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.
Chapter 7
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.
The Compton Clinic was about half way down on the righthand side, a three-storey terraced house with a plague of plaques arrayed on either side of the door. Interestingly, Helen Maitland’s name didn’t appear on any of them. Neither did Sarah Blackstone’s. I opened the heavy front door and found myself in a short hallway with a large sign directing me left to the reception area. I noted a closed-circuit TV camera mounted above the outside door, pointing down the hall towards the door I was being encouraged to use. It was a considerable incentive not to go walkabout especially since I hadn’t brought a tub of Vaseline to smear over the lens.
One of the many problems with my job is you do such a lot of different things in a day, you’re seldom appropriately dressed. If I’d known what the carpet at the clinic was like, I’d have brought my snow shoes, but as it was, I just had to make do with wading through the deep pile in an ordinary pair of leather loafers. There were two other potential patients sitting a discreet distance from each other on deep, chintz-covered sofas, reading the sort of home and garden magazine the nouveaux riches need to copy to shore up their conviction that they’ve arrived and they belong.
A tip from the private-eye manuaclass="underline" magazines are one of the dead giveaways as to whether you’re dealing with the NHS or the private sector. The NHS features year-old, dogeared copies of slender weeklies that feature soap stars talking about their operations and TV personalities discussing their drink problems or their diets. The private sector provides this month’s copies of doorstop glossies full of best-selling authors talking about their gardens and living with Prozac, and Hollywood stars discussing their drink problems, their diets and living with Prozac.
I managed to reach the reception desk without spraining my ankle. It was pure English country-house library repro, right down to the fake tooled-leather top and the cottage-garden prints on the wall behind it. The middle-aged woman sitting at the desk had a pleasant face, the lines on it carved by comfortable optimism rather than adversity, an impression supported by her Jaeger suit and the weight of the gold chains at neck and wrist. Her eyes betrayed her, however. They were quick, sharp and assessing as they flicked over my smartest suit, the lightweight wool in grey and moss green. It felt like she was instantly appraising the likely level of my bank balance and the concomitant degree of politeness required.