Val Mcdermid - Blue Genes

I headed for the hospital florist and looked at the flowers on offer. There were the usual predictable, tired arrangements of chrysanthemums and spray carnations. Some of them wouldn’t have looked out of place sitting on top of a coffin. I suppose it saved money if your nearest and dearest seemed to be near death’s door: one lot of flowers would do for bedside and graveside. Gave a whole new meaning to saying it with flowers. The only exception was a basket of freesias mixed with irises. When I went to pay for it, I realized why they only bothered stocking the one. It was twice the price of the others. I got a receipt. My client would never believe flowers could cost that much otherwise. I’ve seen the tired garage bunches she brings home for Chris.

The price included a card, which I didn’t write out until I was well clear of the florist. ‘Dear Doctor, thanks for everything, Sue.’ Every doctor has grateful patients; the law of averages says some of them must be called Sue. Then I toddled round to the outpatients clinic and thrust the arrangement at the receptionist. ‘Flowers for Dr Maitland,’ I mumbled.

The receptionist looked surprised. ‘Oh, that’s nice. Who are they from?’

I shrugged. ‘I just deliver them. Can I leave them with you?’

‘That’s fine, I’ll see she gets them.’

A couple of hours later, a tall, rangy woman emerged from the outpatients department with a long loping stride. Given that she was in her mid-to late forties and she’d presumably done a hard day’s work, she moved with remarkable energy. She was wearing black straight-leg jeans and cowboy boots, a blue and white striped shirt under a black blazer, and a trench coat thrown casually over her shoulders to protect her from the soft Yorkshire drizzle. In one hand, she carried a pilot’s case. In the other, as if it were something that might explode, the basket of flowers. If this was Dr Helen Maitland, I had no doubt she wasn’t the woman Alexis and Chris had seen. There was no way anyone could have confused her with the photograph in the paper by accident. This woman had fine features in an oval face, nothing like the strong, definite square face Alexis had shown me. Her hair was totally different too. Where Sarah Blackstone had a heavy mop of dark hair in a jagged fringe, this woman had dark blonde curls rampaging over the top of her head, while the sides and back were cropped short. I started my engine. Lucky I’d been parking in a ‘consultants only’ slot, really. Otherwise I might have missed her.

She stopped beside an old MGB roadster in British racing green and balanced the flowers on the roof while she unlocked the car. The case was tossed in, followed by the mac, then she carefully put the flowers in the passenger foot well. She folded her long legs under the wheel and the engine started with a throaty growl. The presumed Dr Maitland reversed out of her parking space and shot forwards towards the exit with the aplomb of a woman who would know exactly what to do if her car started fishtailing on the greasy Tarmac. More cautiously, I followed. We wove through the narrow alleys between the tall Victorian brick buildings of the old part of the hospital and emerged on the main road just below the university. She turned up the hill into the early-evening traffic and together we slogged up the hill, through Hyde Park and out towards Headingley. Just as we approached the girls’ grammar school, she indicated a right turn. From where I was, it was hard to see where she was going, but as she turned, I saw her destination was a narrow cobbled lane almost invisible from the main road.

I positioned myself to follow her, watching as she shot up the hill with a puff of exhaust. At the top, she turned right. Me, I was stuck on the main drag, the prisoner of traffic that wouldn’t pause to let me through. A good thirty seconds passed before I could find a gap, long enough for her to have vanished without trace. Quoting extensively if repetitiously from the first few scenes of Four Weddings and a Funeral , I drove in her wake.

As I turned right at the top of the lane, I saw her put the key in the lock. She was standing in front of a tall, narrow Edwardian stone villa, the car tucked into a parking space that had been carved out of half of the front garden. I carried on past the house, turning the next available corner and squeezing into a parking space. A quick call to the local library to check their electoral register confirmed that Helen Maitland lived there. I always make sure these days after the time that the florist trick failed because the target was a hay-fever sufferer who passed the flowers on to her secretary.

I gave Dr Maitland ten minutes to feed the cat and put the kettle on, then I rang the bell set in stone to the right of a front door gleaming with gloss paint the same shade of green as the car. The eyes that looked questioningly into mine when the door opened were green too, though a softer shade, like autumn leaves on the turn. ‘Dr Maitland? I’m sorry to trouble you,’ I started.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t…?’ Her eyebrows twitched towards each other like caterpillars in a mating dance.

‘My name is Brannigan, Kate Brannigan. I’m a private investigator. I wondered if you could spare me a few minutes.’

That’s the point where most people look wary. We’ve all got something to feel guilty about. Helen Maitland simply looked curious. ‘What on earth for?’ she asked mildly.

‘I’d like to ask you a few questions about Sarah Blackstone.’ This wasn’t the time for bullshit.

‘Sarah Blackstone?’ She looked surprised. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘You knew her,’ I said bluntly. I knew now she did; a stranger would have said something along the lines of, ‘Sarah Blackstone? The doctor who was murdered?’

‘We worked in the same hospital,’ Dr Maitland replied swiftly. I couldn’t read her at all. There was something closed off in her face. I suppose doctors have to learn how to hide what they’re thinking and feeling otherwise the rest of us would run a mile every time the news was iffy.

I waited. Most people can’t resist silence for long. ‘What business is it of yours?’ she eventually added.

‘My client was a patient of hers,’ I said.

‘I still don’t see why that should bring you to my door.’ Dr Maitland’s voice was still friendly, but the hand gripping the doorjamb was tightening so that her knucklebones stood out in sharp relief. I hadn’t been suspicious of her a moment before, but now I was definitely intrigued.

‘My client was under the mistaken impression that she was being treated by one Dr Helen Maitland,’ I said. ‘Sarah Blackstone was using your name as an alias. I thought you might know why.’

Her eyebrows rose, but it was surprise rather than shock I thought I read there. I had the distinct feeling I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. ‘How very strange,’ she said, and I suspected it was my knowing that was the strange thing. I’d have expected any doctor confronted with the information that a colleague had stolen their identity to be outraged and concerned. But Helen Maitland seemed to be taking it very calmly.

‘You weren’t aware of it?’

‘It’s not something we doctors generally allow,’ she said drily, her face giving nothing away.

I shrugged. ‘Well, if you don’t know why Dr Blackstone helped herself to your name, I’ll just have to keep digging until I find someone who does.’

As I spoke, the rain turned from drizzle to downpour. ‘Oh Lord,’ she sighed. ‘Look, you’d better come in before you catch pneumonia.’

I followed her into a surprisingly light hallway. She led me past the stairs and into a dining kitchen so cluttered Richard would have felt perfectly at home. Stacks of medical journals threatened to teeter over onto haphazard piles of cookery books; newspapers virtually covered a large table, themselves obscured by strata of opened mail. The worktops and open shelves spilled over with interesting jars and bottles. I spotted olive oil with chillis, with rosemary and garlic, with thyme, oregano, sage and rosemary, olives layered in oil with what looked like basil, bottled damsons and serried rows of jams, all with neat, handwritten labels. On one shelf, in an Art-Nouveau-style silver frame there was a ten-by-eight colour photograph of Helen Maitland with an arm draped casually over the shoulders of a pale Pre-Raphaelite maiden with a mane of wavy black hair and enough dark eye make-up to pass as an extra in the Rocky Horror Show . On one wall was a cork board covered with snapshots of cats and people. As far as I could see, there were no pictures of Sarah Blackstone.