Fatal Impact (22 page)

37

W
hile Jocelyn slept, Anya went home to grab her mother a change of clothes and toiletries. She wondered why Jocelyn would develop Addison’s disease. The comment the medical registrar made about the prevalence of immunological conditions took her by surprise. Jocelyn had no family history of Addison’s disease, and it was supposedly rare.

Anya replayed conversations and scenes from the past couple of days in her mind. She thought some of the answers might be in the Conspiracy notes under Jocelyn’s bed. Len had been worried about being destroyed and now he was dead.

She also wanted to meet with Jeanette Egan. Something the vet had said during the fire got her thinking. Anya rang the number she’d placed by the bed. Without hesitation, Jeanette agreed to be over within the hour.

Kicking off her shoes, Anya immediately noticed something out of place across the hallway. The door to Miriam’s room was ajar. She had deliberately closed it before the ambulance left for the hospital.

She pulled it shut and pushed on it again. The mechanism wouldn’t release. The only way it would open was manually. Timidly, she searched inside. Nothing appeared out of place, considering Jocelyn had slept in there during her sleepwalking episode. Stepping into the living room, goose bumps spread across her shoulders and arms. Piles of patient files remained, but a stack now obscured the lower portion of the television. She had moved them to the side to watch the news the other night. Now they had been moved back. This had to have happened while she and her mother were away.

Anya held the phone handset, ready to call the police. But what was she going to say? That someone had rearranged some files? So far nothing appeared to be missing. She ventured into the kitchen area. The benches were clear and glistening, papers and files stacked into neat rows beside the table.

‘Whoo hoo.’

Anya startled at the noise at the back door.

‘Anyone here?’

Audrey Lingard stood in a patterned, loose-fitting shirt. She was the only person Anya knew who could make purple, black, white and orange work together. Matching tangerine necklace and bracelets complemented the ensemble, which included black cigarette pants and sparkly thongs. While Jocelyn had dressed more conservatively over time, her friend had become more colourful.

‘Oh, darling.’ Audrey embraced her goddaughter. ‘I hoped to have come and gone by the time you came back. I came to help when I heard your mum was in hospital.’

Anya looked around. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I have a key so I thought I’d tidy up a little. Don’t worry, I won’t throw anything out, although just between you and me, Josie has to get over this hoarding papers business.’

Under the circumstances, hoarding was the least of Jocelyn’s problems.

Anya needed to know. ‘Have you been in the other rooms?’

‘Darling, I popped in yesterday and did a bit of tidying, cleaning, just making the place a bit more presentable. Wellwishers will be coming once she gets home.’ She unloaded pyrex dishes from an insulated bag into the freezer. ‘You can thank me later.’

Anya wasn’t feeling grateful, more like Audrey had intruded. ‘Can I ask you a question? Did you move any papers in the living room, near the television?’

‘Of course not. Your mum is fanatical about two things: patient notes are confidential. I wouldn’t even look at the names on them. And that room in the front, the private one no one’s supposed to enter. She could stash dead bodies in there for all I know, but half the fun is not knowing.’

‘Has anyone else come inside the house?’

‘Only Glenn. He helped me with the sheets. My sciatica stops me making beds.’

As if summoned, Glenn Lingard wiped his feet and came through the back door.

‘It’s all hung up.’ He stopped when he saw Anya. ‘Mum said you wouldn’t mind us doing a bit around the house while Jocelyn’s laid up.’

‘I took the washing home and did it overnight. I’m just about to make a cuppa,’ Audrey said, ‘then you can feed the chickens.’

‘Please. I can do that,’ Anya said. She didn’t want anyone seeing the hole in the pen, where the documents had been buried. ‘I mean, you’ve already done enough.’

Glenn washed his hands in the sink and sat at the table. ‘Heard you helped save some of the livestock during the fire.’

‘We all helped where we could.’ Anya hadn’t remembered seeing Glenn that night, but there were plenty of people helping out she hadn’t seen either.

‘I drove past your institute. I didn’t know it was actually within the PT grounds. You have to get through electric fences to get to work.’

‘It’s the price you pay for being innovative. Plenty of ignorant people don’t appreciate what we do. They call it Frankenscience. People like Len Dengate and his organic cronies, who wanted to shut us down.’

Anya clicked on the kettle then found the new tea bags while Audrey chastised her son for speaking ill of the dead.

‘I thought you would have been in favour of the principles of organic farming,’ Anya said.

‘Not when people risk dying from eating the food. Look at the E. coli outbreak. It’s a perfect example. What if we could prevent the infections in the first place by harnessing science and making bacteria and viruses work for us?’

‘You advocate genetically modifying food?’ It wasn’t what she’d expected him to believe.

The kettle boiled and Audrey filled cups.

‘The way I see it, people have been selectively breeding crops and livestock for thousands of years. It’s well documented in the Bible: look at Jacob and Rachel.’

She couldn’t remember the Bible promoting injection of one
species into another’s DNA, but she listened. He must have known
more about PT research and programs than she had imagined.

‘People have always bred crops to become resilient, grafting plants whenever possible. Animals are chosen for breeding. Prize bulls, rams, roosters, racehorses, greyhounds. Even these chickens were bred to be good layers. Women use sperm banks to try to breed the next Nobel Prize winner.’

‘Surely there’s a big difference between selective breeding and adding the genes of fish to tomatoes to prolong shelf life.’

‘Not necessarily. Famine affects millions of people,’ he argued. ‘If the technology exists to save whole populations, it’s criminal to deny its use when it’s safe, effective and affordable.’

Audrey placed the mugs on the table, and some homemade scones with jam and cream. Glenn helped himself without interrupting his speech.

‘Rice, infused with Vitamin A, can cure blindness in third-world countries. A third of the world has zinc deficiency. In extreme forms it causes mental retardation, and in mild cases impairs the immune system and reduces resistance to infections like malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea. It causes almost a million deaths a year around the world, and affects billions of people. It’s possible to modify grains to take up more zinc from the soil and environment. If we have the capability, we would be morally culpable not to utilise that. We could potentially solve the world’s food crisis.’

Jeanette Egan pushed through the back door. ‘The same was said of AIDS medication in Africa, except that pharmaceutical companies owned the medication and are anything but charitable organisations.’

Glenn rolled his eyes. ‘Who brought her?’

She took her boots off once inside and was instantly even smaller. ‘Hi, Audrey, Anya. The world doesn’t have a shortage of food, it’s a distribution problem. Instead of distributing excess to those most in need, it gets dumped. To keep up market prices, at the expense of lives.’

Glenn shoved his finger into the table. ‘Populations grow, land doesn’t. We need to become even more efficient in terms of yields and nutritional value.’

The idea had appeal, in theory.

‘Who’s going to fund it?’ Anya had to ask.

Glenn sat forward, forearms on his thighs. ‘That’s the great thing. Governments, at least this state’s, and China and the US are already working on solutions with growers.’

Jeanette challenged him. ‘You failed to mention Europe and the UK legislating against GM products.’

‘They knee-jerked with blanket bans. It’s a very political issue and there’s a lot of ignorance and scaremongering going on. The countries in most need, third-world countries, are crying out for help. If we develop the seeds, they can grow crops that are drought resistant, mould resistant, that increase yield and thrive where nothing else grew before. In Nicaragua, two per cent of the adult population suffers from pesticide poisoning. Thousands die every year, and millions suffer severe side effects. By producing pesticide-resistant plants, farmers can spray a lot less and kill the weeds, not the crop itself.’ He shoved the scone into his mouth as if in triumph.

‘You twist facts to suit yourself.’ The vet stood, arms folded. ‘Who funds all this great research? I know, the companies who profit from it? Where’s the peer review of the science? Oops, it’s buried by government-approved self-regulation of your industry. And who’s on all the committees? Reps from PT, your research unit, which is another name for PT, who recommend self-regulation of the science. You aren’t a scientist, you’re a puppet for big corporations.’

Glenn stood and pointed his finger near Jeanette’s face. Despite a considerable size difference, she was not going to be intimidated. ‘You are a hypocrite who wouldn’t even be asked to treat a pet hamster if it wasn’t for PT giving you work when no one else would. You don’t seem to have any problems taking pay cheques from PT.’

‘At least I’m honest about it. I treat their animals. It is what it is. I’m not trying to profit from the most vulnerable people on the planet. Len Dengate was a great man, and he knew exactly what you were doing.’

Glenn turned and slapped the door jam before storming out the back door and slamming it behind him.

‘So,’ Jeanette said. ‘Any more water in that kettle?’

Audrey tugged on her plastic beads. ‘You shouldn’t bait him like that. You know he has a temper.’

‘If he didn’t act like a silverback every time he made a point, maybe I wouldn’t.’

Anya followed him to make sure he wasn’t near the chicken pen. He was loading his boot with gardening tools. ‘She doesn’t have a clue what we do.’

Anya seized the opportunity to find out more about the company Len feared so much. ‘I’d love to find out more.’

He stopped and looked at her. ‘If you’re really interested in the science, I’d be happy to show you around the lab sometime.’

‘Sounds great.’

Glenn opted to tackle the overgrown grass in the garden while Anya trekked to the chicken pen. The crowbar and displaced planks weren’t visible to anyone looking from the back of the house. Chickens squawked when she approached. Inside, things were exactly as she remembered leaving them, apart from the new deposits of chicken poo.

She shooed the poultry aside and knelt down, peering into the hole her mother had made. It was too dark to see. She inserted her hand and reached around. Leaning in further, she scraped her upper arm on one of the splintered boards.

Then she felt it. More plastic. She left it in place and went back inside.

Jeanette was finishing a scone and a coffee. Audrey collected her insulated bag and placed a tea towel on its rack inside the cupboard. ‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ she said. ‘Don’t mind me, I’ll see myself out.’

‘Thanks, Audrey.’ Anya stood and hugged her mother’s friend. ‘Mum’s lucky to have a friend like you.’ She meant it.

‘Now, I’ll be in to see her as soon as you say she’s well enough for visitors.’

When Audrey was out of earshot, Anya turned back to Jeanette. ‘What was that about with Glenn?’

‘He’s a pompous ass. And he was no friend of Len’s.’ She looked up over her mug. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

‘Cows and their stomach acidity.’ Anya grabbed her keys. ‘Do you mind driving while we talk?’

‘It’s what I do.’ Jeanette left her mug in the sink and they headed out in her black Range Rover to the northwestern border of Len Dengate’s property.

‘It’s been bothering me how the E. coli got into Livelonger’s spinach. And going by the volume of spinach they produce each fortnight, there should have been a lot more cases,’ Anya began.

‘That’s if all the spinach was contaminated.’ Jeanette headed out towards the entrance to Livelonger Organics. As they passed Len’s house, they remained silent. A crime scene van was outside, with the area cordoned off.

Jeanette spoke first. ‘Do you think it’s possible someone deliberately contaminated part of his crop?’

‘It seems pretty far-fetched but Len expected something like this to happen. Can you tell me again about the effect a corn diet has on the cattle?’

‘Pretty simple. They’re stomachs are designed for grass feeding. Corn alters the acidity of the stomachs, although it isn’t a permanent state. If they go back to a grass diet, the digestive acid levels revert to normal in about five days.’

‘Does that affect the bacteria in the gut?’ Anya wondered. Animals and humans needed a balance of organisms to digest food.

Jeanette thought. ‘It would. Some of the organisms wouldn’t survive the change in pH. Others might appear that weren’t there previously.’

Anya had researched the strain responsible for the food poisoning. ‘The infective E. coli was a toxin producer that hasn’t been seen around here before in humans.’

‘You think it’s crossed over from an animal population?’

‘I’m just trying to understand what happened and why.’

The Range Rover pulled up along the boundary. Cattle were grazing through what remained of Len’s crops in that field. Anya asked the vet, ‘Can you find out if the bacteria affected the animals?’

Jeanette removed her laptop from the back. ‘I remember a colleague treating a multi-resistant organism in a leg abscess while I was on holiday a few months ago. In the feed lots, the animals have to stand in their own faeces and sometimes get infected wounds. They’re packed pretty tightly, as you saw.’ She looked up her files.

‘It was a Shigella-producing E. coli. A rare strain.’ She showed Anya the test result data on the screen.