I thanked him for his help and went to see Ogilvie. I told him about Mayberry and his face was a study in perplexity. ‘Are you sure Mayberry isn’t pulling a fast one?’
I shook my head. ‘He’s a nutter. But we’ve got him, and a psychiatrist will sort him out for us.’
‘I’ll buy that - for the moment.’ Ogilvie shook his head. ‘But I wouldn’t call psychiatry an exact science. Have you noticed in court cases that for every psychiatrist called for the defence there’s another called for the prosecution who’ll give an opposing opinion? Still, supposing Mayberry is established as a religious maniac without doubt, there are a few questions which need asking.’
‘I know. Why did he pick on Penny or the girl he thought was Penny? Did he act of his own volition or was he pointed in the right direction and pushed? I’ll see he gets filleted as soon as he can be talked to. But you’re avoiding the big problem.’
Ogilvie grunted, and ticked points off on his fingers. ‘Supposing Mayberry is crazy; and supposing he wasn’t pushed - that he did it off his own bat, and that Penelope Ashton was a more or less random choice among the geneticists. That leaves us up a gum tree, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ I put the big question into words. ‘In that case why did Ashton do a bunk?’
I was beginning to develop another headache.
I’d had second thoughts about ringing Penny: it wasn’t the sort of thing to tell her on the telephone. But before going to University College I rang Honnister and told him the score. He took it rather badly. His voice rose. ‘The wrong girl! The inefficient, crazy bastard picked the wrong girl!’ He broke into a stream of profanity.
‘I thought you ought to know. I’ll keep you informed on future developments.’
I went to University College and was about to enquire at the reception desk when I saw Jack Brent standing at the end of a corridor. I went up to him. ‘Any problems?’
‘Nary a one.’
‘Where’s Penny Ashton?’
He jerked his thumb at a door. ‘With her boss. That’s Lumsden’s office.’
I nodded and went in. Penny and Professor Lumsden looked very professional in white laboratory coats, like the chaps who sell toothpaste in TV ads. They were sitting at a desk, drinking coffee and examining papers which looked like computer print-outs. Lumsden was much younger than I expected, not as old as I was; pioneering on the frontiers of science is a young man’s game.
Penny looked up. A look of astonishment chased across her face and then she became expressionless, but I noted the tightening of muscles at the angle of her jaw and the firmly compressed lips. I said, ‘Good morning, Dr Ashton - Professor Lumsden. Could I have a word with you, Penny?’
‘Well?’ she said coolly.
I glanced at Lumsden. ‘It’s official, I’m afraid. In your office, perhaps?’
She said shortly, ‘If it is official…’ and regarded me distrustfully.
‘It is,’ I said, matching her curtness.
She made her excuses to Lumsden and we left his office. I said to Brent, ‘Stick around,’ then followed Penny who led me along another corridor and into her office. I looked around. ‘Where’s the microscope?’
Unsmilingly she said, ‘We’re working on things you can’t see through microscopes. What do you want? Have you found Daddy?’
I shook my head. ‘We’ve found the man who threw the acid.’
‘Oh.’ She sat at her desk. ‘Who is he?’
‘A man called Peter Mayberry. Ever heard of him?’
She thought for a moment. ‘No, I can’t say that I have. What is he?’
‘A clerk in a City office - and a religious maniac.’
She frowned, then said questioningly, ‘A religious maniac? But what would he have to do with Gillian? She’s an Anglican - and you can’t get more unmaniacal than that.’
I sat down. ‘Brace yourself. Penny. The acid wasn’t intended for Gillian. It was intended for you.’
‘For me!’ Her forehead creased and then she shook her head as though she wasn’t hearing aright. ‘You did say…for me?’
‘Yes. Are you sure you haven’t heard of this man?’
She ignored my question. ‘But why would a religious maniac…?’ She choked on the words. ‘Why me?’
‘He seemed to think you are tampering with the laws of God.’
‘Oh.’ Then: ‘Seemed? He’s not dead?’
‘No, but he’s not doing much thinking right now. He’s gone off into some kind of fugue.’
She shook her head. ‘There have been objections to what we’ve been doing, but they’ve been scientific. Paul Berg, Brenner, Singer and a few others objected very strongly to…’ Suddenly it hit her. ‘Oh, my God!’ she said. ‘Poor Gillian!’
She sat rigidly for a moment, her hands clasped together tightly, and then she began to shake, the tremors sweeping across her body. She moaned - a sort of keening sound - and then fell forward across her desk, her head pillowed on her arms. Her shoulders shook convulsively and she sobbed stormily. I located a hand basin in the corner of the office and filled a glass with water and returned quickly to the desk, but there wasn’t much I could do until the first shock had abated.
Her sobbing lessened in intensity and I put my arm around her. ‘Steady on. Drink this.’
She raised her head, still sobbing, and showed a tearstained face. ‘Oh, Gillian! She’d be…all right…if I…if I hadn’t…’
‘Hush,’ I said. ‘And stop that. Drink this.’
She gulped down some water, then said, ‘Oh, Malcolm; what am I to do?’
‘Do? There’s nothing to do. You just carry on as usual.’
‘Oh, no. How can I do that?’
I said deliberately, ‘You can’t possibly blame yourself for what happened to Gillian. You’ll tear yourself apart if you try. You can’t hold yourself responsible for the act of an unbalanced man.’
‘Oh, I wish it had been me,’ she cried.
‘No, you don’t,’ I said sharply. ‘Don’t ever say that again.’
‘How can I tell her?’
‘You don’t tell her. Not until she’s well - if then.’ She began to cry again, and I said, ‘Penny, pull yourself together - I need your help.’
‘What can I do?’
‘You can tidy yourself up,’ I said. ‘Then you can get Lumsden in here, because I want to ask you both some questions.’
She sniffled a bit, then said, ‘What sort of questions?’
‘You’ll hear them when Lumsden comes in. I don’t want to go through it all twice. We still don’t know why your father went away, but it seemed to be triggered by that acid attack, so we want to find out as much about it as we can.’
She went to the hand basin and washed her face. When she was more presentable she rang Lumsden. I said, ‘I’d rather you don’t say anything about your father before Lumsden.’ She said nothing to that, and sat at the desk.
When Lumsden came in he took one glance at Penny’s reddened eyes and white face, then looked at me. ‘What’s happened here? And who are you?’
‘I’m Malcolm Jaggard and I’m a sort of police officer, Professor.’ To divert him from asking for my warrant card I added, ‘I’m also Penny’s fiancé.’
Penny made no objection to that flat statement, but Lumsden showed astonishment. ‘Oh. I didn’t know…’
‘A recent development,’ I said. ‘You know, of course, of the acid attack on Penny’s sister.’
‘Yes, a most shocking thing.’
I told him about Mayberry and he became very grave. ‘This is bad,’ he said. ‘I’m deeply sorry, Penny.’ She nodded without saying anything.
‘I want to know if you or anyone in your department has been threatened - anonymous letters, telephone calls, or anything like that.’
He shrugged. ‘There are always the cranks. We tend to ignore them.’
‘Perhaps that’s a mistake,’ I said. ‘I’d like some specifics. Do you keep any such letters? If so, I want them.’
‘No,’ he said regretfully. ‘They are usually thrown away. You see…er…Inspector?’
‘Mister.’
‘Well, Mr Jaggard, most of the crank letters aren’t threatening - they just tend to ramble, that’s all.’
‘About what?’
‘About supposed offences against God. Lots of biblical quotations, usually from Genesis. Just what you might expect.’
I said to Penny, ‘Have you had any of these letters?’
‘A couple,’ she said quietly. ‘No threats. I threw them away.’
‘Any telephone calls? Heavy breathers?’
‘One about six months ago. He stopped after a month.’
‘What did he say?’
‘What Lummy has described. Just what you might expect.’
‘Did you get the calls here or at home?’
‘Here. The telephone at home is unlisted.’
I turned to Lumsden. ‘You’ve both used the same phrase - “Just what you might expect”. What might I expect, Professor Lumsden?’
‘Well, in view of our work here…’ He threw out his hands expressively.
We were still standing. I said, ‘Sit down. Professor, and tell me of your work, or about as much as you can without breaking the Official Secrets Act.’
‘Breaking the Official Secrets Act! There’s no question of that - not here.’
‘In that case, you won’t object to telling me, will you?’
‘I don’t suppose so,’ he said doubtfully, and sat down.
He was silent for a moment, marshalling his thoughts, and I knew what was happening. He was hunting for unaccustomed simple words to explain complex ideas to an unscientific clod. I said, ‘I can understand words of three syllables - even four syllables if they’re spoken slowly. Let me help you. The basis of inheritance is the chromosome; inside the chromosome is an acid called DNA. A thing called a gene is the ultimate factor and is very specific; there are distinct genes for producing the different chemicals needed by the organism. The genes can be thought of as being strung along a strand of DNA like beads on a spiral string. At least, that’s how I visualize them. That’s where I get lost so you’d better go on from there.’
Lumsden smiled. ‘Not bad, Mr Jaggard; not bad at all.’ He began to talk, at first hesitantly, and then more fluently. He ranged quite widely and sometimes I had to interrupt and bring him back on to the main track. At other times I had him explain what he meant in simpler terms. The basic concepts were rather simple but I gathered that execution in the laboratory was not as easy as all that.
What it boiled down to was this. A strand of DNA contains many thousands of genes, each gene doing its own particular job such as, for instance, controlling the production of cholinesterase, a chemical which mediates electrical action in the nervous system. There are thousands of chemicals like this and each has its own gene.
The molecular biologist had discovered certain enzymes which could cut up a strand of DNA into short lengths, and other enzymes which could weld the short lengths together again. They also found they could weld a short length of DNA on to a bacteriophage, which is a minute organism capable of penetrating the wall of a cell. Once inside, the genes would be uncoupled and incorporated into the DNA of the host cell.
Put like that it sounds rather simple but the implications are fantastic, and Lumsden was very emphatic about this. ‘You see, the genes you incorporate into a cell need not come from the same kind of animal. In this laboratory we have bacterial cultures which contain genetic material from mice. Now a bacterium is a bacterium and a mouse is a mammal, but our little chaps are part bacterium and part mammal.’
‘Breaking down the seed, mingling one kind with another, creating chimaeras,’ I mused.
‘I suppose you could put it that way,’ said Lumsden.
‘I didn’t put it that way,’ I said. ‘Mayberry did.’ At that stage I didn’t get the point. ‘But what’s the use of this?’
Lumsden frowned as though I was being thick-witted, as I suppose I was. Penny spoke up. ‘Lummy, what about Rhizobium?’
His brow cleared. ‘Yes, that’s a good example.’
He said that although plants need nitrogen for their growth they cannot take it from the air, even though air is 78 per cent nitrogen. They need it in the form of nitrates which, in man-planted cash crops, are usually spread as artificial fertilizer. However, there is a range of plants, notably the legumes - peas, beans and so on - which harbours in its roots the Rhizobium bacterium. This organism has the power of transforming atmospheric nitrogen into a form the plant can use.
‘Now,’ said Lumsden. ‘All plants have bacteria in their roots and some are very specific. Supposing we take the Rhizobium bacterium, isolate the gene that controls this nitrogen-changing property, and transfer it into a bacterium that is specific to wheat. Then, if it bred true, we’d have self-fertilizing wheat. In these days of world food shortages that seems to me to be a good thing to have around.’
I thought so, too, but Penny said, ‘It can be pretty dangerous. You have to be damned sure you’ve selected the right gene. Some of the Rhizobium genes are tumourcausing. If you get one of those you might find the world wheat crop dying of cancer.’
‘Yes,’ said Lumsden. ‘We must be very sure before we let loose our laboratory-changed organisms. There was a hell of a row about that not long ago.’ He stood up. ‘Well, Mr Jaggard, have you got what you wanted?’
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know if it’s going to do me a damned bit of good. Thanks for your time, Professor.’
He smiled. ‘If you need more information I suggest you ask Penny.’ He glanced at her. ‘I suggest you take the day off, Penny. You’ve had a nasty shock - you don’t look too well.’
She shivered. ‘The thought that there are people in the world who’d want to do that to you is unnerving.’
‘I’ll take you home,’ I said quietly. ‘Jack Brent can follow in your car.’ She made no objection, and I turned to Lumsden. ‘I suggest that any crank letters - no matter how apparently innocuous - should be forwarded to the police. And telephone calls should be reported.’
‘I agree,’ he said. ‘I’ll see to it.’
So I took Penny home.
SEVENTEEN
My relationship with Penny improved although neither of us referred to marriage. The shock of Mayberry’s error had been shattering and I stuck around and helped her pick up the pieces; from then on propinquity did the rest. She was persuaded by Lumsden to stay with her work and her life took a triangular course - her home, her work, and whatever hospital Gillian happened to be in at the time.
Mayberry was thoroughly investigated, by a band of psychiatrists and by Mansell, the department’s best interrogator, a soft-spoken man who could charm the birds from the trees. They all came to the same conclusion: Mayberry was exactly what he appeared to be - a nut case. ‘And a bit of a coward, too,’ said Mansell. ‘He was going for Lumsden at first, but thought a woman would be easier to handle.’
‘Why did he pick on Lumsden’s crowd?’ I asked.
‘A natural choice. Firstly, Lumsden is very well known - he’s not as averse to talking to newspaper reporters as a lot of scientists are. He gets his name in the papers. Secondly, he hasn’t been reticent about what he’s been doing. If you wanted a handy geneticist Lumsden would be the first to spring to mind.’
Mayberry was the deadest of dead ends.
Which caused the problem Ogilvie and I had anticipated. If the acid attack had been fortuitous why should Ashton have bolted? It made no sense.
Once Mayberry had been shaken down the guards were taken from Penny and Gillian, and my legmen were put to other work. Ogilvie had little enough manpower to waste and the team investigating the Ashton case was cut down to one - me, and I wasted a lot of time investigating mistaken identities. Ashton’s bolt-hole was well concealed.
And so the weeks - and then the months - went by. Gillian was in and out of hospital and finally wa
s able to live at home, managing on a quarter of her normal eyesight. She and Penny were making plans to go to the United States where she would undergo plastic surgery to repair her ravaged face.
Once, when I persuaded Penny to dine with me, she asked, ‘What did you find in that big vault of Daddy’s?’ It was the first time she had shown any interest. ‘Nothing.’
‘You’re lying.’ There was an edge of anger.
‘I’ve never lied to you. Penny,’ I said soberly. ‘Never once. My sins have been those of omission, not commission. I may have been guilty of suppressio veri but never suggestio falsi.’
‘Your classical education is showing,’ she said tartly, but she smiled as she said it, her anger appeased. ‘Strange. Why should Daddy build such a thing and not use it? Perhaps he did and found it too much trouble.’
‘As far as we can make out it was never used,’ I said. ‘All it contained was stale air and a little dust. My boss is baffled and boggled.’
‘Oh, Malcolm. I wish I knew why he disappeared. It’s been over three months now.’
I made the usual comforting sounds and diverted her attention. Presently she said, ‘Do you remember when you told me of what you really do? You mentioned someone called Lord Cregar.’
‘That’s right.’
‘He’s been seeing Lumsden.’
That drew my interest. ‘Has he? What about?’
She shook her head. ‘Lummy didn’t say.’
‘Was it about Mayberry?’
‘Oh, no. The first time he came was before you told us about Mayberry.’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘It was two or three days after you opened the vault.’
‘Not two or three weeks?’
‘No - it was a matter of days. Who is Lord Cregar?’
‘He’s pretty high in government, I believe.’ I could have told her that Cregar had smuggled her father out of Russia a quarter of a century earlier, but I didn’t. If Ashton had wanted his daughters to know of his Russian past he would have told them, and it wasn’t up to me to blow the gaff. Besides, I couldn’t blab about anything listed under Code Black: it would be dangerous for me, for Ogilvie and, possibly, Penny herself. I wasn’t supposed to know about that.
The Tightrope Men / The Enemy Page 41