Donor (31 page)

No one would listen and they couldn’t be blamed. There was really nothing of substance to consider. For that reason they would all be against him, the hospital, the transplant unit, Amanda’s parents, Sci-Med, everyone. Even if he were to succeed in stopping it, the chances were that Amanda would still die because she couldn’t get a transplant in time when – as others would not be slow to point out – one had been available. He would be seen as her murderer and all because he suspected things weren’t going to turn out well for her.

He knew that unless he worked out exactly what Ross was up to by the time the donor kidney arrived from Geneva, he was going to have to sit still and do nothing. If, as he suspected, Amanda should reject her transplant, like Amy Teasdale and Kenneth Lineham, it would still be his fault because he hadn’t done anything to stop it. Talk about the devil and the deep blue sea. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. He cursed and got up to start pacing the room.

Once more he juggled the pieces of information in his head, trying to make a coherent picture, but they still wouldn’t fit. Maybe there weren’t enough or maybe there were too many and not all of them relevant.

He was distracted by the sound of a taxi’s diesel engine as it drew to a halt and idled noisily at the front door. He looked down to see another person carrying a medical bag had arrived. There was certainly lots of activity surrounding the Omega patient. Soon, he reflected, there would be lots of activity surrounding Amanda Chapman. He frowned and asked himself again: what’s the connection?

Amanda had been taken to the Omega wing for her unnecessary marrow puncture. He hadn’t been able to come up with a reason for it but at least he knew that the test itself wasn’t a simple mistake of duplication. Amy had been subjected to the same procedure. Ross had insisted on it. What was it that Turner had said? He must have wanted stem cells for his immuno-preparation work.

Dunbar suddenly saw the light. The tests hadn’t been performed for the benefit of the patients at all. Ross hadn’t wanted duplicate tests done. He’d needed stem cells from the patients for a purpose other than the obvious one of checking their immunotype. There was no repetition of unnecessary tests at all. There never had been.

He felt a frisson of excitement. He was getting somewhere at last. Immuno-preparation work? Where had he come across that term recently? Turner had used it but he had seen it somewhere else. If only he could remember … The phone rang and broke his train of thought. He cursed and answered it. It was nothing important.

Dunbar tried to recover his concentration but failed. The moment had gone. He decided to cut his losses and waste no more time wondering. He connected his notebook computer to the phone line to call up Sci-Med. He wanted the latest information they had about James Ross.

His interest quickened at once: they’d found out something about Ross’s Geneva connection. Their earlier problems had been due to an inability to trace a Médic International hospital or clinic in Geneva. The reason for this was simple. There was no such place and Médic International had no interests at all in Geneva. Ross had been going there for other reasons; he also owned a house there, a villa overlooking the lake. He had paid $2 million for it three years ago.

‘Jesus,’ muttered Dunbar. So money was involved after all. Big money. You didn’t buy a house like that on eighty grand a year. He saw that there was more information to come and scrolled down the screen. Ross had an interest in a Swiss medical recruitment agency called Roche Dubois. It specialized in the recruitment of high-grade staff for private clinics all over Europe. Doctors, nurses, technicians of all sorts, could find highly paid work if they were good enough. The agency was above-board and had a good reputation. It specialized in finding positions for American nursing and medical personnel wishing to work in Europe for whatever reason, although exchanges for European nationals were also arranged.

Dunbar wondered if this was relevant. Did Ross have reason to recruit medical staff on his own behalf? He thought about the American doctors being shown to the Omega wing. Could all the secrecy, stone-faced guards and strange medical people coming and going really be ascribed to a need for confidentiality? No, there had to be more to it.

The Omega patients were the key to the whole damned thing, Dunbar decided. It wasn’t that the money they brought in was being used to subsidize NHS charity patients. Quite the reverse. The NHS patients were being used in some way for the benefit of Omega ones. That must be why Ingrid had feigned ignorance when he had mooted a connection between them and Omega patients over funding. She knew what was going on. He had thrown her by making the connection but for the wrong reason.

This still didn’t help. The only connection he was aware of was the marrow puncture done on Amanda Chapman in the Omega wing and the fact that there had been Omega patients in the hospital when Amy Teasdale and Kenneth Lineham had been patients.

Just who the hell were these Omega patients? he wondered angrily. What were they really there for? He had the hollow feeling that he was running out of time. He needed information and he needed it fast. It was time to change tactics. No more pussy-footing around. He would cause a fuss by asking questions openly. Maybe he couldn’t stop Amanda’s operation, but he could certainly create the illusion that he knew much more than he did. That might scare someone in the know; it might scare them enough to achieve the same end. It was a dangerous game to play, though. Ignorance was never a position of strength.

He picked up the phone and called Ingrid’s extension. ‘Ingrid, would you come over, please?’

Ingrid arrived and smiled. ‘You have something for me?’

‘I want to know who the current Omega patient is. I want her name and I want to know why she’s here. I also want to know where she was before she came here and who referred her to Médic Ecosse.’

Her smile faded. ‘I’m not sure I can do that,’ she stammered. ‘The strict confidentiality surrounding—’

Dunbar interrupted her. ‘I need that information. I need it now, please.’

Ingrid tried to recover her composure. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’ she asked tentatively. ‘If you’ll forgive my saying, it doesn’t seem to be strictly relevant to the investigation and monitoring of accounts.’

Dunbar had anticipated such opposition. ‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘I have reason to believe that the true income from Omega patients is not being declared.’

‘But you’ve seen the figures,’ said Ingrid, taken aback. ‘The profit for the hospital amounted to many thousands of pounds.’

‘I’ve seen the declared profit,’ agreed Dunbar. ‘I’d like to see for myself how the figures are arrived at. For that reason I want to know all about the current Omega patient, who she is, why she’s here, and I need verification of her condition from an outside source, preferably the hospital or clinic that referred her to you.’

‘I see,’ said Ingrid. ‘I very much doubt if Mr Giordano or Dr Kinscherf will agree to this.’

‘If they don’t, I will lodge a formal complaint of obstruction with my colleagues at the Scottish Office and suggest that an investigation be mounted immediately by the Serious Fraud Office.’

Ingrid tried to maintain eye contact with Dunbar, by way of a challenge, but she failed after a few moments. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said quietly; she was obviously unnerved at seeing a side to Dunbar she hadn’t encountered before.

The door closed behind her and Dunbar remained in his chair, sitting perfectly still, wondering how well he’d played his hand. Would they give in and tell him what he wanted to know or would they try to delay as long as possible? He had to admit that the latter would be the bright thing to do. They were vulnerable only as long as the Omega patient was in the hospital. Once she’d gone they’d be safe. She’d be lost in the mists of secrecy. His only hope lay in Ingrid relaying his threat to call in the SFO as being imminent. They might just believe that his interest was still financial and gamble on giving him the information he asked for. After all, no figures had been declared for the current Omega patient. They had nothing to worry about on that account. He decided to help matters along by exploiting the fact that his computer screen was being monitored. He sat down at it and started drafting a letter requesting that the Scottish Office consider calling in the SFO on the grounds that he’d been denied access to files he thought might be concealing fraud.

After nearly half an hour, Ingrid returned, carrying a file. ‘Here are the notes you asked for, Doctor,’ she said without emotion. ‘I’m asked to remind you of their strictly confidential nature. Please inform me as soon as you’re finished with them.’

‘Of course.’

Dunbar felt a thrill of excitement as he flipped open the cover and started to read.

The patient was a thirty-year-old Saudi Arabian woman, the wife of a sheikh with extensive oil interests and an income to match. She was pregnant for the third time. Her first two babies had been stillborn from a congenital heart defect. The sheikh, who doted on his wife, was anxious that she be monitored every step of the way through her current pregnancy. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, had been given the task but after it was diagnosed at an early stage, through the use of the latest foetal monitoring equipment, that the foetus was suffering from the same cardiac defect as the others, the woman had been removed from the Mayo and flown across the Atlantic to Médic Ecosse. Corrective surgery was planned immediately after a successful birth.

Dunbar noted the name of the attending physician at the Mayo Clinic, Dr Gordon Hasselhof, and closed the file. There was certainly more to it than just a difficult birth, but did it help him at all? It was difficult to see how little Amanda Chapman could be involved in the obstetric care of a thirty-year-old Middle Eastern woman. He phoned Ingrid and told her he was finished with the notes. They were collected within minutes and without comment.

There was one question that sprang to mind though – although it might not be relevant, thought Dunbar. Why had the woman been transferred to Médic Ecosse? The Mayo Clinic was one of the most famous medical institutions in the world. A transatlantic flight and the trauma of moving to yet another strange country and hospital could not have been the most restful experience for the patient. What had precipitated it? Had there been some kind of disagreement over her treatment at the Mayo? Some undisclosed problem?

It had not been Dunbar’s intention at the outset to contact the referring doctor or hospital; he had made his request for their identity purely as a safeguard against being fobbed off with anything Médic Ecosse cared to tell him. But now he decided he would make inquiries. In his present state of ignorance, no detail should be overlooked. He looked at his watch. Making adjustments for the time differential, it would be around 10 a.m. in Minnesota. He asked the switchboard to make the call.

‘Good morning. Mayo Clinic. How may I help you?’ said a robotic female voice.

‘I’d like to speak with Dr Gordon Hasselhof, please.’

‘May I ask who’s calling?’

‘Dr Steven Dunbar. I’m calling from Glasgow in Scotland.’

‘Please hold.’

For a few moments the line was left open and Dunbar could hear the everyday sounds of a hospital in the background; then music cut in as he was put on hold. ‘Greensleeves’ coming from the wrong side of the Atlantic seemed slightly bizarre.

‘Hello, caller.’

‘Yes?’

‘Dr Hasselhof is currently in conference. Would you care to leave a message or call back later?’

‘I’ll try later,’ said Dunbar.

‘Have a nice day, Doctor.’

‘You too,’ said Dunbar. He cautioned himself that it was better to be told to have a nice day by someone who didn’t mean it than to get lost by someone who did.

He put down the phone and started to tidy up the papers on his desk. He saw that his letter to the Scottish Office was still on the screen of his computer and decided to copy it to disk rather than cancel it. He picked up the disk he had initialled earlier and inserted it. He saw it come up as ‘Research Data One’, the title he’d given it when covering up the mistake of inserting one of Ross’s disks. Looking at it and thinking of Ross’s research reminded him where he’d seen the term ‘immuno-preparation’ before: in the title of one of Ross’s research papers, the one he had put aside while he read the others. He grabbed his jacket and briefcase and made for the car park. The paper was in the file in his hotel room.

There was a laundry bag sitting on his bed when he got there, with a note pinned to it. Dunbar feared it would be a complaint from the hotel about the state of the things he’d sent for cleaning, the clothing he’d used on the ill-starred expedition with Jimmy Douglas. He opened the envelope. It wasn’t a complaint. They were returning a set of car keys that had been left in one of the pockets. Dunbar looked at them. They were the keys to Jimmy’s Land-Rover. He’d have to find a way of returning them.

When he retrieved Ross’s paper from the Sci-Med file, Dunbar noticed that it was over three years old. This was not encouraging. Could what Ross had been working on over three years ago really be relevant to what was going on at the moment? If it had been a successful line of research, why had he not published any more about it in the intervening period? He sat down and started reading.

He had to struggle with the immunological jargon at the beginning but it soon began to make sense and he jotted down the major points as they emerged.

Fact number one was that the human foetus did not start out with an immune system of its own. If biological material from a foreign source were to be introduced to it before its own system developed, it would be accepted. More importantly, when the baby finally did develop its immune system, it would continue to accept material from that source throughout its life. Animal experiments using stem cells … Dunbar swallowed as he read the words … had shown this to be the case. Unborn mice, surgically infused with human stem cells before development of their immune system, had subsequently been born with a human immune system as well as their own.