Crisis

30

ASW called me as I was getting into the Mercedes.

‘The research team have had only limited success with your request,’ he said.

‘In what way?’ I asked.

‘After much persuasion, the director has finally agreed to speak with you but won’t promise to give you any information.’

‘Well, that’s a start,’ I said. ‘It could have been a pointblank refusal. I’ll go there right now.’

‘Ask for Dr Sylvester.’

‘Will do. Anything else?’

‘Not at present,’ he said. ‘How about at your end?’

‘Several fuses lit,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘Good. Keep your tin hat on.’

We disconnected.

‘Where to?’ asked the driver.

‘Cambridge,’ I said. ‘Bell Street in Cambridge.’

‘Okey-dokey,’ he said, and we set off.

A mile down the road we had to wait at a level crossing as the gates were closed manually in front of us by a man on foot.

‘This is Dullingham Station,’ said the driver. He pointed to our left. The station was, in fact, just a platform and a signal box from which the man had obviously emerged to close the gates.

‘I thought all level-crossing gates were now automatic,’ I said.

The driver laughed. ‘Not in these parts, clearly.’

A two-carriage train passed in front of us and stopped at the platform. No one appeared to get off or on.

‘Which line is this?’ I asked.

‘Ipswich to Cambridge,’ he said. ‘Runs every hour.’

The man opened the gates and we continued on our way.

Next I called Kate at work.

‘Can you do me a favour if you have a minute?’ I asked her.

‘Of course.’

‘I’d like you to ask Janie something. Better if you do it. I’m not sure she really trusts me.’

‘What is it?’ she asked.

I explained what I needed.

‘I’ll do it straight away.’

‘I’d rather she didn’t mention anything about it to Ryan or Oliver.’

‘Not much chance of that,’ Kate said. ‘Ryan sent her a text this morning asking her to go back but at the same reduced rate as before. Fair to say that Janie wasn’t very impressed.’

The Healthy Woman Centre in Bell Street, Cambridge, did not look like an abortion clinic, but what does one of those actually look like?

I suppose I had expected a modern, single-storey building with large windows, perhaps discreetly frosted for privacy. Instead it was a Victorian red-brick mid-terrace house with five steps up to the front door.

There was no brass plaque, nor any name at all, just a modern doorbell incorporated into a plastic intercom box that also contained a small camera, its lens staring out at me like an unblinking eye.

I pushed the bell.

‘Yes?’ said a tinny voice through the speaker. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I’m expected,’ I said, facing the camera. ‘My name is Harrison Foster. From Simpson White. I was told to ask for Dr Sylvester.’

‘Please wait,’ said the voice.

Presently, I heard a bolt being drawn back and the door was opened by a smart woman in a suit who I took to be in her late forties or early fifties.

‘I’m Dr Sylvester,’ she said. ‘Director of the Centre. Sorry about the security measures, but there are some strange people about and what we do here can be somewhat controversial. We’ve had the occasional protest in the past.’

She stepped to one side and allowed me in. Then she closed and rebolted the door. ‘We can’t be too careful. We used to have one of those remote openers but someone forced it, so now we use the bolt.’

She led me into a small meeting room and we sat down at the table.

‘Now, how can I help you, Mr Foster?’ she said.

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

‘Me or the clinic?’

‘Both.’

‘I joined the team here six years ago. I was appointed as director. I’d previously worked at clinics in Liverpool and Manchester. But the centre has been here much longer. In fact, this was the first such specialist clinic outside London. The Abortion Act came into effect in April 1968 and we opened about a year after that. And a damn good thing, too. Took abortion away from the unregistered and illegal back-street abortionists, who were little more than quacks and butchers, killing women by the score.’ Dr Sylvester was clearly very passionate about her work but I felt it was a speech she’d made often before.

‘I’m here about Zoe Robertson, Zoe Chadwick as she was then. She had an abortion here in August 2002.’

‘What about her?’ the doctor asked.

‘She’s dead,’ I said. ‘You may have heard recently of a fire in some stables in Newmarket that killed several horses.’

She nodded.

‘Zoe was the human victim of that fire. She’d been murdered.’

‘Oh dear,’ Dr Sylvester said. ‘But what has that to do with us?’

‘I think that having had an abortion may have a bearing on her death.’

‘Are you from the police?’

She made it sound like a concern.

‘No,’ I replied. I gave her one of my business cards. ‘I’m a solicitor and I represent Mr Declan Chadwick. He’s been arrested on suspicion of killing his sister but he categorically denies any knowledge of the crime. I am trying to establish his innocence.’

‘And why do you think that her former treatment here is relevant?’

‘I consider that the victim’s previous sexual abuse is germane to who might have committed this crime. Zoe Chadwick was just thirteen when she had the abortion, and I believe the pregnancy was a result of that abuse.’

‘Are you quite sure she was treated here?’

I removed my smartphone from my pocket and showed her the photo I had taken of the letter to Dr Benaud from Dr Andrews. ‘I found this in her medical records.’

Dr Sylvester took a close look at the letter.

She nodded. ‘Gavin Andrews was my predecessor here as director.’

‘Do you still have Zoe’s notes?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sure we do. We are required by law to keep records of all our procedures. They will be in our storage area in the basement.’

‘Can I see them?’ I asked.

‘The 1967 Abortion Act specifically prohibits, without the patient’s express permission, the notification of a termination to anyone other than the Chief Medical Officer of the Department of Health. I take it that’s not you.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But why, then, did Dr Andrews write to Zoe’s GP informing him?’

She looked again at the letter.

‘It does not inform him that an abortion has occurred, merely a gynaecological intervention.’

‘But all you do here is abortions. It therefore doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what the intervention was.’

‘Maybe Miss Chadwick had given her permission for her doctor to be contacted, or maybe she had been referred here by him in the first place. I don’t know. Either way, unless a patient specifically forbids it, we are customarily in touch with her GP to ensure there are no underlying medical conditions that might put the patient at risk. I tend to use email but I know that Dr Andrews liked to telephone, and clearly he must have done so in this case.’

She paused briefly and folded her arms. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Foster, but you can’t see the records without the patient’s permission and that’s final. I have to adhere to the absolute requirements of the Act, otherwise I would be putting our very existence in jeopardy.’

‘But the patient is dead,’ I said.

‘I’m afraid that her being dead makes no difference. I am still unable to give you notification of a termination.’

‘But I’m not asking you to give me notification. I already know that the termination occurred. I’m asking for any other aspects of the circumstances that might have a bearing on her murder. Surely you would want to see her killer brought to justice?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then will you look through her records and tell me if there is anything contained within them that might be useful. For example, the letter refers to a sample being sent for analysis. Is that common? What sort of analysis would that be? And do you still have the results?’

She hesitated.

‘I could ask the detective chief inspector who is investigating the murder,’ I said. ‘I’m sure he could get a search warrant.’

Mention of potential police involvement seemed to sway the argument. Visits by the police were clearly not good for business.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and look through the records for you. Please wait here.’

While I was waiting for her to return, I wasted some time using my phone to look up the trains between Ipswich and Cambridge. As the driver had said, one ran every hour with alternate trains stopping at Dullingham.

Then Kate called me.

‘You were right,’ she said. ‘Julie confirmed it. Ryan asked her to sort it on the Friday before the fire and she made the call. But it seems that nothing was set in stone and, by Monday, it didn’t matter any more.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

Dr Sylvester returned with a buff folder in her hand.

‘You’re not the first person to ask to see these,’ she said. ‘There’s a note on the front to say that photocopies of all the enclosed papers were made and sent out at the request of the patient.’

‘When?’ I asked.

She looked again at the note.

‘Six years ago. Just before I arrived.’

She opened the folder and studied the top couple of sheets, being careful to hold them up so I couldn’t read them too.

‘All perfectly standard,’ she said, closing the folder again and placing it down flat on the table. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary at all. Sorry, Mr Foster, I can’t help you.’

‘How about the sample sent for analysis?’ I asked. ‘Are there any results from that?’

She reopened the folder and briefly shuffled through the papers.

‘As I said, there’s nothing in here that’s out of the ordinary.’ She was clearly determined that there shouldn’t be.

I thought back to what Janie had told me about the flaming row she’d overheard between Zoe and Oliver:

Zoe was shouting that she’d now obtained the DNA evidence to prove it.

Was that the evidence to prove that she actually was his daughter or to prove something else entirely?

‘Is there anything to indicate who the father was? And, in particular, was a DNA profile made of the aborted child?’

‘That wouldn’t be standard practice,’ the doctor said. ‘Blood and urine samples from the patient maybe, and only then to determine if there were any sexually transmitted infections present.’

‘Can you please check again?’ I said. ‘This is most important and I will apply to the police to obtain a search warrant if necessary.’

She wasn’t to know that I’d probably not get one.

Reluctantly, she opened the folder for a third time and studied the papers, this time taking much longer to go through absolutely everything.

‘How very strange,’ she said eventually, holding up one piece of paper.

‘What’s strange?’ I asked.

‘It seems there was indeed a sample taken from the foetus. That is highly irregular. Highly irregular indeed.’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe not even legal.’

‘Who took it?’ I asked.

‘It must have been Dr Andrews. No one else would have had the authority.’

‘What happened to the sample?’ I asked.

She looked again at the paper.

‘It was sent to a lab in London.’

‘Which lab?’ I asked.

I could tell that she didn’t want to tell me but I just waited, resisting a temptation to tap my fingers impatiently on the table.

‘Somewhere called the Chancery Lane Medical Laboratory,’ she said eventually, reading from the paper.

‘Do you use them often?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never heard of them before.’

I typed their name into my smartphone and pulled up their website.

‘Specialising in forensic testing for the legal profession’ was their strapline.

‘Do you have the results?’

‘There is nothing in here,’ Dr Sylvester said holding up the folder. ‘I’ve been through it all.’

‘Would the analysis have been paid for by the health service?’ I asked.

‘No chance,’ said the doctor. ‘Lab work hardly ever is. Even nowadays, when about half of the terminations here are done on the NHS, the clients still have to pay for lab tests. And anyway, back then, all our procedures would have been private.’

‘But Zoe Chadwick’s mother told me that Zoe had organised everything herself and it was done for free under the NHS.’

‘Not here.’ The doctor shook her head with certainty. ‘Not then.’

‘So how much would it have cost?’

‘In 2002? Between two and three hundred pounds.’

‘So who paid for it?’ I asked. ‘And for the lab testing on top? Zoe wouldn’t have had access to that sort of money. Is there a receipt in the folder?’

‘That information wouldn’t be kept in here,’ she said. ‘These are the medical notes only.’

‘So where would it be kept?’

‘In our finance department. But I doubt they’ll still have the records from so long ago.’

‘Let’s have a look, shall we?’

I stood up to encourage her.

We walked along a corridor to an office at the rear of the building where a large middle-aged woman in a blue cardigan was sitting in front of a computer screen, tapping away on a keyboard.

‘Hello, Barbara,’ Dr Sylvester said. ‘This gentleman would like to see some financial information from 2002. Is that possible?’

She said it in a manner that expected, and probably hoped, that the answer would be no.

Barbara drew in a breath through her teeth.

‘What sort of financial information?’ she asked. ‘We don’t normally keep any paper records beyond seven years. We don’t have the space. And 2002 was before we switched over to the computers.’

‘I’d like to know who paid for a certain procedure,’ I said.

‘How did they pay?’ Barbara asked.

‘I’ve no idea.’

She noisily sucked in air again. ‘In 2002, you say?’

I nodded. ‘August.’

‘The only record we’d have left would be the receipt book. That’s if a receipt was issued. Dr Andrews didn’t always bother.’

‘Perhaps I could ask him if he remembers,’ I said.

‘That wouldn’t be possible,’ Barbara said. ‘Not unless you have a direct line to the hereafter. Dr Andrews died in post. Literally. Had a heart attack while sitting at his desk in the next room. He’d been here for twenty-five years but he was still only sixty-two. It was a dreadful shock for us all.’

Barbara was obviously still upset by it.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Shall we look in the receipt book?’

The receipt book actually turned out to be a cardboard box full of lots of receipt books stored in a cupboard behind Barbara’s desk.

‘What date did you say?’ Barbara asked.

‘August 2002.’

She shuffled through the box and lifted out one of the books. It had about fifty pages with four receipts on each. The top copy of the receipt had clearly been torn out and handed to the customer while the carbonless duplicate beneath remained.

‘Name?’

‘Chadwick. Zoe Chadwick.’

She scanned through the pages.

‘Ah, here we are,’ she said triumphantly. ‘Chadwick. Two hundred and sixty pounds, received on 4th August 2002. But that’s a bit odd.’

‘What’s odd,’ I asked.

‘Dr Andrews wrote “Do NOT inform the patient” across the bottom in bold black ink and he underlined it twice. I recognise his handwriting.’

‘So who was the receipt issued to if it wasn’t to the patient?’ I asked.

‘Mr Chadwick,’ Barbara said. ‘Mr Oliver Chadwick.’