He pulled the drawer completely out and looked into the space to see that something had fallen down the back. He reached in and pulled out a single, folded sheet of paper. It was a carbon copy of a hospital lab requisition for supplies and services. It had been submitted to, Dr Leonard Fairbrother, School of Biological Sciences, University of Wales at Bangor. There was an official order number along with a date but no other details. Gordon folded it and put it in his pocket. It was the only document he was to find in an extensive search of the lab and office.
He returned the key to the secretary and asked her to give his apologies to Dawes for not having waited. He left the unit to walk out into watery sunshine and a stiff breeze. There seemed to be little point in hanging around now.
He was just about to start up the Land Rover when he noticed a worried looking James Trool leave the front door of the hospital and get into his car. Gordon noted that it was the Jaguar that Carwyn Thomas had been surprised to see in the car park last night. Gordon mused that he didn’t envy the man his job in trying to defend the hospital’s image at a time when scandal and shock seemed hell bent on damaging it from all angles. He watched him drive off before he himself followed suit and set out on the road back to Felinbach.
When he got in, he made coffee and sat down to re-read the piece of paper he’d found in Thomas’s lab. ‘Well, Leonard Fairbrother,’ he murmured. ‘Just who the hell are you? Feeling that he had nothing to lose, he grabbed at the phone directory and looked up the number for the University of Wales. He was going to go for a direct approach. ‘I’d like to speak to Dr Fairbrother in the Department of Biological sciences,’ he told the operator.
‘Trying to connect you...’
‘Fairbrother.’
‘Dr Fairbrother, my name is Tom Gordon; I’m a GP in Felinbach; I was wondering if I might come over and talk to you — some time today if possible?’
‘What about?’
‘I’d rather leave that until I saw you, Doctor.’
‘Intriguing,’ said Fairbrother. ‘Let’s see... Would twelve noon be any good?’
‘Ideal,’ replied Gordon. He hadn’t meant to sound cryptic but establishing contact with Fairbrother had been so easy and so rapid that he hadn’t had time to think about what he wanted to say. By the time he was dodging traffic to cross the main road outside the biological sciences building, he had a better idea.
Fairbrother had ivy growing on the wall outside his office but the room itself was located in a dirty brick building fronting a busy main thoroughfare. The ivy was its only claim to cloistered charm. An ambulance went wailing by outside as Fairbrother invited Gordon to sit. ‘What can I do for you, Doctor?’
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?