Dead Man's Daughter

by Roz Watkins

  I swallowed. It felt like something was stuck in my throat. ‘It seems a step too far to take on their memories though.’

  Fen nodded abruptly. ‘There’s plenty we still don’t understand about memory.’

  Fiona shifted forward on her seat. ‘But to murder someone because of this?’

  ‘That obviously wouldn’t happen normally. It would depend on exactly what was transferred from the donor. Like with the mice – only hearts from the ones that had been killed traumatically caused a problem.’

  ‘But surely a lot of donors die traumatically?’ I felt cold. I didn’t want Abbie to have killed her father. I didn’t want Fen to come up with an explanation as to why she might have done it. I wanted her to tell me it was impossible. Ten-year-old girls didn’t kill their parents. Ten-year-old girls weren’t responsible for people’s deaths.

  Something passed across Fen’s face. Like a memory of something painful that she brushed aside. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose they do.’

  I shuffled in my chair. ‘There’s a chance this new immunosuppressant could allow something to survive that’s normally killed off? Increase the chance of a recipient taking on something from the donor? That sounds quite a scary prospect.’

  ‘It’s quite worrying. But I’d need to know more. Please don’t take this as an opinion as to what happened with Abbie Thornton.’

  ‘But do you think we should be looking into other patients who took Immunoxifan?’

  ‘I might be a little concerned in the circumstances.’ Fen frowned. ‘There is one option, of course, given that we can’t discuss this with poor Dr Gibson. A way to discover if Abbie does remember what happened to her donor.’

  ‘Yes?’ I said.

  ‘I could hypnotise her.’

  I could sense Fiona holding her breath.

  I felt a stab of excitement at the possibility of finding the truth. ‘But she was terrified when Dr Gibson hypnotised her,’ I said. ‘I promised she’d never have to do that again.’

  ‘She’s up for murder,’ Fiona said. ‘This might tell us what really happened. If you genuinely don’t think she did it, Meg – ’

  The door swung open. Tom. ‘Would you like drinks?’

  ‘We’re okay, thanks,’ I said. ‘We’d better get off. You need to make that phone call.’

  Dr Li looked at her watch. ‘Yes, I do. Let me know if you’d like to discuss hypnotising the girl.’

  We thanked Dr Li profusely and made our way out.

  ‘I think we should ask Dr Li to hypnotise Abbie,’ Fiona said. ‘She might even remember what happened the night her father died.’

  *

  Fiona returned me to my car, and I set off for home. The snow wasn’t bad in the lower regions – the kind of light dusting that brought London to a standstill but just caused Derbyshire people to stick on their big coats and joke about soft Southerners. I turned the car’s blower up high and tried to ignore the dampness which had seeped into my underwear.

  At the precise moment that the car had fully de-misted, de-frosted and become relatively pleasant to be in, I arrived home. I sat for a moment, not wanting to move. The damp underwear had reached body temperature and I didn’t want to expose it to the freezing air.

  Eventually I steeled myself and clambered stiffly from the car. I pushed open my front door, tripped up the step, and glanced back at the letter-box, all in one not-so-graceful manoeuvre. No Carrie-dolls, but I was still spooked at the memory.

  My house wasn’t warm enough to get rid of the chill that seemed to have solidified my moving parts, and I half-walked, half-crawled up the stairs to check the rooms and then have a bath. Hamlet appeared while I was lying in the glorious warmth, and sat on a corner of the bathtub staring ghoulishly at me, telepathically reminding me that he hadn’t been fed for at least an hour or two.

  Once out of the bath, I donned a nightshirt, three fleeces, some leggings and a dressing gown, fed Hamlet, grabbed a glass of wine, and retreated to my bed with the laptop. I wanted theories and I wanted evidence, and I wanted to be tucked up in bed where the duvet would protect me from all known dangers.

  Not all the people who believed in the memory-transfer theory were on the fringes of medicine – some were highly qualified researchers and doctors. I checked out the possible explanations, hardly believing I was taking it seriously. Whenever I heard my dad’s scathing voice in my ear, I blocked it out with a glug of wine.

  One of the most plausible explanations seemed to be the Little brain in the heart theory. As Dr Li had said, the heart apparently had a nervous system of its own, containing around 40,000 neurons called sensory neurites, which could act independently of the brain and possibly store memories.

  I was struggling to visualise a heart having memories, but realised I knew virtually nothing about how memory worked anyway. Why was I so sure it was all in the brain? We felt as if we lived in our brains, but was that because our eyes and ears were on our heads? If our brains were in our hearts, would we even feel any different?

  Then there was the Neuropeptide Theory. Pharmacologist Candace Pert had proposed that neuropeptides in every cell were able to store emotions. Neuropeptides had been found in the heart, and could theoretically transfer emotions from donor to recipient. I’d heard of Candace Pert and she was no dummy, although I knew her theories weren’t exactly mainstream.

  I put the laptop aside and flopped back on my pillows. Had I been too hasty dismissing these ideas? Too influenced by my dad yet again? I closed my eyes and saw Abbie’s face. Maybe she had done this after all. I imagined her life if she was found guilty of murder. Held in a secure unit, surrounded by the most brutal children, horrified by what she’d done, terrified of her own heart and what it might make her do next.

  24.

  Monday morning. I sat in my room sifting through the data on our system, looking for links and patterns and anything that didn’t involve Abbie slaughtering her father and attacking her mother.

  I jumped. Jai was standing over me. ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Are you perfecting your ninja stealth skills?’

  ‘No, you’re clearly missing some senses this morning.’ He shunned the chair, of course, and leant against my desk. ‘Still worried Abbie didn’t do it?’

  ‘Worried she did; worried she didn’t. I am kind of an expert at worrying.’

  ‘As far as Richard’s concerned, it’s all done and dusted.’

  ‘But, Jai, if she did do it, then what’s her motive? That some weird drug caused her to remember her donor’s death? If that’s true, there are other people out there who could be dangerous.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And if she didn’t do it . . . ’

  ‘Oh, Rachel Thornton’s out of hospital. Doesn’t remember a thing.’

  ‘So, if it wasn’t Abbie, Rachel might be in danger.’

  ‘It was Abbie, Meg. I know you don’t want to believe it because she’s a kid, but it was.’

  Fiona sidled up, looking depressed. ‘Richard’s taken me off this case. Said it’s just tying up loose ends now. But I think there’s leads we should be following up. And we should be looking at the donor child’s father. What if he drowned his daughter?’

  ‘Tying up loose ends? God, am I the only one who thinks Abbie might not have done it?’ I only had two more days before I had to leave them to it. Although I knew it was silly, I felt I was letting Abbie down. ‘Let’s think about whether we should hypnotise her.’

  Fiona’s mouth twisted and she pushed herself back a little as if wanting to keep her distance from me. ‘It’s hit the papers.’

  ‘It’s okay, Fiona. I’m perfectly safe to be around.’ Of course I hadn’t read the papers yet. Maybe I wasn’t safe to be around.

  Fiona laughed politely, as if humouring a slightly insane and possibly violent relative.

  ‘Do you want to show me?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. I’ve got it on my computer, if you want to come over.’

  I followed Fiona to her desk and pu
lled up a chair. Her fingers flicked over the keyboard and she brought up an online news article. Jai walked round and stood behind us.

  The headline screamed: Transplanted Heart Turns Young Girl into Evil Murderer. The byline read, Derbyshire police in chaos as body-count increases.

  ‘Fantastic.’ I leant forward to read the article.

  ‘A recent heart transplant has turned a young Derbyshire girl into a devil child, who has killed her father and left her mother in a coma.

  ‘Until her transplant, the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was a normal schoolchild who wanted nothing more than to play with her friends, and chat about boys . . . ’

  I broke off. ‘Chat about boys? Boys? She’s ten years old, for God’s sake.’

  Fiona shrugged. ‘That’s the bit you’re worried about?’

  ‘And her mother’s not in a bloody coma.’

  I carried on reading.

  ‘But soon after the girl received her new heart, she started having nightmares, screaming that her father was a murderer and was trying to kill her. Her distraught parents took her to a psychiatrist, but nothing seemed to help. The nightmares became more and more distressing. Finally, last week, the girl left her bed in the middle of the night, apparently asleep, crept into her parents’ room, and slit her father’s throat with a knife from his own kitchen.

  ‘Derbyshire police are in chaos. They inexplicably released the girl and left her in the care of her mother and ageing grandmother. Tragically, she struck again, bludgeoning her mother with a rock, leaving the woman in a coma.

  ‘We have reported previously on recipients of heart transplants taking on the donor’s personality, but this case adds a horrific twist to the story. Who was the donor child for the girl’s heart? Rumours are that the girl dreamed she was drowned by her father. Is that what happened to the donor child? Did the donor child’s heart seek revenge? Are the police investigating this?

  ‘It is suggested that new immunosuppressant drugs may have allowed the transfer of memories and emotions from the donated heart, according to “cellular memory” theory. There are now calls for these new drugs to be banned.

  ‘Questions will be asked about where donor hearts come from. Would you be happy for your loved one to receive the heart of a convicted murderer (as happens in some countries, such as China) or the heart of someone who died a traumatic death?’

  I leant back in my chair. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘It’s all over social media,’ Fiona said.

  ‘How the hell,’ I said, ‘did this get out? We didn’t release any of this? Did we?’

  ‘No,’ Jai said.

  ‘I want to know how it got to the media.’

  ‘I meant to tell you,’ Fiona said. ‘My granny confirmed it – people move into that house to do penance.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You know the story about the children being sacrificed? There’s this thing that if you’ve done something terrible, then you move into that house with the statues of the children, and something bad happens to you, like in revenge, and then you’ve done your penance.’

  ‘We know Phil Thornton wanted to do penance. Rachel told us.’

  Jai smiled. ‘People don’t still believe that shit these days, Meg.’

  ‘Maybe Phil did. Both Karen and Rachel said he was desperate to move into that house and the statues were really important to him. What was he paying penance for? Check which charities were in his will, just in case. What had he done that he felt so terrible about?’

  I grabbed my bag and headed out. ‘I’m going to give Dr Li a ring about hypnotising Abbie. I’m not keen, but if it’s what it takes to find the truth . . . ’

  Craig was in the corridor. I tried to walk past without acknowledging him, but he blocked me. ‘For God’s sake, Craig. I have a call to make.’

  ‘You’re off on holiday on Wednesday, aren’t you? Don’t worry, I’ll be able to sort out charging the kid without your help.’

  He was bang in my way. I tried again to skirt round him, but he shifted over. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t postponed your holiday,’ he said. ‘Richard thinks it shows a lack of commitment.’

  ‘Richard didn’t say that.’

  ‘Only because you lied and said you’d postpone your time off. You haven’t even said what you’re doing, so it can’t be anything that special.’

  My teeth and fists clenched with that instinctive readiness to smack him in the face. It would feel so good . . . My breathing came faster. ‘You’re in my way, Craig.’

  We stood for a moment in the corridor, tense and hard as those statues in the woods. Finally, Craig shifted sideways a fraction and I pushed past and towards my room.

  A shout from behind. ‘Meg!’

  I glanced round and saw Fiona. She walked a step down the corridor and then stopped abruptly as if bouncing into the force-field that Craig and I had created. ‘Can I just check something with you?’ she said. ‘I’m not sure if I should go and see . . . ’

  Craig was heading for me again, Fiona behind him. ‘Oh, God, Fiona,’ I said. ‘Make up your own mind.’

  Fiona gave me an astonished look.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry, Fiona, I didn’t mean that.’ I turned and walked a few paces back up the corridor towards her, even though it took me closer to Craig.

  Craig’s face spread into a delighted smirk.

  ‘It’s absolutely fine.’ Fiona strode off, speaking over her shoulder. ‘I’ll make up my own mind.’

  I spun round to face Craig. I was burning with all the pent-up fury I’d been so carefully restraining. ‘Leave me alone, you lying shit-head!’

  *

  An hour later, Jai wandered up to my desk, chomping on a chocolate bar. ‘Have you seen Fiona? No one knows where she is.’

  A shifting in my stomach. ‘She wanted to talk to me earlier.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I didn’t get a chance to ask.’ A flush of shame. ‘Craig was being a dick. I snapped at her, and she shot off. Then I called Craig a lying shit-head.’

  ‘Oh dear. Fair enough about Craig though. Seems accurate to me.’ Jai finished the chocolate. ‘But I hope Fiona’s not trying to impress you by doing something stupid. You do know she stuck her neck out for you?’

  ‘No? What do you mean?’

  ‘She told Richard she’d overheard a conversation between Craig and one of his cronies. Where he admitted he didn’t see you push Rachel Thornton. That’s why Richard didn’t follow up on it, and why Craig’s pissed off with her.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ A wave of mortification. She’d helped me and all I could do was snap at her.

  ‘She’ll be okay.’ Jai fished out his phone, tapped the screen and waited a moment. ‘Straight to answer-phone.’

  ‘She was on about seeing the donor child’s father.’ I jumped up and headed through to Fiona’s desk. Jai followed. No sign of her, and Craig wasn’t around either. A fresh-faced DC, Ian something-or-other, was staring intently at his screen.

  ‘Do you know where Fiona is?’ I asked.

  He looked up and shook his head.

  ‘Or Craig?’

  Another head shake.

  ‘Oh, come on, Ian,’ Jai said. ‘Meg’s okay. What’s going on?’

  His eyes flitted from side to side. ‘Craig thought she’d gone to see the kid’s father – the donor child’s father. She’s not supposed to be on the case so she didn’t want Richard to know.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Do we have the guy’s address?’

  Ian passed us a scrap of paper. An address somewhere up in the hills. ‘Craig left it with me. He went after her.’

  ‘Why did Craig go after her?’

  ‘The guy’s into guns. Craig got worried when he couldn’t get in contact with her.’

  ‘Guns?’ I started to feel a little sick.

  ‘Yeah.’ Ian scratched his nose. ‘He’s into running about the countryside shooting grouse and whatnot.’

  Jai sighed. ‘Craig may b
e an arse, but he’s a loyal arse. He doesn’t like to see his colleagues in trouble.’

  ‘Even though she grassed him up to Richard?’ Sometimes I felt so confused by the relationships in our team. If Jane Goodall was observing us, I’d be that sad chimp sitting at the edge of the group looking baffled.

  I waved the paper in Ian’s direction. ‘Do you know where this address is?’

  ‘I think it’s near the village of Flash.’

  ‘You’re kidding. Isn’t that the highest village in England?’

  Ian nodded. ‘The snow’ll be seriously bad up there.’

  Jai tapped on his phone. He waited a moment and shook his head. ‘No answer from Craig either.’

  Ian said, ‘You won’t tell Richard, will you? Craig made me promise.’

  I was already half way out of the room. ‘Not unless absolutely necessary.’

  *

  ‘You think Nick Norwood drowned his daughter?’ Jai said, as we pulled out of the car park. ‘Is he dangerous?’

  I tried to keep the panic from my voice. Fiona was in danger and it was because I’d snapped at her. And Craig had proved himself to be not-so-bad. ‘If I really thought he was a significant risk, we wouldn’t be taking off into the wilds of Derbyshire with no back-up, would we?’

  ‘Righto. Just checking.’

  I reached to put the address into sat-nav, although I wasn’t hugely optimistic it would get us there.

  ‘Looks snowy up in the hills,’ Jai said.

  ‘Exactly where we’re going.’

  The snow was thawing in the lower regions but it would be piling out of the sky and coating the hills and valleys around Flash. We’d taken Jai’s car – not four-wheel drive but a better choice than mine. I looked towards the snow-iced peaks in the distance.

  The tyres slipped as we pulled onto the main road. Jai gripped the steering wheel with rigid fingers.

  We climbed higher. Snow was falling properly now. Big flakes like something from a Christmas film. The fields were thickly coated. ‘It’s minus five out there,’ I said.

  Jai reached forward and turned the heating up high. ‘I’ve been thinking. Is there any way something iffy could have happened with Abbie’s transplant? Like somehow Phil Thornton persuaded the doctors to take the donor child’s heart even though she wasn’t properly dead?’