Blue Genes - By Val McDermid Page 0,23

her Headingley home.

"You knew her?" I asked.

"That's the doctor who worked with us on Christine's pregnancy."

It was a strange way of expressing it, but I let it pass. Alexis clearly wasn't in command of herself, never mind the En¬glish language. "I'm so sorry, Alexis," I said inadequately.

"Never mind being sorry. I want you working," she said abruptly. She crushed out her cigarette, lit another, and swallowed half her vodka and Diet Coke. "Kate, there's something going on here. That's definitely the woman we dealt with. But she wasn't a consultant in Leeds called Sarah Blackstone. She had consulting rooms here in Manchester and her name was Helen Maitland."

There are days when I'm overwhelmed with the con¬viction that somebody's stolen my perfectly nice life and left me with this pile of shit to deal with. Right then, I was inches away from calling the cops and demanding they track down the robber. After the day I'd had, I just wasn't in the mood for Chapter One of an Agatha Christie mystery. "Are you sure?" I asked. "I mean, news¬paper photographs ..."

Alexis snorted. "Look at her. She's not got a face that blends into the background, has she? Of course it's Helen Maitland."

I shrugged. "So she uses an assumed name when she's treating lesbians. Maybe she just doesn't want the notori¬ety of being the dykes' baby doctor."

"It's more than that, KB," Alexis insisted, swallowing smoke as if her life depended on it. "She's got a prescrip¬tion pad and she writes prescriptions in the name of Helen Maitland. We've not had any trouble getting them filled, and it's not like it was a one off, believe me. There's been plenty. Which also makes me worried, because if the cops figure out that Sarah Blackstone and Helen Maitland are the same person, and they try and track down her patients, all they've got to do is start asking around the local chemists. And there we are, right in the middle of the frame."

All of which was true, but I couldn't see why Alexis was getting so wound up. I knew the rules on human fertility treatment were pretty strict, but as far as I was aware, it wasn't a crime yet to give lesbians artificial insemination, though if the Tories started to get really hysterical about losing the next election, I could see it might have its attractions as a possible vote winner. "Alexis," I said gently. "Why exactly is that a problem?"

She looked blankly at me. "Because they'll take the baby off us," she said in a tone of voice I recognized as the one I used to explain to Richard why you can't wash your jeans in the dishwasher.

"I think you might be overreacting," I said cautiously, aware that I wasn't wearing protective clothing. "This is a straightforward case, Alexis," I continued, skimming the story. "Burglar gets disturbed, struggle, burglar panics, pulls a blade and lashes out. Tragic waste of talented test-tube baby doctor." I looked up. "The cops aren't going to be interviewing her Leeds patients, never mind trying to trace people she treated in a different city under a differ¬ent name."

"Maybe so, but maybe there's more to it than meets the eye," Alexis said stubbornly. "I've been doing the crime beat long enough to know that the Old Bill only tell you what they want you to know. It wouldn't be the first time there's been a whole other investigation going on beneath the surface." She finished her drink and her cigarette, for some reason avoiding my eye.

I had a strong feeling that I didn't know what the real story was here. I wasn't entirely sure that I wanted to know what it was that could disconcert my normally sta¬ble best buddy as much as this, but I knew I couldn't dodge the issue. "What's really going on here, Alexis?" I asked.

She ran both hands through her wild tangle of black hair and looked up at me, her face worried and fright¬ened, her eyes as hollow as a politician's promises. "Any chance of another drink?"

I fetched her another Stoly and Diet Coke, this one more than a little weaker than the last. If she was going to swallow them like water, I didn't want her passing out before she'd explained why she was in such a state about the death of a woman with whom she'd had nothing more than a professional relationship. I slid the drink across the table to her, and when she reached out for it, I