Murder of a Dead Man (15 page)

‘I wanted to say I’m sorry about this morning.

I’ll try to be more understanding about your hours.

It’s just that…’

He glanced at his watch. ‘Can we talk about this tonight, Lyn? I’m running late.’

‘I’ll make us supper.’

‘I’m taking the doctor to dinner, so I won’t be eating, but how about we share a bottle of wine?’

‘Red or white?’

‘Red.’

‘I’ll have it open. Love you.’

‘Me too.’ He hung up the receiver. Yesterday he wouldn’t have wondered if he’d meant what he’d said. But then yesterday Daisy hadn’t walked back into his life.

‘How many people do you reckon sleep here?’ Anna asked Peter.

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’ Peter peered into the shadows beyond the range of his torch beam and past the guttering flames of candles burning inside open doors. Rags, papers and rubbish were strewn over the wooden floors and heaped high against doors. All it would take was one candle knocked sideways by a derelict in a drunken stupor for the whole place to go up. He wondered how strong the boards were that covered the windows.

He hoped they’d be easy to knock out in an emergency.

‘There’s the stairwell,’ Anna said.

Peter shone the torch beam up and down. White graffiti was plastered over the dark brown and green paintwork on the walls.

Dee loves Richie. Anarchy for the masses and the inevitable, Fuck off pigs.

‘Think that’s meant for us?’ Peter whispered.

‘Not personally.’ She made an effort to sound braver than she felt. The eerie silent building with its hidden occupants unnerved her.

‘Up the stairs, and…’

‘First door on the right,’ she finished for him.

Peter led the way. Before they reached the top he put his hand inside his anorak and unbuttoned the shoulder holster. The knife was fine for scaring off thugs, although he was aware Dan and Bill would have a fit if they knew what he carried on his undercover assignments. But if the man they were after was the one who’d carved up and burned the victim in Jubilee Street, he was in a different league to the lad who’d challenged him downstairs.

He should have insisted on getting in some practice that afternoon. He hadn’t fired a gun in six months, and that had been on the range and he hadn’t scored well. Now both his own and Anna’s lives depended on it. His own he could cope with, but after the events of that afternoon he was worried about taking responsibility for hers. Suddenly their relationship wasn’t just professional any more. It was much, much more. Slipping the barrel half out of the holster, he walked up the last few stairs.

‘First door on the right.’ Anna swept her torch beam towards it, Peter pushed down her hand.

Andrew hadn’t seen the man, but there could be another entrance to the building. There was no flicker of candlelight at floor level. Peter put his hand to the door and thrust it open. The room yawned gaping and black before them.

‘What now?’ Anna shone her torch over the benches and coat hooks.

‘We wait.’

‘In here?’

‘Can you think of a better place?’ He looked behind the door. There was a pile of newspapers on the bench. He kicked them to the floor. Something scuttled out and ran across the room.

‘What the hell was that?’ Anna whispered urgently.

‘Big mouse or baby rat. Would ma’am care to be seated?’

She shone her torch below the bench behind the door. Only when she was certain nothing was there did she sit with her back to the bench and her hands clasped around her knees. Peter sat next to her.

‘Right, this is where we conserve energy and switch off our torch lights.

She reluctantly pushed down the button.

‘Here?’ He pushed something unyielding and metallic into her hands.

‘What’s this?’

‘A flask. Seeing as how you turned down my offer of beer I thought you might appreciate something stronger later. And as we all know, no down-and-out should be without his bottle.’

She lifted it to her lips. ‘No vagrant I know drinks best brandy.’

‘This one does. Right, silence, and if you get scared you can cuddle up close.’

‘I’m not scared,’ she asserted. ‘But I am bloody frozen.’

‘Give me your hand.’ She did and he blew on her fingers. ‘Damn Trevor for finding this place,’

Peter cursed. ‘If it had been me, he’d be here instead of us.’

‘Think of the opportunity for togetherness we’d be missing,’ she whispered.

‘I’d rather be together in your bed.’

‘So would I, but think of the pluses,’ she drew closer to him. ‘All the fantasising we can do while we wait, and act out later.’

‘He told you he wanted red wine.’

‘Yes.’ Lyn turned a miserable face to the sister who worked on her ward. ‘But a couple of months ago it was all so marvellous, and now…’

‘He’s busy working. You only see each other during the boring parts of the day when neither of you are at your best. The excitement’s gone, the glitter’s worn off and you’re wondering if there was anything between you other than lust.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Been there, seen it, done it, unfortunately with my ex who wasn’t as good-looking as Trevor, even in his prime. Your generation is luckier than mine. If we’d moved in together it would have given both sets of parents heart failure, so when lust struck we trailed to the altar. My marriage lasted only as long as the sex. What did that psychologist say in the lecture we went to the other night? The length of time sexual attraction lasts was set by nature to give cave-women the time they needed to bring a child to semi-independent status. Four years is average. We didn’t last that long.’

‘But at least you did get married. You had something…’

‘Incredibly messy and tangled to get out of,’ the sister broke in. ‘Be grateful you haven’t got to go to court or pay a solicitor to sort out your mistake. You don’t have a share in the house, do you?’

‘No. But I think there still is something between Trevor and me.’

‘Twenty-one to thirty-six – I make it fifteen years.’

‘Fourteen and a half,’ Lyn contradicted.

‘And that six months makes all the difference?

Forget about it for one night. It’s Richard’s birthday, he might be a worm, but it’s a night out and everyone who’s off duty will be there.’

‘I don’t feel like it.’

‘You’d rather sit alone in Trevor’s house and mope, waiting for him to come home. That’s how resentments build up. Listen to Auntie.’

‘I won’t be good company.’

‘Who said anything about company? You’ll have your car and you’ll have to stay sober. That means whatever you put into the wine kitty is a plus and seeing as how you’re driving, you won’t mind taking me home.’

Trevor rang the doorbell of the hospital flat and Daisy opened it.

‘The traffic was dreadful,’ he apologised.

‘I’ve only just finished dressing.’

‘You look beautiful.’ Not given to paying compliments, he meant it. She was wearing a calf-length black skirt and black silk polo that made her pale skin glow. Her long hair was loose, brushed away from her face.

‘I like a man who knows how to flatter.’ She picked up a wool wrap and handbag and joined him in the corridor.

‘I wasn’t sure of your taste in food. I haven’t booked anywhere, but there’s a new Turkish restaurant on the marina.’

‘Turkish is fine. I’ve had a successful couple of days on your behalf.’ She opened her handbag and removed an envelope. ‘My secretary typed up the notes I made.’

‘You didn’t have to go to all that trouble.’

‘Yes, I did. You’ve never seen my

handwriting.’

‘Doctor’s handwriting.’ He opened the car door for her. What would he have given to have had this happen eighteen months ago? Then he recalled eighteen months ago her husband had died and he’d been a physical wreck.

‘There are four surgeons working on transplant programmes,’ she said when they in the car. ‘That’s internationally. Three programmes are funded from America, one in Mexico, one in Los Angeles, one in New York – that’s the one that also operates in Africa…’

‘The one you were working on?’ he asked.

‘Before I came here. And, there’s the one I’m working on now.’

He stopped at traffic lights. ‘Is your boss British or American?’

‘British, but so are the consultants leading the New York and Los Angeles teams. You’d be surprised how much expertise we humble islanders bring to international medical programmes. I also discovered that the first documented face transplant took place in America twenty months ago.’

‘There was nothing before then?’

‘Nothing official. It might help if you told me a little about this case you’re working on. It is a case?’

‘It is.’ Since he’d met her again it had seemed more of an excuse than a case. He’d done nothing that afternoon except think about the evening that lay ahead.

‘Is it classified?’

‘What?’ he asked in confusion.

‘The case?’

‘We try to keep some aspects of every case out of the press. It gives us an edge.’

‘I’m not the press.’

‘You’re an expert witness.’ The lights of the marina loomed ahead and he turned into the right-hand lane that led away from the main road.

‘We looking for the Turkish Delight?’

‘Excruciating name, isn’t it?’

‘The first thing you learn as a doctor is to never judge the inside by the outside. The ugliest people often have the most beautiful kidneys and livers.’

‘That’s a disgusting thought.’

‘There’s a parking spot right outside the restaurant and that’s a good omen,’ she said.

‘Or everyone else has tried the place and they’re staying away,’ he suggested sardonically.

They left the car and he locked it. Staring up at the facade he realised the last time he had been in the place it had been a curry house. Inside, the changes were minimal. The benches in the booths were covered with Turkish tapestry as opposed to red damask. The pictures on the wall were enlarged Turkish miniatures of men wearing impossibly massive turbans, and dancing women who were uniformly bell-shaped and cross eyed. But on the plus side an appetising smell wafted from the kitchens, and at thirty-five minutes past eight on a week night, it was quiet.

The black-suited waiter directed them to a table set in pride of place in the centre of the room, but Trevor was having none of it and they settled into a quiet booth behind a screen at the back.

‘You do realise you’ve ruined his advertising plans,’ Daisy whispered as the waiter left them with the wine list while he carried off her wrap.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea to hold our discussion in the middle of a restaurant.’

‘Replacing tissue, rebuilding noses and ears, dovetailing eyebrows around eyes…’

‘Wine, sir?’

‘Red or white?’ Trevor asked Daisy.

‘A very dry white.’

Trevor chose the most expensive in the hope it would be the best. The food was easier. They opted for the speciality of the house. A mix of Turkish Meze, followed by Circassian Chicken, oriental rice and salads.

‘Dessert, sir?’

‘We’ll order that when we come to it,’ Trevor said brusquely, hoping the waiter would have sense enough to leave them alone.

When the wine came Trevor insisted on pouring it himself.

‘You ever eaten Turkish food before?’ Daisy asked.

‘No, have you?’

‘Only in Turkey.’

‘I might have known you’d been there.’

‘Tim took me there the year before we married.’

Her dead husband’s name was spoken easily, and he wondered if she’d come to terms with his death.

‘Your meze, madam, sir.’ The waiter pointed to them in turn. ‘Lady’s thigh meatballs, fried meat fingers, gardener’s meatballs, sardines in vine leaves.’

‘Sounds like a cannibal’s feast,’ Trevor looked at the large plate.

‘They look delicious,’ Daisy said, in an attempt to mollify the hurt expression on the waiter’s face.

‘What you said earlier, about no one carrying out a transplant officially before twenty months ago.

How definite is that?’

‘It isn’t. There’s always a guinea pig and doctors prefer to experiment out of sight of the media. Adverse publicity can close down a research programme. First attempts inevitably run the greatest risk of failure. If the initial transplant turned out to be a disaster the surgeon concerned might have covered it up, although it wouldn’t be ethical to do so because we learn from one another’s mistakes.’

‘Pooling ideas?’

‘Through conferences. And there are potential problems with face transplants aside from the medical. Give someone a new face through plastic surgery and it’s generally accepted, even though it doesn’t match the old look. Give a man or woman a face that belonged to someone else and you can end up with a full blown identity crisis that can devastate the recipient and both families concerned.’

‘The personality can change?’

‘Imagine your face is destroyed in a car crash.

You wake up swathed in bandages like the invisible man. Eventually they come off and you look like Frankenstein. Then along comes a doctor offering a miracle. A new face. Not the old one remodelled, but someone else’s. It can take four or five operations just to rebuild a nose if the cartilage is smashed or burnt away. With a transplant it goes on in one, along with the ears, lips, cheeks, and eyebrows.’

‘And I look in the mirror and see someone else.’

‘Someone with friends, family and a life.

Everyone involved in the programme has agreed from the outset that we have to be completely honest with our patients. We try to keep the donor/recipient arrangement anonymous, but there is always a chance that the recipient will meet someone from the donor’s past.’

‘Could be hard on a widow or widower.’

‘We tell the donor’s relatives that if they should meet the recipient they should look carefully. What they will see is not an exact copy of their loved one’s face. It can’t be. I’ve yet to come across a case where there’s been an exact match of skull size. And no matter how meticulously the tissues are grafted, there always seems to be a slight slip to one side or the other.’

‘And if the donor has scars…’