by Bill Rogers
She slid the list across the table. His lawyer raised his hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t see the relevance of your question to the matter on which you detained my client.’
‘I can assure you that it is connected,’ she replied. ‘Your client has agreed to answer any questions that we wish to put to him, and this is one of them. Should it become necessary to explain the connection, I will be happy to do so.’
She switched her attention to the suspect.
‘Well, Jason? Do you recognise any of them?’
He looked up, and shook his head.
‘No, I don’t. To the best of my knowledge, I have never been near any of them.’
There was a knock on the door. Max stood up and went to see who it was. He came back and whispered in Jo’s ear.
‘It’s the lab,’ he said. ‘They say they’ve discovered something important, something you need to know.’
Jo turned to face the video camera. ‘I’m suspending this interview,’ she said, ‘for operational reasons at ten fifty-two am and fifty seconds.’
‘It’s about the nature of the sample we tested, not the DNA match,’ said the forensic scientist.
‘So it is still definitely a match to his DNA?’ said Jo.
‘Absolutely.’
‘So what are you saying, that it’s not semen?’
‘No, I’m not saying that. It is his seminal fluid. But it’s not just his seminal fluid.’
‘You’re saying there are traces of someone else’s?’
‘No, I’m not saying that either. Look,’ said the scientist, ‘just bear with me. It will all become clear.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jo, ‘go ahead.’
‘Right. When your colleague had the initial sample tested yesterday at the morgue for a match on the DNA register, that’s all he and the pathology technician were interested in. They knew it was seminal fluid. They could see that it contained sperm. What they weren’t attempting to do was to analyse the constituent parts.’
‘I get that.’
‘Good. Well, now we have. And in addition to what we would expect to find, there were other trace elements. Specifically, glycerol, sucrose and soy lecithin.’
‘And that’s not something you’d normally expect to find?’
‘No, not in that combination and not in the proportions or quantities that we found.’
‘So what’s their significance?’
There was a dramatic pause. ‘The most common use for these substances in this combination,’ he said, ‘is as a cryoprotectant.’
Jo had experienced cryotherapy for a muscle injury following a training session.
‘You’re saying his sperm was frozen?’
‘Semen is either frozen through a slow cooling method,’ the scientist continued, ‘or is flash-frozen. In either case, it’s important to protect the motility and DNA integrity of the sperm both when it is frozen and, even more importantly, when it is thawed – that’s the role of a cryoprotectant.’
Jo tapped her head repeatedly with the handset.
‘He’s a sperm donor,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Why didn’t you tell us, Jason?’ she said. ‘It would have saved us all a lot of time and trouble.’
Relief had flooded his face as soon as she asked him if he had ever been a donor. Now he was even more eager to help.
‘It never occurred to me,’ he said. ‘It was years ago. And anyway, I thought it had been destroyed. How the hell was I to know it would end up where it did? How the hell did it?’
‘That’s what we need to find out,’ she told him. ‘Where and when did you donate your sperm, Jason?’
‘I was nineteen, playing for a football team in the Morpeth Sunday League. It was after one of the games. We were celebrating in the Black Bull after thrashing Stobswood Welfare six-nil. Our centre forward was bragging cos he’d scored a hat-trick. Someone called him a wanker. He said the laugh was on us because he got paid for it. Turns out he was going to a sperm donation clinic and getting twenty-five pound a time as expenses. I was skint at the time – I decided I’d like a piece of that. So did two of the other players.’ He grinned. ‘Only they didn’t make it through the tests.’
‘Where was the clinic, Jason?’ she said.
He told her. While she wrote it down, he babbled on, ‘It was more complicated than you’d think. I had to check my family medical history, fill in forms, have an interview, and provide three separate samples for them to test. They told me I’d have to go back after six months so they could check I hadn’t developed any medical conditions that might be dormant in the ones I’d donated.’
‘When was this, and over what period were you donating?’ Jo asked.
‘Spring of 1995. But I pulled out after I’d given the four proper samples.’
‘Why was that, Jason?’
He shrugged. ‘When they told me it could be used either for research, or to father up to ten families, I said research.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘I just didn’t fancy the thought of all those kids wandering round looking just like me. Besides, I was only doing it for the expenses, and by the time I’d paid the bus fares and taken time off work, I only had a tenner left each time.’
‘And you were told that after they’d finished with your samples they’d be destroyed.’
‘That’s right.’
They sat there in silence staring at each other, both asking themselves the same question.
‘Have you let him go?’ Max strode towards her holding a blue cardboard folder.
‘On police bail,’ Jo said. ‘His solicitor wasn’t happy, but as I pointed out there could be other explanations.’
He handed her the folder.
‘Well, you may want to stop him before he leaves the station.’
She opened it. There was a printed list and a set of photographs.
‘What is this?’ she asked.
‘While you were interviewing Dalmeny, I had a call from the search team. This is the list of the contents of a large cardboard box found in the loft, containing rather a lot of jewellery. As you can see, there were rings, earrings, necklaces, three women’s watches, four men’s watches, a couple of iPads, two iPods, three Kindles.’
‘Not stuff the wife would leave behind,’ Jo said. ‘Eclectic taste too.’
He looked at her.
‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘He’s a painter and decorator,’ she said. ‘In the words of Sam Spade, “What better way to case a joint?” ’
‘That’s what the search team thought. Despite the fact that the warrant did not explicitly give us the right to search for such property, they seized it as potentially the proceeds of crime.’
‘It would explain why when you told him who we were, he looked as though he’d been expecting us. No wonder he was surprised when you cautioned him for abduction and rape.’
‘What do you propose to do about it?’ Max asked.
‘I’ll get Northumbria CID to see if they can link any of this stuff to their unsolved cases,’ she said. ‘If they do, then they’ll have to carry out a separate search and re-arrest Dalmeny.’ She shook her head. ‘Those poor kids. First their parents separate and they’re shuttled back and forth between them, then their dad’s banged up, let out, and now he’s likely to be banged up again.’
‘We don’t get to choose our parents,’ he said. ‘If we did, then the childless couples would outnumber the rest.’
Jo was tempted to call him cynical, but she knew that he was right.
‘I suggest you head back to Manchester,’ she said. ‘I’ll see what the clinic has to say and then head back myself.’
‘By the way,’ said Max. ‘I checked in with Ram and Andy like you asked. Ram told me to tell you that he’s managed to locate Malacott’s sister. She’s alive and well, and living in Christchurch.’
‘She’s in Dorset?’
He shook his head.
‘Christc
hurch, New Zealand.’
‘Well, I need to speak with her,’ Jo said. ‘I don’t care how. Tell Ram to set it up. Preferably for tomorrow. I should be back by then.’
He gave her a mock salute.
‘Yes, Ma’am. Certainly, Ma’am. Thank you, Ma’am.’
It was done without the slightest hint of sarcasm or rancour. It set her off laughing for the first time in days.
Chapter 38
It was exactly as she had envisaged it. A former Victorian mansion, presumably commissioned by a wealthy businessman. A mine owner perhaps, intent on enjoying the fruits of his labour and ensuring that all and sundry were left in no doubt of his talent and importance.
Jo parked in the only remaining space on the gravel car park, alongside a 2015-registration gold Bentley. A modern form of conspicuous consumption that she guessed must belong either to the chief executive or the senior consultant. Her money was on the latter.
The receptionist studied her ID, and the consent form Dalmeny had signed enabling her to see the records pertaining to his donation. The receptionist rang for the senior laboratory technician.
‘I don’t have the authority to respond to this,’ she said. ‘I shall have to call Mr West, the Chief Executive.’
‘Tell him,’ Jo said, ‘that if I do have to come back, it will be with a search warrant and I can’t promise what it may extend to.’
She hadn’t lied exactly, but the threat wasn’t something she would be able to carry out. The magistrate would see to that. Fortunately, the expression on the technician’s face when she returned told her that the bluff had worked.
‘Could I see that letter again, please?’ she said.
She pushed her glasses higher up the bridge of her nose and peered at the name. Jo wondered how she managed looking down microscopes. Maybe that helped to explain why she closed one eye as she read.
‘When exactly are we looking at?’ the technician said.
‘The spring of 1995. Late March to early May.’
The lab technician sniffed. ‘The records from before 2001 are still in paper form. We haven’t had the staff to enter them into the computer software. Please, follow me.’
She led the way down an oak-clad corridor and stopped outside a door. Entering a code into a keypad, she opened the door and stepped inside. Jo followed. It was an office that looked as though it had been constructed by portioning off a former library. Banks of chest-high metal filing cabinets lined three of the walls. The technician took a bunch of keys from her overall pocket, unlocked one of the cabinets and pulled out a drawer packed with buff manila folders.
‘There were more donors than potential recipients in those days,’ she said as she leafed through the files. ‘Now it’s the reverse. You wouldn’t believe it, but last year there were only nine registered British donors to the National Sperm Bank. Almost all of the donations now come from America or Denmark. Their banks are overflowing, if you’ll pardon the pun.’
She pulled out a manila folder.
‘Ah, here we are: Dalmeny J. No 77986.’
She took the folder over to the desk beside the fourth wall, opened the folder and read it, slowly turning the pages as she went along.
‘Application . . . medical clearance . . . trial sample one, two, three . . . donation cycle begins . . . four donations over a three-week period . . . donor withdrawal form. And . . . yes, the samples were definitely destroyed. It says so here.’
She stabbed the page with her forefinger.
‘See for yourself.’
Jo walked over and read the note.
‘This states that they were destroyed,’ Jo said. ‘That doesn’t prove that they were. Whose signature is this?’
The technician picked the sheet up and studied the signature. She shook her head.
‘I don’t know. I don’t recognise the name or the signature. This was before the clinic changed hands. I wasn’t working here then.’
‘Can you ask someone who was?’
She sighed, put the sheet back in the folder and closed it up.
‘I’ll see if the Medical Director, Professor Basillu, is in the building,’ she said. ‘He’s the only one left of the original staff. He may remember.’
The professor was close to a foot shorter than Jo. He wore a shiny grey cashmere suit, immaculate white shirt, red bow tie, and beige, hand-tooled shoes. With his bald crown, curly black hair on the sides, full figure and tinted glasses, he reminded her of Danny DeVito in Get Shorty.
‘Mary, what can I do for you?’ he said, addressing the technician.
‘This is Senior Investigator Stuart from the National Crime Agency,’ she told him. ‘She’s asking about a sperm donation that was supposedly destroyed back in 1995.’
The MD raised his eyebrows above the rim of his glasses.
‘Supposedly? What does that mean, Miss Stuart?’
‘Traces of this particular donor’s seminal fluid,’ Jo said, ‘accompanied by substances commonly used as cryoprotectant, were recovered from a victim of rape.’
Professor Basillu’s face clouded over as the import of what she had told him hit home.
‘Not possible,’ he said. ‘Our security has always been second to none. Could it be a coincidence? A mistake?’
‘I’m sorry, Professor,’ Jo said, ‘there is no mistake. The sample contains his DNA. What we need to establish is how it came to be found on a victim twenty years after he donated it at this clinic.’
‘Even though it’s theoretically possible for samples to retain their viability for up to fifty years, we rarely keep samples longer than ten years,’ the MD said. ‘We tell the donors that.’
‘In this case, the donor withdrew his consent halfway through the donation cycle,’ Jo said. ‘What I was hoping was that you could tell me whose signature this is?’
Reluctantly, he took the form from her and studied it. ‘That’s Selma Grainger,’ he said. ‘She was an administrative lab assistant. Worked with us for about a year. Last I heard she’d gone back to the West Indies.’
‘Do you know where in the West Indies?’
Professor Basillu shrugged.
‘I’m sorry. I really have no idea.’
‘If I show you some faces on my tablet,’ Jo said, ‘do you think you could tell me if you recognise any of them?’
He shrugged.
‘If you must.’
Jo took the tablet from her bag, and scrolled through a succession of images, including those of Nathan Northcote, Zachary Tobias, Professor Harrison Hill, Anthony Ginley, Sam Malacott and Jason Dalmeny.
‘Take your time,’ she said.
‘No, I’m sorry, I don’t recognise any of them.’
‘Would you need to look at them again?’
Professor Basillu shook his head.
‘There’d be no point. I’m certain that I’ve never seen any of them before. I have a good memory for faces.’
‘In which case,’ she said, ‘I’m going to have to trouble you for a list of all of the employees working at the clinic in 1995.’
‘That,’ he said, ‘will take some time to arrange.’
‘I’ll wait.’
He shrugged.
‘Please yourself.’ He turned to his senior laboratory technician. ‘Mary, could you ask Rashid to expedite this for Miss Stuart, please?’
As she scurried off, Professor Basillu faced the NCA investigator. ‘Whether or not the sample came from these premises, I trust that you will keep this as low profile as possible? It could do a lot of damage to our donor programme. We have precious few home-grown donors as it is.’
‘I can’t promise that, Professor,’ Jo replied. ‘If the clinic is implicated and there’s a trial, it’ll be impossible to prevent the connection from becoming public. Given that it was over twenty years ago and an isolated case, I’m sure your company will be able to manage damage limitation.’
‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘This has been my life’s work, Miss Stuart.’
He hel
d out his hand for her to shake.
‘Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, Professor,’ she replied, ‘and thank you for your cooperation.’
‘Not at all.’
He turned and walked away.
‘Nice car, Professor,’ she called after him.
He acknowledged it with a wave of his hand. His life’s work had clearly paid off, Jo reflected as he disappeared through the fire doors. She wondered if Abbie and her donor James would be employing the services of a clinic like this, or using a turkey baster as one of their friends had done. The thought caused a wave of gloom to sweep over her. She sighed and headed outside for a breath of fresh air.
She was enjoying the bright winter sun on a bench overlooking the lawns when the receptionist brought her the envelope containing the list of names. There were twenty-two in all. It seemed a lot for a donor facility. Then she realised from some of the job titles that it doubled as a fertility clinic.
There were a chairman, two medical directors, an assistant medical director, a specialist IVF consultant, an obstetrician, one nurse, two scientists, two embryologists, four laboratory technicians, a fertility counsellor, a donor counsellor, a business coordinator, a receptionist, a medical secretary, three admin assistants, a building facilities manager, an electrician, two part-time gardeners and a security officer.
Jo found it difficult to believe that only one of them was still here twenty years later. It was a shame that it wasn’t the security officer. He would have some explaining to do. She went through the list of names twice, just to be sure. Not one of them had featured in the investigation thus far.
‘Damn,’ she said out loud. They would have to check them all for a connection with Operation Juniper. She put the list in her bag and stood up. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Chapter 39