God's Dog Read Free Page B

been noted down.’
    â€˜Thank you. Tomorrow I’ll need a list of the names and addresses of all the patients and their civil status. I’ll leave it here with you; but it must always be available.’
    â€˜Very good.’
    â€˜Are we still in time for lauds?’
    â€˜The chaplain is waiting for me. Come this way.’
    Salazar followed the sister through the glazed door. Several empty camp beds stood in the corridor, over whose light brown linoleum a cleaning woman was wearily pushing a mop. The smell of the detergent mingled with the scent of coffee and cut flowers; some rooms were full of them. As he entered the large room, Salazar was instantly struck by the winking of bubbles in innumerable drips, the only things in that whole space that moved at all. Heavy white globs, they rose to the surface, then sank down again, unceasing in their regularity. The beds were arranged in two rows in front of an improvised altar, rigged up on a piece of furniture originally from a chemist’s shop. Several stretcher-bearers had just brought in the most recent arrivals, and were now quietly leaving. The relatives remained, like so many unmoving sentinels. Filtering in through the curtains, the daylight could not contend with the soft, tenacious shadow. Some patients were groaning, dark hands moving spasmodically over the dense white of the sheets. But the chaplain soon drowned the sound out with his prayers.
    â€˜Lord of all mercy, may your victims’ prayers come unto you; show them the light which frees man from all pain! You are the life eternal, you are the way, the truth.’
    â€˜Show them the light!’ chorused the shadowy figures in sepulchral unison. Salazar immediately sensed a jarring note, a lying note, among those voices. Lauds was a group prayer for which the patients in every ward in the hospital were brought together once a day. Visiting relatives were expected to join in. For the terminally ill it was an opportunity to take a reckoning, to see just how nearly their fellow-sufferers were approaching death. Only those who had received extreme unction were spared the lauds. But, for fear of reprisals, many relatives did not even dare ask for it. At the end of the rite the stretcher-bearers pushed the beds back into the rooms from which they had come, and suffering could carry on unimpeded.
    The Medical Guarantor of Faith was a bony, shambling man with long, vein-threaded hands. He sported an eye-catching white goatee which he moved like a horn as he thrust his chin continually forwards. His heavy, wrinkled lids gave his small eyes the look of those of an aging mastiff. He wore an expensive-looking tie tucked into his surgeon’s white coat, and showy cuff links of gold and mother-of-pearl in the sleeves of the shirt he wore beneath it.
    â€˜Welcome to our institution, inspector!’ he said, ushering Salazar into the bare room, which looked more like a mortuary than an office. The furniture was that of a consulting room. Steel and plastic, also pale brown in colour, like the lino. The glass doors to the two little cupboards to either side of the desk were engraved with Hippocrates’ serpent. A huge black wooden crucifix hung on the end wall. Salazar sat down in one of the two small armchairs flanking a small glass table on which stood a relief model of the hospital. The doctor sat down in the other, opening his white coat to reveal a grey double-breasted jacket.
    â€˜Your superiors have informed me of your mission. Obviously, you can count on my total collaboration. We cannot be everywhere at once, inspector! And I know that the angels of death have infiltrated this hospital, as they have so many others. We are for ever vigilant, but that is not enough. Two years ago we arrested several abortionists who were making contact with their clients in our clinic. We reported the suspects and asked the police to carry out surprise inspections of our doctors’ premises and