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.”
