Eyes of the Blind

by Alex Tresillian

  “They did it because they think I’m on to something about Miranda’s operation,” Niall went on. He knew that he was exposing himself horribly, but if Faith was a part of whatever it was she already knew that he had suspicions, and he was past beating about the bush. Surprisingly, his statement didn’t meet with ridicule. It encountered silence.

  “And what is this something you’re on to?” the consultant asked at last.

  “I think you know,” Niall said.

  “And if I do?”

  “I think maybe it was you who came up to me and put on some humble London accent.”

  Duncan Clark guffawed with what sounded almost like genuine laughter.

  “I did once dabble in amateur theatricals,” he said. “When I was an undergraduate. But not for a long time. Tell me upon what you base this preposterous accusation.”

  “I have some evidence – never mind what – ” Niall continued carefully, “that you’re in communication with Daniel Sullivan at BAB.”

  “An odious man,” Clark said, “but I suppose it’s not beyond the bounds of credibility that a Moorfields consultant should be in contact with the chief assistant to the assistant chief of the country’s leading VI charity.”

  “Possibly,” Niall conceded. He knew he couldn’t mention the emails without risking legal complications. They had reached an impasse. “Sullivan’s behind it,” he said, needing something to say.

  “I think that’s highly unlikely,” Clark said. “I suppose I would say that, wouldn’t I,” he added, “as I’m supposedly in league with him.”

  There was a pause, in which Niall wished he could see Clark’s face. He heard the other man sigh.

  “Mr. Burnet,” he said, “your allegation against me – if that is what it is – is offensive and potentially libellous. Publish and be sued, I am tempted to say. Faith did say you were a journalist, didn’t she? However, on one thing, curiously, we are agreed. Which is that all is not entirely as it should be around Miss Leman’s operation. Presumably this is why Faith contrived this meeting. But I need to have some kind of idea what it is that you have put together before I decide whether I am prepared to share any of my thoughts with you. And any discussion that we do have will be completely off the record and based upon your admission that your accusation against me is groundless.”

  “Just tell me what Daniel Sullivan’s emails were about,” Niall said, risking all. He had been wrong-footed and surprised by what the consultant had said, and already wished he hadn’t made his spur of the moment accusation against him regarding the hit and run. He expected a storm of outrage about illegal computer hacking. Instead Clark said

  “Emails? I’ve never had an email from Daniel Sullivan in my life. What sort of an investigative journalist are you?”

  A very confused one, Niall thought. Either that or a very stupid one who was being conned by everybody. What was he thinking? Faith’s house was Number Seventeen. Faith was sitting there. He had just revealed his entire hand to her.

  “You are d.clark I presume?” he said, realising that he’d be lucky to leave the room alive, or at least not under arrest.

  “Well now that is interesting at last,” the consultant said. “Because suddenly you go from being an inept time-waster to someone who actually might have something significant to contribute. Whether or not the information was obtained legally.”

  Niall’s confusion was complete.

  “I am not ‘d.clark’, as you – logically, I have to say – surmised,” Clark continued. “You reckoned without the illiteracy and lack of attention to detail that bedevils the majority of our fellow citizens. “I am actually ‘duncan.clark’; ‘d.clark’ is the lesser of the Clark species, Doctor Damian. Whom you, intelligently, will have discounted because his surname ends in an ‘e’. But, alas, I had made such a mark in my years here that our admin staff assumed there was only one way to spell Clark, so when Doctor Damian joined us, they erroneously gave him ‘d.clark’ without an ‘e’. He did tell them about it, but they never corrected it. And so your whole edifice of a case against me collapses, under the weight of administrative incompetence.”

  “Right,” Niall said. He felt humiliated, defeated. He wanted to crawl away into a dark corner and let everyone laugh at him behind his back. In front of Faith he had jeopardised the secrecy of their entire investigation. If they hadn’t been before, they were all in danger now.

  Damian Clarke settled into the driving seat of the family car. His wife had gone out for the evening to play bridge. The children were peacefully asleep upstairs. Staring into space he thought back over his life, over all their lives. Saw smiles, heard laughter. Things had been good to them; life had been kind. And then had come the business with the eye transplant. How had it all begun? He remembered a meeting between himself, Jamal Daghash, Daniel Sullivan and John Holthouse. It was the first time he had met the BAB men. Jamal had explained to him beforehand that BAB had given a great deal of money to help fund the research for his ‘Great Project’. These men were pushing him now to ‘go for an operation’ in order to catch headlines and make his work newsworthy. He resented it, but he knew he owed BAB a great deal. Without their support he would never have got to the point that he had now reached. It was still, really, too soon. But they were threatening to pull the plug from his funding if he didn’t comply with their request.

  “It seems to me,” Jamal had said to him, “that they don’t really care about success or failure for the poor person they want to be their guinea-pig. They just want it to happen.”

  If he had only known the truth.

  At the meeting John Holthouse had explained that they had found the perfect subject for the operation. She was the daughter of a friend of his, had been blind since birth, and the man was prepared to ‘make a massive donation’ if his girl could be the one to have the treatment.

  Jamal had rejoined that she would have to undergo a series of medical tests to assess her suitability.

  “Money passes most tests,” John Holthouse had rather smugly said.

  The atmosphere at the meeting had been tense; at times aggressively adversarial as Jamal tried to stand up for the integrity of his work. He needed another year to be properly ready. He wanted to assess a number of possible subjects. He came up against the brick wall of the BAB men’s money. To deny them would have meant a hiatus in his research while he looked for alternative sources of funding for a project that most influential eye specialists considered to be only half a step up from attention-seeking quackery.

  And so he gave in. For the first time they heard the name Susannah Leman.

  “I would give the operation at best a 50% chance of success,” Jamal said.

  “If at first you don’t succeed...” Daniel Sullivan said pleasantly.

  As the meeting broke up, Sullivan and Holthouse invited the two of them to a wine bar for a drink to ‘celebrate’. Jamal Daghash, a practising Muslim and thus teetotal, said he didn’t feel there was anything to celebrate, and declined. Fatally, he – Damian – had accepted.

  Over a bottle of champagne John Holthouse had explained the delicate balance of BAB’s finances.

  “Make no mistake, BAB is a wealthy charity as charities go,” he had said. “But I still have to give a pretty good account of myself when it comes to dishing out large sums to research projects like this one.”

  Damian had sipped his wine and nodded, feeling absurdly privileged to be the recipient of the other man’s confidences.

  “The principle for us is,” Holthouse went on, “that any grant is actually a kind of investment, with the prospect – even the necessity – of showing some return. Giving sight to the blind is a hugely emotive, popular issue. When we’ve managed to get it into the public consciousness it has outscored Guide Dogs, and believe me that takes some doing. But, like all these things, it needs momentum. Showing the world pictures of Jamal in his laboratory isn’t going to get people dipping into their pockets. And we’ve got to start getting the money back.
”

  Damian, under the influence of the champagne, had said he understood. And it had been then that Holthouse had looked at Sullivan, and then back at him, and said, “There is a way that this could work out really well for all of us – REALLY well – but we’d need to be able to place implicit trust in you.” And then the whole scheme had been put before him. It wasn’t one operation that BAB needed, it was a series. Heroic failure followed by heroic failure would keep the topic in the news and keep the money flooding into BAB’s coffers. Which in turn would give the money Jamal needed to ‘get it right’. Daniel Sullivan had silenced Damian’s ethical objections.

  “You heard Jamal himself say there was only a 50% chance of success,” he had said. “Most eye surgeons think there is none. We just want to ensure that. This girl has never seen. She’ll be no worse off if, after a big burst of publicity, she still can’t. But the whole blind community will be better off because BAB will have much more money at its disposal. It’s about the bigger picture.”

  “And of course,” Holthouse had added, “your importance to the whole project would be reflected in what proportion of income came your way.”

  Figures had been mentioned. He had asked for time to think it over. They had said they really needed to know then and there. They had exposed themselves to him by sharing their intentions. They needed to know where they stood. That had been clever. Bounced into a decision without time to think it over, he had seen what they had wanted him to see, lost sight of his principles, lost sight of the victim or potentially victims at the heart of this fraud.

  He had agreed, and that road had led him here.

  He turned the key in the ignition and stared into the darkness in front of him.

  “I think I’ve put us in the shit,” Niall said.

  “OK,” Miranda said.

  Niall outlined the essence of his meeting with Duncan Clark.

  “Well,” Miranda said when he had finished, “Subterfuge is obviously not your strong point. But if Duncan Clark had suspected that Faith was involved he’d never’ve said anything to you.”

  “But he doesn’t know about her,” Niall said. “We’re the only ones that do.”

  “Or maybe we don’t,” Miranda said.

  “That’s just what you want to believe.”

  “Well, I have in my possession, pinched from her desk in her office at Victory, one of Vivien Loosemore’s business cards.”

  “You little thief,” Niall said, clearly impressed. Miranda glowed. “What about it?”

  “It’s got lots of difficult words on it for a beginner, but it’s got what’s obviously an address and phone number in small print at the bottom.”

  “And?”

  “Her address is 17, Cardew Crescent.”

  “My God!”

  “I couldn’t read the words straight away, but the number caught my eye.”

  “My God!” Niall said again. “Of course, it doesn’t prove anything. We don’t know which 17 is the one. It still could be here.”

  “I would say there was more than enough evidence now to give Faith the benefit of the doubt,” Miranda said. “You’ve known her much longer than I have, but I would be prepared to bet my entire disability allowance that she’s one of the good guys.”

  “I wonder how long you’ll be able to go on getting disability allowance,” Niall mused.

  “Oh, Niall,” Miranda said, exasperated. “Don’t dodge the point.”

  “No, OK,” he conceded. “I do agree with you, but I still don’t think we should trust her.”

  “Duncan Clark does. And you yourself said he’s no fool.”

  “He thinks it’s your doctor.”

  “But why? What have I ever done that he would want to sabotage any hopes I have of being able to see?”

  ‘Whatever his role is,” Niall said, “I’m still convinced the thing begins at BAB. We ought to reel in your pet journalist. He might be able to help. And he ought to be interested.”

  “I thought you wanted the story for yourself. And he’s only interested in my sister.”

  “He’s probably got resources at his disposal that we haven’t.”

  Miranda looked mulish and unconvinced, but Niall couldn’t see her.

  “Then there’s a list of names,” she said, letting Matthew Long’s resources slip by.

  “What list?”

  “In Vivien Loosemore’s almost empty office,” Miranda explained. “There were basically three things. A calendar, the business cards, and a notebook. The notebook was empty apart from a list of names on the first page.”

  “Which you tore out.”

  “No.”

  “Great.”

  “How obvious would that have looked? I tried to memorise them.”

  “Were there numbers or anything with them?” Niall asked.

  “No,” Miranda said.

  “So what do you think they were?”

  “I don’t know really. Daniel was one of them.”

  “Daniel Sullivan?”

  “Just Daniel. They were all just first names. Gordon was another.”

  “Gordon can be a surname,” Niall observed. “Byron’s name was Gordon. And there was Gordon of Khartoum. Had she written on the calendar?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so. But you didn’t check.”

  Miranda got up and walked out of the room. She knew she was about to cry and she didn’t want Niall to see it. She thought she had done well at Victory. She thought she had found out at least one significant piece of information. And there had been something else, too. She went back to the kitchen where they had been sitting and stopped in the doorway.

  “You might want to know that Lindsey’s boyfriend is Director of Finance at BAB. Or so she told me.”

  “Wait,” Niall said, hearing her going again, but it was too late. He sighed. He was a boor. He shouldn’t take out his own frustrations on Miranda. He was the one who had majorly cocked up. Revealed all. Behaved like an idiot. She had contrived to be alone in Loosemore’s office and he hadn’t even thanked her, let alone praised her. No wonder he couldn’t get a girlfriend. Meanwhile Lindsey had somehow found a way to appeal to the Director of Finance. How did that work? Perhaps she was gorgeous to look at (although nobody had ever suggested as much at school, where he had had friends who could see a bit). Perhaps after early floundering with him she had become a siren in bed, a mistress of the art of pleasure. He couldn’t quite believe that either. If Hugo had been his normal self Niall would have engaged him in conversation at this point about the impossibility of women, but as he wasn’t he found himself drawn to seek Miranda out and apologise. He called her name from the foot of the stairs but got no response. He went to the sitting room, but she wasn’t there. He climbed the stairs, knocked on her bedroom door, and opened it.

  “Miranda?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m a complete arse.”

  “Yes. You are.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “OK.” Her own resolve to be obdurate was fast evaporating.

  Niall came into the room and stood, undecided and helpless.

  “The bed’s straight in front of you,” Miranda said. “You can sit on that. There’s not much else to sit on, since my clothes are all over the only chair.”

  “OK.” Niall shuffled forward and sat. “You did really well.”

  “You don’t have to patronise me.”

  “No I know. I mean it. Getting into Loosemore’s office and everything.”

  “I was quite impressed myself,” Miranda admitted, smiling.

  “The question is,” Niall said, “where do we go from here?”

  “If my father wasn’t in Doha,” Miranda said, “I’d go and ask him straight out.”

  “What?”

  “How I got to be the lucky girl.”

  “Yes,” Niall mused. “That must be significant.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Not that you aren’
t the most deserving girl in the world,” he added quickly.

  “Yeah,” Miranda said. “Sorry little Susannah Leman.”

  “But look what you’ve turned into,” Niall said.

  “Frankenstein’s monster.”

  “Have you read ‘Frankenstein’?”

  “What do you think?”

  “No,” Niall said. “Nor me,” he added.

  “Funny, isn’t it?” Miranda said. “We all make these references and sound like we know what we’re talking about, but you and I’ve never read Frankenstein – I didn’t even know it was something you could read. I thought it was just a film. We wouldn’t know Frankenstein if he walked in here now.”

  “Probably looks a lot like Daniel Sullivan,” Niall said. Miranda threw a sock at him.

  “What was that?”

  “A dirty sock.”

  “Nice.”

  “Meanwhile...” Miranda said, bringing them back to their immediate situation.

  “Yes,” Niall said. “OK. Lines of attack. Your Dr. Clarke.”

  “How can I attack him?”

  “Don’t know yet. Vivien Loosemore. Now that we know her address I could visit her at home.”

  “That would be a stupid thing to do,” Miranda said, “although I know you’re longing to do it.”

  “Why stupid?”

  “Because you don’t know what her involvement is. You still don’t know the right questions to ask her.”

  “I could ask her about the list of names.”

  “What about it?”

  “No, OK,” Niall conceded. “That leaves me with bloody Lindsey, I suppose.”

  “What if I agreed to go out with Sullivan again?” Miranda asked tentatively.

  “No,” Niall said emphatically.

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “Because he’s a slime-ball and we know exactly what he wants.”

  “Which he won’t get,” Miranda said. “Niall, he’s the only person that we’re absolutely certain is involved in this and I can get him to drink masses of champagne and tell me stuff.”

  “He’s hardly going to tell you, is he?” Niall said.

  “I could use feminine wiles.”