Dead of Winter

Chapter 69

Ebony was sitting at her desk in the ETO. Across from her, Jeanie was on the phone trying to set up some help for Helen Tapp. Ebony listened to her making sure; Jeanie was persistent, dogged. Ebony knew that if she was in a tight corner she’d want Jeanie in there with her.

Ebony’s phone vibrated on her desk top. A photo message was coming through. Ebony looked at the number of the person sending and didn’t recognize it. She was about to ignore it when the photo flashed across the screen and she snatched it up from the desk as she watched the face form in front of her eyes.

Jeanie held her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and mouthed: what is it?

Ebony turned the phone around to show her the screen. Jeanie shook her head in disbelief. Ebony went to find Carter.

The low winter sun was bright; too bright for Davidson’s tired eyes as he swivelled the louver blind and turned back to look at the officers in the room. They were waiting for him. He turned and stood tall. On his desk was the print out from Ebony’s phone. Davidson picked it up and looked at it.

‘When was this taken?’

‘Sister Phillips says it was when Shannon was being treated on the ward. It was one of the nurse’s birthdays and Nurse Linda Peters was working that shift.’

‘Nikki de Lange is the woman we’ve been looking for then? She was the woman who abducted Alex.’

‘Abducted her own nephew, sir,’ said Carter.

‘Yes sir. She must have been involved whether she wanted to be or not,’ replied Ebony.

‘She’s been seen going back to the Mansfield hospital regularly,’ said Carter. ‘I think that’s where she’ll be.’

‘Okay,’ said Davidson. ‘Ebony and Jeanie go to the Mansfield hospital now. We can’t risk Alex getting killed. If he’s there, find him and make sure he’s protected.’

Jeanie and Ebony left Davidson’s office, leaving Carter and Harding.

‘Sir? I would like to bring Mr Martingale in for questioning.’

Davidson’s eyes flitted towards Harding and stayed there a second.

‘Martingale is a megalomaniac’ Harding said. ‘He thinks he’s God.’

‘But why allow the boy to live in the first place?’ asked Davidson.

‘Insurance. . To harvest him when he’s ready. . for himself. Perfect tissue match. . a whole new set of organs. He’s a walking organ incubator.’

Davidson looked at her. ‘And would he really be capable of harvesting his own daughter?’

Harding nodded. ‘She meant nothing to him. He had no bond with her or her mother Maria. Maybe he didn’t do it himself. I can’t see him getting his hands dirty, but I can see him setting the seed and looking away whilst it’s done and, most importantly, picking up the tab. I can see him making sure that there is nothing traceable to him. I think he tries to have a hold over everyone he meets. He makes sure of it. Martingale is a psychopath. He doesn’t have the ability to establish meaningful personal relationships with anyone.’

‘What about with his daughter, Nikki?’

‘She is his property, his Frankenstein. He created her.’

‘Could he kill her?’

‘In a heartbeat.’

‘Not just her,’ said Carter. ‘I also think he could have killed his ex-wife Maria easily. The sophisticated timers he has for his orchids could easily have been adapted to make a remotely detonated incendiary device.’

‘He would have needed to get into her house to plant it,’ said Davidson.

‘She lives in the middle of nowhere, sir. He could have gone to see her in the weeks before she died. He could have rigged it up then set it off with a phone call. He lied about being here at around that time. We know he attended the orchid shows.’

Davidson was listening to Carter. He gave one sharp nod of the head as he pulled out his chair from behind his desk and sat down, his hands resting on the edge of the desk. ‘Okay. I’ve heard enough. Carter, you go and arrest Martingale on suspicion of murder.’

Carter didn’t wait around. He was out of Davidson’s office before he could change his mind.

Harding smiled at Davidson once they were alone in the office. He returned it, relaxed, rubbed his tired face and shook his head.

‘Getting too old for all this,’ he said, looking at her and smiling.

‘Ha. . don’t make me laugh. Anyway, when this is over you might just find it’s worth staying on.’

‘What you’re trying to say is my retirement prospects will be non-existent.’

Harding shrugged, ‘If Barbara has the sense to kick you out you can come and live with me; you’re going to have to iron your own shirts though.’

He smiled and shook his head.

Harding took her phone out of her bag. ‘I’ve narrowed it down to who, if I was Martingale, I would want to do an organ transplant. I’ve also been looking at whose career has sky-rocketed since that day.’

She dialled a number and set the phone to loudspeaker so Davidson could hear as well.

‘Simon. . it’s Jo again; I got your list of possible transplant surgeons but the main one wasn’t on it.’

‘I don’t know who you mean.’

‘Thirteen years ago you started working for Martingale after the night his daughter was murdered, didn’t you?’

‘You know I did.’

‘I was racking my brains to think of the one person I would have wanted to do a transplant at the time. . and it’s you.’

‘I specialized in it at the time. You know that.’

‘I looked at the list of surgeons operating the night Chrissie Newton was murdered. You were on the list. Since that time you’ve really risen up the ranks in the Mansfield Group.’

‘What are you insinuating?’

‘I want you to think back and see if it could possibly have been you that operated on Chrissie Newton that night.’

‘I assisted Martingale that night. Afterwards I remember thinking that it was terrible to be working when your own daughter gets murdered. But then he claimed not to be in the country at the time. . I was confused. .’

‘Where were you when Martingale contacted you?’

‘I was working on the transplant ward at the Royal Free. I was a few months away from taking my final registrar exams.’

‘What did you think when he contacted you?’

‘I was flattered. He offered me a lot of money. He also said I could be sure of a new career in one of the hospitals he invested in and that I would be able to concentrate on the thing I was most interested in — cosmetic surgery.’

‘So you were happy about it?’

‘I was ecstatic. I was young, ambitious, things were going well for me at last. Martingale was already hugely respected. So when he asked me to assist I jumped at it.’

‘You said he told you to take a few days off?’

‘Yes. . he wasn’t sure when the organs would become available.’

‘Where did he say they were coming from?’

‘He said a woman on a life support machine, brain-dead; her family were intending to pull the plug over the weekend.’

‘That’s all you knew?’

‘It wasn’t my job to know more. I wasn’t going to be the one doing the operation. I was assisting and being paid a lot of money for it. He got in touch in the evening on Saturday and said that the operation would definitely go ahead that night or the early hours of the morning. He told me to go into the hospital and prepare the theatre.’

‘Go through it for me.’

‘I arrived. The theatre was ready. The recipient was there. She was in pre-op. I was told I didn’t need to do anything for her at that time.’

‘Had Martingale shown up? What was going through your mind?’

‘I was thinking. . bit odd. Martingale seemed very erratic. We needed to have the patient ready. The new heart couldn’t last more than an hour or so outside the body. We needed to put her on a bypass machine, get her old heart out and get going. But. . I know things are tricky with this kind of procedure.’

‘Did you go in and see the patient?’

‘No. Martingale was being weird about it all.’

‘What did you know about her?’

‘She was a woman of about thirty, she was showing advance signs of heart failure. She was extremely breathless and so on.’

‘You didn’t recognize her?’

‘I didn’t see her face. We got a call; the heart was already on its way and we had to get a move on. I opened her up. The heart arrived.

‘Martingale started to connect it but it just wasn’t working. We took a good look at the donor heart and saw the scar tissue — the first signs of heart disease. He stopped the operation. It was a hell of a situation. . there was no way we could put the diseased heart back in.’