Eye of the raven

TEN

Ronald Lee’s murder made it into all the papers next morning. The story was generally presented as a highland tragedy, a mindless killing followed by the death of the victim’s wife, suggesting a devoted couple who clearly couldn’t live without each other. Two of the nationals however did note that Lee had been the forensic pathologist involved in the murder investigation of Julie Summers. One of them also recalled that he had taken early retirement in the aftermath of the case.

‘ Lothian and Borders Police have been on to the Home Office again,’ said John Macmillan when Steven called Sci-Med. ‘Suffice to say they’re hopping mad about your latest exploit.’

‘ And what would that be?’ asked Steven.

‘ They say you’ve visited David Little in prison and taken a sample from him for DNA analysis. They’re complaining that you’re giving everyone the impression that there was something wrong with the original one.’

‘ Well, that certainly got around fast,’ said Steven. ‘That’s actually why I’m calling. I do want the DNA fingerprinting done again if only for my own peace of mind. I’d also like it to be done locally rather than send the samples to London so I need a name, someone independent of the police and forensic services up here.’

‘ You don’t really think that Little could be innocent, do you?’ said Macmillan.

‘ I don’t know what to think right now,’ said Steven.

‘ But the DNA evidence against him was…’

‘ Overwhelming, yes, I know,’ interrupted Steven. ‘But all the same, I just know there’s something badly wrong with the Summers case. I keep looking for reassurance but so far I haven’t found any. There are just too many question marks.’

‘ All right,’ sighed Macmillan. ‘We’ll make arrangements for the sequencing and get back to you. Anything else?’

‘ I’d like to know the current whereabouts of a man named John Merton who was on the staff of the forensic lab at the time of the murder. He left when Ronald Lee was put out to grass and worked in the medical school for a while but then he moved on.’

‘ We’ll do our best,’ said Macmillan.

Next Steven called McDougal the current head of forensics in Edinburgh to ask if he had any objection to giving him access to the semen samples recovered from Julie Summers.

‘ I personally don’t have any objection,’ said McDougal although he sounded puzzled. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘ I hope not,’ said Steven.

‘ I dare say you won’t be alone in these sentiments,’ said McDougal. ‘I read about the deaths of Ronald Lee and his wife in the papers this morning. I even had a journalist phoning me to ask if I had anything to say on the matter.’

‘ Did you?’ asked Steven.

‘ Only that I never knew the man.’

‘ One more thing: when I come by to pick up the samples, could I have another word with Carol Bain?’ Steven wanted to ask her about John Merton.

‘ I’ll tell her to expect you,’ said McDougal.

Steven said that he would be over some time in the afternoon and then called Peter McClintock at Fettes Police Headquarters to ask if he’d meet him at lunchtime in the pub they’d used before in Inverleith Row.

‘ Being seen with you is not exactly a good career move right now,’ said McClintock. ‘Your prison visit has been the talk of the steamie all morning.’

‘ The what?’

‘ I forgot you were English,’ replied McClintock. ‘In the days when men were men and women were grateful, the steamie was a communal washhouse for cleaning clothes. It was where Scots housewives used to meet and exchange gossip.’

‘ Right. About that drink?’

‘ One o’clock. I’ll be the one wearing a blonde wig and swearing I don’t know anyone called Dunbar.’

Steven saw that he had about an hour to kill so he sat down and tried to get his thoughts in order. Telling Sci-Med that he had a bad feeling about the case wasn’t going to be enough to sustain continued investigation for much longer. He would need something more concrete to offer Macmillan next time they spoke. There had been a distinct edginess in Macmillan’s voice when they’d spoken earlier and suspected that he was being subjected to Home Office pressure.

The duty officer at Sci-Med phoned as he was driving across town to meet McClintock. He told him that Sci-Med had arranged for a molecular biologist at the University of Edinburgh — a woman who had already signed the official secrets act for other aspects of her work — to carry out the semen and buccal swab analysis he’d asked for. Steven asked the man to send the relevant information to him as a text message. He was in heavy traffic and couldn’t stop to note down details.

‘ I think Mr Macmillan would like a word with you before you hang up,’ said the man.

Steven had to tuck the phone between head and hunched shoulder as he used both hands to turn the car into a side street to start looking for a parking place. His action attracted a disgusted look and shake of the head from a woman pedestrian who was waiting to cross the road. He gave her a half smile by way of apology.

‘ When do you plan taking the samples over?’ asked Macmillan.

‘ This afternoon,’ replied Steven, wondering why Macmillan had asked.

‘ If these new lab tests should suggest that David Little was not the killer of Julie Summers…’ began Macmillan hesitantly, ‘then of course the case must be reopened and to hell with any fall-out.. ’

‘ But?’ prompted Steven.

‘ If the tests should confirm that the semen was in fact David Little’s…’

‘ You’d like me to stop upsetting people and come back to London?’ said Steven.

‘ Do you have a problem with that?’ asked Macmillan.

‘ I suppose not,’ conceded Steven. He understood the difficulty of Macmillan’s position and recognised that there were limits to how long he could go on rocking the boat.

‘ Good,’ said Macmillan. ‘As long as we understand each other. Keep in touch.’

McClintock was already in the pub in Inverleith Row when Steven arrived. Steven saw that he had got himself a beer and was eating a sandwich so he did the same and joined him in the corner.

‘ So, do I get an invite to the opening?’ asked McClintock between bites of a cheese sandwich.

‘ Of what?’ Steven asked.

‘ The Steven Dunbar Forensic Lab Service,’ replied McClintock.

‘ Highly amusing,’ said Steven.

‘ But you are going to do the DNA fingerprinting again?’

Steven confirmed it.

‘ Look,’ said McClintock, leaning across the table, ‘I know Ronnie Lee was a tosser but Christ, you’re surely not suggesting that the whole lab was crooked and made the whole lot up?’

‘ If I didn’t have doubts I wouldn’t be asking for the tests,’ said Steven.

McClintock stopped eating and looked at Steven in astonishment. ‘Christ, you are,’ he whispered. ‘You really believe that Little was stitched up.’

‘ I didn’t say that,’ countered Steven. ‘But there’s something wrong.’

‘ You think there’s something wrong,’ corrected McClintock. ‘And on the basis of that you’re prepared to throw shit 360 degrees.’

‘ It’s not a question of throwing shit but I am telling you, there’s definitely something wrong,’ insisted Steven. ‘I’ve tried bloody hard to find evidence to show that I’m imagining it but frankly, it’s been like looking for snow in July. The samples are missing; the lab reports are missing and when I ask the pathologist about it he takes an assisted walk off a cliff. The only thing left to me to check is the DNA evidence myself.’

‘ Have you asked McDougal to do it?’ asked McClintock.

‘ No.’

‘ You don’t trust anyone round here, do you?’

‘ Trust is like faith. I try hard not to rely on either,’ said Steven.

‘ What did you want to see me about?’ asked McClintock.

‘ I wanted to tell you personally why I was doing this. I suppose I hoped you’d understand.’

‘ And you’d get the inside gen on how the local plods were taking it’ said McClintock.

‘ No,’ said Steven. ‘I know how they’re taking it. They’ve been on to the Home Office.’

‘ Good,’ said McClintock. ‘Then you’ll know not to park on any double yellow lines in this city. You’ll go down for life.’

Steven smiled wanly and said, ‘You told me that the Fiscal’s office was wary of relying on evidence that came from Ronnie Lee’s lab. They presented as little as possible?’

McClintock nodded. ‘Like I said, they lost a number of cases when everything seemed to be cut and dried. Just when they felt sure their man was going down, defence counsel would pop up and question some aspect of the forensic evidence. Suddenly, it didn’t stand up any more. Case dismissed and egg on face all round.’

‘ Can you get me details of these cases?’ asked Steven.

‘ Are you thinking of having them reopened too?’ asked McClintock.

‘ You never know,’ said Steven calmly.

‘ Bugger me, you’ve got balls Dunbar: I have to give you that. If I was making enemies at the rate you are I’d be spending most of my time in the bog, I’m telling you.’

‘ But you will get the details for me?’ asked Steven.

‘ I’ll see what I can do.’

‘ Another beer?’

‘ Maybe coffee.’

When he got back to the car, Steven checked his phone for the Sci-Med text message he’d asked for. He called the number he’d been given at Edinburgh University and asked to speak to Dr Susan Givens.

‘ Speaking.’

‘ My name’s Dunbar. I understand the Sci-Med Inspectorate has been in touch?’ said Steven.

‘ Indeed they have, Doctor. I take it you have the samples?’

‘ I’m just about to pick them up from the police lab. Will it be all right if I bring them over this afternoon?’

‘ I have a meeting at two, so any time after three? Say three thirty?’

‘ Three thirty, it is then’ said Steven. ‘And you are in the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, room 923?’

‘ That’s right. It’s the tower building on your left as you enter through gate 4 in Mayfield Road.’

Steven drove across town to the forensics lab and was shown immediately into McDougal’s office where he sensed that McDougal seemed a deal less friendly than last time.

‘ All ready for you,’ said McDougal with a weak attempt at a smile as he pushed a polystyrene container sealed up with yellow tape across his desk. ‘There are two samples of semen and the wash obtained from the buccal swab of David Little taken at the time. They’re all in crushed ice. I take it you’ve already made arrangements for the analysis?’

Steven confirmed that he had without saying more.

‘ I can’t say I wish you luck because I’ve no official idea of what you’re setting out to do. I’d be lying of course, if I pretended that I couldn’t work it out for myself. Let’s say, I wish you a result, which shows that you’re wasting your time.’

‘ Fair enough,’ smiled Steven.

‘ There’s one thing I think you should know,’ said McDougal.

‘ What?’ asked Steven.

‘ I was asked yesterday to carry out a discreet analysis on these self-same samples.’

‘ By whom?’

‘ People with an impressive amount of scrambled egg on their hats,’ replied McDougal.

‘ And?’

‘ I declined.’

‘ Can you do that?’

‘ I’ll find out over the next few days,’ said McDougal with a nervous smile.

‘ Why did you refuse?’

‘ I don’t want anything to do with what went on in this lab in Ronald Lee’s time. I’m not going to be tainted by association. I’m gambling that they won’t want me fuelling the fires of publicity by resigning on a matter of principle.’

‘ Seems a safe enough call,’ said Steven. ‘Let’s hope for everyone’s sake that the scrambled egg stays on their hats and doesn’t slip down on to their faces when the results come back.’

‘ Amen to that,’ said McDougal. ‘You wanted a word with Carol?’

Steven nodded and McDougal excused himself in order to go find Carol Bain.

Carol Bain, when she came in, sat down in the same prissy fashion as she had on the occasion of their last meeting, crossing her legs and smoothing her skirt. ‘How can I help you, Doctor?’ she asked.

‘ You can tell me about John Merton,’ said Steven simply.

‘ I haven’t seen John for years. As I said before, when Dr Lee retired John left too. He worked in the medical school for a while and then there was some talk of him setting up his own business but that’s about as much as I know.’

‘ Any idea what kind of a business?’ asked Steven.

Carol shrugged. ‘I don’t remember him having any other hobbies or interests outside science so I presume it would have to have something to do that. That’s about as much as I can tell you.’

‘ The last time we spoke, you told me that John took it upon himself to look after Dr Lee in the lab, make sure he didn’t mess up too many things, minimise the damage and generally keep an eye on him.’

‘ That’s right,’ agreed Carol.

‘ Why?’ asked Steven. ‘Why did he do that?’

‘ Just John’s nature, I suppose. I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ replied Carol.

‘ What do you think would have happened if John Merton hadn’t covered for Dr Lee?’

Carol thought for a moment and said, ‘I suppose matters would have come to a head much sooner.’

‘ Perhaps that might not have been a bad thing?’

Carol moved uncomfortably in her seat. ‘In retrospect, I suppose not,’ she conceded. She raised the palms of both hands, trying to fend off an unpleasant notion. ‘Who can say?’ she said. ‘What’s done is done. It’s always easy to be wise after the event.’

‘ John wasn’t always successful in protecting Dr Lee, was he?’ asked Steven.

Carol looked defensive.

‘ I mean there were occasions when things slipped through, things that defence counsel exposed and exploited. It must have been a bit embarrassing?’

‘ I suppose.’

‘ Guilty men walked free on occasions?’ asked Steven.

‘ Unfortunately yes,’ said Carol in a low voice.

‘ Did John apply for the position of head of the lab when Ronald Lee was forced into retirement?’

‘ No,’ said Carol with a decisive shake of the head. ‘There was no question of that.’

‘ Why not?

‘ He wasn’t medically qualified. That’s a requirement.’

‘ I see,’ said Steven. ‘Well, thank you for your help, Miss Bain.’

Steven checked his watch as he left the building and saw that he had forty minutes to kill before his meeting with Susan Givens. It would only take him ten minutes to drive to Edinburgh University’s science campus in Mayfield Road so he stopped at the first hotel he came to and ordered some coffee. It came on a silver tray accompanied by a small plate of shortbread fingers.

Steven sat in the lounge, which at 3 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, was deserted. This encouraged him to take up cup and saucer in hand and wander around the room viewing the eclectic mix of artefacts that for some reason hotel lounges always managed to accumulate. He supposed that there might be a large warehouse somewhere that prospective hoteliers called up in order to buy assorted junk by weight. ‘Forty kilos of Victoriana please.’

He moved to one of the large windows and looked out on the car park and what had once been an impressive orchard beyond. It now lay neglected and overgrown, a tangled mess of intertwined boughs and ill-defined paths, one of them leading to the tumbledown remains of a greenhouse without glass. It looked a mess but only because the human eye searched for order and functionality. Here, nature was simply reclaiming her own. The tangled branches had buds on them. They were very much alive. In a few years there would be no trace left at all of man’s efforts to order the garden because the green stuff had one big advantage over cinder paths and brick walls, it had DNA, the self-replicating life force. It was no contest.

Susan Givens was discussing experimental results with one of her research students, a Chinese boy, when Steven arrived.

‘ I’ll be with you in a moment,’ she smiled.

Steven took in the stunning view of the city from the window of her office, which looked out due north to Edinburgh Castle. The conversation continued in the background.

‘ The graph shows big rise,’ said the Chinese boy enthusiastically.

‘ But so does the control culture,’ countered Susan, holding up two sheets of graph paper in front of her and comparing them critically.

‘ Not so much,’ insisted the boy. ‘I think result is significant.’

‘ The control doesn’t show as big a rise because you’ve plotted it on a different scale from the experimental culture,’ said Susan. ‘I think you should go away and plot them on the same scale and then you will see there’s no significant difference.’

The boy left her office, peering closely at the graph he held up to his face, the paper almost touching his glasses. Susan shut the door behind him and turned, wearing a smile. ‘You know,’ she said. ‘It’s amazing just how much people see because they want to see it.. ’

Steven found her smile disarming. ‘Not a breakthrough then,’ he said.

‘ Not even a tap on the door.’

Susan Givens was a good-looking woman in her mid thirties, slim and dark-haired with a smooth olive skin. She exuded a confidence that suggested she might be capable of spotting a phoney at two hundred yards on a foggy night.

‘ I understand you’d like me to carry out some DNA work for you, Doctor?’ she said.

Steven handed over the polystyrene box and said, ‘This contains a number of semen samples, which were collected at the scene of a rape and murder of a young girl eight years ago. This is a buccal swab extract taken at the time from the man who was subsequently convicted for the crime. It was the matching of these two that sent him down for life. Steven took out another small packet from his briefcase and said, ‘This is a buccal swab that I took myself from that same man yesterday. I need to be sure they convicted the right man.’

Susan took the samples and asked, ‘Is there any reason to believe that they didn’t?’

‘ Every reason and no reason at all,’ replied Steven.

‘ And I thought bullshitting was the province of my students.’

Steven smiled. ‘I’m sorry, I have no concrete reason to believe that there’s a problem but there are factors surrounding the case that have made me feel uneasy. I need to be sure there has been no mistake.’

‘ You said eight years ago?’

‘ The girl, Julie Summers, was murdered in January of 1993.’

‘ I’m just trying to think how good DNA fingerprinting was at that time,’ said Susan.

Steven opened his briefcase and took out the forensic lab’s photographs of the DNA gels. ‘These are what the forensic lab submitted in evidence,’ he said.

‘ They’re good,’ said Susan admiringly. ‘In fact, they’re very good indeed. I didn’t think they had the software at that time…’

‘ Software?’

‘ I’m sure it’s nothing significant but I don’t think these are photographs of the actual DNA gels they ran in the lab. Call me suspicious, but they’re too clean. They’ve almost certainly been tidied up — or digitally enhanced, if you prefer. It’s my guess that someone used Adobe Photoshop or some other imaging software on them.’

‘ You’re telling me they’ve been altered?’ asked Steven, feeling a surge of excitement at the prospect.

‘ That might be going too far,’ said Susan, taking a closer look, this time using a magnifying lens. ‘They’ve probably just been cleaned up for aesthetic reasons.’

‘ Is that normal practice?’

Susan shrugged and said, ‘It’s more common than people let on. There’s really nothing wrong with it as long as it is confined to tidying. If of course, people were to use it to actually add or remove elements to or from the gel then you’d be entering the realms of scientific fraud.’

‘ Would it be easy to add or remove elements, as you put it?’ asked Steven.

‘ Very,’ replied Susan. ‘Once the hard data is converted to a computer image, the world’s your digital oyster.’

‘ I can understand the temptation, particularly in a research lab,’ said Steven. ‘If the presence or absence of a single band on a gel can make the difference between an exciting result and nothing.’

‘ But the repercussions can be equally great,’ said Susan. ‘If a researcher were caught doing that, his or her career would be over.’

‘ Have you ever known someone to try?’ asked Steven.

‘ Scientific fraud has always been with us,’ said Susan. ‘And we’re not just talking about ambitious students taking shortcuts. Scientists of world renown have fallen from grace over it. Common or garden arrogance is usually the cause. Some scientists believe so strongly in their theories that they dismiss their continued failure to come up with supporting evidence as some kind of technical difficulty. Frustration leads to manipulation of the data to show that what they believe must be true — or worse still, they’ve occasionally been known to browbeat their research students into coming up with data to support their pet theories. This is why we have rigorous peer review of work before it gets published in the journals.’

‘ Foolproof?’ asked Steven.

‘ No,’ replied Susan. ‘But it stops the more overt rubbish getting through the net. Apart from that, science has its own inherent safeguard.’

‘ How so?’

‘ Science is conservative with a capital “C”. If you try to publish work that sounds entirely new and radical, the scientific establishment won’t like it. Every aspect of your paper will be examined in minute detail by career scientists who will go through it with a fine-tooth comb, looking for reasons not to publish it. The work really has to be well done and that’s as it should be. Unfortunately, the other side of the coin is that if you submit work that supports the scientific establishment’s view of things, you will have a much easier time of it. Your paper will sail through the refereeing process. People see what they want to see.’

Steven nodded.

‘ So now you can guess what ninety percent of the research journals contain,’ said Susan with a wry smile.

‘ Nothing of any great import at all?’ ventured Steven.

‘ Right,’ laughed Susan. ‘They are full of work that amounts to little more than the crossing of t s and the dotting of i s, people telling each other what they want to hear, work confirming what has already been shown to be so. Some scientists have turned saying the same thing over and over again into a minor art form. But in a world where scientific achievement is equated with the number of papers you’ve had published, what else can you expect?’

‘ You make it all sound rather depressing,’ said Steven. ‘But I suppose it’s the best system we’ve got.’

‘ It is,’ smiled Susan. ‘But that doesn’t make it good.’

‘ How easy would it be to fake a DNA fingerprint match?’ asked Steven.

‘ If we’re talking about altering the actual gel data to make it appear that one person’s DNA fingerprint matched another’s, impossible I’d say. They are just so highly individual.’

‘ So you couldn’t see anyone attempting it?’

‘ Frankly, no.’

‘ How about simply photographing the same gel twice and pretending that they came from two different sources?’

‘ It would be quite obvious that the photographs had come from the same gel. There are always lots of little distinguishing marks in the polyacrylamide — that’s the jelly that the gel is made from. A first year student would spot it right away.’

‘ Could these marks not be removed by using the software you spoke about earlier?’

‘ There are just so many of them when you look through a magnifier that you would be left with something that had so obviously been doctored that no one would believe it anyway.’

‘ Good,’ said Steven. ‘So if you come up with a DNA match from the sample I’ve just given you it means that this man is guilty beyond doubt.’

‘ If the DNA from the buccal swab you took matches the DNA from the semen then it’s perfectly safe to say that they came from one and the same man — unless of course, he has an identical twin somewhere,’ said Susan.

‘ He hasn’t,’ said Steven.

‘ In that case, leave me your number and I’ll be in touch.’