiting for him. Their eyes were upon him as he closed the door of Sister’s office and walked nonchalantly towards them.

‘Well, MacLeod?’ the professor asked.

‘Yes, thank you, Professor. All very well indeed, as I’m sure Sister will be delighted to hear.’

But the look on Sister Crippen’s face was more than a million miles from delight, as she contemplated the grin on MacLeod’s face while he continued with the professor’s ward round and moved on to assess the next patient.