Tangled Web (27 page)

Gordon felt as if he’d been struck by a train. He could only stare at Davies, speechless with shock. ‘Thomas is dead?’

‘The hospital medics say it was a heart attack but then who do we find emerging from a ground floor window?’

Gordon was still too shocked to say anything.

‘Now, when I question you about it, you behave as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be climbing out of a lavatory window in the middle of the night and your alibi is that you were actually climbing
in
to the place. Gordon, if nothing else, you should have the jury in stitches. Of course the prosecution might go and ruin everything by venturing to suggest that there was a perfectly good front door not twenty metres from the toilet window and that it’s open 24 hours a day but I feel confident you’ll come up with some suitable explanation.’

Gordon was too distracted to defend himself. His mind was reeling with the implications of Thomas’s death for it was the last thing in the world he expected and, coming on top of everything else, it seemed like the cruellest blow that fate could have delivered at that particular moment. Now he just couldn’t see how he could possibly link Thomas’s research to the Palmer baby’s death. Gradually he became aware of what Davies was saying.

‘Forensic haven’t done their stuff yet, but I’m going to make sure they do a thorough job, seeing as how you popped up at the scene. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do and right now, you’re not doing a very good line in “stricken by grief” if I might say so.’

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Gordon wearily.

Davies pursed his lips and looked as if his exasperation level was getting perilously high. ‘Oh, wouldn’t I?’ he exclaimed. ‘Just why were you running away, Gordon? What was your contribution to the professor having a heart attack? Come to that, my officers said you looked as if you’d gone three rounds with Mike Tyson when they picked you up. And your clothes looked as if you’d crawled out of a sewer, they said. Just what the hell has been going on?’

‘I wasn’t running away,’ insisted Gordon. ‘I climbed in; I heard voices in the corridor; I climbed back out again.’

‘All right, why you were climbing in?’

‘I didn’t want to be seen.’

‘You didn’t want to be seen,’ repeated Davies sarcastically. ‘Apart from the state of your clothes, why didn’t you want to be seen - or would that question be considered an intrusion into your own personal Disneyworld?’

‘I wanted to get to Thomas without anyone stopping me or warning him I was coming.’

‘Go on.’

‘Earlier this evening … he tried to kill me.’

Davies shook his head and looked up at the ceiling as if seeking guidance from above. ‘You know, I’ve never been the greatest fan of the medical profession, Gordon but I thought it was only psychiatrists who were as loony as their patients. He tried to kill you?’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Gordon weakly.

‘Well, I’m not all that bright, see,’ said Davies, pressing the loud pedal on the Welsh accent. ‘But I do like a good story.’ He pulled up a chair and sat down beside Gordon’s bed. ‘On you go, boyo. Enthrall me.’

By the time Gordon had finished telling him what had happened, Davies was looking openly bemused. He shook his head in bewilderment as he repeated some of the key words. ‘Kidnapping? Human cloning? Attempted murder? And you’re suggesting that the most distinguished man in Welsh medicine was mixed up in all this?’

‘I think so,’ said Gordon. ‘He knew I was going down to the mortuary and probably suspected that I was going to take samples from Anne-Marie Palmer. Things were obviously getting a bit too hot for him.’

‘Sounds like they were getting even hotter for you if what you told me checks out,’ said Davies. ‘So, you confronted him after you’d managed to escape and he had a heart attack?’

‘No, like I say, I never got to him. Your men intervened,’ said Gordon.

‘Well, we’ll see what the PM comes up with. If what you tell me is true, it’s understandable that you just lost the place and went up there and frightened him into having a heart attack? In the circumstances I think I might have felt like putting his lights out myself.’

‘No,’ Gordon insisted. ‘I never got to him.

Davies looked doubtful. He was about to say something when Mary Hallam put her head round the door and said, ‘Your five minutes is up, Chief Inspector. You promised.’

Davies nodded and got to his feet. ‘Well, it’s been hugely entertaining as always, Dr Gordon,’ he said. ‘I dare say we’ll be talking again quite soon. In fact, just to make sure I’m not disappointed, I’m going to leave a man outside your door to keep you company.’

Oh, come on, Davies, you can’t seriously believe that I had anything to do with Thomas’s death?’ Gordon exclaimed.

‘I think I’m going to keep an open mind on that for the moment, Doctor,’ said Davies, turning the door handle to leave and holding it open for a few seconds. ‘You don’t know a good cure for piles, do you? Mine are killing me.’ With that, he left.

‘An open mind about what?’ asked Mary Hallam who came in as soon as Davies had gone.

Gordon sighed and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Open, as in vast, empty, windswept and uninhabited by anything remotely resembling brains. I think a frontal lobotomy is a prerequisite for the police entrance exam round here. Carwyn Thomas has been found dead. Apparently he had a heart attack but Davies thinks I might have had something to do with it.’

Mary’s mouth fell open. ‘Professor Thomas is dead?’ she exclaimed. ‘My God, how awful,’ she said. ‘When did this happen?’

‘Late last night. They found him in his office at Caernarfon General.’

‘But that’s where you went when you left me,’ said Mary.

‘I met him in the car park when I got there,’ said Gordon. ‘He’d been in London all day. We talked and I challenged him about having Anne-Marie’s body moved. I think he probably realised why I was there and what I was going to do. He must have followed me down to the mortuary later.’ Gordon touched his head wound and grimaced.

Mary shook her head in bewilderment. ‘Professor Thomas did this to you? She exclaimed. ‘God, this is unbelievable!’

‘Don’t you start.’

‘Tell me everything.’

Gordon told her all that happened to him since he’d spoken to her last. As she herself had pointed out, this was just before going up to Caernarfon General to try for a tissue sample from Anne-Marie Palmer’s body.

‘Did you tell the police this?’ exclaimed Mary, her eyes wide with astonishment.

‘I tried to,’ replied Gordon. ‘But I don’t think Davies wanted to hear it. All he seemed interested in doing was implicating me in some way in Thomas’s death.’

You weren’t, were you?’ asked Mary, looking as if she didn’t know what to believe any more.

‘Of course not – but I might have been had I got to him.’

‘Just thought I’d check,’ said Mary distantly.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Gordon with a weak attempt at a smile. ‘I know it must all sound absolutely bizarre but that’s the way it happened.’

‘Did you actually see Thomas before he hit you?’ asked Mary.

Gordon confessed that he hadn’t.

‘So you don’t know for sure that it was him. I mean, it could have been anyone when you think about it.’

Gordon gave her a look.

‘I’m just saying that you don’t know for sure,’ said Mary.

Gordon was too tired to argue the point. ‘If you say so,’ he conceded. He let out his breath in a long sigh and closed his eyes for a few moments. Mary smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘You look out for the count,’ she said, tousling his hair gently.

‘God, that’s nice,’ murmured Gordon, as his eyelids grew heavy. He reached up his hand and found Mary’s. He held it against his cheek for a moment before slipping off into a deep sleep. His last happy thought was that she hadn’t taken it away.

Gordon’s first depressing thought on waking up at seven-thirty was that he had failed to get a sample of tissue from Anne-Marie Palmer’s body and it was now too late: her remains had been destroyed. He swore and sat up, encouraging his head wound to remind him that this was a bad idea. He sank slowly back down on the pillow and lay still while he wondered if his last chance to get any real evidence had gone. He wasn’t at all sure what he would do now but a first step would be trying to get out of bed.

The effects of the painkillers he’d been given the previous night had now completely worn off leaving him aching in places he hadn’t realised he’d got. He sat up and swung his legs round, but with the slowness and difficulty of a man forty years his senior. He was just about to try standing up when Chief Inspector Davies arrived.

‘Not a bloody thing,’ announced Davies by way of greeting.

Gordon looked at him, hoping for an explanation but felt apprehensive about the look of self-satisfaction on Davies’s face.

‘Not a bloody thing, Gordon.’

‘Do we go on like this or are you going to tell me what you’re talking about?’ asked Gordon sourly.

‘We didn’t find one single thing to corroborate your story about being tied up in the boiler house last night,’ said Davies. ‘Not one little thing.’

‘But you must have found bits of tape? And that rag he stuffed in my mouth? I threw it on the floor,’ protested Gordon.

‘Not a thing.’

‘Blood on the transporter from my head? There must be something!’

Davies shook his head slowly. ‘Nothing.’

‘Well, maybe the boiler-house man cleaned up. Did you ask him?’

‘Of course we did,’ said Davies softly. ‘He came on duty at eight, just before I came over here. That was the first sign of him: there is no night shift.’

‘Well …’ Gordon began before failing to find any words to follow up with. He waved his hands helplessly as he tried to think of an explanation.

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Davies with a humourless smile. ‘Carwyn Thomas came back from the dead to clean up the boiler house and mess up your alibi.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Gordon.

‘You think
I’m
being ridiculous?’ said Davies, feigning astonishment.

‘What about the mortuary?’ said Gordon, putting his hand gingerly to his bandaged head wound. ‘There must have been blood on the floor after he hit me.’

‘If there was, he cleaned that up too,’ said Davies.

‘Anne-Marie’s body!’ exclaimed Gordon. ‘It’s not there any more, is it?’

‘It
is
missing,’ agreed Davies.

‘At last we are agreed on something,’ sighed Gordon, letting his head fall back on the pillow. ‘You can’t really believe that I had a hand in Thomas’s death?’ he said.

‘Let’s wait and see what the pathologist says. In the meantime you can tell me about this secret research you say Professor Thomas was involved in.’

In his present condition, Gordon had little heart for it but he sat on the edge of the bed and supported his head in his hands while he got his thoughts in order.

‘I don’t think Anne-Marie Palmer was really Anne-Marie Palmer,’ he began. It was a bad start as far as the policeman was concerned. He rolled his eyes.

‘I think she was the result of a human cloning procedure performed in Thomas’s IVF unit.’

‘Human cloning procedure? You mean like in creating a copy of a living person?’

Gordon nodded.

‘Can you prove this?’

‘That’s what I was trying to do last night when I got knocked unconscious and sent to an early cremation. I found out through a friend that Anne-Marie Palmer’s body had been transferred to Caernarfon General at Thomas’s request. I wanted to get a tissue sample for DNA fingerprinting before he’d had a chance to destroy the evidence. Unfortunately I met him in the car park when I arrived and I think he suspected that was why I was there. Now it’s too late to get the proof I was after. Anne-Marie went into the incinerator.’

‘Of course,
you
could have put Anne-Marie Palmer’s body into the fire, couldn’t you?’ said Davies.

‘Why the hell would I do that?’ exploded Gordon, his exasperation boiling over. ‘My whole reason for being there was to prove that she wasn’t the natural child of the Palmers. Her body was evidence as far as I was concerned. Why would I want to destroy it? What possible motive could I have had?’

‘Maybe you discovered that Anne-Marie
was
in fact
the Palmers’ natural child so
you
wanted to get rid of the evidence before you made a complete prat of yourself - yet again! Professor Thomas might have caught you in the act and had a heart attack all because of you and your loony ideas.’

‘What a fine mind you have, Davies,’ said Gordon caustically.

‘You’re in deep enough shit as it is, Gordon,’ growled Davies. ‘Don’t make things worse for yourself.’

Gordon ignored the warning. ‘Who’s carrying out the pathology on Thomas?’ he asked.

‘Dr French.’

‘The same man who agreed to transfer Anne-Marie’s remains to Caernarfon at Thomas’s request.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I’m not
trying
to say anything. I’m just pointing out that the body, despite being subject to Crown Prosecution Service regulations, was moved here at the request of Carwyn Thomas. I think so that he could destroy it but I don’t know what he told French. I understand they were in the same golf club, so, instead of making up stories about me, why not ask French about it and ask him why he agreed to do something so grossly illegal.’

‘You’re not exactly making yourself popular round here, are you Doctor?’ sighed Davies.

‘I don’t think I’d like to be popular round here,’ replied Gordon with plain meaning.

Davies left and Mary came in. ‘Can I take it, you two haven’t exactly become firm friends yet,’ she said, looking after the departing Davies.

‘You could say,’ said Gordon wearily. He was still sitting on the edge of the bed.

‘You’ve decided to leave us then?’

‘I feel okay,’ said Gordon.

‘You’ll have to sign the form,’ said Mary, suspecting that any argument would be useless. She was referring to the liability waiver that had to be signed when a patient wanted to leave before an official discharge was granted.