Ken McClure - Donor

‘Dr Dunbar, please.’

‘Speaking.’

‘Your authorization code, please.’

Dunbar gave it.

‘Sorry for the melodrama, but I was told to go exactly by the book on this one.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘My name’s McVay. I’ve been instructed by the Scottish Office to carry out a post-mortem on the exhumed body of one Amy Teasdale at the behest of the Sci-Med Inspectorate.’

‘Yes. I’ve been waiting for your call.’

‘Sorry it took so long, but there was a fair bit of lab work to do on this one.’

‘I understand. What did you find?’

‘Well, no one provided me with too much background on the case. They didn’t think to tell me that the child had already undergone extensive PM examination.’

‘I suppose that’s entirely possible,’ said Dunbar. ‘She died after a kidney transplant went wrong. A PM would probably be necessary in the circumstances.’

‘I just thought I’d mention it. Her kidneys and heart had already been removed for examination and then replaced. I even found a couple of swabs they’d used at the time. I hate it when pathologists are too damn lazy to clean up their mess and use the cadaver as a rubbish bin. Lazy sods!’

Dunbar bit his lip to stop himself betraying his impatience. ‘What exactly did you find, Doctor?’ he asked slowly and deliberately.

‘My specific brief was to concentrate on the transplanted right kidney and carry out immunological testing with a view to compatibility. I was asked to pay particular attention to tissue type and to… species.’

‘Yes.’

‘The transplanted organ was a human kidney; it was also perfectly compatible with the patient’s tissue type. We came up with a rating of eighty-one per cent homology.’

Dunbar felt the bottom drop out of his world. ‘Human and eighty-one per cent compatible,’ he echoed. ‘Are you sure?’

It was a stupid question and the snapped answer told him that McVay thought so too. ‘Of course. Plus or minus five per cent.’

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Dunbar, now on autopilot. ‘You didn’t happen to notice anything at all out of the ordinary, did you?’

‘Apart from the cadaver having been autopsied before, no. It seemed an unnecessary shame to have dug her up, if you ask me.’

‘Quite so,’ said Dunbar, and he put the phone down.

He stared at the wall for a few minutes; he didn’t know which emotion to address first. He felt disappointed, dejected, foolish and totally bemused. He’d made a fool of himself and it hurt. He knew he should call Lisa, but right now he even felt angry with her — and with Sheila Barnes, for that matter. Between them they had convinced him the children really had been given the wrong organs during their operations. It was this that had made him read so much into what he’d seen in the post-mortem suite at Medic Ecosse.

Now it seemed that Amy Teasdale had, in fact, been given the correct donor kidney and what he’d seen in the basement was probably just an experimental dissection, bizarre to the outside observer but legal and licensed.

Now the only thing against it all having been some huge mistake was the fact that someone had set out to kill Sheila Barnes. But why? If everything to do with the transplant had been above-board and Sheila was mistaken, why set out to kill her? It didn’t make sense. But then none of this did. He picked up the phone and called Lisa.

‘Well?’ she asked anxiously.

‘There was nothing wrong with the kidney Amy was given. It was human and eighty-one per cent compatible.’

There was a pause before Lisa said, ‘But that’s impossible. Her reaction was so strong, it just couldn’t have been compatible.’

‘I’m sorry, Lisa,’ said Dunbar. ‘But those are the findings of the pathologist commissioned by the Scottish Office. We have to accept what he says.’

‘I just don’t understand. There’s no way a reaction like that could have been caused by…’ Her voice tailed off.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Dunbar.

‘Then why try to kill Sheila Barnes?’ asked Lisa, clutching at the same straw as he’d found.

‘You’re right,’ he agreed. ‘That doesn’t fit at all. We thought it did, even if it was a strange way to do it, but not any more.’

‘What happens now?’

‘I expect to be recalled to London to explain myself. I can’t see beyond that at the moment.’

‘I’m sorry. I feel responsible,’ said Lisa.

‘No one’s to blame,’ said Dunbar. ‘With a bit of luck no one will find out about the disinterment, so in the end no great harm will have been done.’

‘God, I don’t think I could bear it if Amy’s parents found out,’ said Lisa. ‘An exhumation for no good reason, after all the pain I caused them the first time around. It doesn’t bear thinking about. I was so sure they were going to find that Amy had been given an animal kidney.’

‘Me too.’

‘You don’t think her parents will find out, do you?’ She asked anxiously.

‘As far as I know, there were no hitches, so it should be okay. Fingers crossed.’

Lisa sighed deeply, then said, ‘You know what? In spite of everything you’ve told me — and I know I have to accept it — I still know I was right. I don’t know how or why, I just do.’

Dunbar didn’t know what to say. ‘I wish there was some way you could be,’ he began.

‘It’s all right,’ she reassured him. ‘I don’t expect you to fly in the face of the facts as they stand. I just don’t understand it, that’s all. I really don’t. But then I don’t think I understand anything any more. The rejections of perfectly compatible organs, Sheila’s cancer, the pig experiments in the hospital, and now it seems that everything’s fine and above-board in that place?’

‘For what it’s worth, my gut feeling says there’s something terribly wrong too. It’s just that I have to have evidence before I do anything and there isn’t any.’

‘London weren’t too keen on the exhumation in the first place, were they?’ said Lisa.

‘You can say that again,’ said Dunbar wryly.

‘Are you going to get into trouble?’

‘I’m expecting a call at any minute, inviting me to London to face the music.’

‘You don’t think you’ll lose your job over this, do you?’ asked Lisa.

Dunbar grimaced and said, ‘I think in the circumstances I might feel obliged to offer my resignation.’

‘Don’t.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You didn’t make a mistake. You acted in good faith. You had the courage of your convictions. Ring a bell?’

Dunbar smiled to himself. ‘But the fact of the matter is that the exhumation was a mistake,’ he said.

‘Only in hindsight,’ she insisted. ‘No one starts off with hindsight. Don’t resign. If they fire you there’s not much you can do about it, but don’t make it easy for them. You’re the one on the ground, not them. You did nothing wrong. Stand up to them.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Dunbar with a shrug, but he appreciated her support.

Dunbar received the expected call just after 4 p.m. He was told to report to Sci-Med in London the following day. The director would see him at eleven. He called Lisa to tell her.

‘Come round later,’ she said. ‘The condemned man deserves a fond farewell.’

Dunbar took the tube into central London from Heathrow. It was raining heavily and the carriage began to smell of wet clothes. There were no smiles among the morning commuters. They were apparently looking forward to the day as much as he was. He passed the time trying to predict what each of his immediate travelling companions did for a living. Unfortunately he couldn’t ask them if he was right.

He was glad of the fresh air when he finally got off the train and climbed the stairs to the outside. It didn’t matter that it was raining. He started looking for a cab to take him up to the Home Office. Because of the weather it took some time to find one, but he didn’t mind the wait. Turkeys didn’t long for Christmas.