by Lee Weeks
‘Have you got all your adoption papers?’
‘Yes. . of course. .’
‘How did you come to adopt Alex?’
‘He was called Adam when he came to us. His mother was murdered, we were told. She named someone else in her will in the event of anything happening. But that person died with her. It was her wish that he be put up for adoption, change his name, everything. He gets money put into an account for his needs. It’s a generous amount from his grandfather but his mother left instructions that there was never to be any contact. We were delighted to take him on. We were having trouble conceiving, we’d been trying for years.’
‘Do you think Alex might have been approached by any of his family?’
‘I don’t know. Looking back. .’
‘Before Alex disappeared did you notice anything strange? Did Alex ever ask you about his real mum?’
She nodded. ‘Michael told me not to mention it before. He said it would make no difference to things.’
‘We found no searches on his PC
‘That wasn’t one that Alex really used. He did his homework on it here in the kitchen where I could help him if he needed, but he used his iPad in his room. Michael bought it for him.’
‘Where is the iPad now, Helen?’
‘He took it with him that day.’
‘To the Arsenal match?’
‘Yes. . I know. . I don’t know why he did that.’
‘Because someone told him to bring it maybe. . Did Alex know he was adopted?’
‘We told him a couple of years ago.’
‘How did he seem with it?’
‘Not bothered in the beginning. In the last six months he’s been asking a lot of questions about how his mother died.’
‘Uncomfortable questions?’
‘I found his questions really difficult to answer. How do you tell a boy his mother was murdered? I told him she went away. I told him she might still be alive but I doubted it.’
Ebony looked at Helen Tapp and she realized that Adam thought he’d found his real mum.
She got outside and called Carter. ‘Adam never knew who he was until someone told him. What about the woman Tapp is seeing?’
‘I had him followed,’ said Carter. ‘He’s having an affair with Aaron’s mum.’
Chapter 69
Ebony was sitting at her desk in the ETO. Across from her, Jeanie was on the phone trying to set up some help for Helen Tapp. Ebony listened to her making sure; Jeanie was persistent, dogged. Ebony knew that if she was in a tight corner she’d want Jeanie in there with her.
Ebony’s phone vibrated on her desk top. A photo message was coming through. Ebony looked at the number of the person sending and didn’t recognize it. She was about to ignore it when the photo flashed across the screen and she snatched it up from the desk as she watched the face form in front of her eyes.
Jeanie held her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and mouthed: what is it?
Ebony turned the phone around to show her the screen. Jeanie shook her head in disbelief. Ebony went to find Carter.
The low winter sun was bright; too bright for Davidson’s tired eyes as he swivelled the louver blind and turned back to look at the officers in the room. They were waiting for him. He turned and stood tall. On his desk was the print out from Ebony’s phone. Davidson picked it up and looked at it.
‘When was this taken?’
‘Sister Phillips says it was when Shannon was being treated on the ward. It was one of the nurse’s birthdays and Nurse Linda Peters was working that shift.’
‘Nikki de Lange is the woman we’ve been looking for then? She was the woman who abducted Alex.’
‘Abducted her own nephew, sir,’ said Carter.
‘Yes sir. She must have been involved whether she wanted to be or not,’ replied Ebony.
‘She’s been seen going back to the Mansfield hospital regularly,’ said Carter. ‘I think that’s where she’ll be.’
‘Okay,’ said Davidson. ‘Ebony and Jeanie go to the Mansfield hospital now. We can’t risk Alex getting killed. If he’s there, find him and make sure he’s protected.’
Jeanie and Ebony left Davidson’s office, leaving Carter and Harding.
‘Sir? I would like to bring Mr Martingale in for questioning.’
Davidson’s eyes flitted towards Harding and stayed there a second.
‘Martingale is a megalomaniac’ Harding said. ‘He thinks he’s God.’
‘But why allow the boy to live in the first place?’ asked Davidson.
‘Insurance. . To harvest him when he’s ready. . for himself. Perfect tissue match. . a whole new set of organs. He’s a walking organ incubator.’
Davidson looked at her. ‘And would he really be capable of harvesting his own daughter?’
Harding nodded. ‘She meant nothing to him. He had no bond with her or her mother Maria. Maybe he didn’t do it himself. I can’t see him getting his hands dirty, but I can see him setting the seed and looking away whilst it’s done and, most importantly, picking up the tab. I can see him making sure that there is nothing traceable to him. I think he tries to have a hold over everyone he meets. He makes sure of it. Martingale is a psychopath. He doesn’t have the ability to establish meaningful personal relationships with anyone.’
‘What about with his daughter, Nikki?’
‘She is his property, his Frankenstein. He created her.’
‘Could he kill her?’
‘In a heartbeat.’
‘Not just her,’ said Carter. ‘I also think he could have killed his ex-wife Maria easily. The sophisticated timers he has for his orchids could easily have been adapted to make a remotely detonated incendiary device.’
‘He would have needed to get into her house to plant it,’ said Davidson.
‘She lives in the middle of nowhere, sir. He could have gone to see her in the weeks before she died. He could have rigged it up then set it off with a phone call. He lied about being here at around that time. We know he attended the orchid shows.’
Davidson was listening to Carter. He gave one sharp nod of the head as he pulled out his chair from behind his desk and sat down, his hands resting on the edge of the desk. ‘Okay. I’ve heard enough. Carter, you go and arrest Martingale on suspicion of murder.’
Carter didn’t wait around. He was out of Davidson’s office before he could change his mind.
Harding smiled at Davidson once they were alone in the office. He returned it, relaxed, rubbed his tired face and shook his head.
‘Getting too old for all this,’ he said, looking at her and smiling.
‘Ha. . don’t make me laugh. Anyway, when this is over you might just find it’s worth staying on.’
‘What you’re trying to say is my retirement prospects will be non-existent.’
Harding shrugged, ‘If Barbara has the sense to kick you out you can come and live with me; you’re going to have to iron your own shirts though.’
He smiled and shook his head.
Harding took her phone out of her bag. ‘I’ve narrowed it down to who, if I was Martingale, I would want to do an organ transplant. I’ve also been looking at whose career has sky-rocketed since that day.’
She dialled a number and set the phone to loudspeaker so Davidson could hear as well.
‘Simon. . it’s Jo again; I got your list of possible transplant surgeons but the main one wasn’t on it.’
‘I don’t know who you mean.’
‘Thirteen years ago you started working for Martingale after the night his daughter was murdered, didn’t you?’
‘You know I did.’
‘I was racking my brains to think of the one person I would have wanted to do a transplant at the time. . and it’s you.’
‘I specialized in it at the time. You know that.’
‘I looked at the list of surgeons operating the night Chrissie Newton was murdered. You were on the list. Since that time you’ve really risen up the ranks in the Mansfield Gr
oup.’
‘What are you insinuating?’
‘I want you to think back and see if it could possibly have been you that operated on Chrissie Newton that night.’
‘I assisted Martingale that night. Afterwards I remember thinking that it was terrible to be working when your own daughter gets murdered. But then he claimed not to be in the country at the time. . I was confused. .’
‘Where were you when Martingale contacted you?’
‘I was working on the transplant ward at the Royal Free. I was a few months away from taking my final registrar exams.’
‘What did you think when he contacted you?’
‘I was flattered. He offered me a lot of money. He also said I could be sure of a new career in one of the hospitals he invested in and that I would be able to concentrate on the thing I was most interested in — cosmetic surgery.’
‘So you were happy about it?’
‘I was ecstatic. I was young, ambitious, things were going well for me at last. Martingale was already hugely respected. So when he asked me to assist I jumped at it.’
‘You said he told you to take a few days off?’
‘Yes. . he wasn’t sure when the organs would become available.’
‘Where did he say they were coming from?’
‘He said a woman on a life support machine, brain-dead; her family were intending to pull the plug over the weekend.’
‘That’s all you knew?’
‘It wasn’t my job to know more. I wasn’t going to be the one doing the operation. I was assisting and being paid a lot of money for it. He got in touch in the evening on Saturday and said that the operation would definitely go ahead that night or the early hours of the morning. He told me to go into the hospital and prepare the theatre.’
‘Go through it for me.’
‘I arrived. The theatre was ready. The recipient was there. She was in pre-op. I was told I didn’t need to do anything for her at that time.’
‘Had Martingale shown up? What was going through your mind?’
‘I was thinking. . bit odd. Martingale seemed very erratic. We needed to have the patient ready. The new heart couldn’t last more than an hour or so outside the body. We needed to put her on a bypass machine, get her old heart out and get going. But. . I know things are tricky with this kind of procedure.’
‘Did you go in and see the patient?’
‘No. Martingale was being weird about it all.’
‘What did you know about her?’
‘She was a woman of about thirty, she was showing advance signs of heart failure. She was extremely breathless and so on.’
‘You didn’t recognize her?’
‘I didn’t see her face. We got a call; the heart was already on its way and we had to get a move on. I opened her up. The heart arrived.
‘Martingale started to connect it but it just wasn’t working. We took a good look at the donor heart and saw the scar tissue — the first signs of heart disease. He stopped the operation. It was a hell of a situation. . there was no way we could put the diseased heart back in.’
Chapter 70
‘Mrs Morell? Ivy? We need to have a look around. We have a search warrant.’ Ebony held it up to show her.
‘But we won’t be ripping the place apart,’ smiled Jeanie. ‘We would just need to take a discreet look.’ Ebony pushed the paper a little nearer to Ivy Morell so that she could read it through the bottom section of her vari-focals. She looked back up at the two detectives before her. ‘I suppose so. What are you looking for? I’ve seen you before,’ she said to Ebony. ‘Normally with that good-looking Italian man.’
Ebony smiled. Jeanie laughed.
‘Believe me, he’s as much trouble as he looks, Ivy. . Can we just take a look around?’
‘And do you have a Nurse Linda Peters on your books? She helps out at other hospitals. She’s an agency nurse,’ asked Ebony.
Ivy checked out her staff lists.
‘No. . I’m sorry, we don’t.’
‘Ivy. . is Mrs de Lange in today?’
‘I am expecting her in the next hour. She telephoned me earlier to make sure everything is ready. There’s a lot to organize with the donor organs being taken abroad from here. Mrs de Lange will take them herself this time. She asked me to make sure one of the ambulances was ready.’
‘She makes the arrangements to get the organs to the hospitals that are waiting?’
‘She or Mr de Lange. Actually. .’ Ivy lowered her voice. ‘I’m not sure where Mr de Lange is at the moment. He hasn’t been at work this past couple of days. I know the hospital in Poland have been trying to contact him urgently. They have a patient waiting for organs out there. I don’t think all’s well in their marriage. They don’t seem a very together couple. . if you know what I mean? I see them slipping round the back of the building sometimes. I don’t know why. They just don’t want to go past me here on reception.’
Jeanie could feel Ebony getting restless beside her.
‘Does Mrs de Lange ever help on the wards? What about nursing? Is she qualified to help?’ Jeanie asked.
‘I’ve never seen her here on the wards. She spends a lot of time here, but not nursing. She has an office on the lower-ground floor where she does a lot of the charity work for the Chrissie Newton Foundation.’
‘Where exactly is the office?’
‘Down the end of the corridor, take the far service lift down to lower basement. But. . you need to enter a code to get in.’
‘Have you seen her in her office?’
‘No. I never really had reason to go down there. I always just ring through if I want her. There are so many patients’ files down there that they have a security system separate from the main hospital. You have to have access and I don’t.’
‘Would anyone here know the code for gaining access?’
‘No. Sorry.’
‘Is there just one way in?’
‘There’s a door to the back of the hospital and the car park there but that won’t get you into her office. We take deliveries of cleaning materials for the hospital there.’
‘We’ll take a look. Thanks, Ivy.’
‘You’re welcome. Can’t you tell me what this is about? I love all the crime things on the telly; especially the Scandinavian ones. . brilliant. Always work it out before the end though. Always think I could have a crack at writing a crime novel. You must have some stories.’
Jeanie smiled. ‘Tell you what, Ivy, you keep in touch and if ever you get going with a crime novel I’ll be your inside source. How’s that?’
‘Brilliant. . thanks so much. . I’ll hold you to that.’
They walked along to the service lift, and went down two floors to the lower basement. They stepped out into blinking fluorescent orange light, which was activated by their arrival.
Jeanie took a scout to her right. ‘Cupboards, storage. Cleaners’ equipment. Nothing this way, Ebb. Not exactly a nice place to have an office.’ The rest of the floor was in darkness. To the left, at the far end, was a set of doors.
‘Ivy on reception was right,’ Ebony said as she walked over to take a look at the entry pad on the doors. ‘We’ll never get in without an invite.’ She phoned Robbo. ‘Can we get past this system?’
‘Yes. . probably. Text me the make and model, serial number. Take a photo of it for me. Then give me five. I’ll ring you back,’ Robbo said.
Ebony took the picture with her phone and sent it to him. She turned to Jeanie. ‘Five minutes, he says.’
‘Okay. . I’ll go and check out the back of the building. See what the other exits look like. Phone me when you get in.’
Jeanie went back up to reception. ‘Back in a min. .’ She smiled as she passed Ivy.
She walked down the front steps, turned right and walked around to the back of the building. Three ambulances, one unmarked, were waiting on a tar-macked area, under cover. Not far from them was a broad section of tarmac leading to the back entrance.
Robb
o phoned Ebony back. ‘Here’s the sequence. It’s one used for the emergency services.’
‘Okay.’ Ebony tapped in the code and the lock released. ‘Thanks, Robbo. I’ll be in touch. I’ll ring you and tell you what I find. Where’s Carter?’
‘He’s gone to arrest Martingale.’
She texted Jeanie. . I’m in.
Jeanie replied: Found the ambulance.
Chapter 71
Martingale’s fingers played piano on the mouse pad, humming away to Nessun Dorma. He felt the beads of sweat gather at his brow and begin the descent down the side of his face. He could still see her in his mind. The bittersweet pain of love remembered from summer days and summer nights brought a smile to his lips and a sting to his eyes, brought him pleasure in the pain; but only for a few seconds; his eyes snapped open. He wiped them irritably. Nobody understood what he was trying to do. Nobody ever would, but it was him that history would remember, not the small insignificant people. Nicola was the only other human being he had ever loved. She had become part of him, like his right arm, like his beating heart. All those years he watched her grow, only to find that she had a fault in her. A fault that he had given her. It was unbearable. . but luckily for Nicola he could even mend that. He could make everything right for her. He gave her life. He made her into his angel.
He stood and went to the window. He had seen the car parked down the street. As if he wouldn’t know he was being watched! As he shielded his eyes from the low sun he saw another car pass and park and he recognised it as another detective’s pool car. The number plate not fixed, the colour blue, an insignificant little car. He saw it pull in front of the surveillance car.
Chapter 72
Ebony stood looking down the corridor, listening to the hum of the pipes overhead. There was a sickly heat in the corridor from the pipes that ran overhead and served the hospital central heating system. She walked on to the next room: a treatment room. Shelves packed with dressings and tubes, syringes in packs. Ebony looked at the floor; it was the same linoleum as in the room upstairs in Blackdown Barn.