by Roz Watkins
‘I want someone to look into the animal welfare in that lab, as well as what Michael Ellis got up to with shorting shares.’ But in the back of my mind, I was mulling over the first newspaper headline he’d shown me. Recipients take on the pain of their donors. Will this end transplant tourism? This tied in with something I’d been thinking. Phil Thornton went to China for his transplant. And something had happened in the past that he felt he should do penance for. Something that made somebody call him a murderer. My mind was chugging away while I explained what Andrew Bond had said.
‘Oh my God.’ Fiona touched her mouth. ‘The whole mice heart theory was based on a mistake because a technician faked the records.’
‘So Andrew Bond says. Of course he may not be telling the truth. He’s terrified of people blaming his drug.’
‘Do you think Michael Ellis believed what he told us?’
‘I’m not sure. But it all started with Ellis – the idea that Abbie was remembering the donor child’s death. Yes, Abbie was having nightmares, dreaming about her father, but no one thought she was remembering the donor’s death until Michael Ellis came along.’
‘Could Michael Ellis be the killer then?’ Fiona said. ‘He was on the verge of bankruptcy, you know. And he shorted those shares.’
‘He didn’t need to kill anyone though. Surely.’
‘No one would have listened to him. Now they’re all over it, but only because of Abbie. If she hadn’t killed her dad, everyone would have just thought he was a loon.’
‘And he wants to bring their company down.’
‘But, when you met him on that moor . . . ’
‘I know. I let him go. But what about Rachel being hit with the rock?’
‘Maybe she knew too much? Or he realised she’d keep digging about Abbie until she found out the truth? Without her, who’d be working to get Abbie cleared?’
‘Okay, I suppose so. Obviously we need to look into him properly. I’ll have to come clean about my meeting on the moor. I’m going to be in the crap over that. I’ll ask Jai to look at him. But there’s something else I’ve been thinking about.’
‘Yes?’
‘You went to the Yulin dog meat demo in London last June, didn’t you? Do you remember?’
‘How could I forget? Surrounded by horrendous pictures of tortured animals.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I remember how annoyed Richard was, too.’
‘Never mind that. Do you remember opposite the Chinese Embassy, the people who were sitting there, in protest?’
‘Vaguely. Hadn’t they been there since 2002 or something unbelievable like that? Weren’t they a type of Buddhists? Being persecuted by the Chinese Government. Locked up for their beliefs?’
‘You know what I remember? They claimed they were being killed for their organs. I could hardly believe it at the time. I was going to check it out, but I got so overwhelmed with the tortured cats and dogs, I never did. And it seemed so unbelievable. I mean, surely even in China, they couldn’t imprison you and then kill you for your organs.’
‘The rest of the world wouldn’t let them do that, would they?’
I gave a hollow laugh. ‘I think we both know the truth there.’
‘Right.’ Fiona gave me an uncomfortable look. ‘Phil Thornton had his transplant in China.’
‘We’ve been so busy concentrating on Abbie’s heart,’ I said. ‘We never thought about his. Maybe it wasn’t about the donor child at all. Did you find anyone who knew his first wife?’
‘I’ve tracked down a friend. They were close around the time Phil and Laura split up. She said we can go and see her.’
30.
Caroline Shepherd, the friend of Phil’s ex-wife, lived in one of the tiny cottages that clustered on the hillside above Eldercliffe, leading up to the rim of the quarry. We had to park far below and wind our way on foot up a slushy alley.
‘How do they do their shopping?’ Fiona puffed.
I could hardly breathe. ‘What about when they need a fridge delivered?’ I paused a moment and peered over the steep drop to my left. The roofs were spread below, smoke drifting from chimneys. I gave a moment of thanks for the fact that I felt okay about heights again. ‘I could imagine buying a house here because I fell in love with it and only thinking about these things after I ordered my washing machine.’
Fiona laughed. ‘Me too.’
I wondered if we could be friends, or if it was too complicated, with me in the boss role. I wasn’t a natural in the boss role at the best of times.
‘I think it’s that one.’ Fiona pointed at a little stone terraced cottage that huddled between two larger cottages like a young kid standing between older siblings. ‘They’re not even allowed to paint the woodwork in tasteless colours here,’ she said. ‘You get reported to the Heritage Committee.’
‘Sounds terrifying. Any minute we’ll get moved on for being unsightly.’ I glanced at Fiona. ‘Or at least I will. I need to keep an eye on the time, by the way. I’m helping Mum take Gran out at four.’
We knocked on the French-grey door, and it was flung open by a woman with long hair, in a long skirt and a long, chunky jumper. There was nothing short in sight. We showed her our ID.
‘Oh, yes, I’m Caroline. You’d better come in.’ She shuffled back and beckoned us into a small living room, enthusiastically decorated with wall-hangings and throws. This woman had been to India and nobody was going to escape the house without knowing it. With a wood-burner in the corner, and a thick rug on the oak-plank floor, it was cosy enough to make me fancy a snooze.
‘Sit down.’ She waved her arm at an extensively cushioned sofa. ‘Herbal tea?’
‘Do you have any normal tea? Or coffee perhaps?’ No points for rapport-building but I couldn’t face a chamomile concoction, and I felt the need for caffeine.
Caroline gave me a disappointed look and took herself off into the kitchen. Fiona and I sat wedged together on the tiny sofa, hemmed in by cushions.
Caroline reappeared with tea. No biscuits here. She settled herself on a chair opposite us and looked concerned. ‘You want to talk about Laura?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know it’s a while ago, but we’re looking into the death of her ex-husband, Phil Thornton.’
Caroline’s face hardened. ‘I heard someone killed him. He probably deserved it.’
This was odd. She was the first person who hadn’t said he was a nice, ordinary guy. I sat forward, feeling the throw pull under me. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘No morals.’
‘Can you be more specific?’
Fiona took notes, poking me with her sharp elbow.
‘You know he had a heart transplant?’
My pulse quickened. We were onto something here. I nodded.
‘They split up over it in the end.’ Caroline narrowed her lips. ‘We were good people. We marched against the poll tax, demonstrated outside animal testing labs, shouted for Grants not Loans.’ She shook her head. ‘That seems a long time ago now. The way the world’s gone in the last few years, the idea of a student grant seems rather quaint. Anyway, I thought Laura had married someone like us. He was a social worker, for goodness’ sake, even though his parents were bankers or something hideous. I suppose you don’t know someone till they’re up against it, do you?’
‘What happened?’
‘He needed a heart transplant. But the waiting list was long. Lots of people die waiting. Phil didn’t want to die waiting. He had a baby on the way.’
‘It was when Laura was pregnant with Abbie?’
‘Yes. And he heard there was a way round the wait. He had a friend who lived in Taiwan, who told him about it. I think it was a well-known thing there – that you could go to China and get a transplant within weeks, blood type and tissue matched.’
I felt Fiona squirming beside me. We’d both been hoping it wasn’t true; that it was propaganda invented by a religious sect.
‘So, Phil looked into going to China?’
‘Yes. And I mean, at first Laur
a was excited. It seemed like a brilliant solution. It was spectacularly expensive, but they decided it was worth it. You probably know – Phil had inherited money from the banker parents. And I took it at face value at first. I didn’t think it through. This was ten years ago – you didn’t automatically google everything the way we do now. But Laura was the sort to research things. It was more the safety for Phil she was thinking about at first. So, she started wondering, where are all these organs coming from? I mean, for any specific donor there’s only a few percent chance they’ll match you. So, to go over there and get a donor within a week or two, you have to wonder how they’re doing that, when it takes years in the UK. And China didn’t even have an organ donor register. I mean, with no donor register, where the hell were the hearts coming from?’
With a sinking feeling, I asked, ‘What did she find out?’
‘The hospital in China admitted the organs came from executed prisoners. Not great, but Laura convinced herself they were murderers so it wasn’t so bad. The numbers still didn’t add up if you thought about it – there weren’t enough genuine criminals. But Phil was keen. He didn’t want to know where the heart came from – he just wanted it for himself. He got angry with Laura for even doing the research. It was really upsetting.’ Caroline put her mug on a coffee table piled high with paperbacks. ‘And then she found the report. About the Falun Gong. Do you know this? Are you just here for confirmation?’
‘No, tell us,’ I said.
‘The Falun Gong are like Buddhists. They’re harmless. They do exercises and aim for detachment and spiritual enlightenment – that kind of thing. But the Chinese government took against them, probably because they thought they were becoming too influential. They started arresting them and locking them up. Trying to get them to renounce their views. I’m guessing you’ve worked out what this has to do with Phil Thornton’s heart transplant.’
‘We have some suspicions.’
‘Laura couldn’t believe it at first, but the numbers the Chinese were giving didn’t make sense, so she knew something was wrong. She managed to call the medical centre where Phil was going to have the transplant. And she pretended they were worried about the quality of the heart he’d receive. Good heart, the centre told her. Healthy heart. They were selling it to her. It was appalling. Laura had her suspicions about where that heart might have come from. They’re sought-after, you see, because the Falun Gong live a healthy lifestyle – don’t smoke, don’t drink – and they die healthy, because they’re executed.’
‘Oh my God,’ I said.
I glanced at my watch. It was nearly four. I should have been at Mum’s to help her take Gran out. I needed to wrap this up and get over there.
‘Laura was absolutely horrified,’ Caroline said, ‘and she told Phil. And he got really angry. He said he didn’t want to know. He said it’s like when you eat meat, you don’t want to know about the shit life the animal had. You block it off.’ She paused. ‘I don’t agree with that approach either, as it happens, but I’m prepared to acknowledge that it’s how most people operate.’
‘You’re probably right,’ I said.
Caroline reached for her mug and cradled it in both hands. ‘But I do think most people would draw the line at stealing someone else’s heart, even if they were dying. I like to think that.’
Fiona’s voice was quiet. ‘Me too.’
‘So,’ I said. ‘Phil wanted to go to China to get a heart, even though he knew there was a possibility an innocent prisoner- of-conscience would be killed for it?’
‘Yes. I think he used the leather-wearing vegetarian’s argument.’
I glanced at my leather boots. ‘They were going to kill the person anyway.’
‘Yes. But having looked into it some more, I don’t even think that’s true. They didn’t kill all of them by any means. Maybe they took blood samples and picked the ones who were compatible with the people needing organs.’
‘It’s almost unbelievable,’ I said.
‘I couldn’t get my head round it at first. But when Laura did so much research . . . well, there was a lot of evidence.’
‘Did Phil go ahead then, even though Laura was against it?’
‘Yes. In the end he just did it. Laura didn’t want to lose Phil and she wanted Abbie to have a father, so she accepted it. Well, no, she didn’t accept it, but she didn’t leave him.’
‘Okay, so then what happened?’
‘After he got back, they didn’t talk about it. It was a non-subject, even though he was having nightmares about it when Abbie was small. But then when Abbie was four, they had her tested for Phil’s condition. It’s hereditary, you see. And she had it, but she started having symptoms much earlier than Phil. She was going to need a transplant. And then it all kicked off again. Phil said they should take her to China if they could get one there. Laura went ballistic over that – thinking he’d let another child be killed to save his daughter. I mean, I have no idea if they do kill children. But just the fact that Phil would ever consider it . . . ’
‘Do you think Abbie could have overheard these arguments?’
‘Yes. You know what it’s like with parents. They always try to keep it away from the kids but when people get angry, they get careless. Laura admitted to me she’d got so angry with Phil, she’d screamed at him that he was a murderer. She knew Abbie must have heard, because Abbie said something to her – something like Why is Daddy a murderer? Laura was really upset about it.’
I exchanged a glance with Fiona. ‘And she could have overheard them talking about a child being killed to give her a new heart?’
‘Yes, she could. And Laura used to go on about how the donors were still alive, some of them weren’t even given a proper anaesthetic. It’s horrific. Abbie could have heard that. Why are you asking this? Is it something to do with Phil’s death?’
‘We’re not sure. Did they split up over this in the end?’
‘Yes. Laura couldn’t cope with Phil’s attitude any longer. They split when Abbie was five. Then Phil met Rachel really fast. She had a child too.’ Caroline put her mug back, fished a well-used tissue from her pocket, and wiped her face. ‘I’m sorry. It still upsets me.’ She spoke fast, as if trying to get it over with. ‘Laura was killed in a car crash not long after she split from Phil. They’d met up and they’d ended up arguing again about the transplant. She texted me to say how angry she was. She crashed on the way home.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘How terrible.’
‘I suppose it didn’t work out so badly for Abbie in the circumstances. She got a replacement mother and a sister about her age. And then she got a transplant in the UK anyway, so whether Phil even spoke to Rachel about taking her to China, I don’t know.’ Caroline dragged a cushion onto her knee and picked at a mirrored decoration. ‘But I believe in karma. It looks like Phil got what he deserved in the end.’
31.
We stepped out into the freezing air.
‘My head’s spinning,’ Fiona said. ‘Could that really be true? They kill people and sell their organs?’
I glanced at my watch. Four thirty. A flush of guilt. I should have been at Mum’s helping her take Gran to the shop. If we hurried over now, hopefully she’d have waited.
‘I need to get over to Mum’s,’ I said. ‘You know, after what happened last night, I don’t want her taking Gran out on her own. Shall we just nip over there together and talk on the way? It won’t take long.’
Fiona nodded and we headed down the path towards the car, stepping carefully on the frozen pathways.
‘Caroline seemed pretty convincing,’ Fiona said.
‘That’s what Phil Thornton was doing penance for.’ I clicked the car locks and we climbed in. ‘Why he did that artwork, and made the carving of the girl with her heart ripped out. Why he was obsessed with the house and the children who were sacrificed. The weak and the poor sacrificed for the strong and the rich. He knew he’d let someone be killed so he could live. The kind of person who
chose social work as a career – he’d probably have been really messed up about it.’
‘Do you think all this could have triggered Abbie’s nightmares?’ Fiona said, as I pulled onto the lane and drove in the direction of Mum’s house.
‘I don’t see why not. If she heard her mum calling her dad a murderer, and heard her parents saying that a child would have to be killed for her to get a new heart. She could have heard all sorts of awful stuff about the heart being taken out while the child was still alive. If she was only four or five, she’d have found it hard to make sense of it.’
‘And then when she did get a new heart, it could have all come flooding back.’
‘It’s common to have dreams from the perspective of the heart,’ I said. ‘Apparently it’s just the way our brains work. But if in Abbie’s mind, the heart had been torn out of a live child . . . ’
‘This could explain Abbie’s nightmares, except for the ones that named stuff to do with the donor child. If that’s not real, how did she dream it?’
‘She didn’t dream anything from the donor child, Fiona. That was made up by the killer, and added to Dr Gibson’s notes. Abbie dreamt her dad was a murderer, but I don’t think she ever dreamt about drowning, or Ben and Buddy or the spotty bloody swimming costume.’
‘You think someone killed him because of his transplant? And set up Abbie?’
‘What about someone who lost a relative in China?’
‘I don’t want to target her just because she’s Chinese,’ Fiona said. ‘But did Dr Li ever live in China?’
‘I was wondering the same,’ I said. ‘And I wonder whether she’s had any contact with Harry Gibson in the past, with them both being psychiatrists. I’ll get Jai to carry out some discreet enquiries.’ I dialled his number. He didn’t answer, so I left a message.
I called Mum and she didn’t answer either. I left a message telling her to wait for us.
We drove in silence for a while. My mind was spinning with this new information about Phil Thornton, going back over all the times I could have picked up on this.
