Tangled Web

Fourteen

Professor Thomas noticed Gordon’s presence for the first time during the buffet lunch and looked surprised. ‘Dr Gordon! You decided to come after all? I’m delighted.’

‘I’ve taken a few days off,’ Gordon told him. ‘I thought I’d take you up on your kind invitation. It seems to have got off to a cracking start.’

‘You can say that again,’ smiled Thomas. ‘Anything to do with human cloning always arouses strong emotions in people.’

‘How about you?’ asked Gordon as he quickly put a few pieces of salad on a plate and joined Thomas as he moved away from the table to stand by a window.

‘Me too,’ smiled Thomas.

‘For or against?’

‘For, in the long run,’ said Thomas. ‘But then it’s always pointless to stand in the way of progress. I think one has to accept that it’s going to happen, whether one likes it or not. We must simply do our best to see that it’s well controlled and regulated when it does. But, as Meyer pointed out, a successful cloning at the moment can only result in the birth of a baby, with all the moral and ethical issues that that would raise.’

‘You said, “at the moment”, does that mean things might change in the future?’ asked Gordon.

‘Of course, almost certainly, once we understand the true nature of cell differentiation — by that I mean what makes cells decide to become a liver or a lung or whatever. The idea of being able to grow human organs from single cells is a very attractive one. It could solve so many problems, not least the continual search for suitable donor organs.’

‘How close are we to being able to do that?’

‘Quite a long way off, but there’s a lot of research being carried out on it so who knows? Someone may make the breakthrough.’

‘Is this an area of research that you’re personally involved in?’ asked Gordon.

Thomas shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m just a simple obstetrician at heart; I dabble at being a scientist.’

Gordon pointed out that in no way could Thomas’s research achievements be described as ‘dabbling’.

Thomas smiled modestly.

‘Actually, I’d be interested to hear what sort of research is going on at Caernarfon General?’ Gordon asked in what he hoped was a matter-of-fact way.

‘Very little,’ replied Thomas. ‘NHS funding tends not to accommodate research budgets; that sort of thing is best left to the research councils and they’re not big spenders in Welsh hospitals. I think it would be fair to say that my unit is the only one engaged in active clinical research to any degree.’

‘I see,’ said Gordon thoughtfully. ‘I went to see John Palmer on Saturday,’ he said, changing the subject.

‘Really? How is he?’

‘Nothing’s changed.’

‘He still believes his wife did it?’

‘Not exactly.’

Thomas looked at the GP out of the corner of his eye but did not press the question. He took a forkful of his salad and corrected the bend forming in his paper plate through his quiche being too near the edge. ‘Why did you ask about research at Caernarfon General?’ he asked, looking Gordon straight in the eye.

Gordon found it disconcerting: he hadn’t been prepared for the question but it was obvious that Thomas had been mulling it over. He cleared his throat, trying to gain time and get his thoughts in order. He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to confide in Thomas; he was still smarting over having made a fool of himself in his dealings with Charles French. ‘I was... just curious.’

‘You were just curious,’ repeated Thomas in a manner that invited further comment and suggested that he didn’t believe it for a moment.

‘Yes,’ replied Gordon innocently.

Thomas gave him an appraising look and Gordon thought he detected a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes and then everything changed. Thomas glanced over his shoulder and smiled broadly at someone he knew before moving away in the manner of the practised party-goer. Gordon was left wondering what he’d learned from the encounter.

He was about to move on himself when he saw James Trool come towards him.

‘I thought I’d come over and apologise for having to leave so abruptly the other day at lunch.’

‘Not at all,’ said Gordon. ‘I quite understand.’

‘Look, why don’t you come over to supper this evening and meet Sonia. We’d love to see you and I really am most grateful for you giving the hospital this breathing space.’

‘I really didn’t do anything,’ insisted Gordon.

‘You’ll come?’ insisted Trool.

‘Thank you, I’d like that very much,’ said Gordon.

‘We live over on Anglesey,’ said Trool. ‘I’ll give you directions.’

Gordon made a few notes on how to get to the house and agreed to be there at seven-thirty.’

Trool moved away and Gordon wandered over to the French windows to look out at the rain on the grass while he considered what his morning had yielded. His objective had been to discover what kind of research was going on at Caernarfon General and the answer appeared to be very little, apart from what was happening in Thomas’s own unit. He balked at the thought of what that automatically invited him to consider in the light of his theory: that the mysterious doctor who’d taken Megan’s body was on the staff of the IVF unit.

A cot-death child and a murdered baby — what possible relevance could they have to any aspect of IVF research? he wondered. Then he remembered that the Palmer baby had been an IVF child. He’d almost forgotten that. He supposed it might be worth his while checking to see if the same applied to Megan Griffiths. In the meantime, lunch was over and people were drifting back to the lecture hall.

The afternoon session of the symposium was taken up with talks on the value of the ICSI technique, its limitations and the problems associated with it. Apart from the actual technology of being able to inject single sperm into ova, Gordon found most of the session too technical to be interesting. He did however take an interest near the end when it became apparent from slides put up on the screen that the American lab, where the speaker had come from, had apparently had much more success with the technique than the IVF unit at Caernarfon General. A chart of normal versus abnormal births resulting from ICSI pregnancies made Caernarfon’s results seem very poor, so much so that Carwyn Thomas seemed compelled to acknowledge the fact and ask the speaker why he thought this might be so.

The speaker, an American physician from a private IVF clinic in Seattle, fat, bald and avuncular, shrugged his shoulders diplomatically and said, ‘Hard to say, Professor, perhaps we should get together and compare technical notes?’

‘Let’s, do that’ responded Thomas, getting up on to the platform, much to the speaker’s surprise. He hadn’t meant immediately and the suggestion had largely been light-hearted but Thomas had taken over. ‘Ran, perhaps you’d care to come down here?’ he said into the microphone.

Ranulph Dawes, the embryologist who had demonstrated cell manipulation to Gordon, walked down the aisle, putting his jacket back on as he did so and straightening his tie. He climbed up to join the speaker and Carwyn Thomas on the platform. Thomas responded by sitting down on a chair at the side of the stage while the speaker and Dawes were left to compare technical notes publicly about ICSI technology in their respective laboratories, ranging in subject, from needle gauge to incubation times.

After a few minutes Gordon saw that this had been a good ‘show-business’ move on Thomas’s part. Embryologists in the audience were joining in and the whole session had become lively and productively interactive. At the end of the exchange however, the bottom line seemed to be that both Caernarfon and the American clinic were using exactly the same technique.

Dawes left the platform to return to his seat and the American turned to the side to address Thomas. He said, ‘I guess the difference must lie in the type of patients we treat, Professor. As I understand it, you reserve ICSI for your difficult cases whereas we carry it out on anyone who’s prepared to pay for it!’

There was general laughter and an appreciation of the American’s willingness to poke fun at himself but Gordon noted that Thomas appeared not to join in. He remained seated at the edge of the platform, looking down at the floor for quite a long time before finally raising his head and smiling diplomatically as if suddenly realising he should be seen to be sharing the joke. He looked along the rows of the audience, nodding slightly but stopped when he appeared to be looking generally in Gordon’s direction. Gordon couldn’t say for certain that Thomas was looking directly at him — he was slightly too far away, but he saw the smile fade to become the look of a very worried man.

Gordon was puzzled. The explanation offered by the American for Caernarfon’s ICSI patients not doing as well as his own seemed perfectly reasonable to him. Many of the American patients didn’t actually need the sophisticated treatment whereas all Thomas’s patients did as there was really no other alternative for them: it was their last chance. The American success rate was bound to have been better.

Almost on impulse, Gordon wrote down the figures from the slide still showing on the screen, planning to have a think about them later just to see if he could spot what was bothering Thomas. In the meantime he thought he would give the next session a miss and nip upstairs to get a copy of the pamphlet put out by the IVF clinic for the benefit of prospective patients. He remembered seeing them lying on the front desk in the clinic’s reception area when Thomas had given him the guided tour. He felt he could do this in his capacity as a local GP but his real reason lay in the hope that the pamphlets might include a list of the clinic’s staff.

Rather than return to the symposium, Gordon decided to drive over to Bangor to see Lucy was and find out how she was bearing up under the strain of knowing that John was still intent on pleading Guilty. Still in limbo, but managing to cope, seemed to be his conclusion, as they left the house to go for a short walk.

‘I’m going to move back home,’ said Lucy.

‘Do you think that’s wise?’ asked Gordon, more than a little alarmed at the idea in the circumstances.

Lucy shrugged and said, ‘I’m not sure if wisdom comes into it. My sister’s been a gem but there are limits to how long I can keep imposing on her and her husband; they have a life of their own to be getting on with. Apart from that, I miss my home, it’s never going to be the same — it couldn’t possibly be without our Anne-Marie — but it’s still my home, John’s home too.’

Gordon saw Lucy’s eyes become moist; she was fighting back the tears. He said gently, ‘He loves you very much, you know.’

‘Then why won’t he see me? He still must think in his heart of hearts that I did it.’

‘No, that’s not the reason. John knows that the circumstantial evidence against you both is so damning that you’d both end up going to prison for a very long time if he pleaded not guilty. He wants to take the blame alone so that only one of you need go to jail and probably for a shorter time if what Roberts says is true. He loves you that much, Lucy.’

Lucy broke down in floods of tears and Gordon wrapped his arm round her shoulders, holding and shushing her until she regained control. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised.

‘No need.’

‘I can’t allow him to do this,’ said Lucy. ‘It’s not fair and it’s not right. We didn’t do it! We didn’t kill our baby! Oh Tom, I miss her so much. I keep thinking of her in the cold ground. She didn’t stand a chance.’ Lucy sobbed into her handkerchief.

‘I know, I know,’ soothed Gordon. He held her close until she had sobbed herself out. ‘But for justice to prevail, we’ll have to catch the person who did kill Anne-Marie.’

‘And just how are we going to do that? The police won’t listen to anyone or anything except John’s stupid confession.’

‘There are a couple of things to go on,’ said Gordon.

‘Are you serious?’ asked Lucy obviously wanting to believe what she was hearing but still cautious.

Gordon nodded and said, ‘I don’t want to raise your hopes too much but with a bit of luck, I may have some information to give the police in the next few days. I don’t want to say more than that for the moment but believe me, whatever happens, I’m not going to stop trying.’

‘Tom, I can’t begin to thank you enough for what you’ve done and what you’re doing. You’ve been a real friend.’

The Trools lived in a mansion house, obviously built in Victorian times, with lawns stretching down to the water’s edge where Gordon could see they had their own boathouse and landing stage. As he drew to a halt in front of the main entrance, he had the feeling that his aged Land Rover might look more at home round the back or down by the stable block. He dismissed the feeling with a small smile and parked it on the gravel drive outside the front door.

‘Good to see you, Tom. In you come and meet Sonia,’ said James Trool as he opened the door and made Gordon welcome.

Gordon had heard that Trool’s wife was extremely good looking and various references had been made to the fact that she was considerably younger than Trool, but he was still unprepared for what he saw when Sonia Trool walked into the room. She looked as if she had just stepped out from the pages of Vogue or had taken a wrong turning off the catwalk in Milan. She was stunning.

‘And this is Charlotte,’ said Trool sweeping a toddler up in to his arms from the floor where she had been playing with a white furry rabbit, decked out in blue ribbon with little bells attached to its neck. Charlotte giggled as her father tickled her and said, ‘‘Time for bed, little one.’

The smile on Gordon’s lips faltered a little when Trool turned and he could see that Charlotte was blind. Her face had clearly suffered some major trauma in the past although not badly disfigured now. He thought he remembered some mention of a car accident having featured in the Trools’ meeting.

‘Hello Charlotte,’ said Gordon gently. He stroked the back of her hand but the child was more interested in arguing about going to bed.

‘Just a little while longer,’ she wheedled.

‘No, it’s bedtime Charlotte,’ said Sonia firmly, then turning to Gordon she added, ‘Charlotte has more stamina and energy than James and me put together.’

‘It’s such a wonderful house to be a child in,’ said Gordon, his eyes alluding to the sheer size of the place.

‘You know, that’s just what I thought when I first saw it,’ said Trool. ‘It’s just the place for the Famous Five or the Secret Seven to have their adventures.’

Sonia smiled and said, ‘Why don’t you put Charlotte to bed, darling and I’ll show Tom around.’

Trool took Charlotte upstairs and Sonia started to show Gordon the house. ‘I don’t know if James told you about the accident?’ she said.

Gordon said not.

‘That’s really how James and I came to meet. Don — my first husband — and I were over in Britain with Charlotte on vacation and doing the tourist thing. We were on our way to visit Caernarfon Castle when we were involved in a car accident on the dual carriageway. Teenage joy-riders lost control of the car they’d stolen and it crossed the central reservation right into our path. We were all brought in to Caernarfon General but Don was already dead and Charlotte was badly hurt. I got away with a ruptured spleen and some fractured ribs from which I made a full recovery but Charlotte was left blind.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Gordon.

‘James oversaw our treatment throughout our rather lengthy stay at the General so we saw a lot of each other over the months that followed the accident. He was wonderful with Charlotte, seeing that she got nothing but the best of treatment throughout. To cut a long story short, we ended up getting married and I never went back to the States.

Gordon smiled and nodded politely but he wondered about the foundations for such a marriage. It was a common enough thing for patients to fall in love with their physicians and an understandable one too, in situations where trust and dependency were involved. But such feelings usually faded with the help of gentle discouragement from the doctor or simply with the returning self-confidence of the patient as part of the recovery process. He was tempted to consider that Trool, who was clearly old enough to be Sonia’s father, might have abused the situation and exploited his patient’s vulnerability but, from what little he’d seen of them together so far, it was Sonia who seemed to have the dominant personality. Whatever the circumstances, he reminded himself that it was really none of his business.

The tour of the house ended in the original huge, iron-framed conservatory built on to the back of the house and which commanded uninterrupted views over the Menai. Although it was dark and these views were restricted to lights twinkling on the other side of the water, Gordon realised that, in the daytime, it would be possible to see the mountains of Snowdonia.

‘Why don’t we sit here a while,’ suggested Sonia. ‘James will join us soon and we can have a drink before we eat.’

Gordon sat down in one of the cane armchairs among the potted plants, enjoying the smell of leaves and earth indoors. ‘You know,’ said Sonia, ‘James really is grateful to you for back-pedalling on the Megan Griffiths thing. I am too.’

For a moment, Sonia seemed to look directly at Gordon as if adding silent emphasis to what she’d said. Gordon dismissed it as imagination and insisted, ‘It wasn’t a case of back-pedalling; there was just no reason to say anything to the press right now.’

Sonia smiled and said, ‘None the less, we’re very grateful. James really cares about the hospital’s reputation, you know — he takes it all so personally. He’s an old sweetie.’

Gordon thought there might just be a suggestion of that look again when she’d used the word ‘old’ but couldn’t be sure. He did however, feel more comfortable when James Trool entered the room, rubbing his hands and asking what everyone wanted to drink.

‘About time too,’ said Sonia. ‘We’re dying of thirst down here.’

A pleasant evening followed, one which ended with Gordon leaving just after eleven, thanking his hosts and now more than ever convinced that Sonia was the dominant partner in that marriage.

It was impossible for him not to wonder about Sonia Trool on the drive back to the mainland. Had she really been making eyes at him? He wondered. Or was it all his imagination? Perhaps she had just been backing up her husband’s bid to keep the Megan Griffiths inquiry as low-key as possible. He suspected that she was also a very spoiled individual who was very used to having her own way over everything.

Gordon made some coffee when he got in and settled down to take a look at the notes he’d made at the symposium. He was still puzzled at Thomas’s obvious concern over the difference in success rates between his own ICSI patients and that of the American clinic. Of the forty American cases, thirty had been successful, four had failed at the implant stage, five had failed through early miscarriage and one was a stillbirth — the still birth baby had been found to have a lung problem. The Caernarfon data listed thirty-six ICSI patients of whom twenty had been successful and sixteen had failed. Three had failed at the implant stage, five had been ascribed to early miscarriage and eight had been stillborn. The stillborn foetuses had shown a wide range of deformities. One of the live births had resulted in a child with severe deformity. Her name was Anne-Marie Palmer.

Gordon stared at the figures and summarised them in Biro at the edge of the paper. The Americans had chalked up thirty successes out of forty, Thomas’s unit, twenty out of thirty six, a difference easily explained through the difference in patient selection. The implant failure rate was similar, as was the number of early miscarriages. The big difference lay in the number of still births: eight in Caernarfon, only one in Seattle. All the Welsh cases had shown marked deformity while the American baby had simply failed to thrive.

Gordon wondered if that was what had concerned Thomas so much: eight deformed babies dead at birth and one live one... subsequently murdered.