Chapter 5 : June 2009
Claudia felt exhilarated as she left the M6 motorway and directed her soft-top VW Golf towards the stark beauty of the Lake District. Summer had finally arrived and the three and a half hour drive from her tiny cottage in the Warwickshire village of Combrook had relaxed her, helping her to put the nagging doubts that had plagued her over the last ten days to the back of her mind.
She had taken two days of her precious annual holiday allowance, which, combined with the weekend, would give her four days to track down her quarry – the man with the rarest of rare DNA. She drove into Ambleside and parked the Golf in a ‘Pay and Display’ car park near the town centre and looked around. Directly across the road from the car park was a row of formal but attractive two-storey, grey stone houses, once private homes but now the offices of local solicitors, estate agents, dentists or doctors. However, the one that caught her eye had a dark-blue door with a blue sign above it: Police.
Claudia’s confidence evaporated. She gulped, feeling suddenly nervous. Christ, she thought, whatever am I doing here? I should be back in the lab, not sitting in a car park in the Lake District. This whole thing is ridiculous, a fool’s errand.
She closed the roof, got out of the car, fumbled with her keys and dropped them. She picked them up and went to lock the car, but then changed her mind and got straight back in, slamming the door. She checked out her appearance in the mirror, put her hair up with a couple of clips, looked again at her reflection and with a grimace, pulled the hair clips out. She put on her straw sun hat, decided she hated it, and took it off. She banged on the steering wheel in frustration.
This is stupid, she thought, I don’t even have a plan. PC Roberts might not be here. He might be on holiday with Mrs R and Jeff junior.
She felt an urgent need for caffeine.
The Lakes Coffee Shoppe was about a hundred yards along the street from the police station, set back along a pathway that followed Stock Ghyll, the stream that rushed down from the hills behind the town and scurried urgently through it. It was eleven thirty and trade was brisk. As Claudia approached, she saw that all the outside tables were full. However, she was in luck. Just as she was thinking of trying another coffee shop, a well-dressed elderly couple got up to leave.
A couple of hikers weighed down with huge and bulging rucksacks arrived at the table at the same moment. The elderly man took one disdainful look at them and moved round to block their way. He held out a seat and smiled at Claudia.
“There you are, young lady, perfect timing,” adding in a whisper, “they look ready for an assault on Mount Everest.”
“You should try the buttered scones, my dear,” smiled the elderly man’s wife as she leaned over conspiratorially to Claudia. “They’re freshly baked on the premises every morning. Quite delicious.”
“Thanks, I will,” stuttered Claudia. She wished she’d put on dark glasses and a very large sun hat after all.
If I eat, I think I’ll throw up, she thought, studiously ignoring the still hovering hikers.
The waitress arrived. When Claudia ordered only a double espresso, she looked pointedly at her watch.
“Nothing to eat then? We’re taking lunch orders.”
“No, just coffee, thank you.”
The waitress harrumphed and marched off.
As the coffee arrived, Claudia realised she needed the loo. There was now a short queue of customers waiting for tables and she didn’t want to lose hers. She needed something apart from the coffee to show the table was taken. She retrieved her moleskin notebook from the depths of her handbag and put it next to her coffee cup. Still hesitating, she peered again into her bag, found an A-Z of the West Midlands, and placed it on her chair
On her way back from the loo, Claudia saw with dismay that the two hikers had decided to join her at her table: the removal of the mountainous rucksacks was underway. Just as they seemed ready to strike camp, their way was again blocked, this time by the arrival of a tall, good-looking man of about thirty wearing police uniform.
“Hi there,” he smiled at Claudia, completely ignoring the hikers and seating himself at the table.
“Sorry I’m late, I was delayed at the station. Not the sleepy, crime-free place you’d think it might be,” he added with a wink.
Claudia realised that she was staring at him with her mouth open. She closed it, blushing.
Ignoring her reaction, the police officer continued chattily.
“I expect you thought I wasn’t coming. Sorry about that but it’s not always easy to make definite arrangements, especially with the sarge off on a course. I’m the only one holding the fort today, apart from Joan, of course.”
“Joan?” Claudia croaked a strangled whisper.
“Yes, she answers the phones, makes the tea and keeps the filing up to date,” he smiled, very much understating WPC Joan Hunter’s job description.
He turned to the hikers who were angrily struggling to put back on their unruly rucksacks.
“Careful with those, lads, you don’t want to do anybody any damage now, do you? Why don’t you go down the road to the Amble Cafe, there’s much more room there.”
They shuffled off, muttering.
Once they were out of earshot, the police officer leaned forward to Claudia and in a quieter voice said, “Sorry to intrude on your table, miss, but I could see that you wanted to be alone and those lads were likely to demolish the place with all that gear.”
Claudia looked at his handsome, clean-cut features and stuttered, “You mean … that is … did you think I was someone else?”
“Not at all, miss. I normally take my morning coffee here and between you and me, I try to discourage these types who are carrying around half a camping shop. Nothing against them, of course, they are what the Lakes are all about, but they don’t realise how much space they take up. When I saw them about to invade your table, I thought you wouldn’t mind if I stepped in.”
“No, no,” said Claudia, still totally confused. “That’s very kind of you. Can I get you a coffee, Constable …?”
“Roberts, miss, PC Jeff Roberts, and I wouldn’t dream of taking a coffee from you. In fact I was going to offer you another, if you’d like one. Are you all right, miss? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Claudia realised her mouth had dropped open again.
“No, I mean, yes, I’m fine, thanks. I’m just, you know, a bit windswept after the drive up here.”
Her head was spinning and she thought she was going to faint. She absent-mindedly dragged the West Midlands A-Z from under her thigh where she’d sat on it and put it on the table.
“Don’t think that’ll help you much around here, miss.”
“What? No, it’s … I got it out to put on my seat when I … when I popped to the loo.”
“That where you’ve come from is it, miss, the West Mids? Did you decide on another coffee?”
“Yes, please, thank you. Actually, I’m not sure how happy she is serving coffee at lunchtime.”
“Oh, don’t worry about her, miss, she loves to tut and moan. No meaning to it.”
He waved at the waitress.
“Two coffees, Janet. What sort did you want, Miss … er?” he added, turning to Claudia.
“Um, Reid. Claudia Reid. I’d love another espresso, thanks.”
“Two expressos, Janet, my love.”
Janet scowled at him.
“She loves me really,” he laughed.
“So, Miss Reid, is that where you live, the West Midlands?”
“Yes, in Warwickshire, but I work near Birmingham.”
“What line of work are you in?”
It crossed Claudia’s mind that PC Roberts was being rather inquisitive, but then she decided it probably came with the territory.
“I’m a biochemist, a geneticist, really. My lab carries out DNA profiling of CJ samples.”
“You’re kidding me,” said Jeff Roberts in apparent surprise. “Not that lab out near the
airport? I was there about three weeks ago. Pity I hadn’t met you before; you could have shown me round.”
“Yes, I could,” Claudia replied. She didn’t believe she was having this conversation. “What were you doing at the lab?”
“Delivering some buccal swabs. I was going to Leicester to see my mum and my boss reckoned he could save a bit of money if I took them. So I took the batch from here and from Kendal.”
“Kendal?” Claudia was worried. She’d assumed that he would only have delivered samples from Ambleside. Maybe her donor wasn’t from the Ambleside area after all.
“Yes, well, we tend to get a few more samples from around there than here. I only had three from this area. One was a tourist who’d driven his car into a tree, and the others were from a couple of blokes having a good old ding-dong in the Green Man car park in Grasmere.”
“Tourist?” whispered Claudia quietly. Things were getting worse by the minute. Not only could the person have come from somewhere else, if he had been a tourist, he could have come from anywhere.
“Yes, Miss Reid, a tourist. We get one or two of them around here.”
As their coffees arrived, Claudia looked into what Sally had described as Jeff Roberts’ ‘doe-eyes’ and found them rather cold. She had a nagging feeling that he wasn’t quite as friendly as he was trying to appear.
Roberts poured three packs of brown sugar into his coffee, stirred it gently and took a sip. He returned her look and appeared to hesitate. Then he said, “Actually, there are one or two things about the profiling I’d really like to know a bit more about. My good luck, I reckon, a real, live DNA expert turning up on my doorstep. And a young and pretty one at that.”
Claudia looked down, blushing, and then, looking up at him again, said, “What would you like to know?”
He looked over to the lengthening queue.
“You were right,” he said, “it’s close to lunchtime and the place is getting busy. Don’t want to hog the tables. The station’s only just along the street here. Would you mind if we popped in there? We can chat in peace and quiet. It won’t take long, I’m sure.”
Claudia felt her stomach turn inside out again. The police station. But she couldn’t really say no.
“OK,” she replied meekly, gulping down her coffee.
PC Roberts stood and pulled her chair out for her as she stood up. He waved to the waitress, indicating to her to put the coffees on his tab, and then led the way through the tables and out onto the pavement in the direction of the police station.
“Why don’t we go into the interview room? It’s a bit quieter there and there won’t be any interruptions.”
PC Roberts held up the flap in the counter, letting Claudia through to the business side of the station. He waved to Joan, who to Claudia’s surprise was wearing the uniform of a WPC, and said lightly, “Just going to have a little chat with this young lady.”
“‘kay, Jeff,” she replied, looking up to make a rapid appraisal of Claudia as she walked by.
Claudia’s legs felt like lead. The short corridor seemed to be a long, dark tunnel to the dungeons.
PC Roberts opened the door to the interview room, turned on the light and indicated a chair.
“Take a seat. ‘Fraid we don’t really do comfort in here.”
Claudia looked round the small room with its cream walls, single table and four upright chairs, thinking it looked more like an interrogation room.
PC Roberts didn’t immediately sit in the chair opposite Claudia. Instead he walked over to the right of where she was sitting and leaned his back against the wall. He looked down at her.
“OK, Dr Reid, perhaps you’d like to tell me what’s going on.” He wasn’t smiling.
Claudia stared at him, aghast. Dr Reid. He knew.
“W…what do you mean?” she stuttered, her stomach churning again.
“Well, we both know, Dr Reid, that you haven’t come up here today to take in the sun-kissed scenery and rugged charms of the Lake District, don’t we?”
“I don’t understand,” Claudia stammered again, her head spinning with confusion. “I… I...”
She sniffed, bit her lip and blinked rapidly. How could this smooth-talking PC know exactly why she was here? Had he been waiting for her?
“I don’t know what you mean.” She was suddenly defensive.
PC Roberts sighed.
“You’ve come up here to be a very stupid young woman, haven’t you? You’ve come not only to potentially wreck your own career but also to try to persuade me to wreck mine.”
He paused, looking at Claudia, waiting for a response. When there wasn’t one, he added, “Dr Reid?”
Claudia rested her chin in her cupped hands.
“I don’t understand,” she repeated.
“What don’t you understand?” Roberts seemed a bit more hostile now.
She cast her eyes down at the tabletop. “I don’t understand how you know.”
He sighed and shook his head. “I know, Dr Reid, because you have a very good friend who clearly loves you dearly and who is terrified that you’re about to do something extremely stupid. As it happens, I also know your friend and she has persuaded me – much against my better judgement, I might add – to stop you before you make a very foolish mistake.”
Claudia stared at him, horrified. “Sally?”
“Yes, Sally.”
“What did she tell you?”
“She called me and told me what you were planning to do. I wasn’t particularly pleased to hear from her, I can tell you – water under the bridge and all that – and I didn’t like her tone. But she made it clear that if I at least listened to her, I’d never hear from her again. After she’d pleaded your case, I agreed that I’d stop you before you asked me to do anything you shouldn’t ask me to do. Fortunately, you’d told her that you’d be coming up here this morning. She even told me the registration number of your car.”
“She knows my registration number?” Claudia was amazed. “I don’t even know it.”
“She said she found a photo of you both lounging on the bonnet, and you can see the plates in the picture. Said her boyfriend took it.”
“Ced,” replied Claudia, absently, not really taking it all in.
“Yes, said. She said it.”
Claudia looked up at him, not understanding. Then she realised his confusion. “It’s his name. Her boyfriend. His name’s Ced.”
The light dawned in Roberts’ eyes. “Foreign is he?”
“What?” Claudia frowned. “No, he’s from … actually, I don’t know where he’s from. His name’s Ced. It’s short for Cedric.”
PC Roberts realised they were digressing.
“So, Dr Reid, armed with all that info, even for a country bobby like me it wasn’t too difficult to spot your car when you arrived this morning.”
“You were waiting for me?”
“Yes.”
“So at the coffee shop, you weren’t being a knight in shining armour.”
“No, I wasn’t, not then. But I am now, thanks to Sally. You realise, don’t you, how much trouble you could get yourself into. Breaking the rules of confidentiality of the database, attempting to coerce a police officer to do the same. I don’t think there’s likely to be any precedent as far as the database is concerned, and I think the powers-that-be would enjoy making a huge example of you.”
He sat down opposite her.
“What did you think you could achieve? You don’t even know that this person is from round here. He could be from anywhere.”
“I realise that now from what you told me at the coffee shop. I hadn’t thought it through. I thought that with the sample coming from up here, I had a lucky break, a chance to identify the donor and a chance that he might be interested in his own profile.”
“I don’t think many people are interested in their DNA profiles and they certainly don’t like having them on the database. A lot of people would like to see the whole thing scrapped. If your ‘donor’,
as you call him, didn’t take kindly to your actions, he could make a huge fuss that could rock the database to its foundations. The whole thing could come tumbling down, just from your thoughtlessness.”
He had meant to frighten her, but the last part had come out more forcefully than he intended and now Claudia couldn’t hold back the tears. Roberts produced a pack of tissues from his pocket and handed them to her.
Once she had calmed down, he said to her more softly, “What I want you to do now is get up, walk away and forget you’ve ever thought about trying to be so stupid. You’ve not, as yet, asked me to do anything, and, as far as I can see, you’ve not got hold of any information that you’re not entitled to during the course of your work. You seem a sensible and very committed young lady. It’s good to be passionate about what you do, but it’s stupid to break the law. So don’t. And don’t be angry with Sally Moreton; she’s been a very good friend to you.”
He stopped and waited for Claudia to speak. She stared at the table for several seconds and then raised her eyes.
“I really appreciate it that you’ve gone to this trouble. You could have just let me dig a big hole and waited while I threw myself in it. I’m grateful, really.”
She paused, looking down again.
“But?” he said.
“But … look, can I explain why I’m so passionate about this? I won’t ask you to do anything for me.”
She waited, but he said nothing.
“You see there’s something I haven’t told Sally yet. I’ve done some more tests.”
Roberts frowned.
“When we do the tests for the database,” explained Claudia, “we use a testing kit that gives eleven sets of results. One tells us the gender of the subject, which is necessary in case someone who seems to be Jane is actually John, the other ten give us a DNA profile that is compared with the database for outstanding crime. You know all this, of course.”
Roberts had no idea about the number of tests but he did know about the automatic comparison of new profiles with the outstanding crime database.
“If we need to get a more specific profile, we can use other kits that let us test the person’s DNA in up to seven other places. The distribution we get then is usually pretty conclusive. Well, what I haven’t told Sally is that I’ve done that and the results are all new too, every single one of them. So from this one person, we now have more rare variants than we ever dreamed existed.”
“So this person really is different,” said PC Roberts, pursing his lips.
“So different,” added Claudia, “that it’s hard to believe. While we can argue that we are all unique, this man is a true one-off.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means we’re dealing with someone we would never expect to exist. A statistical improbability.”
“What I meant was, what does it mean about the person? Is he different in any way?”
Claudia thought about Sally’s comment about criminality, but decided that would be sailing too close to the wind.
“No, and this is the problem really – at least it is for me and what I was hoping to do.”
He frowned at her, not understanding. She continued. “As far as is known, the variations we see in the areas on the DNA that we test for the database tell us nothing about the individual. But I think they are significant and I’m doing some research into it. Which is why I’d love to meet him and find out a bit more about him, to test his DNA further. With such an unexpected profile, if there really is anything special about these areas we test for the database, this would be a big chance to find out.”
“So why haven’t you gone to your boss to explain? Surely he would be as keen as you to follow this up?”
“No. My boss is openly dismissive of my research. This is what I meant when I said it was my problem. You see, most geneticists believe that these areas are what they’ve been informally called – junk DNA. They believe they have no function. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be willing to go against the rules of the database. As you pointed out to me so emphatically, it’s too sensitive an area.”
“Do you really think this person is likely to be very different from everyone else? I mean, we get more than a few weirdos hanging around here, but are they likely to have this rare DNA?”
“I don’t think he’d appear any different from anyone else. But the way his body works might be different. He might have a better resistance to certain diseases, particularly genetic diseases. Who knows? He might be cleverer than most people, or more talented in some way. If he is different, in some beneficial way, and we could understand it better, it could be of value to other people. You see what I mean?”
PC Roberts drummed his fingers on the table.
“It’s fascinating, and I can see why you’re so fired up about it. If it was my DNA, I’d be happy to let you poke about a bit more. But you can’t ask me for confidential information about someone. It’s more than my job’s worth.”
“I’m not. I was going to try, I admit, but you’ve convinced me I can’t. It would be wrong. I just wanted to explain it to you so that you wouldn’t think I was some nutty scientist with a mission.”
The drumming of fingers stopped. Claudia saw his eyes stare into the middle distance. They seemed to have lost the cold, formal look of a few minutes earlier; they were now somehow more vulnerable.
He suddenly sighed and focused his eyes on her. “Have you got the reference number of the sample?”
Claudia looked at him in amazement. “Pardon?”
“The reference number. Have you got it?”
She opened her notebook and showed it to him.
“Wait here a minute,” said Roberts as he got up and walked out.
Five minutes later he was back.
“I thought I’d check it against the list of samples I took down to your lab,” he said, sitting down.
Claudia waited. Clearly Roberts was finding it hard to make a decision, but despite that, his whole tone had changed.
“I can’t tell you his name. That would be wrong, even if you haven’t asked me. What I can say, even though I shouldn’t, is that the sample came from here. It was one of the three I told you about from the Ambleside area. And it wasn’t the idiot who drove into the tree.”
“You mean it was one of the men who was fighting outside the pub?”
“Yes, and not the one from Liverpool.”
“You mean he lives around here?”
“I really can’t say anymore. I’ve said too much already and I’d absolutely deny this conversation if the shit hit the fan.”
“Thank you, I appreciate it. I appreciate everything you, um, haven’t told me.”
Roberts pushed back his chair and stood. Claudia frowned, trying to remember exactly what she’d said.
“Before I go,” she said, standing up as well, “can I ask you what made you change your mind? You were very adamant earlier.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he muttered, rather embarrassed, “but I can assure you it wasn’t those pretty blue eyes.”
Claudia smiled and held out her hand. “Thank you, Jeff, I’ll keep you posted.”
“No. You won’t. I don’t want to hear anymore about it. But good luck with those scientific breakthroughs.”
As Claudia walked past her, WPC Joan Hunter looked up inquisitively. Claudia smiled at her and stepped out into the sunshine.