He reflected that it wasn’t often that he had experienced total darkness. Waking up in the middle of the night was nothing like this. Little reference points of light from some source or other were always there to aid orientation. The bandages afforded him nothing like that, just an endless dark infinity where there was nothing to do but think.
As he lay there, unable to sleep, his thoughts returned to Carwyn Thomas and what evidence there was for his involvement in human cloning. There were of course, the bad figures for ICSI treatment when compared to those of other labs using the same technique. Although these could be explained away for other reasons, there was no doubt that an increase in failure rate would be expected if human cloning was being attempted under the guise of IVF treatment. Cloning experiments with animals had shown that this would certainly be the case.
The more he thought about it, the more Gordon began to appreciate that an IVF unit would be the perfect cover for carrying out cloning experiments. Once the technical problems had been sorted out, it would be a case of obtaining eggs from women patients in the usual way, but then removing the nuclei from them and injecting them with DNA from the subjects being cloned instead of sperm from the prospective fathers. The perfect cover.
Gordon shivered at the thought but also saw the problems that would arise if such a secret cloning were to be successful. A baby would be born after an apparently normal pregnancy but it would not be the one the parents were expecting. They of course, wouldn’t know that. In reality, the mother would have acted as a surrogate for an entirely foreign child but she’d be none the wiser.
And then what?
Eighteen
Gordon considered what the implications of a successful human cloning might be. Until now, he’d been assuming that all such experiments would end in abortion or stillbirth. Now he found himself forced to consider the problems and repercussions of success. In the event of that happening, what would the cloner tell the mother? That the child she’d just given birth to wasn’t really hers? That the little bundle she was cradling in her arms was the result of a secret experiment and had absolutely nothing to do with her and her husband at all? That he had conned her and her husband into believing that they were having the child they’d always longed for, when in reality they weren’t?
He supposed not, but also felt uncomfortable with the alternative of the perpetrator staying quiet and saying nothing about what he’d done. Would he really allow his ‘experiment’ to grow up as the son or daughter of a family that was totally alien to them in terms of blood relationship, a bizarre situation where the parents didn’t know that their offspring was adopted. He wondered if simply knowing that the experiment had succeeded would be satisfaction enough for a researcher. Again, he thought not. Surely the point of carrying out such an experiment in the first place would be to add to his scientific achievements? There could be no peer acclaim if the outcome remained a secret, no international awards, medals or prizes to be modestly accepted. On the other hand, the whole thing would be so grossly illegal that none of that would be possible anyway. So the puzzle remained. Why do it? Curiosity? Vanity? The desire for scientific knowledge? Or some other reason altogether?
Supposing it wasn’t just an experiment. Suppose there had been a reason for the cloning and that the cloned child was not just any child but the result of a DNA cloning of a specific individual. Thomas was involved in cloning somebody! A deliberate choice suddenly seemed to be a more realistic option, but who had the donor been? Could Thomas be cloning himself? Surely the ultimate ego trip for any scientist. But if the cloned child were to be left with its ‘adoptive’ family and neither he nor they were to know anything about his true origins... would that make any sense?
Gordon wrestled unsuccessfully with this notion. Common sense dictated that if anyone were to risk their reputation and career in a bid to clone a specific individual, then surely there had to be more to it than simply wanting to know if it could be done. The cloner would want access to the child, however difficult it might be to achieve and it certainly would. It might even be the highest hurdle of them all. Just how would he manage it, he wondered?
The child would be the most treasured possession of a couple who believed that IVF treatment had finally paid off for them: they would be the least likely parents on Earth to give up their child under any circumstances, so it would be necessary to take it from them. That would mean kidnapping it, not exactly a minor crime in any society and not one that either the public or the police were going to take lightly. Kidnapping was something that very few people ever got away with so it was out of the question... or was it?
Gordon felt his skin tingle with excitement as he realised that that was exactly what had happened to one of the IVF babies from Thomas’s unit. Anne-Marie Palmer had been kidnapped! He and her parents might be the only people on Earth who believed that, but it was true nevertheless. Gordon’s excitement foundered almost immediately on the fact that Anne-Marie had subsequently been murdered within days of her abduction. This didn’t fit in with what he was considering... unless of course, she had been regarded as a failed cloning because of the severity of her disability. Was it possible that she had been disposed of as an untidy loose end, maybe to prevent anyone ever finding out the true facts of her origin?
Gordon moved his head restlessly on the pillow as he saw that there would have been no need to murder Anne-Marie to keep her origins secret because it was just so unlikely that the truth would ever have come to light anyway. DNA fingerprinting of both Anne-Marie and her parents would have been required to reveal the secret and the possibility of that ever happening for any reason seemed very remote. On the other hand, Gordon suddenly saw that... it could still be done!
He felt a surge of excitement as he remembered that Anne-Marie’s remains were still being kept in refrigerated limbo by the police forensic service. She was lying in the mortuary of this very hospital at this very moment. Anne-Marie could be DNA tested and her profile compared with that of her parents! If it didn’t match, it would be conclusive proof that she had not been the natural child of the Palmers and go a long way towards suggesting that she had been the outcome of a human cloning experiment. It would certainly provide justifiable grounds for a police investigation into the IVF unit!
‘Yes!’ he murmured as, at last, he realised that he had come up with a way of obtaining hard evidence.
His slight exclamation had not been loud but loud enough to attract the attention of a nurse passing the door to his room.
‘Everything all right, Dr Gordon?’ she asked.
‘Yes, fine,’ he replied feeling slightly embarrassed. ‘Bit of a bad dream.’
The nurse gave the bedclothes a cosmetic tuck in and turned his pillow. ‘There now, you get some rest.’
Gordon made appropriate sleepy noises but he was already thinking about how he would go about getting material from Anne-Marie Palmer’s body for DNA fingerprinting. There was nothing to it, he mused wryly, all he had to do was break into the mortuary at Ysbyty Gwynedd and take a sample of Anne-Marie’s tissue — after having been expressly forbidden to go near the body by the forensic pathologist in charge of the case. Gordon felt a chill run down his spine at the thought but he’d cross that bridge when he came to it. He felt a wave of tiredness sweep over him. Events were catching up with him and the tide of consciousness was turning. Sleep was almost upon him with its sweet promise of forgetfulness. Under the bandages, he closed his eyes and wished Lucy well before drifting off into merciful oblivion.