The Spoilers / Juggernaut. Desmond Bagley
information which I consider incredible. They tell me that she was a drug addict – that she took heroin.’
‘She did.’
‘Heroin which you supplied.’
‘Heroin which I prescribed,’ corrected Warren.
Hellier was momentarily taken aback. ‘I did not expect you to admit it so easily.’
‘Why not?’ said Warren. ‘I was your daughter’s physician.’
‘Of all the bare-faced effrontery!’ burst out Hellier. He leaned forward and his powerful shoulders hunched under his suit. ‘That a doctor should prescribe hard drugs for a young girl is disgraceful.’
‘My prescription was …’
‘I’ll see you in jail,’ yelled Hellier.
‘… entirely necessary in my opinion.’
‘You’re nothing but a drug pedlar.’
Warren stood up and his voice cut coldly through Hellier’s tirade. ‘If you repeat that statement outside this room I shall sue you for slander. If you will not listen to what I have to say then I must ask you to leave, since further communication on your part is pointless. And if you want to complain about my ethics you must do so to the Disciplinary Committee of the General Medical Council.’
Hellier looked up in astonishment. ‘Are you trying to tell me that the General Medical Council would condone such conduct?’
‘I am,’ said Warren wryly, and sat down again. ‘And so would the British Government – they legislated for it.’
Hellier seemed out of his depth. ‘All right,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I suppose I should hear what you have to say. That’s why I came here.’
Warren regarded him thoughtfully. ‘June came to see me about eighteen months ago. At that time she had been taking heroin for nearly two years.’
Hellier flared again. ‘Impossible!’
‘What’s so impossible about it?’
‘I would have known.’
‘How would you have known?’
‘Well, I’d have recognized the … the symptoms.’
‘I see. What are the symptoms, Sir Robert?’
Hellier began to speak, then checked himself and was silent. Warren said, ‘A heroin addict doesn’t walk about with palsied hands, you know. The symptoms are much subtler than that – and addicts are adept at disguising them. But you might have noticed something. Tell me, did she appear to have money troubles at that time?’
Hellier looked at the back of his hands. ‘I can’t remember the time when she didn’t have money troubles,’ he said broodingly. ‘I was getting pretty tired of it and I put my foot down hard. I told her I hadn’t raised her to be an idle spendthrift.’ He looked up. ‘I found her a job, installed her in her own flat and cut her allowance by half.’
‘I see,’ said Warren. ‘How long did she keep the job?’
Hellier shook his head. ‘I don’t know – only that she lost it.’ His hands tightened on the edge of the desk so that the knuckles showed white. ‘She robbed me, you know – she stole from her own father.’
‘How did that happen?’ asked Warren gently.
‘I have a country house in Berkshire,’ said Hellier. ‘She went down there and looted it – literally looted it. There was a lot of Georgian silver, among other things. She had the nerve to leave a note saying that she was responsible – she even gave me the name of the dealer she’d sold the stuff to. I got it all back, but it cost me a hell of a lot of money.’
‘Did you prosecute?’
‘Don’t be a damned fool,’ said Hellier violently. ‘I have a reputation to keep up. A fine figure I’d cut in the papers if I prosecuted my own daughter for theft. I have enough trouble with the Press already.’
‘It might have been better for her if you had prosecuted,’ said Warren. ‘Didn’t you ask yourself why she stole from you?’
Hellier sighed. ‘I thought she’d just gone plain bad – I thought she’d taken after her mother.’ He straightened his shoulders. ‘But that’s another story.’
‘Of course,’ said Warren. ‘As I say, when June came to me for treatment, or rather, for heroin, she had been addicted for nearly two years. She said so and her physical condition confirmed it.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Hellier. ‘That she came to you for heroin and not for treatment.’
‘An addict regards a doctor as a source of supply,’ said Warren a little tiredly. ‘Addicts don’t want to be treated – it scares them.’
Hellier looked at Warren blankly. ‘But this is monstrous. Did you give her heroin?’
‘I did.’
‘And no treatment?’
‘Not immediately. You can’t treat a patient who won’t be treated, and there’s no law in England which allows of forcible treatment.’
‘But you pandered to her. You gave her the heroin.’
‘Would you rather I hadn’t? Would you rather I had let her go on the streets to get her heroin from an illegal source at an illegal price and contaminated with God knows what filth? At least the drug I prescribed was clean and to British Pharmacopoeia Standard, which reduced the chance of hepatitis.’
Hellier looked strangely shrunken. ‘I don’t understand,’ he muttered, shaking his head. ‘I just don’t understand.’
‘You don’t,’ agreed Warren. ‘You’re wondering what has happened to medical ethics. We’ll come to that later.’ He tented his fingers. ‘After a month I managed to persuade June to take treatment; there are clinics for cases like hers. She was in for twenty-seven days.’ He stared at Hellier with hard eyes. ‘If I had been her I doubt if I could have lasted a week. June was a brave girl, Sir Robert.’
‘I don’t know much about the … er … the actual treatment.’
Warren opened his desk drawer and took out a cigarette-box. He took out a cigarette and then pushed the open box across the desk, apparently as an afterthought. ‘I’m sorry; do you smoke?’
‘Thank you,’ said Hellier, and took a cigarette. Warren leaned across and lit it with a flick of his lighter, then lit his own.
He studied Hellier for a while, then held up his cigarette. ‘There’s a drug in here, you know, but nicotine isn’t particularly powerful. It produces a psychological dependency. Anyone who is strong-minded enough can give it up.’ He leaned forward. ‘Heroin is different; it produces a physiological dependency – the body needs it and the mind has precious little say about it.’
He leaned back. ‘If heroin is withheld from an addicted patient there are physical withdrawal symptoms of such a nature that the chances of death are about one in five – and that is something a doctor must think hard about before he begins treatment.’
Hellier whitened. ‘Did she suffer?’
‘She suffered,’ said Warren coldly. ‘I’d be only too pleased to tell you she didn’t, but that would be a lie. They all suffer. They suffer so much that hardly one in a hundred will see the treatment through. June stood as much of it as she could take and then walked out. I couldn’t stop her – there’s no legal restraint.’
The cigarette in Hellier’s fingers was trembling noticeably. Warren said, ‘I didn’t see her for quite a while after that, and then she came back six months ago. They usually come back. She