Second Opinion

by Claire Rayner

  ‘There!’ said Vanny in huge satisfaction and with an almost proprietorial air. ‘Do you see what I mean?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ Bridget said after a moment, with complete candour. ‘You tell me the truth, now, Vanny. What meaning am I supposed to see? They seem like nice young people in a picture, is all. What have I missed?’

  ‘Why, the birth of America, that’s what!’ Vanny said with great vigour. ‘Or part of it anyway. It’s called “The Last of England”. Just look at those two people! They’re having to emigrate, right? There’s a lot of poverty at home in Britain — that was the time people were emigrating in the most amazing numbers, around 1850 or so. So, they’ve decided to up stakes and go and seek their fortune in the New World. But they’re scared. He’s specially miserable, because he feels he’s kinda failed her, his pretty little wife, couldn’t make a go of it here so he’s taking her away from all she’s ever known and loved. Oh, he feels bad about that! He doesn’t like the company much either — all those noisy revellers in the back of the painting, see? They’re not his class at all, so he knows the journey won’t be easy. And there’ll be problems over food too — see the cabbages they’ve got tied to the side of the ropes there, on the rail? That’s how it was. Fresh food at sea was a real worry. By the time they arrive in New York they’ll be a lot sadder than they are now.’ She shook her head in warm sympathy. ‘And then the saddest thing of all. See their hands?’

  Bridget peered and so did George. The man was holding his wife’s gloved right hand in his, protective and caring. The cold had made his own bare fingers a little blue, but at least she was warm, and George said, ‘You’re right, Ma. It does tell a story, doesn’t it? I wonder why he had no gloves? Too poor, maybe?’

  ‘Oh, that — maybe.’ Vanny dismissed glovelessness with an impatient shake of her head. ‘No, it’s her other hand I mean. See?’

  The woman’s other hand was just visible in the folds of her thick cloak. George frowned in puzzlement and started to speak. ‘She has no glove on that hand, has she? Maybe it’s in her pocket or —’

  But it was Bridget who spotted what Vanny wanted her to see, and Vanny crowed with delight as she said so.

  ‘Oh, look! She has a baby’s hand there!’

  George bent and peered too and there it was; peeping above the closed fingers of the woman were four much smaller fingers.

  ‘Oh, that is so sweet!’ Bridget cried. ‘She has her baby there. Under her cloak to keep him safe from the cold. Oh, those poor dears! How long would they be at sea?’

  ‘About three or four weeks, I think,’ Vanny said. ‘Maybe longer. Looking at the ropes in the background it’s clear it’s a sailing ship, isn’t it? Not a fast steamship. I’m not sure when the first steamship took immigrants, but at this time anyway, poor people had to rely on the winds. It could take a long time, and them with a baby too, probably getting sea sick if nothing worse —’

  ‘They’d have needed more than a couple of Valium to keep it quiet on board,’ Bridget chuckled. ‘I keep praying there’re no babies on the plane day after tomorrow. I’m fresh out of pills and —’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ George said loudly. ‘Oh, my giddy God!’

  The two old ladies turned and looked at her in unison, staring anxiously. George would have laughed at the comical effect of their synchrony if she hadn’t been so transfixed.

  ‘What is it, honey?’ Vanny said. ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘Sick? Oh, Ma, I’m not sick or anything like it! You’ve just solved the case that I’ve been working on all these weeks, that’s all! Of course that was how they did it! And getting them shouldn’t be all that difficult, now we know what to look for!’

  ‘No, dear,’ Vanny said peaceably and looked swiftly at Bridget. ‘If you say so. Um, how about a little cup of tea? I guess maybe you are a bit tired after all.’

  ‘They told me you were here having supper,’ George said, sliding in beside him and reaching for a chip from his plate. ‘Nice to be some people.’

  ‘This is the first proper meal I’ve had for days,’ he growled. ‘Kitty! Fetch the doctor some grub, will you?’ Kitty looked up from the other side of the restaurant, waved and flashed a grin at George. ‘So, what’s so urgent? I did get your message and tried to call but I don’t have to tell you you weren’t available. Found out who done it, hmm? Went to Maternity and got someone to confess, have you?’

  ‘No.’ She refused to be baited. ‘I decided that wouldn’t work. Too many people marching in and out all the time. There’s hardly a department that doesn’t overlap with them. You might as well try and sort out alibis for everyone who walks in here in the next week.’

  ‘Hmmph,’ he nodded. ‘I supposed that was likely. Well, we’ll have to get our heads down even harder, won’t we? We’re looking for the friend Sylvia said put her in touch with the scam in the first place. Not much joy there yet, but the robbery’s all sorted, at least. They got them in Manchester, as sweet a collar as you ever heard. I’ve got the paperwork sewn up and we’re clear. Tomorrow we can bring back all the people I’ve had working on the robbery to the murder room and we’ll see if we can crack this little bugger, however long it takes.’

  ‘It mightn’t take as long as you think,’ George said with elaborate casualness. ‘Seeing I know how it was done.’

  ‘Eh?’ Gus stared at her with gratifying surprise, but she only smiled at him and leaned back in her chair as Kitty arrived to put a piece of plaice and some chips in front of her.

  ‘Thanks, Kitty. That looks lovely. A glass of water, too, please? Bless you.’

  Kitty showed a decided tendency to linger and chat but Gus glared at her so she made a face and went to fetch the water. Gus demanded, ‘What does that mean, then?’

  ‘I’ve worked out how the scam was operated.’ She leaned forward, unable to hide her glee any longer. ‘I can see the whole story. Just you listen and see if you don’t agree. No interruptions, now!’

  She speared some chips and began to eat, talking with her mouth full. Gus pushed his own plate aside and propped his chin on his fists to listen.

  ‘OK, I am a person — I’m not sure what sort of person — but a person who has access to people who want babies. At this stage I have to say I’m not sure how that access was obtained, but I have a strong suspicion. I’ll be working on that. Let’s just say for argument’s sake now that I am that person.

  ‘Right. I realize that a lot of money can be made by satisfying the wishes of these people who want babies. So I think about how to do it and I find out that there are a whole bunch of babies without parents in a foreign country. White babies, though some of them are dark haired and dark eyed, being of Gypsy origin, but the sort of babies the potential customers want. How to get them, however, from the country where they are, which is of course Romania — all that publicity about Romanian orphans a couple of years back, remember — how do I get them from Romania to the UK?’

  ‘I suppose —’ Gus began but she shook her head at him.

  ‘No, not a word till I’ve done. I know, as this person, that you can’t just go and select babies and take them to the airport and say to the officials there, “Oh, I’m just taking these babies to England!” You have to have them documented. Passports and so forth.

  ‘So, since there is no way I can get them on to passports — not every one of them and it’s my intention to bring in one hell of a lot — I need to smuggle them out of Romania into Britain. How? You can’t do it by packing them into cases or hiding them in luggage, can you? Babies breathe and move and cry. You can’t carry them through in hand luggage on account of all that has to go through security and is checked by X-rays. No good at all.

  ‘So …’ She stopped, triumphant. ‘So, I decide to carry them the way mothers carry babies before they’re born.’

  He laughed at that. ‘Reverse birth, eh?’

  ‘As near as dammit. From time immemorial, to quote the cliché, mothers have bound their babies to their bodies and carri
ed them that way. Look at this.’

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out the postcard she’d bought at the souvenir desk at the Tate Gallery. ‘Can you see it?’

  He looked at the copy of ‘The Last of England’ and slowly a smile lifted his face. ‘I remember this. We had it in a book at school. The history master was keen on it.’

  ‘Then you know the details?’

  ‘Emigration in the 1850s,’ he said. ‘There was something else …’ He looked more closely and then smiled even more widely. ‘Of course. The baby. He used to talk about the baby.’ His voice died away and he stared and then looked at her. ‘Of course! It has to be the only way, doesn’t it? Why didn’t we think of it sooner?’

  ‘It was Vanny who made me realize. And Bridget who put the lid on it,’ she said and told him of her time at the Tate that day and he laughed.

  ‘That’s my dear old ladies! Going day after tomorrow, are they? Pity. You’ll miss ‘em.’ His eyes glinted then. ‘I won’t quite so much, as long as I can go on visiting your place to see where they were — being sentimental, like.’

  ‘If you leer again, I’ll hit you,’ George said amiably. ‘So, Gus, what do we do? Stake out the airport? Look for women wrapped in big upper garments, bigger than their faces and legs’d make you think they needed? Because I can’t see the scam stopping, can you? Why should it? Not when there’s money to be made.’

  ‘I’d already decided the airport was significant, of course. I’ve got men crawling round there, but I think we can be a bit more specific. We need to be sure these children are being brought in from Romania.’

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ she said. ‘The Oberlander baby, remember.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said and nodded. ‘AIDS. Not that it doesn’t happen in other countries, of course.’

  ‘But in Romania it’s endemic among babies. Orphaned babies — or rather babies in orphanages. Not all of them actually have dead parents, of course. But yes, I think we can be certain. These babies are brought from Romania —’

  ‘So we stake out flights from there.’

  ‘Remember that they needn’t all be direct flights.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that. Don’t teach me my job. OK, we stake it out, and when we get whoever is shipping the babies in —’

  ‘That should lead us to who is behind it all,’ George ended triumphantly. ‘I don’t imagine the prime mover does the actual fetching and carrying.’

  ‘But I suspect he or she did the killing of Harry Rajabani,’ Gus said. ‘That’s obvious.’

  ‘Because Harry had worked out what was going on?’ George frowned, and then her face cleared. ‘I was about to say how, but of course. I know now who it was who — at least, I think I do.’

  ‘Who killed Harry?’

  ‘Probably. Certainly who’s behind it all,’ George said. ‘It has to be! It can’t be anyone else. For a moment I wondered about Susan Kydd — the consultant on Paediatrics. She travels to Romania often, but then I realized who it had to be.’

  ‘Is this a private conversation, or can anyone join in?’ Gus asked plaintively.

  ‘Listen, Gus, don’t interrupt!’ She was sitting bolt upright, staring at him with her eyes glittering. She was so excited she could hardly get her words out. ‘She told me herself how much she cared about those childless people. She’ll do anything for them — and she also wants money, wants it badly. To improve the service, to make herself independent of the hospital. It all makes perfect sense to me.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Gus was acerbic. ‘Let me know when you’re ready to make some sort of sense as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Julia Arundel,’ George said. ‘It has to be! She was the one who knew who the people were who’d be open to the idea of adopting. She knew which of them had money. No one knew them better than she did.’

  ‘For Gawd’s sake, you daft ‘aporth, who is she?’ Gus bawled and some of the people at adjoining tables turned to stare and snigger. Kitty, on the other side of the restaurant, called out, ‘She’s the cat’s mother!’ and giggled too.

  George dropped her voice and leaned closer. ‘Julia Arundel. The consultant in charge of the Fertility Unit. It all fits so perfectly, Gus. It has to be her. She has access to the names of people who want babies. She promises them babies, takes money from them, like she took it in advance from the Hillmans, and then she imports the babies. She gets someone to smuggle them in tucked inside a shawl or a jacket and gets them drugged so that they don’t wake up — Valium, like Bridget said, maybe. Then one day one arrives dead, and she has to be really frantic, doesn’t she? Money has changed hands and — and then she remembers the Maternity Unit just down the corridor. She takes the dead baby and swaps it for a live one and passes it on.’

  She lifted her chin then and went on softly, ‘And Gus, that means if I’m right, those bereaved parents are going to be able to get their babies back, doesn’t it? Though God knows what that’ll be like for the people who adopted them.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, all excitement and enjoyment gone. This was a horrible tangle. But she was certain she was right. She opened her eyes and went on talking, eagerly.

  ‘She does that three times — even to one of her own fertility patients, so she has to be a hard bitch, doesn’t she? And Harry, who spends a lot of time hanging around Fertility because of his girlfriend Cherry, he finds out. Gets suspicious anyway, and starts to make notes. In code. Using the Matty typewriter where he has to be so often when he sees the neonates. It all fits. He probably got the idea from accidentally shifting the key on the typewriter. People are always making mistakes with keyboards — I’ve had some awful tangles in my own department because of computer errors caused like that. There was a great fuss over some blood sugars for the Diabetic Clinic. Anyway, Harry gets this information, and Julia Arundel realizes he knows. Maybe he confronted her? Who can say? And she kills him — runs over him. What car she used and where it is we can’t know, but maybe if you hunt around for her car in particular, you might get a surprise.’

  ‘I’ll look,’ he said tersely. ‘Go on.’ He hadn’t taken his eyes from her face all through her recital.

  ‘She dresses in anonymous clothes to do it. Woolly hat, jeans, trainers — so they thought she was a guy, the people at the Rag and Bottle.’ George wrinkled her nose in concentration. ‘Yeah, that was it. They just assumed it was a man, but it was Julia Arundel. And then she gets a frantic message from one of her clients. The baby she gave them is sick — very sick. She knows she’ll have to see him, and arranges for him to be brought here to Old East. Was she planning to kidnap the baby that night and get rid of him? Who can say? Anyway, she couldn’t for some reason. But she did manage to get her hands on him later with that tale about seeing the Harley Street consultant. And she killed him because she was afraid what would happen if he was investigated and searches made for the origin of his illness. You can see it all, can’t you? Christ, she must be the hardest of women — can you imagine behaving so —’

  ‘We can’t be sure,’ Gus said. ‘It’s a seductive theory, but there’s still your Dr Kydd idea, mind you. But this one’s good too.’ He looked at her with his head on one side. ‘OK, Detective Barnabas. What next?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve obviously taken my job off my hands. So tell me what to do next.’

  She reddened. ‘Stop that damnfool nonsense, Gus Hathaway. If the idea stands up, you know perfectly well what happens next.’

  He was silent for a while, thinking, and then nodded. ‘It stands up,’ he said. ‘OK. This is no time for me to get the hump over you being so bleedin’ clever. Well done. You’re a real smart cookie, ain’t that the phrase? Ta for your help.’ He smiled at her a little crookedly. ‘You’re good for a fella’s self-esteem, and I don’t think! But I’ll get over it. Right, we get a picture of Julia Arundel and show the Hillmans. We stake out the flights from Bucharest. We look in the register at Swansea for a car registered to Arundel and see if
we can track it that way and check it for evidence of Harry’s murder — though it’s getting unlikely after all this time that there’ll be any traces left. And then — then we see what we have in the way of firm evidence. Because all this is just guesswork, hmm? Good guesswork, but not a shred of proof.’ And he looked a little happier as he said it.

  36

  ‘I’ll try to come in the fall, Ma,’ George said. ‘I’ll be due for a few weeks’ holiday by then and I’ll be able to stay a while. It won’t seem so long, you’ll see.’

  ‘Of course it won’t,’ Vanny echoed. ‘Not long at all.’ But it was clear she didn’t believe it.

  Bridget, with elephantine tact, had gone wandering off round the shops, leaving them to share a last cup of coffee, and George sat close to her mother looking at her as though she wouldn’t ever see her again. It was absurd, she told herself deep inside, to be so melancholy; there was nothing new about the situation, after all. She’d left the States over ten years ago, and had visited back and forth a few times (though this was her mother’s first trip to Europe to see her), and never before when they’d parted had she had this keen sense of loss hovering over her. Yet this time she did. She studied her mother’s face, the fine lines outlining the eyes, the faint rim of pallor round the irises, the papery cheeks, wondering whether she’d ever see them again, and felt a childish desire to weep. But she controlled it by pushing her attention sideways, making herself aware of the bustle of the coffee shop, the anxious people with their piles of luggage and the noise of the announcer’s voice calling messages for lost passengers and details of flights.

  ‘Don’t you fret about me, George,’ Vanny said unexpectedly, reaching up and touching George’s cheek. ‘I know I’ve been a bit vague and I know Bridget thinks I may be sick. I thought I was, too. But what the hell! You’ve got to think positive, right? So I do. Maybe I am getting a bit worn out here and there, but that’s the way of things. It always has been. Take a look at Hamlet again some time — Act One Scene II, lines seventy-two to seventy-three, as I recall. Gertrude’s speech to her son.’