Dead Man's Daughter

by Roz Watkins

I walked over and stood beside her. ‘She’s gone to hospital.’ I resisted the temptation to say she’d be okay. I didn’t know if she’d be okay.

  Abbie turned to face me. Gulped down her tears. ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘You didn’t think it was me, but it was. In the night. I can’t remember.’

  The PC spoke in a monotone. ‘The victim’s mother found a piece of rock, amethyst, next to the child’s hand this morning, with blood on it. The victim had been hit on the head with the rock.’

  I remembered the purple amethyst by Abbie’s bed in the house in the woods. Light enough for a child to carry but solid enough to give someone a nasty thump. ‘Is it your crystal, Abbie?’

  She nodded, and positioned her skinny body so she was sitting on the wide windowsill, looking out. She’d stopped crying but her face was smeared with tears.

  ‘Do you remember anything?’

  She stared out of the window at the snow-covered garden. ‘I woke up with it by my hand.’

  ‘Can I see your hand?’

  She turned and held it to me, passively. There was a smear of blood on her palm.

  She pulled her hand back and looked right into my eyes. ‘What’s wrong with me?’

  *

  I left Abbie with the PC and headed for the living room at the back of the house, where Rachel had been sleeping. I bumped into Craig in the hall. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Hi, Craig.’

  ‘Hoping I wouldn’t turn up?’

  He was standing too close. Craig had no concept of personal space. If he’d been a dog, other dogs would have bitten him.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘It turns out the kid did it after all?’

  We still didn’t know that, but I was damned if I was sticking my neck out again. ‘She may have done,’ I said.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to say to me?’

  ‘Oh yes, Craig, there’s lots I’d like to say to you.’ I squeezed past him and into the living room. The velour sofa and chairs had been shoved up against windows overlooking a conifer- hedged back garden, and one of the casements was open. Rachel always slept with the window open. An air-bed took up most of the remaining floor space.

  There wasn’t a lot of blood – just a few smears on the pillow case.

  I realised Craig was behind me again. ‘Why won’t you admit you were wrong? You made the wrong call. You let the kid out, and she was dangerous. Everyone knew she’d done it except you. And now she’s done it again.’

  I spun round. He smelt of cheap aftershave and mouthwash, with a subtle hint of male sweat. ‘Did you predict this, Craig, or is this all with the benefit of hindsight? Because I don’t remember you saying she posed a threat to anyone else. Can you remind me? No, actually, don’t bother – ’ I stopped myself. I’d been going to say he’d only lie about that too. But I remembered Hannah’s advice.

  ‘It was bloody obvious.’ Craig turned and stamped out of the room.

  Of course, the sickening truth was that he was right. I’d made the decision and I’d got it wrong. Did he think I didn’t know that?

  *

  Jai drove with exaggerated care, pretending he was concentrating too hard to talk.

  ‘Are you alright if I wind the window down a bit?’ I said.

  Jai shot me a perplexed look. ‘That white stuff’s snow.’

  ‘I’m too hot.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said warily, as if dealing with someone unstable.

  I wound the window down and stuck my arm into the icy air.

  ‘Fuck,’ I said.

  ‘We couldn’t have predicted she’d attack her mum. It was her dad she was dreaming about.’

  How did he manage to stay so balanced? Bad things just slid off him. Perhaps because it was my responsibility, not his.

  I retracted my arm and wound the window up a bit, leaving a couple of inches at the top. ‘Why do we still say wind the window, when it’s been all buttons for years?’ I said.

  ‘Has your car got automatic windows?’ Jai said. ‘It barely has windscreen wipers.’

  He was being mean again. That was a good sign. ‘I didn’t even think she’d killed her dad.’

  He came straight back at me. ‘What do you think now?’

  ‘I suppose she must have done. I cocked up.’

  I looked round at Jai’s profile. His lips moved as if he was about to say something, but nothing came out.

  ‘What were you going to say?’

  He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No. Go on.’

  ‘Okay.’ His voice was quiet. Almost drowned out by the tyres on the slushy road. ‘You’re still not convinced it’s Abbie, are you?’

  The road had become a tree-lined tunnel, the snow sitting on the branches overhead and making it so dark it almost felt like dusk. Was Jai right? Was I still not convinced? I’d thought I was. I’d been doing a solid job of berating myself for getting it wrong. But had I got it wrong? ‘There are still some questions in my mind,’ I said. ‘Anyone could have climbed through the window into the room Rachel was sleeping in. And they were all on sleeping pills.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Meg!’ Tendons stood out on Jai’s hands as he gripped the wheel. ‘And can you shut that bloody window.’

  I shut the window. ‘Drop me at my house. I’ll pick up my car.’

  ‘Okay.’ Jai sighed. ‘I’m sorry, but I think you’re refusing to see what’s in front of you. I just think you’re a bit too attached to Abbie. Don’t you agree?’

  I shouldn’t have shared so much with Jai. What did I really know about him? Fell out with parents over marrying an English girl; parents proved right when English girl turned out to be crazy cow; interminable custody battles; new relationship with Sikh version of the same. It wasn’t that he didn’t talk. But nothing deep. Nothing I could hurl in his face and say, You’re not thinking rationally because of your screwed-up childhood.

  ‘No, Sigmund fucking Freud,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I’m too attached to Abbie.’

  22.

  ‘Sit down, Meg.’ Richard scowled at me.

  ‘No, I – ’

  ‘Sit down please.’

  I sat down. This had the benefit that as I sank into the chair I could see less and less of Richard, behind his piles of files and cacti.

  ‘Right.’ He slammed his elbows onto his desk. ‘Can we wrap this one up now? We must have enough evidence that the girl did it. She’s attacked her mother as well, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I know the evidence points that way. And she doesn’t deny it. But I still have some concerns about – ’

  ‘Get it to the CPS and get her charged. We’re already in a mess about why we let her out. Once the press get hold of this . . . ’ He wiped his forehead. ‘And it’ll be all over Twitter and Insta-bloody-whatever-it-is in no time. Christ almighty.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we look into it a bit more? I mean, keep her in custody, yes, but . . . ’

  ‘But what, Meg? This has gone far enough. She admits she did it. She was found with a knife in her hand, and now she’s been found with a rock in her hand. What more do you want? It’s not our problem if the motive’s a bit odd.’

  I clawed myself out of the lower regions of the chair. ‘It is our problem if she didn’t do it.’

  ‘We’ve wasted enough time. Get her charged and get it wrapped up.’

  *

  Back at my desk, my mobile phone rang. Michael Ellis, the immunosuppressant man.

  I snatched it up. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Do you want to know what’s going on with Abbie Thornton?’

  I could see Craig’s shadow. He was hovering by my door. I’d thought by coming in on Sunday, I’d at least escape Craig – he’d probably come in specially to watch me suffer. I spoke quietly into the phone. ‘Do you know what’s going on?’

  ‘I’ll meet you if you come alone. No other cops and not that psychiatrist either. I mean it.’

  I flipped my eyes to Craig. ‘Where do you want to meet?’

  ‘The Cat and Fiddl
e car park.’

  ‘But, Michael, it’s snowing again. My car might not even make it up there.’

  ‘We go in mine then.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Deal’s off then. I’m not talking. Do you want to know what the pattern was? Which mice turned into killers and what that means for Abbie Thornton? And who else has taken Immunoxifan? I have details. I don’t care if you know. I’m past caring if there are other . . . incidents. I’m just trying to keep my head down and not get killed.’

  I walked to the far end of my room and put my hand around the microphone as I spoke. ‘Michael, you need to let us help you. If you think someone’s trying to kill you.’ Again I wondered if he was completely deranged. But he was the only person who seemed to have any explanation for what had gone on with Abbie, and he’d originated the theory about her heart. Whether Abbie was the killer or not, Michael Ellis was involved.

  ‘No deal,’ he said. ‘I’m changing my number. You won’t be able to contact me again.’

  ‘Hold on.’ I spoke as firmly as I could, whilst keeping my voice down. ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘Near the pet cemetery at Harpur Hill.’

  I didn’t just want to know what was going on with Abbie. I was practically bleeding with my desperation to know. I wanted to know like an addict wants heroin. ‘Pick me up from the car park by the chip shop in twenty minutes.’

  I put the phone down, shocked at what I was planning to do. Richard would go bonkers if he found out. Was I making some stupid attempt to redeem myself? To prove it wasn’t really Abbie’s fault, even if she had killed her father? To stop other people who’d taken Immunoxifan from doing anything wrong? Would that go some way to offsetting what I’d let Abbie do?

  I aborted the amateur psychoanalysis of myself, made sure I had my radio and my phone, both fully charged, and sneaked out.

  Once at the chip shop car park, I sat with the engine running and waited for Michael Ellis. I texted Fiona brief details of what I was doing, so they’d stand a chance of finding my decaying corpse if it all went wrong.

  Ellis turned up on time, in a Land Rover.

  I knew I was being rash, but I had to find out what he knew about Abbie. I climbed into his car. ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to go to the second highest pub in England in this weather?’

  He made a throat-slitting gesture and whispered, ‘Car could be bugged. I’d prefer to talk up on the moors where we can see them coming.’

  If he was psychotic, did he pose any threat to me? It seemed unlikely. He didn’t think I was out to get him or he wouldn’t have agreed to see me. Richard wouldn’t see it like that. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’

  We drove in silence through the swirling snow. He was right that we’d have the moors to ourselves. No sane person would be up there in this.

  Finally he pulled up in the car park by the Cat and Fiddle.

  I glanced at the surroundings and pictured the headline. Detective Inspector dies of exposure after paranoid schizophrenic leads her onto deserted moor.

  ‘Can I interest you in talking to me inside the pub rather than on a bleak hillside in a snowstorm?’ I said. Actually, it would probably be Disgraced Detective Inspector. Deluded? Deranged? There was a rich vein of alliterative headlines to tap.

  ‘They might have followed us,’ Michael said. ‘I’d rather be in the open where we can see them. And it’s stopped snowing.’

  I sighed and pulled my hat over my ears. ‘Okay.’

  Michael led me over the road and onto a bridleway that crossed the moor. The path was invisible in the snow but he seemed to know where he was going. I slipped and my foot plunged into a bog, up to my ankle. I swore under my breath.

  ‘You do know you’re putting yourself in danger,’ he said. ‘Being seen with me.’

  I glanced behind me. I was picking up on his paranoia now. ‘Do you really think they’d harm you? Surely if there’s a genuine problem with their drug, they’d want to know about it.’

  His laugh cut through the thick air, loud and humourless. It had an edge of something from a horror film. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That’s funny. That’s genuinely funny.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ I felt a little sulky, like a kid who was being teased. ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘You think a drug company automatically wants to know if there’s a problem with its drug.’

  ‘Well, I mean, I know they covered up the problems with Thalidomide, but that was decades ago and surely nowadays . . . Even just to avoid getting sued. I’m not saying they’d necessarily do it for ethical reasons.’ The bog water had seeped into my boots, my toes squelching in sodden socks.

  ‘Do you know about statins?’

  ‘Anti-cholesterol drugs? They want to put my mum on them.’

  ‘Look them up. Look for any evidence that they help women. Then ask yourself why your mum’s being put on them, when they have very significant side effects.’

  I wondered if he was against the whole pharmaceutical industry. Maybe he’d been pushed out of his company, and now he wanted revenge. Were the claims about Immunoxifan even true?

  ‘What was the pattern, Michael? Gaynor Harvey said the mice were affected by cellular memory too. What happened? Why did they kill their cage mates?’

  Michael looked behind him. Paused a second, and glanced at me. ‘Are you sure you want to know? There are people who do not want this information out there.’

  I couldn’t help glancing around at the snow-covered moor. I pulled my coat tight and shivered. ‘Just tell me.’

  He looked at me through narrowed eyes. ‘Okay. I’ll tell you. Mice which hadn’t had a heart transplant weren’t affected. We worked on other transplants and none of these mice became aggressive. And mice which hadn’t been given Immunoxifan weren’t affected either. But even out of the heart transplant mice which had been given Immunoxifan, not all of those were affected. Only a minority in fact. I eventually realised . . . You probably won’t believe me. My colleagues didn’t. Although after what’s happened with Abbie Thornton . . . ’

  ‘Try me,’ I said. The wind picked up some snow from the ground and blasted it in our faces.

  Michael kept walking. We were quite a way from the pub now. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It seemed to depend on what had happened to the donor mice before they were killed.’

  I hurried to keep up, slipping into a rut. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean the manner in which the donor mice died was a factor.’

  ‘Didn’t they all die the same way?’

  ‘No. Some of the mice had a more traumatic death than others. Not deliberately of course. Although I wonder if in the future, they’ll have to add that to the tests . . . ’

  ‘Christ, let’s hope not for the poor mice’s sake.’

  The wind dulled Michael’s words. ‘It’s always the case,’ he said, ‘that certain lab technicians are better with the mice than others. Some are gentle, some less so. I’m afraid some are downright sadistic.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I have a dodgy ankle.’ It was throbbing from running to help Tom the day before.

  He didn’t slow down. ‘We do try to get rid of them – the cruel lab techs – but we had one . . . You know nowadays, you have to give them no end of warnings and so on. This man – I don’t know exactly what he did but he always upset and scared the mice.’

  I felt a creeping coldness at the back of my neck as if snow had fallen inside my clothes. ‘Go on.’

  Michael stopped and looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot. ‘All the mice that killed their cage-mates had received hearts from mice that were anaesthetised by this man before surgery. So we can assume they had traumatic deaths, or at least traumatic last memories. And they’d also all had Immunoxifan.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Michael shrugged. ‘I’m just telling you what I observed.’

  ‘The mice who turned violent were the ones whose donors had had traumatic deaths. As if something from the traumatic d
eath had been transferred with the heart? Is that what you concluded?’

  Michael nodded. ‘I’m afraid so. The recipient mice which had turned violent had nothing else in common with each other. And they were all handled by different technicians.’

  ‘So if this applies to people . . . ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re saying that if a heart donor had a traumatic death, it could make the recipient of their heart violent?’

  ‘If they’d taken Immunoxifan, yes.’

  ‘But that’s terrifying,’ I said. ‘Why wasn’t it made public?’

  ‘Do you know much about the way drug companies operate?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Did you know that about half of all clinical trials aren’t even published?’

  ‘I did read something about that.’

  ‘Which ones do you think are published?’

  ‘I’m guessing the ones that make the drugs look effective.’

  ‘On the whole. I can’t believe I was ever part of that racket. It makes me sick now.’

  ‘But if they thought a drug might make people violent? Surely that wouldn’t be covered up?’

  Michael gave me a pitying look. ‘It was only mice that became violent, of course. They didn’t know it would apply to humans.’

  ‘But if they think mice are similar enough to people to do the trials on them – surely they couldn’t discount side effects?’

  ‘You think that? Oh, how sweet. It’s amazing how mice can transform between similar to humans and not similar to humans depending on what point is to be made.’

  ‘I was always sceptical about animal experiments,’ I muttered. ‘Weren’t they worried something might happen? That a person might . . . do something?’

  ‘They probably thought that a person would be better able to control their behaviour.’

  ‘Hollow laughs all round,’ I said.

  Michael smiled. ‘I know. How ridiculous. And it also doesn’t take into account that the person could be a child, or could sleepwalk.’

  The snow was disorientating. I had a moment of vertigo and felt the ground shift towards me. Had Abbie really killed her father because of this drug, and her donor heart?

  ‘You believe Abbie was affected by something that happened to her donor? You think the heart was causing her nightmares?’