Second Opinion (32 page)

‘That does not mean to say there is no photograph,’ she said softly. ‘I am a Cypriot woman and we women have our own ways and our own friends.’

She looked over her shoulder briefly at one of the other women at the table. ‘Arianna, she took one for me. I wanted it and at that time Kostakis did not mind. He did not have a camera, but Arianna did. And she is, after all, my cousin.’

George’s mouth was dry with anticipation. ‘May I see it?’

‘Gladly,’ Helen said. ‘I trust you, of course, not to mention this to Kostakis, should you ever speak to him.’

‘Of course not,’ George said. ‘If that is what you wish.’

‘It is what I wish,’ Helen Popodopoulos said gravely, and nodded at the woman at the table. Arianna got to her feet and went across the room to pick up her leather handbag. She brought it back to George and took out a small envelope, stiffened with cardboard and unmarked.

With slippery fingers George pulled the picture from its folds.

‘I took it almost as soon as he was born,’ Arianna said. Her voice was husky with remembered emotion. ‘I was so
excited. He was such a lovely boy and so — well, you can see. But once he was dead Kostakis wanted it burned up. He did not want ever to see it again, to remember the boy who died before he lived.’ She looked over her shoulder at the three silent women at the table. ‘We could not bear that. So we keep it.’

George turned the picture over and looked, and the dryness in her mouth increased and her throat constricted too as she concentrated. Because now she knew what had happened to those babies. Of that she was sure. She knew what had happened. Not how or why, but
what
.

23
  
  

‘I know what happened,’ George said. ‘Not how or why, but what.’

There was a long silence at the other end of the phone, and then Gus said carefully, ‘Was this the notion you had Christmas afternoon? The hunch?’

‘You’ve got it,’ she said, with a sudden lift of exhilaration. It was good to be able to tell him how she felt, and not to hide anything. ‘I just wanted to check first.’

‘You didn’t have to,’ he said. ‘Believe me, you could have trusted me not to — well, let it be. Just make me a promise.’

‘Depends what it is.’ She laughed as she said it.

‘Don’t play the coquette with me, ducks. It’s not your style or mine. Just promise me that in future you’ll stop playing secrets. We’re a team, ain’t we? Just tell me what’s going on, no matter what.’

She hesitated. ‘I promise, I’ll
try
. Will that do?’

He was silent again and she was alarmed. Had she upset him? Hurt his feelings? It was important to her suddenly that she should never do that. Yet at the same time, she had to hold on to herself, to her freedom to do what she had to do. She held her breath, waiting for his response. And then relaxed when he said, ‘OK, ducks. I’ll settle for that. Can’t do anything else, can I? All right, let’s get on. Out with it. You say you
know
what happened. What?’

‘The babies. The cot deaths, so called.’

‘Humph,’ he said. ‘You’ve got evidence?’

She looked down at the photograph on her desk. ‘I think it’s evidence,’ she said. ‘If you took me into court and asked me to swear to it on oath, I would.’

‘Good enough,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way.’

‘Don’t you want me to tell you now?’ She was startled. In his shoes she couldn’t have borne not being told immediately.

‘I’d rather look at the evidence at the same time as I hear the words,’ he said. ‘Anyway, any excuse to see you … Give me fifteen minutes.’

The dialling tone buzzed in her ear, and slowly she recradled the phone, still looking down at the photograph. Perhaps, she thought, she ought not to look at it too often. If she did, she might blur her memory; and she closed her eyes and deliberately summoned up the image of the Popodopoulos baby lying on her dissection table in the mortuary. It took a moment or two, which alarmed her a little, but then it worked, and she could see it all clearly: the table; Danny out of the corner of her memory’s eye preparing viscera for the scales; the sound of rain on the roof. She’d forgotten till now that it had been raining that morning. She opened her eyes again, relieved. There was no doubt; she could go into court and swear it, if she had to.

Sheila put her head round her office door to say goodnight, putting on her my-God-I’m-so-exhausted face, even managing to look drawn and white. An excellent actress, Sheila.

‘I’ll get those oncology slides finally sorted by tomorrow,’ she said. ‘And the regional lab said to let you know that the figures for last year’s cervical smears are on their way. They’re sorry they’re later than usual.’

‘Thank you, Sheila,’ George said. ‘Sorry you’re so pushed at the moment. I’m not exactly sitting around myself, mind you.’

‘No,’ said Sheila tartly. ‘I’m sure.’ She withdrew her head leaving George feeling thoroughly irritated and a little guilty. There was no doubt that she did lean a good deal on Sheila while she rushed around being a detective, which wasn’t really part of her job description. But after all, why shouldn’t she? It still was work, and she wasn’t taking time off the way some hospital consultants did for private practice or the improvement of a golf handicap. And then she felt guilty again, for thinking harsh thoughts about her colleagues. It wasn’t easy, she decided, having any sort of conscience when you worked in a hospital.

By the time Gus arrived she’d made a pot of coffee and was sitting waiting at her desk, the photograph carefully stowed back in its envelope. She couldn’t resist a little bit of theatricality, she thought, and then was amused with herself. It wouldn’t be theatrical to him, dammit; he’d never seen the child with his own eyes so the photograph would mean nothing to him. She took it out of the envelope and propped it up against her phone.

He came in in a flurry of cold air, bringing the smell of the dank December street and the river in with him. She watched with a sense of deep pleasure as he shrugged out of his old overcoat and loosened his tie before delving into the shabby plastic bag he was carrying and bringing out a square white box with a flourish.

‘Grodzinski’s,’ he announced with great satisfaction. ‘Best pâtisserie in the East End. You got the coffee ready? Good girl. Here’s the strudel.’

He opened the box and put slices of pastry on to the two paper plates which he also fished out of the plastic bag. George laughed as he pushed it in front of her, together with a plastic fork to eat it with.

‘You must live in fear of imminent starvation,’ she said. ‘Whenever I see you you’re fetching food offerings. You filled our fridge with an amazing amount of stuff on Christmas Day. Bridget showed me. It wasn’t necessary.’

‘Shut up and eat up,’ he said amiably. ‘O’ course it’s necessary. A man who neglects his stomach neglects life. As Dr Johnson once said.’

‘I doubt he said precisely that.’ George tried a piece of the strudel as he busied himself with the coffee tray. It was delectable and she ate another forkful as he pushed her coffee in front of her.

‘See what I mean? Get the grub right and the rest falls into place. Now, tell me all about it. You can talk with your mouth full, I don’t mind.’

He started on his own strudel as she finished hers and dropped the paper plate in the waste-paper basket.

‘No need. Now, listen. I went to see Mrs Popodopoulos this afternoon.’

‘Mrs Who? Should I know?’

‘Huh! Some memory you’ve got. Hers was the third baby which died. The one I did the post-mortem on. I didn’t do the others, remember, because I was off sick.’

‘I haven’t asked.’ He was all compunction. ‘How is it?’

‘What? Oh.’ She looked down at her left hand. ‘It’s fine. I forgot about it, so I suppose it’s fine. Are you listening?’

He had finished his pastry and was now looking at her with a deliberately soulful expression on his face. ‘I’d rather be sittin’ on your floor beside your sofa while your Ma and Bridget sleep,’ he said. ‘That beats talkin’.’

‘Shut up and listen.’

‘OK, OK, I’m listenin’. All ears, that’s me. So, you went to see the woman whose baby died. Why?’

She made a little face. ‘It’ll sound kinda crazy, but it was partly you taking us to the Players Theatre, and partly something that was on TV on Christmas Day.’

‘You were watching TV?’ he said reproachfully. ‘And here was I thinkin’ you were concentratin’ on me.’

‘I told you to shut up about that. Anyway, you remember. Ma woke suddenly and sang a line from that damned “Raggle-taggle Gypsies” song she’d heard at the Players
and there was stuff on the programme about the children in Romanian orphanages.’

‘Yes.’ His attention had sharpened now; the laughter had gone from him. He was watching her face closely as she talked, and that made her feel a little flustered, but she ploughed on.

‘Well, it wasn’t only that. I have to say I’d been to see the Chowdarys too. She wasn’t there, but he was — Viv — and he showed me a photograph of his dead baby. It had been taken at the moment of birth, not when it had died. It was a bit messy, but I thought I saw a naevus on it — a sort of birthmark. It looks a bit like a strawberry and on that picture I thought there was one across the chest. He confirmed it. Said he’d noticed and asked about it but they’d reassured him — anyway, the thing is, there was no mention of any naevus on the PM report. And the locum they had for me, he was a reasonably efficient guy, from his reports.’

‘Not as good as you’d have been, of course.’

‘Is your stand-in as good as you when you’re away?’ she demanded.

‘Of course not. Go on. Then what?’

‘Then, like I said, I remembered what happened when you took us to the Players Theatre.’

‘What’s the Players got to do with the price of eggs or the current crimewave? Apart from that song, that is?’

‘It was the song that did it for me. When it so took Ma’s fancy. We were talking about it, remember? And you told Ma that it was about children being stolen away by gypsies and she said that was a different one and — anyway, that was what we’d talked about and I suppose it put a worm of a notion into my mind. When Ma woke up in the middle of that TV item, I suddenly saw what had happened to the babies.’

‘So? Why couldn’t you tell me then?’

‘Don’t start that again, please. I was — oh, silly maybe. It
seemed a bit romantic. Far fetched. That was why I went to see Mrs Popodopoulos this afternoon. I wanted to be sure.’ She leaned forward and picked up the baby’s photograph and gave it to him. ‘The thing is, that baby there is
not
the baby I autopsied.’

He looked at the photograph and then at her and at the photograph again. He said sharply, ‘You’re sure.’ It wasn’t a question but she treated it as one.

‘Yes, I’m sure. I remember checking the notes again, not all that long after I’d done the PM though it feels like ages ago. I noticed an anomaly then, but I dismissed it. The baby was measured when he was born and I measured him too, of course — that is, I measured the baby I autopsied. There was a difference. I put it down to post-mortem changes in muscle tone — quite reasonable — but I was wrong. It was definitely a different baby.’

‘I’d trust your memory anywhere,’ he said. ‘Though whether a court would is another story.’ He looked up then. ‘But we’re a long way from going to court. The only known crimes we have are the deaths of the Oberlander baby and Harry Rajabani. No one’s made any suggestion that there was anything wrong — legally speaking — about these cot deaths, have they?’

‘No, but they could be linked with the murders, couldn’t they?’

‘It’s possible.’ He was silent for a while. ‘But listen, if you’re right and the babies that died here aren’t the ones who were born here, what’s happened to the other babies? Why was it done? And as you said on the phone, how? I mean, finding dead babies lying around to swap for live ones ain’t what you’d call the most likely of scenarios.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m trying hard to see any connection with our known cases. This is odd, and needs investigating, I grant you, but I say again, what has it got to do with the murders of the Oberlander baby and Harry?’

‘I’ve a theory,’ she said. ‘Not evidence, and I know that
matters, but it’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense.’

‘Well?’

‘It’s an adoption scam.’

‘What?’ He looked as alert as a terrier with its ears up. ‘Tell me more.’

‘People who are infertile get desperate. Look what Angela and Viv Chowdary put themselves through to get their baby. Well, if they can’t have their own, adoption is the next best thing. And there was a hell of a demand for Romanian babies, I remember, when they first found out what was going on there. I remember TV programmes about it.’

‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes. You could be right. But how can substituting dead babies for living ones help adopters? Call me dumb, but I just don’t see it.’

‘I’m not sure I do,’ she said candidly. ‘All I can think of is that for some reason these babies are being taken from our Matty block to give to adopters and they’re getting hold of dead babies to replace them with and cover their tracks. Maybe these Romanian babies are brought here and they’re ailing and die and rather than disappoint the people waiting for the babies they do a swap?’ She shivered suddenly. ‘It’s the most cruel of things to do. It means, if I’m right, that these three babies are alive and well somewhere, while their real parents are breaking their hearts over their deaths. Well, two of them are at any rate. Not the first one —’