Doctor Frigo Read Free

invariably swift, sure and a pleasure to watch.
    He had just made the abdominal incision. I was pulling on the ascending colon so that he could snip away the peritoneal reflections, when the mortuary attendant came in to say that I was wanted on the telephone.
    I told him to take a message. He said that it was someone from the Préfecture on behalf of a Commissaire Gillon and that the matter was urgent.
    Dr Brissac stopped cutting and waved his scissors impatiently. ‘Tell the Préfecture from me that Dr Castillo is too busy to speak,’ he said. ‘Tell them that he has a man’s entrails in his hands and that he will call back.’
    The attendant went away grinning and we worked on. Dr Brissac grunts a good deal as he works but does not usually talk much. However, when we got to the transverse colon he glanced up at me.
    ‘Do you know Commissaire Gillon?’
    ‘Very slightly, Doctor. A week or two ago his youngest boy gashed a leg swimming by a reef. The Commissaire brought him in to have the wound attended to. I happened to be on duty.’
    Dr Brissac pursed his lips. ‘He did not tell me about that.’ After a bit he went on. ‘He was at my house for bridge the other evening and was making enquiries about you. Not about your professional qualifications – he would have all that information in your dossier – but about your personal interests, your character.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘What did you do with your spare time apart from bedding your girl friend and that amateur photography of yours? When you were in charge of the mobile clinic last year what had been my impressions of your work? Were you self-reliant or are you the type who always has to have his hand held?’
    ‘Interesting questions.’ I tried to sound as if I didn’t much care how he had answered them.
    He didn’t tell me anyway; he was cutting his way into the splenic flexure. When he spoke again he said: ‘I take it you don’t know who Commissaire Gillon is or what precisely he does here?’
    ‘I assumed that he was a policeman. I didn’t know that police worked in the Préfecture.’
    ‘He is a policeman, but not an ordinary one. He commands the DST antenna in this department. At least “antenna” is what he calls it. Officially the unit is a brigade, I believe, but perhaps he thinks that antenna sounds more mysterious and important. These political types …’ He broke off as if aware suddenly that he had been straying onto dangerous ground. ‘It’s as well to be polite to them,’ he added.
    I got no more out of him. It was clear that he knew more about the telephone call and the reason for it than he was prepared to tell me.
    When we had finished with the cadaver, I typed out the preliminary report for his signature and had the various specimens we had taken sent to the laboratory for examination. By then it was ten o’clock. I was due in the out-patients’ department, but there was little privacy there and I did not want to be overheard talking to the Preéecture about personal matters. In spite of Dr Brissac’s hints about Gillon’s interest in my character the only reason that I could think of for my having attracted the attention of the DST was that I was an alien in government service and therefore in some way suspect.
    I was put through to a secretary. She was brusque. Dr Brissac’s little joke about entrails had evidently not gone down well. Commissaire Gillon wished to see me in his office at eleven-thirty. Not at twelve, not a quarter to twelve, but at eleven-thirty please. Yes, it was understood that I had my duties at the hospital, but no doubt I could arrange with a colleague for those to be attended to in my absence if necessary. Eleven-thirty in Commissaire Gillon’s office then, on the second floor of the annexe. Thank you, Doctor.
    In the out-patients’, as it happened, there were only a few persons for me to see that day; but one of them was an old fisherman with diabetes whose case I had come across when I had been