Felix Francis - Crisis

‘Would the analysis have been paid for by the health service?’ I asked.

‘No chance,’ said the doctor. ‘Lab work hardly ever is. Even nowadays, when about half of the terminations here are done on the NHS, the clients still have to pay for lab tests. And anyway, back then, all our procedures would have been private.’

‘But Zoe Chadwick’s mother told me that Zoe had organised everything herself and it was done for free under the NHS.’

‘Not here.’ The doctor shook her head with certainty. ‘Not then.’

‘So how much would it have cost?’

‘In 2002? Between two and three hundred pounds.’

‘So who paid for it?’ I asked. ‘And for the lab testing on top? Zoe wouldn’t have had access to that sort of money. Is there a receipt in the folder?’

‘That information wouldn’t be kept in here,’ she said. ‘These are the medical notes only.’

‘So where would it be kept?’

‘In our finance department. But I doubt they’ll still have the records from so long ago.’

‘Let’s have a look, shall we?’

I stood up to encourage her.

We walked along a corridor to an office at the rear of the building where a large middle-aged woman in a blue cardigan was sitting in front of a computer screen, tapping away on a keyboard.

‘Hello, Barbara,’ Dr Sylvester said. ‘This gentleman would like to see some financial information from 2002. Is that possible?’

She said it in a manner that expected, and probably hoped, that the answer would be no.

Barbara drew in a breath through her teeth.

‘What sort of financial information?’ she asked. ‘We don’t normally keep any paper records beyond seven years. We don’t have the space. And 2002 was before we switched over to the computers.’

‘I’d like to know who paid for a certain procedure,’ I said.

‘How did they pay?’ Barbara asked.

‘I’ve no idea.’

She noisily sucked in air again. ‘In 2002, you say?’

I nodded. ‘August.’

‘The only record we’d have left would be the receipt book. That’s if a receipt was issued. Dr Andrews didn’t always bother.’

‘Perhaps I could ask him if he remembers,’ I said.

‘That wouldn’t be possible,’ Barbara said. ‘Not unless you have a direct line to the hereafter. Dr Andrews died in post. Literally. Had a heart attack while sitting at his desk in the next room. He’d been here for twenty-five years but he was still only sixty-two. It was a dreadful shock for us all.’

Barbara was obviously still upset by it.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Shall we look in the receipt book?’

The receipt book actually turned out to be a cardboard box full of lots of receipt books stored in a cupboard behind Barbara’s desk.

‘What date did you say?’ Barbara asked.

‘August 2002.’

She shuffled through the box and lifted out one of the books. It had about fifty pages with four receipts on each. The top copy of the receipt had clearly been torn out and handed to the customer while the carbonless duplicate beneath remained.

‘Name?’

‘Chadwick. Zoe Chadwick.’

She scanned through the pages.

‘Ah, here we are,’ she said triumphantly. ‘Chadwick. Two hundred and sixty pounds, received on 4th August 2002. But that’s a bit odd.’

‘What’s odd,’ I asked.

‘Dr Andrews wrote “Do NOT inform the patient” across the bottom in bold black ink and he underlined it twice. I recognise his handwriting.’

‘So who was the receipt issued to if it wasn’t to the patient?’ I asked.

‘Mr Chadwick,’ Barbara said. ‘Mr Oliver Chadwick.’

Yvonne had stated that she wasn’t aware until a year after the event that Zoe had had an abortion. But Oliver had known, all right. Indeed, he had paid for the procedure four days before it had been carried out.

Do NOT inform the patient.

Perhaps Zoe really had thought the termination had been carried out for free on the NHS. Maybe she also believed that it was her secret. That’s what she’d implied to her mother: She never meant to tell anyone, ever.

Did that suggest that someone other than Zoe had told Oliver?

If so, I reckoned there were only two names in the frame — the two doctors, Andrews and Benaud.

I was once more in the Mercedes, on my way back to Newmarket.

I called Kate again.

‘Hiya,’ she said with happiness in her voice. ‘I was just thinking of you.’

‘Good,’ I replied with a laugh. ‘Could you do me another favour? Call Janie again and ask if she knows if Oliver knew either Dr Benaud, who was a GP in Newmarket seventeen years ago, or Dr Andrews, who used to run a clinic in Cambridge.’

‘The Healthy Woman clinic?’

‘Yes, but try not to tell Janie that.’

‘Dr Benaud or Dr Andrews?’

‘Yes. Gavin Andrews died about six years ago. And Benaud is spelt like Richie Benaud, the cricketer, with a silent “d” at the end. I don’t know if he’s still practising medicine or even if he’s still alive.’

‘I’ll call Janie right now.’

‘Thanks.’

Next I called ASW to bring him up to speed with what I’d found out.

He waited until I was finished before he said anything. ‘So you think you know why the horses died.’ He said it more as a statement than a question.

The horses, after all, were why we were retained by the Sheikh.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’

‘And who killed them?’

‘Yes. But I probably don’t have the legally required evidence to prove it.’

‘How about the dead girl?’ he said. ‘Did the same person kill her?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I’m still working on that.’

‘How about the police?’ ASW asked.

‘They will obviously need to be involved,’ I said. ‘I haven’t yet decided how or when. I have to get some hard evidence first. Everything is circumstantial.’

‘Be careful,’ he warned.

‘I will,’ I said... but just how careful? I required confirmation and perhaps the only way of getting that was to make the perpetrator show a hand.

‘Anything we can do this end?’ ASW asked.

‘Yes. Two things. First, get on to the Chancery Lane Medical Laboratory. See what you can find out about a sample sent to them from the Healthy Woman Centre in Cambridge on 8th August 2002. Specifically, did the lab do a DNA test on the sample and, if so, do they still have the results? And also did they do any other tests associated with it?’

‘Other tests?’ ASW asked.

‘For comparison.’

‘Yes, of course. Right. I’ll get on to it myself straight away. What’s the second thing?’

I hesitated, wondering if my other request would be a good idea after all.

‘Is Denzel in the office?’ I asked.

Denzel was of West Indian descent and was number 9 of the Simpson White operatives. He was our ex-special-forces man, our former Royal Marine commando, our fixer.

Denzel wasn’t his real name but a nickname he’d been given in the military due to his uncanny resemblance to the actor, Denzel Washington. But our Denzel was not just a pretty face. He was six foot four inches tall with big muscles, and he knew how to use them. Hence he got results.

‘Ask no questions, get told no lies’ was Denzel’s favourite catchphrase.

So we asked no questions.

‘He certainly is,’ ASW replied. ‘He’s kicking his heels around the office like a bear with a sore head. He’s desperate to be doing something.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I can use him. I don’t think the laboratory is likely to play ball even if they’ve still got any results, so can you send Denzel off to Ealing to put the thumbscrews on Peter Robertson. I’d like to know how much he knows and, in particular, if he’s aware who was the father of Zoe’s aborted foetus.’