Blue Genes

by Val McDermid

  ‘Not a clever move,’ Helen said, reaching for another cigarette. ‘Sarah and threats were never a comfortable mix.’ Her cool irony was starting to get to me. Sooner or later, an explosion was going to come. The longer she kept the lid on, the worse it was going to be. I hoped I’d be well out of the fallout zone when it did.

  ‘How did she react to your threat?’ I asked.

  ‘She grabbed me by the lapels and shoved me up against the kitchen counter,’ Flora said, still incredulous that someone in her world would do such a thing. ‘She kept banging me against the counter, telling me I was a dirty blackmailing bitch and that she knew a lot of women who’d happily kill to keep the children she’d given them. I was terrified. She kept twisting her hand in my coat, it was so tight it was strangling me. I was desperate. I groped about on the worktop behind me and my hand touched a knife. I just grabbed it and thrust it up into her. I wasn’t thinking, I just did it. And she sort of fell back onto the floor. I was standing there, holding the knife, watching her die. And I couldn’t do a thing about it.’

  ‘You could have called an ambulance,’ Helen said, her voice cold.

  ‘I did. I went straight to the phone box down the street and called an ambulance.’

  ‘Not then, you didn’t,’ I said. ‘You did one or two other things first. You cleared up any signs of a struggle. You unlocked the back door, leaving the key in the lock, went outside and smashed a pane of glass to make it look like a burglary. You took off your bloodstained mac and checked nobody was about, then you walked calmly out of the front door and up to the phone box on the corner. And then you phoned 999 and told the operator you’d just seen a black man running out of an open door on that street with a bloodstained knife. By which time Sarah Blackstone was dead.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d phoned straightaway,’ Flora said desperately. ‘She died so quickly. Honestly, Helen, she was dead in seconds.’

  ‘Not that quickly,’ I said coldly. ‘She can’t have been dead for long otherwise the ambulance crew would have told the police there was a discrepancy between the time of death and the time of the call-out.’

  The way Flora looked at me, I was glad there wasn’t a knife handy. ‘Let’s face it, Flora, you couldn’t really allow her to live, could you?’ Helen said bleakly. ‘Not after what you’d done. No wonder you said to me the next day that you’d give me an alibi if the police came asking. You wanted to make sure you had one, didn’t you? Just don’t you dare ever say you did it for me.’

  Flora said nothing. Helen faced me. ‘I suspect there’s a tape recorder whirring away in your handbag.’

  My jacket pocket, actually, but I wasn’t about to tell them that in case either of them got any clever ideas. ‘Technology’s got a bit smarter than that these days. I wouldn’t still be alive if I didn’t believe in insurance,’ I said.

  ‘So now you go to the police, is that it?’

  ‘Helen!’ Flora wailed. ‘I can’t go to jail!’

  ‘I don’t think that’s necessary,’ I said. ‘The way Flora tells it, it sounds pretty much like self-defence that got out of hand. I don’t think she’s a risk to anyone else. I don’t see a need for this to come out into the open.’

  A cynical smile curled Flora’s lip. ‘You mean you don’t want the world to know what that bitch Sarah was doing. I bet your client’s one of those women she gave a baby to. She won’t want that can of worms opened, will she?’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, Flora,’ Helen said. ‘Ms Brannigan holds your freedom in her hand. Or wherever she has her tape recorder stashed.’

  I nodded. ‘There are conditions to my silence,’ I said. ‘If anyone else is charged with Sarah’s murder, I can’t stand idly by. And if Sarah’s secret work becomes public knowledge and I think it’s anything to do with you, the tape goes to the police. Is that a deal?’

  Epilogue

  The cops picked up Peter Lovell’s thugs a couple of weeks later in a routine raid on an after-hours shebeen in Bradford. They charged them with Tony’s murder. The Crown Prosecution Service, who love bent coppers about as much as the police do, also added murder to Lovell’s list of charges under the ‘joint enterprise’ principle. According to Della, who was on the point of giving up the elbow crutches and moving back into her house, it looks like they’re all going to go down for a very long time. Oh, and Dan Druff and the Scabby Heided Bairns signed a deal with an indie record company on the strength of their first Nazi-free gig. They’ve promised me the first pressing of the first single to roll off the production line. I can hardly wait. It’ll look great framed on my office wall. Not.

  The law on fraud being what it is, Alan Williams and Sarah Constable probably thought they were unlucky to do any time at all. But the police did a good job, tying them into ripping off the bereaved in Birmingham, Durham and Plymouth. They each got eighteen months, which they’ll do easy time in an open prison. It probably won’t stop them dreaming up another nasty little scam when they come out, but at least it’s got them off the streets for a few months. Their boss at Sell Phones did a bit better; all they could get him on was obtaining phone calls by deception, on account of the laws in this country affecting telecommunications are so archaic it’s hard to nail anybody on anything to do with cellular phones. And since nobody much likes phone companies, he only got a suspended sentence. He lost the business, though, which is a kind of rough justice.

  I also got round to talking to Josh. He gave me a load of toffee about how he wanted to devote some of his capital to working with small businesses, and I told him to cut the crap and get to the horses. The deal we worked out meant he bought Bill’s share of the business, but in recognition of my sole contribution to the profits, my stake in the partnership was upgraded to fifty-five per cent. So I got an extra twenty per cent for nothing except running the agency and doing all the hard graft…Josh also promised me that when I can afford it, I can buy him out for what he’d paid plus the rate of inflation. I know a good deal when I see it. I nearly bit his hand off. The best part about it was that overnight I stopped wanting to rip Bill’s arm off and hit him with the wet end. That Sheila’s a really good laugh when you get to know her.

  Alexis was happy with the way I sorted things out with Helen and Flora. With the single-mindedness of all parents-to-be, she didn’t much mind who’d killed Sarah as long as it wasn’t going to bounce back and wreck her happy little idyll. I never did tell her about Sarah Blackstone’s nasty little trick of dropping her own eggs into the mix. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything that would poison Alexis’s happiness.

  It’s just as well I didn’t. When Chris gave birth six months later, there was no mistaking the genetic source of Jay Appleton Lee’s shock of jet black spikes. I swear the child cries with a Scouse accent.

  I wish I could close the account there. Everything in credit, almost a happy ending. It’s never been that neat in my experience. About two months after the showdown in her kitchen, Helen Maitland turned up at my office one afternoon around close of business. I left Shelley in charge and took her up to the café at the Cornerhouse for a herbal tea and a flapjack. Sometimes it’s dead handy having an art cinema so close to the office.

  Over a cup of wild strawberry she told me that Flora had just got a job in a university library in Wyoming. ‘I didn’t know they had universities in Wyoming,’ I said. Cheap, I know, but I never claimed to be otherwise.

  ‘Me neither,’ Helen said, smiling with the half of her mouth that wasn’t clamped around a cigarette.

  ‘You looking for jobs, then?’

  ‘You mean am I going with her?’

  I nodded. ‘I wondered if this was goodbye, don’t worry, we’re out of your life.’

  ‘I suppose it is, in a way. Flora won’t be back, and the one thing I’d pray for if I had any religion left is to be allowed to forget the whole sorry mess. So you can rest assured you won’t be hearing any more of this from me. And Flora…well, she has too much to lose. The
police never arrested anyone, never even seriously questioned them. The case is going to die now, just like Sarah did.’

  ‘Better that way,’ I said.

  ‘Better all round,’ she agreed. Her green eyes looked distantly over my shoulder. ‘I’m not going to join Flora, though. Ever since she told us what had happened, I’ve scarcely been able to tolerate being in the same room as her. I may have stopped loving or hating Sarah, but I never wanted her to die, not even in our most terrible fights. And I hate the thought that I was the instrument of her death.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ I protested. ‘It was Flora who knifed her, not you. You didn’t even know she was going to see her. You certainly didn’t suggest it, that much was obvious from your reaction to Flora’s confession.’

  ‘Maybe not overtly. But she’d never have dreamed up the idea if my obsession hadn’t planted it. If I hadn’t told her the meaning of the photograph and the lock of hair, she’d never have gone near Sarah. I may not have held the knife, but I carry the guilt.’

  I could tell there was no point in trying to get her to change her mind about that. We finished our drinks, talking about anything except Sarah and Flora. Then she excused herself, saying she had someone to meet. I sat by the first-floor window and watched her stepping out across Oxford Road, dodging cars and buses. I watched her long stride as far as the corner of Princess Street, where she turned left and disappeared.

  The story was in the next night’s Chronicle. DOCTOR DIES IN HOTEL PLUNGE. She’d taken a room on the top floor of the Piccadilly Hotel. She’d even brought a club hammer in her overnight bag in case the window didn’t open far enough. At the inquest, they read out a note where she’d quoted that bit from Keats about ceasing on the midnight with no pain.

  Some nights, I dream of Helen Maitland falling through the air, morphing into a bird and suddenly soaring just before she hits the ground. I hope someone somewhere is making babies with her eggs.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  What is outlined in this novel is entirely within the realms of possible science. Somebody somewhere is almost certainly carrying out these procedures, probably for very large sums of money.

  I’m grateful to Dr Gill Lockwood for most of my medical and scientific information, and to David Hartshorn of Cellmark Diagnostics for background on DNA testing. For other matters, I’m indebted to Lee D’Courcy, Diana Cooper, Yvonne Twiby, Jai Penna, Paula Tyler, Brigid Baillie and the press office of the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority.

  About the Author

  Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three years as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. Now a full-time writer, she lives in Cheshire.

  Blue Genes is the fifth of six novels featuring Kate Brannigan. The third, Crack Down, was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award in 1994.

  Val is also the author of three tense psychological thrillers featuring criminal profiler Tony Hill. The first of these, The Mermaids Singing, was awarded the 1995 Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year, while the second, The Wire in the Blood, lends its name to the acclaimed ITV series featuring Robson Green as Tony Hill. She has also written three standalone thrillers, Killing the Shadows, A Place of Execution and A Distant Echo, and six novels featuring journalist-sleuth Lindsay Gordon.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  By the same author

  The Distant Echo

  Killing the Shadows

  A Place of Execution

  Tony Hill Novels

  The Last Temptation

  The Wire in the Blood

  The Mermaids Singing

  Kate Brannigan novels

  Star Struck

  Clean Break

  Crack Down

  Kick Back

  Dead Beat

  Lindsay Gordon novels

  Hostage to Murder

  Booked for Murder

  Union Jack

  Final Edition

  Common Murder

  Report for Murder

  Non-fiction

  A Suitable Job for a Woman

  Copyright

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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  First published in Great Britain by

  HarperCollinsPublishers 1996

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  Copyright © Val McDermid 1996

  The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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  EPub Edition © 1996 ISBN: 9780007327577

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