Ken McClure - Eye of the raven

‘ I don’t suppose Sister Egan is still on duty?’ he asked the staff nurse who challenged him when he entered.

The girl shook her head. ‘No way,’ she said in an Australian accent. ‘The night staff took over more than an hour ago.’

Steven screwed up his face. ‘A pity,’ he said. ‘It’s important I speak with her. He showed the girl his ID.

‘ You might still be lucky,’ said the girl. ‘I’m pretty sure she’ll still be in the hospital. She and some of the other sisters were having a little get-together when they went off duty. One of the gang is leaving so they were planning to break out the Bulgarian red and get stuck into some peanuts.’

Steven smiled and asked, ‘Do you know where?’

‘ I think she said it was in the nursing manager’s office. Want me to phone her?’

Steven said not; he’d rather go up there himself. The nurse gave him directions.

The female laughter coming from inside the room stopped when he knocked on the door. After a short delay, a tall woman with a wineglass in her hand opened it. Steven apologised for the intrusion, showed his ID and explained why he was there. The woman turned and said over her shoulder, ‘Sam, it appears the police have finally caught up with you.’

Steven was invited into a small sitting room where he apologised again for interrupting and said to a bemused-looking Samantha Egan that he had to speak to her.

‘ Use my office, Sam,’ said the tall woman.

Samantha led Steven through to an adjoining office and closed the door behind them.

‘ I didn’t expect to see you again,’ she said as she sat down. ‘How can I help this time?’

‘ This is going to sound very strange,’ said Steven. ‘But during our last conversation you told me about some kind of mistake you made in Ronald Lee’s lab over a blood grouping?’

‘ Yes, that’s largely why I gave up lab work,’ said Samantha.

‘ As I recall, you had been asked to group the blood found in the scrapings taken from under Julie Summers’ fingernails?’

‘ That’s right.’

‘ Can you remember what you thought the blood group was?’

‘ I’m not liable to forget,’ said Samantha. ‘We are talking about two simple and straightforward tests here. I was devastated when John told me I’d got both the ABO grouping and the Rhesus factor wrong: I just couldn’t believe it. But when he repeated the tests in front of me it was obvious that he was right. I realised then that if I could screw up something as simple as a blood grouping, there was no hope at all for me in lab work. I thought the blood in the scrapings was O negative: to my embarrassment, it was A positive.’

‘ That is exactly what I wanted to know,’ said Steven.

‘ This is all very mysterious,’ said Samantha. ‘And rather upsetting if I may so. It was something I really didn’t want to be reminded of.’

‘ I’m sorry,’ said Steven. ‘But…’ His mobile phone went off and he excused himself, walking over to the window to take the call. It was McClintock.

‘ For what it’s worth, Combe was blood group, O negative.’

‘ It’s worth a very great deal,’ said Steven. He turned back to Samantha. ‘You didn’t make a mistake,’ he said. ‘John Merton did.’

‘ John did?’ exclaimed Samantha as if it were the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. ‘John didn’t make mistakes. He was the one who held the lab together.’

‘ Maybe “mistake” was the wrong word,’ said Steven, reluctant to divulge too much. ‘But in this case you were right and he… wasn’t. The blood was O negative.’

Samantha sighed deeply and bowed her head in silence for a few moments then she looked up and smiled. She said, ‘It’s silly but I can’t tell you how much this means to me. I know I was only a junior in the lab at the time and my “mistake” was discovered almost immediately but the thought of having made it has been in the back of my mind ever since. To this day I tend not to trust myself. I always check everything twice on the ward.’

‘ Well, it’s a mistake that never was,’ said Steven. ‘You got the blood group and type absolutely right. I promise you.’

‘ But how could John have got it…?’

‘ Tell me about John Merton,’ interrupted Steven.

‘ I don’t think I can tell you any more than I did last time. I really didn’t know him that well.’

‘ Everyone I’ve spoken to has told me that it was really him who ran the lab and covered up as best he could for Dr Lee’s shortcomings but no one has ever been able to tell me why. Were they close friends?’

‘ I don’t think so,’ said Samantha. ‘In fact, I sort of got the impression that John maybe despised Dr Lee a little.’

‘ What made you think that?’

‘ Just the way he looked at him some times, sort of superior, if you know what I mean. But then, John had a bit of a chip on his shoulder.’

‘ About what?’

‘ Sounds awful but I think it was the old working class thing. He was always making jibes about the ‘establishment’ as he called it. The whole country was run by public school twits in his opinion. Maybe he thought his background was holding him back. I don’t know but he certainly seemed bitter about something.’

‘ Was he married?’

‘ No. The story was that he’d been engaged at one time but the girl had called it off; something else he felt bitter about by all accounts.’

‘ So he didn’t have a girlfriend, or even a boyfriend for that matter?’

‘ None that I ever saw,’ said Samantha. ‘But I think it was definitely girls that John was interested in. I saw the inside door of his locker once. It’s a wonder some of these girls didn’t catch their death of cold.’

Steven smiled. ‘Did you ever visit him at his home?’

‘ Never,’ said Samantha. ‘I don’t think anyone in the lab was ever invited to John’s place. From what he said from time to time I think it must have been full of computers anyway. That seemed to be his big passion in life. He was a bit of a jacket in that respect.’

‘ Anorak,’ Steven corrected with a smile.

‘ God, yes, I’m always getting that wrong.’

Steven thanked Samantha for her help and apologised again for interrupting the party.

‘ I’m so glad that you did,’ said Samantha. ‘You’ve made my day.’

‘ Mine too,’ thought Steven as he returned downstairs and started walking back along the corridor. It was now clear that John Merton was the man he was looking for. It was Merton, not Lee or any of the others who’d been Verdi’s contact in the lab. Instead of stopping Lee making mistakes and generally looking after him, as everyone thought, Merton had actually been introducing mistakes, some of which, he would subsequently ‘discover’ and blame on Lee, others he would deliberately let through so that Verdi could question the evidence and get his clients off. Lee of course, conveniently got the blame for everything. All he needed now was for Verdi to confirm it.

But it was Merton’s role in the Julie Summers case that Steven now concentrated on. Merton had deliberately conned a subordinate in the lab into believing she had made a mistake in typing the blood found under Julie’s fingernails. Being very junior, Samantha Egan had accepted it, especially when Merton had apparently repeated test in front of her but, unknown to her, he must have switched the samples. Group A positive blood wasn’t hard to find. Almost half the population had it. It could even have been his own.

If Ronald Lee had succeeded in carrying out the DNA fingerprinting on the scrapings, as had been his intention, he would have come up with Hector Combe’s DNA fingerprint. Merton must have persuaded him — as he had Samantha Egan — that he had made some mistake and shown him his version of the test, one that matched the profile of the semen belonging to David Little. As this would have appeared to make more sense in the circumstances, Lee must have believed him and been grateful.