Free Comeback by Dick Francis Page B

together with drugs prescribed. The notes, he added with a despairing shake of the head, were then taken to the secretarial section and stored in files.
    “Not in the computer?” I asked, flicking a finger at a monitor that stood on a table near the desk.
    “In the main computer in the office, yes, but our secretary enters only the date, the name of the animal, owner, type of surgery and a file number. It takes too long to type in all the notes and, besides, mistakes creep in. If anyone wants to refer back, they must call up the file number and go and find their actual notes.” He gestured helplessly. “Now all the files are bound to have gone. So has the computer itself, I suppose. This terminal is dead, anyway. So there will be no records anymore to prove that all the operations when the horses died were normal, regular procedures.”
    I reflected that on the other hand if in fact there had been any departure from regular procedures, all records of that too had conveniently vanished. Yet I did believe in Ken’s distress, otherwise what was I doing wandering round an animal hospital in the middle of the night looking for people playing with matches?
    “What’s absolutely irritating,” Ken said, “is that the architect we engaged for the hospital told us the office wasn’t up to his standards of fireproofing. He said we should install heavy fire doors everywhere and frankly we didn’t want to, they slow you up so much. We knew we’d simply prop them open. But there you are, he was right. He insisted on at least fireproof doors at each end of the connecting passage, and the firemen say those doors—and the length of the passage—saved the hospital.”
    “Why is the passage so long?”
    “Something to do with what’s under the ground. It wasn’t suitable for foundations any nearer. So we had to have the passage or else run from building to building in the rain.”
    “Lucky.”
    “So it turned out”
    “How old is the hospital?”
    “Three or four years,” Ken said. “Three and a half, about”
    “And you all use it?”
    He nodded. “Not for minor things, of course. Often it’s because of some sort of emergency. Dog run over, that sort of thing. There’s a small-animal wing. Otherwise there are—were—the two small-animal surgeries over in the main building for vaccinations and so on.” He paused. “God, it’s all so depressing.”
    He led the way out of the office and into the central passage. The floors throughout were of black, gray-streaked vinyl tiles, the walls an unrelenting white. The hospital hadn’t been designed, of course, to soothe human patient anxieties: severe practicality reigned along with the fire-retardant ethos.
    Nothing was made of wood. Doors were metal everywhere, set into metal frames, painted brown. A row of three on the left-hand side were storerooms, Ken said. All the doors were locked. Ken opened them and we checked inside: all quiet.
    On the right, past the office, lay another, much bigger, double room, one half housing X-ray developing equipment, the other, a movable X-ray machine on wheels. There was also a simple bed in there, with folded blankets, looking unused, and a closed door giving access from the car park for patients.
    “We have to keep all these doors locked, including the office,” Ken said grimly. “We’ve found things walking out of here when we’re all busy in the theater. You wouldn’t believe what some people will steal.”
    Looting was a built-in instinct, I thought.
    Immediately beyond the X-ray room there was what should have been a heavy fire door blocking our way. It was present, but had been opened flat against the wall and held there by a substantial wedge. Ken saw me eyeing it and shrugged.
    “That’s the problem. We can’t open these doors with our arms full of equipment. The firemen closed that door earlier, when they first came, but someone’s opened it since. Force of habit.”
    Past the habit, there was an extra-wide door