The Scholar

by Dervla McTiernan

  ‘Let’s start with the closure of the University,’ Cormac said. ‘How did that come about?’

  Egan nodded enthusiastically. ‘We’re renovating, as I’m sure you know,’ he said. ‘Well, we’re expanding, but the renovation is part of that. Major works on the concourse, but work all over campus. A lot of landscaping work.’

  ‘I was told asbestos was found. Was that in the concourse?’

  ‘I wish. That would have been relatively easy to deal with. No, it was in the landscaping. Wherever the landscaping contractor picked up his mulch – that we are still looking into – it was full of waste material, including small lumps of concrete that apparently contain asbestos. And that mulch has already been spread across half the campus.’

  Christ. Cormac thought about the men and women he’d had stationed outside on the other side of campus all night. ‘All right,’ said Cormac, his tone cool. ‘I’ve got two uniforms who spent the night out there. And two more who’ve been out there for the past couple of hours. Are you telling me that it’s not safe?’

  Egan held up his hands in a calming gesture. ‘No, detective, sorry, I should have been clear. I understand that the asbestos is completely stable and cannot get airborne. There’s no risk to anyone’s health.’

  ‘Well that raises an obvious question, doesn’t it?’

  Egan grimaced. ‘Yes, we clearly didn’t need to shut the campus down at all. And of course the contractor maintained it was safe from the start. Once he admitted it was there, which took longer than it should have. But the insurers insisted on taking the precaution until testing had been carried out. So we closed the campus for a day, had the testing done, and thankfully confirmed what we expected – there is no trace of asbestos in the air. We’re still having the whole lot dug out and removed, which will take about a week.’ Egan eyes had glazed over, his mind had gone down a rabbit hole of university planning. ‘A major hit for the contractor, but that’s what he gets for taking a short cut. And of course we made sure he was well insured and solvent, before we appointed him.’ He looked back at Cormac, and spoke more briskly. ‘Which isn’t always guaranteed, particularly these days.’

  ‘When did you make the decision to close the campus, and how and when did you notify the students?’

  ‘It all happened on Thursday afternoon. The decision was taken by close of business, and an e-bulletin was sent to the students that evening, and again early the following morning.’

  ‘An e-bulletin.’ It wasn’t exactly a question.

  ‘Yes. An email, basically, to their student email accounts. We also posted a notice on all student electronic noticeboards, and paper copies around campus of course.’

  Cormac was taking notes. ‘What time did the email go out?’

  Egan tapped at his keyboard, clicked something. Cormac couldn’t see the screen from where he was sitting, but Egan was able to give him the times – just after 5 p.m. on the Thursday and again at 7 a.m. the following morning – and offered to forward the original email to Cormac.

  ‘I can’t give you student email addresses, of course, but you won’t expect that.’

  Cormac didn’t comment. Data protection legislation might be good for human rights, but it was a bastard for police work.

  ‘And just like that, it was enough? Not a student out of how many thousand showed up?’

  ‘Four thousand, six hundred and thirty-four, give or take a recent dropout,’ Egan said promptly. ‘But yes. It’s the emails that do it. Every student has a student email account, and every student has a phone. We manage virtually all the university communication online these days. And I think most of them took it as an excuse for a mini-Rag Week. I’m told many of the off-campus bars and half of the pubs in the city were full by the afternoon. We had people at the campus entrances all day, to keep visitors from straying inside, but I understand that very few students showed up. And once the results came in we took security down too.’

  ‘What time was that at?’ Cormac asked.

  Egan glanced towards his screens. ‘I’ll have to check exactly what time they stood down. I know I gave the order around 5 p.m.’

  ‘So some time after security stood down, people could come and go on campus without being challenged. What about college buildings. Did you open those?’

  Egan shook his head. ‘The concourse would usually have been open until nine, the library twenty-four hours at this time of year, and some of the computer labs until nine p.m., or later by special arrangement of the relevant head of faculty. But the security staff we usually have on to manage the buildings worked extra shifts to manage the crisis. I wasn’t willing to ask people to work late that day, so we kept everything shut down until this morning at the usual times.’

  ‘So no one could enter or leave a university building last night? They were completely locked down?’

  Egan stood up, pointed to an expensive-looking coffee machine at the side of the room. ‘Coffee?’ he asked. When Cormac declined Egan made a cup for himself, talking all the time. ‘We host a couple of private labs on campus. I understand some of the researchers can access those out of hours. But otherwise, yes, the buildings were completely locked down.’

  ‘The woman who died last night, our initial impression is that she was young – probably late teens or early twenties. There’s a strong possibility that she was a student here. She was carrying another student’s ID.’

  Egan nodded seriously. ‘Carline Darcy’s.’

  Cormac raised an eyebrow. ‘Who gave you that information?’ he asked baldly. Not Murphy – Cormac was certain he would want to keep talk of a Darcy connection to a minimum.

  Egan leaned forward, adopted the mien of someone passing on a confidence to a trusted friend. ‘I had a call last night from an associate of John Darcy’s. Understandably upset about last night’s misunderstanding.’ The barest suggestion of irritation from Egan, well hidden. ‘Wanted to read me the riot act, I’m afraid. Concerned about campus security. Reasonable, really, given the circumstances.’

  Cormac wanted to ask more about the university’s relationship with John Darcy and his company, but he didn’t want to get sidetracked.

  ‘Our priority now is to identify the girl. Would you know if a student was missing?’

  Egan shrugged. ‘There’s no way to tell, unless someone reports it. We take attendance for tutorials, but not for lectures, and even tutorial attendance is not recorded centrally. If an undergrad misses more than five tutorials their tutor is supposed to notify their lecturer, and the student is given a warning but it’s not a process that is strictly followed. And post-grads and PhD students aren’t monitored at all.’ He paused, glanced again towards his computer screen. ‘We have twelve hundred students living in residence at the university, but we don’t monitor their comings and goings.’

  Something about Egan was irritating Cormac. For all his superficial concern, it was clear that Egan cared only about one thing.

  ‘I’m going to need you to send out another email,’ Cormac said. ‘Can you ask every student to check on their flatmates, and if someone is missing from last night, to email your office, or this address?’ Cormac took a card from his wallet with his email address and number and handed it over. Egan took the card and examined it. ‘It really is urgent, Professor Egan. The sooner you send the message the better.’ And it was Cormac’s turn to glance towards the keyboard.

  ‘I’ll send the message, detective, but you do realise last night was Friday night? You’re going to get a bunch of emails about friends who will turn out to have gotten lucky at a bar.’

  ‘Tell them to call the friend first then, but if the call isn’t answered straight away, I want to know. Tell them not to delay.’

  Without further comment Egan pulled the keyboard towards him and started to type. When he’d finished the email he turned a screen so that Cormac could read and approve the wording. That done, he pressed send.

  ‘Thank you for your help,’ Cormac said. ‘We’ll be on campus thr
oughout the day doing local door-to-door, and we may put up some posters. I’ll need the names of the researchers who have access to the private labs, by the way. Do you have that information?’

  For the first time, Egan hesitated. ‘I have … or at least I have the names of those who are employed by the university and also have a relationship with Darcy Therapeutics. But that list is not complete. Darcy Therapeutics employs many staff members who are not on the faculty. Like your Emma, for example. I’d be happy to provide you with the list I have, but I’m afraid I will have to see a warrant first.’

  Cormac’s shoulders tensed but Egan’s body language was relaxed, conversational. There was no reason for him to know that Emma was his partner. That information had to have come from Brian Murphy. But why? To smooth Cormac’s path into the university? Maybe. But hearing her name in this room, in this conversation, felt like a threat.

  Egan stood. ‘You have my number. Call me if and when you need anything else.’

  Cormac was almost at the door when Egan spoke again. ‘Detective? I presume it won’t be necessary to involve Carline Darcy any further in this matter?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘It’s not my place to tell you how to do your job, of course, but it seems that she was brought into this matter due to an unfortunate misunderstanding, and it shouldn’t be necessary to interview her again. As I said, I’m more than happy to assist in any way I can.’

  Cormac looked at him for a long moment, long enough to embarrass the man if he could be embarrassed. If he was, he didn’t show it, just waited.

  ‘Quite right, Professor,’ Cormac said. He watched a hint of relief creep into Egan’s face. ‘It’s not your place.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Emma opened the door to Fisher’s knock almost immediately, a mug of coffee in her hand. She looked behind him, as if expecting to see Reilly, then paused.

  ‘Just you?’ she asked.

  ‘Just me.’

  She stepped back and led Fisher into the kitchen. He had to remind himself, firmly, to keep his eyes off her arse and to take in the house instead. Emma Sweeney was gorgeous. Distractingly gorgeous. He’d seen her, what, three times now? Each time she’d come across as low key, casual, not particularly keen to draw attention to herself. Today she wore jeans, a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up. No makeup, or not much of it anyway. But she had a body that was pretty much perfect. Curves in all the right places.

  ‘Coffee?’ she asked.

  ‘Please. Milk and one sugar if you have it.’

  Emma flipped the switch on the kettle, then put two slices of bread in the toaster. ‘Have you eaten anything? I’m starving. I’ve been at the lab all day, so nothing since lunch.’ She moved what must be her coat – it was green wool, not exactly Reilly’s style – off a chair for him and indicated that he should sit.

  Fisher settled in, put all thoughts of her looks firmly out of mind.

  ‘What are you working on?’ he asked.

  Emma took a mug from a cupboard and milk from the fridge as she answered. ‘I work in biotechnology. Medical devices. We’re running tests at the moment.’

  ‘Sounds interesting.’

  Emma laughed, shook her head. ‘Everyone says that, before they change the subject.’ She made the coffee and handed him the cup, pulled a stool around so that she could sit opposite him. This close, he could see a silvery scar that ran along her jaw-line, another at her temple.

  ‘I’m interested, really. The DS says you’re doing really high-tech stuff.’

  She took a sip of coffee. ‘It is interesting, actually, to me at least, and to quite a few others if we’re successful. Essentially, we’re working on something that would be a bit like an artificial kidney, using silicon nanotechnology. It uses the same processes that were developed by the microelectronics industry for computers.’

  ‘An artificial kidney. To replace dialysis?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And you’ve made one?’

  ‘We’re getting closer. My team has designed the little chip that forms the basis of the technology, but there are still some challenges. That’s why we’re in Galway. My colleague Alessandro – he’s our biomedical engineer – Alessandro is working with me, using computer programs to study the prototype’s fluid dynamics and further refine the channels for maximum blood flow efficiency. Getting blood flow right is essential if we’re going to make this thing work, and it’s incredibly challenging. The other challenge is that we need to layer the device with living kidney cells, that can distinguish between toxins that need to be flushed from the body, and nutrients that should be absorbed.’

  She was more animated when she talked about her work, sitting up straighter. She held her hands up and layered one on top of the other to demonstrate their work with kidney cells. Her enthusiasm was contagious – Fisher found that he’d sat up straighter, that he was leaning forward in his seat as he listened.

  ‘That bit is really challenging,’ she continued. ‘We can grow kidney cells in the lab easily enough, but the process after that – layering the cells on the device, and building a membrane – it’s never been done in the way we want to do it. And then we have to permeate the whole device with a drug that has to be released slowly, slowly, slowly into the blood stream. So very difficult to get right. Fortunately we have a bit of a head start with that.’ Emma stood up and left the room without explanation, returning a moment later with a copy of a technical magazine in her hand, put it in front of him.

  ‘There’s an article in there about our device,’ Emma said. ‘If you’d asked me to explain our research a month ago I couldn’t have, not really, but patent applications have been updated and we’re going public with some of our progress, so it’s not so very hush hush.’

  Fisher pulled the magazine a little closer, looked it over. There was a photograph of an older man in a lab coat on the front cover.

  ‘That’s James Murtagh,’ Emma said, pointing to the picture. ‘He’s head of the lab I work out of, and James did all the early work on the slow-release drug, years ago really.’

  Fisher nodded, turned a page, then asked, ‘You work late a lot then?’ It wasn’t subtle, but he had a job to do.

  Emma curled her hands around her coffee cup, took a breath. ‘Yes. When we’re testing I need to be there at odd hours sometimes.’

  ‘Can you tell me about last night?’

  ‘I went in pretty late. I was working at home most of the day, writing an article that we’re planning on submitting to The Lancet. I was pretty close to finishing up but I needed something from the lab to complete the section I was working on, and I didn’t want to leave it until the following day. I wanted to get it down on paper while the logic of it was fresh in my mind.’

  Fisher nodded. ‘Why don’t you start from when you arrived at the college. What you saw, what you did.’

  Emma took a deep breath. Her expression tightened into one of concentration, like someone about to take an important exam, determined not to miss a single question.

  ‘I always go by Newcastle Street, and turn into the campus by the Distillery Road entrance. You know the way?’

  Fisher nodded again. He had seen it all the night before.

  ‘So Distillery Road splits into two. One fork continues down to the laboratory, and the other turns right and leads down towards the library and the chapel car park. I took the right turn.’

  ‘You didn’t go directly to the lab?’

  Emma shook her head. ‘There’s no parking down there. We always park in the chapel car park. So I took the turn, and was just about to take the entrance to the car park when I saw her, just lying there.’

  ‘You didn’t realise that the university was closed?’

  ‘No. The university sent out an email alert … you heard about the asbestos scare?’ She waited for his nod, then continued. ‘Well, the university sent out more than one alert, actually, but I didn’t see them until this morning because I had my email turned off ye
sterday. I often turn it off when I’m working on something that requires a lot of focus. So I never got the message that the campus had been closed. Even if I had, it wouldn’t have stopped me going to the labs, probably. I have a swipe key for access after hours.’ Emma’s voice grew quieter as she spoke.

  ‘Finding the body must have been very traumatic for you,’ Fisher said.

  She was silent for a moment. ‘I thought it was a student who had had too much to drink. It wouldn’t be the first time some kid drank too much and fell asleep on the side of the road. Did you hear about that first year in UCC last year? Died from exposure after a Christmas party?’

  Fisher shook his head.

  ‘Well, I thought it might be something like that.’ Her expression darkened. ‘Or, you know, the victim of a rape. I stopped the car, then I got out to check. When I got closer I saw how … twisted she was. So unnatural. And then I saw her poor face.’ Emma shook her head, blinked back sudden tears.

  ‘And that’s when you called Sergeant Reilly?’ Fisher asked.

  ‘I thought I should check to make sure that there was no pulse. Thought maybe I should do CPR, you know? So I went right up close, put my fingers to her neck.’

  ‘Did you do CPR?’

  ‘No. It was obvious it was too late. There was no pulse. And her injuries seemed far too serious.’

  Fisher nodded. ‘After you confirmed that the victim was deceased, what did you do then?’

  ‘I called Cormac. Straight away. Then I got back into my car and sort of reversed it, put it in the centre of the road and turned on my hazard lights.’

  ‘You moved your car?’ Fisher was thinking about the forensics. There had been no trace of the victim’s blood on the car. Emma must have stopped far enough back that she hadn’t driven over any trace evidence. She had been lucky.

  Emma nodded. ‘I wanted to stop anyone else from driving down. What if they hit her again? It was pretty dark. I thought it would have been easy to miss her until it was too late. And I couldn’t bear that to happen. So I drove back out onto the road and parked in the middle, put my lights on.’ Emma’s eyes were on his face. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Did I do something wrong?’ Her face creased in distress. ‘Did I mess up some evidence?’