Lee Weeks - Dead of Winter

Harding nodded. ‘She meant nothing to him. He had no bond with her or her mother Maria. Maybe he didn’t do it himself. I can’t see him getting his hands dirty, but I can see him setting the seed and looking away whilst it’s done and, most importantly, picking up the tab. I can see him making sure that there is nothing traceable to him. I think he tries to have a hold over everyone he meets. He makes sure of it. Martingale is a psychopath. He doesn’t have the ability to establish meaningful personal relationships with anyone.’

‘What about with his daughter, Nikki?’

‘She is his property, his Frankenstein. He created her.’

‘Could he kill her?’

‘In a heartbeat.’

‘Not just her,’ said Carter. ‘I also think he could have killed his ex-wife Maria easily. The sophisticated timers he has for his orchids could easily have been adapted to make a remotely detonated incendiary device.’

‘He would have needed to get into her house to plant it,’ said Davidson.

‘She lives in the middle of nowhere, sir. He could have gone to see her in the weeks before she died. He could have rigged it up then set it off with a phone call. He lied about being here at around that time. We know he attended the orchid shows.’

Davidson was listening to Carter. He gave one sharp nod of the head as he pulled out his chair from behind his desk and sat down, his hands resting on the edge of the desk. ‘Okay. I’ve heard enough. Carter, you go and arrest Martingale on suspicion of murder.’

Carter didn’t wait around. He was out of Davidson’s office before he could change his mind.

Harding smiled at Davidson once they were alone in the office. He returned it, relaxed, rubbed his tired face and shook his head.

‘Getting too old for all this,’ he said, looking at her and smiling.

‘Ha. . don’t make me laugh. Anyway, when this is over you might just find it’s worth staying on.’

‘What you’re trying to say is my retirement prospects will be non-existent.’

Harding shrugged, ‘If Barbara has the sense to kick you out you can come and live with me; you’re going to have to iron your own shirts though.’

He smiled and shook his head.

Harding took her phone out of her bag. ‘I’ve narrowed it down to who, if I was Martingale, I would want to do an organ transplant. I’ve also been looking at whose career has sky-rocketed since that day.’

She dialled a number and set the phone to loudspeaker so Davidson could hear as well.

‘Simon. . it’s Jo again; I got your list of possible transplant surgeons but the main one wasn’t on it.’

‘I don’t know who you mean.’

‘Thirteen years ago you started working for Martingale after the night his daughter was murdered, didn’t you?’

‘You know I did.’

‘I was racking my brains to think of the one person I would have wanted to do a transplant at the time. . and it’s you.’

‘I specialized in it at the time. You know that.’

‘I looked at the list of surgeons operating the night Chrissie Newton was murdered. You were on the list. Since that time you’ve really risen up the ranks in the Mansfield Group.’

‘What are you insinuating?’

‘I want you to think back and see if it could possibly have been you that operated on Chrissie Newton that night.’

‘I assisted Martingale that night. Afterwards I remember thinking that it was terrible to be working when your own daughter gets murdered. But then he claimed not to be in the country at the time. . I was confused. .’

‘Where were you when Martingale contacted you?’

‘I was working on the transplant ward at the Royal Free. I was a few months away from taking my final registrar exams.’

‘What did you think when he contacted you?’

‘I was flattered. He offered me a lot of money. He also said I could be sure of a new career in one of the hospitals he invested in and that I would be able to concentrate on the thing I was most interested in — cosmetic surgery.’

‘So you were happy about it?’

‘I was ecstatic. I was young, ambitious, things were going well for me at last. Martingale was already hugely respected. So when he asked me to assist I jumped at it.’

‘You said he told you to take a few days off?’

‘Yes. . he wasn’t sure when the organs would become available.’

‘Where did he say they were coming from?’

‘He said a woman on a life support machine, brain-dead; her family were intending to pull the plug over the weekend.’

‘That’s all you knew?’

‘It wasn’t my job to know more. I wasn’t going to be the one doing the operation. I was assisting and being paid a lot of money for it. He got in touch in the evening on Saturday and said that the operation would definitely go ahead that night or the early hours of the morning. He told me to go into the hospital and prepare the theatre.’

‘Go through it for me.’

‘I arrived. The theatre was ready. The recipient was there. She was in pre-op. I was told I didn’t need to do anything for her at that time.’

‘Had Martingale shown up? What was going through your mind?’

‘I was thinking. . bit odd. Martingale seemed very erratic. We needed to have the patient ready. The new heart couldn’t last more than an hour or so outside the body. We needed to put her on a bypass machine, get her old heart out and get going. But. . I know things are tricky with this kind of procedure.’

‘Did you go in and see the patient?’

‘No. Martingale was being weird about it all.’

‘What did you know about her?’

‘She was a woman of about thirty, she was showing advance signs of heart failure. She was extremely breathless and so on.’

‘You didn’t recognize her?’

‘I didn’t see her face. We got a call; the heart was already on its way and we had to get a move on. I opened her up. The heart arrived.

‘Martingale started to connect it but it just wasn’t working. We took a good look at the donor heart and saw the scar tissue — the first signs of heart disease. He stopped the operation. It was a hell of a situation. . there was no way we could put the diseased heart back in.’

‘Mrs Morell? Ivy? We need to have a look around. We have a search warrant.’ Ebony held it up to show her.

‘But we won’t be ripping the place apart,’ smiled Jeanie. ‘We would just need to take a discreet look.’ Ebony pushed the paper a little nearer to Ivy Morell so that she could read it through the bottom section of her vari-focals. She looked back up at the two detectives before her. ‘I suppose so. What are you looking for? I’ve seen you before,’ she said to Ebony. ‘Normally with that good-looking Italian man.’

Ebony smiled. Jeanie laughed.

‘Believe me, he’s as much trouble as he looks, Ivy. . Can we just take a look around?’

‘And do you have a Nurse Linda Peters on your books? She helps out at other hospitals. She’s an agency nurse,’ asked Ebony.

Ivy checked out her staff lists.

‘No. . I’m sorry, we don’t.’

‘Ivy. . is Mrs de Lange in today?’

‘I am expecting her in the next hour. She telephoned me earlier to make sure everything is ready. There’s a lot to organize with the donor organs being taken abroad from here. Mrs de Lange will take them herself this time. She asked me to make sure one of the ambulances was ready.’

‘She makes the arrangements to get the organs to the hospitals that are waiting?’

‘She or Mr de Lange. Actually. .’ Ivy lowered her voice. ‘I’m not sure where Mr de Lange is at the moment. He hasn’t been at work this past couple of days. I know the hospital in Poland have been trying to contact him urgently. They have a patient waiting for organs out there. I don’t think all’s well in their marriage. They don’t seem a very together couple. . if you know what I mean? I see them slipping round the back of the building sometimes. I don’t know why. They just don’t want to go past me here on reception.’