Donor (26 page)

‘None taken.’

‘Fancy a seat?’ asked Douglas.

He led the way to a bench seat with the stuffing protruding in several places. They put down their drinks on a table that was awash with beer slops.

‘Why here?’ asked Dunbar as an adjacent door opened and the smell of urine wafted out.

‘I had to be sure you weren’t followed. You weren’t.’

‘I came by cab.’

‘I know. You gave the driver a generous tip.’

Dunbar didn’t inquire how he knew. ‘Why all the precautions?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know who you are or what you’re into. The people who employ me don’t tell me things like that. They figure I don’t need to know. It’s all done through intermediaries so the customers can pretend they know nothing at all about it if things go wrong. I have to treat everyone the same. You could be the most wanted man in Europe, for all I know.’

‘What
do
you know?’ asked Dunbar.

‘You’d like to gain access to a place where the door might be locked. I’ve to get you inside and then out again.’

‘It’s a research lab. They work on animals. It’s at a place called Vane Farm, three miles north of the city on the Lomond Road.’

Douglas had brought out a notebook and was jotting information down. ‘What are you after?’

‘Information about what they’re doing. I think it’ll be in computer files in the building.’

‘University or private?’

‘Private.’

‘A pity. Probably means they’ve got proper security. Know anything about that?’

Dunbar told him what he’d learned from last year’s research budget records.

‘How about internal lay-out?’

‘Nothing.’

‘How much time have we got?’

‘Time enough. It’s more important that no one knows I’ve been there,’ said Dunbar.

Douglas pursed his lips and said, ‘In and out with no trace? That could be a bit more difficult.’

‘It’s important.’

‘I’ll take a look at the place and get back to you.’

‘When?’

‘I’ll do a full recce, day and night. Come here again the day after tomorrow. Same time.’

Dunbar left the Crane and found his way back to a main road, from where he took a cab to Lisa’s place. She looked more relaxed than he’d ever seen her.

‘How was your day?’ he asked.

‘Excellent.’

‘Do anything in particular?’

‘I walked for miles,’ said Lisa, ‘in any direction I fancied. I just walked and walked because I didn’t need to be here. I was free to do as I pleased, and it felt wonderful.’

‘Good,’ said Dunbar.

‘And you?’

Dunbar told her about his plans to get into Vane Farm and take a look at Ross’s research findings.

‘You’re going for it then?’

‘It could put an end to all the speculation,’ said Dunbar. ‘Any evidence of animal parts being put into patients at Médic Ecosse and the police can act immediately.’

‘When?’ asked Lisa.

‘In a few days. I’m not going to do it alone.’

‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ she said softly.

‘Of course.’

‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Lisa as Dunbar fell silent.

‘Tomorrow.’

‘What happens tomorrow?’

‘A funeral.’

The following morning Dunbar set off for the Clyde-coast town of Irvine where Sheila Barnes had been brought up. She had asked to be buried there in the graveyard of St Andrew’s Church where she and her husband Cyril had been married twenty-six years before. That was the one saving grace about being told you’d got a terminal illness, thought Dunbar. It gave you time to put your affairs in order and make arrangements, something most people put off until it was too late.

There was nothing pretty about St Andrew’s. It had a cold, austere look with iron railings surrounding it instead of low walls or hedging. Even the churchyard seemed unnecessarily bleak, lacking as it did trees and shrubbery to break up the lines of tombstones which stretched for more than two hundred yards behind the building. But it had obviously meant something special to Sheila, and that was all that mattered. As he’d heard some churchman say recently on the radio, ‘Churches aren’t about buildings, they’re about people.’

As he entered the building, Dunbar noted that the sky was darkening ominously. He hoped the rain would hold off until after the interment. Earth turning to mud did little to enhance a burial ceremony. Not wishing to intrude on family and friends, he sat down near the back of the section to the right of the main aisle. He noted with some pleasure that the church was nearly three-quarters full. He had liked Sheila Barnes; even in the debilitated state in which he’d known her, she’d struck him as a woman of fine character. It seemed fitting that she be mourned by many. Cyril wasn’t present but that was no surprise; he must be close to death himself.

The service was conducted by a Church of Scotland minister who had clearly known Sheila personally. His voice was deep and resonant and reached all corners of the church without difficulty. The result was an informative and affectionate biography of the woman and her work, so different, thought Dunbar, from the hastily cobbled together bits and pieces gleaned from relatives at the last moment that was usually the case in modern times. He learned that Sheila had spent long periods overseas in the early days of her nursing career, working in Third World countries. Her long, happy marriage to Cyril was held up as an example of the power of love. Her son, Peter, was mentioned but Dunbar got the distinct impression that the minister was back-pedalling on that issue. Like the matron at The Beeches, he was obviously aware of the family rift.

Dunbar could see in the front pew a man whom he took to be Peter Barnes. He stood slightly apart from the other main mourners, who might be Sheila’s brothers and sisters, judging by their age. It gave the impression that the rift went deeper than immediate family. Peter Barnes was tall and dark and, when he turned to look at the congregation, wore a slight smile as if amused at some private joke. Dunbar noted that his tie was not black but purple, as was the handkerchief in his top pocket. Although the colour was muted, it seemed strangely disrespectful.

Dunbar, who had kept well out of the way of close family and friends at the graveside, was almost the last to join the slow procession back along the gravel path leading to the churchyard gates. What appeared to be a general shunning of Peter Barnes meant that he too was on his own. Dunbar joined him and offered his condolences.

‘Thank you,’ replied Peter.

‘You didn’t manage to see your mother at The Beeches before she died, then?’

‘Unfortunately not,’ replied Peter. ‘My work takes me away a lot. It was a bit difficult to get up to Helensburgh.’

‘I see,’ replied Dunbar. He hesitated before saying, ‘I know it’s not really any of my business, but if it’s any comfort your mother mistook me for you on my last visit. I let her think I was you. She was very pleased. She died believing you two had made it up.’

Peter smiled and said, ‘Thank you for telling me that, Mr …?’

‘Dunbar. Steven Dunbar.’

‘That gives me a great deal of comfort. Can I ask what your business was with my mother?’

‘I had to ask her a few things about her time at the Médic Ecosse Hospital, just to complete some paperwork I was doing.’

‘Ah, paperwork,’ said Peter Barnes in a way that suggested a sneer to Dunbar. He could understand why people didn’t take to the man. What is it you do, Mr Barnes?’ he asked.

‘I work on the design of warships.’

‘That sounds interesting. All aspects or one in particular?’

‘Radiation containment.’

Dunbar swallowed hard. He felt the, hairs on the back of his neck start to prickle. ‘Really?’ he said then cleared his throat against the tightness that had crept in. ‘Might I ask what company you work for?’

‘Baxters, on Tyneside.’

As soon as he got back to his hotel, Dunbar called Macmillan in London and told him what he now knew.

‘I agree, it goes beyond the realms of coincidence,’ said Macmillan. ‘This Barnes character could have plotted the deaths of his own parents so he could inherit. He must have thought he was going to get away with it, too. It was damn nearly foolproof. Would you like me to arrange for all the information to be handed over to the Glasgow police?’

‘I’d be grateful,’ replied Dunbar. ‘I’ve no heart for it. The case has nothing to do with what I’m interested in any more.’

‘Don’t get too down about it,’ said Macmillan. ‘You’ve just solved a double murder, and an unusual one at that.’

‘But not the double murder I’m interested in,’ said Dunbar.

* * *

‘You’re telling me that Sheila wasn’t murdered to keep her quiet after all?’ said Lisa.

‘Afraid not,’ he said. ‘In retrospect, I suppose it was wrong from the outset. If you want to kill someone to keep them quiet, you don’t choose a slow death. That’s more the style of someone who wants to make the death seem natural, the perfect crime committed by someone who can afford to wait a little.’

‘Like her own son,’ said Lisa with disgust.

‘Take a look at life again soon,’ said Dunbar.

‘So now you have nothing at all to go on against Médic Ecosse,’ said Lisa.

Dunbar shrugged and said, ‘Nothing except the word of two nurses and one of them’s now dead.’

‘The remaining one knows what she’s talking about,’ said Lisa firmly.

FOURTEEN

Dunbar decided to look at some of Ross’s published research before going out to Vane Farm; it might help him understand what he found there. Sci-Med had supplied him with reprints of Ross’s most recent papers, but he’d put them to one side until now. There were four, three on animal work and a fourth on something called ‘Immuno-preparation’, which he left in the file while he concentrated on what he thought the more relevant stuff.

He suspected he might find it hard going but Ross had a good writing style and presented his data in straightforward fashion. What really helped was the fact that one of the papers was a review article about current work in the field. Like all scientific reviews, it was aimed at scientists but not confined to those working in the same field. Technical detail was therefore kept to a minimum.

Ross’s papers made it clear that he believed the use of animal organs – pigs’ in particular – for human transplant was the way ahead. It would eliminate the awful uncertainty of patients having to wait for a human organ to become available, with the attendant moral dilemma of wishing misfortune on someone else. It would also obviate the continual struggle to convince an unwilling public that carrying donor cards was a good idea when their gut instinct told them otherwise. It was seen as tempting fate; courting disaster.

Whenever the medical profession made any headway in that direction, it seemed, a story would break about the recovery of some coma patient who had been declared brain-dead by the experts. This awakened fears akin to the age-old dread of being buried alive. Only now people imagined their organs being removed while they were still conscious but unable to communicate.

A further advantage of using animal organs, according to Ross, was that the donor animal could be kept alive until the very moment the organ was needed. It would therefore be well oxygenated and ‘fresh’. There would be no more rushing to and fro across the globe with tissue decaying in transit with each passing hour. There would be no more hoping against hope that unforeseen delays would not render vital organs useless. An added bonus was that the social and moral problems associated with hospitals ‘delaying’ the death of putative donors by keeping them on life-support machines, solely to keep their organs in good condition, would become a thing of the past.

The main focus of the research was the immunological problem associated with the introduction of foreign tissue. Like tissues from any other source, animal organs had to be made compatible with the patient’s own immune system, otherwise they would quickly be rejected as alien material, causing the transplant to fail and the patient to die. Ross’s experimental work had shown that it was possible to breed pigs with the immune system of a human patient in addition to their own. This scenario would ensure that the pig’s organs would be perfectly acceptable to the patient whose immune system the pig had been given. This was all experimental, of course, qualitative work performed to establish the validity of theory. The idea of preparing a pig donor for each and every human being in case they should need a transplant at some time in their life was beyond practicality. The morality of it was another issue.

Dunbar wondered if it could possibly have been attempted for selected individuals at Médic Ecosse, but concluded not. The timescale would have been all wrong for cases like Amy Teasdale or Kenneth Lineham. These patients had come to Médic Ecosse already very ill and needing transplants quickly.

The more he read, the more depressed he felt. Unless Ross had made some great secret leap forward in technology there would have been no point in attempting to transplant pig organs into human patients. Rejection would have been almost guaranteed. Had Ross made such a breakthrough? He hoped to find out at Vane Farm.

Douglas was already in the Crane when Dunbar arrived at five to eight. They shook hands and sat down on the same seats as last time.

‘How’d you get on?’ Dunbar asked.

‘It looks possible. The staff are all gone by ten o’clock. That just leaves two security men in the gate-house. They’re supposed to patrol the grounds every half-hour but they were a bit lax after midnight. They probably rely on the electric fence doing its job.’

‘Electric fence?’ exclaimed Dunbar.

‘Nothing too desperate,’ said Douglas. ‘It’s more of an alarm than a line of defence. Low voltage. We can bridge it easily.’

‘How about the building itself?’

‘That’s our biggest problem. We can’t use a window – there aren’t any – and the door has an electronic lock.’

‘But you said it was possible.’

‘I think it’s possible,’ said Douglas. ‘It’s going to depend on this.’ He took from his pocket a small piece of plastic the size of a credit card. It was unmarked save for a strip of magnetic tape across it.