Val Mcdermid - Blue Genes

‘That’s interesting,’ I said, my brain working overtime. My first thought was that she’d got the bit about the kids the wrong way round. Then I thought about what it would mean if she hadn’t.

Before I could pursue that line, Maggie shook her head wonderingly and said, ‘Oh, so that’s what this is about, is it? Looking for a suitable dyke to replace your client on the suspect list?’

‘You know I don’t work like that. If I did, I’d have told the police about a certain incident three years ago…’

Her embarrassment was obvious even if it didn’t stretch to an apology. ‘Yeah, well,’ she said. ‘Helen’s not the type. Believe me, I know her. She went out with my best mate for about a year not long after she came to Leeds. Anyway, Helen’s had stuff to deal with in the last year that must have seemed a hell of a lot more significant to her than whatever Sarah Blackstone was up to.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like cervical cancer. She had to have a complete hysterectomy. She’s only been back at work for about three months.’

I felt like a fruit machine with two lemons up and a fistful of nudges. ‘And has she been involved with anyone since Sarah?’ I thought I knew the answer, but it’s always worth checking.

‘Oh yes,’ Maggie said. ‘She’s got a girlfriend in York. Flora. A librarian at the university. Masses of black hair, like one of those Victorian maidens in distress.’

‘I think I’ve met her. Looks like she’d break if you spoke too loud?’

‘You’d think so to see her doing that vulnerable innocent routine. But when you watch her in action, you soon see she’s tough as old boots. If St George had rescued her from a dragon, he’d not have had her home long before he realized he’d spared the wrong one. And when it comes to Helen Maitland, that Flora’s besotted. You could see from early on. Flora had Helen in her sights, and she was going to have her. A ruthless charm offensive, that’s what it was. You never get the chance to get Helen on her own these days. Flora’s never more than a heartbeat away.’

‘How long have they been together?’

Maggie frowned, trying to recall. ‘It’s been a while now. Since before Helen was diagnosed. Mind I get the impression that if it hadn’t been for the cancer and the fact that she needed the emotional support, Helen would have dumped Flora a long time ago. You often see it in relationships — you get the one who worships and the one who’s not much more than fond. Well, Helen’s not the worshipper here. But she definitely wasn’t hankering after Sarah, if that’s what you’re thinking. That relationship was dead and buried well before Sarah died,’ she added definitely.

Before I could say more, the front door opened and a tall woman in her twenties wearing an ambulance paramedic’s uniform walked in. ‘Hi, hon,’ she said to Maggie, moving into the room and kissing the top of her head. She grinned at me. ‘Hi. We’ve not met.’

‘This is Amanda. She’s the one who burns your Christmas cards,’ Maggie said drily.

The tall woman’s face darkened in a scowl. ‘You’re Kate Brannigan?’ she demanded.

‘That’s me.’

‘My God,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a nerve. How dare you come round here hassling us! Haven’t you done enough?’ She took an involuntary step towards me.

I got to my feet. ‘It’s probably time I was going,’ I said.

‘You’re not wrong,’ the paramedic snapped.

‘It’s all right, Mand,’ Maggie said, reaching out and touching her partner lightly on the hip. ‘I’ll walk you to your car, Kate.’

Amanda stood on the step watching us down the path. ‘She thinks you’re the one who broke my heart,’ Maggie said as we walked up the hill towards my car. ‘I thought so too for a while. It took me about a year to realize I’d been idealizing Moira. She was a wonderful woman, but she wasn’t really the fabulous creature I had constructed in my mind. If I’m brutally honest, I have to admit we’d never have gone the distance. There were too many things that separated us. But Amanda…With her, I do feel like I’ve got a future. So on the rare occasions when I remember you’re on the planet, I don’t think of you with anger. I think of you as the person who probably kept me out of prison so that I was free to meet Amanda.’

We had reached my car. I held out a hand and we shook. ‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘That’s us quits now.’

I watched her walk back down the pavement. She took the steps to her front door at a run and fell into the kind of hug that would have got her arrested twenty years before. I hoped I’d still be off her hate list by the end of this case.

I walked up the wide path and stopped by the Egyptian temple, sitting down on a stone plinth between the paws of a sphinx. Over to one side, I could just see the columns of a Graeco-Roman temple, complete with enough angels for a barbershop quartet, if not a full heavenly choir. I leaned back and contemplated a Gothic spire like a scaled down version of Edinburgh’s Scott Monument. The watery spring sunshine greened the grass up in sharp contrast to the granite and millstone grit. There’s nothing quite like a Victorian cemetery for contemplation.

I didn’t have to be back in Manchester until eight, and I needed a bit of space to think about the fragmented pieces of information I’d picked up about Sarah Blackstone’s life and death. I’d persuaded myself without too much difficulty that I didn’t really have enough time to nip over to Leeds and start interrogating the IVF-unit staff. Instead, Undercliffe Cemetery, out on the Otley Road, seemed the perfect answer, with its views across Bradford and its reminders of mortality. Surrounded by obelisks, crosses, giant urns, elaborately carved headstones and mock temples, thinking about death seemed the most natural thing in the world.

According to Alexis, the burglar who had allegedly been disturbed by Sarah Blackstone hadn’t actually stolen anything. The only thing missing from the scene was the murder weapon, believed to be a kitchen knife. I found it hard to get my head around that. Even if he’d only just broken in when she walked in on him, there should have been some sign that a theft was in progress, even if it was only a gathering together of small, portable valuables. The other thing was the knife. If the murder weapon came from the kitchen, the reasonable burglar’s response would be to drop it or even to leave it in the wound. That’s because a burglar would be gloved up. A proper burglar wouldn’t need to take the knife with him in case he’d left any forensic traces. Even the drug-crazed junkie burglar would have the sense to realize that taking the knife was a hell of a risk. It’s harder to lose good-quality knives than most people think. They’ve got a way of getting themselves found sooner or later.

So if it wasn’t a bona fide burglar, who was it? I shivered as a cold blast of moorland wind caught the back of my neck. I turned my collar up and hunched into the lee of the sphinx. Sarah Blackstone posed a risk to the future of her colleagues, there was no denying that. But the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that she’d been killed for that. Even if her secret had been discovered, presumably no one else was directly implicated. In spite of the truism that mud sticks, in my experience it dries pretty quickly and once it’s been whitewashed over, nobody remembers it was ever there in the first place. So I could probably strike the angry/frightened colleagues.

There was no doubt in my mind that some of the babies Sarah Blackstone had made owed more to the doctor than the exercise of her skills. Her eggs had gone into the mix, and I had the evidence of my own eyes that she had cruelly duped some of her patients. Even though I’m a woman who’d rather breed ferrets than babies, I can imagine how devastating it would be to discover that a child you thought came equipped with half your genes was in fact the offspring of an egomaniac. I could imagine how Alexis would react if the child Chris was carrying was the result of so wicked a deception. It would be as well for Sarah Blackstone that she was already dead. So there was a group of women out there who, if they’d managed to put two and two together and unravel Sarah Blackstone’s real identity, had an excellent motive for murder.