Cold, Cold Heart

by Christine Poulson

  “What about the surgery?”

  “Nope. Though I do have locked cabinets for medical records and for controlled drugs. We may be a long way from home, but the same rules apply.”

  * * *

  Back in her pit-room, Katie unpacked. Deciding what clothes to bring hadn’t been much of a problem because everyone was issued with the same utilitarian gear to wear outdoors and T-shirts and jeans were standard wear indoors.

  She put up photographs on the pinboard: her parents; her brother and sister-in-law with Harry and Joel, their two little boys; Rachel and Dan with Chloe. She was soon done. It was still only five thirty, but sleep seemed impossible. She had promised to write a weblog for Chloe’s school. She was writing from the point of view of a small stuffed penguin. She propped it up against the window, got out her laptop, and began to write. “Penguin has arrived at the South Pole or very nearly. Just now it never gets dark here…”

  But she was too restless and too tired to concentrate. She got up and went out into the corridor. She wandered the base, opening doors and peering into rooms. She felt uncomfortable, as though she were prying. But she reminded herself that this was her home now and she could wander at will.

  The layout of the main accommodation module was straightforward. A wide central corridor formed the spine of the building and was divided at regular intervals by fire doors. At one end was a combined library and quiet room. She browsed the books: plenty of thrillers and crime novels, but the classics too. She had time now to read things that she wouldn’t dream of reading normally. She took a copy of Dante’s Inferno off the shelf. Well, why not? It was a parallel text. This would be an excellent opportunity to brush up on her Italian. She’d done an evening class a few years ago.

  She took it with her as she went on past the pit-rooms on either side of the corridor. Loos and showers next. Then on one side a little gym with a rowing machine and a treadmill and on the other what was clearly the communications room, their link to the outside world. Then a TV room with shelves of DVDs and a music room with a keyboard and a guitar on a stand. Next came an open space the width of the module containing the kitchen and the dining room and bar, where she and Sara had been sitting earlier. This was clearly the heart of the community.

  Then she was back in the corridor with rooms on either side. She opened a door onto a gleaming surgery. She went in and had a look around. The base doctor had to be completely self-sufficient. There was a ventilator, an anaesthetic machine, cylinders of oxygen, surgical equipment, and an X-ray machine. There wasn’t anything more sophisticated in the way of imaging equipment, no CT, MRI, or ultrasound scanner, and some of the equipment was a bit basic, though still serviceable. The X-ray machine, for example, took X-rays on film, which then had to be developed in the dark room in the old-fashioned way. But basically the surgery contained everything needed for any conceivable medical emergency. And the surgery had its own direct line to the British Antarctic Survey headquarters, so that medical confidentiality could be maintained – because after all the base doctor might have to report on the health of the base commander.

  This was Sara’s little kingdom and as Katie closed the door she felt thankful that she was only the backup doc.

  On the other side of the corridor was a food store; then came a plant generator, the room for monitoring the generators, and the kit room. That was all on this floor. A spiral staircase led to a floor above she knew housed labs and the meteorological room. She decided to leave those for later.

  She went back to her pit-room.

  There was another hour until breakfast. She was determined to stay awake and opened the copy of Dante’s Inferno. She was pleased to see that she did recognize some of the Italian. She lay down on the bed and began to read. “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita. Halfway through the journey of this life I woke and found myself in a dark forest, lost and with no idea of the way ahead…”

  Her eyes were sore. She’d got a little bit sunburned at Rothera, before she’d realized the danger. She closed them, just to rest them. Moments later she was asleep.

  CHAPTER 6

  ELY

  Rachel was woken by the beep of a text coming in on Dan’s phone. He hauled himself up in bed beside her. She was aware of him scrolling down the screen and then making a phone call. His side of the conversation was mostly a series of terse monosyllables. “Lyle? Yep… no… mmm…” and then, “Yes, yes. It’s fine. Yes, yes… what time? OK.”

  He hung up and rolled out of bed. A few seconds later, Rachel heard the swoosh of the shower. She drifted off again and woke to the smell of coffee. Dan was standing by the bed, wrapped in a towel, smelling fresh and soapy. He put a mug on her bedside table. She looked at the clock. Oh goodness, it was seven forty-five already. They must have forgotten to put the alarm on. It had been another bad night with Chloe.

  “That was Lyle,” he said.

  “So I gathered.”

  She pulled herself up on the pillows and watched him assembling his lawyer’s uniform, laying out a pinstriped suit on the bed, putting on a cotton shirt with a fine pink stripe.

  He was in underpants, socks, and shirt when the phone rang again. It was Alison, his secretary. He jammed the phone between his ear and his shoulder, while he struggled to thread a cufflink into a sleeve. Rachel beckoned him over. He sat down on the bed and offered her first one cuff and then the other, swapping the phone over to continue the discussion with Alison. “I’ll be in the office in ten minutes or so,” he said, and ended the call.

  “Thanks, love.” He leaned over absent-mindedly and brushed her cheek with his lips. “About Chloe…”

  “Do you think you won’t make it?” She couldn’t keep the anxiety out of her voice.

  “No, I’ll be there, I promise. But I might have to meet you at the hospital,” he said, as he reached for his tie.

  He pulled on his trousers and shrugged on his jacket.

  “Don’t forget to have some breakfast,” Rachel said.

  “I’ll ask Alison to go out for some croissants. See you later.” He bent to kiss her.

  To all intents and purposes she saw that he’d already gone. In his head he was at work, organizing his day, planning what could be passed on to his assistant, what could be shifted to make room for a meeting with Lyle. Rachel listened to his footsteps going down the stairs and then the sound of the door closing behind him.

  She got up and put on her dressing gown. She went into Chloe’s room. Chloe had half thrown off the covers. She tucked her back in. She went over to sit on the window seat and cradled her mug of coffee in her hands. There was ten minutes or so before she needed to wake Chloe for school.

  Their little house on Quayside looked over the marina, but the Matilda Jane wasn’t visible from here. She was moored around a bend in the towpath. They only lived on the boat in the summer.

  It was March now and just yesterday she had heard a thrush singing its heart out. There was a mist of green on the weeping willows that overhung the towpath. She thought of what Katie was missing and wished she wasn’t so far away. They were in regular email contact, but it wasn’t the same as sitting down together with a glass of wine.

  Of all her friends, Katie was the one who most understood what Chloe’s Diamond Blackfan Anaemia meant. Ever since she was a baby she had had to have a blood transfusion once a month. And with the transfusion went a risk that dangerously high levels of iron would accumulate in her heart and liver. Five times a week she had had subcutaneous infusions to shift the iron deposits. So five nights a week, Rachel or Daniel had had to put a needle into her leg or waist and tape an infusion pump to her body to deliver the therapy overnight. It was a tough regime for anyone, let alone a little girl.

  And then a few months ago, their consultant had suggested a new therapy that could instead be delivered orally.

  And this afternoon, they would learn whether or not it was working. She hadn’t said anything to
Dan, but she didn’t have a good feeling about it.

  * * *

  Daniel made his way up Fore Hill to the Market Place. People were sometimes surprised to hear that a firm of lawyers in a sleepy little place like Ely, known mostly for its cathedral, could have a global reach. But Daniel’s firm, specializing in patent law, was ideally placed close to Silicon Fen or the Cambridge Cluster, one of the most important technology centres in Europe. A thousand high-tech businesses focusing on software, electronics, and biotechnology were based there, many of them with connections to the University of Cambridge. That meant that the area also attracted venture capitalists, big consultancy firms, bankers – and lawyers.

  Lyle Linstrum was one of those venture capitalists and Daniel was curious to find out what brought him to Ely. About eighteen months ago Linstrum had been head of a biotech company and had employed Daniel in a case where there had been a dispute over which research team had made the first discovery of a therapy to combat obesity. The case had almost been concluded when Linstrum was sacked from the board of his own company.

  You can’t keep a good man down. Daniel had been sure that Lyle would soon bounce back. He had followed his progress in the financial pages of the newspapers and it was as he had foreseen: raising money, funding new ventures, was what Lyle did – and he’d gone on doing it. He had set up his own firm of venture capitalists. There were even rumours that he might be back on the board of his old company soon. He was like one of those toys with a ball for a base: when you pushed him over, he popped back up.

  Daniel reached the office before Lyle arrived. He just had time for a cup of coffee before there was a knock on his door and his secretary put her head around the door. She looked dazed. Lyle had that effect on people and Daniel braced himself.

  Lyle appeared in the doorway. He had a lean, leathery face, and was well over six foot, made even taller by the cowboy boots he was wearing. The boots, the bolo tie, the photos in the press of him riding Western style, wearing chaps, reins held loosely in his hand on his ranch in Texas: they all contributed to a public image of him as a buccaneering, larger-than-life character. The truth was more complicated. He was also a former academic, a scientist who had grown more interested in the development of discoveries than in doing the discovering himself.

  “Hey, Daniel.” He offered his hand. “Great to see you!”

  Daniel put out his own hand, resigning himself to having it gripped to the point of discomfort – if not beyond. He gestured to two chairs on either side of a coffee table and Lyle folded himself into one of them.

  “What can I do for you, Lyle?”

  “Well, it’s pretty urgent –”

  It would be. It always was with Lyle. In spite of that Southern drawl of his, he didn’t do patient or measured. He was tapping one foot as he spoke. He never sat still. He must be getting on for sixty, but you’d never have guessed it. A lot of people thought Lyle could be brash, abrasive, even downright rude. That was true enough, but Daniel liked him: what you saw was what you got. And there was something about his overflowing energy that was invigorating.

  “And you want me to drop everything else and concentrate on it,” Daniel said.

  “Well, yeah. There’s a small biotech company called Theseus that we’re planning to invest in.”

  “I’ve heard of them. A couple of years ago? They made a breakthrough in cancer research. Concerning apoptosis, wasn’t it?”

  Apoptosis was the mechanism by which a cell was programmed to destroy itself; the possibility of finding a way to trigger that selectively in cancer cells was a recent and very promising area of research. Daniel was not surprised that Lyle was keen on investing in it.

  “That’s right. A research team came up with it – a woman called Flora Mitchell was running the show and she had a postdoc working with her. Just a couple of young researchers – came across it almost by accident – that’s the way these things happen sometimes – and the university established Theseus to develop it. My, but these guys like their classical references.”

  “In this case, it’s apt. Exploring a labyrinth in order to discover and then slay the monster.”

  “Sure, sure. Exactly what those guys are aiming to do. You know the basic idea?”

  “They used an artificial virus to deliver a biochemically benign electron carrier –”

  “Yeah. Cytochrome c. It’s been shown to trigger apoptosis in lung cancer cells. Think of it, Daniel. A treatment for cancer that has none of the brutal side effects of chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Of course it’s only in vitro at the moment.”

  It’s a big jump from something working in vitro, in a petri dish in a lab, to working in an actual living being. And that would be where Lyle and his investors came in.

  Lyle went on. “Flora Mitchell got more research funding on the back of her earlier work, and it’s all looking great. They’re reaching the point where they need big bucks to take it further and develop a therapy. That’s where I come in. So far I’ve been relying on the advice given by their own retained patent attorneys. Now that I’m planning to bring in other potential investors, I need to be sure that that advice is sound and there are no potential holes in the intellectual property protection.”

  Daniel nodded. It would take a huge amount of work to develop an actual pharmaceutical product from research like this and would cost hundreds of millions of pounds, far beyond the scope of a university budget. “So now you need a second opinion. And that’s where I come in.”

  “That’s where you come in.”

  “Any problems that you’re aware of?” Daniel asked.

  Lyle raised a hand in denial. “This isn’t like the last time I employed you. It all looks hunky-dory – and I’m not anticipating any irregularities. Of course they put in a patent application as soon as they realized what they’d got, but there could be additional patents or protections that we might want to seek. Flora’s done some further work in the meantime on how the therapy could be delivered.”

  This all seemed straightforward enough. Once outside parties were considering investment there would inevitably be some fairly heavy due diligence on the patent front because no one would want to invest if there were any doubts about who owned the rights. It would be Daniel’s job to make sure that all that was in order: as well as looking at the patent application, that meant going through the lab books that had recorded the experiments.

  Lyle looked at his watch. “Got to get back to London.” He got to his feet. “So are we on?”

  “We’re on.”

  “Great. My PA will be in touch.”

  Another bone-cracking handshake followed.

  “Heard anything from Katie?” Lyle asked as he released Daniel.

  Katie had been best friends at university with Juliet, Lyle’s daughter.

  “Rachel’s in touch by email and she rings up now and then and speaks to Chloe. She seems fine.”

  “Great, great. Glad to hear it.”

  He made for the door and had his hand on the knob when he paused.

  Dan waited. He thought of this as the Columbo moment. It was surprising how often clients did this. What was presented as an afterthought was often a worry that they hadn’t quite been able to put into words or to acknowledge until the very last moment. Sometimes it was the most important part of the interview.

  Lyle turned and leaned against the door.

  “There is one thing. Flora Mitchell, the principal investigator. Very smart, very determined, very personable. A high-flyer if ever I saw one. She’ll be heading up the project and she’s part of the reason we’re prepared to dig deep for this one.” He paused.

  “And?”

  “Probably nothing. It’s just that she’s a bit elusive at the moment. Not an immediate problem, I’ve got all the documentation that we need for now. But my secretary tried to get hold of her to remind her about the meeting with investors that’s scheduled for next week. Couldn’t be done.”

  “Well, is she away?”

>   “According to the department’s administrator Flora’s holed somewhere, getting a run at some work she needs to complete. Well, OK, but she’s not even replying to emails or texts!”

  “I wouldn’t read too much into it, Lyle. Not everyone’s umbilically attached to their smartphone.”

  “I guess you’re right. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  And then he did go. Daniel walked him out and watched him climb into the red Audi that he had left right outside the office, parked on a double yellow line. Being Lyle, of course, he hadn’t got a ticket. He went roaring off down the street.

  A shadow fell across Daniel’s thoughts. What was it? Oh, yes, Chloe. That worry was never far away. He hadn’t said anything to Rachel, but he had a bad feeling about this afternoon’s meeting with the consultant.

  CHAPTER 7

  NORTH NORFOLK

  Two weeks had passed since Flora had gone. The days were growing longer. There had been rain and high winds. The garden was full of noise and movement and fascinating rustlings in the undergrowth.

  Marmaduke had made many nocturnal excursions and his bed in Flora’s suitcase was now felted with fur and lined with little twigs and dead leaves. It was beginning to resemble a bird’s nest. Marmaduke had grown leaner and fitter. With practice his hunting skills had improved. He had added rabbits and the occasional bird to his repertoire, but he was still hungry a lot of the time. And he was becoming increasingly bedraggled, his fur in clumps and tangled with burrs. He worried them with his teeth, but he couldn’t get them all out. They worked their way in close to his skin and irritated him.

  He still waited for Flora every evening. During the day between naps he lay on the bedroom windowsill and watched for a car to drive up. He began to make occasional trips to the edge of his territory to look for someone to care of him. And that was when he ran into trouble in the form of the big tom from the farm across the fields. He had to defend his territory at all costs and a fight ensued, fur flying and fearsome yowls. He saw off his enemy, but not before the tom had managed to inflict a long, deep scratch down the side of his face. Marmaduke had cleaned himself up as best he could, but the wound ached and was beginning to throb.