Mercy

Data Protection Act.”

“But there’s a man on death row who’s going to — ”

“I know that.”

“But you can’t just let him — ”

“It’s not for you to decide. You are not authorized to tell them anything. Is that understood?”

“So … you’re just going to let an innocent man die?”

“That’s none of your concern!”

“Look … I know that you have the law on your side. But there’s a human life at stake.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Susan bit her lip as she waited.

“All right, but don’t tell them more than you have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t tell them about the date of the first consultation or the date of discharge…”

There was a painful pause.

“But you can tell them about the abortion.”

15:48 PDT

David was feeling bothered by his father’s reaction to the verse that he had discovered. The verse might not have been particularly relevant to their investigation, but they had to work with what they had and David had felt that having found it, it was his duty to pass it on.

However, David wasn’t one to take it personally. It was just that the reaction showed what enormous stress his father was under. He had just over eight hours to save a man’s life and they had found very little. In any case, his father was right. Poems were not going to help them. They needed cold, hard, solid facts — like the fact that she had bought a ticket to England, or the fact that she had downloaded a PDF brochure of a private health center in London.

What they didn’t have was any proof that she had actually got there. And this kind of proof would be very hard to get from the United States. Or would it?

If Dorothy had gone to England, she would have had to use money when she got there. Unless she went to some cloistered nunnery she would have had to function in the real world. Of course she had the jewelry, but she could hardly have used that as a negotiable instrument in day-to-day transactions. The fact that she had liquidated her trust fund and bought the jewelry was moderately compelling evidence of her intention to flee. But would she have traded the jewelry for money and risked having a lot of bulky cash on her in London? Or would she had opened a new bank account where her money would be safe and readily accessible when she needed it?

The answer was probably the latter. And, given sufficient time, they could probably get court orders and search through banking records to find her. But time was of the essence. They had only discovered late in the day that she had even been contemplating going to England. Would the courts give them the time they needed now to prove that she actually did? Or would they take a more stubborn and intractable line, on the grounds that the defense should have done this before?

Clayton Burrow had become a pariah and the courts had shown no particular desire to give him the benefit of the doubt. Even David had little regard for Burrow. But they were now seeing faint signs that he might be innocent after all, at least of murder. He couldn’t ignore that, even if the courts could.

The only question was, how to make progress. Assuming that Dorothy had opened a bank account in London, how could he go about finding it and proving it quickly? Well the first thing to do was to work out where she might have banked. The Finchley Road Medical Centre provided a useful starting point. She probably didn’t know London and would likely open a bank account somewhere near where she was staying or where she had some interest.

Using Google as his first source of reference, he searched for British banks. Then, armed with a list of names, he searched for “Finchley Road” in conjunction with various bank names.

It was the first stage of what he suspected would be a long and arduous process.

15:53 PDT

Alex was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge when the call came through.

“Hi, Juanita.”

“Hi, boss. I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

“Give me the good news.”

“They told me what treatment Dorothy had at the medical center.”

“What?”

“She had an abortion.”

“An abortion?”

“That’s what they told me.”

“Why would she go all the way to London for an abortion?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, so what was the bad news?”

“They refuse to tell me anything else. They said they can’t send us any written confirmation of the date she arrived or tell us the date she left.”

“So they’re giving us the opposite of what we asked for.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“And they refuse to give it in writing?”

“That’s what she said.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe so, but I don’t think she was lying.”

“No, I accept that, Juanita. It just seems rather strange.”

“Something’s occurred to me, boss. Maybe it was Clayton who got her pregnant, maybe she tried to blackmail him.”

Alex remembered that he hadn’t told Juanita about the poem.

“You think he killed her to silence her?”

“Maybe someone else killed her to protect him.”

“Like who?”

“Like his mother.”

“When I suggested that, Juanita, you ridiculed me.”

His tone was chiding.

“Okay, I’m sorry, boss. But now I’m not so sure.”

15:58 PDT

Nat felt the warm, humid air as soon as he stepped out into the open. After the air conditioned airline office, it was like stepping into a steam room.

He had just served the court order on the local office of the airline and he had to walk half a block to get to his car. He waited for almost a minute in the car while the air conditioning kicked in. Only then did he take out his cell phone and put in a call to Alex’s number.

“Hi, Nat,” Alex answered.