Dunbar returned to Medic Ecosse. He supposed he felt better for the chat with Turner, but he was far from easy in his mind. As he parked his car and walked round to the front of the hospital, a taxi drew up outside the front entrance and two men got out. They were well-dressed and had the aura of successful professional men, Dunbar noted as he passed that one was carrying a very expensive alligator-skin medical bag. Both had American accents.
Out of curiosity, Dunbar lingered near Reception, pretending to look for something in his briefcase.
‘We’re expected,’ said one of the men as they reached the desk.
‘Dr Ross left word,’ said the receptionist. She rang the bell for the porter and said to him, ‘Show these gentlemen up to the Omega wing, will you?’
Dunbar waited until the three men had disappeared before approaching the receptionist.
‘Dr Dunbar, what can I do for you?’
‘Those two men. Who were they?’
‘I couldn’t rightly say, Doctor. Dr Ross just advised me that two medical gentlemen would be arriving sometime this afternoon. Sounded American, if you ask me.’
SIXTEEN
Dunbar sat at his desk and embraced the silence. He took slow, deep breaths as an aid to thinking clearly and rationally; mounting frustration had been preventing this. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to put a stop to Amanda Chapman’s transplant operation, but he couldn’t. This was the unpalatable bottom line that was making him so uncomfortable. He couldn’t because he had no good reason to. If he tried, he would be seen by all and sundry as some kind of interfering lunatic, at best suffering from a sudden nervous breakdown, but more probably reviled as a madman of the sort who mowed down the innocent.
No one would listen and they couldn’t be blamed. There was really nothing of substance to consider. For that reason they would all be against him, the hospital, the transplant unit, Amanda’s parents, Sci-Med, everyone. Even if he were to succeed in stopping it, the chances were that Amanda would still die because she couldn’t get a transplant in time when — as others would not be slow to point out — one had been available. He would be seen as her murderer and all because he suspected things weren’t going to turn out well for her.
He knew that unless he worked out exactly what Ross was up to by the time the donor kidney arrived from Geneva, he was going to have to sit still and do nothing. If, as he suspected, Amanda should reject her transplant, like Amy Teasdale and Kenneth Lineham, it would still be his fault because he hadn’t done anything to stop it. Talk about the devil and the deep blue sea. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. He cursed and got up to start pacing the room.
Once more he juggled the pieces of information in his head, trying to make a coherent picture, but they still wouldn’t fit. Maybe there weren’t enough or maybe there were too many and not all of them relevant.
He was distracted by the sound of a taxi’s diesel engine as it drew to a halt and idled noisily at the front door. He looked down to see another person carrying a medical bag had arrived. There was certainly lots of activity surrounding the Omega patient. Soon, he reflected, there would be lots of activity surrounding Amanda Chapman. He frowned and asked himself again: what’s the connection?
Amanda had been taken to the Omega wing for her unnecessary marrow puncture. He hadn’t been able to come up with a reason for it but at least he knew that the test itself wasn’t a simple mistake of duplication. Amy had been subjected to the same procedure. Ross had insisted on it. What was it that Turner had said? He must have wanted stem cells for his immuno-preparation work.
Dunbar suddenly saw the light. The tests hadn’t been performed for the benefit of the patients at all. Ross hadn’t wanted duplicate tests done. He’d needed stem cells from the patients for a purpose other than the obvious one of checking their immunotype. There was no repetition of unnecessary tests at all. There never had been.
He felt a frisson of excitement. He was getting somewhere at last. Immuno-preparation work? Where had he come across that term recently? Turner had used it but he had seen it somewhere else. If only he could remember… The phone rang and broke his train of thought. He cursed and answered it. It was nothing important.
Dunbar tried to recover his concentration but failed. The moment had gone. He decided to cut his losses and waste no more time wondering. He connected his notebook computer to the phone line to call up Sci-Med. He wanted the latest information they had about James Ross.
His interest quickened at once: they’d found out something about Ross’s Geneva connection. Their earlier problems had been due to an inability to trace a Medic International hospital or clinic in Geneva. The reason for this was simple. There was no such place and Medic International had no interests at all in Geneva. Ross had been going there for other reasons; he also owned a house there, a villa overlooking the lake. He had paid $2 million for it three years ago.
‘Jesus,’ muttered Dunbar. So money was involved after all. Big money. You didn’t buy a house like that on eighty grand a year. He saw that there was more information to come and scrolled down the screen. Ross had an interest in a Swiss medical recruitment agency called Roche Dubois. It specialized in the recruitment of high-grade staff for private clinics all over Europe. Doctors, nurses, technicians of all sorts, could find highly paid work if they were good enough. The agency was above-board and had a good reputation. It specialized in finding positions for American nursing and medical personnel wishing to work in Europe for whatever reason, although exchanges for European nationals were also arranged.
Dunbar wondered if this was relevant. Did Ross have reason to recruit medical staff on his own behalf? He thought about the American doctors being shown to the Omega wing. Could all the secrecy, stone-faced guards and strange medical people coming and going really be ascribed to a need for confidentiality? No, there had to be more to it.
The Omega patients were the key to the whole damned thing, Dunbar decided. It wasn’t that the money they brought in was being used to subsidize NHS charity patients. Quite the reverse. The NHS patients were being used in some way for the benefit of Omega ones. That must be why Ingrid had feigned ignorance when he had mooted a connection between them and Omega patients over funding. She knew what was going on. He had thrown her by making the connection but for the wrong reason.
This still didn’t help. The only connection he was aware of was the marrow puncture done on Amanda Chapman in the Omega wing and the fact that there had been Omega patients in the hospital when Amy Teasdale and Kenneth Lineham had been patients.
Just who the hell were these Omega patients? he wondered angrily. What were they really there for? He had the hollow feeling that he was running out of time. He needed information and he needed it fast. It was time to change tactics. No more pussy-footing around. He would cause a fuss by asking questions openly. Maybe he couldn’t stop Amanda’s operation, but he could certainly create the illusion that he knew much more than he did. That might scare someone in the know; it might scare them enough to achieve the same end. It was a dangerous game to play, though. Ignorance was never a position of strength.
He picked up the phone and called Ingrid’s extension. ‘Ingrid, would you come over, please?’
Ingrid arrived and smiled. ‘You have something for me?’
‘I want to know who the current Omega patient is. I want her name and I want to know why she’s here. I also want to know where she was before she came here and who referred her to Medic Ecosse.’
Her smile faded. ‘I’m not sure I can do that,’ she stammered. ‘The strict confidentiality surrounding-’
Dunbar interrupted her. ‘I need that information. I need it now, please.’
Ingrid tried to recover her composure. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ she asked tentatively. ‘If you’ll forgive my saying, it doesn’t seem to be strictly relevant to the investigation and monitoring of accounts.’
Dunbar had anticipated such opposition. ‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘I have reason to believe that the true income from Omega patients is not being declared.’
‘But you’ve seen the figures,’ said Ingrid, taken aback. ‘The profit for the hospital amounted to many thousands of pounds.’
‘I’ve seen the declared profit,’ agreed Dunbar. ‘I’d like to see for myself how the figures are arrived at. For that reason I want to know all about the current Omega patient, who she is, why she’s here, and I need verification
