The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (25 page)

The Department of Cancer Genetics had suffered death.

Professor Turner's secretary wasn't obviously upset. She had on her face a look of determined anger.
This
is
exceedingly
inconvenient
, she seemed to be saying.
It's
getting
in
the
way
of
my
work
. Eisenmenger could see her point. She was on the telephone when he went into her office and it rang three times in the few minutes he was with her. All of the calls were for Turner, all were answered with the same litany. Eventually he discovered from her where Susan Warthin was located and he made his way there.

It was like all laboratories. The corridors were crowded with large freezers, liquid nitrogen stores, boxes, filing cabinets and discarded chairs. The rooms he passed contained benches cluttered with glassware, pipette racks, boxes of pipette tips and occasional pieces of undoubtedly expensive equipment, as well as equally cluttered racks of shelving, the odd centrifuge and, every now and then, a space where someone could sit and write, or perhaps just think.

Susan Warthin was housed in such a room and she was seated at such a space, but she wasn't writing and she wasn't thinking. At first Eisenmenger thought that she was asleep but then, after standing and looking at her quarter profile from the doorway, he realized that she was just staring at a photograph on the wall in front of her. The photograph was of Millicent Sweet.

He knocked on the doorframe and it brought her head round to face him. "Oh," she said softly, surprised. "I'm sorry."

"Susan Warthin?"

She nodded. Coming into the room, he introduced himself, then nodded at the photograph. "I was hoping we could have a chat about Millicent."

At the mention of the name she seemed to collapse slightly, as if something painful had just passed through her. On her face there formed a look of caution and puzzlement. He explained, "I've been asked to look into her death, and into the mix-up over her body."

It was plain she didn't want to be reminded about any of it, but it was even plainer that she wanted — she needed — to talk. Once she started, she wasn't in the mood to let him stop her. Even when he asked questions it seemed merely to divert the flow, not interrupt it. Sitting together in the quiet of the laboratory, their voices low, he felt as if he were taking confession.

"It was horrible. To die like that. She said once that it was her greatest fear."

"How long had you known her?"

"Not long. Only about a year, but we became close quite quickly. She wasn't very outgoing — people tended to see that as stand-offish, but it wasn't. She was shy, and she'd been through a lot."

Eisenmenger hardly ever took notes. He was afraid that writing and listening were mutually incompatible. As a student, while his compatriots scribbled he merely sat and tried to let the lecturer's words flow into him. It had worked then, it generally worked now. "A lot?" The phrase intrigued him and found his interest quickening. "What do you mean?"

But she clamped down at once, as if she had been indiscreet. "Oh, you know. There was something about a love affair."

Perhaps there was, but he could feel she was trying to misdirect him. "She used to work for a pharmaceutical company, didn't she? Pel-Ebstein?"

Susan nodded.

"There was some sort of laboratory accident, I think … "

She said, "Millicent wouldn't talk about it much."

"Really? Why not, I wonder."

This was safer ground. Susan Warthin didn't mind this subject. "It was hush-hush. Millicent was bound by some sort of confidentiality clause. Actually, from what she said, I got the impression that she was almost ashamed of what she'd been doing for them … "

A conspiratorial style had descended, one that Eisenmenger wasn't inclined to tamper with. "Ashamed?" he said, his eyebrows raised. "But why?"

Susan shook her head. "She wouldn't say, at least not directly, but I did have my suspicions."

Her suspicions, it transpired, were that Millicent had been engaged in defence work. There was no solid evidence for this, and it left Eisenmenger unsure of the value to place upon the datum. "That final phone call," he said gently, knowing it would be painful for her, "She mentioned the word, 'Proteus.' Did that mean anything to you?"

Her face was at once pained, and her answer came through the emotion of the recollection. "I remember she'd mentioned it once before. It was something to do with her work at PEP."

"But no details?"

Another shake of the head. When he asked where the laboratory had been, she shook her head. "I'd never heard of it, but apparently it was an island off the north-west coast of Scotland. She began working there about three, three and a half years ago. She was doing her doctoral thesis; something to do with targeted mutagenesis but, as I say, she wouldn't go into details."

Eisenmenger knew little about targeted mutagenesis, except that it was very high-powered cell biology.

"She wasn't even halfway through when the accident happened and the lab closed. It was a terrific blow, to have her work destroyed like that. Most of her notes were lost, along with a couple of draft papers she was preparing for publication."

"Did she talk about the accident? It was a fire, wasn't it? Did she say what caused it?"

At once he sensed they were again getting close to something she considered a confidence, but now she was more at ease, now perhaps she was willing to tread this ground. Yet it still required something more, for she hesitated, and he had to say gently, "I think it might be important, Susan. I think it might be connected with how and why she died like that."

In truth he wasn't sure of it, wasn't sure of anything yet, but he knew it wasn't a lie.

After a moment she took the chance, still clearly afraid that she was perhaps betraying her friend. "She told me once, but asked me not to tell anyone else."

He smiled, trying to emanate reassurance. Someone walked past in the corridor and for the time that the footsteps approached they were both in apprehension, a kind of stasis in which they dared not continue. Then the intruder passed by and with it went the tension.

"She said there was a fight. She didn't know all the details, but she thought that the fire started then."

"It was deliberate? Someone started it out of revenge?"

But she was quite adamant. "No. She said that something got knocked over in the laboratory during the fight. That's what started it."

"What was the fight about?"

She paused but he quickly saw that it was embarrassment, not secrecy. "She said it was over her."

Eisenmenger glanced at the photograph of Millicent Sweet. It showed the same girl as the photograph provided by her father. Perhaps neither of them represented the true nature and appearance of the subject, but Eisenmenger had seen nothing in them that suggested she might inflame two men to assault each other over her. It was certainly an intriguing thought.

He asked, "Who? Who fought over her?"

More reluctance and for a few seconds he feared that she would not tell him, but after looking again at the photograph as if looking for guidance she said, "She said that one of them was the Professor."

"Professor? Professor who?"

She sighed. "Robin Turner."

Once, when he had first started in Forensic Pathology, he had been asked to do a post-mortem on a body found in a river. He had arrived at the scene, feeling nervous, feeling inexperienced and feeling slightly nauseous, then changed into protective clothing before joining the group that had assembled inside the temporary compound on the river bank. It had been raining, he recalled, although not particularly cold. As he entered, the uniformed police, the detectives, the police surgeon all turned to look at him and he had suddenly felt elation. He was the star, he was the single most important person there. He was at once charged with confidence.

And then he had stepped forward and the crowd had parted and there, bloated, white and sodden, had been his best childhood friend.

He felt like that now.

"Turner?" he asked incredulously. "The Turner who just died?"

"That's right."

He tried to make it as clear as he could. "Turner also worked for PEP? In the same laboratory?"

She nodded. "I think they were having an affair. When the fire happened and the project was wound up, he took her with him to this job."

Turner
who
had
died
from
falling
off
a
building
but
who
had
coincidentally
also
had
cancer
.

Eisenmenger was trying to stop his mind working too far ahead and in too many directions at once. Ideas and links were suddenly making and breaking like chemical bonds in a furnace.

"And who was Turner fighting with? Did she tell you that?"

"She told me once. She only mentioned his first name, though."

Before she actually articulated the name, he knew what it would be.

"Carlos."

*

Frank Cowper informed the Coroner of the startling change in Hartmann's report on Millicent Sweet before he told Beverley Wharton, but only by about a quarter of an hour. She put the phone down and pondered. First Helena Flemming, now this. And when Cowper dropped the name Eisenmenger, she felt suddenly, strangely elated.

Her interest was growing.

She had eighteen ongoing investigations, a team of subordinates most of whom had an IQ below that of a stapler, and a boss whose whole life seemed to turn on making sure that she was doomed, but …

Beverley was a gambler. Not with money, but with success. She calculated probabilities with every bit as much objectivity as a card player, and sometimes she lost, more often she had won.

She did not think that she would lose on this occasion, not now that the talismanic name of Eisenmenger had been mentioned. Anyone else and she might have dismissed it as a waste of her time. Eisenmenger she had great respect for, recognizing that he had the knack of finding trouble and then dealing with it. If he suspected something important, she was certainly prepared to spend a few hours looking into it.

Making sure that Lambert was not around, she left the station and drove quickly to the Medical School where she found Hartmann in his office. Not doing anything, she noted, just in there, as if run to earth. She also thought that he looked close to collapse. He was shivering, as if the influenza epidemic had reached him with its ague, and he was pale with large, blue-black bags beneath bloodshot eyes. Beverley smiled at him, and perhaps he interpreted that as sympathetic but was in reality because she could see that he would be easy to break.

She began the interview pleasantly, as she usually did. Her side of the discussion was predicated on knowing that something was going on, but not knowing how significant it might be, how and where it might lead. Despite this ignorance, she smelled something important. Just a ripple on the surface but she was enough of a copper to know that what had made it wasn't small, wasn't in any way unworthy of her notice.

"Now tell me, Dr Hartmann. Why did you falsify your initial report on Millicent Sweet's autopsy?"

At the question Hartmann, whose shock when Beverley had appeared in his office had now transmuted into near-total overload of his autonomic nervous system, felt himself lose consciousness for a moment. Then the world came back, unchanged and unappeased.

This
isn't
fair
!
Eisenmenger
said
…

But Eisenmenger, he knew, had said nothing of consequence. No such promise had been aired, however he might have wished it otherwise. Eisenmenger had merely promised him what would happen if he didn't try to make good. There was nothing left to Hartmann other than acceptance that it was all over for him.

He opened his mouth, suddenly and crushingly aware that he was almost certainly about to destroy his life. Only a miracle could be of any use now.

*

She didn't get to call on Raymond Sweet until late in the day, due mainly to Lambert, due mainly to the fact that day by day he was working his way steadily through the
Big
Bastard's
Manual
, and didn't want to lose the page. So here she was, tired but the scent that came to her on the wind was strong enough to carry her. She now knew that someone had been worried enough by the death of Millicent Sweet to spend a lot of time and effort falsifying it. She knew also that the person who had done it was trained in various covert techniques, a data item she recognized not only as significant, but also consequently as possibly dangerous.

She explained to Sweet who she was and had no compunction in stating quite openly that it was an official police investigation. As she suspected, her witness was delighted that his claims were at last being taken seriously. He was more than happy to repeat everything he had told Helena and Eisenmenger; indeed, now that he had, as it were, been rehearsed, he was far more lucid.