Pestilence Read Online Free PDF

company alone but a great many more created through a knock on effect as smaller firms flocked to the area like pilot fish to satisfy the requirements of Otsuji for components and services. Already the building trades in the area were flourishing and new housing was springing up on every available plot of land. Capital was being ventured on the well proven assumption that prosperity and home ownership went hand in hand.
    The new air of optimism was not confined to the private sector alone. New council departments with grand sounding names seemed to materialise overnight to deal with the floods of trade enquiries and brightly coloured brochures were being rushed off the press to extol the virtues of Skelmore and surrounding district as the development area of the future.
    There was even talk of the hospital modernisation programme, which had been on ice for the last five years, being brought down from the shelf and dusted off. There seemed to be a real possibility that essential renovation work at Skelmore General might actually be carried out before the place fell down.
    Skelmore General was a disgrace; at least it was a disgrace to anyone who believed in the highest standards of medical care, those befitting a nation that considered itself so abrasively often to be superior to the rest of the world. Of course, if you had lived in Britain for the last five to ten years then Skelmore General was fast becoming the norm in a health service at odds with government philosophy. Understaffing, low pay and impotent resentment manifesting itself in Trade Union bloody mindedness had all conspired to bring morale to a dangerously low ebb.
    Even the Press seemed to realise this and had stopped whipping an all but dead horse. Stories of leaking ceilings and cockroaches in hospital kitchens no longer appeared under crusading headlines. It was a waste of time for there was no incompetence or laxity left to expose. Britain’s Health Service was simply falling to bits for lack of money.
    Skelmore General felt the effects of economic stringency particularly badly because it had been a rambling Victorian slum of a building to start with. Its plumbing and electrics were antiquated and the style of its design with high ceilings and arches made it prohibitively expensive to heat. The same reason made it impossible to keep clean.
    Frequent outbreaks of diarrhoeal illness in the wards was the norm and almost certainly due, though never admitted publicly, to dirty food standards. Ironically this problem tended to work in the General’s favour for any kind of outbreak that looked as if might be infectious allowed the hospital to unload affected patients on to the Infectious Diseases Unit of Skelmore’s County Hospital, a ploy that the County was only too well aware of.
    On the last occasion of a transfer Saracen’s friend and opposite number, David Moss at the County Hospital had good naturedly claimed that anyone who farted too loudly in the General was in danger of finding themselves in an ambulance on their way to the County. Saracen had countered with the claim that Moss had deliberately pushed two of his geriatric patients downstairs during the previous week in order to have them admitted to the General’s Orthopaedic Unit.
    Saracen was idly wondering what to do with his unscheduled two day break when the telephone rang; it was Nigel Garten.
    “Hello James. I’ve just been up to Ward Four to see you, ‘found you’d flown the coop. How are you? All right?”
    “I feel a lot better thanks.”
    “Excellent. Nasty business all round really, still, can’t be too bad if you signed yourself out eh what?” Garten gave a forced laugh to augment his one-of-the-chaps act. Saracen could see what was coming. He was right.
    “Soon be back in harness eh?” continued Garten, still forcing the laugh.
    “Shouldn’t be too long,” agreed Saracen flatly. There was a pause.
    “Any idea exactly…how long?” probed Garten.
    Saracen smiled at being