The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (29 page)

"What's that?" asked Eisenmenger.

"I didn't know at first. It shouldn't be there, though. Also, it's in every sample."

Surprisingly quickly, Helena asked, "You mean that it's contamination?"

Belinda admitted, "That was certainly the first possibility I considered. I used PCR — Polymerase Chain Reaction — to analyse the cDNA. It's notoriously prone to contamination like this."

Helena seemed to take this as negation of everything, but Eisenmenger said, "But you're not sure? Can you sequence it? Find out what it is exactly?"

"I did that. I got someone in the virology lab to help me because I haven't done much sequencing."

"And?" Helena noticed that Eisenmenger was by now impatient, excited. "What is it?"

She produced more paper, a lot of it. A much, much longer graph with four lines undulating up and down in green, red, blue and black, seemingly going on for metres. Above each peak was a letter — A, C, U or G — endlessly repeating in a random pattern.

"All of the samples gave the same sequence. When we ran it through the databases looking for areas of similarity with known genes we got a peculiar result."

Eisenmenger was staring at the letter sequence as if he could read it directly. Helena asked, "What do you mean?"

Belinda was looking genuinely bewildered by now. "It contains all sixteen genes, interspersed with sequences that I'm having a tough time interpreting. Also the introns are missing."

That one missed Helena by a long way. "What does that mean?"

Eisenmenger was still staring at the sheet as he said, "Genes aren't easy things. God, whoever, made them in bits called, 'exons' — 'exons' are separated by long stretches of DNA that are apparently useless, at least as far as constructing genes is concerned — they're the 'introns.' When a gene is expressed and translated into RNA, only the exons are actually used; the introns are excised and discarded. Some people have speculated that the introns aren't useless, we just don't know what they're for yet."

"So why is this significant?"             

"Because it's difficult to think of a reason why all sixteen genes should turn up strung together in a line and without their introns." Suddenly he smiled but it wasn't a joke that he had to tell. "At least, not a natural one," he said.

*

Eisenmenger gave Helena a lift to her flat. There had been a time when he would have expected to come up with her if only for coffee and talk, but he thought it wiser not to presume too much. As he pulled up outside he noticed that it was in almost the same place as the time when Marie had suddenly appeared, nearly knocking Helena down, spitting jealous delusion like acid. When he commented on this, Helena barely heard him.

"Look, Helena. What's wrong?" he said at last, infuriation overcoming delicacy. "You've been behaving as if you're in another universe all evening."

She had been about to get out, her body language suggesting she just wanted to be out of his presence. His question appeared momentarily to act as a spur to this for she was almost out and gone before she stopped, one foot on the road surface, and turned back to him. She wore a resigned, almost deflated expression as she said, "You'd better come up. I think something terrible has happened."

*

Beverley had returned to the station. She wasn't about to trust pondlife like Lyme with any more work. Anyway, things were starting to look interesting, although she didn't yet know precisely what it was that was interesting. Not yet. Several hours' work, though, might just make the shape of things clearer.

She began by running checks on Millicent Sweet and Robin Turner, finding nothing of fantastic interest. She discovered that Turner had been recently married and noted down his address for future reference. Then, aware that it was getting late, she tracked down the number of the Leishman Centre, Newcastle, dialled it and was put through to the Personnel Department. A problem soon showed itself, for she found that the phone was answered by a young woman who appeared to function despite having shit for brains.

"I can't give out the information."

She was entirely right, and Beverley knew it, but that wasn't the point. She had to find out who and where Carlos was, and she had neither the time nor the inclination to involve the local force in an unofficial enquiry.

"Look, I told you. I am Inspector Wharton. I am a member of the police. I must have that information."

"How do I know you're not lying?"

Sweet
holy
fucking
Jesus
!

Beverley hated the Geordie accent, finding it almost contrived. "My dear, I'm not asking for the combination number of the company vaults. Nor am I interested in discovering whether the Chief Executive wears women's clothing and sticks cucumbers up his arse as a party trick. All I want to know is have you ever had an employee by the name of Carlos somebody or other and, if so, his full name and where he lives."

"There's no need to be dirty."

"This is important, love. Don't fuck me around."

"Well, really!"

Give
me
the
strength
to
cope
with
this
. "What's your name, love? I need it because I'm going to charge you with obstructing the police. This is a murder investigation, I'm on. I haven't got time for fucking jobsworths like you."

At last she made an impact. There was a pause, then, "Murder?"

"That's right. Murder. So be quick and tell me what I need to know, there's a sweetie."

It took a further ten minutes and referral to her line manager, but eventually the girl came back. There had only ever been one employee at the Leishman Centre for Neurological Diseases with the forename of Carlos — Carlos Arias-Stella. However, he had not reported in for work that day. No message, no reason given.

"You must have a home address for him."

It was a flat in the city centre. They even had a phone number for it, but when Beverley called it, she met a problem. Carlos Arias-Stella had left. The woman didn't know where he had gone and, judging from her tone, wasn't in a fit state to help her find out.

For the moment frustrated, she turned her attention to Robin Turner's widow.

*

Rosenthal called at the anonymous block of flats just as the rush hour was dying and the harsh, neon-lit contrasts of light and dark, something and nothing, presence and absence, began to bite into his eyes. His face was hardened into an expression that by losing its humanity, gained in a sort of beauty. The eyes, in shedding softness, donned clarity and lines that Leonardo might have massaged into stone; the mouth thinned the lips and accentuated the jawline, the cheekbones more noticeable. Rosenthal was never more handsome than when he was going to kill.

The journey had been long and somewhat rushed, but he had wanted this task himself while the others, located as they had been across the world, had been left to local organizations. It was a matter of pride as well as professional confidence that he do this one himself; this one, and then the final one. Still, he had always had a liking for Newcastle. Some of the best men he had ever known had come from the city or its surroundings; some of the best men who were now part of a dead past that would not let him be.

He sniffed the air, finding the sweet, cloying aroma of malt, presumably from a brewery. He hated beer, hated it as much the people who drank it. He wondered if Carlos Arias-Stella drank it; presumably he did, considering the name.

The front door was solid; wood that had recently been repainted for perhaps the twentieth time and a small panel of frosted, toughened glass. Beside it was a panel of six buttons and six small grilles, illuminated by the circular light above that was strung about by dirt-encrusted cobwebs. There was a smell of urine.

All except number four had names beside them, the letters scrawled in different shades of biro on tatty pieces of card, and then slid into tiny metal holders. Rosenthal pressed the button beside number four, having first checked that no one was in the street.

A burst of static and, behind it, a noise that might have been human, just as easily might have been Neptunian.

"I’m here to see Carlos. Carlos Arias-Stella."

More static, this time longer. Length did not lead to comprehension, though. He repeated his little speech and was again rewarded by white noise and indistinct harmonics.

"I'm sorry. I don't understand you."

Even more of the same, although it seemed to be getting angrier. "Is Carlos there?" he enquired when it finished.

As if in answer, there was a load buzz from the door in which he heard a faint click. He pushed it open, then moved quickly inside, past the two bicycles and the post that had been piled on a small table. He guessed, correctly, that flat four was on the middle of the three floors. He saw no one as he climbed the steps.

The door to flat four was open and a short, early middle-aged woman was standing in it. She was slightly overweight and she looked upset, two qualities that caused Rosenthal some amusement; fat, angry women always seemed to think themselves an irresistible force.

"That bloody speaker phone! Never worked properly, and will they do anything about it? I'm the only one who complains, of course. Everyone else seems happy to put up with it … "

While she ranted, Rosenthal was figuring options. Her presence was a complication, but not an insurmountable obstacle. The question was how much she would need to be involved. If Carlos could be persuaded out of here without her, then she would not need to be killed. If not …

"I'm here to see Carlos."

She made a face. "Not again! He's not here. He's disappeared. When I came back this evening, the little shit had packed his bags and buggered off."

Even as Rosenthal was moving forward, and pushing her out of the way he was thinking that he believed her, but that didn't matter. He had to make sure.

"What the hell are you doing?" she demanded as she stumbled inside the living room of her flat. "Listen, you'd better get out of here, mister. I'm giving you ten seconds … "

He had stopped and was assessing the flat, but now he turned, his face unchanged. With one hand that was gloved in tight, pale yellow latex he grabbed her chin in a grip that she felt move her lip. "Shut up," he advised. He didn't shout, didn't whisper.

Her eyes widened as his grip stayed, then tightened momentarily before he released her. He shut the door gently, still looking directly into her fear-brightened eyes. Without touching her again he gestured that she should go and sit in a large, leather armchair that faced the television. She complied, not daring to break eye contact.

It took him two minutes to search the flat, a further four to search through the correspondence on the kitchen table and in the letter rack by the toaster. She was telling the truth, it seemed, for neither was Carlos physically there, nor was there evidence to suggest that he still abided there.

Then he came back to her, standing in front of the television while she looked up at him as if he were a god and she the supplicant.

"Do you know where he went?"

She shook her head quickly. He had no means of checking this, unless things were going to get messy. "Are you positive?" This was asked in a silky tone that under some circumstances might have been intimate, under these was menacing.

She caught the implication. "Yes! Oh, God, yes!"

He decided she wasn't lying.

He would have gone then, but something she had said came back to him. "What did you mean, 'Not again'?"

She was only too eager to please now. Gone was the belligerent flat-owner with a weight problem. "The police telephoned. They wanted him as well."

"When?"

"Earlier this evening."

"You're sure it was the police?"

"Oh, yes. Wharton, she said her name was. Inspector Wharton."

He considered the possibilities. The likeliest was that it was Flemming posing as a police officer, but it was just conceivable that it really was the constabulary. In which case, it might be coincidence.

He wasn't trained to be optimistic. In the company he had always known, optimism had usually proved a fatal flaw. He bent down over her, his face so close to hers that he could see the hairs on her top lip. "If you tell anyone about this, I'll come back. Understand?"

She nodded.

Without looking at her again, he walked quickly from the flat, aware that her eyes were following him all the while.

*

Helena had hoped that by confession she might achieve some improvement in her mental and physical state. Ever since her discovery that Alasdair didn't exist, that Cronkhite-Canada was connected to Pel-Ebstein, she had been feeling a dreadful malaise manifest by dark depression, enervation and nausea.

Part of this had come from anger and embarrassment that she had been fooled, and fooled, it appeared, so easily. Within the space of a few days this man had penetrated defences that had hitherto proved impregnable. How had this happened? What technique had he used so effectively?

The questions were repeated endlessly throughout the day, the answers remained silent.