Tangled Web (32 page)

The lack of visitors this early in the season only added to the pleasure of being able to wander along quiet paths without hindrance. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to have their arms around each other. They had been walking and talking for about twenty minutes, although time seemed to have stood still, when they came to a striking stone building. Gordon walked over to it, feeling strangely drawn. He touched the stone lightly with his fingertips and turned to ask Mary what it was.

‘It’s called
The Poem
,’ she answered quietly. ‘It’s a mausoleum.’

Gordon shrugged. ‘I can’t escape death even here. He rejoined Mary and they continued walking. ‘I thought I had it all worked out,’ he said. ‘The truth is I was wrong about just about everything.’

‘Does that include John Palmer’s innocence?’ asked Mary, with a sideways glance.

‘No, he’s innocent all right and I still believe Anne-Marie’s death was connected with what was going on in the IVF clinic, but as for everything else … ’

‘You’re being too hard on yourself,’ she said, rubbing the back of his hand.

Gordon shook his head. ‘I was so sure that Thomas was guilty because of what I saw in his lab but we both know I read it all wrong. The man was completely innocent all along. That was unforgivable.’

‘You’re not a professional detective,’ said Mary. ‘But your heart’s in the right place. You were doing what you thought was right. If nothing else, you’ve goaded the police into getting off their backsides at last. Even they must recognise now after two murders that things in the IVF unit are not all above board. Try to look on the positive side.’

Gordon gave Mary’s shoulders a grateful squeeze as they continued walking.

‘What’s bugging you most right now?’

‘Dawes’s death,’ replied Gordon. ‘I thought I’d definitely got it right this time. Dawes was the guilty man - and then we find him dead just like Thomas.’

‘But that doesn’t mean to say he was innocent like Thomas,’ said Mary.

‘True,’ conceded Gordon.

‘Everything you said about Dawes still fits, doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose.’

‘If he was murdered too, it just means there’s another level to this affair. Dawes wasn’t the prime mover after all: there must be someone else involved. Dawes must have panicked when he heard that the police were treating Thomas’s death as murder so he had to be silenced. It might help if we go through it step by step.’

Gordon smiled at Mary’s determination to introduce order and logic to a situation he had been seeing as chaotic. There was a pause in the conversation while they crossed a small wooden bridge over a tumbling waterfall. When the noise of the water had died away Mary continued, ‘Dawes makes several attempts at human cloning at the IVF clinic. They all fail apart from one; that was Anne-Marie Palmer but she wasn’t a complete success; she was born deformed. Somewhere along the line, Professor Thomas begins to suspect what’s going on and carries out his own investigation. He gets killed for his trouble. Dawes, d’you think?’

‘Probably but we can’t rule out the person who killed Dawes himself.’

‘Is there anything to connect Dawes to Megan Griffiths?’ asked Mary.

‘There is,’ said Gordon. ‘Dawes was seen going down to pathology by the chief technician in the IVF unit, on the day in question. He made something up about going there to warn Thomas about being late for a meeting but it turns out that there was no such meeting. Dawes also fits Maurice Cleef’s description of the man he’d spoken to about Megan’s body.

‘So it seems to me that Dawes was up to his neck in everything that was going on,’ said Mary. ‘What we don’t know is
who
he was trying to clone or
why
.’

‘And where Megan Griffiths fits in to all this.’

‘Still no thoughts?’

Gordon shook his head.

‘A cloned baby and a normal baby. Could somebody have wanted to compare something about them?’ asked Mary.

Gordon shrugged. ‘I just don’t know.’

They had completed a circle of the garden and were sitting on a bench seat in the upper rose terrace, looking out to the hills of Snowdonia. Mary snuggled up close to Gordon as a cold wind sprang up and let them know that winter hadn’t quite finished yet. ‘I wish the spring would come properly,’ she said. ‘I hate this time when we’re between seasons. One day it’s spring then it’s back to winter with a frost, then it’s back to spring again. You never know where you are.’

‘Know the feeling,’ said Gordon.

‘Let’s go get some coffee.’

At Mary’s suggestion, they drove on down to Betws-y-coed where they had coffee and scones in the conservatory of the George Hotel while rain pattered gently down on the roof. It didn’t seem to matter: they were oblivious to it. They were just happy in each other’s company.

‘Can I ask what you’re going to do now?’ said Mary.

‘I’m going to wait for the DNA result on Anne-Marie so at least there will be one solid piece of evidence. Davies said he’d let me know about the PM on Ran Dawes so we’ll take it from there.’

‘So you two are on speaking terms then?’

‘At the moment,’ agreed Gordon.

‘You know, logic tells me that the unknown third person was actually running the show,’ said Mary.

‘How so?’

‘I suspect, from what’s happened and what you’ve told me, that Dawes was just someone hired to carry out the cloning.’

‘Hired?’ exclaimed Gordon, sounding surprised.

‘You said yourself that he was in the ideal position to do that sort of work and he did have the expertise. I think someone paid him - probably a great deal of money, to carry out a designer cloning, if you like.’

‘You know, that’s a good thought,’ said Gordon. ‘Maybe I’ll ask Davies to check Dawes’ bank account to see if there were any large payments made into it.’

‘It’s getting dark; we should be going.’

They left the hotel and opted to take the mountain road through the Llanberis Pass back to Bangor, thereby completing a big circle. Mary accepted Gordon’s offer to drive, admitting that she really didn’t like driving on narrow mountain roads at night.

‘Let’s just take our time,’ said Gordon. ‘Unless you have to be back for anything?’

‘Nothing,’ said Mary. ‘You don’t really have a social life when you work in A&E.’ She slipped a cassette into the player on the dash and Gordon was pleased to hear Mozart drift gently out from the speakers. ‘All right?’ asked Mary.

‘Just perfect.’

‘Mary fell asleep after five miles and her head came to rest on Gordon’s shoulder for the remainder of the drive home. She woke with a start as they drew up in the car park outside her home. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she exclaimed, taking a moment to get her bearings. ‘I must have been more tired than I thought.’

‘Don’t apologise,’ said Gordon, taking her hand in his. ‘I’ve enjoyed this afternoon more than anything I can remember in a very long time.’

‘Me too,’ agreed Mary. ‘You must come and see Bodnant with me when the spring is really here.’

‘I’d like nothing better,’ said Gordon. ‘Are you back on duty tomorrow night?’

‘Fraid so but you will let me know if you hear anything?’

‘Of course.’ Gordon leaned over and kissed her gently. Mary smiled when Gordon pulled back. ‘Was that a good night kiss?’ she asked softly.

‘Only if you want it to be,’ he replied.

‘Maybe … you’d like to come up for coffee?’

‘Very much.’

The fact that his flat was cold for the usual reason did not detract from Gordon’s feelings of euphoria one iota when he got home just after nine thirty in the morning. He hummed Mozart as he fiddled with the timer and gave the pump its customary kick. He turned on the electric fire and the kettle before checking the answer machine – there were no messages. He might have lost his job and made a fool of himself over Thomas’s involvement, but not
everything
in this world was going badly.

Davies phoned at eleven to say that Dawes had undoubtedly been murdered. He’d been hit on the back of the head before being locked in the liquid nitrogen store. Gordon said that he appreciated being told but sensed that Davies wanted to say more.

Davies cleared his throat a couple of times before beginning, ‘I know we got off on the wrong foot, but frankly I’d appreciate your input in this case, Doctor. It’s not exactly your run-of-the-mill murder.’

Gordon too was in the mood for reconciliation. He said, ‘I know I’ve been making a bit of a nuisance of myself to the police in the last few weeks. I apologise for that. I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.’

‘Good, we’ve been trying to establish who the last person to see Ranulph Dawes alive was. Apparently Dawes was still in the IVF unit at eight o’clock last night. One of the secretaries was there – she was using her word processor to type up her son’s degree thesis. Dawes told her he was hoping to see the hospital’s medical superintendent to discuss what implications Thomas’s death might have for the unit. He was still trying to track him down when the secretary left. We haven’t yet managed to ask Dr Trool if he made contact.’

‘I’m just waiting for the DNA result on Anne-Marie,’ said Gordon. ‘It’ll probably be another day at least. I’ll call you when I have it.’

Gordon decided to walk up to the village and get a few things from the local shops. It had been a while since he’d run the gauntlet and he wondered if anything had changed. He was aware of groups of women whispering behind his back in Main Street but no one he came across was overtly rude. He said good morning to a few of them and got a civil reply. That, he decided, was probably as good as it got. He bought a morning paper at the newsagent and some bread rolls from the bakers before walking back along the street to the steps leading down to the harbour. He’d almost reached them when a double-decker bus pulled up at the stop next to them and Blodwyn Marsh, the woman he’d treated for fume inhalation, got off. She seemed a bit anxious and upset.

‘Good Morning, Mrs Marsh, he’s not been stripping furniture again, I hope,’ said Gordon.

‘Oh, Good Morning, Doctor, I didn’t see you there. No, it’s worse than that, God bless ‘im, the poor man’s dead. He was found dead at his work apparently.’

‘How awful,’ said Gordon. ‘What happened?’

‘The police aren’t saying. It was his neighbour who told me. Poor Mr Dawis, such a gentleman, he was.’

‘Dawis,’ repeated Gordon, bells ringing in his head. The woman had pronounced the name, da-wis; but the fact that he had died at work and the police were involved suggested suddenly that the name was, in fact, Dawes.’

‘Did your Mr Dawis work in Caernarfon, Mrs Marsh?’

‘Yes,’ replied the woman. ‘Why?’

‘At the hospital?’

‘I don’t rightly know what he did,’ said the woman. ‘I don’t think he ever said. We never spoke much, he was always out when I arrived, see. He just used to leave the money for me on the hall table. I think the last time I saw him was when I had to complain about the fumes. Remember?’

‘I do indeed,’ said Gordon. He was thinking that he couldn’t see Ranulph Dawes as the furniture-stripping type and the bells inside his head were still ringing. ‘You must have your own key for the place,’ he said.

‘Yes …’ agreed the woman, a note of puzzlement and caution creeping into her voice.

‘Could I have it?’

Blodwyn Marsh’s eyes opened wide. ‘I don’t rightly know,’ she stammered.

‘I’ll see that the police get it, I promise,’ said Gordon. ‘They’ll know what to do with it.’

‘Well, that would save me having to do it, I suppose. I don’t mind telling you, the news gave me quite a turn.’

‘You could do with a cup of tea,’ said Gordon solicitously. ‘I’ll walk you over to your house.’

Brushing aside Blodwyn Marsh’s protestations, which were weak enough to suggest that she was secretly pleased at the offer, Gordon insisted on accompanying her the few streets to her home where her husband came out to see what the matter was. ‘She’s had a bit of a shock,’ explained Gordon. ‘I think strong sweet tea is called for.’

Feeling that he’d done his good deed for the day, Gordon walked back to Main Street, the fingers of his right hand playing with the keys to Dawes’ house in his jacket pocket. Just what the hell was it that Dawes had been doing that involved fuming chemicals, he wondered? Apart from that, he had been living in furnished, rented accommodation. The furniture wasn’t his to play around with, even if he had been into DIY. The intriguing question was, could he have been carrying out some kind of experimental work at home? Something to do with the cloning business, something that he couldn’t do openly at the IVF unit?

Gordon supposed that the police would get round to looking the place over but, at the moment, they were more interested in making inquiries about Dawes’ movements. He toyed with the idea of taking a look for himself as he descended the harbour steps. He knew that it was something that he shouldn’t even be contemplating – Davies would probably go ballistic, but he found the temptation just too great. He started up the Land Rover and set out for Aberlyn.

It was only four miles from Felinbach to Aberlyn but Gordon had seldom had occasion to visit it. It was a small village, much like Feli itself, sitting on the shores of the Menai, looking out towards Anglesey, but access to it was by a single-lane road that led down from the main road. You didn’t drive through Aberlyn on the way to anywhere else.

Gordon was unlucky enough to meet a tractor coming towards him about a mile from the edge of the village. He had to back up nearly three hundred metres before he found a suitable cutting to move into. The tractor driver drove by without any recognition of Gordon’s action. ‘Have a nice day,’ murmured Gordon. He drove on down to the village and parked the Land Rover well away from the houses on a patch of shingle leading down to the shore. In North Wales, Land Rovers were so common that they were practically invisible. They were the standard form of transport for the sheep farming community and also much in evidence for mountain training and rescue organisations, not to mention the Coast Guard Service and the Electricity Board. His would not attract any undue attention.