Authors: Ken McClure
Martin nodded. ‘Poor lass.’
Simmons shook his head in frustration. ‘There must be some clue. Her face and hands clearly took the brunt of it. But brunt of what? What was she doing?’ He gave up the search for words as he examined the damage. ‘But this is your bench, Gavin …’ he said, looking at the blackened seat of the fire.
‘We were just talking about that,’ said Gavin. ‘I think Mary may have been doing me a favour, setting up an experiment for me. I had a problem this morning: I had to go out for a while.’
The firemen finished checking the lab over and were making sure that there was no possibility of a further flare-up. ‘Can I take it you guys know what happened here?’ asked the senior man.
‘We won’t know for sure until we can speak to the injured girl,’ said Simmons. ‘But we know where it started.’
‘Maybe we can have a copy of your internal report when it becomes available?’
‘Of course, and thanks for coming so quickly.’
‘That’s what they pay us for,’ said the fireman.
‘Maybe, but thanks all the same.’
Simmons, Martin and Gavin were left alone in the lab, the
atmosphere
heavy with the smell of burnt wood and plastic. ‘So, Mary would be sitting here,’ said Simmons, attempting to reconstruct the scene. He picked up a stool, which was lying on its side, and placed it at the middle of the burnt bench, at the same time looking to either side of him. ‘And the cell cultures would be where?’
‘Just here,’ said Gavin, indicating to a point on the bench to the right of the stool.
‘So, she’d light the Bunsen, unless you’d left it on the pilot flame?’
‘No, I hadn’t lit it.’
Simmons nodded. ‘She’d light the Bunsen … take a pair of forceps from the ethanol beaker … and flame them.’
There was a glass beaker lying on its side under the gantry.
Simmons
righted it and moved it beside his right hand. He mimed the action of taking the forceps from the beaker and flaming them. ‘And then what?’
‘She’d take the stopper out of the cell culture bottle and flame the neck before adding the Valdevan …’
‘Where’s the vial?’ asked Simmons.
Gavin and the others started looking.
Eventually, it was Gavin, who had got down on his hands and knees, who recovered the vial and the melted plastic remains of an automatic pipette from below the bench. ‘I probably knocked them off with the extinguisher,’ he said.
‘Still nothing to tell us what happened …’ said Simmons.
‘She could have knocked the beaker over with the pipette and set fire to the ethanol,’ suggested Jack Martin. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.’
‘An ethanol fire wouldn’t have caused a blast,’ said Gavin. ‘Or done so much damage so quickly. Something else must have been involved, something really volatile.’
‘We have to remember that ethanol burns with an almost
invisible
blue flame,’ said Martin. ‘She may not have been aware of a small fire on the bench until it was too late and the flames set something else off.’
‘But what?’ said Simmons. ‘What was lying around on the bench that would flare up like that?’
No suggestions were forthcoming.
‘There’s another smell in here,’ said Simmons, sniffing the air.
‘A number of chemical bottles exploded with the heat,’ said Gavin. ‘It could be that. I didn’t see which ones. I was too busy ducking.’
Simmons took another exaggerated sniff of the air. ‘I know that smell,’ he said. ‘I just can’t put a name to it …’ He went on a slow circular walk round the damaged area. ‘It’s the kind of smell you associate with … hospitals.’
‘This is a medical school, Frank,’ said Martin.
‘No, it’s something that takes me back to my childhood,
something
that once you smell it you always associate it with hospitals … ether! It’s ether!’
‘Now you come to mention it,’ said Martin, taking in a long sniff of the air, ‘you could be right.’
‘Did you have a bottle of ether sitting on your bench, Gavin?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive. I’ve had no reason to use it.’
Simmons went over to the metal cupboard on the floor under the fume cupboard where dangerous and inflammable chemicals were kept and squatted down to unlock it. There was a series of clunking glass sounds as he moved the stock bottles around. When he stood up, he was holding a one-litre, dark glass bottle. ‘Ether. Half empty.’ He read out the date on the label. ‘Obtained from the stores two days ago … but already half empty?’ He returned it to the cupboard. ‘Ether vapour is notorious for causing flash fires,’ he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. ‘If you leave a container of ether open to the atmosphere for long enough you’ll get an explosive mix of ether and air which would be heavier than air itself.’
Simmons walked back to the burnt bench. ‘The fumes would have built up around Mary until the concentration became critical and the Bunsen flame would have set off a flash fire in her face.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Martin.
Simmons looked at Gavin and said, ‘You say there was no ether on your bench … so the obvious explanation is that the beaker the instruments were sitting in – the beaker that Mary thought contained alcohol – actually contained ether.’
‘No way,’ said Gavin. ‘I filled it myself this morning with ethanol.’
‘The ethanol is kept in the same cupboard as the ether,’
Simmons
reminded him.
Gavin remained silent and didn’t flinch.
‘Is it not just possible that …’
‘I didn’t mix them up,’ said Gavin, cutting off the question. ‘No way.’
The haunted look had returned to Simmons’ eyes. ‘Then the alternative is just too awful to contemplate,’ he said.
Martin voiced it. ‘Someone meant this to happen? They
deliberately
substituted ether for ethanol, knowing that Mary would turn on the Bunsen near it?’
‘No,’ said Simmons. ‘It’s Gavin’s bench. They thought it would be him.’
‘Christ,’ said Gavin.
‘Shit,’ said Martin. ‘Attempted murder?’
Gavin could see that both Simmons and Martin were having trouble believing this. It was clearly a step too far for both of them. They would be much more comfortable with an explanation
involving
a mistake or an accident, and it was making him feel uneasy – like a schoolboy who wasn’t being entirely believed by his elders. He found the silence threatening.
People were being allowed back into the building, and the
corridor
outside was busy and filled with the buzz of staff discussing what had happened. Ten minutes later Graham Sutcliffe came in and took in the scene imperiously, before asking Simmons, ‘Do we know what happened here? Health and Safety are going to be crawling all over the place in the next hour or so.’
‘It looks very much as if there was a flash fire in the lab resulting from ether fumes getting into the air,’ said Simmons.
‘How did they get into the air?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to establish.’
‘The university will be keen to –’
‘Absolve themselves from all blame,’ interrupted Simmons. ‘Yes, I know. I think we’ve established it was either an accident … or a deliberate act of sabotage. Either way, Old College can rest easy in their beds. They weren’t to blame.’
‘This is hardly the time for levity,’ said Sutcliffe.
Simmons ignored the rebuke. He looked at Gavin, adopting an exaggerated grimace of embarrassment, and said, ‘Gavin, can we just assume for a moment …’ He paused as if the words were causing him pain, ‘… that a mistake
was
made. You obviously didn’t realise it, otherwise you would have changed the solution immediately, but will you at least consider the possibility that this could
conceivably
be what happened? I mean, we all make mistakes from time to time. It was just unfortunate that in this case it had such tragic consequences.’
‘I did not make a mistake,’ said Gavin flatly. He saw the look that Sutcliffe gave Martin. It suggested that this was exactly what he expected to hear from the Liverpool paddy. Blank denial when in the wrong.
‘Then we are faced with the prospect of calling in the police,’ said Simmons, after a long pause.
Gavin nodded his agreement. ‘And if I can just remind you, it was my arse they were after.’
Sutcliffe rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, come on, no one in their right mind would do something like this deliberately. It was clearly an
accident
caused by thoughtlessness, carelessness, kismet, call it what you will.’
‘No, it was sabotage,’ said Gavin. ‘Someone wanted to put a stop to the Valdevan experiments.’
‘What arrogant nonsense,’ stormed Sutcliffe. ‘What makes you think your piddling little experiments could possibly provoke criminal action like this?’
‘The fact that they’re not piddling little experiments,’ said Gavin. He was angry but in control.
‘Someone has already added hydrochloric acid to a drug
solution
in this lab in an attempt to wreck Gavin’s experiments,’ said Simmons. ‘So there is precedent.’
Sutcliffe’s mouth fell open and he waved his arms around in a gesture of utter bewilderment. ‘What on earth is happening to this department?’ he pleaded to the heavens. ‘This beggars belief. We are a centre of excellence with a research record that stands comparison with that of any university in the world, and suddenly people are behaving like guttersnipes and talking about sabotaging each other’s work.’
The look Sutcliffe gave Gavin left him in little doubt where he thought the blame lay.
‘Has anyone phoned the hospital?’ asked Jack Martin.
‘I’m just about to do that,’ said Simmons.
‘Frankly, I am very reluctant to call in the police,’ said Sutcliffe. He was speaking to Jack Martin while Simmons made the call. Gavin was examining the extent of the damage to the lab outside the immediate area of the flash fire. The electricity cable to the cell culture incubator had melted, fusing the plug and cutting off the power supply. The cultures inside were ruined. It would be back to square one again, but before that, there would have to be extensive repairs to the lab, which would take even more time. It was depressing and the conversation he was overhearing wasn’t helping.
‘I’m inclined to treat the matter as a tragic accident without apportioning blame,’ said Sutcliffe.
‘I agree,’ said Martin.
‘Perhaps you could put out a departmental circular, warning of the hazards of flammable chemicals in the lab and urging vigilance?’
‘Of course.’
Simmons put down the phone and all eyes moved to him. ‘They’re moving her to a specialist burns unit.’
‘But she’s out of danger?’ asked Sutcliffe.
Simmons looked at him as if his thoughts were a million miles away. ‘She’ll live. They’ve managed to save her sight but she’s going to need extensive surgery. A long process, they say.’
There was silence in the room while everyone came to terms with the fact that Mary Hollis was going to be scarred for life.
‘What a bloody awful thing to happen,’ said Martin.
‘It should have been me,’ said Gavin quietly.
‘Maybe we’ll all be able to think more clearly in the morning,’ said Sutcliffe. ‘Life can be terribly cruel.’
Martin and Sutcliffe left the lab without saying anything more. Simmons went into his office to start gathering his things together. Gavin followed him. ‘You do believe me, don’t you, Frank? I didn’t mix up the bottles.’
Simmons turned round. ‘I’m sure you believe it, Gavin. Right now, I just want to go home and think about what I’m going to say to Mary’s parents when they get here in the morning.’
‘The hospital called them?’
‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t seen Tom around. Does he know what’s happened?
‘He told me earlier he was going to meet some relations at the airport and probably wouldn’t be back. I suppose whoever’s in first in the morning will have to tell him.’
‘I know it’s not exactly the time to talk about this … but what are we going to do about the final experiment for the paper?’ said Gavin. ‘All the cultures I set up are knackered.’
Simmons felt that he’d had all the emotional trauma he could take for one day. ‘Tomorrow, Gavin. Let’s leave it till tomorrow,’ he said, collecting his things and preparing to leave. ‘What a shit awful day.’
Gavin watched the door swing shut. He wasn’t looking forward to telling Tom Baxter what had happened, but he suspected that he might have to if Frank were to go directly to the hospital in the morning.
An hour later, as Gavin himself was preparing to leave, the lab door opened and Peter Morton-Brown came in. He looked about him slowly, taking in the damage. ‘I heard what happened to Mary.’
Gavin didn’t respond. He just looked at him as if waiting for something more.
‘You must be feeling like shit, old son.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Making a mistake like that, I mean. Could happen to any of us and you shouldn’t feel bad about it … but all the same … what a bloody nightmare.’
‘I didn’t make any mistake.’
Peter adopted an exaggerated look of puzzlement. ‘I’m sorry? That’s what everyone’s saying. If it wasn’t a mistake … then what?’
‘It was done deliberately. It was meant for me.’
Peter now put on a contrived look of shock. ‘I see … but who would do something like that?’
‘Someone determined to see that the Valdevan experiments didn’t make it into print.’
Peter affected an amused smile. ‘I’ve heard about delusions of grandeur, old son, but this takes the biscuit. Who the hell do you think you are?’
‘The guy who’s going to turn your smug, patrician nose into a mess of blood and snot if you don’t sling your hook within the next ten seconds.’
‘Ah,’ said Peter. ‘You don’t think you’ve done enough damage for one day?’
Gavin felt himself on the edge of losing control, but he managed to confine himself to making one slight movement in Peter’s
direction
. It was enough to send him scurrying out through the door.
‘Bastard.’
Gavin was up at three in the morning being sick. It was the third time since coming home just after midnight, and now there was nothing left in his stomach to void. All the beer and junk food he’d consumed had been vomited, leaving only the painful
spasmodic
retching of an abused digestive system, which had to be endured until his body was satisfied that he had got the message. He rinsed his mouth out several times with cold water and then splashed some up into his face to combat the fuzziness. Was it worth it? He looked at himself in the mirror and defiantly
concluded
that it was. He’d managed to achieve a couple of hours of oblivion, an escape from the hell his life had become in the space of just twenty-four hours.