Hypocrite's Isle (11 page)

Gavin waited until Frank had gone into his office before asking, ‘Did I miss much?’

‘No,’ said Mary. ‘Peter was speaking about Gerald Montague’s new paper in
UK Cell Science
.’

‘Jesus,’ murmured Gavin.

‘I think he plans on asking Gerald Montague to be his external examiner when he’s finished writing up,’ said Tom.

‘A match made in heaven,’ said Gavin without looking up.

‘You know …’ announced Mary, ‘for once, I agree. That
Montague
paper was rubbish. How the hell does he go on getting that nonsense published?’

This was so unexpected, coming from Mary, that both Tom and Gavin looked at her in surprise, not sure what to say.

‘He’s one of the managing editors of the journal,’ said Gavin.

‘Oh, God,’ said Mary, sitting down as if she felt too weak to stand. ‘Are things really that awful in science these days?’

Tom and Gavin looked at each other, equally alarmed at what they were hearing from someone who was usually so positive.

‘Hey, come on, Mary, of course they’re not,’ said Tom.

‘They’re no worse in science than they are in anything else,’ said Gavin, as if it were the best he could manage.

Mary got up and left the lab.

‘Time of the month,’ said Gavin.

Tom looked at him. ‘You can probably go to jail for saying things like that.’

Mary returned to the lab shortly afterwards, outwardly calm and composed, and got on with her work as if nothing had happened. Tom gave a slight shrug of his shoulders and a glance in Gavin’s
direction
, which was returned with a slight widening of the eyes. Tom started to hum tunelessly as he pipetted diluting fluid into a series of test tubes, while Gavin went back to examining photographs with his eye lens. He was still doing this an hour later when Frank Simmons came out of his office and dumped a pile of scientific papers on his desk.

‘From my biochemistry reprint collection,’ he said. ‘I thought you might find them useful.’

‘That was kind,’ said Gavin with a jaundiced look that brought a smile to Simmons’ lips.

‘Not at all. What are you up to?’ he asked, seeing what was lying open on Gavin’s desk.

‘I thought I’d have a quick look through the GS report while you guys were at the journal club.’

Simmons nodded but felt suspicious. ‘And what has your quick look told you?’ he asked.

‘I think you were right. They seem to have done a pretty
thorough
job, but, at the end of the day, they didn’t get anywhere. They’ve no idea why the drug didn’t work on patients.’

Simmons had the distinct impression that Gavin was telling him what he wanted to hear. ‘Then maybe we should just leave it at that, shall we?’

‘Yes, boss,’ said Gavin. ‘No point in going up blind alleys.’

Simmons returned to his office and sighed as he slumped down into his chair. The fact that Gavin had quoted his own advice back at him was making him doubly suspicious about what Gavin was thinking. He knew it was all too easy for research students to go off at a tangent when they weren’t fully committed to their designated project, and that certainly would apply to Gavin, whose
imagination
had clearly been fired by seeing how well Valdevan worked
in vitro
. If Gavin’s heart was in something, he could be left alone to get on with it. If it wasn’t … he’d have to keep a close eye on him.

Simmons’ suspicions were well-founded, because Gavin had just discovered something that was occupying his full attention. He waited until Frank had returned to his office before picking up his eye lens and resuming what he had been doing. He had seen
something
in the report photographs that put a whole new slant on the Valdevan story and his pulse was racing. The more convinced he became of what he was seeing, the more excited he became, until he found it impossible to sit still any longer. Without saying anything to anyone, he got up, grabbed his jacket and left the lab.

Gavin started out across the Meadows. The blustery, wet weather of the past few days, with its accompanying strong westerly winds, had given way to clear skies and a slight but bitterly cold wind
coming
in from the east, but he welcomed the icy breaths he took as he headed for nowhere in particular at a brisk pace.

Because the drug had failed to kill tumour cells in patients
suffering
from cancer, the Grumman Schalk team had understandably assumed that either it had been inactivated in the body or had been prevented in some way from reaching the site of the tumour. They had put all their time and effort into determining what the problem was, but in the end had drawn a blank. Gavin now knew that they had been wasting their time. It was quite clear from the
photographs
he had been examining for the past hour that the drug
had
reached the tumour cells and
had
been active when it got there.

Close examination of the photographs of cells taken from patients showed what he now recognised as the typical membrane pinching caused by Valdevan, despite no mention of this by the company in their report – but of course, they had not been looking for slight membrane defects; they had been looking for cell death.

Gavin’s discovery had left him with a puzzle. The fact that you could have membrane damage without resultant cell death implied that the S16 was
not
an essential gene. If the drug could knock it out and the cells could continue to grow and divide, this was the very opposite of what he’d found in his lab experiments, where membrane pinching was always followed by cell death.

Forty minutes of walking round in circles deep in thought brought some measure of calm to his mind, which was important because he had decisions to make. Frank didn’t want him
investigating
the failure of Valdevan because he felt that Grumman Schalk had already taken it as far as it could go. But what he’d seen in the photographs was making him reluctant to stop and switch to
studying
something else, when so much remained unanswered.

Apart from anything else, biochemistry was not Gavin’s
favourite
branch of science. It could be long, tedious and boring, with constant, fidgety adjustments to experimental times and conditions being necessary before things started to work – if they ever did. What was certain was that he couldn’t start work on a biochemical study of the new strain and continue to investigate the failure of Valdevan. There weren’t enough hours in the day.

He supposed he could come clean with Frank: tell him what he had seen in the photographs and hope that he might change his mind, but on the other hand, he might not. He took a kick at a discarded Coke can lying in the grass beside the path and swore under his breath. He couldn’t leave things the way they were, he decided. One way or another he had to follow it up.

It dawned on him that he could work on Valdevan over the Christmas break. No one would be around at that time for nearly two weeks and, even if Frank should find out what he was up to, he could hardly insist that he work on something else in what was officially a holiday period. He felt more relaxed. All he had to do now was work out exactly what he was going to do …

 

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand the significance,’ said Caroline when the pair met in Doctors at eight and Gavin, full of enthusiasm, told her what he had discovered.

‘Don’t you see? The company thought that Valdevan wasn’t reaching the tumours in cancer patients – either that or it was
being
inactivated in the body in some way – but it wasn’t either of these things. The drug
did
reach the tumours and it
was
still active when it did.’

‘But it still didn’t work,’ said Caroline.

Gavin brushed the objection aside as if it were trivial. ‘I know, but the research angle changes, don’t you see? Frank’s been insisting that the company had probably investigated every angle that could be investigated, but that’s not true. They were asking the wrong questions about the wrong problem. They spent hundreds of man hours altering drug composition and changing the ways of
administering
it in order to ensure that Valdevan got to the cancer when it was getting there all along!’

‘Maybe the concentration was too low when it got there?’

‘They monitored drug levels in the patients. It was well above what killed the cells in the lab experiments.’

‘But it still didn’t work,’ said Caroline, leaning across the table to make her point. ‘Surely that has to be the bottom line, doesn’t it?’

‘But that’s exactly what I want to investigate,’ said Gavin.

‘But you’ll be right back at the beginning, and now you’ll have an even bigger problem to investigate than the company thought
they
had.
You
don’t even have a working hypothesis about why it didn’t work.’

‘It’s still worth doing,’ said Gavin stubbornly.

Caroline looked doubtful. ‘What’s Frank saying to all this?’ she asked.

There was a pause which allowed disbelief to grow in her eyes. ‘You’re going to say you haven’t told him?’

‘There’s a conflict of interest,’ said Gavin.

Caroline had to prompt him. ‘I’m waiting.’

‘Frank doesn’t want me spending any more time on Valdevan. He wants me to move on and try a biochemical approach, using a strain deficient in another gene.’

‘I’m with Frank,’ said Caroline. ‘If Valdevan didn’t work before, it’s not going to now. If one of the biggest pharmaceutical
companies
in the world had to give up on it after shelling out millions of dollars, what are you going to come up with that’s so different?’

‘If they got the basis of the report all wrong, God knows what else they might have missed.’

‘Mmm,’ said Caroline.

Gavin took a sip of his beer and sighed deeply. ‘Okay, maybe I am getting a bit carried away here,’ he conceded. ‘But the
company
’s efforts to find out what the problem was were misdirected. They don’t count. It would be like starting over.’

‘But that’s exactly my point,’ agreed Caroline. ‘It would; and that means having an enormous mountain to climb with little chance of reaching the top.’

‘But it’s an exciting mountain, don’t you think?’ said Gavin, with what he hoped might be an argument-winning smile.

Caroline gave a small shake of the head. ‘Is it one you’d want to gamble your entire future on?’

Gavin made a face and started to examine his beer.

‘What Frank says is scientifically sound and sensible.’

Gavin continued examining his beer.

‘Don’t tell me I’m actually getting through to you?’ asked
Caroline
with an amused smile.

‘Look, I agree there’s a lot in what you say …’

‘Good. That’s a start.’

‘Okay, look, I’ll make a start on the biochemistry, but I’m not giving up on Valdevan and I’m definitely going to work on it over the Christmas break.’

‘As long as you make a start on the biochemistry …’ said Caroline, deciding to be satisfied with one concession. ‘Right,’ she announced. ‘No more beer. Let’s go see the Christmas lights.’

Although Gavin would have preferred to continue sitting in the warm, drinking lager and munching his favourite bacon-flavoured crisps, he agreed without argument, and seeing the look on
Caroline
’s face as they walked down the Mound and along Princes Street made it worthwhile.

‘You’re like a kid,’ he laughed as he watched her try to keep walking straight while looking up at the lights, occasionally
pirouetting
to enhance the effect.

‘I love Christmas and everything about it … people change for the better … it’s like the way it should be all the time … I want it to snow … I want to build a snowman … I want to drink mulled wine and sing “Hark the Herald Angels” … I want to go to see a school nativity play where Joseph forgets his lines and Mary drops the baby Jesus … I want to waken at three in the morning and smell a Christmas tree in the house … I love all these things … At least I used to …’ she added, suddenly coming down to earth. ‘But God, it’s going to be so different this time …’

‘Just take it one day at a time,’ said Gavin. ‘Christ! I sound like a Country and Western singer. Are any of the rest of your family coming?’

‘My aunt and uncle usually come up from Manchester, but they’ve decided it would be
inappropriate
this year. What a prissy little word. Makes me think of town hall officials.’ Caroline stopped walking and looked to the other side of Princes Street where the shops were. ‘I’m hungry.’

‘What d’you fancy?’

‘Something bad for me … a burger with heaps of chips and
lashings
of relish and fizzy Coke with lots of sugar and caffeine …’

Gavin grabbed her hand and they ran laughing across the broad street to McDonald’s on the corner of Castle Street.

They found a table by the window where they could look out and up at the floodlit castle while they ate.