Gordon glanced at his watch and decided that it was time to leave: he’d been here longer than he’d intended but he thought he’d just take a quick look in the cupboards before he left, just in case he had missed something. He really didn’t have that much to go on in terms of hard evidence. The cupboards contained various pieces of scientific apparatus but little else. Almost as a last gesture, he raised the lid of the chest freezer and froze with horror. The faces of three foetuses stared up at him through clear but misty plastic bags.
‘Jesus Christ,’ muttered Gordon. What were they? Who were they? He lifted up one of the bags and looked for labelling on it. There was a number written on the back in black grease pencil. He noticed that it had the same number of digits in it as the reference number he’d copied down from Anne-Marie’s file. He made a note of the numbers of all three then laid the little bundles back down in their icy lair and closed the lid. He rested his hands on it for a moment to recover his composure for they were shaking slightly: it was definitely time he was out of this place.
He clicked the lab door shut and replaced the key on its holder under Thomas’s desk. His nerves were beginning to settle and anxiety was being replaced by almost a sense of elation. He put his ear to the outside door, listening for any sounds in the corridor. To his dismay he heard the sound of raised voices, both male and they were getting louder. What was worse, he recognised one as belonging to Carwyn Thomas. The talk must have finished early. He was going to be caught red-handed!
Gordon took a deep breath and decided that there was no alternative but to brass it out. Hiding under the desk was not going to be an option this time. Hoping to disguise the fact that the door to the office had been closed, Gordon opened it wide and backed out into the corridor, holding the door handle and hoping to give the impression that he had just looked into the room to see if anyone was there. He turned to face the men coming towards him who had seen him and stopped talking. He could now see that Carwyn Thomas had been arguing with James Trool.
‘Ah, there you are, Professor,’ said Gordon, hoping his smile wasn’t going to fracture like that of an anxious beauty contestant held too long on camera. His heart rate was topping 140.
Trool smiled and said, ‘Hello there’.
‘What can I do for you, Doctor?’ asked Thomas, looking distinctly puzzled.
‘I know you’re very busy, Professor, but I hoped I might catch you here between symposium sessions. I wanted to have a private word with you. It’ll only take a couple of minutes.’
‘What about?’
Gordon noted that Thomas appeared to have lost his usual charm. He seemed preoccupied with something, presumably what he and Trool had been arguing about. ‘The Megan Griffiths business,’ said Gordon.
Thomas looked at him blankly for a moment before turning to Trool and saying, ‘I’ll get back to you. We’ll talk further.’
‘As you wish,’ said Trool coldly and walked off.
Gordon decided not to say anything about having come at a ‘bad time’. He followed Thomas into his office and sat down as invited.
‘I’m wearing a different hat this afternoon, Professor; I think you know that I’m one of the unofficial investigation team into what happened to Megan Griffiths’ body,’ said Gordon pleasantly. ‘I’m talking to everyone who was listed as visiting the Pathology Department on the day in question.’
‘So?’
‘You were listed,’ said Gordon.
Thomas looked at him as if his mind were still elsewhere. ‘Was I?’ he murmured.
‘You signed in at two-fifteen along with one of your technician — a Michael Deans.’
‘Oh yes, I remember,’ said Thomas quietly, still sounding heavily preoccupied, ‘I went down to see Sepp.’
‘Was Dr Sepp there?’
Thomas snapped out of his preoccupation. ‘Of course he was. I had an appointment to see him.’
‘And Deans?’
‘I thought he might be needed.’
Gordon let his silence prompt Thomas into saying more.
‘I thought we might have some tissue samples to deal with, that’s why I asked Deans to come along.’
‘Tissue samples?’
‘I hoped Sepp might still have path specimens from some patients I was interested in.’
‘Dead patients?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your patients? Babies?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t think that need concern you,’ said Thomas.
‘As you wish,’ said Gordon evenly.
Thomas suddenly seemed uncomfortable with what he’d said. ‘All right, I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘I wanted to know if Sepp still had samples of tissue taken from the stillbirth babies at the unit. I wanted to carry out further tests on them to see if I could find some clue as to what had gone wrong.’
‘I see,’ said Gordon, immediately thinking that he’d been right about what had been upsetting Thomas at the American’s seminar. But now, in the light of what he’d seen in Thomas’s lab, he could imagine an alternative reason for Thomas wanting to get his hands on the specimens. It was possible that he had planned to get rid of them to make sure that there was no damning evidence lying around in the Pathology Department. If Thomas really had been experimenting with human cloning and that was the reason for the increase in stillbirths in the clinic, he’d want to make sure his tracks were covered if people started asking questions.
With the symposium coming up, the high failure-rate of ICSI babies in his unit might well come to light when Caernarfon’s figures were compared with those of other labs. This was exactly what had happened during the American physician’s talk. The only thing that didn’t fit was that Thomas himself had seemed the one most keen to investigate the problem. The double bluff of a clever man, Gordon wondered? He smiled politely and said, ‘Thank you for your time, Professor. I’ll get out of your way now and let you get on.’
There were two messages on the answering machine when Gordon got back to Feli, the first from Liam Swanson, asking that he get in touch and the second from Lucy, saying that she was moving back home today. She wondered if he’d care to join her for supper tonight around seven. If he couldn’t manage, he wasn’t to worry. It was very short notice and she’d quite understand.
Gordon smiled and rang Lucy’s number to tell her answering machine that he would be there at seven. He called Swanson next.
‘I thought we might have a meeting when this symposium thing is over,’ said Swanson.
‘If you like.’
‘I think between us, we’ve talked to most of the people recorded in the Path Department’s book apart from Professor Thomas. He’s been tied up with the symposium.
‘I spoke to him today,’ said Gordon. ‘I knew he was on the list and as I’ve been attending the symposium, it seemed too good a chance to miss.’
‘No joy, I suppose?’ said Swanson.
‘Afraid not. I didn’t speak to his technician, Deans though.’
‘I did, yesterday,’ said Swanson. ‘He’d been asked to accompany Thomas to collect some tissue samples from the Path Department.’
‘That’s my understanding too,’ said Gordon.
‘I suspect we’re not going to get anywhere with this,’ said Swanson. ‘We’d be as well handing it over to the police.’
‘The question is, will they?’ said Gordon.
‘Maybe not,’ agreed Swanson. ‘But I’ve been ringing round some of the others and there’s a general feeling that we’re not making progress and won’t, however many times we question the staff. There’s not a lot more we can do really.’