Dead Man's Daughter

by Roz Watkins

  My phone rang. Jai. I pressed the button to answer hands-free.

  ‘Where the hell are you? Richard’s on the war path. What’s this China connection about?’

  ‘Oh God, I’ll talk to Richard some other time. Look, we think we might be on to something here.’ I slowed the car so I could concentrate. ‘You know Phil Thornton had a heart transplant in China? It looks like he might have had a heart from someone who’d been murdered. Deliberately for their organs, I mean.’

  Jai sounded pissed off. ‘What are you on about, Meg?’

  ‘It’s rumoured that they use the organs of prisoners-of-conscience. Falun Gong practitioners.’

  ‘One of the charities in Phil’s will was something to do with that. Falun Gong. He gave them quite a chunk of money.’

  ‘This is it.’ My mind suddenly felt sparkly and clear. ‘Did you check if Dr Li had had any contact with Harry Gibson?’

  I could hear Jai breathing down the phone. ‘I found out she was his supervisor.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘I don’t have many details but his practice manager checked on their system and he had periodic meetings with her, and joined in webinars. Why didn’t she tell us she knew him? And Richard said she’d emailed him her updated CV just as the whole Abbie thing was kicking off. That’s why she came to mind when we needed a consultant.’

  My heart was racing. ‘Bloody hell, she put herself forward deliberately. Why didn’t Richard say?’

  ‘I suppose he had no reason to question her motives. But why didn’t you tell me you were looking into the China connection? I’ve checked and Dr Li and her son did live in China for a few months. It looks like she had a daughter too. Why didn’t you tell me you’d gone dashing off looking into something to do with China?’

  An icy feeling under my ribs. I remembered the photo in Dr Li’s office. Tom and a girl with the same eyes. ‘Where’s the daughter?’

  ‘There are no recent records of her.’

  ‘Oh God.’ What the hell had happened to the daughter? ‘So Dr Li could have had access to Abbie’s notes. Have we heard back about the identity of Abbie’s heart donor? I’m sure now it’s not Scarlett.’

  ‘They’re really funny about giving the information out. You have to jump through so many hoops.’

  I pictured the scanned letter in Harry Gibson’s file. From Great Ormond Street Hospital. Why hadn’t I questioned that at the time? It had looked so official, but would have been easy to fake, especially for someone who worked in the medical profession. It now seemed obvious that they wouldn’t just give that information to a psychiatrist. I spoke quietly. ‘Scarlett Norwood wasn’t Abbie’s donor.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What if Dr Li’s daughter was involved in this supposed organ harvesting – and she died? Then Dr Li realised Phil Thornton had got his heart from China. Could she have done all this?’

  ‘I don’t – ’

  ‘And it’s getting people thinking about where organs come from. It’s already in the papers – talking about transplant tourism, saying people aren’t going to want hearts of convicted murderers. Maybe that’s what she wanted as well as revenge. She could have even tipped off the papers. I’ve been wondering how it got out. And it was her that really convinced us that Abbie could be having memories from her donor. She did it very subtly, but she made the point.’

  ‘Are you saying she killed Harry Gibson?’

  ‘She could have done. He would have trusted her if she called round to support him after the paedophile allegations. She probably knew what tranquillisers he was on. And she’s strong. I remember her pushing her son through the snow after he tried to commit suicide. And she would have known Abbie was on Sombunol. She’s a doctor, so she could have easily found the carotid artery on Phil Thornton.’

  ‘But Abbie Thornton’s at Dr Li’s now,’ Jai said. ‘She’s gone for a session to see if she’s up to being hypnotised again.’

  ‘Christ, Jai, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I’ll get over to Dr Li’s clinic,’ Jai said. ‘But it’ll take me a while from here.’

  I pictured Mum waiting with Gran for me to come over. She’d be pissed off with me, but Abbie could be in danger.

  ‘Okay, Jai,’ I said. ‘Take back-up. We’re in Eldercliffe. We’ll go to the clinic now and check Abbie’s okay. If there’s any problem, we’ll wait for back-up.’

  *

  I skidded into the health centre’s car park, nearly crashing into a black car that was leaving at high speed.

  A woman came charging towards us, slipping in the slush. Rachel, wild-haired and frantic. ‘She’s taken her! Dr Li’s taken Abbie!’

  Fiona and I jumped out of our car. Rachel grabbed Fiona’s arm. ‘Come on. We need to follow them.’

  I glanced behind me at the black car, which was now disappearing round a corner in the lane. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was in the waiting room . . . ’ Rachel spoke in gasping bursts. ‘Dr Li saw Abbie on her own. Oh God, why did I let her? Abbie started screaming . . . She took her out the back. We need to follow them! She’s taken her in the car.’

  My phone rang. I picked up, whilst following Rachel across the car park at a run.

  It was Mum. ‘Meg! It’s your gran!’

  ‘What?’ I lurched to a stop, put my hand over the phone, and shouted to Fiona. ‘You go with Rachel. Follow Dr Li. But call for back-up!’

  I watched Rachel’s car accelerate out of the car park. ‘Mum. What did you say?’

  ‘I took her to the shop. She wanted to go. She only has a few more days. How could I say No? I went inside . . . ’ I was losing signal. ‘ . . . she’d gone . . . ’

  My knees felt weak as the poisonous guilt flushed through me. Was she saying Gran had disappeared?

  I glanced down at my phone. The signal had dropped out. No bars. We were in the shadow of the rock that loomed over the clinic.

  There were lights on in the far end of the clinic, the opposite side to where we’d seen Dr Li. They’d have a landline I could use. The main entrance door was locked, so I ran down to the lit end to see if there was another way in. I pushed against what looked like a fire door.

  The door swung open, pulling me off balance.

  Someone grabbed me and dragged me forwards. Something sharp stabbed into my arm. A voice. ‘You will keep interfering.’ Then nothing.

  32.

  Where was I? I opened my eyes but couldn’t see. My brain wouldn’t work. How long had I been unconscious?

  I was on my front. On some kind of padded trolley, my face pressing into cold plastic. The smell of antiseptic. I opened my eyes wider and twisted my head around, straining to see into the darkness. My heart thudded in my ears.

  I couldn’t move. Something held my wrists and ankles. Straps like leather. I tried to wrench my hands free but they were held down tightly.

  Panic swelled inside me. I kicked my legs but they were held fast. I kicked harder but nothing shifted.

  I yelled, ‘Hello? Help!’

  My clothes were gone and I was wearing a hospital gown, the type that fastened at the back.

  A square of light to my side. A door must have opened. Someone was silhouetted against it. A light flicked on and the door shushed to a close.

  The gentle noise of a wheelchair rolling towards me.

  My breath tore my throat. I shouted. ‘Tom! What the hell’s going on?’

  He was close now, so close I could have touched him if I hadn’t been restrained.

  His voice was smooth like oil. ‘If you’d only left me alone, everything would have been fine.’

  I fought against the restraints. ‘What do you mean? What are you doing?’ My voice bounced from the walls.

  ‘You’ll soon find out,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  I thrashed from side to side, stupidly pulling against the restraints, rubbing my skin raw.

  Tom stood and walked around me, leaving his wheelchair behind.

  He stood. He w
alked.

  Was I hallucinating? ‘What . . . ’ I whispered.

  And then it began to click into place. ‘Oh God.’ I twisted my head to see him, squashing my face into the surface of the trolley. ‘You’re one of those people. You’re not paralysed.’

  ‘Soon I will be. I don’t have to wait much longer.’

  ‘You want to be paralysed?’ My brain wouldn’t accept this. How was it possible? That my worst fear could be his dream? My mind whirred, trying to make sense of it all. I was so helpless lying on my front, only able to move my head. I tensed my back muscles and pulled upwards, but only succeeded in wrenching my shoulders.

  ‘You messed it all up, didn’t you? You had to come along, all pally with my mother, and rescue me.’ He looked straight into my eyes. ‘You stupid bitch.’

  He switched on another light. We were in a large, spotless white room. My eyes were drawn to the brightly illuminated, shelved wall a few feet from me. Arranged neatly, glistening in the light, were surgical instruments. Something solid welled up in my throat. ‘I’m going to be sick. Tom. I need to be sick.’

  He glanced round. ‘Go ahead.’

  I gasped for breath and fought to control myself. I let out a sob. But I wasn’t sick.

  ‘And it could have worked, jumping there. The height was perfect and I knew how to jump and what position to land in, if you people hadn’t been there getting in the way. I wasn’t trying to kill myself. Only to break my back. My mother knew.’

  I blinked back helpless tears.

  ‘She still doesn’t understand. She was always trying to cure me. Taking me to China to see crazy, alternative therapists; getting me involved with the Falun Gong – I suspect you know how that worked out for us. And sending me to Harry Gibson, as if that would help. Why do you people care? It’s my life, my spine, my legs. If you’d all left me alone, none of this would have been necessary.’

  My gaze slipped over the shining instruments. My voice croaked in my dry throat. ‘What do you want from me?’

  He looked straight at me. ‘I’m going to operate on myself. I’ve realised it’s the only reliable way. But it’s difficult to do. I’ll have to come in from behind like for an epidural, and sever the spinal nerves. I need to practise first on another person, to get the feel of it.’

  I felt bile rising again in my throat as his words rearranged themselves in my mind. ‘What do you mean? You can’t practise on me! Let me go!’ I pulled at my arm restraints, desperation making me drag skin from my wrists and ankles. ‘They’ll send someone for me. They’re expecting me back.’

  He walked closer and stood over me. His voice was cold and emotionless. ‘That probably would have been the case. That nice colleague of yours – he’d have realised you were still here. But unfortunately I drove your car, including your bag and your phone, to your mother’s house. They’ll think you went over there because of your poor grandmother going missing. There was no room to park outside. All those pesky police vans. So it’s down the road. They’ll probably wonder if you were taken by the people who took your grandmother. It certainly couldn’t be me, could it? A poor disabled man.’

  I let out a tiny whimper. ‘How did you know . . . ’

  ‘It’s so easy to hitch when you’re in a wheelchair. A very polite gentleman gave me a lift back here. He was worried my chair wouldn’t fit in the car, but if you take the footplates off, it’s fine. And of course I’m unusually good at getting myself from the chair into the front seat.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ I was entering a kind of alternative state. As if my brain was shutting down. I’d never been scared of dying. But to be paralysed . . . I wanted to pass out.

  ‘I know they’ll want me to go to the police station,’ Tom said. ‘But it might not prove possible. You see, I’m leaving the country soon. I’d prefer not to go to an English prison if I can avoid it. So I have plans in place. I won’t be doing my own operation here, but I really would like to do this practice run. To get the feel of it.’

  I looked at his blank, dark eyes. ‘Was it you? Did you kill Phil Thornton and Harry Gibson, and attack Rachel Thornton?’

  ‘They deserved it,’ he snapped. ‘If your sister had been butchered and her organs removed while she was still alive, you’d feel the same way.’

  I let my head flop forwards. I’d been right. This had all started with Phil’s heart transplant. In China.

  I had to keep control of myself. There must be a way out of this.

  Maybe if I could express sympathy. Get him talking. The longer someone talked to you, and the more they told you about their life, the less likely they were to slice you up. Useful fact. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I probably would.’

  ‘Phil Thornton didn’t care. He didn’t even feel guilty that they treated us like animals.’

  ‘But . . . ’ I couldn’t think properly, tied to this cold table, scalpels glinting next to me. I needed to keep him talking to me. Ask him questions. Act almost as if I admired what he’d done. ‘How did you know he went to China?’

  Tom flicked his head in a dismissive gesture. ‘My mother got me to set up the computer when she did Harry Gibson’s online supervisions. I heard about Abbie’s dreams. I don’t know why my mother didn’t realise. But she didn’t. Then it was simple enough to find Thornton and get the truth out of him.’

  ‘Was Phil Thornton given your sister’s heart?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Tom’s upper lip twitched and those almond eyes narrowed. ‘Some other rich Westerner will have got her organs. But it might as well have been him. My sister wouldn’t have died if it wasn’t for people like Phil Thornton. And he wasn’t even decent enough to help me try to stop it.’

  ‘You asked him to help you?’

  ‘All I wanted was for him to tell his story honestly, so I could publicise what’s going on. But he wouldn’t do it. Too worried his wife would find out what a monster he was. That’s when I knew he had to die. And they thought their daughter was remembering her donor’s death – it was too good an opportunity to miss. He did help me in the end, without meaning to, of course. I met him a couple of times. Suggested he encourage his wife to think their daughter had memories from her donor. He even said he’d heard her screaming she was being drowned. He thought it would cover up the truth about what he’d done, of course. If everyone thought it was the donor child’s father who was the murderer, it would stop them asking questions about him. Oh I loved that – the way he helped me set it all up to kill him.’

  ‘It’s terrible about your sister,’ I said. ‘I agree with you. I’ll help you . . . Help you tell people about this. It has to stop. You planned all this so well – imagine what we could do if I helped you. I could start petitions. I have lots of friends and contacts. Please, Tom.’ I could feel myself moving towards complete, abject, grovelling desperation. ‘Don’t make yourself as bad as them. Let me help you tackle it.’

  He spat on the floor. ‘People don’t want to hear about transplant tourism. Nothing ever changes. But if people think hearts can bring feelings with them? Then they’ll think twice about having one from someone who’s been murdered, won’t they?’

  ‘You won’t get away with it.’ I fought to control my breathing, my face twisted over the smooth plastic. ‘They’ll find you. You know you won’t get away with it.’

  I was struggling to keep myself from becoming hysterical. I told myself it must be a dream. Things like this didn’t happen in real life. I’d play along and soon I’d wake up, soaked in sweat and tangled in the sheets.

  ‘That’s why I had to do it this way,’ Tom said. ‘It’s already making people think. It’s in the papers and people are blogging. I did have to give the press a little steer, and write a couple of scientific papers to refer to. I quite enjoyed making that one up about new immunosuppressant drugs allowing hearts to take their feelings with them. Luckily nobody checks their sources these days, including my mother.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘Suddenly people are asking where the organs come from. Now it migh
t affect them. People are selfish like that.’

  ‘But Harry Gibson?’ I said. ‘What had he done wrong?’

  ‘I needed access to his notes. And I couldn’t have him saying that Abbie didn’t really mention Ben and Buddy, could I? He was easy. Delighted to let me in and drown his sorrows with me, when I said I’d found out something about the people who spread those rumours. I was the technical one, of course. He knew that. I’d helped him log in to my mother’s webinars. And who’d turn away a man in a wheelchair? And of course I wear gloves – I have to wheel my chair. Nobody’s going to challenge that.’

  Poor Harry. Like all of us, he’d looked at Tom and seen someone harmless, vulnerable even. And it had all been an act. ‘So Gibson wasn’t a paedophile?’

  ‘I didn’t put real pornography on his laptop.’ Tom’s tone was defensive. ‘I wouldn’t have accessed those websites and encouraged the abuse of children. I’m not a monster.’

  I could have almost laughed, if I hadn’t been about to be butchered. The minds of murderers – they never thought they were monsters. It didn’t matter what they’d done – they’d always find a way of justifying it.

  ‘And Rachel Thornton didn’t care,’ Tom said. ‘Phil told me. He said Abbie was getting worse and he couldn’t carry on the pretence that it was all coming from her heart. He tried to pay me off. Idiot. Then he said he’d told his wife what he did in China and she wasn’t bothered.’ A hint of doubt crept into his voice. ‘She said it wasn’t their problem. So she deserved to die. I should have hit her harder with that rock.’

  Tom must have been the angry man who visited Phil’s work. The reason for Phil getting out twenty thousand from his account. It hadn’t gone to Karen. I didn’t tell Tom that Phil Thornton had been lying about Rachel knowing. I didn’t want to aggravate him.

  ‘And that child,’ he said. ‘Abbie. She killed her own step-sister. She told Harry Gibson. She’d overheard her parents talking. She knew someone had died for her father, and she wanted a new heart, so she thought someone had to die. She deserves to be locked up.’

  I felt a wave of despair. He could twist anything round to his own agenda. If he wanted to practise his operation by severing my spine, he’d find a way to convince himself it was justified.