Palindrome

by Nick Athanasou

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said, looking at him admonishingly. “You did give me a fright. I thought I heard a noise. I mean, what with everything that’s been going on.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I was looking for Samant.”

  “He’s taken the day off to go with his wife to the hospital. She’s pregnant, you know.”

  Gabriel nodded. “I wonder if you can help me then. Could I have a look at the blocks from which some of the slides I’ve been looking at were cut?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” said Tina Simms pleasantly, “though everything’s frightfully chaotic at the moment, what with the police and everything. There’s nothing to sit on.”

  Gabriel followed her to a bench opposite Samant’s office where there were several small piles of slides. Beside them was a computer into which she typed a password that brought forth a flurry of colour then a series of processing screens in which she had to click certain boxes before moving on to the next one.

  “I shan’t keep you two minutes,” Gabriel said, apologising bizarrely for the computer not responding instantly. In the old days they would have opened up a written ledger and found the information easily.

  “No problem. We sort the slides and blocks out here before filing them.” A datafile screen finally appeared. “What are the numbers?” she asked.

  Gabriel pulled out a list of slide numbers and gave it to her.

  Tina typed in one of the numbers and produced a screen on which there was a record of the location of every microscope slide and tissue block. She whisked the mouse quickly up and down the screen, scrolling through the pages, stopping occasionally to write down the reference location on a pad beside her. Once or twice, she licked the tip of her finger before replacing her hand on the mouse; it was as if she were running her hand down the pages of a real ledger.

  “Honestly I don’t know how I shall cope with poor Anna gone and Vishie not here a lot of the time. The filing has just get worse and worse. On top of that, the lab assistant who helps out has just announced that she’s quitting.”

  She pushed the mouse over to the right and the arrow on the screen pointed to an entry in one of the columns that was marked with an X.

  Very apt, Gabriel thought. “All the blocks should be filed,” said Tina, tearing out the sheaf of paper from the pad.

  “I wonder whether you would mind if I could have a quick look at them.”

  She led the way down the corridor to a store room. It was next to the staff coffee room which contained some plastic chairs and a battered coffee table littered with old newspapers and magazines. One of the papers was folded to reveal a half-completed crossword. There was an electric kettle with steam coming out of the spout and some mugs by the kitchen sink.

  “I was just about to make a cuppa,” Tina said, noticing the direction of Gabriel’s gaze. “Would you like one?”

  Gabriel shook his head and followed her into the store room. It contained several metal cabinets in which there were drawers of different shape, tall and thin for filing microscope slides, flat and wide for filing the blocks. A few slides and blocks were scattered loose on the top of the cabinet. Some were embedded in a pink plastic mould, others in white.

  “What do the different colours mean?”

  “We embed the tissues of mice that get different drugs in cassettes of a particular colour so we don’t mix them up.”

  “And these pencil marks?” Gabriel pointed to a pencil line across one corner of the block.

  “They’re to make sure that the block is always cut in the same direction,” Tina said over her shoulder. “The slides are put in the microtome with the marked corner upper right so that the section is always oriented the same way on the slide.”

  “I see,” said Gabriel.

  He watched Tina Simms forage through the filing drawer, talking all the while. “Here’s where the first on your list should be.”

  Gabriel stood beside her as she began carefully to finger through the blocks, stopping every now and then to pull one out.

  At one point she stopped, her attention evidently arrested by the appearance of something odd.

  “What is it?” Gabriel asked.

  Tina laughed. “It’s just that one of the blocks is out of order. I wonder what Samant and I were thinking. We must have been having a brainstorm.” She smiled as if to show Gabriel that he could split his sides laughing at their incompetence if he wished. He remained unsmiling as she continued her search. After pulling out a couple more blocks, she announced, “That’s the last of them.”

  Gabriel pulled out of his pocket some slides and compared them with the corresponding block. Then he looked at several of the blocks side by side together. A few lacked the pencil mark at one corner.

  “Thank you. I think I’ve seen everything I need to see.” His voice faltered for a moment then he managed to continue. “I’d put back the blocks for the moment. I may need access to them later and it’s useful to know where they are and what they look like.”

  He stood up and faced Tina Simms. He had a smile on his face. “And now how about that cup of tea you promised me?”

  Gabriel walked briskly back to his car from the Nebotec lab. There was a distinct chill in the air which made him tuck his coat arms tight round his body. He zipped up the jacket he wore over his coat. The windscreen had misted up and he had to drive through the Oxford streets for a time with the window down, making the car draughty and cold.

  Gabriel reflected with a faint shudder on how it was now clear beyond doubt that Anna’s murder had been a premeditated act, one that had been worked out carefully. Now the mystery of the letter sent to him was partly solved. Anna had realised that some of the slides of bone marrow she was looking at were not from the test mice. Some of the mice had died when given the higher dose of PLF because, as she had suspected when examining the first batch of slides, PLF caused a marrow abnormality, probably a pre-leukaemia that made the mice more likely to suffer infection or bleeding.

  That observation would have been enough to scupper Nebotec’s best laid plans to obtain FDA approval to carry out a Phase One trial with PLF. And that would have meant the collapse of the deal with the large pharma firm that Hewitt had hinted at. Possibly collapse of the company as well. And they would all have suffered from that: Hewitt, Palmer and Taylor.

  Along the road back to the hospital, the implications of his discovery seemed totally to take over his concentration and he became detached from the act of driving. Traffic was murderously slow on Oxford’s narrow roads; he followed the long row of cars in front of him, speeding up and slowing down, changing the gears of his Peugeot mechanically.

  His lips moved as he silently verbalised his thoughts and at one point he muttered aloud, “But why write to me at Boarstall?”

  There were still facts that failed to fall into order by themselves, details that were still unexplained. The diagnosis was not yet certain. You couldn’t tell a surgeon to take a leg off on what he had.

  Back in his office, Gabriel was greeted by Jane with the news that Poole had again tried to contact him. He ignored her offer to ring him and instead asked her to telephone Brook’s mobile number.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to have another word with Hewitt and co at Nebotec,” Gabriel told Brook, not bothering to reply to his customary greeting.

  He related as plainly as he could what he had noted in the slides.

  “Another thing. I’ve just had a look at the blocks from which the slides of bone were prepared in the last few experiments. Some don’t have the usual pencil mark in one corner.”

  “Which blocks don’t have it?”

  “The blocks of bone from PLF-treated mice in the last experiment, including the one that corresponds to the slide Anna Taylor was supposedly looking at when she was murdered.”

  “And the blocks of bone tissue from the previous experiments?”

  “They all have a pencil mark at the corner which means that they were cut
by the Nebotec lab staff. Someone, most likely the murderer, must have been systematically substituting samples of bone tissue from a PLF-treated mouse with those from a normal mouse. It’s possible that the processing of the tissue and the preparation of some of the slides was done in a different lab in the last experiment. I’d get your men to remove the slides and blocks of bone and other tissue samples from the Nebotec files and test them to see if they were all prepared the same way. You may spot differences in the chemical composition of the wax or stain used to prepare the slide.”

  “Who at Nebotec would have known enough to prepare a microscope slide and been able to do the cutting and staining themselves?”

  “Samant and Tina Simms certainly. Palmer and Taylor possibly — they might have done something like that in their past research. I don’t know about Hewitt but I would have thought it unlikely.”

  “They’ll all have to be questioned again,” said Brook. “I wouldn’t mention what you’ve found to anyone yet.”

  “Whatever you say. The murderer will realise something’s up though, when you take away all the blocks and slides from Nebotec. And—”

  “And whoever is innocent will as well.” Brook was one of those listeners on the phone who could not resist interrupting. “It’ll be useful both ways.”

  Gabriel picked up then put down a paper knife on his desk. It prompted his next question. “What about the murder weapon? Have you found it?”

  “No. We’ve pretty much dredged that branch of the water near Nebotec which feeds the Cherwell. It could have been got rid of somewhere else in Oxford. Or anywhere, for that matter.”

  “You’ll need it, won’t you, to nail whoever it is?”

  “It’ll certainly be more difficult to make a case without finding it. Why? Have you any ideas on that score?”

  “One or two. It very much depends on what Nick Grant tells me tonight. I’m taking him to dinner at my college.”

  “You’ll have to wine as well as dine him.”

  “I know that and I intend to,” Gabriel said, putting the best face on the situation he could.

  “By the way, would one of your lecturers, Tom Duncan for instance, have been able to make that slide?”

  “Yes.”

  “You told me that if Anna Taylor had gone ahead and applied for the Clinical Tutor job she would have been in competition with him. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And from the way you talked about her, you would have chosen her over him. Right?”

  “Possibly, but you don’t murder someone just because they’re up for the same job. You’re making a judgement on very little evidence.”

  “But a lot of experience. We’ve brought him in for questioning and he’s told us they were friends at medical school. No more than that though.”

  “So he wasn’t the cause, so to speak, of Anna Taylor’s miscarriage.”

  “He didn’t mention it. And we didn’t either. I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t as well.”

  “Is that all you have on him?”

  “There may be more. But I’ll let you know about that after we’ve completed our inquiries.”

  When Brook rang off Gabriel put down the phone. It almost immediately rang again.

  “Poole here, Adam.” The voice really needed no introduction; it was clipped and urgent; it went on and on about figures and rationalisation. Gabriel listened patiently but he took in very little of what Poole had to say. He felt somehow too exhausted to concentrate on the detail and clearly surprised Poole with his lack of comment or objection.

  “Is everything all right?” he heard him ask, approximating concern as much as he was capable.

  “Yes,” Gabriel answered. “I’m just a little busy now. But I’ll sort out what you want as soon as I can. Liz will help. Goodbye.”

  Chapter 16

  Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus

  The warden shifted a glass of sherry to his left hand and held out a knobbly hand to Grant.

  “In the same game as Gabriel, are you, eh? And you work here, do you?”

  Grant answered what he regarded as the important question first. “I’m a forensic pathologist.”

  “And you work here?” the warden persisted.

  “No, in London mostly. But Oxford sometimes — when required, that is.”

  “Which he has been recently,” added Gabriel.

  The warden, a retired ambassador, gave Grant a practised smile. “Must see a few things in your game.”

  Grant was used to that remark. He had a standard reply to it. “Mostly dead things.”

  The warden let out a little laugh. He had a plump, full-cheeked face, pink, like a baby’s bottom. Beneath his gown he wore a uniform dark grey suit, white shirt and college tie; his brush back white hair, thick and shiny, looked oddly wet, as if he had just emerged from a shower. He liked to gild his conversation with all sorts of English civilities such as “with all due respect” or “as you say”, and he perpetually wore the knowing expression of someone who is about to say something witty and clever. Gabriel found his easy manner too smooth by half; it reminded him of that assumption of superiority he so disliked in Oxford.

  “I see your friend has a sherry and you do not, Gabriel.”

  Gabriel half-smiled. “I’ve got to drive home to Boarstall.”

  The warden narrowed his eyes at Gabriel as if wondering whether even that precaution qualified him to make the journey. Then he introduced his two guests who were chatting to each other, a pretty young female postgraduate Law student and Gearing. Gabriel shook hands with both of them. Gabriel and Gearing showed genuine pleasure at meeting each other again.

  “Gearing was chairing a long, inter-college meeting about equality and access to the University. It went on for hours. Could have been worse, of course, if Gearing here hadn’t done his best to keep the agenda moving along, eh.” He laughed theatrically. “I thought the least I could do in appreciation was bring him back here for dinner.”

  “Very kind,” Gearing said.

  “Nothing, nothing at all,” the warden answered with a laugh.

  As indeed it was, Gabriel remarked to himself, as by the rules of the college the warden did not have to pay for his guest’s meal.

  “When I worked at the UN,” the warden went on, really boasting now, “I used to tell my staff that no meeting should last more than two hours. They could do worse than adopt that rule here in Oxford, eh Gearing.”

  “Committees are the same everywhere,” answered Gearing. “There are some people who feel they have to justify their existence on them by examining forensically,” he gave a nod of apology toward Grant, “a subject before talking it to death.”

  “Like a murder then,” said Grant.

  Gearing smiled. “You could say that.”

  “There are too many murderers walking around scot free,” the warden cut in, never content to be out of a conversation for long.

  “Are they Scots by any chance?” Gearing asked, looking knowingly at Gabriel.

  The warden looked uncomprehendingly toward Gabriel then Gearing then Gabriel again. It had only just dawned on him that he was not in on the real meaning of their conversation but he was unwilling to admit it.

  “Eh, yes. I’ve got Welsh blood in my family. That has its own terrors.”

  He laughed theatrically again. As far as he was concerned a wink or a joke from him was sufficient to recapture the field. Gearing and Gabriel smiled while the warden finished his sherry in one draught.

  With that mysteriously efficient talent they have of materialising from the void, one of the college butlers suddenly relieved the warden of his empty glass. The warden cocked one ear to what the butler whispered to him, raising his chin and nodding a few times.

  “Looks like they’re ready for us in hall,” his firm voice and well-oiled smile announced to his guests. “We’d better go in, eh.”

  At dinner, poor Gearing suffered in silence that unique Oxford torture of being sat b
etween diners with whom he had nothing in common. He was trapped between the warden, who sat at the head of the table, and a tall Australian Rhodes scholar. The gown of the Australian kept falling off his check sports jacket as his arms, working like pistons, tucked into a plate piled high with a large salmon steak, potatoes, carrots and broccoli. Conversation either side of Gearing was limited, His eyes were those of a martyr. He kept looking around the table, taking frequent short sips of his wine, just to have something to do. On his right, the warden ignored him, his attention being more taken with the young Law student, the only female at High Table. On his left, the Australian piston, when not eating, drinking or adjusting his gown, determinedly directed his attention away from Gearing.

  Gabriel wondered if the Australian had abandoned poor Gearing after learning that he had nothing in common with a classicist who specialised in Lycian dialects. He kept one eye on Gearing as he listened to the bored voice of Grant beside him. When it changed tone to one of curiosity he was finally snapped out of his introspection.

  “What do you have? I presume I will have to sing for my supper.”

  “Correct,” Gabriel answered. “But not too loud I hope. The weapon that was used to kill Anna Taylor—”

  “What about it?”

  “Do you think it could have been a microtome knife? It’s very sharp and has an angled blade. You said something about that, didn’t you?”

  The boredom in Grant’s voice was replaced with a sudden acuteness.

  “It’s possible. Do you have a particular one in mind? It would be useful if you did then it could be subjected to forensic analysis. Is one missing from Nebotec?”

  Gabriel shook his head.

  “Then from where?”

  “From our lab at the hospital.”

  “But who at Nebotec could have had access to it there?”

  “Palmer and Taylor supervise some research students in my department. But theoretically anyone working in the department could have taken it — if it was stolen that is. Anyway, my head technician tells me that one of our microtome knives is missing. He suspects Palmer’s students.”