‘Not exactly.’
‘Then may I ask why you are here?’
‘You don’t watch much television, Mr Marks.’
Peter reached into his inside pocket and extracted a folder. He laid it on the table in front of the solicitor.
‘I don’t watch any television, Sergeant. Neither my eyes nor the programmes are what they used to be. I prefer listening to the radio.’ He picked up the folder and opened it. The colour drained from his face.
‘That man burned to death in a run-down dock area seventy miles from here two nights ago. He was a vagrant who, when he lived anywhere, lived in hostels. He was known to the people who manage the hostels as Tony,’ Peter continued. ‘When the video clip those stills were lifted from was shown on the news last night, nine people telephoned the hotline. All recognised the man in the video as Anthony George.’
‘That’s impossible. I identified Anthony George’s body myself. More than two years ago.’
The solicitor dropped the photographs on to the table and leaned back in his chair, pale-faced and trembling.
‘I understand his face was removed after death.
Under the circumstances, could you have made a mistake?’
‘No, Sergeant. There is no possibility that I made a mistake. Anthony George had his first heart attack in the Squash Club. He was driven to the hospital by a friend, who, knowing of his mother’s condition, contacted me and Fraser Caldwell…’
‘Fraser Caldwell?’
‘I spoke of him earlier. He employed Anthony in his practice, Caldwell, Caldwell and Buckingham, Solicitors. Anthony died of a second heart attack in A and E before we arrived. We both formally identified Anthony before his body was removed to the mortuary.’
‘Then how do you explain this, Mr Marks?’
‘I can’t, other than to say that we are all supposed to have a double somewhere.’
‘One with the same mole on the cheek and the same scar below the bottom lip?’
‘I noticed,’ Marks remarked frigidly. ‘But one thing I do know, Sergeant,’ he closed the folder. ‘Is that Anthony George was dead when I last saw him.’
‘Then you do not identify this man as Anthony George?’
‘I agree whoever he is…’
‘Was,’ Anna corrected.
‘Bears an uncanny resemblance to him. But I also know that dead men are not in the habit of walking the streets.’
‘So you can offer no explanation for the marked similarity?’
‘None. Both Anthony and his mother are clients of mine…’
‘Were, Mr Marks,’ Peter corrected. ‘Surely you have closed their files by now.’
‘I administered the family affairs for many years. I watched Anthony grow up. It’s not easy to come to terms with the death of someone you knew as a child.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m sorry, Sergeants, but I did mention another appointment.’
He left his chair and walked to the door.
‘So you did.’ Peter rose from his seat. ‘If you would like to keep those photographs, Mr Marks, you may.’
‘No, Sergeant, I do not wish to keep them. But thank you for offering.’
‘If you remember anything – anything at all…’
‘I have had two years to remember, sergeant. I hardly think I am going to come up with anything new now.’
‘He was in love with the mother.’
‘What?’ Peter slammed on the brakes as a car cut in front of him as he pulled out of the car park.
‘Brian Marks was in love with the mother,’
Anna declared. ‘Didn’t you notice his expression whenever he mentioned her name? It grew softer…’
‘You sound like an advert for washing up liquid.’
‘Take my word for it. There was something going on between that man and Mrs George.’
‘The day I accept a female’s intuition as hard evidence is the day I retire from the force.’
‘I may hold you to that.’
‘Try me.’
‘I intend to. Tonight if we stay over. Turn left up ahead for the hospital.’
Peter glanced at Anna out of the corner of his eye. She was different. The first woman he’d worked with who could be counted on to answer back.
Trevor stood in the foyer of the new burns unit and reflected that Patrick’s comments hadn’t been overstated. On a Saturday you couldn’t move in the town for community-spirited people collecting signatures in an attempt to keep the General’s A and E unit operational twenty-four hours a day. Six months ago as part of a cost-cutting exercise, the Health Authority had diverted all night emergencies eight miles, and a delaying network of small roads, out of town. As well as the petitions, collecting boxes were waved under every passing nose in an effort to raise money to buy vital equipment for the I.C.U. and premature baby unit. In the light of such life-threatening deficiencies it seemed obscene to spend money on marble tiles, chromed staircases, fountains and more potted plants than he’d seen outside of the Botanical Gardens.
‘Can I help you, sir?’
Even the receptionists were dressed in tailored uniforms of blue trimmed with silver to co-ordinate with their surroundings.
‘I’m here to see Dr Randall.’
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘She is expecting me.’
‘Your name, sir?’
‘Sergeant Trevor Joseph.’ He flashed his identity card.
‘There is nothing booked for Dr Randall under that name.’
Trevor wondered what training hospital bureaucracy gave people to turn them into automatons. ‘Patrick O’Kelly made the appointment for me. He phoned through from the mortuary.’
‘Trevor, how are you? It’s good to see you again.’
It was a voice from his past, and one he’d never expected to hear again outside of his dreams. He turned his back on the reception desk and drank in her image. Five foot eight, slim, dark-haired, and very beautiful. The looks matched the voice. It was her. Only the name, Randall, was unfamiliar.
‘There’s no appointment booked for Sergeant Joseph, Doctor Randall,’ the receptionist said reproachfully.
‘There wouldn’t be, Mary. It’s just been made.’
‘We can’t be expected to run this
department…’
‘There was no time to inform you, Mary.’
Polite, charming, and firm. Exactly as Trevor remembered. ‘If you’d come this way, Sergeant.’
At that moment Trevor would have followed her to the ends of the earth. He climbed the stairs behind her, admiring the long, black-stockinged legs, just as he’d done two years before. She hadn’t cut her hair, or changed the style. She still wore it in a knot twisted low at the nape of her neck. Once, he had seen it loose and it had reached her waist.
‘Coffee?’ she showed him into an office, furnished like the foyer in a mixture of bleached white wood trimmed with chrome and marble tiles.
‘Please.’
She pressed a button on the telephone on her desk and ordered coffee through the intercom.
‘You’re looking more human than the last time I saw you.’
‘When was that?’
‘On the beach, after you’d been thrown off the pier. None of us thought you’d make it.’
‘There were times when I wondered if I would myself.’ He took a deep breath, wishing for the first time in his life that he had one of Peter’s cigars in his hands. ‘Peter told me you went to Africa.’
‘I did. I worked in a leper colony.’
He remembered Patrick’s briefing. ‘Then you’re the assistant who carried out face transplants?’
‘Partial ones,’ she qualified. ‘We started with ears, noses, and lips. I’ve only assisted at two full transplants. Come in,’ she called in reply to a knock at the door. She cleared a space on her desk for the tray of coffee her secretary brought in.
‘Hold all my calls for half an hour, Julie,’ she ordered. ‘Black with no sugar?’
‘You remember.’ He was barely aware of the secretary closing the door on them.
‘I remember a great deal about you, Sergeant Joseph. You made the most difficult time of my life just about bearable.’
‘You’ve married again?’
‘No,’ she smiled, her silver-grey eyes lighting up in amusement. ‘When I went to Africa, I reverted to my maiden name. The name Sherringham held too many memories, both personal and in the medical establishment. And you?’
‘Me?’ he asked in bewilderment, forgetting everything, including his reason for visiting the unit.
‘Are you here on business, or just looking up an old friend?’
He recalled the peculiar glint in Patrick’s eye when Dr Randall’s name had been mentioned. He must have worn his heart on his sleeve when he’d investigated the disappearance of Daisy Sherringham’s husband two years ago.
‘Business.’ But even as he launched into a brief description of the facts of the case and the possible, if far-fetched, theory of face transplant, he couldn’t stop looking at her and noting the changes. The tan on her face and hands, the loss of weight that had thrown her cheekbones into greater prominence, the appearance of the first fine lines around her eyes.
There had been a time – and not that long ago –
when all his wildest and most cherished dreams had been centred on Daisy Sherringham. And now she was actually in front of him he was gabbling out the facts of the current investigation like an idiot. It would be a miracle if she understood what he was telling her. He wasn’t even sure he understood it himself.
‘This man’s face was removed two years ago.’
Daisy stopped him mid-flow.
‘Yes.’
‘There was no one carrying out transplants in this country two years ago.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I can’t be sure. But as far as I’m aware most of the pioneering work was carried out in America, and for legal reasons, Africa.’
‘No one likely to sue in Africa?’
‘That sounds like one of Peter Collins’s remarks.’
‘I still work with him occasionally.’
‘On this case?’
Trevor nodded.
‘The Americans – and the Europeans – have gone litigation crazy in the last few years. It’s getting to the stage where doctors are afraid to treat patients in case they are sued at a later date for something that wasn’t even taken into consideration at the time, and lepers, more than most, are generally prepared to take the risk of pioneering surgery.’
‘How many transplants have been carried out in this unit?’
‘None, but we have three possible recipients waiting for suitable donors.’
‘Men or women?’
‘Two men, one woman.’
‘And two have already been carried out in London, both on women?’
‘Patrick told you. Mark has become quite friendly with him. There are other plastic surgeons operating in this country, but as far as I know none of them have transplanted a full face as yet, apart from Mark.’
‘You’re in touch with the other teams?’
‘Contrary to what the newspapers think, we co-operate with one another. Most doctors do when they’re practising techniques still in the experimental stage. That way our failures can become someone else’s successes, and vice versa.’
‘Could you give me the names of the other teams, and which hospitals they’re operating from?’
‘I can do better than that. If there’s nothing top secret about what you’ve just told me I can run the scenario by them and see if they come up with any ideas.’
‘Would you?’
‘For you, Trevor, anything.’ She looked away from him towards the window. The tide was out.
The vast expanse of beach speckled with the miniature figures of lugworm diggers. ‘If you give me your telephone number I’ll get back to you.’
‘How long will it take you to get the information?’
‘That’s what I like about the police. You offer to do them a favour and they want it yesterday.’
‘We would like the information as soon as possible, but I thought perhaps you could give it to me over dinner.’
‘You’ve changed. Eighteen months ago it would have taken you eight weeks of acquaintanceship to make a proposal like that.’
‘Since I last knew you I’ve begun to live more like a person and less like a hermit.’
‘I don’t want to disrupt your life.’
‘You won’t be.’
‘In that case, why don’t we have dinner tomorrow night? If there’s any news I should have it by then.’
‘I’ll pick you up about eight.’
‘I’m in the same block of hospital flats I stayed in last time I worked here.’
‘I’ll be there.’ He shook her hand, only just resisting the temptation to hold it a fraction longer than necessary, before walking out through the door.
‘Look, Sergeant…’
‘I’m Peter, she’s Anna.’ Peter ground the stub of his cigar to dust in an ashtray. It was the tail end of a long and fruitless day. They’d got no joy at the hospital, not that he’d expected any after two years.
The shift on which Anthony George’s face had been skinned had turned out to be the mortuary attendant’s last. The doctor who’d telephoned the hotline had tried to be helpful, but he’d only endorsed the statement he’d made two years ago.
The George family GP had dropped a few hints which Anna had taken as verification of her suspicion of an affair between Mrs George and Brian Marks, a theory which apart from making Anna insufferable had done nothing to take their case further forward.
Anthony George’s friends had confirmed that the man on television had definitely been Anthony George, which hadn’t helped at all. And now they were in their last port of call. The pub where Inspector Edwards had found Anthony George’s boyfriend. An effeminate gay whom Peter had taken a dislike to on sight, and Anna had established instant rapport with.
Luke Davies snapped the folder shut and handed it back to Anna. ‘All I can say is that whoever he is, he bears an uncanny resemblance to the Anthony I knew, and,’ he glared defiantly at Peter, ‘loved. But it can’t be him.’
‘Why?’ Peter twirled the remainder of his beer around his pint glass and downed it. It was his second and he intended to have a third which would either mean Anna driving back, or staying over, and at that moment he didn’t give a damn which.
‘Because I drove Anthony to the hospital after he had his first heart attack. I sat in the waiting room while they tried to resuscitate him. And I held his hand when he died.’
‘And it was definitely Anthony George?’ Anna probed.
‘No doubt about it.’
There was a young man in evidence, just as Ted Edwards had told Trevor. While he served drinks he glanced frequently in their direction, but his attention didn’t stop Luke Davies from shedding tears over Tony’s photograph.