Murder at Cape Three Points - страница 8

“Soon after that, Jason accosted me one morning in the car park as I drove in to work, making an embarrassing scene. It was a combination of attacking me, saying I was letting his daughter die, and begging me for mercy. The security man had to escort him away. It was horrible-still haunts me. By the end of April, I had heard nothing from him, so I called him. He said he was back at Korle Bu Hospital with Angela. They had done an exploratory laparotomy and found that she had hepatocellular carcinoma. It’s very rare in children, and all of us had missed it. Angela was in hepatic coma at the time I spoke to Jason, and she died about ten days later.”

“Oh,” Dawson said. “I’m sorry.”

She lowered her head and closed her eyes for a moment of pain that clearly still haunted her. “I am too. I failed Jason and his wife, and I failed their daughter. I could have made a stronger appeal to my administrator, or called someone at Korle Bu.”

“Would it have made a difference in the end, Doctor?”

“Perhaps not, but the point is that I didn’t try hard enough to save a girl who was the same age I was when Uncle Charles and Auntie Fiona rescued me from ruin. I wonder what that says about me.”

With the last comment, she was almost talking to herself, and Dawson felt uncomfortable, as though he were eavesdropping. He had never witnessed such self-recrimination in a doctor. Like policemen, physicians rarely accepted blame for anything. He wanted to comfort her, or at least empathize, but he was afraid he might sound patronizing.

“Did Jason ever get back in touch with you?” he asked her.

“He didn’t call me, but I reached him by phone once. I told him how sorry I was. All he said was, ‘I hope it never happens to you,’ and he hung up.”

“Meaning, ‘I hope you never lose a loved one like I have?’ ”

She contemplated. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“Could he have killed your aunt and uncle?”

Dr. Smith-Aidoo took a breath and released a long, contemplative sigh. “It’s difficult to accuse him while he has suffered the same kind of loss as I have, but…”

“The bitterness that comes with grief can be powerful.”

“Yes. You read my mind.” She shook her head. “But no, I can’t in good conscience accuse him.”

“I understand,” Dawson said. “I was curious how you came to work on the Malgam oil rig. It’s not a typical job for a physician, is it?”

“No, it’s not. After Angela’s death, I left IMS immediately with a bad taste in my mouth. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them again. I was looking around for something completely different to do-a new environment to escape to, where I didn’t have to hear all the talk about Angela and what had happened. Tadi is a small place. People gossip. Uncle Charles understood where I was coming from, and when he heard that a position on the Malgam rig as medic had unexpectedly opened up, he recommended it to me. I was overqualified since they usually use EMTs, but I was willing to take the cut in pay. In fact, I was glad to do it, maybe as a penance for the IMS tragedy. I pestered Malgam, and Uncle Charles added pressure. That’s how I got the job.”

“You must have really wanted it,” Dawson commented. “Isn’t that like the Inspector General of Police taking the position of a sergeant?”

She laughed. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it. That didn’t matter to me, though. I’m still an MD, no matter what.”

“How soon after your uncle’s death did Jason Sarbah take over as Malgam’s Director of Corporate Affairs?”

“About two months. In September, the CEO of Malgam, Roger Calmy-Rey, met Jason at the funeral, and they talked. Jason’s work history-first as a bank manager and then as a solo real estate agent-impressed Roger, and the story of the death of Jason’s daughter touched him. He offered Jason a crack at the position, they interviewed him, and he was successful.”

“Is it possible that Calmy-Rey gave him the job as a consolation?”

“Kind of a gesture of sympathy?” she asked. “I doubt it. Malgam Oil comes first in Roger’s life. He’s not going to jeopardize it by hiring someone unqualified. No, Jason is a very bright man. I don’t doubt his abilities.”