Ken McClure - Tangled Web

Gordon looked at him.

‘If he runs, it’s as good as an admission of guilt and it means he’s scared. He’ll be more inclined to come clean when we catch him — and we will. If he stays cool and brasses it out then we could be hard pushed to pin anything at all on him.’

‘But if the DNA test on Anne-Marie proves she wasn’t the Palmers’ child?’

‘He could simply plead a mix-up in the lab. He’d claim that Lucy Palmer was implanted with the wrong egg.’

Gordon saw Davies’s point. ‘And you could hardly DNA test everybody in the country to find out just exactly who it was he cloned,’ he added.

‘Precisely.’

‘God, you don’t think he could still get away with it, do you?’

‘A few suspicious reference numbers and a dodgy DNA fingerprint from a dead baby — what d’you think?’

‘Damn,’ said Gordon. ‘Let’s hope he talks.’

‘Amen to that.’

Deans returned and said, ‘No answer.’

‘And the secretaries say that Professor Thomas didn’t have a meeting at all on the afternoon in question,’ added Walters. ‘Dawes must have made it up.’

‘Let’s hope he’s shitting himself in some service station motel on the M6,’ grunted Davies. ‘The more scared he is, the better.’ Then Davies said they should be going and Deans made to show them out.

As they left the main lab, one of the female technicians they’d seen earlier was entering. Deans stopped her and said, ‘Top up storage tank three with liquid nitrogen, will you, Karen. I had to open it: it’s lost a bit.’

‘Will do,’ replied the girl.

Davies turned to Deans as they reached the front door and said, ‘I’d rather you didn’t spread any of this around.’

‘Understood,’ said Deans. ‘What if Dr Dawes should turn up?’

‘Let us know immed—’

Davies was interrupted by the sound of a scream coming from the main lab. All three men turned to see the girl called Karen standing in the doorway. She was wearing long gloves and a plastic full-face visor. Her hands were by her sides and she seemed unsteady on her feet.

‘Karen! What is it?’ exclaimed Deans. ‘What’s the matter?’

The girl looked at him, her face white inside the mask. Suddenly her body heaved and she vomited over the inside of her visor. Deans rushed forward to offer her support while Davies and Gordon hurried past into the main lab. At first they couldn’t see anything amiss but wisps of white vapour alerted Gordon to the fact that the heavy door to the liquid nitrogen store was ajar. He pointed this out to Davies and they both approached cautiously. Gordon pulled the clasp and a cloud of vapour enveloped them like sea mist for a moment. When it cleared they could see the frozen body of a man lying there. Despite the crusting of ice on his face and in his hair, Gordon could see that it was Ran Dawes. ‘It’s him.’

‘Christ,’ said Davies. ‘Where does this leave us?’

Gordon was lost for words.

‘Oh, thank God!’ exclaimed Mary when Gordon phoned her. ‘Does this mean they’ve let you go?’

‘I managed to convince them that I didn’t murder Carwyn Thomas,’ said Gordon.

‘But he was murdered?’ asked Mary.

‘He was injected with amyl nitrate. Apparently he did have a slight heart condition so the chemical over-stimulated it and provoked a genuine cardiac arrest. Pretty clever, huh? Damn nearly the perfect crime. The forensic people were really on the ball to pick up on it. He must have used a bit too much nitrate.’

‘Have they arrested Dawes?’

Gordon paused. ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ he said, his voice betraying the confusion he felt. ‘Dawes is dead.’

‘You’re right — I don’t believe it,’ murmured Mary.

‘We found his body in the liquid nitrogen store in the lab. We’ll have to wait for the PM to establish the exact cause of death but at the moment it looks like someone locked him in there and he froze to death.’

‘God, this just goes from bad to worse.’

‘Tell me about it,’ sighed Gordon. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Just after three, a bit late for lunch. Have you eaten?’

Gordon said not.

‘Why don’t we pick up some sandwiches and go for a walk somewhere. You sound as if a bit of fresh air will do you good and we can talk.’

Gordon drove over to Mary’s place and they changed to her car. She had already bought sandwiches from a local baker while she’d been waiting. ‘Let’s go to Bodnant,’ she said. ‘Do you know it?’

Gordon shook his head.

‘I think it’s my favourite garden in the world,’ said Mary. ‘I go there when I have things to think about. It’s in the Conwy valley just about eight miles south of Llandudno and it’s just reopened after the winter break. This will be my first trip this year. Maybe the rhododendrons will be out.’

It turned out to be a bit early for the rhododendrons but Gordon had to admit that the garden was something special. The fact that Mary was beside him made it even more so and he could not fail to sense the magic he’d been promised. He turned and smiled at Mary without saying anything and she nodded in reply, knowing that both felt the same.

The lack of visitors this early in the season only added to the pleasure of being able to wander along quiet paths without hindrance. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to have their arms around each other. They had been walking and talking for about twenty minutes, although time seemed to have stood still, when they came to a striking stone building. Gordon walked over to it, feeling strangely drawn. He touched the stone lightly with his fingertips and turned to ask Mary what it was.

‘It’s called The Poem ,’ she answered quietly. ‘It’s a mausoleum.’

Gordon shrugged. ‘I can’t escape death even here. He rejoined Mary and they continued walking. ‘I thought I had it all worked out,’ he said. ‘The truth is I was wrong about just about everything.’

‘Does that include John Palmer’s innocence?’ asked Mary, with a sideways glance.

‘No, he’s innocent all right and I still believe Anne-Marie’s death was connected with what was going on in the IVF clinic, but as for everything else...’

‘You’re being too hard on yourself,’ she said, rubbing the back of his hand.

Gordon shook his head. ‘I was so sure that Thomas was guilty because of what I saw in his lab but we both know I read it all wrong. The man was completely innocent all along. That was unforgivable.’

‘You’re not a professional detective,’ said Mary. ‘But your heart’s in the right place. You were doing what you thought was right. If nothing else, you’ve goaded the police into getting off their backsides at last. Even they must recognise now after two murders that things in the IVF unit are not all above board. Try to look on the positive side.’

Gordon gave Mary’s shoulders a grateful squeeze as they continued walking.

‘What’s bugging you most right now?’

‘Dawes’s death,’ replied Gordon. ‘I thought I’d definitely got it right this time. Dawes was the guilty man — and then we find him dead just like Thomas.’

‘But that doesn’t mean to say he was innocent like Thomas,’ said Mary.

‘True,’ conceded Gordon.

‘Everything you said about Dawes still fits, doesn’t it?’

‘I suppose.’

‘If he was murdered too, it just means there’s another level to this affair. Dawes wasn’t the prime mover after all: there must be someone else involved. Dawes must have panicked when he heard that the police were treating Thomas’s death as murder so he had to be silenced. It might help if we go through it step by step.’