Blue Genes (22 page)

Porches, car ports and new front doors had sprouted rampantly with no regard to any of their neighbours, each excrescence an indicator of private ownership, like a dog pissing on its own gatepost. Jan and Mary were among the more restrained; their porch was a simple red-brick and glass affair that actually looked as if it were part of the house rather than bolted on as a sad afterthought. I rang the bell and waited.

The woman who answered the door had an unruly mop of flaming red hair. It matched perfectly the small girl wrestling for freedom on her hip. I went through the familiar routine. When I got to the part where I revealed the doctor’s real identity, Jan Parrish looked appalled. ‘Oh my God,’ she breathed. ‘Oh my God.’

It was the first time I’d struck anything other than cracked plastic with that line. And that was even before I’d told her Sarah Blackstone was dead. ‘It doesn’t get any better,’ I said, not sure quite how to capitalize on her state. ‘I’m afraid she’s dead. Murdered, in fact.’

I thought she was going to drop the baby. The child took the opportunity to abseil down her mother’s body and stumble uncertainly towards me. I moved in front of her, legs together and bent at the knees like a hockey goalkeeper and blocked her escape route. Jan picked her up without seeming to be aware of it and stepped back. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said.

The living room was chaos. If I’d ever considered motherhood for more than the duration of a movie, that living room would have put me off for life. It made Richard’s mess look structured. And this woman was a qualified librarian, according to her medical record. Worrying. I shoved a pile of unironed washing to one end of a sofa and perched gingerly, carefully avoiding a damp patch that I didn’t want to think too closely about. Jan deposited the child on the carpet and sat down heavily on a dining chair with a towel thrown over it. I was confused; I couldn’t work out what Jan Parrish’s excessive reaction to my exposure of her doctor’s real identity meant. It didn’t fit my expectation of how a killer would react. I couldn’t see Jan Parrish as a killer, either. She didn’t seem nearly organized enough. But she had been horrified and panicked by what I’d said and I needed to find out why. Playing for time, I gave her the rigmarole about lesbian history. She was too distracted to pay much attention. ‘I’m sorry it’s been such a shock,’ I said finally, trying to get the conversation back on track.

‘What? Oh yes, her being murdered. Yes, that’s a shock, but it’s the other thing that’s thrown me. Her not being who she said she was. Oh my God, what have I done?’

That’s exactly what I was wondering too. It wasn’t that I was too polite to say so, only too cautious. ‘Whatever it was, I’m sure it had nothing to do with her death,’ I said soothingly.

Jan looked at me as if I was from the planet Out To Lunch. ‘Of course it didn’t,’ she said, frowning in puzzlement. ‘I’m talking about blowing her cover with the letter.’

I knew the meaning of every word, but the sentence failed to send messages from my ears to my brain. ‘I’m sorry…?’

Jan Parrish shook her head as if it had just dawned on her that she had done something so stupid that even a drunken child of two and a half would have held fire. ‘We were all paranoid about security, for obvious reasons. Dr Maitland always impressed on us the importance of that. She told us never to write to her at the clinic, because she was afraid someone might open the letter by mistake. She said if we needed to contact her again, we should make an appointment through the clinic. But we were so thrilled about Siobhan. When she had her first birthday, we both decided we wanted Dr Maitland to know how successful she’d been. I’m a librarian, I’m back at work part time, so I looked her up in Black’s. The
Medical Directory
, you know? And it said she was a consultant at St Hilda’s in Leeds, so we sent her a letter with a photograph of Siobhan with the two of us and a lock of her hair, just as a sort of keepsake. But now you’re telling me she wasn’t Dr Maitland at all? That means I’ve exposed us all to a terrible risk!’ Her voice rose in a wail and I thought she was going to burst into tears.

‘When was this?’ I asked.

‘About three months ago,’ she said, momentarily distracted by Siobhan’s sudden desire to commune with the mains electricity supply via a plug socket. She leapt to her feet and scooped up her daughter, returning her to the carpet but facing in the opposite direction. Showing all the stubbornness of toddlers everywhere, Siobhan immediately did a five-point turn and crawled back towards the skirting board. This time, I took a better look at her face. The hair might be Jan Parrish’s but the shape of her face was unmistakable. I wondered whether Helen Maitland had also noticed.

‘Well, if you haven’t heard anything by now, I’d think you’re all safe,’ I reassured her. ‘What did the letter actually say?’

She frowned. ‘I can’t remember the exact wording, but something like, “We’ll never be able to thank you enough for Siobhan. You made a dream come true for us, that we could really share our own child.” Something along those lines.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘That could mean anything. It certainly wouldn’t make anyone jump to the conclusion that something so revolutionary was going on. And it doesn’t give any clue as to who was actually treating you, does it? Unless the real Helen Maitland knew Sarah Blackstone was using her name, she’s got no way of guessing. And if she did know, then presumably she was in on the secret too. I really don’t think you should worry about it, honestly,’ I lied. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her for her stupidity. With a secret that held so much threat for her and her daughter, she should never have taken such an outrageous risk. Given that her mother faced a lifetime of discretion, I didn’t rate little Siobhan’s chances of making it to adulthood without being taken into care and treated like an experimental animal in a lab. Instead, I made my excuses and left.

I hadn’t found a serious suspect yet among the women who had been Sarah Blackstone’s patients. I hoped I’d still be able to say that when I’d finished interviewing them. I cared far too much for Alexis and Chris to want to take responsibility for the hurricane of official and media attention that would sweep through their lives if I had to open that particular corner of Sarah Blackstone’s life to public scrutiny.

Sometimes I think Alexis is psychic. I’d driven home thinking about her, and there she was on my doorstep. But it only took one glimpse of her face to realize she hadn’t popped round to say how gratified she was at my concern for her. If looks could kill, I’d have been hanging in some psychopath’s dungeon praying for the merciful end that death would bring.

Ask people what they think of when they hear the name ‘Liverpool’ and they’ll tell you first about the Scouse sense of humour, then about the city’s violent image. Tonight, Alexis definitely wasn’t seeing the funny side. I’d barely got out of my car before she was in my face, the three inches she has on me suddenly seeming a lot more. Her tempestuous bush of black hair rose round her head like Medusa on a bad hair day and her dark eyes stared angrily at me from under the lowering ledges of her brows. ‘What in the name of God are you playing at?’ she demanded.

‘Alexis, please stop shouting at me,’ I said quietly but firmly. ‘You know how it winds me up.’

‘Winds you up? Winds
you
up? You put me and Chris in jeopardy and you expect me to care about winding you up?’ She was so close now I could feel the warmth of her breath on my mouth.

‘We’ll talk about it inside,’ I said. ‘And I mean talk, not shout.’ I ducked under the hand that was moving towards my shoulder, swivelled on the balls of my feet and walked smartly up the path. It was follow me or lose me.

Alexis was right behind me as I opened the inside door and marched into the kitchen. Mercifully, she was silent. Without asking, I headed for the fridge freezer and made us both stiff drinks. I pushed hers down the worktop towards her and after a long moment, she picked it up and took a deep swallow. ‘Can we start again?’ I asked.

‘I hired you to make some discreet inquiries and cover our backs, not stir up a hornet’s nest,’ Alexis said, normal volume resumed.

‘My professional opinion is that talking to other women in the same position as you is not exposing you to any danger, particularly since I have not identified you as my client to any of the women I have spoken to,’ I said formally, trying to take the heat out of the situation. I knew it was fear not fury that really lay behind her display. In her stressed-out place, I’d probably have behaved in exactly the same way, best friend or not. ‘I had a perfectly credible cover story.’

‘Yeah, I heard that load of toffee about lesbian history,’ Alexis said derisively, lighting a cigarette. She knows I hate smoking in my kitchen, but she clearly reckoned this was one time she was going to get away with it. ‘No flaming wonder you set off more alarm bells than all the burglars in Greater Manchester. It’s not on, girl. I asked you to make sure we weren’t going to be exposed because of Sarah Blackstone’s murder. I didn’t expect you to go round putting the fear of God into half the lesbian mothers in Manchester. What the hell did you think you were playing at?’

It was a good question, and one I didn’t have an answer for yet. The one thing I knew for sure was that this wasn’t the right time to tell Alexis that Sarah Blackstone had added her mystery ingredient to the primordial soup. I was far from certain there was ever going to be a right time, but I know a wrong one when I see it. ‘Who told you anyway?’ I stalled.

‘Jude Webster rang me. She assumed that because you had the names and addresses of all the women involved that you were kosher. But she thought she’d better warn me in case I didn’t want Chris bothered in her condition. So what’s the game?’

Inspiration had provided me with an attempt at an answer. ‘I wanted to make sure none of them knew Blackstone’s real identity,’ I said. ‘If they had, they might have contacted her at her home under her real name, and there could be a record of that. A letter, an entry in an address book. I need to be certain that there isn’t a chink in the armour that could lead the police back to this group of women if they get suspicious about the burglar theory and start routine background inquiries.’ I spread my hands in front of me and tried for wide-eyed innocence.

Alexis looked doubtful. ‘But they’re not going to, are they? I’ve been keeping an eye on the local papers, and there’s no sign the police are even thinking it might have been anything more than a burglary that went wrong. What makes you think it was?’

I shrugged. ‘If anybody she worked with had found out what she was up to, they had a great motive for getting rid of her. A scandal like this associated with the IVF unit at St Hilda’s would have the place closed down overnight.’ This was thinner than Kate Moss, but given what I couldn’t tell Alexis, it was the best I could do.

‘Hey, I know it’s hard getting a decent job these days, but I can’t get my head round the idea of somebody knocking off a doctor just to avoid signing on,’ Alexis protested. Her anger had evaporated now I had anaesthetized her fears and her sense of humour had kicked in.

‘Heat of the moment? She’s arguing with somebody? They grab a knife?’

‘I suppose,’ Alexis conceded. ‘OK, I accept you did what you did with the best of motives. Only it stops here, all right? No more terrorizing poor innocent women, all right?’

That’s the trouble when friends become clients. You lose the power to ignore them.

Midnight, and we were arranged tastefully round the outer office of Mortensen and Brannigan. As soon as Richard had mentioned the f-word to Tony Tambo, the manager of Manassas had insisted that we meet somewhere nobody from clubland could possibly see him talking to a woman who’d already been publicly asking questions on the subject. Otherwise, flyposting was definitely off the agenda. He’d vetoed a rendezvous in a Chinese restaurant, a casino, an all-night caff in the industrial zone over in Trafford Park and the motorway services area. Richard’s house was off limits because it was next door to mine. But the office was OK. I couldn’t work out the logic in that until Richard explained.

‘Now they’ve converted the neighbouring building into a student hall of residence, if anybody sees Tony coming out of your building, they’ll assume he’s been having a leg-over with some teenage raver,’ he said.

‘And I bet he wouldn’t mind that,’ I said drily.

‘Show me a man over thirty who’d object to people making that assumption and I’ll show you a liar,’ Richard replied wistfully.

So we were sitting with the blinds drawn, the only light coming from the standard lamp in the corner and Shelley’s desk lamp. Tony Tambo was hunched into one corner of the sofa, somehow managing to make his six feet of muscles look half their usual size. Although it was cold enough in the office for me to have kept my jacket on, the slanting light revealed a sheen of sweat on skin the colour of a cooked chestnut that covered Tony’s shaved skull. He was wearing immaculate taupe chinos, black Wannabes, a black silk T-shirt that seemed moulded to his pectorals and a beige jacket whose soft folds revealed it was made of some mixture of natural materials like silk and cashmere.

It’s a mystery to me, silk. For centuries it was a rare, exotic fabric, worn only by the seriously rich. Then, almost overnight, somewhere around 1992, it was everywhere. From Marks and Spencer to market stalls, you couldn’t get away from the stuff. Kids on council estates living on benefits were suddenly wearing silk shirts. What I want to know is where it all came from. Were the Chinese giving silkworms fertility drugs? Had they been stockpiling it since the Boxer rebellion? Or is there some deeper, darker secret lurking behind the silk explosion? And why does nobody know the answer? One of these days, I’m going to drive over to Macclesfield, grip the curator of the Silk Museum by the throat and demand an answer.

I was sitting in an armchair at right angles to the opposite end of the sofa from Tony. Richard was in Shelley’s chair, his feet on the desk. The pool of light illuminated him to somewhere around mid-thigh, then he disappeared into darkness. The whole scenario looked like a straight lift from a bad French cop movie. I decided pretty quickly that there weren’t going to be any subtitles to help me out. The questions were down to me.