Tainted Read Online Free PDF Page B

to what?”
    “A certain kind of Swiss dark chocolate. With creamy centres. His favourites were . . .” He peered at his notes and began to count the flavours on his slender fingers: “Raspberry, kiwi, passion fruit, and hazelnut. Half a pound a day.”
    “That is a heck of a lot.”
    “Funny, eh? A dentist addicted to chocolate. I wonder if his patients knew about it?”
    “It’s not that easy to find Swiss chocolates with fondant centres in Hamilton. I only know of one place that sells them.”
    Hamish uncrossed his legs and straightened the crease in histrousers. “Four Corners Fine Foods. Just down the street from here.” Triumph shone in his eyes. “Hugh made a pilgrimage there every Saturday. Had a standing order of four pounds a week.”
    “Good God!” Zol said. “Anyone who eats that much chocolate is bound to rot more than their teeth.”
    “And die happy.” Hamish smiled, then frowned and covered his mouth. “But Hugh McEwen was no happy dentist. For the past few years he’d been having difficulty swallowing. Could only eat meat that was thoroughly ground up. His wife blended most of his meals, including his favourite Viennese sausages and English-style bangers.”
    Zol pictured one of his festive rack-of-lamb dinners tossed into a blender. A terrible assault on fine ingredients. “That sounds like an esophageal stricture,” he said. “Or that condition where the far end of the esophagus doesn’t open properly when you swallow.”
    “You mean achalasia,” Hamish said, narrowing his eyes and raising a forefinger as if instructing a student. “Brenda’s description fits it exactly.”
    Zol raised his hands and spread his fingers. Sometimes Hamish’s pedantic manner was just plain annoying. Zol took a deep breath, tucked his hands beneath his thighs, and reminded himself that Hamish was a rare friend — obsessive and finicky, but unfailingly loyal and too socially insecure to be an egotist.
    Hamish picked at the flecks of lint on his necktie, then ironed it smooth with his palm. After a moment he said, “Hugh saw a gastro -enterologist who performed a manipulation every few months. His wife didn’t know much about it, except that the treatments did improve his swallowing for a few weeks each time.”
    “What about his suicide?” Zol asked. “How long had he been depressed?”
    “Only recently. But it wasn’t exactly depression. More like a change in personality. Since early June he’d been distractible, getting angry over trivialities. Brenda found him weeping in the bathroom a few times.”
    “Any confusion or memory loss?”
    “He cancelled his workday a number of times. Always at the lastminute. Walked out without warning — threw his staff into a tizzy.”
    “Had he been given a psychiatric diagnosis?”
    “Refused to see a doctor.”
    “And then,” Zol said “within three or four months, he kills himself.”
    Hamish bit his lower lip. “Sunday, September fifteenth. In his dental chair. Morphine, midazolam, and nitrous oxide.” He gulped several mouthfuls from his bottle. “Very sad. I remember him as a really nice guy. Always in a good mood.”
    Zol picked up his pad and jotted several lines. After a few moments, when Hamish had regained his composure, he asked, “Anyone else in the family sick, depressed, forgetful?”
    “Brenda’s grieving but she seems okay — between bouts of tears. They have just the one child, a nine-year-old girl. She missed school for a couple of weeks after her father’s death, but her mother said she’s pretty well back into her routine.”
    “What did Brenda think when you asked so many questions about Hugh’s eating habits? Did she twig to the CJD angle?”
    “She was relieved to hear that the pathologist found something in his brain that might explain —”
    Zol threw his hands into the air. “Hamish!” he said. “You didn’t tell her about the amyloid plaques and the mad cow —”
    Hamish flinched and drew back in his chair.