by Roz Watkins
The door was smooth apart from a small indentation near the floor.
I flicked my eyes desperately over its entire surface. There had to be some way to get it to open. Panic was rising up inside me. I wanted to scream.
It had to be magnetic. There was no other way it could have worked.
I remembered Hannah’s tales of wheelchairs flying at MRI machines. Wheelchairs were ferrous. Maybe Tom had designed it specially so he could get through easily without a key, just by bringing his wheelchair up to it.
I shoved Gran’s trolley against the door. Nothing.
If it was magnetic, I needed Tom’s wheelchair to get us out.
The thought of going back towards Tom’s operating theatre made me weak with terror. I let out a desperate sob and pushed past Gran’s trolley. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I sprinted back down the corridor and gave the door to Tom’s room a little nudge. I peered in. He was still lying on the floor.
I ran in, grabbed his wheelchair, and dashed from the room, pushing the door shut behind me.
As I shot towards the external door, I could see that the indentation was designed to receive the footplate of the wheelchair. The one that was missing.
‘Oh, Jesus.’ I leant and grabbed the other footplate, and shoved it into the indentation.
Nothing.
A scratching from behind me.
I’d been wrong. It wasn’t magnetic.
Tom was waking. We were going to die in this place. Why hadn’t I taken a knife when Tom was on the floor? Why hadn’t I hit him again – harder? It always drove me nuts in films when the hero didn’t give the villain an extra smack for good measure, and now I’d done the same.
I shifted the position of the footplate.
A click.
I pushed against the door.
It opened.
I grabbed Gran’s trolley and thrust her out of the clinic. I glanced back and saw Tom staggering from the operating theatre clutching his head. He was holding the scalpel. I kept the footplate, got Gran out and slammed the door behind us. If Tom had to go back for the other footplate, maybe we’d have time to get away.
I dragged Gran’s trolley across the slushy car-park and towards the road. My legs felt leaden like in a dream. I wanted to sob with the effort of making them move.
A shout. ‘Meg?’
That sounded like Jai.
I looked up to see him running across the car-park towards us. ‘Jesus Christ, Meg. What the hell happened? Why’s your gran here?’
Gran and I juddered to a halt. ‘I’m going to faint.’ I leant forward, hands on knees, head dangling down.
Jai touched me on the shoulder. ‘Come on. Let’s get you out of here.’
Gran sat up on her trolley. ‘Get us away from that man,’ she said, with surprising force.
‘Come on.’ Jai grabbed Gran’s trolley.
I followed Jai towards a police van in the corner of the car park. ‘Is Abbie okay?’
‘She’s back with Rachel. Dr Li’s confessed to it all.’
‘It wasn’t her,’ I said. ‘It was her son.’
35.
Dr Fen Li grasped her hands together, fingers interlocked, knuckles white. ‘It all started in China,’ she said.
She’d had the caution. She knew we might use anything she said against her. But she hadn’t asked for a solicitor and she seemed desperate to share her story. Unconcerned about what would happen to her, but determined to make us understand why she’d tried to protect her son, even though he’d killed two people.
‘I was born in China,’ she said. ‘But I went to school in the UK. I’d lived here for years. Tom was born here. And his sister, Lily. Tom studied medicine and qualified here. I thought he was happy. But then one day he told me about his . . . condition. About wanting to be paralysed.’ She looked down at her clenched fists. ‘He’d told Lily years earlier – he’d always felt that way ever since he was a little child. He didn’t want legs that worked. It was awful. I couldn’t make sense of it. I was so upset . . . and angry . . . He told me he’d had ideas about trying to actually paralyse himself. It was terrible.’
‘It must have been,’ I said.
‘I was convinced it should be curable. I mean, JCB drivers develop mental maps that include the digger arms, for goodness’ sake. Our mental maps are flexible. So I researched it and found out about a practitioner who’d had a lot of success helping people with the condition. He used a mixture of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Buddhist philosophy, plus he taught specific exercises with mirrors, like the ones they do with amputees. The Buddhism helped his patients see that the human body is just a temporary vessel and isn’t within our control. And the exercises helped them to accept their bodies as they were. It seemed to work for people with BIID, when nothing else had. But he was in China and he didn’t travel.
‘I persuaded Tom to see him, and we went out there, planning to stay a few months.’
‘Did this doctor introduce Tom to Falun Gong?’
‘Yes. He was a practitioner. It really helped Tom. Lily became interested too. I didn’t see a problem. It’s peaceful. No one should be offended by it.’ She shook her head. ‘I still find it hard to believe. Having lived so long here. I don’t think we understood . . . ’
‘And the Communist Party banned it?’
‘They said it was a cult – a menace to society. Our doctor was arrested, and he must have given them names. They came for Tom, and Lily too.’
‘And put them in prison? Just for being interested in Falun Gong?’
‘They put them into a detention centre for “re-education”.’ She wiped her forehead. ‘It was terrible. I didn’t know where they were. I’m sorry.’
I gently prompted her to carry on.
‘Tom told me they were tortured. I know you won’t understand, but Falun Gong . . . they are peaceful and tolerant. But they don’t renounce their views. They even claim not to hate their torturers – they say the torturers are victims too. I can’t be like that. I have a lot of hatred in me. You can’t imagine how it feels to know your own children have gone through something like that, and that you put them in harm’s way. Electric shocks, beatings, the “death board”, the – ’
‘The “death board”?’
Fen’s face was grey in the cold light of the interview room. She wiped her mouth with a tissue. ‘Yes. The “death board”. Tom told me they strap you to an iron or wood board, so your four limbs are stretched out. They leave you there for at least seven days. You can’t move, can’t go to the toilet . . . can you imagine? The muscle cramps make you scream. They sometimes strip you naked to make it easier for them to clean up afterwards. Tom said someone was held on there for eighteen days. Eighteen days. When they let her off, she was paralysed from the waist down and she never recovered.’
I felt like I couldn’t breathe properly. ‘You don’t have to tell us all this.’
‘I want to.’ She raised her head and looked out of the window that overlooked the cold grey car park. ‘Tom capitulated. But Lily didn’t . . . We were told she’d offered to donate her organs. She would have been alive when they took them. So that the organs were viable. They would have taken her heart, kidneys, liver, corneas . . . ’ She swallowed and wiped her eyes roughly with a tissue. ‘It would never have happened if I hadn’t persuaded them to go to China, and made Tom see the doctor – if only I’d been able to accept him as he was, like Lily did.’
I looked across at her haggard face, not knowing what to say, or even what to think. ‘After Tom was released, you came back to England?’
‘We decided to try to make a new life. But you don’t just get over something like that. Tom’s BIID got much worse. All the progress he’d made before being in prison, it all came to nothing. He was so devastated about what had happened . . . he blamed himself, me, Falun Gong. He was a mess. He didn’t have the energy to work against his feelings any more. I know it makes no sense . . . ’
‘It’s clearly a real con
dition. I understand that.’
‘He decided to return to England as a paralysed person. I tried to help him. Harry Gibson was a specialist in BIID and Tom agreed to talk to him but nothing worked. And when you’ve lost a daughter . . . other things don’t matter so much. I agreed to go along with the pretence, and told people he’d had a car accident. I imagined the accident so many times, I almost came to believe it. When I told you in the gorge, it didn’t feel like a lie. I did lose patience sometimes, but only occasionally. Anyway, I thought he was happy being a “pretender”. But then he tried to jump into the gorge to paralyse himself.’
‘I see now. It must have been hard for you, coping with that.’
‘I thought it was. I didn’t think it could get any worse. But now he’s killed people.’
‘Did you know what he was doing?’
‘Of course not. But it’s my fault. I gave him access to my computer. That was the trigger.’
‘Tom got to listen to the recordings of Dr Gibson’s sessions with Abbie?’
Fen sighed. ‘He’s the technical one. He helped me set up LogMeIn for Harry when he couldn’t get onto my webinars. He had access to everything on my computer and Harry’s too, I suppose, so all the notes and recordings from Abbie’s sessions. I trusted him.’
‘And he realised Abbie’s nightmares related to her father’s transplant?’
‘Yes. Screaming that her father was a murderer, that he’d taken someone’s heart when they were still alive. He didn’t know for sure what it meant, but he suspected.’
‘But why did Tom realise that it was about Phil’s heart transplant, and you and Dr Gibson didn’t?’
‘I suppose Tom was the one who’d been in prison. When he heard Abbie talking about someone taking a heart when a person was still alive, it would have brought his sister to mind. Whereas Harry and I were thinking of the donor child for Abbie, because that’s what Rachel had said. We missed the connection.’
‘But why didn’t you tell us you were Dr Gibson’s supervisor?’
‘I’m sorry.’ She sighed. ‘Tom asked me not to. He said he’d seen some child pornography on Harry’s computer when he was helping him get onto the webinars. He said he’d told a friend who was thinking of taking his child to see Harry, and then he’d realised he shouldn’t have done that, and I could be in trouble for giving him access to Dr Gibson’s computer. I didn’t know Harry was dead at that point. I was just doing what my son asked me. Then when poor Harry killed himself, Tom said it was even more important I didn’t say anything, because it was our fault people had found out about the pornography. I’m sorry.’
‘But at some point, you realised what he’d done, and you still protected him? Let us believe Abbie had killed her father? And then ran off with her to let your son get away?’
Why was I was even shocked? Mothers would do anything to protect their children. I’d once read about a thought experiment where parents had to say how many other children they would let die to protect their own child. One woman said she’d let every other child on the planet die to protect her own. Until she realised her daughter needed another child to play with. So every child on the planet minus one.
‘I know I shouldn’t have done that,’ Dr Li said. ‘But he’s my son. The only child I have left. He’s been through so much. I couldn’t cope with him going to prison again. I’d never have let Abbie go to prison though. I’d have told you the truth once Tom was out of the country.’
*
‘I don’t regret any of it.’ Tom spat the words across the fake-wood table. ‘I don’t care that you caught me.’
It was too hot in the small interview room, and there was a faint smell of something sharp and poisonous. Craig sat next to me, and even he seemed muted.
Tom’s anger felt overwhelming – a huge, acid sea of it seething and swirling around us. I pictured a protective bubble around myself, and spoke into the recording apparatus. Calming myself by going through the familiar set-up routine.
Tom bored into me with his almond eyes, giving me a quiver of fear, a momentary flashback to that operating theatre.
I waited a moment, feeling his anger dissipate.
‘Would you like to tell us what happened?’ I said.
‘Would I? Why should I tell you anything?’
I waited. I sensed he wanted to share. He wanted us to be impressed.
‘It wasn’t so hard,’ he said. ‘Once I’d had the idea. Blame my mother – if she’d been capable of dealing with the technology herself, I wouldn’t have had access to Gibson’s computer. But if Phil Thornton had just agreed to be honest about what he’d done, none of this would have been necessary.’
In Tom’s mind, it has all been justified. Necessary. ‘And you framed Abbie?’ There was no judgement in my voice. I wanted information – it was a dangerous indulgence to let suspects know how you felt about their behaviour.
‘I’d been in their house before, of course, to see the layout. How silly they were to leave a key outside, in the most obvious place. It was so easy to find. I’d seen from their calendar that she’d be away, the mother. And I knew from Gibson’s notes that the child and her father would be drugged into oblivion on Sombunol. It wasn’t hard to inject her with a little more, in one of her existing needle sites.’ He was talking freely, with pride in his voice. The anger had gone because he was pleased about what he’d done and was relishing telling us about it.
I swallowed and indicated that he should carry on.
Tom tipped his head to one side. ‘I did wonder about bringing Abbie through and stabbing Phil Thornton with her in front of me and the knife in her hand. But I decided it was too risky, so I took her nightdress, taped it on to myself, sorted out Phil Thornton with the nightdress in front of me, and then brought Abbie through and put the nightdress on her. There was enough blood around, and I thought his wife would mess up the scene anyway. I wasn’t expecting her to do quite such a good job of confusing matters, of course.’
‘Were you wearing protective clothing?’
‘Two suits and three sets of overshoes. You can buy them on eBay, you know. I knew it would make a terrible mess when I stabbed him, so I took the outer suit and shoes off and put them in my rucksack, then I brought Abbie through and put the nightdress on her, and left her on the floor in all the blood, with the knife, smeared it around a bit so I didn’t give your people too much help. I put the third set of overshoes on, being careful not to tread in the blood of course, and I left wearing the second suit and the third set of overshoes. It all went as I’d planned. There was a difficult moment before I stabbed him when I thought he was waking up, but of course he didn’t. And I put a few rocks in my rucksack and chucked all my gear into the lake at the quarry. Easy-peasy.’
‘But Phil Thornton didn’t get your sister’s heart.’
‘What difference does that make? He got the heart of an innocent person, and some other monster got my sister’s.’
I looked into his empty eyes. He didn’t seem to have any regrets about what he’d done. ‘And Harry Gibson?’
Tom laughed. ‘He gave me access to his computer. It’s amazing what information people will give you. Once I was in, it was easy to find all his passwords. People are stupid.’
‘You changed Abbie’s notes after you killed Dr Gibson?’
‘Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.’ Tom smiled. ‘Yes of course I did. But why am I telling you all this? I should make you work harder. Although I’ve decided I’m not too concerned about going to prison here. I suspect it will be quite pleasant in comparison to my experiences in China. I read in the paper that prisons here are like holiday camps.’
Something flicked across his face and I wondered if it was a memory from his time in prison. What kind of man would he have been without that experience? Possibly a good man, a good doctor. He had an unusual condition in wanting to be paralysed, but that wouldn’t have harmed anyone, if only he’d been left alone. He’d been getting better before the Chinese locked h
im up. The ripple effect of their violence had spread across the globe.
‘I suppose it was you who emailed your mother’s CV to DCI Richard Atkins last week.’
‘Of course. It wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t used her, but I thought it could be fun if he did. It made it easier for me to feed my scientific papers into the equation, and convince you Abbie could be remembering the donor child’s death.’
And Richard had fallen for it, like a little kid taking sweets from a paedophile.
‘But me?’ I said. ‘How did you know so much about me? And why did you hate me so much?’
‘Obviously I was going to check out the lead detective, wasn’t I? I didn’t realise there’d be such a lot about you online. You seem to have upset a group of bible-bashers, which I don’t have a problem with. And it turned out they were surprisingly enthusiastic bloggers. But when I found out you’d been responsible for your sister’s death . . . ’
‘I’m no more responsible for my sister’s death than you are for yours,’ I snapped, before I thought it through.
A tiny jolt went through him and he looked right into my eyes. ‘You’re probably right,’ he said. ‘If it hadn’t been for me, my sister wouldn’t have even been in China, let alone involved with Falun Gong.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I said. ‘And it’s not my fault my sister died.’
The air in the room thickened and my skin felt prickly, like I wanted to scratch, or be sick, or go somewhere cold, or anywhere away from there.
‘We didn’t understand why they were carrying out health checks,’ Tom said abruptly. ‘They had no regard for our lives, but they kept taking blood samples. They took blood from my arms and earlobes, and they took urine samples and X-rays. One time, they were beating me – they’d pinned me down and were hitting me with sticks – when another official warned them not to damage my organs. I didn’t understand. And always, always, I worried for my sister. She was stronger than me. I knew she wouldn’t give in.
‘And at first I didn’t believe it about the organ harvesting – there were rumours they would take our organs one by one, whilst we were still alive.’ He paused and touched his cheek. ‘One day, my sister was pulled from her cell and never returned. I gave up after that. I told them whatever they wanted to hear. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I didn’t care what I believed. Only the thought that I might one day get revenge – only that thought kept me alive.’