Sisters of Mercy (26 page)

‘
What can you tell us about these?’ Tom handed him a copy of the list of patients.

Potter
glanced at it. ‘Not very much, without my computer. I take it these are donors of organs we’ve handled?’

‘
Yes. Use this terminal. I know Professor Barnett won’t mind.’ We were in the professor’s room.

‘
Oh. Very well.’ He tapped in a password, then the first of the names. ‘Can I write on this list?’

‘
By all means.’

He
started writing.

‘
Well,’ he said at last. ‘All seven of the livers were transplanted, and so far, three have been rejected.’

‘
Were they the best matches in each case?’

‘
Yes, excepting this one …’ He showed us.

‘
Tell us about it,’ said Tom.

The
patient had been desperately in need of a transplant and the liver had been allocated to him although the match wasn’t the best. It had subsequently been rejected and the patient had died.

‘
That’s the whole problem,’ Potter said. ‘Do you give the organ to someone who’ll definitely die without it, but who’ll probably die anyway even with it? Or do you give it to someone who might make better use of it?’

‘
Whose decision was it in this case?’ Tom asked.

‘
Mine, and Professor Barnett’s. I asked him because the patient’s consultant had put considerable pressure on me. The professor considered it justified in this case.’

‘
Did you think it justified?’

Potter
hesitated. ‘Is this strictly in confidence?’

‘
Absolutely.’

‘
Well, no, I didn’t, as a matter of fact. But it’s easy to be wise after the event, isn’t it?’

‘
One last thing. How well do you know Miss Shenstone of St Chad’s in Latchvale?’

‘
I’ve met her. I have great admiration for her. I can’t say that I know her personally.’

*

Dr David Enfield couldn’t have been more different. He was as tall and thin as Barnett, but erect, with a strong bony face and fair hair just beginning to turn grey. His manner was open and confident.

‘
Kidneys are often easier to allocate than the other organs,’ he told us, ‘because there are two of them. So if you’re in the situation of having one patient with a very good match versus another with an overriding need, you can satisfy both.’

‘
Was it that easy in these seven cases?’ Tom asked. He passed the list of patients over.

Enfield
studied it. ‘I’ll have to consult the computer to tell you that.’

‘
Please, go ahead.’

Enfield
went ahead and after a few minutes said, ‘Yes, they were all pretty straightforward.’

‘
But what about this one?’ Tom produced the printout of a more contentious case we’d noticed among those the professor had produced for us earlier: one recipient with a desperate need, and two others who had very good matches.

‘
How did you decide which of these two should have the kidney?’ he asked.

‘
Ah, yes, this one was a difficult decision.’ For the first time, I thought I detected a hint of nervousness about him. He continued: ‘In the end, after studying both cases very carefully, I decided that one of them had a slightly greater priority.’

‘
Did you involve Professor Barnett in your decision?’

‘
No, I didn’t. I saw no need to. I’m perfectly well qualified to take these decisions on my own.’

‘
Did you speak with both consultants involved?’

‘
Naturally. Look, I know you’ve got the director’s go-ahead for these questions, but I must say, I can’t understand the reason for them.’

‘
Just tying up loose ends, Doctor,’ Tom said irritatingly. Enfield’s lips tightened, but he didn’t pursue it any further.

‘
D’you know Miss Shenstone at all?’ Tom asked. ‘Miss Marie Shenstone at St Chad’s in Latchvale?’

‘
Of course I do. Everyone knows of her.’

‘
What I asked was, do you
know
her? To speak to.’

‘
I do, as a matter of fact. As do a great many people in this field.’

23

As
soon as Enfield had left us, Tom made a call from the pay phone in the corridor. Then we gathered together all the relevant printouts, thanked Professor Barnett and left for Tom’s office in the Department of Health, in Whitehall.

His
boss, Marcus Evans, was tall and spare, and one of the baldest men I have ever met. Perhaps to compensate for this, he had a heavy black moustache, which somehow gave humour to his face, as well as strength. He also had an old-fashioned charm and courtesy that made me warm to him immediately.

‘
Have you had lunch yet, Miss Farewell?’

‘
I haven’t, actually.’ It was half-past one and I was beginning to feel hungry.

‘
I thought you’d want to see what we’ve found first, Marcus,’ Tom said.

Marcus
looked up at his clock. ‘If we don’t go now, we won’t get any,’ he said. ‘From what you told me on the phone, Tom, I think it could wait half an hour, don’t you?’ It was said with a smile, though, so that it wasn’t a put-down.

We
went to the staff refectory, where the food was excellent. I’ve noticed before that the administrators always manage to fix themselves up with better food than the doers. I didn’t say so, though. Tom clearly wanted to talk about the case, but Marcus wasn’t having any.

‘
Have you always lived in Latchvale, Miss Farewell?’ he asked me.

‘
I was born there.’

‘
No desire to move away?’

‘
Not any more. I did a couple of years post registration in Birmingham, that was quite enough big city life for me.’

‘
I stayed there for a few days myself once — Latchvale, that is — visiting the hospital. There’s more to it than Birmingham somehow, although it’s so much smaller. History, perhaps. There’s a cathedral with three spires, isn’t there?’

‘
Yes, they’re called the Ladies of the Vale,’ Tom said knowledgeably.

Marcus
looked faintly surprised. ‘Miss Farewell’s been showing you around?’

‘
Yes,’ he said breezily. ‘Attended a service, didn’t we, Jo? Listened to the choir.’

Bloody
liar, I thought.

‘
Hmm,’ said Marcus. ‘Ah well, better get back to the grind, I suppose. How did Holly feel about you rushing back to the Midlands yesterday, Tom?’

You
bastard, I thought.

Tom
said, ‘Well, I had to go back to collect the car, and then all this came up.’

‘
Remarkably understanding girl, Holly.’

‘
Yes.’

Back
in Marcus’s office, Tom took him through what had happened in the last two days.

‘
Not really conclusive, is it?’ Marcus said, tugging at his moustache.

‘
Not absolutely, no. But I think we can draw some conclusions, or at least, a hypothesis.’

‘
Please do.’

Tom
cleared his throat. ‘All right, but I tell it in my own way — agreed?’

We
agreed.

‘
OK. The first point is that although Susan King started killing non-believers of her own volition, somebody else spotted this and manipulated her for their own ends. We know this because of the altered patient notes on the computer.

‘
Secondly, the motive for this has to be organ transplant, because of the statistics, the seven out of eight victims with organ donor cards.’

‘
But what about the five earlier killings,’ Marcus said, ‘the ones Miss Farewell didn’t spot? Did they have organ donor cards?’

‘
No, because they were Susan all on her own. It was when someone realized what she was doing that they then chose victims with donor cards and altered their patient notes for her to find.’

‘
So who is this someone?’

‘
I’ll come to that in a moment. The person behind the organ related killings must be Miss Shenstone.’ He smiled mirthlessly. ‘I got the idea while Jo was showing me the Ladies of the Vale. I know Jo thinks she’s a saint, but she’s the only one with the know-how.’

‘
What’s her motive for doing this?’

‘
I thought you were going to let me tell this in my own way,’ Tom protested, and Marcus gestured for him to continue.

‘
She has to be in collusion with someone at Transplant Headquarters, and I suggest that person is Enfield — because Enfield is dealing with kidneys, which are Shenstone’s speciality, and because the one really contentious medical case we came across concerns him.

‘
I suggest the mechanism is this:
One
: Enfield makes a deal with a patient who needs a kidney. Their need might be urgent, although probably not desperate, and they’d obviously be well-heeled. He then gives Shenstone the tissue type of the potential donee.

‘
Two
: Shenstone finds a patient at St Chad’s who has an organ donor card and a very good match with the donee —is there such a word as donee?’

‘
I think recipient is more usual.’

‘
All right, recipient. Anyway, it has to be a very good match so that the donee will automatically have the best claim. Shenstone knows all the patients’ tissue types because of the research she and Dr Cannock are doing. She tells Stephen Wall, who then alters the patient’s notes, so that Susan King thinks they’re an unbeliever and deals with them in the manner she deals with all unbelievers.

‘
Three
—’

‘
Wait a minute, Tom, how on earth do you implicate Stephen Wall?’

‘
Please, Marcus, let me finish.
Three
: the kidney then becomes available for the donee. The computer at Transplant HQ shows it’s the best match — which Enfield already knows, and if there’s more than one claimant, as there was in the case we noticed, Enfield has to make his difficult decision.’

He
sat back.

‘
So shoot me down.’

Marcus
looked up from the notes he’d been scribbling.

‘
I met Miss Shenstone when I visited St Chad’s. I don’t know about her being a saint, but she did strike me as a remarkable, and a
good
, woman. So what’s her motive?’

‘
Her department’s in financial trouble.’

‘
Really? How did you find that out?’

I
leaned forwards. I was quite interested to know myself.

‘
Last Saturday, when Jo was putting together all the staff rotas, I’d arranged a meeting with one of the finance administrators. He told me.’

‘
How much financial trouble?’

‘
Terminal. You see, there isn’t really any justification for a small department like hers — she’s only been allowed to keep it on because of the research she did, and her name. Once St Chad’s becomes an NHS Trust, the board will insist that it becomes self-supporting, or closes down.’

‘
But why should she mind so much? She must be well into her sixties: you’d have thought she’d have just retired gracefully.’

‘
I wondered about that,’ I put in.

‘
I agree,’ said Tom. ‘But a great many elderly people, especially those with a reputation, are unwilling to leave the stage when it actually comes to it. We’ve all come across them. I suggest that she’s an extreme example.’

‘
We need more than just a suggestion of her unwillingness to retire, Tom.’

‘
All right, how about this? Her department has recently received two large, and anonymous, donations. I suspect that more are on their way, enough to keep the department afloat.’

‘
These are verifiable facts, are they, Tom? That her department’s in financial trouble, but has been receiving anonymous donations?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
All right. How did she know that Susan was killing atheists?’

‘
Stephen Wall told her.’