Ken McClure - Donor

He knew that unless he worked out exactly what Ross was up to by the time the donor kidney arrived from Geneva, he was going to have to sit still and do nothing. If, as he suspected, Amanda should reject her transplant, like Amy Teasdale and Kenneth Lineham, it would still be his fault because he hadn’t done anything to stop it. Talk about the devil and the deep blue sea. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. He cursed and got up to start pacing the room.

Once more he juggled the pieces of information in his head, trying to make a coherent picture, but they still wouldn’t fit. Maybe there weren’t enough or maybe there were too many and not all of them relevant.

He was distracted by the sound of a taxi’s diesel engine as it drew to a halt and idled noisily at the front door. He looked down to see another person carrying a medical bag had arrived. There was certainly lots of activity surrounding the Omega patient. Soon, he reflected, there would be lots of activity surrounding Amanda Chapman. He frowned and asked himself again: what’s the connection?

Amanda had been taken to the Omega wing for her unnecessary marrow puncture. He hadn’t been able to come up with a reason for it but at least he knew that the test itself wasn’t a simple mistake of duplication. Amy had been subjected to the same procedure. Ross had insisted on it. What was it that Turner had said? He must have wanted stem cells for his immuno-preparation work.

Dunbar suddenly saw the light. The tests hadn’t been performed for the benefit of the patients at all. Ross hadn’t wanted duplicate tests done. He’d needed stem cells from the patients for a purpose other than the obvious one of checking their immunotype. There was no repetition of unnecessary tests at all. There never had been.

He felt a frisson of excitement. He was getting somewhere at last. Immuno-preparation work? Where had he come across that term recently? Turner had used it but he had seen it somewhere else. If only he could remember… The phone rang and broke his train of thought. He cursed and answered it. It was nothing important.

Dunbar tried to recover his concentration but failed. The moment had gone. He decided to cut his losses and waste no more time wondering. He connected his notebook computer to the phone line to call up Sci-Med. He wanted the latest information they had about James Ross.

His interest quickened at once: they’d found out something about Ross’s Geneva connection. Their earlier problems had been due to an inability to trace a Medic International hospital or clinic in Geneva. The reason for this was simple. There was no such place and Medic International had no interests at all in Geneva. Ross had been going there for other reasons; he also owned a house there, a villa overlooking the lake. He had paid $2 million for it three years ago.

‘Jesus,’ muttered Dunbar. So money was involved after all. Big money. You didn’t buy a house like that on eighty grand a year. He saw that there was more information to come and scrolled down the screen. Ross had an interest in a Swiss medical recruitment agency called Roche Dubois. It specialized in the recruitment of high-grade staff for private clinics all over Europe. Doctors, nurses, technicians of all sorts, could find highly paid work if they were good enough. The agency was above-board and had a good reputation. It specialized in finding positions for American nursing and medical personnel wishing to work in Europe for whatever reason, although exchanges for European nationals were also arranged.

Dunbar wondered if this was relevant. Did Ross have reason to recruit medical staff on his own behalf? He thought about the American doctors being shown to the Omega wing. Could all the secrecy, stone-faced guards and strange medical people coming and going really be ascribed to a need for confidentiality? No, there had to be more to it.

The Omega patients were the key to the whole damned thing, Dunbar decided. It wasn’t that the money they brought in was being used to subsidize NHS charity patients. Quite the reverse. The NHS patients were being used in some way for the benefit of Omega ones. That must be why Ingrid had feigned ignorance when he had mooted a connection between them and Omega patients over funding. She knew what was going on. He had thrown her by making the connection but for the wrong reason.

This still didn’t help. The only connection he was aware of was the marrow puncture done on Amanda Chapman in the Omega wing and the fact that there had been Omega patients in the hospital when Amy Teasdale and Kenneth Lineham had been patients.

Just who the hell were these Omega patients? he wondered angrily. What were they really there for? He had the hollow feeling that he was running out of time. He needed information and he needed it fast. It was time to change tactics. No more pussy-footing around. He would cause a fuss by asking questions openly. Maybe he couldn’t stop Amanda’s operation, but he could certainly create the illusion that he knew much more than he did. That might scare someone in the know; it might scare them enough to achieve the same end. It was a dangerous game to play, though. Ignorance was never a position of strength.

He picked up the phone and called Ingrid’s extension. ‘Ingrid, would you come over, please?’

Ingrid arrived and smiled. ‘You have something for me?’

‘I want to know who the current Omega patient is. I want her name and I want to know why she’s here. I also want to know where she was before she came here and who referred her to Medic Ecosse.’

Her smile faded. ‘I’m not sure I can do that,’ she stammered. ‘The strict confidentiality surrounding-’

Dunbar interrupted her. ‘I need that information. I need it now, please.’

Ingrid tried to recover her composure. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ she asked tentatively. ‘If you’ll forgive my saying, it doesn’t seem to be strictly relevant to the investigation and monitoring of accounts.’

Dunbar had anticipated such opposition. ‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘I have reason to believe that the true income from Omega patients is not being declared.’

‘But you’ve seen the figures,’ said Ingrid, taken aback. ‘The profit for the hospital amounted to many thousands of pounds.’

‘I’ve seen the declared profit,’ agreed Dunbar. ‘I’d like to see for myself how the figures are arrived at. For that reason I want to know all about the current Omega patient, who she is, why she’s here, and I need verification of her condition from an outside source, preferably the hospital or clinic that referred her to you.’

‘I see,’ said Ingrid. ‘I very much doubt if Mr Giordano or Dr Kinscherf will agree to this.’

‘If they don’t, I will lodge a formal complaint of obstruction with my colleagues at the Scottish Office and suggest that an investigation be mounted immediately by the Serious Fraud Office.’

Ingrid tried to maintain eye contact with Dunbar, by way of a challenge, but she failed after a few moments. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said quietly; she was obviously unnerved at seeing a side to Dunbar she hadn’t encountered before.

The door closed behind her and Dunbar remained in his chair, sitting perfectly still, wondering how well he’d played his hand. Would they give in and tell him what he wanted to know or would they try to delay as long as possible? He had to admit that the latter would be the bright thing to do. They were vulnerable only as long as the Omega patient was in the hospital. Once she’d gone they’d be safe. She’d be lost in the mists of secrecy. His only hope lay in Ingrid relaying his threat to call in the SFO as being imminent. They might just believe that his interest was still financial and gamble on giving him the information he asked for. After all, no figures had been declared for the current Omega patient. They had nothing to worry about on that account. He decided to help matters along by exploiting the fact that his computer screen was being monitored. He sat down at it and started drafting a letter requesting that the Scottish Office consider calling in the SFO on the grounds that he’d been denied access to files he thought might be concealing fraud.