“Did she tell anyone about this?”
“I pressed her on that, and eventually she admitted that she had let something slip. She got drunk at a party and found herself talking to Langstaffe’s research partner, Johnson-Marsh. She commended him for good work and told him that she couldn’t understand why the paper had been turned down. She says he could have worked out for himself that someone more important than her must have given it a bad report – and that he was probably capable of working out who that person might be.”
“And then worked out that Cameron had passed on his and Kieran’s research to Flora. Perhaps he went to confront her and ended up killing her.”
“It’s a possibility. But we still don’t know where the hell he is, do we? I’m going to the police with this.”
* * *
Daniel decided to take an early lunch. He needed to get out of the office and think about what Lyle had told him. He told his secretary that he’d be back in an hour, groped for his crutch, and made his way out into the cathedral close.
Clouds scudded across the April sky. For a moment he had the sensation that it was not they, but the cathedral that was moving, as though it were some vast ship swaying at anchor. He knew that Rachel often went in to sit in the cathedral and say a prayer. He tended to cross the threshold only for special events like midnight mass, but today he felt drawn to it. Perhaps that is where most of us do turn, when it comes to matters of life and death, he thought.
He made his way slowly across the green. He was more used now to his crutch and the swelling was going down on his hand, too. But still he hated being in plaster. It was like being hobbled – or having a ball and chain, frightening almost to have his freedom of movement curtailed. He felt an affinity with all those who were halt and lame and was humbled. He vowed never again to take his health for granted.
Inside the cathedral the sound of his crutch echoed on the flagstones. He struggled to find his resident’s pass in his wallet, showed it at the ticket desk, and walked down the aisle. He wanted somewhere quiet to sit and saw that there was no one in Bishop Alcock’s chapel. He went in. It was a small, dark chamber, crammed with carved and bristly canopies. He read a notice that told him that they had come from some other chapel, so that was, no doubt, why the scale was all wrong. In the dim light he seemed almost to make out skulls in the busy details of the carvings.
He sat down. He yawned and ran his hand over his face. They’d had another bad night with Chloe. He found himself thinking not of work, but of the accident that could so easily have taken his life. We think we are in control, but we aren’t. It had been a mistake to live in fear of what might happen if Rachel got pregnant. Nothing is ever a hundred per cent safe. He knew that now.
The already dim light in the chapel was fading and pools of darkness were forming. Rain had been forecast.
When he got home this evening, he was going to tell Rachel what he had learned. Life is short and unpredictable and we have to seize the moment. Let’s try for a baby – and not just for Chloe either, but for its own sake and for what it will bring to our lives.
From somewhere in the cathedral came a distant sound of children laughing and calling. It was hard to tell where noises were coming from in the vast echoing space of the cathedral.
That was why Daniel didn’t realize that he was no longer alone until someone sat down beside him. His heart skipped a beat. It was Professor Cameron.
Cameron said, “I was on the way to your office and I saw you go into the cathedral.”
Daniel eyed him warily. “What do you want, Professor Cameron?”
“Lyle’s been asking questions about the Langstaffe and Johnson-Marsh paper. Larry rang me after Lyle had spoken to him. It mustn’t come out.”
So Lyle was right. Cameron had been one of the readers of the Langstaffe and Johnson-Marsh paper.
“You were the one who turned the paper down,” Daniel said.
Cameron nodded. “That’s right. Good idea, but it was seriously flawed, problems with the methodology.”
“That’s not true. You didn’t turn it down because you thought it was no good. Quite the reverse. You turned it down because you’d seen its potential.”
“No.”
“I’ve read it, Cameron. I know what you did. You handed their discovery to Flora. You stole it. You took it and you made sure that Kieran’s paper wasn’t published.”
Cameron was a dark shape in the gloom, sitting with slumped shoulders. They sat in silence and then at last he said, “It was very early days with me and Flora. No one knew about us. We were very discreet. Of course I knew all about her work, that was what had brought us together in the first place. She asked my advice, and I was flattered. It went on from there. We were in bed when I told her about the paper. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that I might suppress it. But when Flora talked about getting a head start, I realized what she was thinking. It was something I could do for her. It’s not as if she wasn’t talented, she was a first-rate scientist. I knew what she’d be able to do with it. And then – I’ve never felt like that about anyone, I’d have done anything for her.”
Daniel thought of Kieran, sitting in that room in southwest London, surrounded by towering Lego constructions, the brilliant mind occluded, the faithful mother mourning the loss of the man he had been.
“How could you do that?” Dan asked. “Someone of your stature, your eminence. You’re a scientist, for God’s sake. What’s this going to do to your reputation when this gets out?”
“It mustn’t come out. Flora’s dead.” Daniel heard the pain in Cameron’s voice. “I don’t want her name traduced. She didn’t just take Langstaffe’s idea. She understood the potential in a way that he hadn’t, she took it further. It was a true breakthrough, a genuine scientific achievement. I want her to be remembered for that.”
Daniel could find it in his heart to feel sorry for him. He had lost the woman he loved, and perhaps that was punishment enough. But still justice must be done. “Langstaffe should have his due, too,” he pointed out.
“Is it really going to make any difference to him now? Would he even be able to take it in? Yes,” Cameron said, catching the expression on Daniel’s face, “I know about his illness.”
“If you know that, you know that you blighted someone’s career. No, worse than that. You blighted someone’s life.”
“Someone who wasn’t normal, someone who was already… fragile. If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else.”
Daniel was shocked. “You really think that this can be brushed under the carpet?”
Cameron put his hand on Daniel’s arm. He spoke fast. “Well, can’t it? It’s not in Lyle’s interest – or Theseus’s either – to have doubt thrown on the validity of the patent. I’m sure the editor of The European Journal of Molecular Oncology would be quite happy for this to go away. He’d prefer not to have a scandal centring around his publication.” His hand closed on Daniel’s arm. “There’s no real evidence either,” Cameron continued. “Who’s to say that Flora didn’t stumble across the idea of stimulating apoptosis in cancer cells all on her own?”
Organ music came drifting into the chapel, a tantalizingly familiar tune, just on the edge of Daniel’s memory.
He said, “You misjudge Lyle. He wouldn’t be involved in a cover-up. And even if he would, I certainly wouldn’t.”
Cameron tightened the grip of his fingers. Daniel winced. He was conscious of the solid bulk of the man and of his own vulnerability, tethered as he was by his cast. Still he couldn’t stop himself. “You’re supposed to care about the truth. That is what science is all about. You cheated and you lied. And so did Flora. You still don’t understand, do you? When you were indulging in the pillow talk with Flora, you –”
Daniel’s phone rang, strident and shocking. He’d forgotten to switch it off when he entered the cathedral. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw that the call was from Lyle.
He answered it.
&nb
sp; Lyle said, “I’ve just heard from a contact – it’s not public knowledge yet – they’ve found a stab wound on Sara’s body –”
“A stab wound! You mean she was murdered?”
“Looks that way.”
“I’ve got Cameron here. He’s admitted the fraud.”
“Keep him there. We need to talk. I’ve got a lead on Johnson-Marsh as well. I think he’s going by another name. I’m going to speak to the police and then I’m on my way up.” Lyle hung up.
“What’s happened?” Cameron asked.
“Sara McKee was murdered. I don’t think it’s just coincidence that both she and Flora are dead, do you?”
“But that can’t be – not Langstaffe…”
“No, it wasn’t Langstaffe. But who else could have found out about you and Flora? Who could have guessed that you’d given her Langstaffe’s research and made sure that his paper wouldn’t be published? There was another name on that unpublished research paper.”
Cameron let go of Daniel’s arm and buried his head in his hands. “No, no, it can’t be.” His voice was muffled. Daniel understood that he was desperately trying to defend himself from this bitter knowledge. But sooner or later he would not be able to deny the truth and when that happened, it would destroy him.
CHAPTER 35
ANTARCTICA
Breakfast was a silent affair. Katie, Graeme, and Justin sat separately from the others, who had in any case arrived in dribs and drabs. Katie hadn’t slept well. Lying awake, a horrible thought had occurred to her. Awful as it would be to discover which of them was a murderer, it would be even worse if they didn’t find out. If they had to spend the entire winter not knowing, they might go off their heads and when outsiders at last arrived at the base they might be discovered barricaded in their pit-rooms, surviving on individual caches of tinned food.
And another thought occurred to her: something she and Sara had joked about. But perhaps it wasn’t a joke. She voiced her suspicions when she and Graeme and Justin had convened in Graeme’s office.
“Do you think there’s something a bit odd about Craig?” she asked.
“How do you mean?” Graeme asked.
“Well, he never really says anything about his life before he came here. Had you noticed?”
“Actually he never says much of anything,” Justin pointed out. “But now you come to mention it…”
“There can’t be anything sinister about it, can there?” Katie asked. “I mean he couldn’t be escaping from the law?”
“Not a chance,” Graeme said. “He’d never have got the job here. Everyone’s vetted. So we can be certain that he hasn’t got a criminal record and he’s not wanted by the police. More likely to be an unhappy marriage or something like that.”
“But what if there was something shady?” Katie persisted. “I don’t know – maybe he’s not who he claims to be. And Sara found out.”
They pondered this. “You might have a point,” Graeme said slowly. “Because I’ve looked very carefully at the grid, and there’s no getting away from it. Craig and Nick are the only ones with any length of time unaccounted for. Both of them claim to have spent an hour in their pit-room, but no one can corroborate that. We’ll have to have them both in again. And I’m afraid this time, I will have to raise the question of Nick’s history of drug-taking. I’m sorry, Justin.”
Justin said, “Before you do that, I’ve had an idea. There’s something I want to try. Let’s call Craig in again.”
“What’s the idea?” Katie asked.
“I’d rather not say just yet. I might be quite wrong, but there’s something I want to ask both Craig and Nick and I don’t want them to have a chance to confer…”
Justin went to get Craig and brought him back.
Craig sat down and looked at Graeme, waiting for a lead. Graeme said, “Justin has something he wants to ask you.”
Justin said, “It’s just this. After Alex left, you and Nick went on playing Scrabble, didn’t you?”
Craig nodded. Katie thought he looked wary.
Justin said, “Who won?”
“Who won?” Craig repeated.
“Yes, who won? It’s quite a simple question, surely.”
“I’m… not sure.”
“Really? Competitive as you both are, you’re not sure?”
“I think… Nick won… yes, that’s right. Nick won that time and I won later in the afternoon. It was a draw. One all.”
“OK. Would you mind waiting next door in the communications room?”
Katie thought Craig was about to protest, but he just bit his lip and nodded.
* * *
“Who does Craig say won?” Nick asked.
“Never mind about that.” Graeme had taken over the questioning. “We are asking you.”
Nick considered. “Craig won the first game and I won the second.”
There was silence. He looked at their faces, “Or it might have been the other way round…”
Justin said, “You know what I think? You didn’t finish that first game, did you? That’s why neither of you know who won. No one won.”
Nick laughed. “It’s a fair cop. I told Craig that we ought to come clean. He said, only if it’s essential. Well, clearly it is essential and we’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. We’ve, well, we’ve fallen in love. I liked him right from the beginning, but he’s not one to wear his heart on his sleeve and I wasn’t sure how he felt about me. And then that afternoon I got the idea from reading Anna Karenina. There’s a bit where Levin proposes to Kitty. They’re playing a game with cards with letters on them. He spells out the initials of what he wants to say. I laid out a message on the Scrabble board. And Craig replied.” He was blushing. “We went to my pit-room to talk things over and be alone together.”
Graeme said, “So are you saying that you and Craig spent the whole afternoon together?”
“We weren’t apart at any time for longer than it takes to go and have a slash.”
Justin said, “And now we know why neither you nor Craig could tell us who came in or out during that second bout of Scrabble. You only had eyes for each other!”
Nick smiled. “It’s true. I was in a bit of a daze.”
“OK,” Graeme said. “You can go.”
Nick got up to leave and Graeme said, “Just one more thing. Do you know why Craig never talks about his life before he came here?”
Nick began to laugh. “Yes, I do, but I don’t think it’s for me to tell you. You’d better ask him yourself. One thing I will say though. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything that’s happened on base.”
When he’d gone, Graeme asked, “Do we believe him?”
“Yes, we do,” Justin said. “I already knew that Nick was gay. I didn’t see him and Craig kissing or holding hands or anything as obvious as that, but I had a feeling…”
“It’s romantic, really,” Katie said. “You know, I can see that they might be rather well suited.”
“We’d better get Craig back,” Graeme said.
* * *
“Oh alright then. Yes, if you must know, yes, we were together all afternoon,” Craig said. “Nick wanted to tell you earlier. I couldn’t see that it was anyone’s business but ours. We knew that neither of us had anything to do with what happened to Sara.”
“And now that we know it too, we’re that much further forward,” Graeme pointed out.
Craig had the grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry. I’ve never liked having my private life on display. And it’s been that much worse –” He broke off.
Katie was willing Graeme to probe a bit more. He caught her eye and she made a face that said, “Go on!”
He took pity on her. “Is there something else we ought to know, Craig?”
Craig pondered. “Well, I suppose it can’t do any harm. Maybe best under the circumstances to have everything out in the open. Yes, I had a special reason for coming here. I had to get away. You see, it’s like this. For the past couple of years,
my life’s been hell. Ever since I won the lottery.”
There was a stunned silence, then Katie said, “You won the lottery? How much did you win?”
“A million and a half. I wasn’t one of those mega-winners. Unless you followed the lottery closely, you wouldn’t know. I thought I’d be safe enough here with other scientists – they tend to be a bit snooty about the lottery. The only person who thought he’d heard my name somewhere before was Adam, but he couldn’t remember where.”
“The odds are hugely against any one individual winning,” Justin said. “I expect Rhys could give you the statistics.”
Craig said, “At first it was great. I bought myself a house, looked after the family – bought a little flat for Mum – and gave some to charity. But everybody else wanted something from me. The begging letters, you wouldn’t believe! And then one evening I was having a quiet drink on my own in a bar, and someone said to me, ‘Aren’t you that guy who won the lottery? Why aren’t you buying drinks all round?’ The next day I applied to BAS.”
* * *
“They could be in it together,” Graeme said when Craig had gone, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it.
Katie said, “It’s hard enough to believe that there’s one person among us responsible for Sara’s death, but two… what possible motivation could they have?”
Graeme updated his grid and then sat back. He drummed his fingers on the table.
“What’s the matter, Graeme?” Katie asked.
“If we do rule out Craig and Nick on the grounds of their joint testimony, then I have a problem. According to the grid, I ought to be arresting myself. I’m the only one who had enough time to do it. At the critical time I was alone in my pit-room with no one to vouch for me.”
“We must have got something wrong,” Justin said.
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