Dead End (28 page)

Parnell waited until they were at their benches before emerging from his office. ‘I know I'm going against our established schedule but anyone had any startling revelations overnight from what you might have read?'

There was no immediate response. Then Deke Pulbrow said: ‘We're not big enough, don't have sufficient resources, to do what we're trying to do. You count how many
countries
contributed to decode the domestic chicken genome? Six countries, with all the resources of six leading scientifically advanced institutions. Competing against which there's just six of us – six ordinary people, not six countries – you making up the seventh, Dick. What chance do you think we've genuinely, practicably, got?'

‘It comes down to fractions,' admitted Parnell. ‘You saying, because it's fractions, we shouldn't try?'

‘No,' denied Pulbrow, at once. ‘What I'm saying is that we're pissing into the wind to imagine we've a chance in hell of finding anything, no matter how hard we try. And I can't imagine anyone trying any harder than us guys are trying.'

There was another brief silence. Parnell said: ‘Deke's point is taken. Anyone else?'

‘I'm not proposing I break away from the new regime, reading all that there is here for us to read, but I'd like to run another string through the synthesizer,' said Sato.

‘Go ahead,' agreed Parnell at once. ‘Anyone else?'

This time there was no response. Parnell said: ‘OK, let's keep reading. Anyone get any brilliant ideas, let's hear them right away.'

As he read, with growing acceptance that he wasn't going to get a lead, Parnell felt the disappointment of the others at San Diego's unsuccessful efforts to find link between their 1918 flu discovery and the genome map they'd chosen from one of the most commonly eaten Chinese chickens, although conceding immediately that the connection was not the direct focus of their investigation but a naturally ongoing – and maybe ultimately successful – progression of it. Initially the only movement in the outside laboratory had been Sean Sato moving around his equipment, but that soon ended. No one bothered to leave for a coffee break, all accepting Kathy Richardson's offer to bring it in. Lunch was more to rest wearily fogged eyes than to eat. No one took more than half an hour away from their desks or benches.

Without any conscious decision, six o'clock had evolved into the time for their end-of-day review, and that Friday night Parnell stuck rigidly to it, coming out of his side office precisely on time and bringing everyone up with the cry of: ‘OK, guys. Day's over, as well as the week. Make it a full weekend. I know you're going to take stuff home, like I am, but keep it light. The way we're working we're going all of us to end up brain-dead, and brain-dead we're no use to anyone, certainly not to wives or partners or loved ones …' He was instantly aware of the abrupt attention from everyone at the remark, not sure himself why he'd said it. It had just come naturally and there hadn't been any clog of emotion when he'd said it. He hadn't even been thinking of Rebecca. ‘Let's clear our minds and our heads and start again on Monday,' he concluded.

Parnell didn't intend waiting until Monday, of course. And he had other work in mind, as well.

Parnell arrived at McLean just after seven on the Saturday morning, his reading until midnight bringing him two thirds of the way through the Scripps material. He put what remained of the American documentation beside that from San Diego on his desk, everything temporarily suspended, sure what he intended would only take up the morning, possibly even less. He accepted that there would have to be an explanation for the rest of the unit when they saw the obvious evidence of an experiment, but was unconcerned about it. He was, after all, working in his spare time, and by Monday he would have completed all the necessary reading, so he'd be further ahead than anyone else. On all their benches and desks there were sections of both dossiers obediently left for the following week. Parnell concentrated his experiment upon the medicines to which the additional expectorants and the rifofludine partial-preservative had been added, recording the dosages of each to his carefully separated test mice, from each of which he first took a blood sample to provide a comparative DNA string to measure the effect, if any, of the new formulae against the old. He was almost at the end of his preparation when the other idea came to him and he physically stopped what he was doing, considering it. With the exception of the three new constituents, every drug had gone through the required three-phase licensing process, and those three ingredients could not, in themselves, be humanly harmful. He wasn't, anyway, considering human testing as such, just a shortcut to extend the experiments beyond mice.

He prepared each petrie dish with a measured sample of every brand product containing liulousine, beneuflous and rifofludine. It was difficult extruding the vein in his left arm and he inserted the hypodermic awkwardly, hurting himself, but he managed to withdraw sufficient blood identically to match the drug measures already in the culture dishes.

He was concentrating so totally upon storing them that he didn't hear Beverley Jackson come into the laboratory. The first he knew of her presence was when she said: ‘What the hell are you doing?' And so startled was he that he came close to dropping the culture dish in his hand.

He turned to face her at the door, aware that the shirt sleeve of his left arm was still rolled up and that the hypodermic, with some blood remaining in the chamber, was lying very obviously on the bench alongside Russell Benn's samples.

‘I'm just working my way through something,' Parnell said, inadequately.

Beverley came further into the room, absorbing everything as she did so. ‘For Christ's sake, Dick, you're experimenting on yourself! What is it? What have you injected? Tell me you haven't done anything stupid! Holy Christ!'

‘Stop it,' he said, hoping his calmness would calm her. ‘I haven't injected myself
with
anything. I just needed human blood and I was the only donor.'

‘What for?' she persisted, looking more intently at the neatly stacked bottles and phials. Before Parnell could answer she said: ‘They came from the chemical division a couple of days back, right?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I'm just carrying out a few tests, that's all.'

‘Why? Why on these specific samples when we've got hundreds of others we haven't even looked at yet? And when we're supposed to be working exclusively on the flu research, which, incidentally, is what I've come in here today to go on doing.'

It could only be his suspicion that there was some connection with Rebecca's killing, but he couldn't compromise Beverley in any way. ‘I want you to trust me. Trust me and not talk to anyone about what I'm doing. Which is what I am going to ask everyone else on Monday, when they see the mice and the cultures.'

‘It's personal?'

There was only one inference if he answered that. ‘Trust me.'

Beverley regarded him steadily for several moments. ‘Am I going to regret coming in here today?'

‘You could go.'

‘I'm logged in, at the security gatehouse. As you are.'

Shit, thought Parnell. ‘You don't know anything. You're not part of anything. There's probably nothing to know or be part of.'

There was another silence. ‘Were you and Rebecca doing something you shouldn't have been?'

Beverley was too clever, too prescient, Parnell conceded. ‘Neither Rebecca nor I were betraying Dubette in any way. Nor were – or have – either of us done anything illegal or against the company.'

‘I've got to trust you on that?'

‘I'm
asking
you to trust me on that,' qualified Parnell.

‘Do I get to know sometime?'

‘I can't answer that. Like I said, maybe there's nothing to know.'

‘It would have been a good day to stay at home, wouldn't it?'

‘It would have avoided a lot of complications.'

Beverley Jackson didn't reply and Parnell accepted, surprised, that he'd had the last word.

They read – Parnell retreating into his private office – for the rest of the morning. He was surprised, although not as much as he had been earlier, by her sudden arrival at his office door. ‘What are you doing about lunch?'

‘I hadn't thought about it. Probably won't bother.'

‘You know what you look like …?'

‘Don't!' stopped Parnell, realizing he hadn't even bothered to shave that morning. ‘And yes, I know. Everyone keeps telling me.'

‘Shit,' completed the woman, refusing the interruption.

‘That's it. That's what everyone keeps telling me.'

‘Did you make breakfast?'

‘I didn't have time.'

‘What was dinner last night?'

‘That really was shit. A prepared lasagne: I didn't get all the plastic covering off, before the microwave. It didn't add to the flavour. But then I don't think anything could have done.'

‘You lectured us last night, about the danger of being brain-dead?'

‘Yes?'

‘You're a mess. And getting messier. For a lot of reasons I know and for a lot more that I don't. What I do know is that a messed-up – fucked-up – head of department is even more of a danger than being brain-dead.'

‘I'll do better – eat better, get better – tonight.'

‘I know you will,' said the woman. ‘I'm personally going to see that you do. But also that you shave first. Christ, you really are a fucked-up mess!'

Twenty-One

P
arnell managed to finish all there was to read by two a.m. on the Monday without finding a direction from either the English or American flu discoveries, to pursue his unit's particular search. There was always the possibility, he told himself, that someone else in the pharmacogenomics section had spotted something he'd missed – it was at least a slender straw at which to clutch. He was at McLean by seven, determined to be the first there, although still without an explanation for the experiment Beverley had caught him conducting on the Saturday, trying to convince himself that, as head of the department, he didn't necessarily have to provide one. He'd expected Beverley to press him further during dinner but she hadn't, not in fact referring to it once, which he didn't fully understand. Most of the time the talk had been light, although they'd obviously discussed the influenza project, but not in any depth, Parnell warning that neither of them at that stage had completed their reading, creating the need to avoid one misguiding the other with half-formed or ill-formed impressions. And although there'd been no indication of it, Parnell tried to overcome any difficulty Beverley might have by openly referring to Rebecca. That had been the moment he'd expected Beverley to challenge him about that morning's experiment. They hadn't talked at all about her ex-husband. He'd enjoyed the evening – positively, physically, relaxing. Beverley chose the restaurant, in a part of midtown he hadn't been to before, and met him there. It was traditional home-town American cooking, which dictated portions sufficient to relieve an African famine, even though he tried to order minimally. He decided the only thing missing from the rib-eye steak were hooves and tail. As he had anticipated, Beverley initially led the conversation, but gave way to him as the evening progressed, and by its end he'd realized, surprised, that he was dominating the exchanges and Beverley appeared content to let him, not once trying for the last word. He refused her demand that they split the bill, which she accepted without continuing argument, and they'd parted quite comfortably outside the restaurant, without any awkwardness about nightcaps at another bar or either's apartment. In the cab on his way back to Washington Circle, Parnell found himself wondering what possibly could have gone wrong between Beverley and her husband. That reflection prompted the half thought that he'd found the first evening with Beverley easier than he had with Rebecca, but that was where he'd halted it, as a half thought not to be completed. It left him feeling guilty, which was worsened throughout the following day by his failure to pick up something from the San Diego or London research. Richard Parnell wasn't a man upon whom the rarity of professional disappointment rested easily.

None of the mice he'd injected with the French-suggested drug modifications showed any obvious ill effects after the forty-eighty-hour period, and he was halfway through extracting blood comparisons when Beverley Jackson arrived.

She said at once: ‘We going to learn all today?'

‘You finished the flu-identification papers?' avoided Parnell.

‘Almost.'

‘I didn't get a lead.'

‘I haven't either, not yet.'

‘Let's hope you do before you finish. Or one of the others might come up with something.'

‘You didn't answer my question,' she said.

‘No,' Parnell agreed, turning back to his sampling.

He was conscious of other arrivals behind him but didn't respond to them until he had the tests from all the experimental mice on to slides. He turned back into the main laboratory unsurprised to find himself the focus of everyone's attention. He said: ‘This has nothing to do with what we're looking for. It's something I set up over the weekend. Anyone come up with anything, anything at all, from what you've read so far?'

There were various head-shakes. Deke Pulbrow said: ‘Not a godamned thing.'

Sean Sato said: ‘It's great research but there's nothing here that's going to help us.'

. ‘I haven't found anything either,' conceded Parnell, again. ‘Let's talk about it when we're all through.' He'd tell them as much of the truth as he felt able, Parnell finally determined. Not about his suspicion that Rebecca's death was somehow connected with the French material, but that he had become curious at the apparent secrecy in which it had been chemically tested, and had decided to put it through the most basic of genetic programmes without interfering in any way at all with what they were concentrating upon.