A Dead Question

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Dr McGordon has also gained credit in the eyes of the public by giving his services free to a clinic in the poorest part of Edinburgh. No doubt organs were also solicited through that source, but nobody is allowed to starve in Britain. In parts of Africa, the Middle East and the Americas, starving may at times be almost mandatory. And what better way to smuggle the part than in the living body of the donor?

  ‘As I’ve already said, I don’t have a case that would stand up in court. How could I possibly, without support or access to records and without court orders to open bank accounts? But I was fortunate in making contact, indirectly, with an official of the charitable body that organises surgery by visiting doctors and surgeons in impoverished countries. And by happy chance the Constable who was my sole help has a certain knack with young ladies. This he used to good effect in the Doctor’s preferred travel agency, so that we have a list of places and dates of travel.’

  Mr Holland seemed amused. ‘Perhaps we should be schooling our younger and more attractive PCs in the art of gentle persuasion,’ he said.

  Sandy chuckled. ‘I’m sure that my wife is more than competent to organise such a course,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry to spoil the party,’ Honey said stiffly, ‘but this really isn’t funny. I would have been ready to laugh with you but for one factor. Let me explain. The official who organised the trips insists that, so far as she was aware, with only two exceptions the persons accompanying the two medical men back to Scotland were patients. The only exceptions were the very wealthy sheikh and the donor of the testicle.’ Seeing all three men flinch, Honey could not resist disturbing their peace of mind a little further. ‘The donor was said to be a willing volunteer but one has one’s doubts. He may have given offence in some way and have been purging his contempt.’

  She glanced around their faces. There could be no doubt that the idea of being conscripted to offer a testicle to an overlord struck at the heart of some deep, male instinct.

  She resumed. ‘The organisation, however, does keep in touch with patients whenever possible. In the most recent instance, almost a year ago, the patient, a Mr Yussuf Osman, was ostensibly brought to Britain for a kidney operation. In a sense that was true. He did indeed have a diseased kidney, which should have been removed. It has since emerged that his good kidney was the one that was removed, leaving Mr Osman’s health seriously compromised. His home and the family farm are more than a hundred miles over mountainous roads from the nearest place where he could obtain dialysis, so you will see that his prospects are not good. It is now emerging that he was told nothing of the state of his kidney. Lawyers engaged on his behalf by his government have been in touch with the organisation, which has in turn contacted the Doctor and his nephew. There is word of litigation, but litigation involving doctors and their insurers is notoriously slow and it will be difficult to satisfy a court that the Doctor knew that the other kidney was diseased. The defendants may not have to delay for very long for Mr Osman to be deceased, and then there will be no witness as to discussions between the Doctor and himself.’

  The ACC(Crime) was known to suffer from the effects of wear and tear on his joints and to hate being kept on his feet for more than a few minutes. Sandy, observing the older man’s uneasy transference of his weight from hip to hip, released Honey’s hand and got up to offer his chair. Mr Holland subsided onto it gratefully.

  ‘That could certainly explain the Doctor’s nervousness,’ said Mr Vosp.

  ‘I disagree,’ snapped his chief. ‘So far we only have evidence of carelessness, possibly amounting to negligence. Removing the wrong organ is a mistake that quite reputable surgeons have made in the past. The Doctor’s original words pointed to something criminal.’

  ‘We can guess what he was afraid of,’ Honey said. ‘It seems that on the day that Mr Osman’s good kidney was removed, a transplant was given to a patient in the Gilberton Clinic.’

  ‘This is all becoming highly irregular if not illegal,’ Vosp exclaimed. ‘Medical records are supposed to be sacrosanct. There should have been a court order.’

  ‘There will be a court order by tomorrow afternoon,’ Mr Holland said grimly. His face, which rarely betrayed any trace of anger, could have been carved out of granite. ‘So we are to assume that Mr Osman’s good kidney went for transplant, presumably at a price.’

  ‘That is exactly the situation,’ Mr Blackhouse put in. Anyone freshly entering the discussion might well have assumed that he was claiming the credit for the successful investigation.

  ‘Let me see if I have this straight,’ said Mr Holland. ‘A doctor and a surgeon, under the guise of charitable work, have been matching up donors in famine or disaster areas, desperate for money, with moneyed recipients similarly desperate for organs, and pocketing what in the world of commerce would be called a substantial mark-up. But they have not scrupled to remove a donor’s only good kidney. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Honey.

  ‘Leaving aside the legalities for the moment,’ Mr Holland said, ‘that seems to me to be the most cynically evil deed that I’ve ever heard of. Given a clear hand, you could prove all this?’

  ‘Given help and facilities and no more obstruction, I think so.’

  ‘Go ahead, then. You’ll get the backup.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know the name of the recipient of that kidney?’ Honey asked.

  ‘I object to this method of questioning,’ Vosp said. ‘That information is protected. Not even the recipient should know the source of his donor organ. And we are being offered a great deal of hearsay.’

  ‘That wasn’t the question,’ said Mr Holland. ‘I do want to know the identity of the recipient. I want to know it very much.’

  ‘It was a Mr Vosp. Matthew Vosp.’

  The silence in the room was unbroken except for a tiny mewing sound as the baby stirred. Then they all began to breathe again in unison.

  Mr Holland gave his sweating depute a look blending contempt and reproach. ‘And I recall that your brother married into the banking family. He would certainly be able to afford the cost of the operation and an illicit kidney. He was ailing, a year ago, but then made a recovery.’

  Vosp’s limbs were shaking. Honey had to move her feet aside quickly as he collapsed onto the foot of the bed. ‘I knew that my brother had a kidney transplant,’ he said. ‘I knew nothing about where the kidney came from.’

  Detective Superintendent Blackhouse had been listening intently but in silence – waiting, Honey thought, to see which way the argument was going before committing himself. He glared down at Vosp. ‘But it was you who gave me firm orders that the Doctor was to be left alone and not investigated. Why would that have been, except that you knew that the Doctor had illicitly obtained a kidney for your brother?’

  White-faced, Vosp said, ‘Those were Mr Holland’s orders.’

  ‘Orders that I permitted you to pass on after considerable persuasion on your part,’ the ACC(Crime) said. ‘I wondered at the time why you were so impassioned about it, but you harped on the Doctor’s reputation for charitable work and you moved heaven and earth to convince me that Dr McGordon was being unjustly harassed. Against my better judgement, I allowed you to persuade me; so I suppose the ultimate responsibility for the very difficult position in which Mr Blackhouse and Inspector Laird have been placed is mine.’

  After another moment of fraught silence a babble broke out. Vosp was blustering and Mr Blackhouse was demanding immediate exoneration for himself and, as an afterthought, Honey.

  Mr Holland, by seniority added to force of personality, topped them with a firm statement that Vosp was suspended pending a full enquiry. ‘And,’ he said, ‘this is the one place where a doctor could wander freely with a hypodermic syringe. I shall not be easy in my mind until both doctors are confined. We need protection for Inspector Laird, and until it can be organised I want a constable on guard.’

  ‘I know just the man,’ Honey said.

  Vosp was still protesting but toppin
g all came the voice of young Miss Laird, raised in protest at having been brought into the world against her wishes, then woken by angry voices but left to starve. It was a loud voice and one that nature had designed to be impossible to ignore. There was some attempt to talk above it, but when Sandy handed Honey the baby and Honey began preparations for the feed, there was a hurried exodus. The sound of argument could be heard receding along the corridor.

  Sandy was looking fondly at the picture of mother and child but Honey found that motherhood seemed to help the gathering of her wits. ‘Go after the Super,’ she said. ‘Tell him that we’ve just decided that Allan Dodson is to be another godfather.’

  ‘All right. But why?’

  ‘Can you see him sharing the duty and having to mingle with a mere constable?’

  ‘Clever!’

  ‘I’m not just a pretty face and a set of reproductive organs.’ Honey returned her attention to the most beautiful baby in the world, but she was shaking with laughter so that some difficulty was experienced in latching on.

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