The Devil's Landscape

by Ken McClure

‘Not in?’ Steven exclaimed.

  ‘She’s over at Jason’s.’

  ‘Jason?’

  ‘Her boyfriend.’

  ‘Her what?’

  ‘Steven, she’s a teenager. It happens, he’s a very nice boy.’

  ‘She’s a ch . . .’

  ‘No, she isn’t, she’s a young woman and a very sensible one if it helps.’

  Steven struggled to get over the shock but finally said reluctantly, ‘Suppose you’re right, you usually are.’

  ‘Thank you, I am in this case.’

  Steven looked at his watch then asked anxiously, ‘How will she get home?’

  ‘Jason’s dad is driving her over.’

  ‘Good . . . shall I try tomorrow?’

  ‘She has karate, but she’ll be in by eight.’

  ‘Right,’ said Steven distantly. He put down the phone, suddenly feeling very old.

  Tally called while he was pouring a whisky. ‘How’s your mum? He asked.’

  ‘Sober, have you been drinking?’

  ‘How on earth? . . .’

  When Tally stopped laughing she said, ‘A lucky guess. Susan called me. She was worried that you were upset about Jenny having a boyfriend.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling the monstrous regiment is ganging up on me?’

  ‘I know she’ll always be your little girl, Steven, but she’s growing up. She’s a teenager and she has started to notice boys. She’s also a very well brought up young lady and you have nothing to worry about.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Steven conceded.

  ‘I do say so. Mum’s fine, I’m planning on coming home tomorrow. Now tell me about your day.’

  ‘Bad doesn’t begin to cover it. Barrowman’s still missing, John’s on a collision course with MI5 and someone planted an idea in my head that just won’t go away.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  Steven told her what Tyler had casually pointed out about Dorothy Lindstrom’s post docs.

  ‘Do you think he did it deliberately?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then that must mean that he thinks there was something dodgy about the American deaths?’

  ‘It was something he mentioned as we parted company so I didn’t have the chance to quiz him, but I’ve asked Jean to dig up what she can.’

  ‘You could also ask her current American post-doc, she must have been there at the time of the fire?’

  ‘You’re right. Maybe I’ll do that while John is bending the ear of the Home Secretary about Five’s refusal to talk.’

  ‘Suppose she refuses too?’

  ‘He won’t take that lying down. You know what he’s like about Sci-Med’s right to investigate without government obstruction.’

  ‘Could be a big day tomorrow,’ said Tally.

  ‘It will be, you’re coming home.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Smoothie strikes again,’ laughed Tally. ‘I’m all of a quiver.’

  ‘Love you.’

  ‘Love you too.’

  In the morning Steven decided to wait until Jean had come up with a file on the American deaths before talking to Jane Lincoln. He would use that as a primer to highlight any questions he thought needed asking. In the meantime, he would visit Lucy Barrowman who he found alert and looking much better than last time. ‘You’re a quick healer.’

  ‘Just as well,’ said Lucy wryly.

  Steven saw once again the strength of Lucy Barrowman’s character. She’d had time to think about things and, unlike many women, she wasn’t going to search for excuses for her husband’s awful behaviour. He sensed that Barrowman had already been consigned to yesterday.

  ‘Have the police found him yet?’ she asked.

  Steven shook his head. ‘He’s completely disappeared.’

  ‘Maybe they aren’t looking hard enough,’ Lucy said with barely disguised bitterness.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘The whole mess,’ said Lucy. ‘Secret prisons for the criminally insane that no one – not even the government of the day – is supposed to know about, MPs using leaked information to create a big scandal for their own ends. Liberal lefties full of concern for the criminals rather than their victims. My husband attacking me after getting involved with these people. I’m sure there are those in power who just see it all as a huge embarrassment and who would like the whole damned thing to disappear.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Steven agreed, ‘and maybe it will. I hear that Mrs Leadbetter’s concern for the denizens of Moorlock Hall is not being shared too deeply by the general public. That being the case, the papers will drop it and move on.’

  ‘Good.’

  Steven changed the subject. ‘The Lindstrom lab has had a chance to examine Owen’s notes and computer files . . .’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The results of his studies on psychopathic killers in Carstairs, Rampton, Broadmoor and all the other places he visited are there with one major exception.’

  ‘Moorlock Hall?’

  ‘Correct. He’s obviously hidden anything to do with Lawler.’

  ‘The special one,’ said Lucy

  ‘The one he thought was special from the outset,’ agreed Steven. ‘Dorothy is pleased with what he came up with from his work on the others and thinks it will all be publishable so she’s not too concerned that one patient is missing.’

  ‘I take it Owen didn’t talk to her about Lawler?’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he do that?’ asked Lucy looking genuinely puzzled.

  ‘I think he’s discovered why Lawler is special – a major discovery that he wants to keep to himself and get all the credit for when it’s published.’

  ‘All this is about ego?’ Lucy exclaimed.

  ‘It’s about people.’

  ‘Yeah, they’re great . . .’

  ‘And now for the big question . . . have you any idea where he might have hidden his material on Lawler?’

  ‘’If I did I’d gladly tell you, but he didn’t confide in me at all. I suppose he must have loaded it on to some computer cloud.’

  ‘Possible,’ Steven agreed, ‘but I tend to think that he wouldn’t put all his eggs in the one basket to quote you quoting him. I think he’d keep something more tangible than a cloud account somewhere.’

  ‘Like a disk in a bank vault?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I’m not sure if he’d know how to go about that, I wouldn’t. It’s something you see in the movies.’

  Steven smiled. ‘Used by rich people to hide money and valuables from the tax man.’

  ‘We never had that problem,’ said Lucy with the faintest tinge of wistfulness in her voice.

  ‘Well, if you think of anything let me know,’ said Steven getting up to go.

  Lucy’s expression froze, causing Steven to ask, ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I er . . . don’t have your number . . . I mean I don’t have your card any more . . .’

  ‘Steven closed his eyes for a moment as the awfulness came back. ‘God, I’m sorry,’ he said, leaving one on the bedside table.

  ‘Like I said,’ said Lucy, ‘it wasn’t your fault.’

  FIFTEEN

  Steven accepted the slim file holder that Jean Roberts handed to him on arrival. ‘Such a sad business,’ she said.

  Steven agreed and they spoke for a few moments about the tragedy before Steven asked about the whereabouts of John Macmillan.

  ‘He’s with the Home Secretary as we speak.’

  Steven nodded and said, ‘I’m not sure which one to feel sorry for.’ He took the file off to the library and settled down to read.

  Under the heading of Yale Fire Tragedy, he read that Dr Paul Leighton and Dr Carrie Simpson, both aged twenty-six, had died in a late-night blaze in the laboratory where they worked as members of Professor Dorothy Lindstrom’s research group at Yale University. A photograph of a missing window surrounded by blackened stonework pinpointed the location of a second-floor l
ab. The cause of the fire was under investigation. Two other newspaper articles reported much the same thing. A smaller article from an inside page and dated two weeks later recorded that the fire department had found a leak in a gas supply pipe to have been the cause of the fire.

  Steven continued reading through cuttings taken from provincial papers published in the respective areas where the two had grown up. Both had been the pride of their families, having excelled at high school and college and having gone on to do PhDs and gain prestigious post-doctoral positions at Yale University where a glittering career had been predicted for both. Steven put the cuttings gently to one side, sad stories but nothing to add substance to why Tyler had made the comment he had . . . or maybe it was he who had read too much into it and it had been meant to be taken at face value.

  Steven examined the last two cuttings, both written around the time of Dorothy’s announcement that she was leaving Yale to move back to the UK. One had gone for the human-interest angle, concentrating on how upset Dorothy had been by the tragedy, fully understanding her desire to move away and start afresh, but the other had chosen to dwell on how upsetting this decision had been for other members of the group who felt let down. One aggrieved student however, had pointed out that something like this had been coming for some time as all had not been well in the lab before the fire: there had, he claimed, been some serious friction between Dorothy and her senior researchers.

  ‘Well, well,’ murmured Steven. ‘There you are . . .’

  Steven drove over to Capital University, ostensibly to ask Dorothy how the trawl through Barrowman’s files was going but mainly to engineer the chance to speak to Jane Lincoln. He had expected Dorothy to ask about Barrowman and be anxious to know how the hunt for him was going. Instead, he found her elated that she had uncovered enough data and results in Barrowman’s files for at least three papers in decent journals, something she felt her backers would be pleased with.

  ‘Well done,’ said Steven. ‘that must take some of the pressure off.’ It must be good to know you don’t actually need Owen Barrowman in person to secure funding.’

  For one awful moment Steven thought Dorothy had read his mind. She seemed to stare at him before asking, ‘Have the police found Owen yet?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Let’s hope he gets the help he needs when they do.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Steven put an end to the awkward pause and went on to tell Dorothy that the Sci-Med lab was currently examining the computer Barrowman used at home. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as they’ve finished. In the meantime, I was wondering if I might have a word with Jane Lincoln?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Dorothy, ‘although I don’t think she and Owen were great friends.’

  Steven was happy with the misunderstanding surrounding his reasons. ‘No matter, I don’t think I’ve had a chance to speak to her before. It would be good for me to know all the members of your group.’

  Dorothy nodded and went off to fetch Jane. ‘You two can use the seminar room,’ she said when the pair returned.

  ‘I’m not sure I can help you,’ said Jane as they sat down, ‘I didn’t know that much about Owen’s work.’

  ‘Actually, it wasn’t that I wanted to talk to you about.’

  The smile – which Steven had found open and honest – faded from Jane’s face leaving slight bemusement. ‘Really?’

  ‘I understand you were with Dorothy’s group in the USA at the time of the fire at Yale?’

  ‘Yes, it was my first post doc position, I’d only been there a few months.’

  ‘It must have been a terrible time.’

  ‘It was, but I think Dorothy is the one you should be speaking to . . .’

  ‘I understand she took it very badly at the time and I didn’t want open up old wounds. I thought I’d ask someone who was fairly new to the lab and wasn’t so personally involved . . .’

  Jane swallowed as if going into defensive mode, but Steven suspected this was for ethical concerns rather than anything to do with guilt. ‘What is it you want to know?’

  ‘The two senior post-docs who died in the fire, they were working in the lab at night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know what they were doing?’

  ‘It’s not at all unusual for researchers to be in the lab at night,’ said Jane. ‘We all do it.’

  ‘Can you be more specific about what they were doing?’

  ‘I understand they were repeating some experiments to confirm earlier findings.’

  ‘Earlier findings . . .’ said Steven, hoping that the pause might encourage Jane to say more. When it didn’t, he changed tack. ‘I’ve been going through the newspaper reports from the time and a few articles written around the time of Dorothy’s decision to leave the USA,’ he said. ‘I came across a suggestion of some bad feeling between Dorothy and her senior post-docs before the fire. Do you know anything about that?’

  ‘These things happen.’

  ‘Do you actually know what the problem was?’

  Jane was clearly uncomfortable with the line of questioning and Steven could see that she was struggling with fears of being thought disloyal, but she was on the hook and that was where she would stay until she came out with all she knew.

  ‘Paul and Carrie were excited about their latest work and were keen to publish their findings - they were confident that they’d come up with a major breakthrough, but Dorothy said no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She didn’t believe them.

  ’But surely, they must have shown data, facts, figures?’

  ‘They did but Dorothy wouldn’t have it. She insisted mistakes must have been made and wouldn’t allow them to proceed. She gave them a lecture about how scientists had a social responsibility as well as a scientific one to make sure their conclusions were beyond all doubt. She was adamant she didn’t want to be subject to the criticism that scientists often announce findings without any thought being given to the consequences.’

  ‘Handing matches to the baby,’ said Steven.

  ‘Exactly.

  ‘So that’s why the two post docs were repeating their work in the lab that night?’

  ‘Not quite . . .’ said Jane. Dorothy had insisted that their work was flawed and shouldn’t be repeated. She asked Paul and Carrie to work on something else.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Paul and Carrie felt sure that their work was watertight but accepted they had to do what they were told. You don’t want to make an enemy of someone as important as Dorothy. They started out on a new project but decided to repeat their original work at night, maybe hoping to convince Dorothy to change her mind.’

  ‘Instead they died.’

  ‘Two nice people, two brilliant scientists at the very beginning of their career, an absolute tragedy.’

  ‘Do you actually know anything about the findings that caused all the trouble?’ Steven asked.

  Jane adopted a reluctant expression but continued. ‘Some of us working in neuroscience had known for a while that there was danger lurking on the horizon, especially those of us with a foot in both pharmacology and neuroscience. On the one hand, we studied human behaviour and on the other control of it. Using appropriate drugs, we could make a violent man passive, a calm man aggressive, a sad man happy, a happy man sad. The more we learned the more we could change things through the use of drugs. But of course, science doesn’t stop there. We had to know more about what the drugs do . . . what pathways they follow . . . we always have to know more . . .’

  ‘And that’s where the danger lies?’

  ‘We may not like what we find.’

  ‘Did Paul and Carrie find out something that fell into that category?’ asked Steven.

  Jane took a deep breath and said, ‘In spades. They came up with a series of results that challenged everything the human race has always believed about itself – that we are all individuals with self-determination and decision-making powers, perhaps made in the im
age of God and harbouring a soul if you’re religious. Their results showed that we as human beings were only individual in the sense that our biochemical make-up varied from one person to another. We were little more than a collection of cells and chemical reactions, something which could be altered at will with the application of the correct knowledge – something which we were fast accumulating. It wouldn’t be long before we could alter every aspect of a human being.’

  ‘Maybe even create one?’

  ‘Given time.’

  ‘I can understand why that could upset a whole lot of people . . .’ said Steven.

  ‘Dorothy is a committed Christian,’ said Jane filling in the blank. ‘Paul and Carrie’s results contradicted just about everything she’s ever believed in.’

  ‘I can understand her reluctance to believe them.’

  ‘I think the questioning of her religious beliefs might have been as big a factor in her mental collapse as the deaths of Paul and Carrie.’

  ‘How about now, is she still a committed Christian? Steven asked.

  ‘I think so . . .’

  Steven was interested in Jane’s pause. His expression suggested he was waiting.

  ‘A Roman Catholic priest appeared in our temporary lab one day at Yale. He was in Dorothy’s office when I came back early from lunch and she was shouting at him.’

  ‘Did you hear what the argument was about?’

  Jane shook her head. ‘Not really. I just remember Dorothy shouting, “No way.” then she saw me through the glass and didn’t say any more. The pair of them emerged some ten minutes later looking a bit guilty and Dorothy introduced me to the priest whom she said had been a great comfort to her, Father Liam Crossan.’

  ‘Strange,’ said Steven. ‘Did Dorothy talk much about her religious beliefs?’

  ‘Almost never,’ Jane replied. ‘I suppose she knows what most scientists feel about religion. She keeps it as a very personal thing.’

  ‘And then she made her big decision about the future of her research?’ said Steven.

  ‘Her big announcement,’ agreed Jane, ‘A change of field and a move to a new country. Although she never said as much at the time, I suspected she had decided to check out Paul and Carrie’s findings by moving the work on to the next level.’