‘How old are you?’
‘Sixteen. It’s all legal, brah.’
‘No, it’s not. She was your teacher.’
‘She didn’t rape me or nothing. We were together.’
‘How long for?’
‘Five months.’
That fit with the phone records. ‘After you had sex last night, what happened?’
‘I had a wazz, got dressed, and I left.’
‘A what?’ Morton asked.
‘I went to the bathroom.’
‘And where was Ms Hogge?’
‘Livvy was in bed,’ Carter said. ‘She always goes to sleep after she... y’know. She was breathing and everything. I’d never hurt Livvy. You don’t think I hurt her, do you? Do I need a lawyer?’
He had said the magic word. It was time to call it a day, for now. It seemed unlikely that young Carter had had anything to do with Primrose Kennard, and if the deaths were linked as Morton suspected, that precluded him from being Olivia Hogge’s killer. Besides, the boy looked incapable of something as gruesome as dismembering a body.
‘No, Mr Gould, you’re free to go.’
‘OK. Good. ‘Cause I’ve got to get back to my maths revision.’ And with that, Carter Gould stood, picked up his backpack and swung it over his shoulder before darting out of the room without a backwards glance.
‘What did you think, Ayala?’
‘I think he’s a victim, but he doesn’t know it. He seems proud of “nailing her”. Why didn’t you bring up Olivia Hogge’s pregnancy, boss?’
Morton pursed his lips. ‘We don’t know it’s his.’
‘But if it is?’
‘Then he still doesn’t need to know. She’s dead, and so is the baby. That knowledge could only cause him pain.’
‘Is not telling him legal?’
‘I have no idea, but it’s the right thing to do.’
***
The incident room board had been updated in Morton and Ayala’s absence. Rafferty hadn’t done as neat a job as Mayberry would have, but it was passable enough. The board now had four victims listed.
Victim Zero: Amoy Yacobi
Victim One: Primrose Kennard
Victim Two: Niall Stapleton
Victim Three: Olivia Hogge
Morton looked around the table. It was strange to be just three, and the huge conference table dwarfed them. He beckoned Ayala and Rafferty to shuffle up towards the end of the table, and then put the pathologist’s report on Olivia Hogge’s death up on the projector.
‘We can now link Primrose Kennard with Olivia Hogge. Both had needle marks in the neck, and both had body parts removed while they were out for the count. The cuts were neat, precise, and surgical.’
‘Are we looking for one killer or three, boss?’ Ayala asked.
‘I think we’re looking at one. Hogge links with Kennard because they were both drugged by injection. They were both dumped in public places, and they were both posed.’
‘Then, what about Yacobi and Stapleton?’ Rafferty said. ‘We could have a second killer if their deaths are linked with each other, but not with Kennard and Hogge.’
‘Yacobi and Stapleton were both cut across the neck. They were both hung upside down, and both were left to bleed out post-mortem.’
‘So, we have two pairs linked,’ Ayala said. ‘How do we link all four?’
‘Body parts,’ Morton said. ‘Primrose Kennard had a lung transplant. Her lungs were removed. Hogge had a bone marrow transplant. Her bones were removed.’
‘And Yacobi needed a blood transfusion to survive being stabbed,’ Rafferty said. ‘But what about Niall Stapleton? He doesn’t seem to fit.’
‘He has to fit. The modus operandi of his murder fits with Yacobi, and Yacobi fits with the other two. We just need to prove it.’
Chapter 41: Blood Connections
Thursday April 16th 16:00
Dr Giles Sinclair was in his office when Morton arrived. The policeman chose not to give him a heads-up before arriving on his doorstep, lest the administrator have time to involve lawyers.
The NHS Blood and Transplant Service was not based in central London. By the time Morton had driven to their head office in Watford, it was nearing four o’clock, and the office was due to close for the day in an hour.
The ruse worked. Morton slipped past reception unnoticed and knocked on the open office door, obviously startling Sinclair. The administrator shuffled a bunch of papers off his overly busy desk, swept an arm across a pile of sweet wrappers to drag them into a wastepaper basket, and then called out, ‘Come.’
‘Doctor Sinclair? I’m DCI Morton, Metropolitan Police. Do you have a moment?’
Sinclair looked to the other side of his desk. There was a chair for guests, but it was occupied by a stack of binders three feet high, and there was scant room to manoeuvre without knocking over one of the piles of papers on the floor. The doctor edged past the paperwork, motioned Morton to move into the hallway, and said, ‘Walk with me.’
They reached the end of the corridor in silence, descended the steps, and went out into the grounds. A light breeze was blowing through the trees.
‘Tell me, what can I do for the boys in blue, Mr Morton? We don’t usually get such interesting visitors. As you can imagine, most of the work we do here is about paper shuffling.’
‘Tell me about it. What exactly do you do?’
‘We save lives. Every day, three people die here in the UK waiting for a transplant. Our job is to maximise the number of donations we receive–’
‘From the deceased?’
‘And the living. We can’t offer payment, but many choose to donate to friends and family, and there are a rare few individuals who make wholly altruistic donations.’
‘What can a living donor give you?’
‘Blood and plasma are the most common donation. We process just shy of two million donations of the former per year, so the bulk of our administration goes on getting the right blood to the right places.’
‘The right blood?’
‘As you no doubt know, blood comes in types. The main four groups are A, B, AB and O. Each of those can contain the RhD antigen. If blood has it, then we call it positive. If it does not, then it’s negative.’
‘Making for a total of eight types?’
‘Very good. Blood is fairly simple. Half of the country has blood type O, and O negative contains no antigens, so we can give blood from them to anyone. These are universal donors of blood. Group AB can receive any type of blood, and they can donate plasma to anyone because they lack antigens.’
‘Are these universal donors common?’
‘Sadly, no. O negative donors make up six percent of the populace. AB plasma donors are just four percent. We need more donors from these groups for those situations where a patient needs urgent blood, but we don’t have the information necessary to match them to an appropriate donor of the same type.’
They reached the end of the path and swung to the left, skirting the perimeter of the grounds. ‘That sounds like hard work.’
‘It is, but we do what we can.’
‘You said blood and plasma are the most common. What else can donors donate?’
‘Living donors can donate a kidney, a lung lobe, a liver lobe, and bone marrow. Deceased donors can donate hearts, corneas, bone, as well as all the things a living donor can donate. They have to die a cardiac death, and near a hospital, but in theory we can save nine lives for every perfect donor. But I don’t think you came here to enquire about becoming a donor, Mr Morton. Why don’t you just ask me what you need to know?’
‘We have four murder victims. We have reason to believe each had a transplant or transfusion shortly before their death. It seems unlikely that is a coincidence.’
‘Transplant recipients are uncommon, certainly, but a significant proportion of the population will have a blood transfusion at some point in their lifetime.’
‘That may be true, Doctor Sinclair, but the odds of those i
ndividuals all being murdered within a year of said transplants must be astronomical.’
‘Just what are you suggesting?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m asking for your help. Each of our victims was murdered in a way that suggests a strong familiarity with human biology.’
‘You think your killer has had medical training?’
‘I do. I need to know who was involved in each of these transplants. I want the names of the donors, the surgeon, and anyone else involved in the procurement chain.’
Sinclair stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Absolutely not. Our patients, our donors, and our staff deserve absolute and total confidentiality. If you want that information, you’ll need a warrant.’
‘Then I’ll get one.’
‘I doubt it. This is a fishing expedition. I think our meeting is over. Good day, Mr Morton.’
Chapter 42: In-House Counsel
Friday April 17th 10:00
A quick call to Kieran O’Connor at the Crown Prosecution Service served to back up Doctor Sinclair’s opinion. The prosecutor didn’t like their chances of obtaining a search warrant for confidential medical information on what came down to little more than a hunch on Morton’s part.
Worse still, Morton’s second task of the day involved talking to yet another lawyer. The Kennard twins had made it abundantly clear, both directly and by way of appeal to the superintendent, that they would not answer any more questions without their lawyer, Tenchi Shimizu, present.
Morton found the lawyer in his office. It was a pokey little chambers hidden off an alleyway inside the Middle Temple with wall-to-wall textbooks (all civil, Morton noted) and the rarefied air of a scholar’s retreat.
The lawyer’s clerk showed Morton to a conference room in short order, assured him that Mr Shimizu wouldn’t be long, and left him to his own devices.
Not long turned out to be nearly half an hour, and if it were not for the repeated warnings from the superintendent, Morton would have stormed into the back room in search of Shimizu. The room was pleasant enough, with high ceilings, a big-screen TV (which, alas, did not have television service), and a tall window letting streams of light flood into the room. Morton had brought his iPad with him and spent the waiting time playing an irritating gem-matching game that Sarah had installed.
The lawyer was nervous when he arrived. His hands shook when Morton greeted him, and the moist residue of sweaty palms made Morton want to wipe his hands on his jacket. He settled for casually brushing against the back of the upholstered chair as he sat down.
‘I’ll be short, Mr Shimizu, as I’m sure you’re a busy man. I need to know where your clients were on Tuesday evening after ten thirty.’
‘I’d have to take instruction on that matter.’
‘So, you don’t know?’
‘No.’
Morton tapped at his iPad for a moment, called up the crime scene and autopsy photos, and then turned the display towards Shimizu. The lawyer recoiled.
‘I really don’t know. Detective, I am a simple civil lawyer. I draft contracts, negotiate, do due diligence, that sort of thing. I am only acting on behalf of the twins in this matter because I am obliged to do so. I have an equity stake in Nuvem Media Associates, draw a salary acting as their in-house counsel three days of each week, and I have no interest in offending Christopher and Frederick Kennard.’
‘And I care because?’
‘Because if you give me a list of your requests, I will write them down, put them to the twins in person, and call you the second I know anything. I cannot give you information that I don’t have.’
‘Fair enough.’ Morton plucked a business card and set it on the table. ‘I await your call.’
***
It was almost as soon as Morton arrived back at New Scotland Yard that his phone rang.
‘Mr Morton?’
‘Missing me already?’ Morton smirked, knowing the lawyer would be thrown off-guard by the casual reply.
‘I... I’m calling to set up a meeting. I apologise for the wasted meeting this morning. My clients would like to talk to you face-to-face at your earliest convenience.’
There was a ‘but’ in his tone that said a condition was coming. ‘OK.’
‘They will only talk to you on the condition that anything they say is off the record, and will not be, ahem, leaked to the media.’
‘I can’t guarantee that, unless you’re telling me that what they have to say has no bearing on their involvement in their mother’s murder.’
‘They didn’t kill her, Morton,’ Shimizu said tersely. ‘You’re going to want to hear this. The prosecutor too.’
‘Then I’ll set up the meet.’
***
There was a glimmer of hope on Friday afternoon. The forensics department had been able to recover a DNA sample from the blood found in the victim’s bathtub drain– and it belonged to a man.
There were no guarantees that it was probative, and so Ayala was dispatched to request an exclusionary DNA sample from young Carter Gould (with the reluctant permission of his grandmother).
If that sample excluded Carter, then there was a good chance that the killer had cut himself while disfiguring Olivia Hogge’s corpse – and that would be enough to nail the son of a bitch.
Chapter 43: Tête-à-Tête
Friday April 17th 17:00
Tenchi Shimizu was as good as his word. The twins were waiting in his office when Morton and Kieran O’Connor arrived.
They had stopped for a quick bacon sandwich in the nearby Pegasus Bar to discuss the limits of what they were willing to offer the twins. Immunity was off the table, for the murder at least, but if, as Morton suspected, the twins were about to implicate themselves in another scandal, then the pursuit of justice demanded that they ignore the bite of the flea in order to hunt down the tiger.
In no time at all Morton was back in Shimizu’s chambers, sitting at the same conference table as he had first thing that morning, but with Kieran to his left and the twins sitting either side of their lawyer opposite them.
‘This is a non-disclosure agreement. I’d like you both to sign it.’ Shimizu pushed the document towards Morton, who turned to Kieran questioningly.
Morton expected the prosecutor to look disgruntled, but instead he was laughing.
‘Did you even go to law school?’ Kieran chided Shimizu. ‘A non-disclosure agreement in a criminal case?’
‘I...’
‘Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to tell us what the hell we’re doing here, or I’ll have Morton arrest you for attempting to pervert the course of justice,’ Kieran said.
It wouldn’t stick, but with Shimizu’s total lack of authority on criminal law, he wouldn’t know that.
Shimizu surrendered. ‘Fine. As long as you’ll stand by your word that this doesn’t go to the media.’
‘We’ll see. Talk.’
Shimizu waved an arm, and the twin nearest to Morton, Christopher, said, ‘When Mum was diagnosed with COPD, we were devastated. We were told she needed a lung transplant, and that she could wait for a set of lungs from a cadaver, but that at her age she’d be low down on the transplant list.’
‘Which is why you donated,’ Morton said.
‘It’s why we wanted to donate.’
‘You’re saying you didn’t?’
Christopher stood, lifted his shirt, and pointed at the scar on his chest. ‘I did.’
The room’s attention turned to Frederick, who avoided eye contact before mumbling, ‘I didn’t.’
‘He couldn’t donate,’ Chris said. ‘Freddy has hepatitis C. He was too ashamed to tell Mum, and he didn’t want to let her down. The prognosis for recovery with live donors is so much better than with a cadaver, and just one lung lobe wouldn’t cut it.’
‘Who did donate the second lung lobe?’ Kieran asked.
The twins looked over to Shimizu. ‘They don’t know. They didn’t ask,’ the lawyer replied.
‘You didn�
�t ask?’ Kieran said disbelievingly.
‘No,’ Shimizu said. ‘The twins were offered a third option, and they took it.’
‘Someone sold you the lung lobe,’ Morton said.
‘That’s the funny thing,’ Chris said. ‘They never asked for any money.’
That you’ll admit to, Morton thought. ‘So, someone just gave you a free lung lobe?’
‘Yep.’
‘And who might this generous benefactor be?’
‘Our mother’s surgeon,’ Freddy said. ‘Dr Isaac Ebstein.’
Kieran couldn’t control his sarcasm. ‘He just offered you a free lung. “Hey, guys, you want a free lung lobe? I’ve got one spare.”‘
‘He said he could sort our problem, and he did. All he asked was that we keep up the charade that we were both donors,’ Freddy said. ‘He never told us where the lobe had come from, and he never asked for a penny.’
‘You realise you’ve just confessed to a crime,’ Kieran said. ‘Organ trafficking is serious.’
‘We’ll deny it. We didn’t buy or sell anything. Our mother’s doctor offered us a medical procedure he thought appropriate and we authorised it. How were we to know that anything untoward was going on?’
‘Bullshit!’ Kieran spat. ‘You covered it up. You knew exactly what was going on.’
‘I think,’ Shimizu said timidly, ‘that it’s time to end this conversation.’
The meeting concluded, and Morton rose ready to arrest the twins on the spot.
‘Morton, can I have a moment?’ Kieran interrupted, and then beckoned for Morton to follow him before he swept from the conference room in a huff.
When they were out of earshot, they paused beneath a marble pillar leading from Inner Temple to Middle Temple.
‘Kieran, why the hell did you just stop me arresting them?’ Morton demanded.
‘If we pick them up, the real criminals will disappear. The twins are to be left alone until we find out what’s really going on.’
‘Then, what’s our next move? Can we use this information to obtain a warrant for the transplant records?’
The DCI Morton Box Set Page 40
