TWELVE
On the day of the exhumation, Dunbar was on tenterhooks. Sci-Med had enlisted the aid of Special Branch in carrying out an unofficial disinterment of the body, rather than taking the gamble of going to the courts for a high- profile official order, with all the subsequent upset that might cause. Dunbar was happy with that but was well aware that covert operations carried risks of their own should anything go wrong. One person in the wrong place at the wrong time and the fall-out could be spectacular.
Amy’s parents were out of the country on holiday — her mother was still suffering from depression some five months after Amy’s death and her father had thought some winter sunshine might help her. They had been in Tenerife for the last three days and would be away for another ten. It was this fact that had swung Sci-Med in favour of a secret operation. If everything went smoothly, Amy’s parents need never know anything about it.
The plan was to exhume Amy in the early hours of the morning, take her to a Glasgow mortuary and have a Scottish Office pathologist, appointed by Neil Bannon, carry out an autopsy under special instructions. When he was finished, he would phone his report to Dunbar. Amy would be returned to her grave before the day was over.
Everything was out of Dunbar’s hands now, but he still felt like an athlete pacing the area behind the start- line before a big race. The phone rang and he snatched it from its rest.
‘Yes?’
‘Steven, it’s Lisa. Any news?’
‘Nothing yet. They seem to be taking a hell of a time.’
‘I’ll get off the line in case they’re trying to get through.’
‘I’ll call you as soon as I hear.’
Dunbar went back to fidgeting and pacing the room. He began to wonder if there had been a breakdown in communications. Tension could make you imagine all sorts of things, especially when your perceived timescale of things was being stretched. Perhaps the result of the PM had been given directly to Sci-Med in London, the police had already been informed and they would arrive at the hospital at any moment, everyone having forgotten to tell the man on the ground what was going on. He was nursing this paranoia when the phone rang again.
‘Dr Dunbar, please.’
‘Speaking.’
‘Your authorization code, please.’
Dunbar gave it.
‘Sorry for the melodrama, but I was told to go exactly by the book on this one.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘My name’s McVay. I’ve been instructed by the Scottish Office to carry out a post-mortem on the exhumed body of one Amy Teasdale at the behest of the Sci-Med Inspectorate.’
‘Yes. I’ve been waiting for your call.’
‘Sorry it took so long, but there was a fair bit of lab work to do on this one.’
‘I understand. What did you find?’
‘Well, no one provided me with too much background on the case. They didn’t think to tell me that the child had already undergone extensive PM examination.’
‘I suppose that’s entirely possible,’ said Dunbar. ‘She died after a kidney transplant went wrong. A PM would probably be necessary in the circumstances.’
‘I just thought I’d mention it. Her kidneys and heart had already been removed for examination and then replaced. I even found a couple of swabs they’d used at the time. I hate it when pathologists are too damn lazy to clean up their mess and use the cadaver as a rubbish bin. Lazy sods!’
Dunbar bit his lip to stop himself betraying his impatience. ‘What exactly did you find, Doctor?’ he asked slowly and deliberately.
‘My specific brief was to concentrate on the transplanted right kidney and carry out immunological testing with a view to compatibility. I was asked to pay particular attention to tissue type and to… species.’
‘Yes.’
‘The transplanted organ was a human kidney; it was also perfectly compatible with the patient’s tissue type. We came up with a rating of eighty-one per cent homology.’
Dunbar felt the bottom drop out of his world. ‘Human and eighty-one per cent compatible,’ he echoed. ‘Are you sure?’
It was a stupid question and the snapped answer told him that McVay thought so too. ‘Of course. Plus or minus five per cent.’
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Dunbar, now on autopilot. ‘You didn’t happen to notice anything at all out of the ordinary, did you?’
‘Apart from the cadaver having been autopsied before, no. It seemed an unnecessary shame to have dug her up, if you ask me.’
‘Quite so,’ said Dunbar, and he put the phone down.
He stared at the wall for a few minutes; he didn’t know which emotion to address first. He felt disappointed, dejected, foolish and totally bemused. He’d made a fool of himself and it hurt. He knew he should call Lisa, but right now he even felt angry with her — and with Sheila Barnes, for that matter. Between them they had convinced him the children really had been given the wrong organs during their operations. It was this that had made him read so much into what he’d seen in the post-mortem suite at Medic Ecosse.
Now it seemed that Amy Teasdale had, in fact, been given the correct donor kidney and what he’d seen in the basement was probably just an experimental dissection, bizarre to the outside observer but legal and licensed.
Now the only thing against it all having been some huge mistake was the fact that someone had set out to kill Sheila Barnes. But why? If everything to do with the transplant had been above-board and Sheila was mistaken, why set out to kill her? It didn’t make sense. But then none of this did. He picked up the phone and called Lisa.
‘Well?’ she asked anxiously.
‘There was nothing wrong with the kidney Amy was given. It was human and eighty-one per cent compatible.’
There was a pause before Lisa said, ‘But that’s impossible. Her reaction was so strong, it just couldn’t have been compatible.’
‘I’m sorry, Lisa,’ said Dunbar. ‘But those are the findings of the pathologist commissioned by the Scottish Office. We have to accept what he says.’
‘I just don’t understand. There’s no way a reaction like that could have been caused by…’ Her voice tailed off.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Dunbar.
‘Then why try to kill Sheila Barnes?’ asked Lisa, clutching at the same straw as he’d found.
‘You’re right,’ he agreed. ‘That doesn’t fit at all. We thought it did, even if it was a strange way to do it, but not any more.’
‘What happens now?’
‘I expect to be recalled to London to explain myself. I can’t see beyond that at the moment.’
‘I’m sorry. I feel responsible,’ said Lisa.
‘No one’s to blame,’ said Dunbar. ‘With a bit of luck no one will find out about the disinterment, so in the end no great harm will have been done.’
‘God, I don’t think I could bear it if Amy’s parents found out,’ said Lisa. ‘An exhumation for no good reason, after all the pain I caused them the first time around. It doesn’t bear thinking about. I was so sure they were going to find that Amy had been given an animal kidney.’
‘Me too.’
‘You don’t think her parents will find out, do you?’ She asked anxiously.
‘As far as I know, there were no hitches, so it should be okay. Fingers crossed.’
Lisa sighed deeply, then said, ‘You know what? In spite of everything you’ve told me — and I know I have to accept it — I still know I was right. I don’t know how or why, I just do.’
Dunbar didn’t know what to say. ‘I wish there was some way you could be,’ he began.
