An Air That Kills

by Christine Poulson

  He glanced over at Katie and Maddie, who were still standing rooted at the door. Katie lifted up a hand and shook her head. She couldn’t get involved in showing up her own postdoc.

  Maddie clearly felt no such compunction and moved towards Claudia. Claudia’s bag was on the chair beside her. Maddie reached for it, but Claudia snatched it up and held it against her chest.

  “How dare you! I don’t have to submit to that,” she said.

  Tarquin was still leaning back against the counter, relaxed and smiling. It seemed to Katie that he had the air of someone who holds a trump card.

  “You know, Claudia, it would be better if you just owned up and apologized. Tell you what, if you return the other things you’ve pinched – my paperweight from the Isle of Mull, for one thing – we’ll draw a line under this unsavoury episode.”

  “I have no intention of letting anyone rummage through my things. And it strikes me that you haven’t got a leg to stand on, Tarquin. I was in here on my own before you came in. No witnesses. It’s a matter of ‘he said, she said’, isn’t it?” Claudia met Tarquin’s eyes. She was clearly prepared to brazen it out. “I think it’s you that should be apologizing to me!”

  “No witnesses, mmm?” Tarquin said. He looked quizzical. “Quite sure about that, Claudia, are you?” He picked up his iPhone from the counter. “Handy little gadgets, these,” he remarked. “Especially the camera function. You didn’t notice that I’d propped it up just over here, did you?”

  He swiped through the icons and then held up the phone and turned the screen to face Claudia. There was a photograph of her sitting in the chair that she was now standing next to. “Do you really want me to show everyone what’s on here?” He pressed the play button.

  There was a strangled squawk from Claudia. The blood rushed into her face. “You... you...”

  For a moment Katie thought she was going to rush across the room and attack him. The threat of violence was in the air. Claudia reached into her bag and pulled something out. It was a piece of cake wrapped in cellophane. She flung the package as hard as she could at Tarquin. He ducked and it hit the wall, splitting open. She turned on her heel and headed for the door.

  Katie and Maddie stepped aside hastily.

  The next moment she had pushed past them. In the stunned silence that followed, they heard her footsteps retreating down the hall.

  “Phew.” Tarquin let out his breath. He looked behind him. The cake had been thrown with so much force that cream cheese and carrot cake were smeared down the wall.

  “I knew it was her,” he said. “I’ve suspected it all along, and this afternoon I decided to put it to the test.”

  “You mean you left the cake in the fridge deliberately?” Maddie asked. “It was really clever of you to think of filming her.”

  Tarquin threw back his head and laughed. “You have no idea how clever,” he managed to splutter. He held up the phone and pressed the play button again. The image of Claudia sitting in her chair ran for a few seconds before the film ended.

  “But where’s the rest of it?” Katie asked.

  Tarquin shook his head. “There is no ‘rest of it’. I recorded this perfectly innocent sequence about ten minutes ago when I came into the kitchen. No, Maddie, I didn’t deliberately set a trap, but when I saw that my cake had disappeared from the fridge a mere half an hour after I had put it in there, and then when I saw Claudia looking like a cat that’s got the cream, I saw my chance. I just filmed her for a few seconds while she was engrossed in texting someone.”

  “Well,” said Maddie, marvelling, “so it was all a bluff.”

  Katie said, “I’m impressed.” She went over to the sink to get a cloth so that she could begin clearing up.

  “I take that as a compliment, coming from you, Katie,” he said, emphasizing her name.

  For a few moments she went on with what she was doing – and then it sank in. She turned and looked at him.

  He smiled at her. “You know all about bluffing, don’t you? And that’s Katie short for Kathryn, isn’t it? Not Katie short for Caitlyn.”

  Katie thought for a moment of denying it, but what was the point? Maddie was smiling too. She didn’t look in the least surprised. Katie let out her breath in a sigh.

  “How long have you known?” she asked.

  CHAPTER 37

  “I had my suspicions,” Tarquin said, “when I saw you in Wells Cathedral looking quite different from the Caitlin we know here. And then my friend thought he recognized that good-looking guy that you were with. Later he remembered that he’d seen him at a conference and that he was an astronomer at Cambridge. So that was it, really. I did some research online and got his name. He’d been in Antarctica and the woman medic out there did bear a resemblance to you if you got rid of the make-up and dye job.”

  “Does anyone else know? What about Claudia?”

  “Don’t worry. You’re among friends. I’m sure Claudia hasn’t a clue. I assume that you are here to check up on her?”

  Katie nodded. “There’ve been some concerns about her results – and the rapid turnover of technicians.”

  “Claudia is far too arrogant to imagine that anyone would have doubts about her work. And I only told Maddie here, because she’d already confided in me that she thought there was something dodgy going on.”

  Maddie said, “I haven’t said anything to anyone else, because, well, there might not have been anything in it. But I know Sophie was worried. She was pretty sure there was something wrong. She didn’t know what to do. She thought of confronting Claudia, she thought of going to see Gemma, but in the end...” She shrugged.

  “She decided not to do anything,” Katie said.

  “Yeah, and I couldn’t blame her really. For one thing, she wasn’t absolutely sure – she said there wasn’t really a way that she could be certain, and then even if she had been...”

  Yes, even if she had been, she was just a technician, low down in the pecking order. Everyone she might have spoken to was invested in the success of the research. They wouldn’t want to believe her, and even if they did, the record of what happened to whistle-blowers was a dismal one, as Katie knew from bitter experience.

  “Did she say what she thought was wrong?” she asked. “Did she think Claudia was manipulating her results, fudging things to make them look better than they were?”

  “It was more than that, but what exactly I don’t know. And that’s why I think it must have been something serious. Sophie didn’t want to tell me what she thought it was.”

  “Do you think it was out-and-out fraud of some kind? Maybe that Claudia hadn’t even been running the experiments that she was supposed to?”

  Maddie shook her head. “No, she had been running them. I know it wasn’t that.”

  If it wasn’t a question of the data being manipulated, or the experiments never being carried out in the first place, then what was left? Katie thought about the inventory and the discrepancy that she’d decided she needed to double-check. Light was beginning to dawn.

  “You don’t have any idea at all what it might have been?” she asked Maddie.

  Maddie looked at Tarquin. “I’ve thought and thought about it, and I haven’t come up with anything. But Tarquin had an idea.”

  Tarquin said, “There is a way that you could get those results and yet they’d be a fake –”

  “What is it?” Katie asked.

  “It’s just a crazy idea and I don’t know how you’d get away with it.”

  Katie said, “Could it be something to do with the avian virus that Claudia claims to have transmitted to her human cell-line?”

  Tarquin stared her. “So you’ve had the same idea.”

  “I’ve just been comparing what we have left in stock with what Claudia claims to have used. It doesn’t quite add up. It won’t be all that difficult to find out. In fact I might be able to have a result by tomorrow.”

  “What are you going to do?” Tarquin asked.

  “I’m go
ing to get hold of a sample of the cell-line that Claudia claims she’s infected with avian flu and I’m going to send it off for sequencing.”

  And amazingly she could do that through the ordinary mail with an FTA card, a chemically treated paper designed to preserve biological samples. You only needed a microlitre, which you applied to the card. The result would be returned to her in the form of a link to a website and a password.

  “Can you really get it back by tomorrow?” Maddie asked her.

  “At a price. And Lyle’s said he’s willing to pay for whatever I need. But I’ll need to get a move on if I’m to catch the post.”

  * * *

  Katie didn’t want to put the sample in the post at the lab and risk someone seeing it and wondering about it. There was a postbox down by the quayside. She headed for that and was only just in time. The postman had collected the contents of the box and was about to drive away. She had to run to hand the package to him. She watched as the van headed out across the causeway and then made her way up the hill to her apartment.

  As she unlocked her door, a phone buzzed. It was Katie’s private phone, which she’d left on the kitchen table. A text had come in. It was from Minnie. “Have found out about Claudia! Ring me.”

  Katie rang her and Minnie answered straightaway.

  “It was Sam who’d heard something about her. It was from a guy who worked in the same lab when Claudia had her first postdoc job. Apparently there were rumours going around that there was something wrong with her work. But she was her PI’s blue-eyed girl and in the end no one said anything. She managed to get several publications out of the work she’d done – her PI was a named author – and then she moved on to Debussy Point. No one was sorry to see her go.”

  “What kind of rumours?”

  “That she hadn’t really got the results she claimed she’d got. Sam didn’t know any more than that. And you know how it is. No one wanted to put their head above the parapet.”

  Oh, yes. Katie knew alright.

  “And something else. There’d been some unpleasant things happening in the lab. Someone came in one morning and found their photos wrecked – that kind of thing. It stopped when she left.”

  Before Katie ended the call, she thought to ask, “You haven’t heard about the job yet, I suppose,” and Minnie said she hadn’t and wasn’t sure she’d take it even if it was offered.

  After they’d ended the call, she wondered about the mishaps in the malaria lab. Could those be down to Claudia? For some people it wasn’t enough to succeed; others must fail.

  There was another text waiting. It was from Rachel and it simply said, “FaceTime me!”

  * * *

  As soon as she saw Rachel’s face, Katie knew it was good news.

  “He’s a match!” Rachel said.

  “That’s wonderful!”

  “Of course, we mustn’t get our hopes up too high. There are all the other tests that have to be done. And then if he’s approved as a donor, there’ll be the operation.”

  Yes, as Katie was well aware, there were still formidable obstacles ahead. It would be several months before they could be sure that Benjamin did not have DBA, and he would have to be screened for other diseases.

  “But if all goes well?” Katie asked.

  “Surgery’ll be scheduled for some time in the summer.”

  They both knew that even if all was well and Benjamin was approved as a donor, Chloe’s operation would not be straightforward. The danger would not be as great with a sibling as from a donor who was a stranger, but all the same, there were risks. She would have to have chemotherapy drugs to knock out her immune system so as to reduce the risk that her body would reject Benjamin’s stem cells.

  But how could they not hope, when they had got this far? It would mean so much, nothing less than a complete cure for Chloe. No more blood transfusions every month, no more infusions five nights a week. Always they lived with the knowledge that these were difficult for young adults to manage. It was something they never talked about – because what was the point? – but they knew that life expectancy was not high among sufferers of DBA.

  Rachel lifted Benjamin up so that Katie could see him. He would soon be three weeks old. Already, he looked different – less like a generic baby and more like a person, already himself, unique.

  “He’s less fussy than Chloe was,” Rachel said. “Or maybe I’m just more relaxed.” She nuzzled his neck. “Whatever happens, you’re my beautiful boy,” she told him.

  Katie put out her hand to the screen and Rachel put the tiny hand to touch it on her side.

  “He’s so gorgeous. I want one!” Katie said.

  Rachel laughed. “Well, you never know. How are things going with Justin?”

  CHAPTER 38

  TUESDAY

  Katie spent the next day doing what she was supposed to be doing for Claudia: generating genetic mutations for further research. Claudia herself was not in evidence and that was hardly surprising after yesterday’s scene in the staffroom.

  The work was dull, but Katie was buoyed up by the news from Rachel. Although she’d felt a pang too when she saw Rachel with her baby – her own arms had felt empty – she couldn’t let herself dwell on that. Envy was never a good look. Best just to concentrate on the moment and enjoy her time with Justin without thinking about what the future might hold.

  She turned her thoughts to the experiment she had twice tried and twice failed to replicate. She thought she’d followed Claudia’s protocol to the letter, but maybe there was something she’d missed? She didn’t expect to hear from the lab that was sequencing her sample until later in the day – or maybe even tomorrow. But as the afternoon wore on she grew more and more restless. By four o’clock she was checking her emails every five minutes. At last, at five forty-five when everyone else had left the lab, and just when she was packing up for the day, it came through. She clicked through to the website and typed in the password.

  When she read the result, she pushed her chair back with a bark of what was almost laughter. So that was it! So simple, elegant even, in its sheer audacity. She could almost admire Claudia for her sheer chutzpah, for taking such a breath-taking risk. And yet wasn’t the riskiness also what had protected her? It was so blatant. It just simply wouldn’t have occurred to Gemma – or anyone else – that Claudia was cheating on such a grand scale.

  She reached for her phone. Lyle was going to be disappointed, but that couldn’t be helped. She had done what she came to do, and of course he had to know straightaway. His suspicions had been fully justified, but being right wasn’t going to be much consolation.

  “Claudia’s research is all smoke and mirrors,” she told him. “It’s like a conjuring trick. You can’t see how it’s done, but it’s so obvious when you know how.”

  Lyle groaned. “So I was right about the results?”

  “Yep. Entirely bogus.”

  “The cells weren’t infected?”

  “Oh, they were infected alright, but not with an avian flu virus. Turns out what Claudia used was a human flu virus.”

  “Hot dog! So she didn’t succeed in getting a virus to cross the species barrier!”

  “Nowhere near.”

  Lyle was thinking it through. “I can see how she’d think she could get away with that – in the short term.”

  “Yeah, the human flu virus looks similar to the avian flu virus; near enough that odds on no one would spot what she was doing. Of course, there’d be problems further down the line. Anyone who tried to replicate her results – like I did – wouldn’t be able to do it.”

  “Oh sure, but we both know there can be legitimate reasons for that – at first. In the short run she’d be able to get away with it.”

  “Yeah, of course, and she wouldn’t be worrying about the long run. She’d have used her research here as a springboard for bigger and better things. Makes me wonder, though, Lyle, how often in the past she’s got away with something like this. I doubt if it’s the first tim
e.”

  “You mean, you think she’s made a habit of this kind of thing?”

  “You know I told you that I ran into someone I worked with at Ely? Minnie’s boyfriend, Sam, knows someone who knew Claudia at the lab where she was working before she came to Debussy Point. The other postdocs had their doubts about her, but no one wanted to come forward. When this is made public, who knows what might come out of the woodwork?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “This is going to be made public, isn’t it, Lyle?”

  He sighed. “Of course. I feel pretty sore when I think of how much I’ve invested in this research. What an unholy mess. Look, don’t say anything to Claudia. It’s best if I come down there and deal with this myself. That won’t be for two or three days. I’ll have to make a space in my schedule.”

  * * *

  After they’d hung up, Katie thought about what Lyle had said. Yes, it was a crying shame that there was nothing to show for the money Lyle had spent. But, she wondered, was that really true? Claudia’s original idea for how to transmit the virus had actually been pretty good. And another thought occurred to Katie. She doubted very much that Claudia had been cheating from the very beginning. It was more likely that when her experiment with the avian flu virus had failed, her desire for success, or her fear of failing, had led her to resort to using the mammalian virus. Certainly the inventory showed that she had been using avian flu virus at some point.

  Katie looked at the photos she’d taken of Claudia’s lab book. As she slowly swiped through the pages, her thoughts drifted. It was an anti-climax after the excitement and satisfaction of solving the mystery. She was tired, very tired. The patch of shingles behind her ear wasn’t quite as painful, but it was still sore. She felt listless and depressed. Time for an early night.

  She found herself staring at something Claudia had scribbled in the margin. It was something that Claudia hadn’t used and Katie could see why. It clearly wouldn’t work. But it set Katie off on another train of thought. No, that wouldn’t work either...