Free Bleeding Hearts by Ian Rankin Page B

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