He got back into bed and switched on the radio to catch up on the news while the water heated up and the chill was taken off the air. There would be no point in trying to phone Fairbrother at the university before nine, he reckoned. If Fairbrother agreed to do the DNA fingerprinting — and it was still a big ‘if’, he’d collect a sample of Anne-Marie’s tissue from French’s lab in Bangor and take it over to him along with the samples he’d collected from Lucy’s house. It was ten past nine when Gordon managed to reach Fairbrother at his third attempt.
‘Dr Fairbrother? It’s Tom Gordon here. You were kind enough to speak with me yesterday.’
‘Of course, what can I do for you?’
‘Frankly, I need your help again — pretty much in the same way that Professor Thomas did and for pretty much the same reason. I need to have some samples DNA fingerprinted.’
‘You folks are going to finish up with a DNA database for everyone in Bangor by the time you’re finished,’ said Fairbrother, but he didn’t sound annoyed.
‘I’d really be very grateful for your help,’ said Gordon.
‘How many samples are we talking about?’
‘Six, but there is a slight problem. Only two are conventional samples; four are scrapings from blood stains.’ Gordon bit his lip as he waited for Fairbrother’s response.
‘Are you sure this isn’t a job best done through the police forensic service?’
‘I’d prefer if it was done by a reliable independent agent if at all possible,’ said Gordon.
‘All right,’ said Fairbrother, ‘Bring ‘em over; I’ll see what I can do.’
Gordon let out a long sigh of relief as he put down the phone. Everything was in place. All he had to do now was pick up the sample from French and the ball would start rolling.
Twenty four
French wasn’t in the police lab when Gordon arrived to pick up the promised sample of Anne-Marie’s tissue. A colleague said that he had been called away suddenly after, ‘some shit had really hit the fan’, but had left a package for him. Gordon opened up the small Jiffy bag to check that it contained the right thing. He pulled out a small, clear plastic container with a one cubic centimetre sample of tissue in it. An adhesive label on one side of it had Anne-Marie’s name inscribed on it in black marker pen.
Gordon drove over to the university and handed it in with the other samples to Fairbrother who took down details and labelled them meticulously, using his own system. He said he’d get them done as quickly as possible. Gordon was back in Feli by ten thirty where he found a dark grey saloon car waiting outside his flat: the three aerials on the roof suggested that it was a police car. As he got out of the Land Rover, DCI Davies and his sergeant got out of the other car to stand in front of the door, blocking his way. Both wore blank expressions.
‘Problems?’ said Gordon, feeling decidedly apprehensive.
‘Thomas Gordon, I’m arresting you for the murder of Professor Carwyn Arthur Thomas...’
The words dissolved into a hollow echo inside Gordon’s head. His jaw dropped in disbelief.
‘You are not obliged to say anything but...’
Gordon didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The desire to pour scorn on Davies and the shock of being arrested was offset by the realisation that Thomas actually had been murdered. He ended up by simply saying, ‘That makes much more sense.’
Davies looked at him as if he were mad. Sergeant Walters wrote it down in his notebook.
‘You’re admitting it?’ asked Davies.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ replied Gordon.
‘Get in the car.’
The drive up to Caernarfon was completed in absolute silence, with Gordon feeling as if he were sandwiched between two silent robots. He declined the opportunity to call a solicitor, opting instead to phone Mary to tell her what had happened.
She too asked if she should contact a lawyer on his behalf.
‘I haven’t done anything,’ he replied.
Davies switched on the recorder in the interview room, related who was present and permitted himself a small smirk as he faced Gordon across the table.
‘I would strongly suggest, Dr Gordon that you make a clean breast of it all and tell us everything.’
‘What’s to tell? I’m completely in the dark. I was under the impression that the professor had died of natural causes — at least that’s what Dr French told me last night.’
‘You spoke to French?’
Gordon didn’t think a confirmation was necessary.
Davies smirked and said, ‘All doctors together is it? You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours? Well, let me tell you this, my son, you might have been clever enough to fool your fellow medics but you didn’t fool the forensic toxicology boys for one moment. ‘Amyl nitrate ring a bell?’
‘’Should it?’
‘That’s what they found in the professor’s samples. He’d been given a large amount of the stuff. It makes the heart race, but then you’d know that, being a doctor wouldn’t you?’ Davies leaned over the table till his face was very close to Gordon’s. ‘And because you administered it!’
‘So that’s how he did it,’ said Gordon calmly.
‘Who?’ asked Davies, sounding more annoyed than inquisitive.
‘The man who killed Professor Thomas and probably Maurice Cleef too, maybe even Anne-Marie Palmer.
Davies did not break into fits of sarcastic laughter. Instead he sat back in his chair again, looking at Gordon as if he were an exhibit in a zoo. He turned his pen, end over end on the surface of the table several times, and then he said, ‘What is this shit?’
‘I was wrong about Thomas experimenting with human cloning,’ said Gordon. ‘It wasn’t him — it was a member of his staff, an embryologist named, Ranulph Dawes. Thomas must have latched on to what he was up to and started to investigate on his own.’
‘And what brought you to that conclusion?’
Gordon calmly told Davies all that he’d worked out and was relieved to see that Davies was — or appeared to be, taking what he said seriously.
‘That’s quite a story,’ said Davies when he’d finished. ‘But is that all it is or can you prove any of it?’
Gordon was honest. ‘It’s going to be difficult,’ he admitted. ‘I stupidly tried to enlist Dawes’s help when I thought Thomas was the guilty party so he’s had time to get rid of all the evidence. I did, however, take down some reference numbers from the frozen foetuses I found in Thomas’s freezer and there’s the all important tissue sample taken from Anne-Marie Palmer’s body that French came up with. I took it up to the university labs this morning; they’re going to DNA fingerprint it. I’m sure it’s going to show that she wasn’t the natural child of the Palmers.’
‘The university labs?’ asked Davies, latching on to the last bit.
‘I asked the same scientist that Professor Thomas used when he started to become suspicious. An entirely independent expert on the technique.’
Davies looked at Gordon like an owl contemplating its supper but decided against any more confrontation at this juncture. ‘And if this should confirm what you claim, what then? How does it help?’
‘The IVF unit must have records of who actually carried out the actual lab work for each patient. If it was Dawes who carried out the IVF procedure in the case of Lucy Palmer and it should turn out that her baby was not her biological child, then he obviously has some explaining to do. With a bit of luck he’ll see that the game’s up and fill in the missing details himself.’
‘And maybe Bangor will win the European Cup next year,’ said Davies but that was as far as the sarcasm went. He turned and said to Walters, ‘We’d better check this out.’ Turning back to Gordon, he asked, ‘Will this Dawes character be at the hospital right now?’