The Chosen Dead (Jenny Cooper 5)

by Hall, M. R.

  ‘I will,’ Jenny said. ‘What did she want to see, exactly?’

  ‘How the equipment works. She told me her father was a geneticist – back in the seventies and eighties – she said she wanted to understand how the applied science worked now.’

  ‘Did she talk about her own work at all?’

  ‘Not much. She mentioned she was writing about Africa. She said there’s a lot of politics around disease prevention there. I think maybe that’s what she was interested in – how researchers try, say, to develop a vaccine.’

  ‘Any particular kind?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘She didn’t mention meningitis?’

  He thought for a moment – or at least, gave the impression of doing so. ‘No. I don’t remember meningitis.’

  ‘What did you show her?’

  ‘Just some regular crystallography work.’

  ‘Crystallography? I’m sorry. I’m afraid this is all new to me.’

  Now on more comfortable territory, Kwan gave her a potted explanation of how he spent his days. He was a fulltime beamline scientist whose job was to assist the various research teams who came to use the equipment. His particular beamline was tuned to the highest possible X-ray frequency and used to examine biological molecules. For the purposes of the experiment, these were arranged in a crystalline array using a number of sophisticated, but standard, laboratory techniques. In a typical project, he might be assisting a team developing a vaccine to study the chemical make-up of a protein molecule. If, for example, they could determine the make-up of a protein that acted as a receptor on the surface of a bacterium, they could engineer a corresponding chemical bond that could be incorporated into a drug designed to attack it.

  This form of microbiology, it seemed, was like peering inside a lock in order to build a key to fit it. The secrets revealed by the beamlines were starting to turn the raw data of the human genome into the medicine of the future. Smart drugs engineered to attack or rebuild only specific cells would all owe a debt to the synchrotron.

  Jenny did her best to follow. It was fascinating, but none of it answered her question: why had Sonia Blake wanted to see the technology in operation?

  ‘Why wouldn’t she?’ Dr Kwan said. ‘She was an academic. She was curious.’

  ‘Did you see her or speak to her again?’

  Kwan shook his head. ‘It was just the one time.’

  ‘Have you ever heard of a man named Adam Jordan?’

  ‘No.’

  Jenny decided she found him more convincing when he was being vague. She tried him with one more. ‘What about Professor Roman Slavsky?’

  Kwan shuffled his weight from one foot to another. ‘Sure. I’ve heard of him. He’s a famous microbiologist.’

  ‘Famous for what? Excuse my ignorance.’

  ‘It’s a long time since I read about him, but as far as I remember, he’d got a long way with recombinant techniques during the eighties. He came from Russia with a large section of the human genome already decoded. He’d been made to work on a biological weapons programme, but when he was here he turned his skills as a geneticist to therapeutic medicine.’

  Jenny said, ‘Did Sonia Blake mention him?’

  Kwan said no, she hadn’t. She had been too busy asking him questions to talk about anything else. She was a bright lady. She picked things up quickly.

  Jenny glanced up and ran her eyes across the pristine tiles on the suspended ceiling.

  ‘Is there any recording equipment in here?’

  ‘No way,’ Kwan answered hurriedly. ‘No cameras. Nothing. We often do commercially sensitive work here – not today, this project is public domain – but some of our data could be worth millions, billions even.’

  The perfect place to speak in confidence, Jenny thought, as long as you trusted whoever you were talking to. ‘Thank you, Dr Kwan. I’ll take your contact details, if I may.’

  Kwan walked her back to reception at a brisk pace, eager not to continue their conversation in public. Everybody they passed seemed to nod or say hello, and they all noticed Jenny. She got an impression of a tight-knit community in which rumour would spread fast. Kwan would probably spend much of his afternoon explaining her visit to inquisitive colleagues. This was just what Leyton intended, Jenny suspected: Kwan’s punishment for bringing her here was to be cast under a cloud of suspicion.

  Jenny found herself feeling a pang of sympathy for him. The strain of conjuring half-answers to her questions had taken a visible toll. Whatever he had failed to tell her seemed to weigh heavily.

  Before he left her, Jenny said quietly, ‘I suspect you haven’t been entirely truthful, Dr Kwan, but if I’m honest, nor have I. Why don’t we talk again – somewhere you’ll feel more comfortable, and when you’ve had time to think?’

  He looked at her for a moment with eyes wide open in astonishment, as if she had given voice to his most intimate secrets.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Jenny said, and handed him her business card.

  He stuttered a goodbye and hurried away across the atrium.

  Passing through the security barrier, Jenny fleetingly caught the eye of a man waiting at the reception desk. He wore a well-cut suit with an open-necked shirt, and had a square military jaw. He didn’t look like a scientist. As she exited the building, she thought she could feel his eyes following her. From beyond the door she shot a glance back through the plate glass, but he was now looking the other way. If she had studied him for a moment longer, she would have seen him reach into his pocket and retrieve his phone.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘I’VE BEEN WONDERING WHEN you’d be back,’ Karen Jordan said. She lowered herself onto the sofa in her sitting room, holding her body stiffly, any sudden movement causing her to screw up her eyes in pain.

  ‘I thought you might like to know what I’ve found,’ Jenny said. She sat on a straight-backed wooden chair made from dark, rich-smelling African teak.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll tell me, whether I like it or not.’

  ‘I went to visit Harry Thorn at his offices,’ Jenny said. ‘He wasn’t exactly helpful.’

  ‘He never is,’ Karen said. ‘He’s a misanthrope.’

  ‘He did say two things that interested me. He mentioned that people he called “spooks” imagine his organization to be criminal because he refuses to work for them.’

  Karen Jordan gazed off into space, seeming to distance herself even further from their conversation. ‘That sounds like Harry.’

  ‘When you came to see me in my office you mentioned that there had been rumours of arms shipments hidden in aid cargoes. Is that what he’s suspected of being involved with?’

  ‘Probably. I wouldn’t know. He would have kept that sort of thing from Adam. Harry’s got broad shoulders.’

  ‘I get the impression part of you admires this misanthrope,’ Jenny said, curious to understand Karen’s evident mixed feelings towards him.

  ‘He’s a survivor. That’s got to be worthy of some respect.’

  Jenny detected judgement of her late husband in Karen’s remark. She had seen it often in the partner of a man who had taken his own life. Disbelief turned to anger, then rapidly to condemnation before emotions finally resolved to a level of acceptance. Primal laws dictated that a man was meant to fight to his last breath in defence of wife and children. Desertion through suicide was one of the worst forms of violation.

  ‘He also said that your husband’s trouble was that he took things to heart.’

  ‘Evidently.’

  ‘He didn’t tell me what precisely.’

  The corners of Karen’s mouth curled into an ironic smile. ‘If I knew, don’t you think I would have told you?’

  ‘Have you spoken with Harry Thorn recently?’

  ‘Of course I have,’ she snapped. ‘He doesn’t know why Adam killed himself any more than I do. Anyone can speculate, but that’s all it can be. None of us can know what was in his mind.’ The effort of her outburst had caused a sharp pain i
n her bruised ribs. She sat for a moment with her eyes shut tight against it.

  ‘I didn’t mean to go over old ground,’ Jenny said. ‘I was just anxious to know if you had any insights into what your husband might have become involved with?’

  ‘What do you mean – involved with? He wasn’t involved with anything.’

  Jenny trod carefully. ‘I told you about his visit to Great Shefford earlier in the evening before he died. I went there – to the filling station he visited. The girl behind the till remembered a man with a young child at about that time, but he had a young African woman with him, too, who she wasn’t sure spoke English. And then another car drew up alongside Adam’s driven by a man in his thirties. The African girl noticed him, and then apparently alerted Adam to his presence. He went out to meet him, shook hands, and then it seems they both drove their cars around to a lay-by at the back of the garage. For what purpose, I don’t know.’

  Karen looked at Jenny, her mask slipping to reveal her shock. ‘A girl? Who is she?’

  ‘I thought you might have an idea.’

  ‘No. What happened to her – did she go with Adam or the other man?’

  ‘I don’t know. But the cashier did say she behaved more like an employee than a girlfriend. It seems she was carrying your son.’

  Karen blinked, as if trying to banish the disturbing image from her mind: her child clinging to a woman she had never met.

  ‘I shouldn’t jump to the obvious conclusion,’ Jenny said quickly. ‘There’s a lot more. Would you like to hear?’

  She nodded.

  Her look of disbelief gradually turned to one of bewilderment as Jenny explained that the filling station was only a short drive from the Diamond Light Source, a facility used by the country’s leading scientists, not least by micro-biologists. This could have been dismissed as a coincidence, except that Adam’s other secret meeting had been with Sonia Blake, who had visited the building only weeks before. Although she was an academic whose expertise was in African politics, she also happened to be the daughter of a pioneering geneticist who had been mysteriously murdered in 1982. Adam had clearly been interested in the Soviet biologist, Slavsky, but the coincidences didn’t end there. Sonia Blake had died, seemingly of natural causes, but papers relating to Slavsky had been taken from her university room.

  Jenny paused, giving Karen an opportunity to assimilate what she had heard.

  ‘There’s more?’ Karen said.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Finding it hard to countenance the facts herself, Jenny explained as gently as she could that her husband’s brain tissue and cerebral fluid had been removed, and that the same thing had happened to the body of Sophie Freeman, a thirteen-year-old girl who had died of drug-resistant meningitis.

  ‘Does any of this make any sense to you?’

  ‘No,’ Karen whispered. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Was he the kind of man who normally shared things?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jenny saw something stir in her. A twitch in the muscles of her face. ‘There had been outbreaks of meningitis in areas he’d been working.’

  ‘He told you that?’

  ‘It came and went most years. I remember him saying there’s no vaccine – you can only treat the disease with drugs, lots of them. They were too expensive for a lot of districts. It was always a source of tension.’

  ‘You mean political tension?’

  ‘Medicine’s always political in Africa.’ They seemed to be sharing the same thought. ‘They become a kind of weapon.’ Pieces appeared to be falling into place for her. ‘Perhaps that’s what he witnessed – drugs being withheld? Nothing would have made him more angry.’

  ‘Where would drugs come from, typically?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Charities and governments. Britain spends a lot in East African countries – they’re all our former colonies.’

  Seconds passed in silence as they both struggled to form a narrative that would have led to Adam’s death. Jenny realized it was the first time that she had laid out the facts end to end, and it was leading to the most disturbing possible conclusion.

  ‘Sonia Blake was well connected,’ Jenny said. ‘If something was happening – if drugs were being held up for political reasons – she’s an obvious person to have been told. She might have sought Adam out as her informer in the field. What do you think?’

  ‘It’s possible. But why wouldn’t he have told me?’

  ‘Too dangerous?’

  ‘Oh God.’ The words fell from Karen’s mouth in desperation. ‘What the hell did he do?’ Her eyes travelled the room in incomprehension, as if the answer might lie in the hand-stitched African rug, or the framed photographs of grazing antelope that hung on the wall. ‘The burglars that came here – do you think that’s what they were?’

  Jenny said, ‘Did Adam keep papers at home? Has anything belonging to him gone?’

  ‘Only his computer. They took that, and mine.’

  ‘Did he back it up?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Karen’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘They knocked me out cold. It was clinical. This is government, isn’t it? He didn’t kill himself – they murdered him, didn’t they?’

  ‘It seems unlikely,’ Jenny said, but without conviction. In Adam’s line of work, it seemed to her anything was possible.

  Tears spilled over Karen’s cheeks.

  Jenny’s instinct was to try to comfort her, but hard as it was she resisted and checked herself: professional boundaries had to be maintained. She decided instead to give her a moment alone.

  ‘I’ll be out in the garden,’ Jenny said.

  She found her way along the hallway to the back door, leaving Karen sobbing fitfully. The garden extended no more than fifty feet from the house, but had been laid out to create an African oasis. The deep borders that ran around its circumference were densely planted with tall savannah grasses, some over eight feet high, that stirred and crackled with every subtle movement of the air. She took a seat at the rough-hewn wooden table and from it could see only sorghum, pampas and sky.

  She weighed the wisdom of tackling Harry Thorn with Karen’s theory and decided it would be a waste of breath. She would leave him to Karen and the courtroom. But she would have to speak to DI Watling, the detective who handed Adam Jordan’s case to her so abruptly after he was found. The speed with which he had discounted the possibility of foul play wasn’t unprecedented, but if the worst of her suspicions proved true, the decision might not have been his. It wouldn’t have surprised her to learn that he had had a call from Ruth Webley. And then there was the issue of Adam’s phone. Had it been crushed under the wheels of a truck and conveniently swept away, or had someone retrieved it? She could only wonder at what secrets it might have held. Then there was the African girl, and the man who came to the filling station – he had already taken on the guise of spy in her imagination – she had to find them. But where to begin?

  ‘Adam planted all this.’

  Jenny turned to see Karen Jordan stepping through the back door.

  ‘Even when he wasn’t in Africa he was trying to recreate it.’ She limped onto the small patch of lawn and kicked off her sandals. ‘He said going there was like going back to the source, where it all began. Where life and death slug it out most keenly. He liked to say there was an honesty in Africa – no pretence that human beings are above it all.’ The grasses leaned in a gust of wind, their dry, tough stems clicking together like a shower of falling twigs hitting stony ground. Karen pushed stray wisps hair back away from her eyes, and Jenny saw the face that Adam would have fallen in love with: soulful and dignified, but with a longing in her for a purer world than the one in which she found herself. ‘I wish I could just let him go, let him fly away on the breeze.’

  ‘There’ll be a time for that,’ Jenny said. ‘But it’s not yet.’

  Il Carretto hadn’t changed in the dozen years since Jenny had first come here with David. The same dusty gourds hung in bunches from the mock beams and the waiters, tho
ugh a little older and fatter, still moved between the tables singing along to the same Dean Martin songs that played on a continuous loop. But while the restaurant was just as Jenny expected, Sally was a revelation. She had pictured a dark, delicate, introverted girl looking to her son for solid, masculine reassurance, but the young woman sitting across the table was red-haired, forthright, and had unselfconsciously dominated the conversation. There wasn’t much Jenny didn’t know about her life history by the time they had ordered coffee, or about her wayward father and his twenty-five-year-old male lover.

  ‘I can understand Dad falling for a man,’ she said. ‘Why not? But Franky’s so neurotic and petty – you’ll just have wiped the kitchen counter and he’ll come along and do it again – and that’s what he’s always accused Mum of being.’ She spoke as if Jenny were intimately familiar with all the personalities involved. ‘I don’t know why he can’t see it.’ She grinned suggestively. ‘I guess there must be other compensations.’

  Ross shot Jenny an apprehensive glance that anticipated her disapproval, but her mind had drifted away from Sally’s story to what awaited her in the morning. She had returned to the office late in the afternoon to learn that Simon Moreton had issued an ultimatum: resume the Sophie Freeman inquest tomorrow, or be removed from the case. He had also ‘strongly requested’ that Elena Lujan’s death be dealt with in the same hearing. The press had started to renege on their promise to keep reporting to a minimum, and the delay was stoking fears of a cover-up. It had been a close decision whether to call Simon’s bluff, but in the end Jenny had agreed to do as he asked. A hurried court hearing would bring her no closer to the truth about Sophie’s death, of course, but it did present the opportunity to pose some difficult questions that might pave the way to a later resolution. But the conundrum, as ever, was how far was it safe to go?

  Sally nudged Ross with her elbow. ‘Don’t be so uptight. You told me you were cool with all that. Don’t tell me you’re a secret homophobe.’