Bleeding Hearts (9 page)

‘Severe haemophiliacs,’ the doctor said, ‘make up over a third of all haemophilia cases. They can suffer spontaneous internal bleeds, usually into soft tissues, joints and muscles. As children, they’re advised to stay away from contact sports. We try to make them get a good education, so they can get desk jobs rather than manual ones.’

‘They don’t go into the armed forces then?’

Dr Jacobs smiled. ‘The armed forces and the police won’t recruit from haemophiliacs.’

Hoffer frowned. If there was one thing he’d been sure of, it was that the D-Man had been either a soldier or a cop. ‘No exceptions?’

‘None.’

‘Not even if they’ve got the milder form?’

Jacobs shook his head. ‘Something wrong?’ he said.

Hoffer had been tugging at his ears. ‘Flying does things to my ears,’ he said. ‘Say, can you help? Maybe take a look?’

‘I’m a haematologist, Mr Hoffer, not ENT.’

‘But you can prescribe drugs, right? Some painkillers maybe?’

‘Consult a GP, Mr Hoffer.’

‘I can pay.’

‘I’m sure you can. Did you catch your cold on the plane?’

‘Huh?’ Hoffer sniffed so much these days, he was hardly aware of it. He blew his nose and reminded himself to buy more paper handkerchiefs. Damned nose was always itchy too. ‘It’s this lousy weather,’ he said.

The doctor looked surprised and glanced out of his window. It was another beautiful day outside. He looked back at Hoffer.

‘The police have already asked me about this assassin. It seems from what I hear that he does possess some knowledge of haemophilia, but as I told them, I just can’t visualise a severe haemophiliac being an assassin. He told the ambulanceman that he was one per cent. I think he was lying. I mean ... well, this is guesswork.’

‘No, go on.’ Hoffer stuck his shred of handkerchief back in his pocket.

‘Well, it seems to me that these weapons he uses, they would have a recoil.’

‘Believe it.’

‘You see, any recoil might start a severe haemophiliac bleeding. It wouldn’t be long before he’d start to suffer problems with his shoulder. After which he wouldn’t make much of a marksman at all.’

‘What about a moderate sufferer?’

‘Even with a moderate sufferer, there would be dangers. No, if this man suffers from haemophilia, then he is a mild case.’

‘But he’d still know about the disease, right?’

‘Oh, yes. But he’d also be able to injure himself without needing medical aid afterwards. Simple pressure on the cut would be enough to stop it.’

Hoffer chewed this over. ‘Would he be registered?’

‘Almost certainly.’

‘I don’t suppose those records ... ?’

Jacobs was shaking his head. ‘If the police wish to apply to see them, then of course there might be a chance, especially if it’s a case of catching a murderer.’

‘Yes, of course. Dr Jacobs, how many mild sufferers are there?’

‘In the UK?’ Hoffer nodded. ‘About fifteen hundred.’

‘Out of how many?’

‘Roughly six and a half thousand.’

‘And how many of those fifteen hundred can we discount?’

‘What?’

‘You know, how many are kids, how many are pensioners, how many are women? It’s got to bring the number down.’

Jacobs was smiling. ‘I have some pamphlets here you should read, Mr Hoffer.’ He opened a desk drawer, hunting for them.

‘What? Did I say something funny?’

‘No, it’s just that haemophilia affects only men. It’s passed on from the mother, not the father, but it is only passed on to the sons.’

Hoffer read the pamphlets as he sat in the bar of the Allington Hotel.

He found it all unbelievable. How could a mother do that to her son? Unbelievable. The women in the family could carry the disease, but they almost never suffered from it. And if they passed it on to their daughters, the daughters could fight it. It was all down to chromosomes. A boy got his mother’s X and his father’s Y, while a girl got two X chromosomes, one from each parent. The bad genetic information was all in the X chromosome. A man with haemophilia passed his bad X to his daughter, but the good X she got from her mother cancelled the bad X out. So she became a carrier but not a sufferer. Each female had two X chromosomes, while males had an X and a Y. So boys had a fifty-fifty chance of getting the bad X passed on to them from their mothers. And they couldn’t override it because they didn’t have another good X chromosome, they had a lousy Y which wasn’t any use in the battle.

There was other stuff, all about Queen Victoria and the Russian royal family and Rasputin. Queen Victoria had been a carrier. There didn’t have to be a history of haemophilia in the family either, the thing could just spontaneously occur. And a mild haemophiliac might never know they had the disease till it came time for a surgical operation or tooth extraction. The more Hoffer read, the more he wondered about going for a blood test. He had always bruised easily, and one time he’d been spitting blood for days after a visit to his dentist. Maybe he was a haemophiliac. He wouldn’t put anything past his mother.

He wasn’t sure what difference it made, knowing the D-MAN was probably a sufferer. It could just be that his family had a history of haemophilia; he could just be an interested onlooker. Hoffer wasn’t going to be given access to any records, and even if he did get the records, what would he do with them? Talk to every single sufferer? Drag them here and let Gerry Flitch take a look at them?

Ah, speaking of whom ...

‘Mr Flitch?’

‘Yes.’

Hoffer offered his hand. ‘Leo Hoffer, can I buy you a drink?’

‘Thank you, yes.’

Hoffer snapped his fingers, and the barman nodded. The first time Hoffer had done it, the barman had given him a stare so icy you could have mixed it into a martini. But then Hoffer had given him a big tip, and so now the barman was his friend. Hoffer was sitting in a squidgy armchair in a dark corner of the bar. Flitch pulled over a chair and sat down opposite him. He flicked his hair back into place.

‘This has all been ... I don’t know,’ he began, unasked. ‘It’s not every day you find out you’ve had drinks bought for you by an international terrorist.’

‘Not a terrorist, Gerry, just a hired gun. Do you mind if I call you Gerry?’

‘Not at all ... Leo.’

‘There you go. Now, what’ll it be?’ The barman was standing ready.

‘Whisky, please.’

‘Ice, sir?’

‘And bring some water, too, please.’

‘Certainly, sir.’

Hoffer handed his empty glass to the barman. ‘And I’ll have the same again, Tom.’

‘My pleasure, Mr Hoffer.’

Gerry Flitch looked suitably impressed, which had been the plan all along. Hoffer gathered up his haemophilia pamphlets and stuck them down the side of the chair. It was a great chair, plenty big enough and damned comfortable. He wondered if he could buy it from the hotel, maybe ship it back.

‘You said you’re a private detective, Leo.’

‘That’s right, Gerry.’

‘And the police tell me you’re very well known.’

‘In the States, maybe.’ Good. As suggested, Flitch had called Bob Broome to check Hoffer’s credentials. ‘So tell me about Saturday, Gerry. No rush, I just want to listen.’

Tom the barman arrived with their drinks, and Hoffer gave him another tip. ‘Let us have some nuts or something, Tom, huh?’

‘Surely, Mr Hoffer.’

The nuts and crisps arrived in small glass bowls. Hoffer helped himself to a fistful. He’d had a mellowing-out joint half an hour ago, and was now hungry.

‘Well,’ said Flitch, ‘what is there to tell? I was drinking at the bar, sitting on one of those stools there. This guy came in for a drink, and sat a couple of stools away. He was drinking some soft drink, grapefruit and lemonade I think.’

‘It was tonic, not lemonade. We know that from his bar tab.’

Flitch nodded. ‘Yes, tonic, that’s right. Anyway, we got talking.’

‘Who started?’

‘I think I did.’

‘And did this guy, did he speak sort of grudgingly?’

‘No, not at all, he seemed very pleasant. You wouldn’t think he had murder on his mind.’

‘Maybe he didn’t. These guys have a way of blocking it out when they want to. So what did you talk about?’

Flitch shrugged. ‘Just general stuff. He told me he was in import-export, I told him I was a marketing strategist. I even gave him my card.’ He shook his head. ‘What a mistake that was. Next thing I know, armed police are at the door of my room.’

‘You’re the biggest break we’ve had, Gerry. It was the Demolition Man who made the mistake, accepting your card.’

‘Yes, but now he knows who I am, who I work for, where I live. And here I am talking to you.’

‘But he won’t know you’ve talked to us until he’s arrested. Besides, he’s not stupid. He won’t come near you.’

‘He won’t have to come near me though, will he? From what I’ve heard, a few hundred yards would be close enough.’ Flitch finished his drink. Hoffer knew the man was nervous, but he suspected Flitch was a heavy drinker anyway. The guy was young, late-twenties, but he had a face that was hardening prematurely, losing its good looks and gaining jowls. Only a big man, a man like Hoffer himself, could carry jowls and not look like a drunk. Flitch was a drunk in the making, and the pattern was just about complete.

‘Tell me something, Gerry, you ever do coke?’

Flitch’s eyes widened. ‘I take it you don’t mean the soft drink?’

‘I do not.’

Flitch shrugged. ‘I might’ve done a little at parties.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Why?’

Hoffer sat forward. ‘Know where I could get some?’

Flitch smiled. ‘In Liverpool I could help you, but not down here.’

Hoffer sat back again and nodded slowly, then craned his neck. ‘Another round here, Tom.’ Flitch didn’t say no. Hoffer rubbed a hand across his nose. ‘So what else did you talk about? Family? Background? That’s what businessmen talk about in strange bars, isn’t it?’

‘Not us, it never became personal. We talked about how easy things had seemed in the mid-80s, then how tough they’d become, and how tough they still were. He said something like, “There’s no room for bleeding hearts in our line of work”.’ Flitch shivered at the memory.

‘The guy’s got a sense of humour,’ Hoffer remarked. Tom arrived with the drinks. ‘Gerry, I’m not going to ask you what this guy looked like. You’ve already given the cops a good description, and he’ll have changed his appearance by now anyway. I’m going to ask for something more difficult.’ Hoffer sat forwards. ‘I want your impressions of him as a man. Just close your eyes, think back on that day, fix it in your mind, and then say anything you want to say. No need to feel embarrassed, the bar’s empty. Go on, close your eyes.’ Flitch closed them. ‘That’s right. Now, to get you warmed up, I’ll ask a few questions about him, okay?’

‘Okay.’ Flitch’s eyelids fluttered like young butterflies.

‘Tell me about his movements, were they stiff or fluid? How did he pick up his glass? Did you see him walk?’

Gerry Flitch thought for a moment and then started to speak.

Afterwards, Hoffer washed his face and hands in the men’s room and looked at himself in the mirror. He felt tired. He’d have to phone Walkins tonight with a preliminary report. There’d be plenty to tell him. Walkins was greedy for information about the Demolition Man. It was like he wanted to build up a good enough picture so he could then tear it to shreds. Hoffer couldn’t really figure Walkins out. There were no photographs of his daughter in Walkins’ house, though there were plenty of his wife, who’d died of lung cancer. The man was loaded, a fortune made in politics. When he was a senator, Walkins had tucked the money away, probably most of it legit. You didn’t have to be crooked in politics to make a small fortune. But when he’d left politics, Walkins must have done something to turn his small fortune into a large one, large enough to pay for Hoffer’s obsession and still leave plenty over.

He thought about doing a couple of lines. They’d keep him awake and alert. But he had one more job to do yet, and besides, he was perilously close to the end of his stash. He left the men’s room and sweet-talked the receptionist, who let him take a look at Room 203. The police had given it a good going over. There was still fingerprint powder on the dressing table, wardrobe and television. But it looked like ‘Mark Wesley’ had spent some time before checking out engaged in a bit of dusting. He’d left a couple of dry bath-towels on the floor of his room, and why else would they be there if he hadn’t been using them as dusters? However, the police reckoned they had half a palm print from the inside of the door, and an index finger from the courtesy kettle. They could not, of course, be sure whose prints they were. They might belong to a maid or a visitor or a previous occupant. They’d only know when they arrested Mark Wesley, or whatever he was calling himself now. They’d also dusted the ambulance, but Wesley had been helped in and helped out. He hadn’t touched a thing.

The room didn’t tell Hoffer anything. Gerry Flitch hadn’t told him much either. He was building up his own picture of the D-Man, but didn’t know where that would get him. He was no psychologist, no specialist in profiling. He had a friend at the FBI who might make more sense of it all. He went back to reception and found that the receptionist had his print-out and photocopies all ready. He handed her the promised twenty. He’d already been given the information by Bob Broome, but he wanted to check that Broome was playing straight with him. The information was all here. He’d used a credit card to reserve his room, but had paid cash when he checked out. The police had run tests and serial number checks on all the cash taken by the hotel on Saturday. The potential big break, though, was the credit card. The home address Mark Wesley had given to the hotel was false, but the credit card had turned out to be genuine.