Blue Genes - By Val McDermid Page 0,51

that I had not been the doctor involved. Besides, I can't imagine Sarah would involve herself, or me, in anything unethical. I never thought of her as a risk-taker."

"Why else would she be using your identity?" I said forcefully. "If it was all aboveboard, she wouldn't have needed to pretend to be someone else, would she?"

Dr. Maitland suddenly looked tired. "I suppose not," she said. "So what exactly was she doing that was so heinous?"

"She was working with lesbian couples who wanted children," I said, picking my words with care. If I'd learned anything about Helen Maitland, it was that it would be impossible to tell where her loyalties lay. The last thing I wanted was to expose Alexis and Chris accidentally.

"Hardly the crime of the century," she commented, turning to put her cup in the sink. "Look, I'm sorry I can't help you," she continued, facing me and running her hands through her curls, giving them fresh life. "It's three years now since Sarah moved out of here. I don't know what she was doing or who she was seeing. I have no idea why she chose to fly under false colors in the first place, nor why she chose to impersonate me. And I really don't know what possible interest it could be to anyone. According to the newspapers, Sarah was murdered by a burglar whom she had the misfortune to interrupt trying to find something he could sell, no doubt to buy drugs. That had nothing to do with anything else in her life. I don't know what your client has hired you to do, but I suspect that he or she is wasting their money. Sarah's dead, and no amount of raking into her past is going to come up with the identity of the crackhead who killed her."

"As a doctor, you'll appreciate the burdens of confidentiality. Even if I wanted to tell you what I've been hired to do, I couldn't. So I'll have to be the judge of whether I'm wasting my time or not," I said, staking out the cool ground now I'd finally raised Helen Maitland's tempera¬ture a degree or two.

"Be that as it may, you're certainly wasting mine," she said sharply.

"When did you see Sarah last?" I asked, taking advan¬tage of the fact that our conversation had become a sub¬tlety-free zone.

She frowned. "Hard to say. Two, three weeks ago? We bumped into each other in the lab."

"You didn't see each other socially?"

"Not often," she said, biting the words off abruptly.

"What? She shared your house for the best part of a year because the two of you got along just fine, then she moves out and the only time you see each other is when you bump into each other in hospital corridors? What happened? You have a row or what?"

Helen Maitland glowered at me. "I never said we were friends," she said, enunciating each word carefully. "All I said was that we didn't get on each other's nerves. After she moved out, we didn't stay in close touch. But even if we had fallen out, it would still have nothing to do with the fact that Sarah Blackstone was murdered by some junkie burglar."

I smiled sweetly as I got to my feet. "You'll get no argu¬ment from me on that score," I said. "What it might explain, though, is why Sarah Blackstone was hiding behind your name to commit her crimes."

I started for the door. "What crimes?" I heard.

Half-turning, I said, "Obviously nothing to do with you, Dr. Maitland, since you had nothing to do with her. Thanks for the tea."

She didn't follow me down the hall. I opened the door and nearly walked into a key stabbing toward me at eye height. I jumped backward and so did the woman wield¬ing the key. She was the original of the photograph in the kitchen. With her cascade of dark hair, skin pale as mar¬ble, and a long cape-shouldered coat that could have been a refugee from a Merchant Ivory film, she looked as extreme as a character in an Angela Carter story. "God, I'm sorry," she gasped. "You look like you've seen a ghost!"

No, just an extra from Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, I thought but didn't say. "You startled me," I said, putting a hand on my pounding heart.

"Me too!" she exclaimed.

From behind me, I heard Helen Maitland's voice. "Ms. Brannigan was just leaving."

The other woman and I skirted around each other, swapping places. "Bye," I said brightly as the door