“We have our sources,” said Annie, who had taken a peek at the personnel records when she made a quick, and otherwise fruitless, search of Jennifer Clewes’s office at the Berger-Lennox.
“Can I come in?” “What do you want? It’s not a police state yet, is it?”
“Not the last time I checked,” said Annie with a smile. “But it is raining fast.”
Dr. Lukas took the chain off the door and stepped back. Annie folded up her umbrella, took off her raincoat and hung it on the coat stand. She followed Dr. Lukas down the thick carpet into a cozy and comfortable living room. The curtains were still open and rain streaked across the windowpanes. The radio was playing quietly, an orchestral concert of some sort. Dr. Lukas excused herself for a moment and went upstairs. While she waited, Annie looked around the room.
What looked to Annie like original works of art hung on the wall, mostly abstract expressionist and cubist pieces, and various knickknacks and framed photographs stood on most available surfaces. The crowded dark-wood bookcase boasted a colorful array of spines, none of them medical. There were novels, mostly Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, poetry by Mandelstam, Akhnatova, Yevtushenko, Tsvetayeva, and a few biographies, Shostakovich, Gorbachev, Pasternak. Annie could see by the lettering that some of the books were in Russian. Taking into account the matryoshka doll on the mantelpiece, and remembering the hint of an accent, it didn’t take much to surmise that Dr. Lukas hailed from Russia, or somewhere in the former Soviet Republic.
Beside the doll stood a black-and-white photograph of a family group in a wooded area: parents and three children. Annie walked over to have a closer look at it. They were all wearing overcoats and no one was smiling; they had that hard, pinched look you get when there isn’t enough food on the table or coal on the fire. Beside it stood another photo of what Annie took to be the parents, more recent and in color. This time they were smiling into the camera, standing beside a large lake in the sunshine.
“On holiday,” said Dr. Lukas, behind her.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be nosy,” said Annie. “Is that your parents?”
“Yes. It was taken two years ago.”
“So you come from Russia?”
“Ukraine. A city called L’viv, in the west, not far from the Polish border. Do you know it?”
“Sorry,” said Annie, whose geography was terrible.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Annie gestured to the photograph again. “Do they still live there?”
Dr. Lukas paused before answering with a tentative “Yes.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Thirteen years. I was twenty-five when the Soviet Union broke up. I was lucky. I got into medical school in Edinburgh. I’d had some training in L’viv, of course, but this country didn’t recognize my qualifications. Do you know how many foreigntrained doctors there are over here driving minicabs and working in restaurants and hotels?”
“No,” said Annie.
“It’s a shame, a terrible waste,” said Dr. Lukas, with a hint of tragic fatalism in her voice.
“You don’t have a very strong accent,” Annie said.
“I worked hard to get rid of it. Foreign accents don’t work in your favor here. But all this is beside the point. What have you come to see me about?”
Dr. Lukas was perching uncomfortably at the edge of an armchair, Annie noticed, body hunched forward and tense, hands clasped in her lap. She was wearing faded jeans and a man’s white casual shirt, no makeup. She looked tired and drawn, as she had in her office.
“You’re right,” said Annie. “It’s not a social call.” She paused and searched for the right way to begin. “Look, in a murder investigation, people sometimes hide things, mask the truth. Not because they’re guilty, but because they’ve maybe committed some minor crime and they’re afraid we’ll uncover it and prosecute them. Do you understand?”
“I’m listening.”
“When that happens, it makes a difficult job even harder. We don’t know what’s important and what isn’t, so how can we know where to focus our line of inquiry?”
“All jobs have their difficulties,” said Dr. Lukas. “Mine included. I don’t see what point there is in you telling me how hard yours is.”
“I thought if you understood, then you’d see reason and tell me the truth.”
“Pardon?”
“I think you heard me.”
“But I’m not sure I heard you correctly. Are you suggesting I lied?”
“I’m saying that you might be hiding something because you think it reflects badly on you. I don’t think you’re lying so much as you’re obscuring the truth. Now it may or may not be important, or it may not seem important to you, but I’d like to know what it is, and I think you’d like to tell me.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You get to know people in this job. I think you’re a decent person and I think you’re under a tremendous amount of pressure. Now that could simply be a matter of your work, or it could be due to personal problems which are nothing at all to do with this investigation. But the feeling I get is that there’s something else, and that it is connected.”
“I see.” Dr. Lukas stood up and walked to the cocktail cabinet. “I think I need a drink,” she said, and took out a tumbler and a bottle of Southern Comfort. “What about you?”
“Nothing, thanks,” said Annie.
“As you wish.” She poured herself a large measure and sat down again. This time she relaxed a little more into the armchair and the strain that etched the lines on her forehead and around her eyes and mouth eased. The concert ended and Annie heard the radio audience applaud before the announcer’s voice cut in. Dr. Lukas switched it off, took a sip of Southern Comfort and regarded Annie closely with her serious brown eyes. Annie got the sense that she was trying to come to some sort of decision and realized that she might well end up with a partial truth, if anything, as was so often the case.
The clock ticked and rain tapped against the window. Still Dr. Lukas thought and sipped. Finally, when Annie could almost bear it no longer, she said, “You’re right.”
“About what?”
“About people withholding the truth. Do you think it doesn’t happen in my profession, too? People lie to me all the time. How much they drink. Whether they smoke. What drugs they take. How often they exercise. As if by lying they’d make themselves healthy. But I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Sometimes people use a different standard to measure themselves by,” said Annie. “You might not think you have done anything morally or ethically wrong, but you might have broken the law. Or vice versa.”
Dr. Lukas managed a flicker of a smile. “A fine distinction.”
“I’m not after getting you struck off.”
“I’m happy to hear it.”
“But I do want the truth. What are late girls?”
Dr. Lukas sipped some more Southern Comfort before answering, then she ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “It’s really very simple,” she said. “They are girls who come late to the center.”
“In what sense? Late in their pregnancies?”
“No. There you are quite wrong.”
“Well, I’ve hardly been steered in the right direction. This isn’t supposed to be a guessing game.”
“Now I am telling you. There have been no surgical procedures performed on girls beyond the twenty-four-week legal limit.”
“Okay,” said Annie, “so what is it all about?”
“Girl who come late to the center, after regular hours. In the evening.”
“When you’re working late?”
“I have a lot of paperwork. You wouldn’t believe it, even a doctor… but I do.”
“So why do these girls come after hours?”
“Why do you think?”
“They want to bypass the system for some reason, and you help them to do it?”