• Chapter 18
• previous
• next
• index

 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows 
... and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all
 – Isaiah 53:4–6

Monday had been a bad day for Bradley Pettier. Although he’d been in early, at 8:30, and – unusually – without a hangover, this hadn’t been nearly early enough to avoid Little Miss Lady Cop and her unladylike temper. Not to mention her language.

She’d been pissed that the local cops had been snooping around in her investigation, and wanted to know what he, Brad, had said to get them involved. No amount of denial seemed to satisfy her. The look of (genuine) confusion hadn’t helped – probably only served to strengthen her opinion of him as just another dumb ex-colonial. 

The fuss had even, eventually, coaxed the boss out of his lair, leading to an increasingly awkward series of questions, culminating in “Are you ever going to write that paper?” and “Why the fuck do I even pay you?”.

The rest of the week could only get better, he’d thought. But here he was, 9 on a Tuesday morning, wondering why there was a 25 kg tub of ammonium nitrate on his lab bench. 

He peered at the lid again. There was a handwritten label, the ink smudged but definitely ‘De Kooij’ and not ‘Pettier’. That jerk in Stores must be illiterate as well as thick, Brad decided.

“Bradley.” A voice from the corridor outside the lab. “I think you have my order. It is a mistake.”

“You’re telling me. What would I want with the free world’s supply of ammonium nitrate?”

Michel stepped cautiously into Brad’s lab. 

“Nitrate? Ammonium nitrate?”

“Yeah. Fertilizer. You taking up industrial-scale gardening or what? Maybe a sideline in GMOs?”

“Verdomme. I wanted sulphate. For salting out. They got it wrong again. How stupid are these people?”

Brad shook his head, too tired even for low-level ragging of this crazy Dutchman. 

“Just take it, man. Get it off my bench.”

Michel nodded. 

“Thank you. We should talk science some time.” Then he lifted the tub without a sound and left the lab, leaving Brad to wonder if he’d just been made a fool of, and whether this was after all an improvement on the previous day.

**********

When Michel got back to his own lab, Felicity the graduate student was loading a gel, while Sabine and Slater were sitting side-by-side, taking turns looking down a microscope. Sabine looked up, smiled. 

“Michel! I wondered where you were.”

“I was chasing a lost order. It is an old Dutch sport.”

Slater snorted, without looking up from the microscope. 

“You’ve been working on your sense of humour, Mike. I approve. I also approve of these latest crystal trays. We’ll be able to book a synchrotron trip soon.”

“Good. Perhaps you can take Sabine and Felicity. It would be good training.”

Slater straightened, turned round. 

“Really, Mike? You’re usually so protective of your crystals. You like to see projects to completion.”

Michel shrugged, putting the heavy tub of chemical down by his own bench. 

“I have enough to be getting on with. Sabine, Felicity… they need papers too.”

Sabine looked from Michel to Slater and back again. 

“Really, Michel? You would do that?”

“Sure. It is no big thing.”

Sabine bent her head. 

“I am not sure how I can thank you,” she said. “Maybe I can buy you that drink sometime.”

Slater wagged his finger in mock seriousness. 

“Now stop it, you two. We have work to do. And you, Mike, need to shift that icing sugar off my desk.”

Sabine’s smile turned into a puzzled frown. 

“Icing sugar? Why are you bringing icing sugar into the lab?”

“I am making a cake.”

“That’s a shedload of icing for one cake, Mike,” Slater said.

“It was a bulk buy discount. And I think we should celebrate Felicity’s PhD upgrade.”

“Very true. Just get it off my desk, all right?”

“In good time, Tom. In good time. But now I have to feed my cells.”

Michel picked up a notebook and walked down the corridor towards the tissue culture lab. Sabine turned to Slater, and said,

“Icing sugar? Does Michel normally make cakes?”

“He hasn’t before, but he’s a man of many talents. And he keeps surprising me. So it’s not impossible.”

She laughed. “Maybe he is making a bomb!”

Slater fiddled with the focus on the microscope. 

“I have worked with Mike for many years, Sabine, and one of the things I have learned is that you don’t question what he’s doing. It all works out fine in the end – usually with a Nature paper.”

**********

The sky outside the lab was darkening, pink tinged with a sombre grey, when Slater emerged from his office. 

“Right you two. Ready? Felicity’s gone ahead – I said we’d catch her up.”

Sabine was already at the lab sink, peeling away  the hated latex gloves and dropping them elegantly into the biohaz bin. 

“Are you ready, Michel?”

Slater chimed in: “You joining us? It’s nearly 8, you should take a break at least.”

Michel looked up at the clock above the door. The minute hand ticked onto the 10. 

“You guys go. I’ll just set up this tray and follow you later.” He reached for his pipettor, and turned to Sabine. A genuine smile spread across his face.

Sabine caught her breath, and smiled back as she walked out the door with Slater.

“Tot ziens, schatje.”

**********

The rest of Brad Pettier’s day had not improved. Truth be told it had got worse, culminating in a letter that he still hadn’t read, having not been able to get past the ‘Formal Warning’ header.

On his way out for a final cigarette before calling it a night, he stood against the corridor wall to let four or five giggling girls go past. One of them he recognized – a grad student from the Slater lab, apparently having passed her upgrade to PhD status. 

Well good luck lassie, he thought, welcome to hell.

He took a detour by the pigeon holes – dammit, bad news loves company, he thought – and was more than slightly surprised to find a large brown envelope in the ‘P’s, his own name handwritten in a Gothic script. He hesitated momentarily, before sliding the envelope under his arm and heading out to the carpark.

Outside, he leaned against the wall of the loading bay, and reached into his jacket pocket for his cigarettes. But then he changed his mind, and slit open the envelope. As he withdrew a sheaf of stapled, laser-printed A4, a loose piece of paper fluttered out. He caught it, and scanned the note quickly, eyes widening. He looked back at the stapled sheaf and quickly flipped the pages with a mounting sense of incredulity. Why would he do this? And why put himself middle, not first? (Or even last? God knew the mental bastard deserved that). 

“You crazy Dutch son-of-a – “

“What’s that you’ve got, Dr Pettier? Looks like a manuscript. Are congratulations in order?”

Startled, Brad looked up to see Sabine and Slater. The older man had a strange smile on his face.

“Uh, good evening, Professor Slater. Your postdoc seems to have given it to me.” Almost guiltily, he slipped the sheaf back into the envelope. “I haven’t read it, but he’s written this note, I’m not sure why – “

Suddenly Slater took him by the arm and pushed him firmly but not roughly into the shadow of the loading bay. Sabine followed. Slater held up a finger and nodded towards the Micro building.

Brad looked in that direction as a white car approached. It stopped under the security camera, and Brad had a sudden flash of insight that this was a deliberate manoeuvre.

A man and a woman got out and headed towards the building. Brad turned to Slater, his mouth open, but Slater shook his head. Sabine also remained silent, but her brow was furrowed.

When the newcomers were safely inside the building, Slater said, 

“Did you know this is the only place in the goods yard there’s no light? And that,” pointing out the white Ford, “is apparently a security camera dead zone.”

Brad shook his head. 

“Never thought about it. I just come out here to smoke.” He felt for his cigarettes again, thumbed one out, and on an impulse offered the packet to Slater and Sabine. Sabine shook her head, but Slater said,

“Don’t mind if I do, that’s most generous of you, Dr Pettier.”

Brad mumbled, his cheeks flushing pink, “Call me Brad.” He held out his Zippo.

Slater drew on the cigarette, a little too deeply for comfort, and coughed, his eyes watering. 

“It’s been a while. But you don’t forget, do you?”

Brad shook his head. 

“I guess not. I should quit, I guess. Say, what are you guys doing out here anyway?” Being so nice to me an’ all left unsaid.

“Tying up some loose ends,” Slater said. “Maybe you can tell us about your manuscript. Michel should be joining us soon.” He looked up to the window of his own lab. Brad and Sabine followed his gaze, and the main light went out, replaced by a smaller glow. “Oh, look. They’re in my office.” 

The glow in the lab window appears to shrink, but is replaced by a strangely blue light, moving faster than thought, expanding into the twilight sky, pushing the glass of the windows before it. The noise follows, crushing their eardrums, collapsing into the patter of glass shards cluster-bombing the tarmac. Orange flames start to lick around the empty window frame. 

Brad recovers first. 

“Mike – Michel? Christ, was he in there?”

He slaps the envelope with the manuscript against Slater’s chest and runs back towards the Institute. 

Sabine sobs, “Michel!”, and starts to follow him. But Slater catches her arm, shaking his head, and she stops. He takes the manuscript out, dropping the envelope on the concrete path, where splots of rain smudge the ink as effectively as they hide the tears on his face. 

Over the sound of the building’s fire alarm, a siren wails in the distance.

• Chapter 17
• previous
• next
• index

My mother she taught me how to read
My mother she taught me how to read
If I don't read, ’n’ my soul be lost
Ain't nobody's fault but mine
 – Unknown

Tom got to his feet, took a step towards Michel. Mallory reached inside his jacket, but stopped when Alice held up her hand.

Slater crouched down by Michel; put his hand on the younger man’s knee. 

“Why, Mike? What is this all about?”

Michel, keeping his gaze on his own feet, said, “She was pregnant. With your child. That’s why I killed her. Even though she promised she never wanted to hurt you. It was a risk I couldn’t take.”

“I don’t understand, Mike.”

“She was a distraction, Tom! You were late in the lab in the mornings, you weren’t concentrating – it was better after she left, but she still had a hold on you. And a child… we would have lost you.” Michel looked up, his cheeks glistening in the fading light. “What would happen to the science? I couldn’t allow it.”

“How did you do it?” Alice asked.

“For God’s sake, woman!” Slater said. “Can’t you just leave it alone for two minutes?”

Alice shook her head. 

“Dr de Kooij, we can give you immunity from prosecution. From a certain point of view, you were on Government business and… collateral damage happens. But, you need to help us to help you.”

“It’s OK, Tom,” Michel said. “It’s only fair. I tell them, and we go back to the lab, and we do good science together again. Maybe we can even build a bridge with Bradley – he has good ideas.”

Slater looked up sharply at Michel, and then sat down. 

“All right. Fine. Tell me. Tell her. Tell all of us.”

Michel drew an invisible line with his finger along the arm of the chair.

“After I hacked your computer I began to think about implanting snake venom into a vector. All the chikungunya work suddenly made sense, of course. Splicing the venom sequence – I thought an alpha neurotoxin would work best – into the genome would have been the work of a couple of weeks. But the challenge was ensuring that the virus itself would have been sufficiently virulent, but not deadly in itself. And we wouldn’t want it to start expressing neurotoxin until we were ready.” Michel smiled. “That would be very bad.”

Slater nodded, thoughtfully. 

“And naturally, the infectivity part of the project fitted in with everything else we were working on. Legitimately.”

“I liked the idea of chikungunya as a vector because it’s not dangerous,” Michel continued. “Not very, anyway. Nobody would suspect it, and unless they took the trouble to sequence an isolate they wouldn’t realize it had been tweaked. All very James Bond. But then the neurotoxin would have given it away. People would know it was a biological agent. Also you wouldn’t sign my orders for reagents, so I didn’t have a template. But then I had a better idea. I could easily get immune components by PCR. Human sequences.” Michel smiled faintly. “I used my own blood for the template.”

“Oh, very clever, Mike. I knew there was a reason I hired you.”

“Yes,” Michel said, “it wasn’t obvious but worked very nicely. Interleukin 4 and a transcription factor or two. It looks like allergic anaphylaxis, or even Reye’s syndrome in the right individual.”

“Wait, stop,” Alice interrupted. “You’ve lost me. How does it work?”

“It’s quite simply, really,” Slater said, sounding more excited than at any other time that afternoon. “What Mike did was use key components of the body’s own immune system – controlling components – to provoke an ongoing immune response in the absence of an authentic immune challenge.”

“So a bit like an autoimmune disease? Arthritis or something?”

Michel nodded. 

“Exactly like that. Except much worse. A positive feedback loop that just gets worse and worse until the body destroys itself.”

“I see,” Alice said. “How did you get it into the test subject?”

“I put the expression cassette behind a heat-inducible promoter. I loaded a sample of the recombinant virus into a sprayer. I knew she liked vintage stuff, so I found a pretty Victorian-replica glass atomizer at a car boot sale. And I gave that to her with some flowers – Freesias. Yellow and white. Charlotte filled the sprayer with water and sprayed the flowers, transferring the virus. Then she must have sniffed the flowers. The warmth of her body activated the virus.” Michel shrugged. “It was not that difficult.”

“Oh come on, Mike!” Slater sounded almost excited. “You must have worked like a demon. I know you have late hours, but that’s one hell of a project. And everything else was progressing too – as far as I could tell, at least.”

“I don’t have much of a social life, Tom. It was for me an interesting exercise. At least, until Charlotte… I was not happy with that, Tom.”

Alice walked over to Michel and put her hand on his shoulder. He tensed, a slight tremor in his arm, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Well done, Dr de Kooij! Excellent work. Heat inducible, you say?”

“It seemed sensible. It was March, cold outside, and such a device should only go off when it comes into contact with a living body, no?”

“Precisely. I think you have great potential.” She lifted her hand and Michel sagged. “Anything else we should know? When can we get a sample?”

“I built in an off-switch. It is crude, but if the virus gets too warm, more than about 45ºC, it will inactivate. Permanently.”

“And the sample? Did you bring some with you?”

Michel opened his eyes wide. 

“No! Of course not. I will need to grow some up from the freezer, and get the files together.” He paused, as if in thought. “Come to the lab at eight on Tuesday night and I will have something your scientists can use.”

Mallory/Peter stepped away from the window. 

“That will do nicely. Come on, ‘Alice’. Let’s get out of here. I need a fag.”

**********

When the white Ford had crept gently away through the gloomy Cherry Hinton streets, Slater closed the curtains and turned the room lights on.

Then, matter-of-factly, not accusing: “You… spent a long time on my computer, Mike.”

“It wasn’t all at once. I put it together over several nights. And you never changed your password.”

“Well, that’s a lesson for me, then.”

Mary appeared from the kitchen, slid her hand into Slater’s. 

“Tom. I’m so sorry. This has been awful, hasn’t it.” She sniffed.

Slater turned, took her fully in his arms, stroked her hair until she stopped shaking. Eventually, Michel said,

“There was one other thing. I did a quick SNP analysis. If Charlotte was going to have your child, I had to know… for sure.”

“How?” Slater asked.

“Coffee cup. Human primers. I had the reagents. But no, it only took a couple of gels to be sure. I couldn’t have murdered my own brother. Or sister.”

Slater nodded. 

“I didn’t really – well, I guess it’s for the best. No more loose ends.”

‘Just one,” Michel said. “There is work to do if I am to be ready on Tuesday.” He nodded politely towards Mary. “Thank you for the tea. And sorry for the shock I gave you.”

“Which one?” Mary whispered, but Michel was already opening the front door.

“Wait!”

Michel turned.

“I know you wanted to get rid of them,” Slater said, “but are you really going to give them a weaponized virus?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Michel said, as the door closed behind him. 

• Chapter 16
• previous
• next
• index

Do I lie like a lounge room lizard
Or sing like a bird released?
 – Neil and Tim Finn

Slater had not expected to be troubled by the line of questioning taken by Cambridgeshire police, and he hadn’t been disappointed. It wasn’t at the “We know it was you what done it so own up now and we’ll go easy on you”-level, but it wasn’t much higher. 

He had tolerated the recent questioning much as he might listen to a graduate student from another lab give their first talk – part of his brain on the lookout for anything intellectually stimulating, but the rest of him detached and dispassionate. He knew the police had nothing to go on; and of course, he knew he was innocent.

Of causing Charlotte’s death, at least.

“They just accused you of murdering the little tart!”

Mary, on the other hand, was not coping so well.

That he could deal with – was used to dealing with. The question puzzling him was, “Why?”

Why had the police shown up? Why were they asking him such asinine questions? And then who – who in the name of God had put it into their tiny little heads that he might have murdered Charlotte Stowell?

Slater actually had a pretty good idea about that one. Someone with peroxide hair, a black coat – and who wore dark sunglasses to a funeral on a rainy April afternoon.

The only explanation that even started to make sense was one that made him very worried indeed. But for now, he had his wife to deal with. He walked into the living room and sat in his armchair. 

“Mary, I did not murder Charlotte.”

“But you were in love with her!”

“No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.” Slater sighed, sat down. “She was young, pretty, keen, clever…”

“And she could give you something I couldn’t? Like that whore in Amsterdam and that freak Michael?”

“Michel. He’s not a freak and he’s not my son.” He looked up at his wife. “He’s not my son. I know he’s not. I don’t know if he knows, but he can’t be. It was folly to think it.”

Mary seemed to him to calm, her hand on the back of his chair.

“But, after she left, you were still…?”

“Say it, Mary. You never have, have you? Just, for once, fucking well say it.”

Mary breathed deeply. “After she left, you were still… screwing her. Yes?”

Tom was silent, but his neck was tinged with pink. 

“Oh Tom,” Mary said. “What have you done?”

Slater spread his hands in front of him. 

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all, Mary. Truly. I’ve been as good as gold. The last time I saw her was – “

In the quiet after the storm the doorbell seemed louder than ever. Slater stood up, too rapidly, his face fully red. “Who in God’s name is it this time?”

Mary opened the front door, but didn’t stand aside. “I think it must be someone for you, Tom.”

Slater came out into the hallway, his face suddenly pale again. “I think you better let them in, Mary.”

The woman nodded to Mary. “Thank you, Professor Slater. And this must be your lovely wife. We’ve heard so much about you.”

“Cut the crap,” Slater said, “and close the fucking door. I know who you are. Who’s the goon?”

The man in the doorway smiled slightly, running a thumb along the line of his chin as he turned to pull the front door closed. “The good professor has a point, ah, Alice. Shouldn’t you introduce us?”

The blonde woman nodded, moved further down the hall. “Of course. You may call me Alice. My colleague here is Mallory.” She reached into an inside pocket, pulled out a black-clad rectangle bearing a photograph and some text too small for Slater to read in the gloom. 

“We’re with the Intelligence Service. MI6 as the papers like to call us. May we sit down?”

**********

Mary went into the kitchen to make a pot of tea, and Slater sat back down on his chair in the living room. ’Alice’ pulled up a dining chair to face him. ‘Mallory’ stood by the window, occasionally moving the net curtain aside to get a better view of the drive.

“Mind if I smoke?” he asked.

“Yes, I do fucking mind! You might be MI6 but this isn’t the Soviet Union.” Slater stood up, suddenly puzzled. “But wait a minute. Isn’t MI6 the bunch that go off toppling foreign governments and whatnot? I thought you people were domestic, MI5?”

“Well done, Professor. But charity isn’t the only thing that begins at home. Alice, this is your project,” Mallory said, smiling. “Why don’t you explain?”

The woman he called Alice leaned forward. 

“We met, Professor Slater, a couple of years ago. You will remember we came to an agreement. Your work had not gone unnoticed by our superiors, and it was decided that you had a great deal to offer your country. I seem to remember you being quite keen on our proposal.”

Slater looked towards the window. “Mallory wasn’t your driver that night.”

“No,” she said. “My driver was blown up two weeks after that meeting by a roadside bomb in Helmand. This is serious, Professor. It’s not an academic exercise. It’s real, and real people are getting killed, and more real people will get killed if you don’t stop acting like a spoilt brat and start remembering who is paying your generous salary.”

“Now, just a minute Alice, or whatever your name is. I’m respected in my field. My science is competitive and I get grants from all over the place – the MRC, the BBSRC, the – ”

“And who do you think tells them who to fund, Professor Slater?” She leaned back, turned her palms upward on her knees. “Look, we’re not here to argue. We’ve given you everything you’ve asked for, maybe even a little extra, and we just want to know when we can expect to see a return on our investment.”

Before Slater could reply, there was a scream from the kitchen. Mallory was across the living room in two strides, pulling something from inside his jacket as he went.

“No! No! Don’t shoot him, it’s only Mike!” – Mary’s voice from the kitchen. “He just startled me, that’s all.”

Slater and Alice arrived in the kitchen to see Michel, even paler than usual, cowering against the fridge-freezer with his hands on his head. Mallory was standing between him and Mary, holding a short, ugly-looking pistol in both hands, pointing straight at Michel’s face.

“For God’s sake, Peter, put it away,” the woman called Alice said.

Mallory – or Peter – slowly lowered the gun.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“This is my postdoc, Michel,” Slater said. “If you’re looking for a ‘return’ on your ‘investment’, shooting him wouldn’t be the best move.” Turning to Michel, he said, “How did you get in? I’d swear we haven’t been out back since we got home.”

Michel lowered his hands. “If you can’t pick a lock, you’ve no business working in a lab.” He shrugged and dropped something into his coat pocket. “Besides, the Noorderbrug tramps had to eat somehow.”

“Right, fine. Whatever,” Slater said, “We’ve got guests. Mary will make you some tea, and we’ll all go and sit down and have a cosy little chat, because I suspect this concerns you as much as anyone else here.”

**********

Mallory/Peter had taken up his usual place by the window. Slater and Alice sat where they had been before Michel’s arrival. But there was an extra chair, now, with Michel occupying it. Mary hovered nervously.

Michel took a sip from the mug, put it down. “Thank you, Mrs Slater. Your tea is excellent as usual.”

Slater pinched the bridge of his nose.

“So. Let me get this straight. Your lot,” he said, waving a finger at the two intelligence agents, “have been making sure I get the funding to continue my research, in return for some research into transmissible biological agents. And now, despite the small size of my group and losing one of my key personnel, you think the work hasn’t progressed fast enough?”

“You haven’t made it easy for me, Tom,” Michel said. “I don’t know how many times you’ve said you’ve lost my orders for signing.”

Slater pushed his hands through his hair. “Mike, please, I know you’re trying to help but can you be quiet for a minute?”

“No, no, this is interesting,” Alice said. “Michel… Mike? Please continue. I’m very interested in what you have to say. Professor Slater did imply that you were critical to the success of this project.”

Michel looked from Slater to Alice, and back again. Slater nodded, flicked his hand towards Michel. Alice smiled encouragingly.

“OK.” Michel looked down at his feet, but didn’t say anything. One minute, two minutes passed. Mallory/Peter took a step away from the window, eyebrows raised. Alice waved him back.

Finally, Michel spoke. “When you visited Professor Slater two years ago, naturally I was curious. The very next day he got me to work on the virus. It seemed… innocent enough. On the face of it. But I was suspicious. Being suspicious is most of what it is to be a scientist. The rest is finding answers to your suspicion. So when the normally efficient Professor Slater started to lose my orders, or forget where samples were… well, at first I thought it was dementia.”

Alice smirked. Slater just said, “Thanks Michel. This is why I hired you.”

There was a momentary flash of confusion in Michel’s eyes, but he continued.

“Just after that, Charlotte left. But I knew she kept coming back, because I could smell her perfume on your jacket, Tom.”

Mary’s hand covered her mouth, and she left the room. Slater remained impassive.

“And then,” Michel said, “just when things were coming together, you spent a lot of time out of the lab. It was impossible to get new reagents. I was still worried about you. But I was distracted by the project. I was so close. Then one day you came in, spent all day in the office, and left. I hoped you were signing my orders. That’s the day I cracked your password.”

Alice sat up.

“You what? Does the professor know this?”

“Yeah,” Slater said, “he told me a few days ago. No secrets now. He’s seen everything. But you could probably guess that a man of his calibre would have figured it out himself. It was just confirmation, to him.”

Michel nodded. “Quite so. It didn’t matter. I had what I needed, but I wanted to know why. You told me what, more or less, was going on. Last week in the Park. State-sponsored terrorism, you called it. But I discovered something that I didn’t know, that I hadn’t foreseen. And that changed everything.”

“And that was…?” prompted Alice.

“Charlotte was pregnant.”

It was Slater’s turn to sit bolt upright. “No! No. I mean yes, she told me she thought she was, early days, and yes, I assumed it was mine. The coroner said she wasn’t, though. She must have had a miscarriage. And not told me.”

“Professor Slater,” Alice said, not unkindly, “the coroner would have said she was carrying Elvis’ child if we’d wanted. Or she could have been the size of an elephant and he would have said it was wind. Her pregnancy wasn’t something we wanted to be widely known.”

“But why would you do that?”

“It didn’t suit our purposes. We didn’t want to shame you – we suspected you had finished the project already.”

“Which is why you sent the Plod round. But why would I have killed her?”

“Because she was pregnant. Because that complicated matters. Because we had grown tired of waiting, and stressed people do strange things.”

Slater shook his head.

“You’ve got the wrong man. I could never had hurt her.”

“Maybe. But you’re not the only player in this game, are you? You’re not the one who would have done the experiments.”

Slater sat back, his face unreadable.

“Go on,” he said. “What are you saying?”

Alice cocked her head towards Michel, who turned and stared out the window, a faraway look on his face. He said nothing for a while. 

Then:

“Tom. I’m so sorry.” Another long pause. “I killed Charlotte.”

• Chapter 15
• previous
• next
• index

If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
 – Lizzie Douglas (Memphis Minnie) and Wilbur "Kansas Joe" McCoy

It was always trying, visiting Mary’s mother. 

Most Saturdays, Slater would rise early and sit in the box room he liked to call his study, with a pile of academic papers, perhaps a lab notebook or two or a student’s thesis, and catch up with everything he hadn’t been able to do during the week. He’d emerge briefly mid-morning for fresh coffee, then take a late lunch. Towards late afternoon, if Mary wasn’t visiting friends they’d go for a walk out towards Fulbourn or over the Gogs, afterwards often heading into town for dinner. They never booked ahead, but rather looked around until they found somewhere not too busy, hang the cost.

Was the spontaneity of their Saturday evenings an attempt to recover some lost romanticism? Or maybe one or other of them was trying to apologize for something – or even simply reminding themselves that not having children was perhaps not without its benefits. All his friends had grown up, had children, and although they seemed to work as hard as he did, he could occasionally feel their envy, disguised though it was as pity.

Whatever the reason, he looked forward to Saturdays – except when once a month when they’d make the tedious drive to Leicester, to the drab Fifties vision that was the Eyres Monsell estate, to the semi smelling of stale cigarettes, Camp coffee and cat piss.

In another life, perhaps, he could have got on with Mary’s mother. She had been by all accounts quite a looker in her youth. But while some women age gracefully, maintaining an air of elegance, even desirability well into their greying years, she had fared no better than her declining council estate environment. Neither was she immune to the more medical slings and arrows of age: the signs of angina and creeping dementia were clear.

She’d also taken an immediate and deep-seated dislike to her only son-in-law. When they arrived at her door, Mary had to tell her Tom’s name repeatedly. When at last she did appear to remember him, she would ask why he’d dropped out of med school, or what kind of career was journalism for the husband of her daughter. He had almost convinced himself that the old bat wasn’t at all senile, but was rather deliberately needling him.

As usual, they had driven home in silence. Slater let Mary through the door first, then threw his keys with slightly more force than intended onto the table. Mary frowned without saying anything, and Slater hated himself just a little bit more.

The decanter was rattling on the edge of the whisky tumbler when the doorbell rang.

**********

Unsubtle.

That was the single thought that occupied Michel’s mind. The blue lights reflecting off the windows in the quiet Cherry Hinton street; the two uniformed officers hammering on the door; the shrillness of Mary’s voice, audible even out here in the allotments.

Unsubtle.

When, an hour after they’d arrived, the police went back to their car and drove off, Michel wasn’t totally surprised that Tom wasn’t with them. Even the Cambridge police must have realized there wasn’t a shred of evidence. No; what was surprising was that they had got involved at all at this stage. There was but one hypothesis that fit his observations, but he couldn’t yet be sure he was right. He needed the fox to come out of its hole.

He’d waited all afternoon; a little longer wouldn’t hurt.

And there it was. The white Ford with the Sheffield licence plates turning into the cul-de-sac, reaching the end, and reversing into the Slaters’ driveway. And the platinum blonde – and a man he didn’t recognize – crunching up to the front door and ringing the bell. 

When the door opened, he pinched out the joint and walked slowly up to the house.

**********

When the police had gone, Slater stood with his forehead pressed against the wood of the front door, the tumbler still in his hand but the whisky untouched. Behind him there was silence, but it was the silence before an earthquake.

I will be calm, he thought. Whatever happens, I will be calm.

A chair creaked; footsteps across the hall to the kitchen. A clink of glassware and the sound of running water. 

Be calm.

The footsteps returned, and he heard Mary gulp down the water.

“What,” she said, just a hint of a quiver in her voice , “was that all about?”

Slater moved his head away from the door and looked up at the architrave. Hmm. Mould. That’s going to be have to seen to this summer.

“Well?”

Calm.

He turned around to face her, dispassionately noting the water dripping from the corner of her mouth; the wide, unblinking eyes; her hand, still holding a glass, hanging limply at her side.

“There’s some mould up there above the door. We should get the wood treated,” he said.

He barely flinched as the glass exploded against the doorframe, inches from his face.

I am so fucking calm, he observed, a bomb could go off and I wouldn’t blink.

He looked down, and poked a piece of broken glass with the toe of his shoe. “For some reason,” he said, “the Cambridgeshire Constabulary think I had something to do with the death of Charlotte Stowell. They’re not the sharpest tools in the shed, as you know.” 

He looked up, and smiled brightly. “Good job that was one of the cheap Tesco glasses and not your mother’s crystal.”

• Chapter 14
• previous
• next
• index

Just as every cop is a criminal, And all the sinners saints
 – Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

Cambridge News, Saturday 12 April 2008

Was Cambridge scientist’s death murder?

The tragic death last month of brilliant young researcher Charlotte Stowell raises serious questions about safety in Cambridge’s new multimillion pound research institute.

Ms Stowell, 28, worked on the infectivity of flu viruses in Professor Thomas Slater’s laboratory at The Wolfhaven Institute, locally known as the “Nobel Factory”. She died after contracting chikungunya fever, a disease normally carried by mosquitoes.

The virus that killed Ms Stowell normal does not affect healthy people, but it can be dangerous in pregnancy. Dr Michel de Kooij, a virologist in Professor Slater’s lab, said he didn’t know if Ms Stowell was pregnant. He said, “We were as surprised as anyone that Charlotte caught it.”

Dr de Kooij said that despite extensive safety procedures, “poor working conditions” and long hours make it “easy to forget how dangerous working with viruses can be”. But Ms Stowell had left the Wolfhaven four months previously to work for the leading scientific magazine Nature.

Paul McIntyre, a technician at the Wolfhaven said that Ms Stowell, “a really lovely girl”, used to receive packages from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “It always feels a little scary,” Mr McIntyre, 57, said, “because you don’t know what’s in there.”

Scientists at the Wolfhaven Institute routinely take viruses like chikungunya apart to see how they work, and put them back together to test their theories in the wild. It is possible that a toxic gene from another lab accidentally got joined to the chikungunya sequence, but Dr de Kooij thought this was unlikely. “It could never happen by chance,” he said. “It is more likely it was done deliberately.”

Dr de Kooij said he did not know who might have wanted Ms Stowell dead. He said that he plans to use viruses in gene therapy, but added that terrorist groups and government agencies such as MI6 could use exactly the same technology to make a deadly weapon, adding that it would not be difficult for somebody with the right technology.

Whatever the real story behind Ms Stowell’s death, it is clear that many searching questions remain to be answered at this jewel in Britain’s research crown.

**********

The woman slammed the paper down.

“Who the fuck is this journalist? Why don’t we know about her?”

The man shrugged. “It’s unimportant.”

“No Peter, it’s not unimportant. It’s of the utmost fucking importance. Somebody, somewhere, somehow, has tipped them off. Who knows? Peter, who the fuck knows?”

The man reached into a pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes, offering one to the woman.

“No? Well then.” He tapped one out of the packet, flicked his Zippo. “Does it matter?”

She snatched the lighter from his hand. 

“Yes it fucking matters. If Slater has squealed it could get us shut down. And we can’t afford that. If he’s squealed…”

“Yah. Whitehall won’t be happy.”

She grimaced. “I think we need to get heavy on Slater. I’ve just about had enough. We’re so fucking close, I can smell it. I know he’s been stringing us along, but I haven’t wanted to get too close in case we spook him. But now, now… we’re nearly there, Peter. I think we should pay him a visit. In person.”

He reached across the table and plucked the Zippo from her unresisting hand. He flicked it, drew on his cigarette, blew a smoke ring at the ceiling.

“I have a better idea, Susan. Let’s give Captain Plod something to do.”

• Chapter 13
• previous
• next
• index

And I dreamed your dream for you and now your dream is real
 – Mark Knopfler

Michel waited patiently for the barman to finish serving the group in front of him. He ordered his pint, and Toni’s wine. This was hard, harder than anything he had done before. Every muscle in his body, every neuron in his brain was screaming at him to stop, to get out, to retreat to the safety of the lab. But he had to do this – for Tom, for himself, even for the memory of Charlotte.

Perhaps the beer would help, drown out the screaming and make it bearable.

“Your other friend coming back, do you think?” 

Michel shrugged. “I do not know. I thought she would be pleased.”

“Ah. Women. You never can tell. There you go.”

Michel handed over a handful of coins. “That should be right.”

The barman smiled. “Thank you very much, Mike. Right as usual. And don’t worry about the wine. I’ll make sure I save you some.” He winked at Michel, “She’ll be back.”

Toni was writing in a ring-bound notebook when Michel returned. She looked up with a smile as he approached.

“Thank you, Michel.”

He nodded. “You are welcome.” For a moment, he just stood there, then suddenly dropped into his chair. Toni frowned.

“Are you all right? I thought you looked a little odd, just there.”

“It is all right. You remind me of someone, that is all.”

She smiled again.

“Someone you remember fondly, I hope?” 

Michel shook his head. Verdomme. “It seems a long time ago, now.” He kept her gaze until she dropped it, ruffled the edges of her notebook; coughed.

“Okay. So we were talking about chikungunya. About it how it isn’t dangerous?”

Michel nodded, slowly.

“But if it were dangerous, it could infect someone? In the lab I mean. And that would be bad?”

“It would be very bad. But as I have said, we have the P3, we have the procedures.”

“But an accident – “

“It is impossible.” 

“Okay.” Toni hesitated. “And it’s not fatal, anyway?”

“Not normally, no.” He took a sip from his pint. “People with weakened immune systems, perhaps the young, perhaps the pregnant – then there might be a problem.”

“And Charlotte wasn’t pregnant?”

“Not as far as we know. The coroner said nothing about that, and you journalists would be on it like a pack of wolfhounds.”

Toni looked down at the table between them. “Yes, maybe you’re right.” Then a thought seemed to appear to her, and she looked up again. “Coroner? There was an inquest?”

“Naturally. It was an unusual happening.”

“What was the verdict?”

Michel leaned back in his chair. “I would have thought you would have looked it up. Natural causes. Fully consistent with being infected by a virus. But not,” he said, suddenly leaning forward on the table, “not one picked up from a lab.”

“All right. Let’s talk hypotheticals,” Toni said, brightly. “If you cut viruses apart, as you say, can you put them back together again? Do you do that?”

Michel took another sip, leaned back in his chair again. He had no idea where this was going. He wished he could understand what she wanted. He wished Sabine were here to help him. He wished she didn’t remind him so much of Karen.

“Michel?”

“Yes, I hear. And yes, we can put viruses back together, as you put it. Indeed, it is something we have to do if we want to test our theories in the wild. It is something we have to do if we want gene therapy to work. It is not so difficult.”

“And you, I don’t mean you personally, but in general – you could make mistakes putting them back together? They could get back together wrong, and be dangerous?”

Michel sighed, rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day. The confrontation with Slater had been difficult, and ever since then he had been puzzling how to make everything all right again, how to repay the trust he had asked Slater to place in him. The answer had come just before Slater had left; just before Sabine asked to join him. And now she wasn’t here, and he had to answer these questions by himself. Scientifically, the questions were not hard: he simply had no idea if there was anything behind them; if the journalist had an agenda that he could not follow.

“I mean,” Toni continued, “perhaps something could have got in there, or somebody did something wrong, got tired and careless, and the virus could have escaped?”

“In theory, yes. No. Possibly.” Michel suddenly felt the need to defend science, defend its practitioners, defend his friends, against this insult. “It is, I would say, very unlikely. What is more likely is that somebody could deliberately do something.”

“Like what?” Toni was alert, her pen still on the paper.

“Maybe you could put the DNA for a toxic protein into the virus. You would have to reverse transcribe it and make sure it got packaged, but you could do it like that.”

Toni shook her head. “I don’t know what those words mean. But is it easy?”

“Easy? It is trivial, if that is what you mean.”

“I mean could you do it? Could Charlotte do it?”

He lifted his chin and, summoning every last ounce of self-control, held her gaze, saying nothing. She looked away first.

“So Charlotte could have done this?” she asked again.

“Even if she had, the P3 – “

“Yes, I know, but you, all the scientists, you work so hard and you get tired – “

“That is why we have the procedures.”

“But you could still make mistakes, yes? Did Charlotte work weekends? By herself?”

“We all do that.”

“And if you do, are you not tempted to take shortcuts? The gloves, the masks – “

“As far as I know,” Michel said, too loudly, “Charlotte did not have a reason to reconstitute the virus. With or without some hypothetical toxin!”

“But other people did? You said you it’s something you want to do to test your theories?”

Michel stared at his hands on the table. The important thing was to stay calm. He counted his breaths, counted the pounding in his ears; willed it to slow down. Slowly, he became aware that Toni was still speaking. Still looking down, he spoke over her:

“We need to know how the viruses would infect in the wild. I have said that.” He rubbed the side of his nose. Words were important, here. “We are not there yet. It is something we have to do, should do, carefully. Carefully.”

“So… could a reconstituted virus have got infected, contaminated itself? Picked up some toxic DNA from somewhere else?”

“You do not know what you are saying.”

“But it could?”

He shook his head. “The chances of something like that happening by chance… It would have to be engineered. We are clever people. It would really not be difficult to engineer, to splice in a toxin into a virus, package it up and let the virus infect someone. The clever thing would be to stop it spreading. Otherwise you would have a lethal pandemic. You would have to stop the virus leaving the host, to spread. But by chance? No. Never.”

“Would it be difficult to do deliberately? Technically I mean?”

“An undergraduate could do it if you give him a recipe. You have to be careful, and clean, and you have to think about it quite a bit, but I could teach you to do it. If you were not a complete klutz. Perhaps I will try next week. The really clever thing would be to make an inducible promoter, a switch that makes it so that it could or could not infect people. Maybe you could even turn it on and off. Like a light switch.”

Toni had stopped taking notes. “Like a weapon?”

“Like a weapon.”

“But who would do such a thing?”

Michel drank long and deep from his glass, almost finishing it. “There are many groups who might want something like that. We are thinking about using viruses in gene therapy, to make people better – so maybe you could use viruses the other way. Maybe the military would want to use viruses to kill people.”

“And do you think that Charlotte – ” Toni stopped, and stared at the door.

Michel looked up, and saw Sabine standing there. He stood, but Toni had already reached her, put her arm around her. Together, without a word, they sat together across from Michel. He noted the smudged eyeliner, the redness of her cheeks, her rapid and shallow breathing.

“Sabine, sweetheart,” Toni said, “is he…?”

Sabine nodded, sniffed. “It’s over. I’m going to get my things in the morning.”

“Do you need somewhere to stay?”

Sabine didn’t answer, but looked up at Michel. “I’m sorry, Michel. I should have been here for you.”

“It is okay.” He slid the still-untouched glass of Châteauneuf towards Sabine. “I will be at the lab, if either of you need me.”

He turned to the door, stopped, and came back. Without asking, he took Toni’s pen from her unresisting fingers, and scribbled on her pad. “In case you want to talk more. I will be out of the lab tomorrow, but please call me.”

And then he left.

• Chapter 12
• previous
• next
• index

You say to me I don't talk enough
But when I do I'm a fool
 – EMF

Toni suppressed a laugh. It was absurd – how could he have missed the whole thing? Weren’t scientists meant to be observant?

“Doesn’t seem like it, does it?” 

Toni tried to keep her voice normal, but she stared at Sabine, almost challenging her. Go after him, she wanted to say: show him you care. But all that came out was, “Previous plans, maybe?” 

Her voice trailed off. Sabine appeared to try to compose herself before she could attempt to address Michel, who had set the wine glass down on the table next to Max’s beer glass, and sat himself on the opposite side, still seemingly oblivious.

“Would you like to sit over here, Sabine?” Michel said.

Sabine looked back to Toni, turned to the door, and spun back round to Michel.

“I’m sorry, Michel. I had forgotten that I had plans… I need to go, so sorry about the wine.”

She turned and walked out of the pub, her heels tapping fast on the floor. Michel frowned but remained seated. Toni realized she was left with a decision: sit back down where she had been – next to him – or go round to the seat Max had just left. It would be awkward sharing the same side of the booth, she thought. It would look like a date. So she reached for her glass and moved it across the table and leaned back. 

If she had thought it was going to be hard to talk to Michel before, it seemed even stranger now. She fiddled with her phone, toying with the idea of calling Max and cancelling the whole deal. But then, when would she get another chance like this? 

“I guess she remembered something.” She waited for him to respond, to show some sign that he was as embarrassed as she was, but Michel just let his gaze rest on the door. Clearly this was not going to be an easy conversation. It wouldn’t be the first difficult interview she’d ever done: the trick was to stay focussed on him.

“What made you go into research?” 

Michel took a sip of his beer. He kept his eyes on the door. Toni had to use all her willpower to keep from turning to see what he was looking at. She began to think he had not heard, when at last he spoke:

“Made. That is a good word. What made me go into research. What made me do anything.” Suddenly he breathed out, seemed to relax. “I like ideas. Solving puzzles. Taking things apart to see how they work. It is an uncovering of order.”

A pause. And nothing more. Toni had a sudden image of driving, stalling at a roundabout, and trying to restart the car as commuters fumed behind her. Try again.

“So, is Holland much different from the UK?”

“The Netherlands,” he said, emphasizing the correction, “are like any place. It has people, who are the same wherever.” Another sip. Another pause. “But yes, there are differences.”

In her mind, one of the angry commuters blew their horn. She was going to have to try harder – perhaps more beer would loosen him up? Perhaps she should try that famous Toni charm, a bit of flirting. Given the man’s response to more obvious cues, though, that didn’t seem promising.

“So, would you go to the pub after work with someone? Someone who isn’t special?”

Michel shrugged. “In the Netherlands, everyone drinks. People go to the bar after work, sometimes during work.”

“But you? You did not go to the wake, after Charlotte’s funeral?”

“No.”

“I mean, it’s not as if you needed someone to go with?”

“I had to work.”

Ah… the engine coughed; fired.

“Do you not have any family?”

The noise level in the pub dipped and increased again. Michel watched the four or five couples who had just come in make their way over to another group in the corner. 

“No,” he said at last, his voice low. “I have no family.”

“I’m sorry. Perhaps that was insensitive. I am curious, you see, how you – I mean all of you – do it. Such long and tiring hours, it must be difficult to have a personal life?”

No answer. She continued,

“Would you say research demands a lot of passion?”

Michel blinked, looked straight at Toni for several long seconds, then returned his gaze to the door. She shifted in her seat. Was this going to be worth it?

“Passion,” he said eventually. “You might call it passion. It is an imperative. I have to do it.”

“Do you find it easy to make friends?”

“No. People tend to find me difficult.” The corners of his mouth turned up briefly, and Toni realized this was the closest she had seen to a smile. But something about the way his face creased made her heart beat faster.

“I – ” she began, and stopped. Breathed deeply. “So, do people make friends within the lab? Close friends, I mean? You spend quite a bit of time together.”

“It happens, yes. Our lab might be different. Sabine is seeing the accountant, Max. Professor Slater has a wife.”

“But you? You do not have a girlfriend?”

“I do not have a girlfriend.”

She wanted to ask him, did you? but she could sense he was beginning to close up again – not so much a stalled car as a wild and nervous animal she had to tame – and changed the subject:

“Okay, let’s talk about your work, if we may. Is it hard to research viruses?”

“No harder than researching anything else.”

“I mean, can you forget about how dangerous they are? Could you make it more virulent, forget that you’re working with something deadly?”

Michel leaned back in his chair, that crease on his cheek reappearing. 

“Every time we work with live virus that can infect humans we have to wear gowns and masks and go into a special room. We call it ‘P3’. It is hard to forget that something is dangerous when you have to work like that.” Suddenly he leaned forward, placed his palms on the table. “But most of the time we do not work with live, or even whole viruses. We work with little bits of them.”

“You chop them up?”

“In a manner of speaking, ha, yes. We make their individual proteins in tubes and see how they behave.”

“And those proteins, they are not dangerous?”

Michel shook his head. “Not usually, no. You have no context, nothing for them to do until you pack them with the other bits, with the genetic material. The reductionist approach is powerful but we molecular biologists sometimes forget that our little molecules like to be with their friends.”

“So you do forget? Do you get so absorbed, then?”

“It is absorbing,” Michel said. “Which is why we have protocols and risk assessments. But I meant that we forget that our little protein is just one piece of the puzzle.”

“And are you looking for other pieces?” Toni put down her glass, let her hand rest by Michel’s. Maybe this would work.

“Sometimes. Sometimes there is so much that being absorbed is all you can do.”

“And do you have all the pieces for the virus, what was it called, chicken fever?”

“Chikungunya?”

“Yes, that’s it! How do you remember these things?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but pushed on, sensing a breakthrough, “Chikungunya. That is what killed Charlotte, isn’t it?”

Michel frowned, crossed his arms. 

Shit, thought Toni, too much too soon.

But to her surprise, Michel carried on:

“Chikungunya is not normally fatal. It is transmitted by mosquitos. Like I say, we have the protocols, the gloves and the masks, the P3. It is impossible. We were as surprised as anyone else that Charlotte caught it.” He paused; swallowed hard. “And then. It is not dangerous. When she died. When she died – ”

“Michel. I am sorry. I should not have mentioned it.”

The Dutchman stood up. “It is okay, Toni. I am being rude, though. May I offer you another drink?”

• Chapter 11
• previous
• next
• index

…he writes there 
in invisible handwriting
the instructions the genes follow.
– RS Thomas

Sabine checked her watch against the clock over the door. It wasn’t that she and Max ever agreed to meet, but his habit was to be at the lab half an hour after leaving his office. And no one in Max’s company ever did any work after three on Friday afternoons. 

True, he had claimed to have an emergency meeting at some stupid hour this morning, and that might have put his entire day out; but Sabine knew that he had been lying. She opened her mobile, and closed it again. 

A familiar smell reached her nose. She pushed away from her desk and walked over to Michel’s bench. 

“I did not think you used the nail varnish for your nails, Michel,” she said, softly, “but what is it you are doing?” 

Michel did not look up, but continued at his task. Sabine watched him as he held a glass coverslip in forceps; as he dipped it in three different beakers, dried it on tissue; and finally, placed it on a drop of liquid on a slide. Just as she was beginning to think he had not heard her, he said, 

“The mountant for the slides sets fast, like glue, but does not hold the coverslip permanently. I paint the edges,” he picked up the nail varnish and took the brush, “like this, and it seals them.” He put the slide into a small black cardboard box. “And in half an hour it will be ready for the microscope.” 

Sabine blinked. “Do you buy the nail varnish yourself?” 

“Yes,” Michel said, “Is there a reason I should not?” 

Before Sabine could reply, Slater came out of his office, coat over his arm and briefcase in hand. 

“Mike, can we talk about that mutant tomorrow? I have to go now, and I need to think about what you said earlier.” 

Michel stood up. “Of course Prof. But tomorrow is Saturday, and I think – “ 

“Oh blast! And I have to take Mary to see her mother. Bugger. Monday then. First thing?” 

“My ‘first thing’ or yours?” 

“Cheeky bastard. All right, have a good weekend – you too Sabine. Try to stop Mike working so hard.” 

As he left, Michel looked at the clock. 

“Kak! I am supposed to be meeting that reporter woman in ten minutes! I will need to come back to finish this.” 

“Toni? I saw her note. Are you going?” 

“She wants to talk about our work with viruses. It will be good for the lab for people to read about us.” 

How can such a bright man be so naïve? Sabine wondered. Not for the first time she found herself looking at his legs, toned and muscular from cycling. Ah! If only he would do something about his clothes. 

“May I come with you?” she asked. 

Michel went quiet, and stared at his desk for what seemed like several minutes. 

Finally: “I am afraid that I might bore you. I am not very good at talking, Sabine.” 

“I know. That is why I want to come with you.”

**********

Toni realized that the afternoon had flown by faster than she had planned. After leaving her card at the virus doctor’s desk and walking out with Max, they thought it might be best to show up at their respective workplaces. She had an article to write and some research to do before the meeting at the pub. She couldn’t help but wonder if Michel would appear, as he had seemed a little hostile at first. 

“Scientists,” she sighed out loud. “Who knows, maybe a beer would loosen him up?” 

The phone on her desk rang and she glanced at her watch: it had to be Max calling to check if she had changed her mind. 

“No Max, I’m still going. I’m meeting him in like two hours. Uh huh.”

She glanced around the office. It was already half-empty, the interns out on assignments and the boss greasing some local politico. Her article was languishing unread on his desk, and she’d learned as much from scientific articles and a breathless write-up in New Scientist as she was ever going to. 

Sod it.

“Sure, if you’re hungry. I wouldn’t say no to something small either. OK, I’ll see you there in a bit.”

**********

The pub smelt stale, in that dead period between the late lunch and the early knocking-off pints. They had taken a booth, where Toni insisted on sitting facing the door. 

“Max, you know I don’t like having my back against people. Who knows who might sneak in?” 

They had finished their meal, and when Max finally looked up at her, she noticed the haggard look in his eyes. 

“Are you OK?” 

He shook his head and took a sip of his beer, Newcastle on tap, just as he always liked. 

“I’m sorry, I really don’t like this. I lied to Sabine this morning and now I haven’t heard from her all day.” 

“So?” Toni frowned. “What do you mean? You don’t talk every day during work hours, do you?” 

“Maybe not, but now I’m here with you instead of going to the lab and meeting her. And I still don’t know what I’m going to tell her tonight.” 

Toni hated to hurt people she liked, and she really liked Max. They’d been friends for a long time, ever since college. She’d been the one to call it off, but despite that – maybe even because of it – she still cared about him and wanted him to be happy. The question was, was Sabine the woman to give him that happiness? So far, the time they had been together it seemed all he did was walk over to the lab and hang out waiting for Sabine to be done with work. 

At least, she mused, he had someone to wait for. Who did she have? Who waited for her?

She hadn’t had a boyfriend for a long time – probably why her work, and especially this job, were so important to her. They were her ticket out of the small paper, the small town, with its small town fashion and self-centred community gossip.

She leaned across the table and patted Max’s hand. 

“Can’t you just say there has been a busy day at work? I mean, if it turns out that someone at the Institute has been involved with this death, wouldn’t you like to know? Sabine is still working there, right? You’re just helping me to make sure she’s safe if something strange is happening.” 

Max downed the last of his beer and rose from the table. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’m sorry that I’ve been coming down on you so hard. It’s just been so really weird. You know what I mean? I’m going home to Sabine. I’m sure everything will be OK. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, all right? Try to be nice to the guy, he seemed a bit upset this morning.” 

Toni nodded, saw the door open behind Max’s back, and the strange man she’d been waiting for was on his way in.

And behind him was Sabine. 

Toni’s smile froze. 

“Yes Max, do that. Um…”

Max frowned, and turned to follow her gaze.

Toni got up, her hand briefly resting at Max’s back.

“Over here! Hello!” 

He doesn’t look too shabby, was the thought that ran through her mind. She smiled again and waved; both of them, but particularly Sabine, looked a little flustered, as if they had been walking fast. 

Michel spoke first. “Hello, I hope you were not waiting too long.”

“Not at all. I was early, that’s all.” 

Toni offered her hand when Michel walked up to the table. He extended his and they briefly shook hands. Nice and soft, she thought. 

“I hope you don’t mind a booth? I thought that might be more private than the bar?” 

Michel opened his mouth to speak, and then noticed Max, apparently for the first time. Max was still standing very still, his eyes looking from Sabine to Toni, then back again. 

“No, that would be fine,” Michel said. “I see you already have a drink.” He looked back to Max, seemed to come to a decision, and headed to the bar.

“Hi Sabine.” Toni felt she had to break the silence. But Sabine just looked at her, and turned to Max instead.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said.

“Neither did I.” 

Sabine glanced over at Toni before she answered. “Well, it seems like you had lots to do at work today.”

An awkward pause, then,

“There was an early meeting,” said Max. 

“So you said.” Sabine turned from the table and looked him in the eye. “And you left at three as normal?” 

“Yes!” Max seemed flustered. “No – there was a, another meeting. I – “ 

“A meeting with her?” Sabine nodded towards Toni. 

“I was having a drink with a friend,” Max said, slowly and deliberately. Colour rose in his cheeks. “Like you, it might appear.” 

“Michel is meeting a reporter. He asked me to help him.” She gestured with both hands. “You know, don’t you, how he does not like being with people?” 

“But he’s okay with you?” Max glared at the bar, where Michel was carefully arranging coins on the counter. 

“What are you saying, Max?” 

“I’m saying that you’ve never respected me. I’m saying that you keep me for, for entertainment value. Your colleagues,” he spat the word, “laugh when I walk by. They look at me like I’m a lost puppy. And they all know that we fucked in the darkroom.” 

“Max!” Sabine’s cheeks were flushed. “People will hear you!” 

“Let them!” Max nearly shouted. “I don’t care anymore. Let them listen. Let them talk. Let them know what we did in the lab, and how you laughed, and will laugh when I’m gone. I know what they, what you say about me. They call me an idiot accountant just because I don’t have a PhD. Because I don’t spend my life doing something worthwhile.” 

“Max, please – ” began Sabine, eyes glistening. 

“I don’t care any more, Sabine. If your friends can’t respect me, they can just fuck off. I’m going home.” 

The murmur of conversation around the pub dipped as Max stiff-armed the door and strode out, then recovered to a higher level. 

Michel appeared at Sabine’s shoulder, a pint of dark ale in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, red tinging to purple in the dim light. He sounded almost happy. 

“They have Châteauneuf. I thought, after last time, but no, the barman found a case in town and saved some for you.” 

He looked from Sabine to Toni, and back again. Something made him pause, as if he were struggling with something. 

“What is the matter? Is Max not staying?”

• Chapter 10
• previous
• next
• index

I said, “What do I know  Show me the right way to go”
 – Coldplay

Michel breathed in the freshness of the gardens, or the “Park” as it was known to the Institute’s denizens. Part of the bequest that endowed the Wolfhaven (and persuaded a desperate government to part with more cash than a recalcitrant Minister for Innovation, Universities and Skills really wanted to allow), with its ecologically sound and expensively ugly architecture, was ring-fenced in perpetuity for maintenance of the grounds. The gardener took his mandate seriously, and as the daffodils finally surrendered to the advancing tulips, tight green bluebell buds were already preparing for Spring’s rearguard action. 

Some of the staff joked that the money spent on the gardens was to expiate the hideousness of the buildings. Others were serious about it. 

“Tom, sometimes I miss home,” Michel said. 

“The Netherlands, you mean? I thought you were unhappy there.” 

“It was my home. My mother lives there. I thought I might try to get a position at the TUE. Eindhoven’s close enough to Maastricht, and they have a good bioengineering group. I think I might be able to do something, there.” 

“You’ve done something here, Mike!” Slater shook his head. “I can’t let you leave now, there’s still too much to do. We can find a way through this.” 

The two walked in silence for a minute, and came to a stop by a small stream that chuckled down an artificial waterfall. 

“Why did you leave the US, Mike?” 

Michel ignored the question. “It was a little over two years ago,” he began, scratching at a nonexistent blemish on his Levi’s, “about seven, one evening. Dark, and I was outside, having a smoke. I saw a white car, and thought it was security, so I stood in the loading bay, in the shadow.” 

“You hid? From security?” 

“I don’t smoke tobacco, Tom,” Michel said, gently. 

“Yes, I see. The plod do get a bit fascist about that sort of thing. Go on.” 

“The car stopped under the camera pole, in the lights from Micro, and I realized that it was a Ford. Our security people drive Vauxhalls. I was about to go back inside, but I remembered that it was the wrong colour for that model. Sheffield licence plates.” 

Slater did not question this. Michel knew these things: it was part and parcel of his strangely wired brain. 

“So I decided to wait, and see who it was.” 

“And who was it?” Tom asked, slightly too quickly. 

Michel shrugged. “You. You came out from the Micro entrance, as usual, looked around and walked over to the car. You looked around again, looked straight at me, but I don’t think you were seeing me. The rear passenger door opened, and you put your briefcase in first, then got in. Ten minutes later you got out, and ran towards Long Road. The car followed a minute later.” 

“Only ten minutes? It seemed longer.” 

“I timed it.” 

“I’m not surprised. Then what?” 

“I went over to the camera pole,” Michel said. “It’s the only place in the loading area where the security cameras do not point.” 

In unspoken agreement, they started walking back towards the Institute. 

“The next day, you got me to start work on the infectivity of the Chikungunya virus. But, you did not want to help. Well, I mean you seemed to want to help: you put on a lab coat but I had to teach you everything. Everything. It frustrated me and I had to work late to catch up. Reagents did not arrive on time. We could not get samples from London. And you were slow signing orders, and then our order system went down.” 

“Did it? How unusual.” 

Again, Michel missed the joke. “It is usually efficient, yes. But I helped Paul sort out the mess, and I discovered a backlog of orders from our lab, that you had signed off but put on the incorrect grant code. They were stuck in the system, waiting for you to correct them.” 

“That was bad of me, wasn’t it?” Slater said. 

“And then, I was suspicious. I cracked your password – ” 

“You WHAT?” Slater stopped, mid-stride, his face reddening. “That’s a disciplinary offence!” 

“Yes, that was bad of me, wasn’t it?” Michel actually smiled, and Slater stared, openmouthed. “But you really should not be so surprised. Anyway.” Michel kept walking, and Slater had to trot to keep up. “Love letters, naturally. Nothing that I couldn’t guess already. But you also had a Gantt chart, with all the projects on it. And a note about snake venoms and virus genomes.” 

“I see,” Slater said, dully. “That looks bad.” 

“Not as bad as that admission,” Michel replied, startling even himself with the insight. “So I have to know. Are you a terrorist?” 

“Oh God, Mike. It’s all so – damn. Terrorist? No! Well, state-sponsored maybe, but no, nothing like that.” 

Michel nodded, and stopped. They had reached the gravel path that swept up to the main entrance. Michel considered that the word “portal” had never before seemed so appropriate. 

“In your outbox, there was a message to Charlotte.” He closed his eyes, reciting from memory, 

“ ‘It’s best if we don’t see each other. Mary’s getting suspicious, and the whole lab knows. I can’t keep the other project secret as well. It’s not you, but it’s just not safe; for either of us’.” 

Michel looked directly at Slater. “But not terrorism?” 

“Oh God. It sounds so like a B-grade crime drama. It’s the government, Mike. Legally it’s all above board. Morally, however… morally it’s blackmail. They knew about Charlotte, and I couldn’t afford that.” 

“Do you trust me, Tom?” 

“You? Trust you? Eh, of course I do. You know I do. Like a son.” 

“Do you still love Charlotte? I mean, if she were alive?” 

“You’re an incurable romantic, Mike.” 

“Maybe.”

Michel bent down, brushed a microscopic grain of dirt off the path back onto the immaculately manicured flowerbed. He straightened up and said, 

“I left the States because Karen broke my heart. I could not bear for the same to happen to you. I know you didn’t destroy the virus sample. Not all of it, anyway, because Charlotte had some. I found it when I cleared out her shelf after she left.” 

Tom Slater sagged, defeated. 

“No, you’re right. I never did destroy the sample.”

Michel walked up to the building, flashing his card at the Wiegand, and the doors hissed sideways. 

“Leave it with me. You do trust me, don’t you Tom?”

“What? Of course. But what are you going to do?”

“I don’t want to hurt you, so better you don’t know.”

“Mike.” Slater put his hand out to stop the door sliding close. “Michel. You are like a son to me.”

“Yes, you said.”

“No, wait. There’s more than that. Thirty-something years ago, the summer I started my PhD, I was in Amsterdam. It was a conference. Avian oncogenes, all that jazz. I was young and hot property. Or at least thought I was. There was this woman, a local. She was serving canapés at one of those horrible Seventies receptions, all pineapple on sticks and prawn mayonnaise as if it was the best thing ever.”

“It must have been an English catering firm,” Michel said.

Slater laughed. “Quite possibly.” But then, lowering his voice, “She was sharp, sparkling. Pretty, too. We got talking. We went for a walk. We ended up at my hotel.”

Michel nodded. “I see. And you were – ”

“Yes, I was engaged to Mary. It was just a fling. But, but the thing is,” he leaned back, looking up at the sky. “The thing is, she had your eyes. Or maybe you had hers. I never forgot her. Never. And then, and then – ” his voice tailed off.

“And then?”

Slater let the door close again.

“And then, years later you appear. With those eyes and that spark and – well, what was I to think?”

“Which is why…”

“Which is why I want you to be careful. Don’t do anything foolish, Michel.”

The Dutchman nodded. “Foolish is a matter of opinion, Tom.”

**********

Brad wiped the remains of the vomit from his mouth and emptied the bathroom cabinet in a fruitless search for aspirin. Leaving his house in a hurry, he popped into a café on his way to the Institute. 

Second mistake of the day, the first being awake in the first place, he thought. The greasy smell of the frying food caused his stomach to immediately revolt again and sent him rushing for the nearest toilet, unsure of which sphincter would fail him first. What was wrong with these fucking Brits? With the fucking greasy eggs and half-cooked bacon in the morning. Where were the pancakes? Waffles? Damn, sausage and grits… real breakfast food.

Finally reaching the Institute he slunk up to his lab. Hearing voices near the elevator he took a back staircase to the fourth floor. 

Mistake number three, his heaving lungs told him. He’d recently started smoking again after quitting for a couple of years. What with Katrina upheaving his life and sending him hurtling across the Atlantic, running into Slater after all these years, then his work going too slowly… who’d complain if he smoked a cig occasionally? Fags, the Brits called them, he thought, smiling. Fucking Brits. 

In his lab he booted his computer and pulled up the results he’d obtained from repeating the HPLC. The data were staring him in the face, but the meaning wasn’t. What the hell was going on? 

Her interferon titre was through the roof. That wasn’t unexpected; she’d had a raging viral infection. But the IFN3 peak was unusual, it should never be that high… unless someone had engineered a toxin into the virus. But then, why couldn’t he detect it? What was she, some kind of immuno-mutant? A quick BLAST search had confirmed his fears that the viral genome hadn’t been sequenced yet, so he had no easy genetics to go on. Reluctantly, he reached for his phone, and nearly dropped it with a yelp when it suddenly rang. 

“Hello?” he offered. 

“Listen, Dr Pettier, I’ve been trying to reach you for the better part of two days. Are you stupid or just forgetful? Did you not get my bloody message?” 

Mistake number four. Always check the caller ID. The Lady Cop’s voice echoed around his addled head. Barely knowing what he was saying, his half formed excuses collapsed under her direct attack. I’d never make a fucking career criminal, part of his mind observed as his mouth began speaking apparently under its own control. 

“Yes. Sorry. My, um, well my phone battery…” he started. 

“Shut up. Don’t fucking lie to me. The ringer was working. Where are you?” 

“In… in my lab… at the Wolf– ” 

She’d hung up at the word ‘lab’. His heart was racing now. What to do? Oh fuck. What to do. This was bad. Like worse than in the movies bad. 

His lab door slammed open, startling him into yelping, a wet fart escaping as opportunity presented itself. How the fuck had she gotten here so quickly? 

“Uh, hi…” Blushing furiously and with part of his mind wondering how he could possibly be more embarrassed right now, he tried to gather his confidence. Lara never gave him the chance. 

“You are in a world of shit, young man. A world of shit. Does obstruction of justice mean anything to you? What are you hiding?” 

A sudden calm washed over Brad. So, this was it. The end of his career. Well, it had happened a little faster than he’d expected, but Hell! Face this like a man! 

His heart slowed, his breathing eased. He swept his hands through his curling hair, pushing it back off his face. If it was to end this way, he wanted to see it coming. With a wave of startling clarity, like ice water in his face, he finally accepted the truth of his data. Perhaps for the first time in his career he was acting like a scientist. 

“Charlotte was murdered.”

Lara stared at him for a moment in shock, then growled. He continued over her vicious swearing, 

“I can’t give you specific details given the data right now,” He paused trying to frame it so a lay person would understand. “Her reaction was too severe. The autopsy showed she was taking aspirin for her fever. That can exacerbate the symptoms of Reye’s syndrome, but – ” 

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“OK, look, Reye’s syndrome is a very rare and often fatal complication found in people who are suffering from viral infection.”

Brad held up his hand, ticking off points on his fingers.

“But it doesn’t add up in this case. The odds of Charlotte even contracting this virus are infinitesimally small. Recent data show that global climate change is speeding up the northern migration of viruses from Africa into Europe, but still I just don’t buy it. And then for her to suffer from Reye’s as well? Sorry, officer, it just doesn’t seem likely. You want my professional opinion?”

He ignored her raised eyebrows at his rhetorical question. 

“There’s something going on here way beyond a journalist getting just sick and dying. I don’t have the data to draw a complete conclusion yet, but none of this adds up. Somehow this girl was murdered. I can’t figure out how it was done, but I’m scared. Something real bad is going on here,” he continued, talking over her half-formed protests. “And you just don’t understand enough yet to be scared too.”

• Chapter 9
• previous
• next
• index

 Something that in my memory has been replaced,
Suddenly it all comes back
 – Tim Wheeler

Michel scanned the canteen. There were too many people, here; too much noise, but sometimes, if he concentrated, he could shut it out and actually think. 

There, for example, was Slater, not so much holding as clinging to his coffee. He was headed this way, but not looking where he was going. Why was he so pale? 

Slater almost knocked his senior postdoc over, shrank back as if in fear. 

“Tom.”

“Mike! Sorry – you startled me! What are you doing here?” 

Michel blinked. 

“It is time for coffee. You are here, and I wanted to speak with you.” 

“Yes, ha ha! I know that, I didn’t expect to see you here. Have you got some coffee, oh, of course – you don’t like the stuff they serve here do you, can’t blame you myself, foul stuff, I only drink it for the company. Did you have a good time last night? Of course not you didn’t come, sorry I’m feeling a little under the weather this morning, It must be the sudden sunshine, not like May at all, ha ha!” 

“Tom.” 

Something in the tone of Michel’s voice got through Slater’s whirling mind. 

“Yes?” Slater snapped, “What is it man? Out with it!”

“Why would a reporter think Charlotte was infected with a virus that you told her to destroy?”

**********

Toni watched Michel walk towards the stairs, and when he was out of sight turned towards the lab he had left. 

“What are you doing?” Max whispered. 

Toni looked at him and shrugged. “We might as well take a quick look. Especially as I need to leave my card so he can call me.” 

She smiled at Max, struck again by how someone like him could have bagged Sabine. She seemed like such a demanding French woman. Love wasn’t always logical or possible to explain, she figured. She of all people should know that.

Toni started towards the lab, not waiting for Max to catch up – though she smiled to herself when she heard his footsteps behind her. 

“Why would you make that stab in the dark, Toni?” he called after her. “What’s wrong with you? He seemed really upset – it was a pretty shitty thing to do.” 

Toni looked back at him, feeling his irritation. 

“Look Max, do you think it is fair that a scientist should die in the lab? Just by looking at this virus thing. I mean, what if it was Sabine? Wouldn’t you want someone investigating that?” She paused. “And anyway, I really need a story for the CEN. The editor is just waiting for me to bring him something good. And this is good.” 

Toni continued into the lab, leaving Max staring after her. Empty, as she’d hoped for.

Max’s voice whined like a mosquito trapped behind a curtain. “Of course I would want an investigation if Sabine…” He shook his head. “How could you even question that? You’ve really crossed the line, Toni. With me, and with him. He knew her, you know.” 

“That’s why I want to talk to him, OK?” She was distracted, looking around in the room, searching for Michel’s desk. After a minute she walked up to it and gave it a thorough inspection. Disgustingly tidy, no writing or notebooks in evidence. She tried the drawers and filing cabinet: all locked. Who locked their drawers in the middle of the working day?

Paranoid – or did he have something to hide? 

“Nothing,” she said softly. Another shrug, took a card out from her wallet and looked in vain for a pen from the desk. “Max, be a dear, would you?”

Max sighed and pulled out a chewed Bic pen from his pocket. Toni flashed him the grin, and took it from his outstretched hand.

I’d love to have a drink with you. I’ll be at the Volunteer at 6 p.m. tonight! Toni x

Toni put the card on the desk, straightened up. “OK, I think we’re about done here. Nothing more to see, unless you want to hang around for Sabine?” 

Max shook his head. His steps towards the door were of a man walking towards relief.

**********

It was as if a bomb had gone off, only a perfectly noiseless one. Or he had gone deaf from the impact of Michel’s question and everything was moving in silent slow motion away in the explosion. In the invisible flash, Slater saw Charlotte’s face, framed by that ridiculously luminous pre-Raphaelite hair – furious, thwarted, with a twist of smile that meant he could order her about all he wanted, but she’d just do whatever she wanted behind his back and he’d be powerless to prevent it. Her hair, too, was fanning out from the blast, coils and spirals of heavy red, a livid Medusa in a white coat. 

He blinked: the ghost vanished, and the noise of the canteen resumed. 

“Tom?” Michel repeated. “Did you hear what I said?” 

“Yes, a reporter,” he said, evenly, holding it all together by sheer force of will. “How tediously predictable. Has the Institute been invaded by the tabloids already?” He made himself smile, as if the entire thing were very amusing indeed. “And I suppose the viruses came from Mars as well?” 

Michel seemed confused: Michel, so painfully easy to fool with bluffs and emotional gambits. It was this aspect that made Slater feel, most days, that his hunch had to be wrong. Michel, in this respect, was as unlike from Slater as a man could be. 

“Just a student reporter,” Michel was saying, subdued. “But she’s been snooping around the lab, saying things about chikungunya virus and Charlotte’s death.” 

“Ridiculous things, obviously,” Slater said. 

“But we did receive that shipment of – “ 

“Irrelevant. We never used the vial.” 

“But maybe Charlotte –” 

“She didn’t! I watched her, with my own eyes, in the BL3 hood, pipette bleach into the vial and put it in the red bin for incineration.” Slater paused, and seemed satisfied that his lie carried weight with the younger man. For now. 

“Even if a microscopic droplet had somehow flown out, escaped destruction and the hood, she died two years later. And the Bangalore strain is completely innocuous.” 

Michel paused, as if making up his mind about something. Then, 

“I’m just not so sure I can trust you. Knowing what else I know, I mean.” 

Slater felt a flutter in his stomach, but managed to keep his mask airtight. His tone took on a dangerous edge. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.” 

“The blonde woman with the glasses, at the funeral,” Michel said, his words gathering speed as they came out. “I know everything. I know what you’ve been up to with the lab. I know why they’re after you. And I can help, if you’ll let me.” 

Everything. Was it possible? Was he bluffing? Would, Slater wondered, someone of Michel’s character even know how to bluff? He somehow doubted it. 

And just like that, a decision. 

“Not here,” Slater said, taking Michel’s arm. “Let’s take a walk in the park.”