Thief in the Night

Norbert

Chapter 2

Thief in the Night

I might not know much about burglary, but proper thieves obviously leave nothing to chance. I am therefore sitting on my bed in the dark dressed in my black work trousers and a black sweater over a dark blue shirt. An itchy balaclava hides my face. So itchy I pull it off and place it back in the drawer. Because my shiny black leather shoes squeak and may reflect the moonlight, I have dug out my old black PE plimsolls from school and am wearing those instead. I am too nervous to sleep or read. I glance for the umpteenth time at the luminous dial of the alarm clock. It is 11.53pm, which leaves thirty-seven minutes and counting. (The church bell strikes on the hour. If I can occasionally hear it, I’m sure Auntie can too.)

Slowly, I become aware of a vague feeling of discomfort, which within minutes intensifies into an uncontrollable urge to defecate. I can’t hold back, I have to go and I have to flush. (An unflushed toilet in our house is a sin worse than slurping tea.) I wash my hands (not washing your hands after toilet in our house is a sin worse than going out in unpolished leather shoes). I return to my bedroom, check the clock, check my checklist, gather my equipment, eat my checklist, gag, spit out my checklist, sneak quietly down the stairs, out of the house and toss my soggy checklist down the first drain.

The cottage hospital is about three hundred yards away and can be reached in a matter of minutes by cutting through two snickets. All well and good, but there is a primary school nearby and brats from the council estate gather there like lions at a water hole, intent on mischief. I have been verbally abused and spat at on several occasions on my way home from work. I dread to think what might have happened had any boys been present.

As it’s the early hours of Sunday morning, I risk it. Apart from having to step over an insensibly intoxicated wastrel blocking the walkway, the coast is clear.

What an adventure this is turning out to be! At this very moment, all over the country, tooled-up criminals are sneaking furtively through the night, risking their freedom in search of loot. Am I the only burglar stalking the streets of Brundy, I wonder? Just as I start to ponder on what my chances are of getting caught, I reach the main entrance.

The cottage hospital was purpose built in the sixties to serve the town and outlying villages. From the front it is a grey concrete rectangle of two storeys. The clinics and canteen are on the ground floor, the wards and offices upstairs. My lab and most of the antenatal clinic is housed in a single storey extension to the left-hand rear. Apart from thirty or so sleeping patients, only four night nurses will be on duty - two to each ward. They are also probably (and hopefully) asleep. The whole building is in darkness, the upstairs nightlights obscured by closed blinds.

I creep left and let myself in through the side door, using Auntie’s keys. Around the first corner, out of sight of the entrance, the darkness is absolute, and scary. The peachy hairs on the back of my neck rise as I face into a warm internal breeze. In the absence of windows and a long way from the next exit, this phenomenon has always been a puzzle. Where does it come from? Though I take it for granted during the day, in the pitch black the magnified sound of wind whistling down the lift shaft sounds like the moaning of the countless souls that died in this place.

With shaking hands I fit on the headtorch and press the switch. The beam is pointing down at my feet, but as I swivel it up, the light goes out. Several times I pivot the lamp up and down. Off on, off on, off on. (Had I been at sea, instead of all at sea, Macarbrough Coastguard would have launched the lifeboat.) I’d checked the batteries worked. What more could I do? I have no choice but to continue with the beam shining down on my pumps.

Running down the centre of the grey vinyl floor are lots of parallel lines. The red stripe guides people to the lift, the blue one to pharmacy, the yellow one to ante natal clinic and the green one to a boarded-up doorway that used to be the WRVS canteen until a teacake got jammed in the toaster and burst into flames. Mrs Cole-Bunker, the stout volunteer who wears pearls with her pinafore, panicked and threw a tea towel over the toaster without first wetting it. The fire spread from there.

Everyone said it was an accident waiting to happen after the accident that did happen a week earlier when a toasted teacake got stuck and Mrs Cole-Bunker tried to dig it out with a knife and electrocuted herself. Everyone said they should have used a wider toaster, but surely thinner teacakes would have been a better solution?

Anyway, the coloured lines on the floor match the plethora of signs on the walls. Every hospital corridor has them. It amazes me that nobody takes a blind bit of notice of them. First time patients thrust an appointment letter in the face of anyone wearing an ID badge and asks the way to wherever their ailment is taking them. No member of staff I know of, other than my myself, has ever said: “Match the colour of the department you want to the same colour on the floor and follow the line unerringly to your destination, unless you want a cup of coffee, in which case you should have brought a Thermos.” They just wave a hand and say: “Down there. You can’t miss it.” Unfortunately, the person that asked me for directions to Ophthalmology (the purple line) happened to be colour blind (which makes sense) and my “Match the colour” speech led the woman to the mortuary. How was I to know that her husband had died of a heart attack that morning and was laid out on the slab as she walked in? I mean, if you think about it, I’d saved her having to go home and come back again to identify the body. How doing someone a kindness like that can be construed as mental cruelty and merit a reprimand is beyond me.

Passing the mesh window of a fire door, I catch the reflection of what looks like a droopy Dalek, and almost jump out of my skin, which is why I don’t spot the wheelie bucket. Cursing the stupidity of the cleaners, I bend down to rub my shin. The headtorch slips off and plops into the still full bucket of water. Again, the light goes out.

As soon as I dunk my right hand in (forgetting to roll up my sleeve), something wraps its tentacles round my wrist and tries to pull me in. I scream and yank my hand out. The mop handle hits me in the face and knocks my glasses off. Thankfully they don’t land in the water. They hit the floor, but thankfully don’t break. I hear them break when I tread on them. I kick the bucket and hear water slop over the side. To retrieve the remains of my spectacles, I have to crawl about on my knees. My trousers get wet.

Anger is clearly acting as a barrier to good sense, because I fish around for the torch with my left hand and get the other sleeve wet. I lift it out and press the switch, but nothing happens. I shake off the excess water and press it back the other way. Nothing happens. I point the lamp at the floor and press the switch repeatedly. Still nothing happens. My head begins to throb. I take a blister pack of paracetamol out of my pocket, but being an apprentice burglar and afraid of the dark, my mouth is dry and I can’t swallow. I have no choice but to ladle out a palmful of scummy water. I instantly retch and spit the pills into the bucket, which isn’t good because I have the headache, not the grannytickling bucket. It takes three more attempts to get them down, by which time the pack is empty. I am not usually this lucky.

I fiddle with the battery compartment and after several attempts prise it open. I hear the plops of the batteries hitting the water. I twist the head straps in my fists and pull them apart with such force the lamp separates from the battery holder. The elasticized strap twangs painfully into my wrist. I make to throw them against the wall, but think better of it and place the bits in separate pockets. The water soaks through to my thighs. My ulcer begins to play up and my stomach hurts. (Ulcer pills are not part of my emergency first aid kit, but they will be from now on.)

I stumble through the darkness, feeling my way along the wall (an apt metaphor for my entire life). I reach the second door, find the right key and enter. The window blinds are open, so enough moonlight diffuses through to confirm I am inside Sister’s office. I navigate around the desk in the centre and stand in front of the key cupboard, which I know will be open.

(I’m not one to moan, but what is the point of a locked key cabinet? By definition the most used key in a key cupboard is the one that opens it. Sod’s law dictates that’s the one most likely to get lost and the one most likely not to be returned.)

I peer myopically at the faded labels above each hook, but it is too dark to read them. If I was a smoker or an arsonist, I would have a box of matches in my pocket (probably my wettest pocket knowing my luck). I am neither, so I close my eyes and try to visualize the position of the key I want. It is on the right near the top, either the second or third row, next to the key for the drug cabinet. A proper burglar or junkie would take this one, but though dependent on medication I’m not an addict or a dealer. I’m not even a criminal. I am … frustrated.

Confident I’ve picked the right key, I inch my way down the corridor to the corner, turn left and pause at the first door. The key doesn’t fit. I bang my fists against my throbbing forehead and curse the grannyticklers who don’t return keys to their designated hook. Just because some other grannytickler hangs a key in the wrong place doesn’t mean you have to do the same. Move the wrong key to its rightful place and for the convenience of the next user hang yours where it should be. What could be simpler? Then I remember two things. First and most worryingly, I am acting exactly like Louie the cricketer with his rack of underwear, and second that every key has a tag attached. I should have read it before leaving Sister’s office. It is, of course, too dark in the corridor and I have to go back anyway. I think for a moment about trying to find the key for the drug cabinet to top up my supply of painkillers. Stealing, though, is not in my nature.

By checking at the window, I finally get the right key and let myself into the patient’s changing room. Dormer windows in the sloping roof let in sufficient moonlight for me to see. Numbered and curtained cubicles line a central corridor, like at our local swimming baths. (I am allergic to chlorinated water, plus I can’t swim, but ogling females in bikinis draws less attention inside than pressed up against the outside window, I find.) Each one has a slatted seat against the back wall and a mirror above, two coat hooks on one wall and a single hook on the other, on which hangs a towelled bathrobe with St Kylie’s Cottage Hospital and the cubicle number stitched on the left breast. Above the clothes hooks is a plastic sign screwed to the wall that reads:

1. Remove all outer garments.

2. Put on the gown.

3. Put on the flip flops.

4. Sit outside the blood room.

Stuck underneath is a paper sign written in marker pen that reads: “Outer garments includes gloves and anything on your head.”

I unravel a black plastic sack, enter the first cubicle and tug the waist sash from its loops. I walk down one side and back up the other removing the tie cords from every gown. Once I’ve finished I lock the door, return the key and smugly hang it on an empty hook on the left and at the bottom. Living on the wrong side of the law, it appears, can provoke even the meek into vindictiveness.