The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (41 page)

"You've come a long way to see me, Carlos."

"I think you can guess why, Professor."

Stein looked at him, mouth slightly open, tongue lurking just inside the darkness of his mouth. It was a typical attitude of the man. Even with the sound of the weather leaking into the room and finding nowhere soft to hide, the noise of his breathing was loud. Then he nodded slowly. "Proteus."

"We're the only ones left, Professor. Do you realize that? The others have either disappeared or died."

Stein's shock made him speechless for a second. Then, "Died? Disappeared? What do you mean?"

"Millie was the first. She died of cancer."

Stein's face showed genuine shock, his voice betrayed complete bewilderment. "The first? What do you mean?"

"Justine was blown to pieces, and then within a day or two Jean-Jacques disappeared. Turner had his accident just a few days before that."

Carlos saw confusion immersing, drowning, Stein. It answered one of the many questions he had brought to Rouna, and he was relieved that Stein was innocent of one crime at least.

"We're being killed, Professor," he explained gently. "We who worked on the Proteus project."

But Stein could not grasp what he was being told. His face was contracted into an unbelieving frown. He leaned back in the chair and Carlos saw tears in his eyes. Carlos tried to be gentle as he said, "I think we're on the list as well."

There was a distant crash from somewhere at the back of the house, a sound of a glass shattering. Both of them looked up at it.

"What was that?" It was the question of a frightened old man. Carlos shrugged, but his face showed almost as much fear as Stein's. He rose and went to the door that led out on to the hallway. Before he got there, this opened and in came first Helena, then Eisenmenger. Bochdalek, covered by Rosenthal, followed them. Their entry into the room caused Carlos to sigh a soft,
Shit
, and briefly close his eyes.

*

Rosenthal ordered Carlos back to the armchair, making Helena and Eisenmenger sit on two dining chairs that Bochdalek brought from the table. It made quite a cosy tableau, perhaps in preparation for a group photograph, one that they could each keep as a memento;
this
is
when
we
all
died
.

Stein was strident in his understandable indignation, an emotion cultured from his years of academic standing and his ignorance of what was happening around him. As soon as they had come into the room he had asked of Rosenthal and Bochdalek, "How dare you? Who are you? How dare you break into my home?"

Then he had recognized Rosenthal. His face had transmuted instantaneously, the speed almost one of comical proportions. He had collapsed back into the chair, saying only, "Oh, you."

Rosenthal failed to acknowledge this tribute. Bochdalek, who had perched himself on the sofa, his pistol pointed in their direction, laughed at the questions. "You're the Professor?" he asked. "You're the smart one?"

Stein looked at him. "Will someone tell me what's going on?" Then, to Carlos, "Do you know?"

But Carlos was as confused as he was. It was Eisenmenger who said, "Perhaps we should make some introductions, Professor. My name's John Eisenmenger, this is my colleague, Helena Flemming. These two," and here he gestured at Bochdalek on the sofa and Rosenthal, who was pacing in front of the window, "are of uncertain designation. This one goes by various names, most commonly Rosenthal. His companion, I'm afraid, is as unknown to me, as he is to you."

Bochdalek bowed his head in greeting but declined to provide any form of nomen.

Stein looked no more informed. "They have come here finally to terminate the Proteus project," Eisenmenger added helpfully.

Carlos whispered, "Double shit."

At last Stein began to comprehend the situation. To Rosenthal he said, "You've come here to kill us?"

Rosenthal was checking the windows. To the glass he said, "The Proteus experiment has ended. The results are in."

When Stein looked confused, Eisenmenger explained helpfully, "The utility of Proteus has been proved, Professor. You did a good job."

The old man took the compliment much as he might have taken the discovery of a cat's furball on the carpet. "You keep an eye on them; I'll check the rest of the house," Rosenthal said to Bochdalek, from the window.

His companion nodded and Rosenthal left, moving quietly on the bare floor.

Helena asked of Carlos, "What happened in the fire? How did it start?"

Carlos glanced at Stein then said, "We thought Proteus was just a high-tech cancer tool. Something to induce cancers in cell systems for future pharmaceutical research. Then we found out that there was more to it."

Stein raised rheumy eyes to Eisenmenger and Helena. "It wasn't my fault. We thought that we were doing something noble. Helping to combat cancer. It is what I had dedicated my life to. Then we found out that we were doing exactly the opposite. We found that someone had taken the project and, with a neat twist, had made it a weapon, a killer.

"Proteus. A biological weapon like no other."

Bochdalek seemed to find this fascinating. His face betrayed absorption. He said in a tone of wonder, "Really?"

Stein turned to Helena. "You must believe me. When I gained the funding from PEP, the project was exactly as Carlos and the others thought it was — a generic system for use in the development of novel anti-cancer therapies. The project was hijacked, but not by me."

Helena asked, "If not you, then who?"

Looking at Carlos, Stein said, "Robin Turner."

*

Rosenthal went from room to room, checking cupboards, behind doors and the view from the windows. All were empty, as he had expected. All were cold, dusty and lonely, except for a large room on the top floor occupying most of the back half of the house. Its windows gave a panoramic view of the northern part of Rouna, with the single track that led to the house at its centre, stretching for a long way to the horizon. Satisfied that no one was going to disturb them — why should anyone want to call on a lonely old man, kilometres from the nearest neighbours? — he turned back to the room. This was part study and part laboratory. Rosenthal wasn't experienced in science and scientific equipment, but he was surprised by how sophisticated and new some of the equipment seemed to be. A lot of it too. He poked idly into some of it, discovering centrifuges, fridges and freezers, amongst other pieces that were completely foreign to him.

Then he looked at some of the many files and papers that were both piled on the desk and stacked on the shelves in the far corner of the room. He understood little of it, but he did come across a name he recognized —
Proteus
.

*

Carlos hadn't reacted. Stein went on, "Turner's a clever man; a good scientist but also an unprincipled one, although I didn't know it then. Right from the start he must have seen the weapons potential of Proteus and persuaded PEP that there was more to be gained than just a few hypothetical anti-cancer drugs."

"Turner's been murdered," Eisenmenger pointed out softly.

Shocked, Stein stared at him for a moment. "Murdered? But who?"

Eisenmenger nodded towards Bochdalek. "His friend, I think." As Stein looked across at him, Bochdalek gave this mocking acknowledgement by dipping his head, and the old Professor turned away from him in disgust. To Eisenmenger, he said, "Whatever he did, he was a good scientist."

Rosenthal returned, carrying a file. He waved it at Stein. "Doing some further work on Proteus, were we, Professor?"

Stein looked up at the file. "Someone had to try to find a way to combat what we had done."

"Have you succeeded?" Carlos asked.

The shake of Stein's head was almost one of shame.

Rosenthal said, "Never mind. Better brains than yours have failed. Still, I'm glad that I found these. If any of these had been found, it might have proved embarrassing." He put the file in a large carry-bag, then to Bochdalek he said, "We wait until dark." To the rest of them, he said, "Now we have quite a while to wait before we can leave. If you're good, we'll make do without restraints, but just give us one sign that you're not the kind, cooperative people I think you are, and I'm afraid we'll have to tie you all up, and that will prove very uncomfortable. Understand?"

"We can all have a nice time," Bochdalek added. "We can listen to a story for entertainment." He smiled contentedly.

Rosenthal sat at the table in the window. Eisenmenger asked of Stein, "So PEP shipped you out to Rouna. Didn't you wonder why they sent you all the way out here?"

The old man shook his head. "I was naive. Starling told me that they considered this project to be of the highest priority, that several other companies were interested in the idea. I was told that Rouna was the safest place for us. I believed that."

Carlos came out of a reverie. "I still don't understand how we failed to spot what was going on."

Stein said, in a low voice, "Because Proteus was preciously close to a biological weapon already. And every modification that Turner suggested could be interpreted as an improvement to my original idea. Even the temperature-sensitive trigger seemed to be a logical, reasonable improvement to the system."

Helena asked, "What about the accident? How did that occur?"

It was Carlos who answered. "On Rouna there was precious little to do, what with the weather, the lack of contact with the islanders, and the intensity of the work. It was inevitable that we would form relationships, begin to see each other differently. Hell, after months and months of that life, I would have fucked a hole in the wall.

"Anyway, I fell for Millie. She fell for me, I think, but only in a small way. Turner was also interested. Justine and Jean-Jacques had pretty much become a unit, so there wasn't anywhere else to turn." He paused, perhaps out of misty-eyed memory, perhaps out of something darker. "I think she felt sorry for us." He smiled. "Anyway, that's what I like to think." A deep sigh. "She tried to juggle Turner and me, but it was never going to work."

Bochdalek was grinning broadly and Helena saw him run his tongue along first his top, then his bottom, lip.

"I had to put up with it. Millie was happy and I was in love with her. Turner was a better bet for her; after all, where was she going to go with a lab tech?" It was like hearing confession. His voice was filled with years of memory, purified by remorseless, relentless remodelling, so that now his love was one of the foundations of his self-respect, and the whole of it had been petrified by her death.

"I could have coped, I think, had Turner not decided that he wanted her for himself. He came to see me, full of piss and importance. Claimed some sort of
noblesse
oblige
because I was only a research assistant."

"What happened?"

"I told him to piss off. Telling me to wash up the test tubes was one thing, ordering me not to spend time with someone I fancied was something else."

"And did he piss off?"

Carlos laughed. "Yeah. He wasn't a great man of action."

"And what did you do?"

"First I had a drink or two. Then I fell asleep, I think. Went to see Millie, to tell her what Turner had said." Before he could be asked, he went on, "She'd gone to the lab, though, so I followed her there, which was unfortunate, because Turner had had the same idea.

"Turner was talking to Millie in the laboratory. He had his back to me and she spotted me over his shoulder. I must have looked pretty pissed off, because she came to me at once and tried to stop me from approaching Turner, but I just pushed past her."

Stein was shaking his head in sorrow as he listened.

"I didn't know what I was going to do and didn't care at that moment. He was standing in front of a fume cabinet, but the significance of that was lost on me. I wanted him to know that I wasn't going to let him get away with treating Millie like that. We had an argument. It wasn't particularly romantic; nothing Hollywood about it. We just started to scuffle, swearing at each other, then got down to pushing and shoving, kicking and scratching.

"The others came in, of course. Jean-Jacques thought it was great fun, a superb entertainment, but the others were trying to stop us."

Stein said, "I had no idea what was going on. I was … " He shrugged and smiled, "Blind to everything but the work."

"That was when it started to get vicious — I mean vicious, like I'd decided I really didn't think he deserved Millie, didn't even deserve to live, and he was getting down to racism and obscenity. And Jean-Jacques was egging me on; he had no love of Turner either, thought he was an arrogant bastard. Anyway, the emotional temperature went sky high and that's when it happened. I mean, I just wanted the cunt dead; we were on different sides of the room and he was practically reverting to the savage. He began to come at me, so I picked up the heaviest thing I could find and threw it at his head. It was a water bath, half-full. If it had hit his head, life would be a lot different now, but it didn't. He dodged and I think for a minute he thought he was going to get to analyse my internal organs at close quarters with a scalpel, but then the water bath landed, and things changed.