Requiem (61 page)

‘So when do we run out?’

‘I’m not sure. Some time around March maybe.’ She couldn’t admit even to herself that it might be as soon as Christmas.

They came to a stop at the end of a slow moving queue. She saw Peasedale’s knuckles whiten at the thought of missing his train. ‘Still plenty of time,’ she said reassuringly.

‘You can contact your – er, man?’ he asked cautiously. He knew as well as anyone Daisy rarely answered questions about the source of money.

‘Not directly.’

The line of cars was moving again. Ahead, the lights turned red.

‘What, no means of contact
at all
?’

She gave a wry laugh. ‘Oh, I leave messages regularly. With his accountant, with his – well, with all sorts of people – but I can’t put it all in a message. I mean, it wouldn’t sound too good to say thanks for all the money, but I need some more already. Not just like that.’

Ahead, the lights turned green. ‘So what happens next?’ Peasedale asked.

She considered for a moment. For the first few weeks she’d felt sure Nick would make some contact – a phone call, a message, something. But the silence had been as long as it had been absolute. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said baldly.

They reached the lights at last and got through on the amber. The station came into sight. Peasedale had five minutes to spare. He looked drained. He clasped his overnight bag to his chest, ready for the off.

‘So what happens when the money’s gone?’ he asked.

Daisy turned into the forecourt and drew up in a taxi bay. ‘Then we’re out of business and it’ll all have been for nothing.’ She gave a brittle laugh.

Peasedale got out and popped his head back through the open door like an anxious bird. ‘You think it could come to that?’

She raised her shoulders. ‘Who knows? Don’t miss your train.’ He craned his head up in alarm and, slamming the door, flew into the entrance, the wings of his raincoat flapping out behind him.

She drove back slowly, thoughtfully, reviewing the decision to set up Octek as an independent operation. It had been a choice between that and waiting for laboratory space in a university, which could have taken as much as six months, and which required the co-operation of academics with both the time and the fearlessness to put their other research funds in jeopardy. The time couldn’t be spared, not enough people could be found. So here they were, cobbling the thing together, throwing in people, equipment and commitment, and hoping it would be enough.

And if the money ran out? She couldn’t bring herself to think about that now.

In A-Lab, the larger of the two laboratories, Floyd was sitting on a high stool talking to one of the technicians. ‘Come on, sunshine,’ she said. ‘Cheer me up.’

Floyd got to his feet with a grin. ‘I’m going to show you some pretty pictures.’

He led the way into the ante-room of B-Lab – commonly dubbed the robing room – where they put on green overalls and washed their hands before passing into the lab proper. Floyd navigated between the benches, exchanged greetings with the two young technicians, and stopped in front of a counter covered with rows of circular glass plates. Picking one up, he passed it to her. ‘Salmonella. One of the control plates.’ His voice hummed with anticipation.

The agar culture had been scored with bacteria, some of which had mutated and divided to form small colonies, visible as sporadic white dots on the clear jelly.

‘And here is the result with ten micrograms of chemical per litre.’ Like a magician, Floyd whipped away the plate and gave her another. On this plate the white dots, though still well spread, were clearly more numerous.

‘And …’ He produced a third plate. ‘… fifty micro-grams.’ Here the colonies had proliferated to such an extent that the dots formed a distinct white ribbon across the surface of the plate.

‘What does it mean?’

‘It means we have a dose-response effect – that is, the greater the dose of chemical, the greater the mutative response. Of course, it would be nice to know which individual chemical or compound is doing the damage …’

‘But this is promising?’

‘Oh yes. Looking good. Or perhaps I should say bad.’

‘But not bad enough for the ACP,’ she murmured. Neither the advisory committee, nor any of the government control agencies, accepted cell-line tests as evidence of a product’s cancer-producing properties.

Daisy sat back. ‘It’s a start though, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, it’s that all right.’

She felt heartened, though that didn’t stop her feeling renewed anxiety at the delay over the Home Office permit. Without that, they were all set up with nowhere to go.

Coming out of the robing room, she went diagonally across the passage to what was known as Room 4. Here she was met by Vera, the animal welfare assistant. Room 4 smelled of hay or some other sweet-smelling substance. It was brightly lit and warm. The cages were well-spaced, and within each cage the mice and rats had plenty of room and clean bedding. Vera was already well into her morning chores, changing bedding and water, measuring out and recording feed. Later she would observe and log the appearance of each rodent.

It was all done by the book, the animals couldn’t have been better looked after if they were pets. Daisy wished that none of this was necessary, but so long as the international safety requirements remained unchanged, there was no escaping the fact that it was. As Peasedale put it: rodents or people; safe chemicals or no chemicals at all. Until there were several billion fewer people in the world then managing without chemicals was never going to be a serious option. Cheap food and safe drugs, or a ramshackle vegetarian utopia: she’d left such stark choices behind, somewhere in her student days. Now she recognized that there had to be an in-between, a place that wasn’t impossibly bad, and wasn’t impossibly good either, where, though a tiny number of rats had to die to satisfy society’s chemical requirements, it was always going to be far, far fewer than the number of cattle and pigs that died each day to make hamburgers. And under Vera’s care these rodents, at least, would be given the best in analgesics and anaesthetics, and generally receive far better treatment than veal calves or intensively farmed poultry, which people with a so-called conscience ate every day.

No, there was no real answer, and there never would be.

Anyway, the whole thing was academic without the permit, because without it, they were not permitted to start testing anything on the animals.

When she got to the front office, the phone was ringing. It was Jenny. Jenny always phoned before nine thirty because Alan was rarely in by that time and she could make the call in peace. It wasn’t that Alan minded the odd call now that Daisy had officially resigned, it was the extent of the message and information service Jenny was providing that he objected to.

Jenny relayed the messages, which didn’t amount to much, followed by a progress report on the anti-Silveron campaign. The Aurora story had got coverage on both sides of the Atlantic, but, as with all such stories, the interest had rapidly fizzled out. In the US, EarthForce were continuing to lobby hard for an EPA review. In the UK, a few reliable MPs had promised to keep up what pressure they could during the long parliamentary recess but, apart from a single bland ministry statement, the government were living up to their reputation on environmental matters by taking the least possible action over the longest possible time.

‘What about the rumour of a licence review?’

‘Haven’t heard anything more,’ said Jenny. ‘D’you want me to ask around?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who shall I ask?’

‘Try Simon.’

‘Simon?’ Jenny sounded surprised at being given the job, but managed a tactful: ‘Oh – right.’

The rest of the news was domestic. Alan was in a dither over the bill from the security firm who’d screened the office for bugs.

‘But he okayed the estimate,’ Daisy said.

‘Well, he’s saying it’s extortionate, considering.’

Considering they had found nothing, she guessed. Alan believed in value for money. ‘I was sure they’d find something,’ Daisy murmured.

‘Not a bleep,’ said Jenny.

‘So are Alan and I not speaking again?’

‘Oh, you are, of course you are. But you know how he is.’

Daisy knew how he was, nobly agreeing the cost of her return flight from New York, bravely shouldering all the work while she was gone, and with no more than a muttered reminder every day for two weeks. Despite that, or maybe because of it, she missed having him and Jenny around. It was like leaving school; you couldn’t wait to taste freedom, but, once gone, you became nostalgic. Since coming here, she’d got to know all about the loneliness of command.

She’d gone back to Catch a couple of times, but had found the sight of her old desk, cleared of her familiar clobber, disturbing. She couldn’t help noticing, moreover, that the clobber of the new girl was a lot more orderly. A pin-board had appeared on the wall where her save-the-whale poster had been, an event chart with a neat array of coloured pins had been fixed over the desk, and the shelf of reference books had a whole new logic to it. Alan had found a soul-mate at last.

‘Oh, and the security people,’ Jenny giggled before ringing off. ‘They even checked the loo.’

‘I should hope so too.’

She tried Nick Mackenzie’s accountant at exactly ten to eleven. On one memorable morning some weeks before, at exactly that time, she had managed to catch him at his desk and not in a meeting or being unavailable. Today, however, he was in a meeting, and she was forced to leave the standard message with his secretary, saying where she could be contacted for the rest of the day.

At noon she drove to the other side of Chelmsford to see a company about some equipment Floyd wanted. Whenever possible, she went to see people on their own patch because then there were fewer questions to answer about Octek. She had become rather expert at evasions and half-truths. At first she had quite enjoyed the subterfuge; now it was a strain. One became increasingly aware of how easy it was to get caught out.

She got back to Octek at one thirty to find a message from Jenny. It was marked very urgent.

‘Thank God,’ Jenny breathed down the line when she got through. ‘It’s your flat, I’m afraid.’

Daisy’s first thought was that it had been burgled.

‘A big leak from the floor above. The water tank burst in the Greek boys’ flat and’ – Jenny paused to break it gently – ‘they think it poured through your ceiling.’

Daisy swore loudly. She could already see this absorbing great chunks of time that she simply didn’t have.

‘The Greek boys got a plumber in to fix their water tank, so the leak’s stopped, but no one’s managed to get into your place yet so … What can I do? Do you want me to go and see what’s happening?’

Daisy thought through the alternatives. ‘No – I’d better go.’

‘Shall I meet you there? Would that help?’

‘Thanks, but I’ll see what it’s like first.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Oh,’ she said hurriedly, ‘that Scotsman phoned.’

‘Campbell?’

‘He wouldn’t say what it was about, but he said it was urgent.’

‘I’ll try and call him now.’

‘And there’s a letter from Mrs Knowles – Alice. I’ll forward it to you.’

‘What does it say?’

‘Well …’ There was a hesitant note in Jenny’s voice.

Daisy prepared herself. ‘Go on,’ she said.

‘Well – it’s about that cancer doctor, the one who promised to be a witness.’

She could guess what was coming. ‘He’s backed out?’

‘Yes.’

It wasn’t worth feeling angry. You could never blame these people. When it came to dealing with its own nonconformists, there was no body so ruthless as the medical profession. The man had probably got ridiculed or warned off or threatened with the loss of his job, or all three.

‘Any more good news? Tell me while I’m still sitting down.’

‘That’s it.’

She hoped Campbell’s news wasn’t going to make it three in a row. She tried to call him but he wasn’t in, which at that time of day was no great surprise. More surprising was that Mrs Bell wasn’t in and, though the phone was often left next to Adrian when he was alone in the cottage, there was no reply from him either.

She meant to start for London within half an hour but it was three o’clock before she’d made the last phone call and finished priming Mabel, the office typist-cum-fixer, to hold the fort. On her way to the London road she called in at Elm Avenue to pick up some washing things and write another note for Mrs Biddows, saying that she might not be back that night.

As she headed down the A12 she tried to work out when she’d last managed to get to the flat. It had been almost three weeks ago, she realized, for a short weekend. Another two weeks before that, she’d managed less than a day. A neighbour in the flat below forwarded her mail to Catch, and Jenny had popped in now and again to see that the place was all right.

It would be strange to see it again – but not so strange as seeing it with the ceiling spread all over the floor.

She’d forgotten what a pig the journey could be. She got caught behind a pile-up on the M25, then a jam at Edmonton, and didn’t reach Holloway until after five.

Ominously, there was a section of ripped-up vinyl flooring lying beside the front door of the house.

She took a deep breath before opening the flat door.

It was bad, but like all these things it could have been worse. The water had poured through the ceilings of all three rooms, but had brought down the plaster in only one, though, with a certain inevitability, it was the main room, containing her few valued possessions. It was as if a small bomb had been detonated close to the ceiling, leaving a long gaping hole. Lining paper hung down from the bulging plasterboard in tattered rags, with shards of plaster still attached.

She spent half an hour removing the larger chunks of plaster from the floor, hanging rugs up to dry, mopping up the remaining patches of damp, turning the mattress on its side. But, like the aftermath of a flood, it was not a situation that could be restored in a couple of hours.