by Nick Louth
She picked up a phone and after swiping a few times showed him a picture of a dapper grey-haired fellow, smiling, standing under a cherry tree heavy with blossom. It was hard to say for certain if it was the same man. Gillard needed a comparison. He carefully slid one of the gory CSI pictures face down back along his desk, only lifting it face up behind his screen to be sure that the Skype camera didn’t pick it up. The two images side by side were not conclusive. A little elasticity with the truth was required.
‘It certainly could be him, Mrs Ho. What have you been told about your brother’s death?’
‘Just that he found in River Thames. Maybe suicide.’
‘Did your brother have suicidal feelings?’ Gillard asked.
‘He depress, since he heard about cancer. No cure. But I no think he kill himself. He very brave man.’
‘I’m sure he was, Mrs Ho.’
‘Mr Gillard, how long Wei-Ling been in UK?’
‘He arrived at Heathrow Airport on June seventeenth, his body was found on the morning of June twenty-second. We don’t know much about what he did between those two dates. Is there anything you can tell us?’
‘He planned to go to nanotech conference in Oxford, I knew that. But I thought he not go, because of cancer.’
‘As far as we know, he didn’t go. In fact, we don’t know what he did do. Did he have any friends in Britain or any contacts here that you are aware of?’
‘I send you list. I email to them already to ask. They say he no tell anybody what he plan.’
Gillard nodded. ‘I understand from the police in Taipei that he isn’t married, and that you are his only living close relative. I assume since you live in Australia that you didn’t see him that often.’
She nodded. ‘He divorce, long time ago. No woman for long time. But I no sure. We too far apart. I live here with my son and daughter. Better with no big communist next door like in Taiwan.’ She smiled.
Gillard knew that the next part would need to be done with the utmost delicacy. ‘Mrs Ho, were you aware of any plans that your brother had made for his own death?’
There was a pause at the other end and he saw her blink numerous times. ‘One time when he depress and call me, he said he go to Switzerland and go out nicely. I beg him no, there always hope. He had money. Could go America for treatment. He no mention it again.’
The detective noted down details of when Dr Chen’s sister had last seen him and any friends and neighbours he had in Taipei who might have a better insight into his mood immediately before he departed for Britain. He once again thanked Mrs Ho, asked her to forward the details of any local police liaison officers who were helping her in Australia, and said he would be in contact again. He knew that it was likely there would be upsetting details that would reach her at some stage, and he was anxious that she shouldn’t have to deal with it alone.
* * *
While Gillard was on the call DC Rob Townsend had found a website for Charon Stichting. ‘It’s a charitable health foundation. Stichting just means “foundation”,’ the research intelligence officer said.
The detective chief inspector looked through the English-language version of the website. It was glossy and professional, with many photographs of trustworthy-looking white-coated male medics. They all had perfect smiles and good hair, stethoscopes resting over their shoulders, often conferring with gorgeous but studious female researchers at their microscopes in pristine and modern-looking labs. It wasn’t immediately apparent what specific services Charon undertook; if he had not read the text, Gillard would have assumed it was some Florida cosmetic surgery outfit. After five minutes of skimming, looking past the euphemisms and corporate-speak, it was clear to him that the organisation was involved in end-of-life care. Helping afflicted individuals make difficult choices and guiding them on their chosen paths. Much was made of the charitable end of the organisation, in which those with incurable diseases and limited means were, in one memorable phrase, ‘offered pain-free off-ramps from the highway of suffering.’ Buried within the website was a section with its own email address that offered to connect those wanting ‘bespoke services’ with others willing to provide them.
The detective sent a message to the site explaining that he was looking into the case of the Taiwanese man who had been found dead in Britain, and who appeared to have been in contact with them.
While he was waiting for a reply, Gillard wandered across to Rob Townsend’s desk to see how he was doing tracing the email address for Penelope, whoever she was. The research intelligence officer looked frustrated. ‘It’s been well disguised. Proxy servers, and probably more. I can pass it on to the specialists in the City of London police if you like. It won’t be quick,’ he warned.
The detective chief inspector looked around the CID office and saw how many good detectives on the team were working hard, using their initiative trying to crack this case. Unlike the early days, there were plenty of leads to follow even if none of it really made sense yet. Tomorrow was Saturday, but he had already made a formal request to Taipei police headquarters for a Skype call with a liaison officer. Brief translations of the documents found on Dr Chen’s laptop were still arriving in dribs and drabs by four p.m. UK time so someone in Taipei must have been working late into the night. The call would probably be early in the UK morning, but he could do it from home if necessary. In the meantime, he set off for the canteen to buy the entire crime team coffees and Eccles cakes, which had recently become a bit of a late-afternoon favourite. Crispy sugared pastry filled with currants. Probably not good for you, but he had never seen a detective get as excited over a grated carrot salad as Hoskins did over this confection. Hoskins’ late colleague DC Colin Hodges, equally overweight and equally fond of something sweet, would have been proud.
Gillard was just making his way back with a full tray, backing his way through the double doors into the main office, when Rainy Macintosh called for him. ‘We’ve just been sent part of Dr Chen’s will, apparently found on a different computer.’
‘Okay, what have we got?’
‘We’ve only been sent the covering letter, but it tells us a lot.’
My dear friends,
I know a number of you have been curious about my unexplained absence, and I can finally now explain my apparent rudeness in not replying to your messages. A few of you may be aware that I have an untreatable liver cancer. Three months ago I was given six months to live. Rather than just let my life slip away painfully at the pace dictated by my affliction I decided to seize control of my destiny. Therefore I arranged to end my life in the manner of my choosing, enjoyably rather than painfully. I was already scheduled to go to a conference in Oxford in the UK, and I anticipate that I will rejoin my ancestors at the end of June. I apologise for not sharing my plans before, I realise some of you will be hurt, but I dared not risk being dissuaded from the path I had chosen. After the return of my body, I have arranged for my funeral to take place here in Taipei on 7 July.
My love to you all
Chen Wei-Ling
Gillard and Rainy Macintosh looked at each other. ‘Whatever he thought he was getting, I’m sure he didn’t sign up to be asphyxiated and dumped in the Thames,’ Gillard said. ‘Apart from everything else he’s been defrauded. His body was presumably to be returned to Taiwan. The contract says so, as does this letter. Right, I’m phoning Charon. They have some explaining to do.’
* * *
Two hours after his email enquiry, Gillard was speaking by telephone to Dr Ernst Molenaar, the chief ethicist of Charon.
‘Our charity is, as you will have seen, based in Amsterdam and merely acts as a global facilitator for those who want to end their life. Like Facebook, we do not take responsibility for the interactions over the network. It’s really no more difficult to understand than contacting a plumber online.’
‘These people are generally terminally ill, yes?’
‘Often but not necessarily. The obvious choice for those who are suffering pain or
have terminal illnesses is a Swiss organisation called Dignitas, which for about £10,000 will get you brought to Switzerland where your life will be ended painlessly and, as you can tell by the name, in a dignified fashion. We go above and beyond that in our offering.’
‘So some of your clients are healthy? Do you not check their motivation?’
‘Of course not. Everybody has a reason. My reason may not persuade you and your reason may not persuade me. We’ve had clients who are so depressed about our inability to face up to climate change that they want their lives to be ended now in a calm and organised manner rather than face the chaos of civilisation’s collapse. It’s not my job to question it.’
‘I’m calling about one of your clients, as I mentioned in the email.’
‘I’m sorry, we are simply not able to disclose the details of parties to the transactions, nor to give you access to our network.’
‘At this stage all we are asking you to do is to confirm that you helped arrange a contract involving a Taiwanese man named Dr Wei-Ling Chen.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that.’
‘We believe that Dr Chen was murdered by someone who got access to him through your network.’
‘That’s a very serious allegation, Detective Chief Inspector. I cannot comment on individual cases but you should remember that those who contact us are requesting that their life be ended. It thus cannot be murder if the contract is fulfilled.’
The detective felt a wave of frustration with this slippery man. ‘All right, the contract we have seen indicates that Dr Chen had arranged with the service provider to have his body returned to Taipei. Instead it was dumped in the Thames. Whatever you think of his death, that’s still a breach of contract. Even by your own standards, it should concern you.’
‘Yes, it does. If what you say is true, that would be a serious matter. If a complaint is to be made it would be up to the client—’
‘Who, might I remind you, is dead,’ Gillard interjected.
‘—or their next of kin to contact us. We have a thorough complaints procedure open to either party, with compulsory arbitration.’
‘We’re talking about something a bit more serious than a flawed purchase.’
‘Not so far, we’re not. The client expressed a wish to die, we can prove that.’
The detective was clenching his fists in frustration. ‘If you don’t co-operate, we will get a court order,’ he said.
‘You may certainly try, but it would have to be under Dutch law, which gives the parties significant privacy protections against such oversight. These, after all, are confidential commercial contracts.’
‘And I’m sure they are illegal in many of the countries that your clients come from.’
Molenaar laughed gently. ‘In a few, possibly. In most it is simply a grey area, and for good reason. After all, if it is a crime, then who would the victim be? A person who has just paid many thousands of pounds for a service that took some time to organise could not be said to have lacked volition or power over the process. Laws that deny us the ability to control our own bodies stand in stark contravention to the usual laws of contract and property.’
‘It’s the law’s job to protect people.’
‘The law won’t stop people dying. The figures for suicide show that. What it does do is remove the possibility that someone wishing to end their life can discuss their wishes with family and friends and move to a conclusion without threat of legal intervention. Instead what you get is the discovery of a loved one having taken an overdose, hanging themselves while you’re out, or being gassed in a car with the exhaust pipe taped inside. As with abortion, the law doesn’t change the outcomes, it just makes the process a whole lot more unpleasant and undignified.’
Gillard blew a sigh, feeling he had got nowhere. Time to step back. ‘All right, Dr Molenaar, can you tell me what kind of suppliers you have on your network?’
‘You mean what kind of termination? Well, we only police them to make sure they do what they’re supposed to do. Which is kind of difficult – you can hardly ask a dead person to fill out a customer satisfaction survey. Many provide a death by the sea. The pounding of tropical surf nearby, a glorious sunset, a fantastic hotel. However, we are aware of numerous erotic and sex-related outfits. Our research indicates that it’s mainly men who are interested in these. One of our most popular is right here in Amsterdam, a farewell party for one, involving three very beautiful, uninhibited and imaginative escorts.’
‘That’s little more than prostitution, then.’
‘It’s a lot more, believe me. Remember that the orgasm was always termed “the little death”. La petit mort as the French say. Everybody wants a bigger bang, of whatever kind. A couple of years ago we arranged a personal crucifixion surrounded by hired worshippers, which turned out to be one of the most awkward and thus expensive arrangements we have ever tried to source. Overall, there are as many variations in how people want to die as in how they want to live. Some clients just want to be cuddled, sometimes by two or three others, as they die. Occasionally, one wants to be eaten. There was quite a famous cannibalism case in Germany years ago. And if that’s your thing, why not?’
After Gillard had hung up, he realised that he’d learned an awful lot about assisted suicide, but almost nothing about the case he was investigating. Could Dr Chen really have paid to be killed in that extraordinary way? Or was the reality simply that he had paid for one service and received another, entirely different? He couldn’t imagine anybody would pay to have the breath squeezed out of them, but then he would have never guessed that anyone would pay to be crucified. In one respect, he had to admit, Dr Molenaar was right: any court case to try to force Charon Stichting to disclose details would take months to arrange.
He needed answers more quickly than that.
Chapter Twenty-seven
It was breakfast time on Saturday morning when Gillard got a call at home from DCI Sarah Bracewell of the anti-corruption unit.
‘Sorry to disturb your breakfast,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some information that you might find useful in the hunt for the killer of Neville Rollason.’
‘That would be much appreciated.’
‘I’ve been interviewing PC Andrew Wickens, who as you know is being investigated for feeding information to the vigilante group AVENGE. For the first two days he refused to say a thing, so I set in motion a rolling series of interviews with the minimum rest period between, and just hoped to grind him down. I’m aware that we need a quick result here. We finally broke him just before dawn this morning.’
Gillard had occasionally deployed intensive interviewing practices and witnessed how gruelling it was to face the same questions again and again. The best results were often gained by going back right to the beginning each time, even down to getting the interviewee to spell his name and address each and every time. He wasn’t surprised that it was in the small hours that Wickens’ resolution had finally collapsed.
‘He confessed to attempting to gain information on behalf of AVENGE, which dovetails with what we discovered from Nigel Chivers and Terry Dalton. He also admitted that he’d logged onto the Police National Computer using a colleague’s ID.’
‘Ah, that would be PC Jim Cottesloe.’
‘Yes. The final nugget was that he finally coughed up who the mister big behind this abduction attempt was. A man named Gus van Steenis.’
‘That makes sense,’ Gillard said. ‘We’ve been sniffing around Holdersham Hall and Estate on a number of occasions related to the murder of Dr Wei-Ling Chen.’ He thanked Bracewell, finished the call and abandoned the rest of his breakfast. It was time to make another visit to the Zimbabwean.
* * *
Within an hour, three patrol cars were screaming their way to Holdersham Hall. Gillard himself hung back, driving more slowly, on the hands-free phone to the duty magistrate who was to issue the search warrant. The female stipendiary seemed to want to ask a lot of lengthy but not unreasonable questions
before granting Surrey police the full range of rights they were seeking. Gillard hung on the line, even as he could see on his mobile text messages from uniforms who had come to a screeching halt outside the stately home’s main gates. It was another fifteen minutes before permission was granted, but even as Gillard relayed to the officers on the scene that they could now effect an entry, he was aware that any element of surprise would probably have been lost.
Gillard finally arrived at Holdersham Hall, to find only a rather disconsolate Rainy Macintosh standing at the entrance to the main building, while officers ferried out plastic bags containing computer equipment.
‘The wee bird has flown, sir. The house manager confirmed that Gus van Steenis left on Friday afternoon to catch a flight to Harare.’
Gillard cursed under his breath. ‘So we were already too late. Never mind, let’s search this place from top to bottom.’
A team of thirty officers began combing through the zoo, aided by the staff and keyholders, while Gillard sat behind van Steenis’s rather grand desk and started checking up on flights to Harare. He made some progress quite quickly, discovering that Zimbabwe was a signatory to the 2003 Extradition Act. Of course, that may not be van Steenis’s final destination. He was an old Africa hand and there must be many places on that continent where he would be welcomed. The detective was just making his second call, to British Airways to see if van Steenis had been on Friday night’s flight to Harare when a grim-faced Rainy Macintosh walked into the office.
‘I think you better come and see this, sir.’
Gillard ended the call and followed her. She led him around the back of the main building to a large ugly barn. Officers had already forced the corrugated metal door and switched on the light. The entire shed was turned over to tools of various kinds, ancient and modern. Spread right in the middle of the shed was a large plastic dust sheet, and on it a gym mat.
