Blue Genes (8 page)

She looked blankly at me. ‘Because they’ll take the baby off us,’ she said in a tone of voice I recognized as the one I used to explain to Richard why you can’t wash your jeans in the dishwasher.

‘I think you might be overreacting,’ I said cautiously, aware that I wasn’t wearing protective clothing. ‘This is a straightforward case, Alexis,’ I continued, skimming the story. ‘Burglar gets disturbed, struggle, burglar panics, pulls a blade and lashes out. Tragic waste of talented test-tube baby doctor.’ I looked up. ‘The cops aren’t going to be interviewing her Leeds patients, never mind trying to trace people she treated in a different city under a different name.’

‘Maybe so, but maybe there’s more to it than meets the eye,’ Alexis said stubbornly. ‘I’ve been doing the crime beat long enough to know that the Old Bill only tell you what they want you to know. It wouldn’t be the first time there’s been a whole other investigation going on beneath the surface.’ She finished her drink and her cigarette, for some reason avoiding my eye.

I had a strong feeling that I didn’t know what the real story was here. I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to know what it was that could disconcert my normally stable best buddy as much as this, but I knew I couldn’t dodge the issue. ‘What’s really going on here, Alexis?’ I asked.

She ran both hands through her wild tangle of black hair and looked up at me, her face worried and frightened, her eyes as hollow as a politician’s promises. ‘Any chance of another drink?’

I fetched her another Stoly and Diet Coke, this one more than a little weaker than the last. If she was going to swallow them like water, I didn’t want her passing out before she’d explained why she was in such a state about the death of a woman with whom she’d had nothing more than a professional relationship. I slid the drink across the table to her, and when she reached out for it, I covered her hand with mine. ‘Tell me,’ I said.

Alexis tightened her lips and shook her head. ‘We haven’t told another living soul,’ she said, reaching for another cigarette. I hoped she wasn’t smoking like this around Chris or the baby was going to need nicotine patches to get through its first twenty-four hours.

‘You said a minute ago you wanted me working on this. If I don’t know what’s going on, there’s not a lot I can do,’ I reminded her.

Alexis lifted her eyes and gazed into mine. ‘This has got to stay between us,’ she said, her voice a plea I’d never heard from her before. ‘I mean it, KB. Nobody gets to hear this one. Not Della, not Ruth, not even Richard. Nobody.’

‘That serious, eh?’ I said, trying to lighten the oppressiveness of the atmosphere.

‘Yeah, that serious,’ Alexis said, not noticeably lightened.

‘You know you can trust me.’

‘That’s why I’m here,’ she admitted after a pause. The hand that wasn’t hanging on to the cigarette swept through her hair again. ‘I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be to tell you.’

I leaned back against the sofa, trying to look as relaxed and unshockable as I could. ‘Alexis, I’m bombproof. Whatever it is, I’ve heard it before. Or something very like it.’

Her mouth twisted in a strange, inward smile. ‘Not like this, KB, I promise you. This is one hundred per cent one-off.’ Alexis sat up straight, squaring her shoulders. I saw she’d made the decision to reveal what was eating her. ‘This baby that Chris is carrying—it’s ours.’ She looked expectantly at me.

I didn’t want to believe what I was afraid she was trying to tell me. So I smiled and said, ‘Hey, that’s a really healthy attitude, acting like you’ve really got a stake in it.’

‘I’m not talking attitude, KB. I’m talking reality.’ She sighed. ‘I’m talking making a baby from two women.’

The trouble with modern life is that there isn’t any etiquette any more. Things change so much and so fast that even if Emily Post were still around, she wouldn’t be able to devise a set of protocols that stay abreast of tortured human relationships. If Alexis had dropped her bombshell in my mother’s day, I could have said, ‘That’s nice, dear. Now, do you like your milk in first?’ In my Granny Brannigan’s day, I could have crossed myself vigorously and sent for the priest. But in the face of the encroaching millennium, all I could do was gape and say, ‘What?’

‘I’m not making this up, you know,’ Alexis said defensively. ‘It’s possible. It’s not even very difficult. It’s just very illegal.’

‘I’m having a bit of trouble with this,’ I stammered. ‘How do you mean, it’s possible? Are we talking cloning here, or what?’

‘Nothing so high tech. Look, all you need to make a baby are a womb, an egg and something to fertilize it with.’

‘Which traditionally has been sperm,’ I remarked drily.

‘Which traditionally has been sperm,’ Alexis agreed. ‘But all you actually need is a collision of chromosomes. You get one from each side of the exchange. Women have two X chromosomes and men have an X and a Y. With me so far?’

‘I might not have A level biology, but I do know the basics,’ I said.

‘Right. So you’ll know that if it’s the man’s Y chromosome that links up with the woman’s X chromosome, you get a little baby boy. And if it’s his X chromosome that does the business, you get a girl. So everybody knew that you could make babies out of two X chromosomes. Only they didn’t shout too much about it, did they? Because if they did more than mention it in passing, like, it wouldn’t take a lot of working out to understand that if all you need for baby girls is a pair of X chromosomes from two different sources, you wouldn’t need men.’

‘You’re telling me that after twenty-five years of feminist theory, scientists have only just noticed that?’ I couldn’t keep the irony out of my voice.

‘No, they’ve always known it. But certain kinds of experiments are against the law. That includes almost anything involving human embryos. Unless, of course, it’s aimed at letting men who produce crap sperm make babies. So although loads of people knew that theoretically it was possible to make babies from two women, nobody could officially do any research on it, so the technology that would make it possible science instead of fantasy just wasn’t happening.’ The journalist was in control now, and Alexis paused for effect. She couldn’t help herself.

‘So what happened to change that?’ I asked, responding to my cue.

‘There was a load of research done which showed that men didn’t react well to having their wives inseminated with donor sperm. Surprise, surprise, they didn’t feel connected to the kids and more often than not, families were breaking up because the men didn’t feel like they were proper families. Given that more men are having problems with their sperm production than ever before, the pressure was really on for doctors to find a way of helping inadequate sperm to make babies. A couple of years ago, they came up with a really thin needle that could be inserted right into the very nucleus of an egg so that they could deliver a single sperm right to the place where it would count.’

I nodded, light dawning. ‘And somebody somewhere figured that if they could do it with a sperm, they could do it with another egg.’

‘Give the girl a coconut,’ Alexis said, incapable of being solemn and scared for long.

‘And this doctor, whatever her real name is, has been doing this in
Manchester
?’ I asked. I know they say that what Manchester does today, London does tomorrow, but this seemed to be taking things a bit far.

‘Yeah.’

‘Totally illegally?’

‘Yeah.’

‘With lesbian couples?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Who are therefore technically also breaking the law?’

‘I suppose so.’

We looked at each other across the table. I didn’t know about Alexis, but I couldn’t help banner headlines flashing across my mind. The thought of what the tabloids would do with a story like this was enough in itself to bring me out fighting for the women who had gone underground to make their dreams come true, let alone my feelings for Alexis and Chris. ‘And the baby Chris is carrying belongs to both of you?’ I asked.

‘That’s right. We both had to have a course of drugs to maximize our fertility, then Helen harvested our eggs and took them off to the lab to join them up and grow them on till she was sure they were OK. She did four altogether.’

If I looked as aghast as I felt, Alexis’s face didn’t reflect it. ‘Chris is having
quads
?’ I gasped.

‘Don’t be soft. ’Course she’s not. There’s a lousy success rate. You have to transplant at least three embryos to be in with a shout, and then it’s only a seventy per cent chance that one of them’s going to do the business. Helen transplanted three, and one of them survived. Believe me, in this game, that’s a result.’

‘So what happened to the other one?’ I asked. I had a horrible feeling I wasn’t going to like the answer.

‘It’s in the freezer at home. In a flask of liquid nitrogen.’

I’d been right. I felt slightly queasy at the thought and reminded myself never to go looking for a snack in Alexis’s kitchen. I cleared my throat. ‘How do you know it works? How do you know the babies are…OK?’

Alexis frowned. ‘There was no way of proving it objectively. We had to take Helen’s word for it. She introduced us to the first couple she had a success with. Their little girl’s about eighteen months now. She’s a really bright kid. And yes, I know they could have been bullshitting us, that it could have been a racket to rip us off, but I believed those two women. You had to be there, KB.’

I thought I could probably make it through the night without the experience. ‘I see now why you thought they’d take the baby off you,’ was all I said.

‘You’ve got to help us,’ Alexis said.

‘What exactly did you have in mind?’ I asked.

‘Helen Maitland’s files,’ Alexis said. ‘We’ve got to get rid of them before the police find them.’

‘Why would the police be looking for them in the first place?’ I asked. ‘Like I said, it’s a straightforward burglary gone wrong.’

‘OK, OK, I know you think I’m being paranoid. But this is our child’s future that’s at stake here. I’m entitled to go a bit over the top. But there’s two reasons why I’m worried. One, suppose it didn’t happen like the
YP
says? Suppose the person who killed Helen Maitland wasn’t a burglar. Suppose it was some woman whose treatment hadn’t worked and she’d gone off her box? Or suppose it was somebody who’d found out what was going on and was blackmailing Helen? Once the cops start digging, you know they won’t stop. They might not be well bright, but you know as well as I do that when it comes to murder the bizzies don’t ignore anything that looks like it might be a lead.’

I sighed. She was right. Coppers on murder inquiries are never satisfied till they’ve got somebody firmly in the frame. And if the obvious paths don’t come up with a viable suspect, they start unravelling every loose end they can find. ‘What’s the second reason?’ I asked.

‘She had consulting rooms in Manchester. Sooner or later, somebody is going to notice she’s not where she should be when she should be. And eventually, somebody’s going to be emptying her filing cabinet. And if I know anything about people, whoever goes through those files isn’t going to be dumping them straight in the bucket. It’s only human nature to have a good root through. And then me and Chris are chopped liver, along with all the other dykes Helen Maitland has given babies to.’ Alexis finished her cigarette and washed it down with a couple of gulps of her drink. ‘We need you to find those files.’

I crossed my legs at the ankles and hugged my knees. ‘You’re asking a lot here. Interfering with a murder inquiry. Probably burglary, not to mention data theft.’

‘I’m not asking for a
favour
here, KB. We’ll pay you.’

I snorted with ironic laughter. ‘Alexis, is this how you really think my professional life works? People walk in and ask me to break the law for money? I thought you knew me! When punters walk into my office and ask me to do things that are illegal, they don’t stay in the room long enough to notice the colour of the carpet. When I have to break the law, I go out of my way to make sure my clients are the last to know. If I do this for you, it won’t be because you’re offering to
pay
me for it, it’ll be because I decide it needs to be done.’

She had the grace to look abashed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she groaned. ‘My head’s cabbaged with all this. I know you’re not some mad maverick burglar for hire. It’s just that you’re the only person I know who’s got the skills to get us out from under whatever’s going to happen now Helen Maitland’s dead. Will you do the business for us?’ The look of desperation that had temporarily disappeared was back.

‘And what if the things I find out point to a conclusion you won’t like?’ I asked, stalling.

‘You mean, if you uncover evidence that makes it look like one of her lesbian patients killed her?’

‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

Alexis covered her eyes and kneaded her temples. Then she looked up at me. ‘I can’t believe that’s what you’ll find. But even if you do, is that any reason why the rest of us have to have our lives destroyed too?’

Just call me the girl who can’t say no.

The pleasant, caring atmosphere of the Compton Clinic hit me as soon as I walked through the door. Air subtly perfumed and temperature controlled, decor more like a country house than a medical facility, bowls of fresh flowers on every surface. I could almost believe they employed the only gynaecologists in the world who warm the speculums before plunging them deep into a woman’s most intimate orifice. I made a mental note to ask Alexis about it later.

The clinic was in St John Street, a little Georgian oasis off Deansgate that pretends very hard to be Harley Street. The doctors who have their private consulting rooms there obviously figure that one of the most convincing ways of doing that is to charge the most outrageous prices for their services. From what I’d heard, you could make the down payment on one of the purpose-built yuppie flats round the corner on what they’d charge you to remove an unsightly blackhead. If Helen Maitland demanded that kind of price for her treatments, I couldn’t imagine there were enough dykes desperate for motherhood and sufficiently well-heeled to make it worth her while. But then, what do I know? I’m the only woman I’m aware of who’s been using the pill
and
demanding a condom since she was sixteen.