now clear that John Merton was the man he was looking for. It was Merton, not Lee or any of the others who’d been Verdi’s contact in the lab. Instead of stopping Lee making mistakes and generally looking after him, as everyone thought, Merton had actually been introducing mistakes, some of which, he would subsequently ‘discover’ and blame on Lee, others he would deliberately let through so that Verdi could question the evidence and get his clients off. Lee of course, conveniently got the blame for everything. All he needed now was for Verdi to confirm it.
But it was Merton’s role in the Julie Summers case that Steven now concentrated on. Merton had deliberately conned a subordinate in the lab into believing she had made a mistake in typing the blood found under Julie’s fingernails. Being very junior, Samantha Egan had accepted it, especially when Merton had apparently repeated test in front of her but, unknown to her, he must have switched the samples. Group A positive blood wasn’t hard to find. Almost half the population had it. It could even have been his own.
If Ronald Lee had succeeded in carrying out the DNA fingerprinting on the scrapings, as had been his intention, he would have come up with Hector Combe’s DNA fingerprint. Merton must have persuaded him — as he had Samantha Egan — that he had made some mistake and shown him his version of the test, one that matched the profile of the semen belonging to David Little. As this would have appeared to make more sense in the circumstances, Lee must have believed him and been grateful.
So why had Merton gone to such lengths to fit David Little up for a crime that he did not do and what kind of pathological mind lay behind it? It had to be pathological. No normal person could have done such a thing. Samantha Egan had said that Merton had a chip on his shoulder but this was something else. It was several orders of magnitude different. Merton was a lunatic.
There was still no doubt however, that David Little’s semen had been found in Julie’s body. How had Merton managed to arrange that? There was no obvious answer. As far as he knew there was no direct link between Merton and Little and only a secondary one between Verdi and Little’s wife, Charlotte. Steven decided that there were two people he had to speak to. One was Paul Verdi, now that he knew who his associate was and the other was David Little. He had to ask Little just who hated him that much and why.
Knowing that he would probably not be able to see Verdi until the afternoon, Steven set out for Barlinnie first thing in the morning. He found Little a bit better in terms of his health than last time. He was lying on his bunk reading but he was not at all pleased to see him.
‘ I thought I told you to fuck off.’
‘ You had every right to,’ said Steven. ‘I gave you false hope when I didn’t mean to.’
‘ Fine; Te absolvo; now fuck off,’ said Little.
‘ I know that you didn’t rape and murder Julie Summers,’ said Steven.
Little stared at him, his dark sunken eyes betraying nothing. At length he broke the silence and said, ‘Do you know, no one has ever said that to me before. Not even my wife.’
‘ A man named, John Merton framed you. Ring any bells?’
‘ Merton?’ repeated Little. ‘I did know a John Merton once but that was many years ago.’
‘ Could you have given him cause to hate you?’ asked Steven.
‘ We were medical students together,’ said Little. ‘We were friends. We shared a flat.’
Little stopped talking and appeared to be lost in thought.
‘ But something happened between you?’
‘ Neither of us came from a wealthy background so we didn’t have much money to play a round with,’ said Little. ‘We lived on cornflakes and beans and toast for the last couple of weeks of every term then suddenly John wasn’t poor any more. He seemed to have money coming out of his ears. He told me that a rich relative had died but he was lying. I found out that he was supplying a foreign pharmaceutical company with human glands. He was stealing them from corpses in the med school,’ said Little. ‘I tackled him about it told him that it was a stupid and dangerous thing to do because the corpses hadn’t been screened for diseases that could be passed on through the glands he was selling.’
‘ What did the company want them for?’ asked Steven.
‘ They were extracting growth hormone for sale abroad. The practice was banned in this country because of the possibility of transmitting Creuzfeld Jakob Syndrome but the extract was still being used abroad.’
‘ So what did you do?’ asked Steven.
‘ He was my friend so I told him that if he packed it in I’d say no more about it. He promised that he would but a few weeks later I found out that he was still doing it — the sports car was a bit of a give-away. We had a fight: I reported him to the Dean and when the dust settled he was thrown out of medical school.’
‘ He didn’t leave you much choice,’ said Steven.
‘ He didn’t see it that way,’ said Little. ‘He didn’t seem to see that he was doing anything wrong. He had no conscience at all about it. He blamed me for his expulsion and threatened to kill me. He was engaged at the time to a girl named Melissa Felton, one of the other med students: she left him when she found out what he’d been doing. I think he held me responsible for that too but I never saw him again.’
‘ He must have gone elsewhere to do a science degree,’ said Steven. ‘He was working in the police lab at the time of Julie Summers’ murder. He manipulated the forensic evidence to fit you up.’
Little tried to take a deep breath to hide the fact that he was being overcome by emotion. Tears started to run down his face.
‘ But the fact remains that your semen was found in Julie’s body,’ said Steven. ‘Any idea how?’
Little looked at Steven as if the question was ridiculous then he said, ‘Oh Christ, we were donors.’
‘ Sperm donors?’ asked Steven.
‘ First year at med school, one of the research council labs was looking for donors among the students so we went along. We thought it was a hoot. A few minutes with a dirty magazine and a plastic cup and that was it. Easy money. Christ, he must have managed to get my sample from the sperm bank.’
‘ Not too difficult if you know your way around the university labs I suppose’ said Steven.
‘ A hoot,’ said Little distantly. ‘We thought it was a hoot…’ More tears started to flow down the hollows of his cheeks.
‘ Merton was also responsible for the pornography found on your computer,’ said Steven. ‘Your wife worked for an associate of his. That’s how he came to know where you were and what you were doing. It was Merton who supplied the utilities disk to help sort out some problem you’d been having. That’s where the porn came from.’
Little shook his head and spread his scrawny arms. ‘He said he’d kill me. I just didn’t realise that he was deadly serious about it. What’s happened to him? Have you arrested him?’
‘ No, I’ve only just worked out what happened.’
‘ The bastard,’ whispered Little. ‘He took away my life… slowly… one day at a time… each one worse than the one before. And the police? What are they saying to all this?’
‘ They don’t know yet,’ said Steven.
Little looked at him questioningly.
‘ I only worked out last night who’d set you up and now you’ve told me why and how. I’ll break the news to them when I get back to Edinburgh.’
‘ You wouldn’t like to video it for me?’ said Little. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll live long enough to sue the bastards.’
Steven silently agreed.
‘ Who did kill Julie?’ asked Little.
‘ Hector Combe, the psychopath I told you about, the one who confessed to the crime on his deathbed.’
‘ The real killer confessed but nobody listened,’ said Little.
‘ I did,’ said Steven.
Little turned his head — he’d been looking up at the ceiling. ‘Yes, you did and I’m not sure what to say to you. I’ve had no reason to thank anyone for anything in over eight years. I’m out of the way of such things.’
‘ No need,’ said Steven. ‘Try concentrating on positive things. Take your medication and start making plans.’
‘ Plans?’ exclaimed Little. ‘Positive things?’
‘ Even if it’s only psyching yourself up to hear apologies from everyone who owes you one.’ Steven got up to go. I’m going back to set everything in motion.’
Little stopped him with a hand gesture but then couldn’t get the words out. He had to settle for two brief
