Impatiently, Adaku shifted her weight from hip to hip. “Do I look like the police to you? What do you think? I’m an undercover agent who throws money round?” She rustled in her bag and brought out the envelope holding the cash. She said, “Here’s the money you asked me to bring. Two hundred fifty pounds.”
Easter glanced at it, on her face the expression of a woman who suspected that the notes were likely to explode into a shower of red dye if she put her fingers on them.
“Isn’t this what you asked for?” Adaku said. “Two hundred fifty pounds?” When Easter still did not reach for the envelope, Adaku took the notes from it and fanned them in her face.
Easter looked over her shoulder in the direction of the stairs. Once again Adaku thought there must be someone above who was unaware of what was going on below. This had to be straight-out bribery.
Adaku added, “I can get a referral for you as well. It won’t be easy, but I’ll do it. If the money and the referral aren’t enough for you, though, I will have to take my business elsewhere.”
“It is five hundred pounds in total,” Easter said. She snatched the envelope. She shoved it into the pocket of the white lab coat she was wearing, and said, “Two hundred more if you want to proceed.”
“And if I do not wish that?”
“Are you asking if your money is then returned? No. It isn’t. Not once you’ve stepped inside. So what’s it to be? In or out?” She opened the door wider. With a curse beneath her breath about money she would lose if things went wonky, Adaku entered.
The foyer wasn’t a great deal larger than a draughts board, with lino in a draughts-board pattern. It bore at least a week’s worth of post lying round. Most of it appeared to be rubbish adverts.
Easter led Adaku towards the back of the building, where stairs were covered by dusty, threadbare carpet worn completely through in places. The handrail was sticky here and there and marked up by past encounters with furniture. Adaku touched it only briefly.
The first floor revealed one door, presumably to a flat. It wore a steel plate and had three deadbolt locks, although from the street the place had looked uninhabited. Easter led her past this and up another flight of stairs. Here a newish-looking door also possessed a steel plate and two deadbolts, along with a sign reading private. Up the final flight of stairs, they came to a door standing open to a reception area furnished with a desk, its chair, two filing cabinets, and two additional plastic chairs against one of the walls, with a small table between them. This held a lamp, a woven grass basket containing miniature chocolate bars, and two dog-eared home decorating magazines. On the desk stood a computer’s monitor along with two stacked in-and-out trays. Nothing was in them, and aside from Easter, there seemed to be no one present.
Adaku said, “I would like to speak to the doctor.”
“You’re speaking to the doctor,” Easter told her.
“If that’s the case, why is no one else here?”
“Procedures occur only as requested. Is that somehow important to you?”
Adaku frowned. This wasn’t what she had expected. She said, “How do I know you are a doctor, then? How do I know you’re qualified?”
“Because I’ve just told you. You can choose to believe me or you can go. It’s all the same to me. Now, do you want to see the establishment for your three hundred pounds or was the climb up the stairs enough for you?”
Adaku considered her options, which appeared to be limited to losing her money or at least being shown the premises. She chose the second option. Easter led her to a room that opened off the waiting area.
To Adaku, it looked like every examination room in the country: exam table, scales, small credenza, the top of which held cotton wool, swabs, thermometer, rolls of gauze, a stethoscope, a sphygmomanometer, a speculum. Everything was pristine, not a smudge or a fingerprint anywhere. There was nothing on the walls save a chart that indicated the optimum weight for a particular height. In one corner was a chair upon which, Adaku assumed, the patient—or client, she supposed—left her clothing. In another corner a wheeled stool made it easier for the doctor to conduct examinations.
It was all very orderly, Adaku thought. Indeed, the room was considerably more orderly than her own GP’s office. That told her a great deal.
Easter opened a second door, and this gave onto a small operating theatre, with lights, the necessary table, several large canisters—presumably for the purposes of anaesthesia—two monitors, and a credenza holding sterile gloves, instruments in cases, and everything else to suggest that medical procedures were conducted therein.