Lethal Factor

by Gabrielle Lord

  ‘I don’t know exactly what it’s about,’ said Bob. ‘Except that it involves you. One of the other divisional detectives told me she talked to that little prick Stewart Fox.’

  ‘Bob,’ I said. ‘It’ll be about that fucking money.’

  Bob knew exactly what I meant. ‘What money?’ he said, in tones of surprised innocence.

  In spite of everything, I smiled. At least, Bob would bat for me. I rang off. My initial fury had eased somewhat, and I now had two very difficult situations to deal with.

  I rang Charlie’s and despite his assurances that he’d ferry Jacinta to and from tech, I couldn’t relax. I stood up and walked to the window, restless and worried about my daughter. And scared that my work as a professional investigator was in jeopardy. What more did Genevieve want from me? I’d done everything I could to placate her. I’d given her the house and said she was welcome to the seventy per cent of our mutual holdings, such as they were, that she’d claimed. But the kids had wanted to live with me, and I had to be punished for that. They were hardly kids anymore, anyway. Maybe I could do a deal with her; pay her off somehow, point out that if she wanted to go ahead with this, it would destroy my career, kill the goose that was laying—if not golden eggs, at least some decent superannuation she could enjoy.

  My thoughts turned to Jacinta again. I felt much better knowing that Bob was back in Sydney and looking out for her. But I still couldn’t settle down so I went down the hallway and made myself a cup of coffee in the kitchenette near the library area. I glanced at my watch. Jacinta might not be in class yet. I tried her mobile. She answered.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ she boomed back at me. ‘Stop fussing.’

  ‘What was the problem with your mother?’ I asked, referring to the disagreement she’d mentioned earlier.

  ‘She wants me to stay with her during the holidays,’ said Jacinta.

  ‘And?’ I replied.

  ‘Come on, Dad! Stop tormenting me. You know what she’s like.’

  I did. I tried to keep my voice neutral for my next question. ‘Have you ever said anything to her about that money?’

  There was a pause. ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘No way I’d tell her that. Why?’

  ‘Bob tells me she’s lodged some sort of complaint against me. And I immediately thought of that.’

  ‘Just your guilty conscience,’ said Jacinta. ‘It couldn’t be that. So what was it?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ I said. For a second, I wondered if I should tell her about Pigrooter’s threats.

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ she said. ‘You know what she’s like. Hey. Gotta go or I’ll be late for class. Love ya Dad.’

  I put the mobile down, thinking that a lot of men described their wives or ex-wives as ‘impossible’. Genevieve was certainly that and then some and I often had the feeling that only my head on a plate would satisfy her. Even then, she’d want to kick it around for a while.

  Back at work, I carried a mug of coffee to the library and refocused my attention, trying to find some peace in my work, pushing the curiosity about Genevieve’s latest ambush and the nagging doubts about Jacinta to the back of my mind, absorbing more information about this pathogen. I made notes to refresh my memory about the process of weaponisation of Bacillus anthracis. Although there are arguments in the scientific community about how difficult or not this might be, doing it requires certain knowledge and facilities. Without this treatment, the spores simply do what nature intend, and fall to earth to lie dormant in the soil.

  All over the world, people like me use their minds to devise methods of making dangerous pathogens even more diabolical, manipulating their genes to increase virulence, finding ways to deliver them more effectively. When the Russian bio-weapons program ended, nearly seven thousand scientists were suddenly out of work and everyone in the scientific community wondered where they went. They’re still wondering.

  I noticed a flyer left on the table near me and, curious, I picked it up. ‘Fight globalisation!’ it admonished, above details of a meeting. Could the killer be someone from the loony fringe of the Greens? Someone who had targeted a scientist because it was scientists who were responsible for developing even more lethal pathogens?

  It was past lunchtime and I was hungry. I heard Jane’s and Florence’s voices as I passed by Florence’s office annexe to her lab and I paused at the door to see Florence staring at a DNA profile on her screen. Jane was leaning over to view it better. They both turned as I came in.

  ‘Get a look at this,’ said Jane.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, peering closer at the profile. ‘Or rather who’s?’

  ‘It’s that murdered nun,’ said Jane. ‘She’s giving us a problem.’

  I checked out Sister Gertrude’s profile. It started out as I would have expected—at the first locus the sex marker was the single peak that showed this DNA belonged to a female. But at locus 23, I was looking at someone with three peaks.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked. We’d sometimes had more than three peaks on a profile, when there was DNA material from more than one person, but I’d never seen a third peak showing up at only one of the loci in a single person sample.

  ‘That’s what we’d like to know,’ said Florence. ‘I rang a few other places and someone said they recalled something like that when they were setting up their database but they eliminated it because it was so freaky.’ She flicked her mouse and I saw a cascade of smaller screens. ‘I re-ran everything,’ she said, ‘and got the same result, consistently. Only at 23.’

  ‘What do you make of it?’ I asked her. There is still so much surrounding the actual fabric of DNA and how it functions that we simply don’t know.

  ‘In our system of reproduction,’ said Florence in her dry way, ‘we can only have two parents, not three.’ There are one or two peaks at the ten loci—either one peak when both parents carry the same gene, and they overlap, or two, when each parent contributes a different gene. Like Florence said, we don’t have more than two parents.

  ‘Maybe it was material from somewhere else—that was absorbed and somehow ended up being included?’ I said. ‘I really have no idea. I’m only guessing.’

  ‘It’s as good a guess as any,’ she said.

  I straightened up. ‘Another of life’s great mysteries,’ I said. ‘At least it makes Sister Gertrude very distinctive.’

  ‘I’ve never profiled a nun before. They might all have it,’ said Florence.

  ‘It might be the holy gene,’ said Jane. ‘The gene that makes women go into a convent. They’d have to be a bit different.’

  Florence smiled. It was the first time I’d seen her playful. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s the holy ghost.’

  I sensed another presence and saw Vic Agnew standing near the doorway. We all looked up and our laughter ceased at the sight of his white face.

  ‘What is it, Vic?’ Jane asked.

  ‘My girlfriend’s a nurse in ICU,’ he said. ‘It’s Livvy Worthington.’

  ‘Tell us,’ said Jane

  ‘They’re not saying anything official yet.’ He looked at us all in turn. ‘I probably shouldn’t even be saying this.’

  I felt irritation rising.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said Florence. ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘Mrs Worthington just died,’ he said.

  I saw the shock register on Florence’s face and wondered if my own was showing the same. Despite what Harry had said, Livvy dying seemed unbelievable. I stared sightlessly at the cascading tiles on the screen, thinking stupidly that I hadn’t realised Vic had a girlfriend. He seemed asexual to me—neat and handsome and somehow, not quite real.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Florence was saying. She’d known Livvy for a long time and they got along well.

&
nbsp; The whole world seemed suddenly murkier and even more dangerous than it had been just a few seconds ago.

  ‘All that research,’ Florence continued, ever the scientist. ‘Just wasted. She never told anyone anything about it.’ She jumped up and hurried out the door. I went back to my office, leaving Jane and Vic staring absently.

  I rang the hospital, identified myself, and spoke with the head of infectious diseases. I filled him in on my connection to the Worthingtons and the anthrax investigation.

  ‘Is it BA?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re not saying it officially,’ the doctor said, ‘until we get the results from the lab.’

  ‘But you won’t have that till—’ I glanced at my watch, ‘early tomorrow morning.’

  ‘We’ve alerted the authorities,’ he said. ‘Just in case. And the police.’

  I recalled the balding detective having a cigarette outside Tony Bonning’s.

  ‘And the local postal authorities.’ The hospital protocols were swinging into action.

  ‘You don’t happen to know where Mrs Worthington’s husband is right now?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said the doctor. ‘He wouldn’t stay. He left straight after his wife died. I wanted him to wait until someone picked him up. He was in no state to drive.’ There was a pause. ‘I’ve never seen a case of human BA in my life. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the radiologist’s pictures. Her lungs were fine. Enlarged mediastinum and lymph glands. We did everything we could.’

  ‘She had the inhalational form?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but we didn’t know what we were dealing with until it was too late.’ I could hear the despair in his voice.

  ‘It’s hard to believe,’ he continued. ‘That someone would do such a thing. What’s the bloody world coming to?’

  I couldn’t answer that. I rang off and stared at the wall opposite me for a few seconds before walking down to Vic’s office and asking him to go with HAZCHEM to both Worthington households. Even without official confirmation, I wasn’t taking any chances with this pathogen. How had Livvy Worthington contracted inhalational anthrax?

  Back in my office, I looked up to see Florence, still ashen-faced and tearful, tapping at my open door.

  ‘Come in,’ I said. ‘Take a seat.’

  But she wouldn’t. She came up close and looked behind her at the door, still half-opened. ‘I didn’t want to tell you this,’ she said. ‘I just hate the thought of being a dobber. But under the circumstances . . .’

  I went over and closed the door fully, returning to my colleague. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Someone’s been abusing the downstairs hot suite,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who it is. Twice now I’ve come in and the scanning electron microscope has been left on. I’ve had to switch it off. There was nothing to account for it in the log book.’

  There are strict security protocols surrounding the use of the scanning electron microscope, with users signing on and off and providing times and dates.

  ‘When was this, Florence?’ I asked her.

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘The first time was about six months ago, just after Vic joined us,’ she said, ‘and then another incident last month.’

  ‘I’ll look into it,’ I said. The computer keeps account of all comings and goings as we swipe our cards in and out of certain places in the building, including the hot suite; the ID of the user is logged automatically. ‘Although,’ I said, ‘it will be difficult unless you can give me dates and times.’

  Florence nodded. ‘I’ll do my best,’ she said. ‘I think I can work it out if I use my calender and get a few cues.’ She turned to go. ‘And the last time it was left on,’ she added, ‘guess what was on the stub?’

  I didn’t have to. I knew it as Florence said it.

  ‘BA,’ she said.

  Eight

  I made a note to myself to check the computer log to find out who had been in the hot suite as soon as Florence could provide me with some dates. Once, hearing something like that wouldn’t have worried me at all. But now such things couldn’t but help having potentially sinister overtones.

  I tried to put everything out of my mind except the project I was working on and devoted my attention to bringing my case notes up to date concerning the cultures I’d grown, describing my methods and findings. That way, if a test ever had to be duplicated, my methodology was clear to any subsequent investigator. I included the certification and addressed the package to Detective Sergeant Tomlins. Then I rang her.

  ‘I’ve got those results for you on Tony Bonning’s case,’ I said, ‘I found Bacillus anthracis on the chocolate wrapping and I suspect that the same culture is growing from the tissue samples you brought up.’

  She listened without interruption.

  ‘And you should know we’ve had another suspicious death here in Canberra.’

  ‘Anthrax?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s not official yet,’ I said. ‘But the doctor had no doubts. They’ll have the path test through by tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Who was it?’ Tomlins asked.

  ‘It was someone I knew,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said DS Tomlins.

  ‘Another scientist.’

  ‘I wonder if she worked on any of the same cases as Tony Bonning?’ Tomlins asked.

  ‘I’d be looking into that,’ I said, ‘if I were the investigating detective.’

  ‘You are,’ said Tomlins, ‘in a sort of way. Maybe she got chocolates too.’

  ‘She contracted the inhalational form of the disease,’ I said, before outlining the differences.

  ‘She might have been unlucky,’ said Tomlins, ‘like the postal worker.’

  ‘We won’t know,’ I said, ‘until there’s a thorough investigation of the contamination route.’

  ‘How do you get the spores in the first place?’ Tomlins asked.

  ‘Steal them from a defence installation. Make them in a secret lab.’

  ‘Like Saddam?’ she asked.

  ‘On a less grand scale,’ I replied, ‘but the result would be the same.’

  ‘Would that be hard to do?’

  This was the question that everyone seemed to be asking lately. ‘Different people give different answers,’ I said. ‘I’m not an expert microbiologist, but it wouldn’t be too difficult for someone who knows what they’re doing to cultivate the bacteria and force spore production. Then it’s a matter of collecting the spores and finding a way to impregnate the item if the gastrointestinal route is taken, or making them float so the victim breathes them in.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of this one bit,’ said Tomlins. ‘How would you impregnate a chocolate heart anyway?’

  I imagined a hypodermic filled with anthrax-rich slurry, a porridge of spores, being injected into the creamy centre of a novelty chocolate. Millions could be swallowed this way and find their way into the body’s systems.

  ‘I guess injecting would be the simplest, most effective way,’ I said. ‘Load a syringe up, pierce the centre, then seal the tiny puncture with a drop of melted chocolate.’

  ‘That sounds a dangerous procedure,’ said Tomlins. ‘If this thing is as lethal as you say.’

  ‘Not for someone who knew what they were doing,’ I said. ‘They’d take the necessary precautions.’ I thought of all the measures I’d taken while handling the samples. ‘And yet some spores must have escaped from the package,’ I added, ‘to contaminate Natalie Haynes.’

  ‘What about the breathed-in variety?’

  ‘That’s a bit more difficult,’ I said, before outlining the steps that needed to be taken to make spores into a breathable, floatable mist.

  ‘Next question is “why” and then “who”?’ Tomlins said.

  ‘That’s
up to you,’ I told her. ‘You find the guilty party, I’ll do the analyses.’ I thought of the red foil that had given me the chocolate crumbs and spores. I thought of the unfortunate man who’d eaten a plump chocolate heart.

  ‘This might sound sexist . . .’ I started to say.

  ‘Be my guest,’ she said.

  I was thinking of the hostile women I’d had dealings with over the years. The fact that I had recently divorced one, and been stupid enough to reconnect with another one last night wasn’t making me feel too clever. ‘A poisoned chocolate heart feels somehow female to me,’ I said.

  ‘Oh really?’ Tomlins’s voice was very dry. ‘You reckon a man would use a death ray?’ she asked. ‘Or an exploding soccer ball?’

  I laughed. She was cheeky and I found myself liking her.

  ‘So you think a woman is behind this?’ she asked, more seriously.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It just seems female. You get a feeling for things like this,’ I added. ‘Call it old hand’s intuition.’

  ‘Sounds like old wives’ tale to me,’ Tomlins laughed. ‘But whoever it is,’ she said, ‘it takes a lot of malice to set out to murder someone in this way.’

  There is no shortage of malice in this place, I thought. A question was teasing me. Like I said, the behaviour of bacteria is not my area of expertise, but I knew that the vegetative state of BA is just as deadly as the spores. So why go to the trouble—the potentially very dangerous trouble—of making spores in the first place?

  ‘What I’m really questioning,’ I said to her after a moment’s reflection, ‘is why someone would go to all that trouble of forcing spore production when the easiest thing in the world is to grow the damn thing on a glass dish and simply use that. There’s no need to go the extra stage. It’s difficult, it’s dangerous and it’s unnecessary. I just don’t get it. Why use the spore form of the disease when there’s a simpler way to deliver?’

  ‘You’re the scientist and you’re asking me?’ Tomlins said.

  I rang off and sat at the desk for a moment longer. The question continued to tease me so I went down to the annexe off the DNA lab where Florence Horsefall was usually bent over her work. Instead, I found her huddled in a corner. I wasn’t sure whether she was crying or not, and I wondered if I should interrupt what looked like a very personal moment or walk away. But in that moment Florence turned and saw me. She hurriedly straightened up, pushed her hair back, straightened her shoulders and blew her nose.