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JIM
I got one of the DCs to pick up John Finch and bring him in. He was with us within the hour. He
looked thinner than he had at the beginning of the week. I put the letter down in front of him.
‘Don’t take it out of the bag.’
He picked the bag up. Fingernails bitten to the quick. Shaking hands. He read out loud:
John Finch will now understand how it feels to lose a child.
It serves him right.
He has been arrogant, and now he will be humbled.
‘By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death will seize the doctor too.’
I watched him closely. He looked as if I’d swung a cudgel at his head, and made contact.
‘Who sent this? What is this?’
‘It arrived this morning. We don’t know who sent it. We’re hoping you can help us find out.’
The shaking in his hands spread to his wrists.
‘Is this my fault? Have I done this?’
‘Let’s not talk about fault. That’s not going to get us anywhere at this point. Do you have any idea
who might have sent it? We think it implies that the sender has had contact with you in a professional
capacity. I know I’ve asked you before, but I really need you to think about this again now. Do you
know of anybody who might have a grudge against you? A former patient?’
John Finch looked like the most beaten person in the world. He looked like a man watching all his
worst nightmares come true. His voice was tight with the effort it was costing him to control it. If I’m
honest, I found the interview unexpectedly hard, and I think that’s because I recognised myself in him.
I knew that if I was him, I would be broken too, and somehow, although it shouldn’t have, that got
under my skin. I don’t know if it was my fatigue, or the way he tried so hard to hold on to his dignity,
or perhaps both, but there it was, a small feeling of solidarity with him that I shouldn’t have allowed
myself.
‘My patients are children, detective. They don’t tend to bear grudges. In fact their view of the
world is often beautifully simple, beautifully fair.’
He ran the fingertips of one hand around his eye socket.
‘But they have families, and, sometimes – rarely – you lose a child during surgery, and the families
can’t accept it. They blame you. Even when there’s nothing you could have done. Even when the
surgery was your only option because without it the child would have died.’
‘Can you think of any families who might have cared more than others?’
‘Cared enough to take my son in revenge? An eye for an eye?’
‘Yes.’
He shook his head. ‘Like I said before, there were one or two who tried to sue the hospital, but
even that isn’t very unusual. It’s a risk we take in our profession.’ He passed a hand across his
forehead, squeezed his temples. ‘I can’t imagine them doing anything this extreme, I really can’t, but I
suppose there is one family that sticks in my mind as being more persistent than the others. I can give
you the name of the child, the father’s details will be on the records at the hospital.’
I pushed a piece of paper and a pen across the desk towards him. ‘Write down the name for me,’ I
said. ‘The one that springs to mind. And write down the person to contact at the hospital.’