Dead Man's Daughter

by Roz Watkins

‘We’re taking it very seriously, Meg. We’re – ’

  ‘But are we? Because nothing seems to have happened so far. They threatened me the other day by shoving that thing through my letter-box. And it’s clear now they think they can do whatever the hell they like. Break into my house, threaten my cat. What next?’

  ‘This gives us something very concrete. We’ll get them, Meg. Don’t worry.’

  ‘We know who it must be,’ I said. ‘And telling me to take time off doesn’t actually solve the problem. This is not my problem.’

  ‘I’m only thinking of your health.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with my health.’

  ‘I don’t want you to – ’

  ‘This is not about me.’ Two could play the interruption game.

  He paused a moment for maximum impact. ‘Especially with what you’re planning with your time off.’

  Uh oh. He did know something. I hesitated, wondering what he’d discovered. He looked at me through narrowed eyes. ‘It’s the lying I don’t appreciate.’

  ‘I don’t remember lying.’

  ‘Faults of omission, I’d say. And you never had any intention of delaying your time off, did you?’

  ‘You put me in a difficult position.’

  ‘I’m going easy on you because of what happened last night. But I do think you should take today off.’

  Did that mean he wasn’t going to try and stop me taking Gran? Was he okay about it? Did he know what we were doing? If not, what did he mean? He was often baffling, which I suspected was the secret of his success. People didn’t want to challenge him for fear of looking stupid.

  Richard didn’t say anything more. Sometimes it was best not to push things. I’d worry about it when I got back from Switzerland. ‘Okay, then,’ I said. ‘I’ll get on.’

  I scuttled out before he had a chance to change his mind.

  *

  I sat at my computer trying to work out who would have wanted to kill Phil Thornton and frame Abbie, and trying not to think about dead sisters hanging from ceilings. I kept coming back to Phil’s heart transplant.

  I noticed Jai approaching and put on a Don’t Ask Me How I Am expression.

  ‘How are you?’ he said.

  I lowered my voice. ‘I think Richard might know about me taking Gran. Have you heard anything?’

  ‘Oh shit. Is he trying to stop you going?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be. But it was one of those cryptic conversations you have with him, where you daren’t clarify in case it takes a turn for the worse. So, I’m avoiding him for the rest of the day.’

  ‘Maybe he thinks it’s best if he doesn’t officially know. Then he can’t be accused of condoning it. Anyway, are you alright? After last night, I mean.’

  ‘You know what, Jai, I think they’ve done me a favour. Instead of seeing my dead sister hanging from the rafters, now I see a stupid dummy.’

  Jai bounced from leg to leg. ‘Okay. Good.’

  ‘It’s like one of those things therapists make you do, not that you’d know, being all sane and that. But they make you do things in your head to turn something traumatic into something silly. I got it for free.’ All lies. Why did I feel the need to do this?

  Jai smiled. ‘Is Hamlet alright?’

  ‘He’s with Mum. She just texted and he’s in good spirits. A bit narked at being shut in, but not off his food of course. And the landlord is finally putting window-locks on my house, so I’ll be fine too.’

  I looked up to see Craig flopping down on my spare chair. ‘It wasn’t Nick Norwood,’ he said.

  He slid his eyes away before I could catch his gaze. He was thinking about the dog pee incident. I suspected me knowing about it would make him hate me more, even though I’d done all I could to be decent about it, and I had no idea why it had stressed him so much. I wondered again what had happened to him to make him the way he was.

  ‘Is he alibied out?’ I asked.

  ‘Rock solid. And he told me what happened with his own kid.’

  ‘Was he being cooperative?’

  ‘Yeah, when the three of us jumped on his head, I think it took the edge off.’ Craig gave a little smile.

  ‘What happened with the kid then?’

  ‘They went to the Mermaid place because his friend had told him there were pheasants up there. He’s a dodgy bastard – I mean it wasn’t even in season, but he went up there with his gun. Saw some birds and got distracted. Left the kiddy by the pool. Came back and she’d drowned. It was too late to save her.’

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  ‘I did, actually. It all rang true.’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust him, but we’ve got no evidence against him, other than Abbie’s dreams, which aren’t exactly admissible.’

  ‘Yeah. He’s in a lot of trouble anyway after his little performance with a shotgun, but he didn’t kill Thornton.’ Craig stood as if to leave and then hesitated. ‘Are you alright?’ he said. ‘I heard about . . . ’

  ‘Thank you, Craig, I’m fine.’ I realised that sounded snappy. ‘Seriously. Thank you for asking.’

  He gave me a self-conscious half-smile. ‘They reckon the paedo might not have been a suicide.’

  I jerked my head up. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Scuff marks on the floor, distance of drop, angle of knots, etc. They reckon he probably passed out at sitting height rather than standing height, and someone pulled the chair out from under him.’

  ‘I knew it. Could you chase Emily again – she’s trying to find out when those notes were put on Gibson’s computer. What if someone killed Gibson and then hacked into his laptop and edited his notes. Put in Ben and Buddy, and that horrendous picture. What if Scarlett Norwood wasn’t even Abbie’s donor? What if the whole bloody lot’s a set-up?’

  29.

  Jai went off to find Emily, and I closed my eyes and tried to think. I’d only had a few peaceful seconds when I heard someone approaching. The gentle step of Fiona.

  I opened my eyes and Fiona sidled up to my desk, looking slightly furtive. She sat in my guest chair and spoke quietly. ‘I know I’m supposed to be off the case but . . . ’

  ‘Never mind that,’ I said. ‘What have you found?’

  ‘Are you okay though? It sounded awful. Did you not want to take today off?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m not giving in to them. What did you want to talk about?’

  ‘It’s this Facebook friend,’ Fiona said. ‘I managed to look at private messages because Vanessa gave us her log-in details. The names of her other child and the dog were available to her friends. But not the spotty swimming costume. So I was trying to find out who knew about that, and she told her friend Helen Key about it in a message. And I checked again what was publicly available about her, about Scarlett. It was in the paper that she was with her father, that she drowned, and that she’d donated her heart. But there was nothing anywhere about Ben and Buddy or the swimsuit, so if the killer knew about them, and it didn’t come from Scarlett’s memory, then it came from somewhere else, and it looks like it might have come via this Helen Key.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘She only appeared a few months ago, and rapidly friended friends of Vanessa, before sending Vanessa a friend request in December, by which time they had ten mutual friends and lots of hobbies in common, and Vanessa accepted. But I can’t find out who she is.’

  ‘Is it fake? A catfish profile?’

  ‘I think so. It’s like it was designed specifically to have stuff in common with Vanessa. She said she’d had a daughter who drowned too, but I can’t find any proof of that, or even any evidence that she exists.’

  I felt a stab of excitement, and hope for Abbie. ‘Seriously, Fiona, I think this whole thing was made up. Abbie Thornton’s been framed. I don’t even think Scarlett Norwood is Abbie’s donor. Did we ever find out what Phil Thornton thought he was doing penance for? Why he moved into the house with the statues?’

  ‘I managed to get through to the woman who sold the h
ouse to him five years ago.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Thornton definitely knew about the statues before he viewed the house. The estate agent remembered because they were such an unusual feature and Thornton seemed fascinated by them. And he knew the story behind them, almost as if he wanted the house because of them, like Karen Jenkins said.’

  ‘What was he doing penance for?’ I said. ‘It was something from years back. I think this might have all started with Phil’s transplant, not Abbie’s. What if his ex-wife called him a murderer, and Abbie overheard that?’

  My internal phone rang. ‘Someone to see you. Andrew Bond.’

  I blinked and tried to recall where I knew that name from. Michael Ellis’s business partner. ‘I’m coming.’ I turned to Fiona. ‘Could you track down someone who knew Phil Thornton’s ex-wife? I want to know exactly where his new heart came from.’

  *

  Andrew Bond was smooth and shiny, in his thirties with a trendy beard and glasses, more salesman that scientist. I supposed Bond was quite a name to live up to.

  He looked disdainfully around our grotty interview room. Probably an unpleasant contrast to life in the pharmaceutical industry. ‘I’m worried about Michael Ellis,’ he said. ‘He’s mentally ill. And he wants to bring our company down. I don’t know what lengths he’d go to.’

  ‘Okay, Mr Bond,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’d better start from the beginning.’

  ‘Call me Andrew.’ He touched his beard as if it was a lucky charm. ‘He got this ridiculous idea into his head. About the mice.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘It was after he got together with his latest girlfriend. He started going a bit native. Believing a load of pseudo-scientific claptrap.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, she’d done a PhD in psycho-neuro-something-or-other. New Age rubbish.’

  ‘Psychoneuroimmunology?’

  He gave me an irritated look. ‘Yes. That. Why have you heard about it?’

  ‘I read some articles. I hadn’t understood it was New Age rubbish. It’s about the interaction between mental processes and physical things like immune response, isn’t it? Doesn’t your company specialise in the immune response?’

  ‘Not in that rubbish. I realise the brain can affect the immune response. But Michael got it into his head that individual cells had a kind of consciousness. He got carried away. He wouldn’t be the first scientist to get sucked onto the woo-woo side.’

  Andrew was so annoyingly smug I had to suppress the urge to argue. ‘And your point is?’

  He sighed aggressively. ‘It set him up for what happened with our drug. If he hadn’t been so bloody gullible, it would never have happened. And now he’s trying to bring the company down. And me personally. He’s not amenable to reason.’

  ‘Tell me what you think happened.’

  ‘It’s not what I think happened. It’s what actually happened.’

  If I’d had to work with this guy, I might have wanted to bring him down too.

  ‘We had some aggressive mice,’ Andrew said. ‘Michael decided there must be a reason, and of course he refused to look at the sane, obvious reasons and went straight to the nutty ones.’

  ‘I thought only certain mice were aggressive.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Ones that had been handled by this particular technician. We’ve got rid of him now. He’d been fabricating records to cover up the fact that he was upsetting the mice. That was a sackable offence.’

  ‘What exactly had he done?’

  ‘He’d changed the notes so it didn’t look as if he’d been handling the mice – the ones that became aggressive. We’ve just found out what he was doing.’

  I could feel things shifting in my mind. ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘So the same technicians handled the donor mice and the recipient mice for the heart transplants. Okay? That’s how it had been set up for these experiments. It wasn’t normally like that and Michael obviously didn’t realise, because the technician covered up the fact he’d handled the recipient mice that became aggressive. He didn’t want to get into trouble. But of course he didn’t bother covering up the fact that he’d handled the donor mice. It never occurred to him that a nutcase like Michael would come along and decide that the way the donor mice were killed had any bearing on the behaviour of the recipient mice. Do you see what I’m saying?’

  I sighed. ‘Yes, I do.’ I pictured a house of cards – the construction of the donor heart theory. Andrew had just knocked a card out of its base. ‘Ellis saw a connection between the way the donor mice were handled and the recipient mice’s behaviour. But actually the recipient mice had been handled by the same technician. The old situation of correlation but not causation.’

  ‘Exactly. So Michael formulated his crazy damn theory that the hearts were carrying their anguish with them or some such rubbish. Because he was desperate to make some sense of it.’

  ‘But in fact all the mice who got aggressive had been handled by this dodgy technician – the donor mice and the recipient mice?’

  ‘Yes. All the recipient mice that Michael thought had picked up on the trauma from their hearts or whatever cobblers he believes – actually it was very simple because they’d all been handled by this guy who we’ve just sacked. They obviously were a dodgy batch of mice for whatever reason and his handling pushed them over the edge. But he’d covered that up and made it look like they were handled by different technicians, so it wasn’t obvious that his bad handling was making the mice aggressive.’

  ‘I understand.’ The cards crashed down.

  ‘So Michael’s theory is a steaming pile of horse manure. I do hope you didn’t take it seriously. He’s suddenly against drug companies, going on about how we’re only out to make money, not help people, even though he set up the company with me in the first place.’

  ‘Does he know about the technician faking the records?’

  ‘No. He’s disappeared. But this has all come out and our shares are plunging like a skydiver with no parachute. Michael’s deluded, but he’s not stupid. He made sure the data about the experiment and the information about the aggressive mice were formally released. Of course no one drew any particular conclusion from it except him. I’m sure he shorted shares in the company after he left. And because he made the information public, it probably won’t count as insider trading because he only based his selling of shares on publicly available information. But now that girl’s killed her father and all the nutcases have come out of the woodwork, this is going to ruin us. And get Michael out of his financial mess. You need to release something to say that the kid killing her father had nothing to do with our drug.’

  ‘We didn’t release anything to say that it had.’

  ‘Look at this.’ He shoved a paper over to me. I glanced at the headline. Recipients take on the pain of their donors. Will this end transplant tourism?

  ‘Oh, hang on.’ Andrew pulled it back. ‘That’s a different hysterical article. This one.’

  Immunosuppressant drug implicated in tragic case of possessed schoolgirl.

  I skim-read the article. I could see it wasn’t going to be good for Pharmimmune’s share price.

  ‘Michael was broke, you know.’ Andrew folded his arms. ‘This has actually been extremely good for him. I’ve even been wondering how far he’d go to bring our company down and save himself from bankruptcy.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘He was desperate. He despises us. And he’s clearly not quite sane.’

  ‘Are you suggesting he could have killed Phil Thornton?’

  ‘I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.’

  There was something unnerving about Andrew. I wondered if he really had threatened Michael Ellis. Or was Ellis the dangerous one after all? And I’d let him get away.

  *

  Fiona intercepted me in the corridor. ‘They found something a bit weird, Meg. On Abbie’s nightdress.’

  I pulled her into a spare interview roo
m. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They missed it earlier because it had been taped for fibres, so they thought it was just the adhesive from that . . . ’

  I felt a twitch of hope. ‘What did they find, Fiona?’

  ‘Adhesive on the back of her nightdress.’

  My heart was pounding. I spoke slowly. ‘Somebody stuck it onto something . . . ’

  Fiona nodded.

  I’d been wondering how it could have been done. How the killer got arterial blood on Abbie’s nightdress. Could they have stuck it to themselves? I pictured the scene. Somebody leaning over the sleeping Phil Thornton, Abbie’s nightdress taped onto their front. The knife slicing into Thornton’s neck, arterial blood jetting out all over the nightdress.

  ‘My God,’ I whispered. ‘She really was framed. It was set up so it looked like Abbie stabbed him.’

  Fiona looked uncomfortable. ‘You think the killer stuck it on to himself?’

  I ran over it in my mind again. ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘It does seem like maybe Abbie was framed. Emily came back and said it looks like the notes on Harry Gibson’s computer were modified late on the day he died, like you suspected. So they could have been changed after he died.’

  My knees suddenly felt wobbly and I sank down onto a chair. We’d been so close to believing Abbie had done it. ‘She never dreamt about Ben and Buddy,’ I said. ‘She didn’t produce that hideous drawing of Scarlett Norwood’s death.’ A flash in my mind of Abbie’s cantering-horse picture, and the dog on the fridge. Why hadn’t I seen the discrepancy before? What an idiot. She drew better than that now. She didn’t draw like a typical kid, and the murderer had overlooked that. ‘Yes, she had some nightmares, but she didn’t say anything that related to Scarlett Norwood. The killer added all that to Dr Gibson’s notes. Found out the information from that poor drowned girl’s mother by befriending her on Facebook and put it in the fake notes. It was all made up. The whole heart memory thing. And listen to what I’ve just found out about those bloody mice.’

  Fiona popped down into the chair opposite me, as if she was about to take a statement. I told her about my discussion with Andrew Bond.