A Dead Question

by Gerald Hammond

  He smiled his thanks. On his return, Honey met him with a pair of leather bedroom slippers. ‘Property of one of my brothers,’ she said. ‘Do they fit?’

  He slid his feet into them. ‘They fit very well. Did your father really mean what he said about inviting me again?’

  ‘I’ve never known him say anything that he didn’t mean.’

  ‘Wow! You didn’t tell him that I’m only a PC. If he invites me again, should I accept?’

  ‘You’ll be bonkers if you don’t. The sporting scene is a friendly one. Class doesn’t matter and money is of only secondary importance.’

  ‘Wow!’ Dodson said again. A whole new horizon was opening up before him.

  The guests were sampling the drinks and raising a babble of chatter. A young man in a black jacket whom Honey addressed as Fergus served them with one beer and a watered wine. Honey led the way along a corridor panelled to match the hall and into the study. Here the resemblance ended. Only an elaborate cornice and the twelve-paned sash-and-case windows seemed out of place. Otherwise, the room was stereotypically the business office of a tycoon – very clean and uncluttered except for a fax machine, two telephones and the inevitable computer with its multipurpose printer. Even the customary bookcases had been omitted, their function presumably having been overtaken by the computer and the rack of floppy disks. The walls were relieved only by several clever ink and wash drawings that Allan Dodson remembered seeing featured in various art books and magazines but which he suspected were originals. The large desk confronted several upright chairs but the other half of the room held a group of easy chairs around a glass-topped table.

  ‘While we’re here,’ she said, ‘you’d better call me Honey and I’ll call you Allan or people will start asking questions.’ She smiled suddenly and disarmingly. ‘Away from here, I’ll tell you when you can start calling me Mrs Laird again.’

  ‘I quite understand,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I think you do. Let’s make ourselves comfortable.’

  Mr Potterton-Phipps joined them almost immediately. He was nursing what appeared to be a large whisky. He seated himself carefully, without spilling. ‘That’s better,’ he sighed. ‘I’m getting a bit long in the tooth for spending whole days afoot. How can I help you?’

  ‘I’m not sure that you can,’ Honey said, ‘but you usually do. We’re still looking into the matter of Dr McGordon and his nephew and we’re still having to do it without making waves, so this remains confidential. We’ve sort of eliminated some of the more likely reasons why his conscience might be playing him up, which only leaves around ten thousand more. I’m going to ask Sandy to run me off a list of unsolved crimes over the last five years or so. But I thought you might be able to help.’

  ‘If I can, I will. I’ve traced his investments, by the way. He’s building up a nice little nest egg but there’s no indication of where the money came from. Equally, there’s no suggestion of insider trading. What can I tell you?’

  ‘For instance, what are the preferred methods of fraud nowadays? We’ve eliminated the more obvious fiddle against the NHS.’

  Her father settled himself more comfortably into one of the leather chairs and took a sip of his drink. From the scent, Honey identified one of the rarer malt whiskies. ‘Presumably your doctor is above such humdrum matters as fraudulently claiming benefit. Most of the favourite frauds these days are by computer. Is the good doctor a computer whiz? Or a skilled hacker?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure that he’s not,’ Honey said. ‘Allan, remind me to get June to ask Mrs Deakin that question. That’s the kind of roundabout route I’m driven to these days,’ she explained to her father.

  Her father nodded understandingly. ‘If you discover that he has a talent in that direction, or that he has a close friend with that sort of skill, come back to me. He’s hardly the type for credit card fraud. On a larger yet more mundane level, the preferred method is the Long Firm fraud.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Honey and Dodson said together.

  ‘If you want a fuller explanation, ask somebody in the Fraud Squad. In short, you establish credit with fake references, buy a lot of very expensive machinery on deferred payment, sell it quickly and vanish. Commonest, perhaps, in the building and allied industries and not suited to a doctor who is essentially established in one place and less able to disappear.’ Mr Potterton-Phipps looked absently at the ceiling. ‘There’s been some selling of shares in a non-existent company, but they caught the culprit. Somebody is printing his own cheques, to use with stolen bankcards. I can’t think of anything else current at the moment that meets the case. Of course, it has to be both big and successful before it comes to my notice. I’ll pass the word round all the staff, including the lawyers, and I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad. I don’t think anything you’ve said rings a bell, but we’ll see. Now, what about smuggling. What are the favourite commodities?’

  ‘Inward or out?’

  Honey had never considered the possibility that the doctors might be smuggling in either or both directions. ‘Either,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘We know that drugs are the big deal but drugs don’t seem to fit any of the parameters.’

  ‘Very well.’ Mr Potterton-Phipps frowned at the ceiling. ‘Stolen goods, especially artworks, in either direction. They can’t usually be re-sold in the country where they were stolen.’

  ‘That’s a thought,’ said Dodson. ‘Paintings from Italy, say, might well be smuggled as far as the Middle East and then travel under a patient on a stretcher. Please go on, Sir.’

  ‘People, of course, usually inward and looking for jobs or National Assistance, but fugitives from justice outwards bound. Gemstones and semi-precious stones – Turkey is a clearing-house. And money for laundering. That’s all I can think of for the moment.’

  Honey knew that her father would not let the matter rest there. She would not be in the least surprised to hear from him again on the subject. ‘And quite enough for us to be looking into for now. You’ve heard nothing against the Doctor since I last asked you about him?’

  ‘Nothing. You’d do better asking Steven Fallow. He was a patient of McGordon’s and he had a transplant done by that nephew of his or one of the nephew’s cronies.’

  ‘A kidney?’

  ‘An eye.’

  ‘I didn’t know that they could transplant eyes,’ Honey said.

  ‘They can.’ Mr Potterton-Phipps leaned back and put the tips of his fingers together. Honey recognised the gesture. Her father was about to pass on some carefully edited words of wisdom that had reached him through one of his companies. ‘I believe the difficulty is in getting a donor eye that’s fresh, undamaged, the right size and a good match. The Gilberton Clinic has done several, I believe. I’m told that medical science is now so advanced that you can transplant almost anything that the donor can spare. An immediate transplant from a live and compatible donor has a good chance of success. The longer the . . . the donation is separate, the worse the prospect. You don’t really want to know all this, do you?’

  ‘Dad,’ Honey said, ‘I don’t know what I want to know, but if it’s anything whatever to do with Dr McGordon I want to know it.’

  ‘All right. Stop me if I get boring, but a company that I . . . have an interest in has been doing some work in the area. There’s been some research done into cold preservative solutions, cocktails carefully blended to suit the organ, but the main objective is to maintain ion balance and bind to the deadly oxygen radicals. There’s been some talk about storing organs in PFC. The vital part of the trick is to keep it cold. Did you hear about the man who had a heart-valve replaced by a pig’s valve? Quite common nowadays, I’m told. When they called him in for a check-up and listened to his chest, it was going thump-thump-thump-oink.’

  Honey and Dodson had exchanged a meaningful look. ‘Stay serious, Dad, please. So you wouldn’t reckon that smuggling body parts would be practicable?’

  ‘Almost
impossible.’

  ‘Is Mr Fallow pally with the Doctor?’ Honey asked. ‘I have to move carefully. You said that he was a patient of Dr McGordon’s.’

  Mr Potterton-Phipps looked at his daughter with one eyebrow raised. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll sound him out. I rather think that there’s been some severing of relations. If I’m sure that he won’t go running to the Doctor with the story, I’ll send him through to you.’ He rose, still nursing his drink, and left the room.

  ‘This could be relevant, I suppose,’ Honey said. ‘The transplant industry, if you can call it that, is hedged around with restrictions. See if there’s some blank paper on my father’s desk.’ She had a momentary vision of the Doctor murdering his wife in order to sell one of her eyes for a huge sum to a half-blind oil sheikh. Such acts had been committed in the past, though not usually among the more respectable citizens of Edinburgh.

  The figure of Steven Fallow appeared in the doorway carrying a glass of sherry. ‘I understand that you wanted a word with me,’ he said. Dodson rose politely and Honey invited them both to be seated. Fallow was the sort of man who could disappear in a crowd; of average height, neither fat nor lean, with mousy hair slightly receding and no single feature that imprinted itself on the memory. The overall impression was of blandness and Honey, without knowing quite how she had arrived at it, had the impression of intelligence without strength of character. His eyes, she noticed, were dark brown. She recalled, while laughing at herself, that the description of Mrs McGordon had included blue eyes.

  ‘I understand,’ Honey said, ‘that you are no particular friend of Dr McGordon?’

  Steven Fallow frowned. ‘That’s true. But may I ask why that should concern you?’

  ‘Did you know that I am a detective inspector with Lothian and Borders Police?’

  ‘No. I didn’t. Well, I do now. What do you want from me?’

  ‘There is a matter concerning Dr McGordon,’ Honey said, ‘that needs to be investigated but without coming to the Doctor’s attention. Confidentiality is paramount, particularly when a doctor is involved. Can I trust you to say nothing whatever to anybody?’

  Few people can resist such an approach. For the first time, Steven Fallow’s inexpressive face showed curiosity. ‘I can very definitely hold my tongue,’ he said firmly.

  ‘That’s good. Tell me about the Gilberton Clinic.’

  ‘Is that all? I thought everybody knew all about it. I would have thought . . . BUPA . . .’

  ‘I’ve had membership of BUPA for most of my life,’ Honey said. Her father insisted on maintaining her membership. ‘But I’ve never had cause to take advantage of it until this pregnancy. If I cut my finger I go to my GP on the National Health and I’ve never had a serious illness. I’ve heard the name of the Gilberton Clinic being mentioned by people who’ve had operations and that’s about the limit of my knowledge.’

  Fallow shrugged. ‘Every city has one or more of the type. They usually have better facilities and hygiene than NHS hospitals and the better NHS specialists and surgeons practise private medicine there. If you’re rich or desperate, that’s where you go.’

  ‘And which were you?’ Honey asked. ‘Rich or desperate?’

  ‘A bit of both. I wouldn’t call myself rich, not while I’m standing beside your father,’ Fallow said, smiling, ‘but I’m tolerably well heeled. And desperate, yes. My left eye was never very good. Then I developed an abscess behind my right eye. They did what they could but eventually Dr McGordon warned me that the eye would have to come out. I’m a dealer in fine art and antiques, for God’s sake. My eyesight is crucial to my living as well as my sport. Then McGordon said that he might be able to find a matching eye for transplanting. I said that I didn’t know that they could transplant eyes.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Well, we were both sadly ignorant. They can do it, but it’s highly skilled work and to obtain the ideal one for transplanting is difficult because of the problem of fit – a kidney, after all, can be popped in almost anywhere – and because they deteriorate quickly once they’re removed and also because nobody living wants to part with a perfectly sound eye, so it’s expensive and unusual.’

  Mr Fallow hesitated for some seconds. ‘I paid the clinic a large, flat fee for the operation, the nursing and all the attendance. There was no separate mention of the eye and I had to assume that it had come from somebody who had died. Was there anything wrong in that? Was I being naïve?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Honey said. ‘But if the facts are as you’ve just said, I don’t see that you’ve committed any crime.’

  Mr Fallow had tensed but now they could see him relax. ‘That’s all right, then. The way I looked at it, if somebody had a matching eye they were unlikely to be a friend or relative of mine. I was surprised when Dr McGordon said that it could be arranged, because I know that it’s illegal in this country to buy or sell organs, but I had a vested interest in not asking any awkward questions.’

  ‘But you went ahead,’ Honey said. ‘Did you ever know where the donor eye came from?’

  Fallow shook his head and held up his hands in a negative gesture. Honey had the impression that if he had been standing up he would have backed away. ‘Good God, no! Never. And I didn’t want to know. I could picture looking out of my new eye and wondering what had been the last sight that the eye had seen before the accident or whatever killed its previous . . . what would one say? Owner? Wearer? User?’ He laughed uncomfortably. ‘Anyway, I very much wanted not to think about where it came from. And I still do.’

  ‘I suppose I can understand that. Who did the implantation? Not Mr Samson?’

  ‘Mr Samson’s a general physician. Mr Shezad did the operation. They brought him up from Leeds, I believe. Mr Samson only does innards. I believe he’s the man on kidney transplants. They’re much commoner, of course. We each have two kidneys but one would have been enough, so any near relative could, at a pinch, spare one. Eyes are different.’

  ‘And when did your operation take place?’

  ‘About two years ago. January the thirtieth.’

  Honey looked closely. The two eyes matched and moved in unison. If there was a colour difference it was no more than can be seen in many people. Perhaps the right one was now artificial? Fallow seemed quite unperturbed. Evidently close scrutiny had become an everyday part of his life. ‘And the transplanted eye is still in place?’ Honey asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Honey glanced at Dodson. He seemed to be getting it all down in shorthand. ‘The operation seems to have been successful,’ she said. ‘The two eyes match well and move in unison. What did you fall out with the Doctor over?’

  Steven Fallow’s face remained expressionless but Honey noticed that his hands stiffened momentarily as though about to turn into fists. ‘When I first came out of the anaesthetic, it seemed miraculous. I had laser treatment to the other eye, which improved it. But I found that I had slight double vision. I was told that it would get better but it continued to get worse. It hampered me in my business and it ruined my shooting and my golf. I was given exercises and now I can bring the two images together, but it takes a conscious effort to hold them like that. Well, when you need your vision most is just when you can’t spare the concentration for holding two images together. I went back to McGordon. By then Mr Shezad had made his pile and gone back to lord it in Egypt or wherever he came from. McGordon said that he could refer me to somebody else who could correct the defect; but he quoted me a price that exceeded that of the original operation – which, God knows, would have been enough to buy quite a decent yacht. I have BUPA but they weren’t going to look at it. Eventually, I went to a different doctor and I’m going down to London for a remedial operation in March. And now, it’s my turn to ask you to keep this confidential, because I had word through a friend of the Doctor that if I make any kind of a fuss he’ll sue me and he’ll warn the other surgeon not to touch my case.’

  ‘Believe me,’ Honey said, ‘we�
��ve no intention of getting you in Dutch with any practising doctor.’

  The fax machine began to type. Fallow looked at Honey sharply while he turned her statement over and over in his mind. Eventually he arrived at an interpretation that satisfied him. He furnished his address, phone number and email address, in case of further enquiries, without demur. He seemed to be on the point of asking a question of his own, which Honey guessed would be as to why they wanted to know so much about his operation. She was saved from the need to formulate a reply that would sound like an answer, but without giving anything away, by the return of Mr Potterton-Phipps. Honey remembered that, wherever he was in the house, the arrival of a fax would alert him by way of a series of tiny blinking lights.

  ‘Food’s on the tables,’ he said. ‘Only a buffet, but I think you’ll enjoy it. If you’ve finished your talk, you’d better come through.’

  Before they were quite out of the door, he was removing the fax from the machine.

  *

  As soon as they had eaten and had let Pippa out for a comfort break, they got back on the road. ‘Quite an interesting day,’ Honey said.

  ‘Definitely. That beautiful gun that your father lent me has fired my acquisitive instincts. And I hadn’t realised how sociable an occasion it could be. Clay-busting is much more competitive. I made no secret of the fact that I’m a humble copper but everyone was still friendly. They just wanted to know what I did and how I did it and whom with. I don’t think that I gave anything away about our present case. After that, they just spoke about the shooting.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about the shooting.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about the McGordon case.’

  ‘Nor was I,’ Honey said thoughtfully. She had managed to get her father aside during the meal for a very personal consultation.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Honey had contrived to keep her father away from the buffet table and out of his study for a quick and very private consultation. Mr Potterton-Phipps had been careful to hide his embarrassment. The subject was a sensitive one and his daughter was clearly worried. Following the death of her mother some years earlier he had tried to be both father and mother to her rather than go to the unnecessary extreme of marrying again, but despite the assistance of several ladies who would have been delighted to share the obligation he had found the burden wearing. It is no easy task for a man, however knowledgeable, to explain the workings of her body and mind, and those of a man, to a maturing girl. He had hoped and believed that that particular duty was in the past, but he found that a burden once assumed is not easily laid down again.