The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (28 page)

He wondered how she was.

Just before six that evening, he rang Turner's laboratory to speak to her. He got through to Susan Warthin.

Helena stared out of the window not because the view was today more worthy of scrutiny, but because she had found herself unable to sit at that bloody desk a moment longer. For a brief but glorifying instant she had thrilled to the thought of taking Cedric Godfrey Codman, and his embezzlement of three hundred and thirty-nine pounds, sixty-seven pence, and casting them to the city's winds; but, perhaps fortunately, the moment had passed. Now she clutched her arms around her chest, locked together in rigid control, staring at sky, at something that was outside and therefore endurable.

She could feel herself shaking.

Something was terribly, terribly, wrong.

A knock on the door and then, before she could do anything more than turn, it opened and in came Stuart Carney. Eyebrows raised, he asked, "Have you got a moment, Helena?"

She was about to say that no, she didn't have a moment, when he continued, "Only I've got the info you wanted on Wiskott-Aldrich."

This stayed her refusal. Deep breath, then, "Of course. Come in. Coffee?"

He accepted, as he always did. Only after he had tried on several occasions to initiate trivial conversation designed to ingratiate himself with her, did they begin discussion of Wiskott-Aldrich.

"It was a sod of a job, actually."

Helena liked Stuart. He was slightly too tall, slightly too skinny and slightly too diffident, but all of them in a way she found appealing. This tendency towards a near-imperceptible exaggeration of qualities and physical attributes continued when she considered the width of his grin, the indelicacy of his language and the wisdom of his wardrobe. He had asked her out on numerous occasions, and on some she had accepted, but in her perception Stuart was forever a friend, no matter how much he sometimes made her laugh.

"It took me much longer than I thought it would." He didn't exactly let the sentence trail, but it was a damned close-run thing. With a mouse-sized pause, he added, "In fact I was here until nine o'clock last night … "

This time he definitely did let the sentence trail. His eyes held a pleading look, but Helena couldn't resist letting him suffer just a little. "Last Friday I was here until eleven," she pointed out, deadpan.

"Oh." His eyes shifted their gaze downwards in perfect synchronization with the corners of his mouth. Had she strangled a kitten Helena would have felt no less cruel.

"But I am grateful, Stuart."

The result was immediate and marvellous to behold. She felt good just to see it, felt that she had increased the sum of mankind's joy. He grinned so widely she lost sight of the ends of his mouth. He murmured, "Well it was nothing really."

"So what was so difficult?" she asked, before he could ask her out for a meal.

He had with him a box-file and this he now opened. "To put it simply Wiskott-Aldrich exists in name only."

"A dummy?"

"Pretty much. It's based in South Georgia — that's the godforsaken one in the South Atlantic, not the American or the Russian one."

"Is that a tax haven?"

"Actually, it's not any kind of a haven."

"Then why there?"

He shrugged. "It's a long way off, I suppose. I must admit, though, it's a first."

"Okay. So if it's a dummy, who's hiding behind it?"

"Ah. That's where the trouble started. The trail leads through several companies and corporations, some of which are real, some of which are just shells."

"Is there any pattern as to what these companies do?"

He scanned two sides of A4 that were covered in scrawl. After a while he said, "Not really, but then there never is in cases like this."

"What do you mean?"

The opportunity to impress brought out the most irritating and most enchanting aspects of Stuart, she reflected ruefully. He almost cleared his throat as though he were appearing as an advocate before a particularly impressionable High Court Judge. Leaning forward, his hands clasped and his forearms on the beech of her desk, he explained, "If you're trying to hide money, you don't make it easy by sifting it through obviously connected companies. You add a little diversity to the mix."

She considered this. "So, where does this trail lead?"

"Nowhere exciting, I'm afraid."

"What about Pel-Ebstein Pharmaceuticals?"

Stuart's surprise was translated into a portrait of open mouth, opened eyes, reared head; she saw such innocent surprise at her question, such a naif, that she almost felt pity for him. With Stuart what you saw was not only what you got, it was all that he possessed. "Pel-Ebstein? But how … ?"

"So they are behind it?" she asked excitedly.

Stuart's hesitation acted as something of a depressant. "It's not that simple. It's not that A leads to B which leads to C, and so on. It tends to get very complicated, very quickly. Also, it's quite boring."

"Bore me, then."

He handed over a list that he took from his box. On it Helena counted sixteen names.

"See what I mean?" he asked.

Except that she didn't, for her eyes were fixed on one of the sixteen names.

Cronkhite-Canada.

"Helena?"

She felt light-headed, as if about to faint, but she fought to retain some sort of appearance of command. Sighing, she asked, "Look, Stuart. Just tell me one thing. Is it possible to prove that Pel-Ebstein are behind all this?"

His face suggested that he found the question completely beyond his ability to comprehend. After a few seconds of facial contortion and faint, guttural squeaks he eventually said, "Well, you can prove a tentative connection, but you won't ever prove anything as direct as Pel-Ebstein using Wiskott-Aldrich for nefarious purposes. There are so many interconnections involving other businesses, it's almost a meaningless question."

He left, still hoping for more than he was going to get, still unable to find it within himself to ask. Helena sat and brooded for a long time, silence her only companion. Maybe there could never be legal proof, but there were other forms of certainty. PEP, she now felt certain, was behind what had happened to Mark Hartmann.

*

Jean-Jacques Renvier was enjoying a pastis in a small cafe near the Picasso Museum in Paris. He had not worked for several months and didn't much feel like working now; life was good. Daphne, his newly acquired, and exceedingly affluent girlfriend was late (late again was a more apposite and accurate description, but Jean-Jacques appreciated that money distorts time just as much as mass and energy) but he would forgive her.

He smiled, thinking of his good fortune. Yes, he had to admit, he had been lucky this time. When the fire occurred at the laboratory he had, not unnaturally, been afflicted with a feeling of uncertainty concerning the future. What would happen now? Learning that PEP were going to close down the operation had increased this alarm. He was a lowly laboratory technician — one of the paid staff rather than one of the high-flying intellectuals — and he knew companies like PEP did not consider them much above the laboratory animals he was required to clean out; it was not an aspect of his career that he had dwelt on when recounting his career to Daphne. Yet, surprisingly, they had offered him further employment and, to his surprise, it had been in his native country.

In fact, they had been surprisingly solicitous towards him …

In truth, that had worried him.

At first, he had wondered if Proteus …

But the blood tests had been negative and their concern for his future had, they had explained quite logically, been because his participation in the project meant that he possessed information that was very commercially sensitive.

Which was why he had recently left his job with PEP and was now trying to make informal contact with one of its competitors, Li-Fraumini.

Where was she? She had said that she was coming from her grandmother's, a not insignificant abode in Montmartre; she had to keep the old bag sweet because this was the source of all things pecuniary in Daphne's life. Another pastis would, he decided, be welcome. He turned to attract the waiter's attention and was therefore surprised to see a man sitting at his table when he turned back.

"M. Renvier?"

He said that he was. The other was short and slightly fat. He had friendly eyes and the kind of face that would never look clean-shaven. "I am from Li-Fraumini."

Jean-Jacques was surprised but delighted. "I didn't expect you to contact me so soon!"

A welcoming, reassuring smile. "Believe me, Monsieur, we were very interested to hear from vou. Very interested indeed. Can we talk?"

Jean-Jacques hesitated. "My girlfriend's due. Could we not make an appointment to meet? Perhaps tomorrow?"

Still the expression of happy reassurance, even as the man was shaking his head. He gestured towards a car parked, illegally, just down the road. "Absolutely. My boss is in the car. You will need to make the arrangements with him."

Jean-Jacques continued his vacillation but, when a glance up and down the street saw no sign of Daphne, he said, "Well, if it will only take a few moments."

He walked to the car with the short man just as the waiter brought out the pastis.

He never drank it. One minute later, in the back of the car, he was shot through the right temple and two hours later he was buried in a specially prepared lime pit, just to the north of Orleans.

*

Luke had done well, an impression that was obvious both from his surroundings — his office was quiet and orderly, his colleagues not obviously drawn from Nature's earlier efforts — but also by his attitude. He had always exuded charm and confidence, but now he transmitted a sense of complete assuredness. He might not yet have arrived, but he knew that he was close to the entry.

Beverley found herself wondering at her own position, sensing within herself a hint of inferiority. It was neither a comfortable nor an accustomed thought but it did make her momentarily wonder if she were doing the right thing, if she shouldn't even now go to Lambert and lay everything before him. If he chose to ignore it, that was his mistake.

But Beverley Wharton was not moulded into that particular shape. A single setback in a career that had been otherwise relentlessly upwards, that was all she had suffered. She had now the chance to obliterate that abnormality; she would take it.

Luke made her welcome, giving her coffee from real china, seating her in a chair that was padded. He wanted to make small talk, but she was in a hurry. "Tell me about Wiskott-Aldrich, Luke."

He hesitated and at once she sensed something wrong. "Problem?"

He bobbed his head, his mouth grimacing. "Maybe, maybe not."

When he said nothing more, she put her hand on his and said quietly, "Please? For old times' sake?"

He smiled and then, from a drawer, he produced a file that he pushed towards her. "Wiskott-Aldrich is an interesting company. Somebody's laid a lot of camouflage on it, just so that people like me can't quite work out who actually owns it, and who actually uses it."

"Who does own it?"

"Pel-Ebstein Pharmaceuticals."

She had a feeling he would say that. She had no feeling whatsoever that he would then say, "There's a suggestion in the files that ghosts have been using it."

She stared at him, then at the orange file she was holding. Ghosts — national security. Was he joking?

"Just a suggestion, of course. Nothing concrete."

There never was, not with ghosts. These were ghosts, though, who could hurt. It changed matters, raised the stakes, but it didn't make her any less intrigued. Far from it. She said, "There was a fire at a laboratory owned by Pel-Ebstein. It was on some island somewhere off Scotland. I need to know more about it."

He sighed. There was a veneer of insouciance but she knew him well enough to see worry beneath. She took his hand having first glanced around to ensure that there was privacy. "I've missed you."

He looked down at the hand. When his face came up, there was a huge lazy grin on it. "You're one saucy bitch, Bev. One saucy bitch."

He laughed, loud and booming. She smiled, enjoying his happiness, and was taken by surprise when it abruptly ended and he leaned forward close to her ear and whispered, "You — and me — we need to be careful of this. Very, very careful."

*

"My god! What are you doing here?"

Nerys had a voice that could slice cheese. He grinned. "I live here, don't I?"

She laughed. "Ha! You puke, shit and snore here, but I'm not sure you live here."

He fought the immediate reaction of annoyance. She was, after all, entitled to be slightly mad at him. "Look, Nerys, I know I haven't been much company lately … "

"You don't say! Not much company!' That has got to be the understatement of the decade!" There was so much sarcasm in her voice he found himself fearing to drown in it.

"But I'm trying to put things right between us."

She looked sceptical. "Oh, yes? And how are you doing that?"

He shrugged. "Look, I'm sorry, Nerys. I've been a shit, but I promise I'll behave. I thought we could have a takeaway. Nice night in, a bottle or two of wine." He put his hand under her chin and smiled the smile that he knew she liked.

She snorted, but something told him he was winning. "Isn't that just typical! He manages to choose the one night of the week when I go out."

He tried to work out which day it was, decided that it was Thursday, then remembered her pottery lessons. "Oh, God. Night class. I'm sorry, Nerys … "

The irritation resurfaced. "How could you forget, Carl? Every fucking Thursday I go out."

"But I did, really. Do you have to go? Can't you leave it for once?" He almost won her round. Her expression had softened and she was clearly no longer incandescent, but she was a dedicated potter.

"I must," she said.

Left alone he sorted a can of lager from the fridge, sat down and drank from it thirstily. Without company he was forced to think and his only thoughts were centred on his former colleagues.

First Turner, then Millie. It was incredible.

And the way she had died …

He told himself that it was coincidence. All six of them had tested negative after the fire … they had seen the results. Therefore, it had nothing to do with Proteus. Simple.

He dug in the breast pocket of his jacket, pulling out his address book. It would do no harm to ensure that Jean-Jacques and Justine were all alive and well.

By the end of the evening, he was a very frightened man indeed. He knew that he had to leave, that quite probably his life depended on it.

But where could he go?

His mother was still alive, but he had never got on well with her, hadn't even talked to her for four years; anyway, if someone were going to look for him, it was an obvious place to go. There were various people he knew in Newcastle, some of whom would probably be willing to put him up for a day or two, providing he didn't tell them that he thought somebody was out to kill him, but they were too close; he needed distance. Various ex-girlfriends suggested themselves, then excused themselves as he recalled how he tended to exit relationships rather abruptly.

Suddenly it came to him that he didn't have many friends left.

In fact, he had only one person to whom he could now turn. Perhaps the one person who might be able to explain just what was going on.

*

"I hope this is going to help you." Belinda was more nervous than Eisenmenger had ever seen her before. She fidgeted, playing with the folder that she had brought with her into the hospital dining room. Eisenmenger played with the food, wondering simultaneously why she was so jumpy and whether the folder would provide better provender if he sunk his molars into the cardboard rather than the
Chicken
a la
King
on his plate. At the very least it would be a Stewards' Enquiry on the decision. He noticed that Belinda had declined to take nourishment, presumably because, since she worked there, she knew what to expect; probably still had the heartburn. Helena, perhaps exhibiting some primeval and previously untapped instinct for survival, had intuitively opted for bottled water.

"Let's see, shall we?" he said.

He laid down his fork, thankful for a distraction. Like every hospital restaurant he had ever known, it was decrepit; did they make them that way? It was well past the lunchtime rush so that they were part of only a small crowd in the large, gloomy rectangle with its regular rows of plastic-topped tables and their more haphazard foot soldiers, the chairs. A sprinkling of porters, a drizzle of junior doctors, the odd, flurried shower of nurses were all that remained, like detritus left when the flood had ebbed. Their jaws trudged their way through the fare with grim tenacity, only their eyes telling of the distress that their taste buds were feeling.

"What I did was to extract both the DNA and the RNA … "

Aware that Helena probably wouldn't have the necessary scientific background, he interrupted. "Helena's not medical. You'd better keep it simple." He glanced across at the lawyer, who nodded her gratitude. Belinda started again.

"What I did was to digest the tissue samples so that I could extract the genetic material. DNA is the stuff that genes are made of — if I analyse that I can tell whether there are any structural abnormalities in them. RNA is the stuff that acts as a messenger between the genes and the rest of the cell; if I analyse that I can tell which genes are being switched on. Cancers can form because of structural abnormalities in the genes, or because genes are being switched on or off when they shouldn't be."

Helena managed a nod that implied comprehension and probably, Eisenmenger reflected, she did understand.

"The problem with RNA is that's very, very fragile. It was never designed to last long, so in order to preserve it, you make a DNA copy of it, called cDNA.

"You can then analyse the DNA using things called
Restriction
Enzymes
. Basically they cut DNA at specific points in the sequence. If the structure has changed, the points at which they cut are changed. The fragments they produce are therefore of different sizes to normal. If you use fluorescent markers and run the fragments through a special machine, you can see which pieces have altered in position and therefore deduce what abnormalities there are."

"Fluorescence scanning?" asked Helena and Eisenmenger laughed at his own presumptuousness. She smiled a smile at Eisenmenger that telegraphed her triumph.

Eisenmenger bowed his head. "My apologies if I was patronizing" he said. "I just assumed … "

"Oh, don't worry, I don't really know much about it, but I'm a lawyer. I spend most of my life trying to understand other people — their jobs, their hobbies, their psychologies. A year or so ago I had a case involving DNA evidence. I picked up a few terms but never really managed to grasp many of the principles."

Belinda looked at Eisenmenger. "Carry on," he suggested.

"You get a printout that looks a little confusing at first … " She produced a roll of paper on which was a graph extended on the x-axis; a line formed peaks and valleys of varying magnitude while along the axes were numbers. Eisenmenger moved his plate on to an adjacent table and she spread it out on the table, so that they could see it. Helena moved her chair closer.

"And?" he prompted.

Belinda opened her mouth as if ready to impart a coherent, reasoned account, then shrugged, smiled and said merely, "It's chaos."

"Meaning?"

"Each tumour sample I analysed has at least sixteen genetic structural abnormalities. Many of them have dozens more."

Helena asked, "And normally? What would the results be like in most cases of cancer?"

"Just a few abnormalities. Maybe as few as one, maybe as many as ten, twelve."

"So these cancers are aggressive? Is that what you're saying?"

Belinda nodded. Helena commented, "That tells us nothing we didn't already know."

"There's more," Belinda interrupted. They looked at her.

"Many cancers have their own characteristic abnormalities, but here they've all got the same basic set."

"The sixteen you mentioned?"

She nodded. Then, as they digested this, she went on, "The analysis of the cDNA confirmed expression of a constant subset of genes in all tumour types. Most of them have got a whole lot more besides, but these are always there. Even in tumours where normally you wouldn't expect to see them."

Helena asked, "Chaos? Genetic chaos? Is that what you're saying?"

Belinda hesitantly replied, "Yes and no. You see, cancer is a step-by-step sequence of genetic events, each contributing to the development of the tumorous cell. Along the way, though, other things go wrong with the genes that probably don't directly add to the process of carcinogenesis. Those are termed 'secondary events.' Here there are huge numbers of such events and the overall picture is one of chaos, but underneath it all, in every tumour, there are always these sixteen genetic changes."

Eisenmenger said, "Are those sixteen changes characteristically seen in any kind of cancer?"

Belinda shook a worried head. "I asked around, just to make sure. No one I spoke to knew of any tumour that you would expect to see all sixteen in."

They looked down at the printouts, each with their thoughts.

"It also shows something else." She said this hesitantly, almost apologetically. Another roll of paper was produced and flattened for their perusal. "This," she said, pointing at a huge peak, far to the right of the graph.