Tangled Web (29 page)

Fairbrother had turned out to be much younger than Gordon had imagined from his voice on the telephone. He’d pictured a middle-aged man in sports jacket and flannels but here was a fresh-faced young man, dressed in sweatshirt and jeans who looked more like a member of a rock band than a don.

‘I believe you know Professor Carwyn Thomas at Caernarfon General,’ said Gordon.

‘I do, or rather, I did,’ agreed Fairbrother. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I heard the news. What a tragedy.’

‘How did you come to know Professor Thomas?’

‘I only met him for the first time recently,’ said Fairbrother. ‘He asked me to help him out with something. Why do you ask?’

‘It’s what he asked you to do for him that I’m interested in,’ said Gordon.

Fairbrother gave a little laugh that suggested the discomfort of a person about to be rude when it really wasn’t in their nature. ‘Frankly, you have me at a disadvantage, Doctor,’ he said. ‘I don’t quite see what I was doing for Professor Thomas has to do with you.’

‘I’ve reason to believe that illegal experiments were being carried out in Professor Thomas’s unit,’ said Gordon, hoping for shock value in the blunt statement. ‘I’m hoping to help the police with their inquiries by piecing together what the professor was doing scientifically before he died,’ lied Gordon. ‘It’s not easy for people outside the profession to carry out that kind of investigation.’

‘Of course not,’ agreed Fairbrother. ‘Professor Thomas asked me to do some DNA fingerprinting for him.’

‘DNA fingerprinting?’ exclaimed Gordon, failing to mask his excitement at Fairbrother’s reply. The words almost stuck in his throat when he asked, ‘What sort of work, exactly?’

‘He hoped to establish the true identity of a child he had some doubts about. He wanted me to DNA test a tissue sample – discreetly.’

‘Were you able to do what he wanted?’ asked Gordon.

‘Yes, I think so. He seemed satisfied with results - shocked, surprised and then pleased, I’d say, if I’m any judge of reaction. It was as if he’d just solved some puzzle that had been bothering him.’

‘What were these results?’ asked Gordon calmly, his mouth going dry at seeing only one more hurdle to cross.’

‘I can’t rightly say,’ confessed Fairbrother, appearing embarrassed at his own answer.’

Gordon felt himself fall at the final hurdle and come crashing to the ground. Surely fate couldn’t be this cruel. ‘You can’t rightly say?’ he repeated.

‘I was working blind, you see, with numbered samples. Professor Thomas didn’t want me to have the names of those involved. I just know that the child I was fingerprinting was definitely not the child of samples one and two but was in fact the child of samples three and four.’

Gordon put a hand to his forehead in anguish. ‘No names,’ he said. ‘Just numbers! Jesus!’

‘Actually, Professor Thomas did mention a name at one point. He seemed to be taken so much by surprise that he sort of blurted it out,’ said Fairbrother.

‘Can you remember it?’

‘Give me a moment … there was something familiar about it … a girl’s name; I remember that much … ’

‘Anne-Marie Palmer?’ prompted Gordon, prepared to bet money that he was right.

‘No, it wasn’t that,’ said Fairbrother. ‘Ah yes, I remember now. It was Megan Griffiths.’

TWENTY THREE

‘Are you all right?’ asked Fairbrother.

Gordon looked at him blankly, taking fully ten seconds for the question to register. ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ he murmured. ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’

‘Positive,’ said Fairbrother. ‘I remember thinking at the time that the name seemed vaguely familiar, then I remembered it was the name of the little girl whose body disappeared from the hospital up in Caernarfon. Her name was, Megan Griffiths, wasn’t it?’

Gordon nodded. ‘Yes, it was. Did Professor Thomas say anything apart from her name?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Fairbrother. ‘I suppose I assumed that his investigation had something to do with that sorry business so I didn’t ask too much. They haven’t got to the bottom of it yet, have they?’

Gordon said not and thanked Fairbrother for seeing him at such short notice.

He stood outside on the pavement for a few moments, oblivious to the heavy traffic rumbling by as he tried to make some sense out of this latest piece of information. It seemed bitterly ironic that a link to Megan Griffiths – the one he’d been racking his brains to find - should suddenly appear at a time when his whole investigation had hit the wall with Thomas’s death. But what was the link, he wondered? Just what kind of sample had Thomas been DNA sequencing and where had it come from? Could this mean that Megan’s body hadn’t been destroyed?

Almost without realising it, Gordon found that he had walked as far as the pier. After a moment’s hesitation, he walked out on the boardwalk, pulling his collar up against the strong March wind and feeling occasional gusts of sea spray on his cheek. It was a good quarter of a mile to the end where he turned his back to the wind and leaned over the leeward rail to look down at the rough waters of the Menai. As he did so, a simple obvious thought struck him. Fairbrother had said that Thomas had sought his help in establishing
identity
. This meant that Thomas had been unsure of the origin of the sample he’d given to Fairbrother. It also implied that he had been conducting an
investigation
.

When viewed along with the fact that Thomas’s lab had been thoroughly cleared out, Gordon was forced to consider for the first time, and not without some embarrassment, that Thomas might actually have been an innocent party in this whole affair. It made the wind feel all the colder.

‘Of course he was,’ said Mary, pleased at the proposition when Gordon posed the question. ‘His suspicions must have been aroused too and probably at a much earlier stage. He was probably trying to find out what was going on, just like you were. It’s just a pity he didn’t confide in you.’

Gordon was sitting in Mary’s small but comfortable living room on the second floor of a modern block of flats, about a mile from the hospital: they had just eaten and had moved away from the table to have coffee in front of the fire.

‘The heart attack was therefore most unfortunate,’ said Gordon thoughtfully.

‘But awfully convenient for someone, when you think about it,’ said Mary.

Gordon nodded slowly. ‘I’m afraid I may have been doing the professor a grave injustice. Your gut feeling was right about him. He was probably a good guy all along. He knew something wasn’t quite right in the unit so he was looking into it on his own - probably because his pride wouldn’t let him confide in anyone else where the reputation of his clinic was at stake.’

‘Just supposing it wasn’t a heart attack,’ said Mary.

‘You mean it could have been murder?’ said Gordon who had been thinking along the same lines.

‘It would make a lot of sense.’

‘They’ll be doing the PM today so we shouldn’t have too long to wait to find out,’ said Gordon.

‘But if it should turn out that he was murdered,’ said Mary. ‘And he didn’t do the cloning … who did?’

‘Ranulph Dawes,’ replied Gordon without hesitation.

‘The cytologist? The man you asked to help you?’

‘Thanks for reminding me,’ said Gordon wryly. ‘But if it wasn’t Thomas it must have been Dawes. Everything points to that now and suddenly a lot of things would become clearer. Thomas knew something strange was going on in the clinic but he didn’t know exactly what until he saw the ICSI figures from the American lab. Coming just after the heated discussion on human cloning, he must have put two and two together and realised what Dawes had been up to. That’s why he looked the way he did when he watched Dawes demonstrate his skills at the microscope. Not many people have the necessary expertise to even attempt a cloning but Dawes had.

‘You must tell the police this,’ said Mary.

Gordon said, ‘Let’s wait for the PM result first. If French says it was natural causes then we’re back to square one. Even if it turns out to be murder, there’s still going to be a problem getting proof,’ he added. ‘Anne-Marie’s body and the suspect foetuses that Thomas had in his freezer have all been destroyed. Dawes has had time to clean up absolutely everything.’

Subconsciously, Gordon put a hand up to the lump on the back of his head. It prompted Mary to ask, ‘Painful?’

‘Not really, just a dull ache.’

Mary moved closer and indicated that he let her examine it. He bent forward to let her fingers probe the area gently. ‘The swelling’s gone down quite a bit,’ she said. ‘But if it’s troubling you …’

Gordon was acutely aware of Mary’s closeness. Her perfume filled his senses and her touch was awakening feelings in him that he’d almost forgotten. He raised his head slowly and turned to face her. ‘It’s fine,’ he said softly, and kissed her gently on the lips, tracing his fingers slowly down her right cheek. There was only the slightest hesitation before Mary responded and they embraced hungrily.

‘God, I think I’ve wanted to do that since the first moment I saw you,’ murmured Gordon.

‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ murmured Mary as Gordon kissed her neck.

Gordon looked at her and saw the smile he’d wanted to see from the time of their first encounter. Any lingering doubts he had about his feelings for her and whether it was a good idea or not, disappeared like snow in summer. ‘I want you,’ he said. ‘God, how I want you.’

Mary put a finger up to his lips and held it there. ‘I need a little more time,’ she said softly. ‘Just a little more. Is that all right?’

Gordon smiled and nodded.

‘But don’t feel discouraged …’ Mary smiled broadly and they both laughed.

Gordon got in to find a message on his answering machine from Charles French, asking that he call him back. ‘Well, well,’ muttered Gordon, wondering why on earth French would be calling him. He dialled the number.

‘Dr Gordon? Thank you for returning my call.’

Gordon recognised the sound of someone trying to be ‘nice’ even if it was a struggle. ‘What can I do for you, Doctor?’ he asked, feeling intrigued.

‘Look, I appreciate that you and Chief Inspector Davies don’t exactly see eye to eye over a lot of things,’ began French. ‘But I don’t think that should be allowed to sour
our
relationship, do you?’

‘Quite honestly, I didn’t think we had one,’ said Gordon.

‘Well, no, I suppose I meant that, as two medical men, we naturally have a strong professional bond … ’

‘I’m really not sure I understand what you’re getting at, Dr French,’ said Gordon.

‘This business with the Palmer child’s body,’ said French awkwardly. ‘I know what I did was technically wrong, a gross error of judgement on my part, but my intentions were good and in no way did I imagine it was going to lead to the destruction of Crown evidence. You do accept that, don’t you?’

‘I don’t think what I accept or don’t accept has any relevance in this case, Doctor,’ said Gordon. ‘I really don’t see why you’re telling me this.’

‘I suppose I wanted to know if the Palmer defence team are planning to make a big thing out of it,’ confessed French.

‘I really couldn’t say,’ said Gordon.

‘Does that mean that they’re not actually aware of what has happened as yet?’ asked French, a hopeful note creeping into his voice.

So that was it, thought Gordon, French was trying to minimise the fall-out as far as he was concerned from the destruction of Anne-Marie’s body. ‘Not from me,’ he said.

French gave a small but audible sigh of relief before continuing, ‘Are you planning to tell them?’

‘They have a right to know,’ said Gordon, stalling for time, he hadn’t fully thought this through although now that French had brought up the subject, he supposed that John Palmer’s defence team could make trouble over the unavailability of the body for any further examination.

‘I understand from Chief Inspector Davies that you, yourself admit to being in the mortuary at Caernarfon General with the express purpose of carrying out an illegal procedure on the body?’ said French, more haughtily now.

Gordon smiled to himself as the threat entered the negotiations.

‘After I had refused you access …’ continued French.

‘Presumably because I’m not a member of the same golf club as you and Carwyn Thomas,’ said Gordon.

‘That is outrageous!’ spluttered French.

‘I agree,’ said Gordon calmly, ‘What you’re suggesting, Doctor, is that if you go down for screwing around with Crown evidence, you’re going to make sure that I go down with you. There, that didn’t take long to say, did it?’

‘There was absolutely no criminal intent in what I did,’ protested French.

‘Me neither,’ said Gordon, matter-of-factly. ‘I simply wanted a small tissue sample for DNA fingerprinting.’

‘DNA Fingerprinting?’

‘I had doubts over the true identity of the child.’

After a short pause, French said, ‘You don’t need much in the way of biological material for DNA fingerprinting.’

‘Very little,’ agreed Gordon, immediately wondering why French had said something like that.

‘Then it would still be possible.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I could let you have a pathological specimen taken from Anne-Marie Palmer at post mortem,’ said French. ‘I still have a range of lab specimens taken from her. If it would help mend fences between us, I am prepared to let you have access to what you need without asking too much.’

Gordon was excited at the prospect but not so excited that he couldn’t see that he and French would now be colluding. His concern was quickly overruled by deciding that he’d be doing what was right. If there was the remotest chance of obtaining sound scientific evidence relevant to the case, it had to be taken. Medical facts were definitely preferable in court to John Palmer’s lawyers introducing legal arguments over technicalities. Apart from that, John’s luck was so bad that the judge at his trial would probably turn out to be a member of the same golf club as French and Thomas.

‘Perhaps I could pick up a sample in the morning?’

‘Of course, and if by any chance you should be able to get the information that you want from the sample … ’