The Longest Pleasure

by Douglas Clark

“Wait for Green,” said Masters.

  When the DCI returned, Lockyer led the way to the cryo lab. Stuck with sellotape on the outside of the door was a piece cut from a newspaper full-page ad. It read—

  At – 10°C your skin can turn as white as snow

  At – 20°C your fingers can freeze solid to metal

  At – 25°C steel can shatter into tiny pieces

  At – 30°C you can find it hard to breathe.

  and then, added in red with a felt pen, ‘you have been warned!’.

  “Makes you feel goose-pimply just to read that,” said Green. “But I suppose it’s a timely warning to anybody barging in here.”

  “Most assuredly.” Lockyer fitted his own master key and opened the door.

  While the others stood just inside, looking round, Moller began to prowl.

  “I understand about as much about this,” said Green, “as I do about Ancient Egypt. All those dials and meters make me think of science fiction programmes on the telly.”

  “George!” Moller sounded excited. He waited until the others joined him.

  “Ultrasonic apparatus?” said Lockyer. “It’s a modern piece, but by no means rare. What excites you so much about it?”

  Moller replied: “George said Wilkin would just pick up a tin on the beach, forget to hand it in and then bring it back here. You said it would be a natural thing to do because your employees are professionally interested in the effect of natural forces on materials in everyday use.”

  “Right, I did.”

  “Something that has been exercising my mind,” said Moller, “is how Wilkin would know his tin was contaminated with type E botulism, because type E is one of those organisms that doesn’t cause tins to ‘blow’ and give any warning of its presence, nor does it turn the food rotten and make it inedible to the taste. In other words, it lies doggo, and short of some pretty comprehensive tests, nobody could detect it.”

  “Go on,” said Masters. “We’re more than interested. This has been one of the weak links in the chain.”

  Moller turned to the ultrasonic apparatus. “He used this little beauty.”

  “To detect the presence of botulism?” asked Green sceptically.

  “No. Ultrasonic waves are an important tool of research in physics,” said Moller. He turned to Lockyer. “It’s your toy. Tell them how it works, because they’ll want to know, down to the last detail. They’re like that, and they’re right to be so, because it’s their thirst for knowledge that has brought us this far.”

  Lockyer stepped forward and laid one hand on the apparatus. “Ultrasonics are sound waves of so high a frequency that they are inaudible to humans—from twenty thousand cycles per second upwards.”

  “Like those things you can use for changing television channels while still sitting in your armchair? The things that drive dogs mad?”

  “Very similar. Dogs can hear much higher frequencies than humans, and what they hear when those things are used must be a high-pitched, torturing scream. But that is by the way. For the most part, ultrasonic waves are produced by, quite simply, causing a solid object to vibrate at a very high frequency. These vibrations can pass through the air or through fluid.”

  “What object do you use?” asked Masters.

  “In this one we use a quartz crystal. But other crystals can be used—those in which it is possible to excite vibrations easily.”

  “Using an electric current?”

  “Oh, yes. But there are some pieces of apparatus involving a nickel component instead of a crystal. The nickel is energised magnetically—with the same results.

  “The big thing is, as Moller has told you, there are numerous technical applications, some of which I’m sure you know of. Echo sounding, for instance . . .”

  “In submarines?” asked Green.

  “For submarine work, certainly. In industry they are used to test for flaws in castings and they are widely employed where glass or ceramics have to be drilled. And that is not all, by any means, but I suspect I’ve covered the ground Moller wanted me to.”

  “Thank you,” said Masters. “Interesting, informative and, thank heaven, put simply enough for laymen like us to understand.”

  Moller took over once more.

  “You heard Lockyer say that ultrasonics are used for detecting cracks in metal. As you might guess, they can be used for determining the morphology of any hole in metal.”

  “Here we go again,” said Green. “Morphology?”

  “Character, shape, size,” supplied Lockyer.

  “Thank you.”

  “So,” went on Moller. “Wilkin brings his tin of food—I’ll say it was caviare, just for laughs—and bungs it in this machine and switches on. He’s probably testing it to see whether it is still sound and good enough to eat, because he rather fancies a bit of caviare. But, to his dismay, the machine tells him there’s a hole. The screen says it is minute, probably too small to detect with the naked eye, but the machine does not lie. Bang goes his chance of a caviare supper. But wait . . .” Moller paused dramatically. “Wilkin is a conscientious scientist. He reads his journals—New Scientist and suchlike. He also has a fairly good memory. Some time ago there were articles in the journals about a tin of salmon that had a minute hole in the seam and which, after being eaten by four people, caused all four to contract severe botulism.”

  Masters nodded. “The existence of a minute hole was the trigger. Is that what you are saying?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I think you’re right. It set him thinking. He went home and turned up the back numbers of his journals. Did a bit of research on botulism, in fact.”

  “But why?” demanded Lockyer. “Why, in heaven’s name?”

  “Because he’d got a grudge to ease,” said Green.

  “What grudge?”

  “That’s what we’re hoping to find out, chum. It will supply the motive. Not that we have to supply one. All we have to establish is means and opportunity, but motive helps to tie the business up with a jury.”

  “You mean you are going to arrest him?”

  “I think we shall have to,” said Masters. “Quite soon, that is. There are still one or two points . . .”

  He was interrupted by a loud ‘Ah!’ of satisfaction from Moller who had wandered away from them and was continuing his journey of inspection round the lab.

  Masters turned in his direction.

  “Got something else?” asked Green.

  Moller was standing by a large cylinder, upright in an iron cradle. It was about five feet tall and a foot in diameter, painted black and carrying a forest of gauges, ring taps and keys screwed into the top. “Nitrogen,” he said, slapping the cylinder on the shoulder, “under pressure. Filled to one hundred and seventy five bar max and with a hose take-off that can be screwed on to any bit of apparatus you like, virtually.”

  “Nitrogen?” said Lockyer. “What’s odd about that? You’ll find it in practically every working lab in the country.”

  “Working lab?” asked Masters.

  “Where technicians actually have to do things,” replied Lockyer, a little testily. “There’s pressure and power there. Surely you realise that pressure hoses are necessary for all sorts of things?”

  “I do, sir,” replied Masters quietly. “I merely wanted to establish that Wilkin was accustomed to doing practical bench work as opposed to a deal of theory and the reading of a few dials.”

  “Oh, I see. Yes, he was a technician. He’d be of no use in a lab that has to earn its bread and butter commercially unless he was a dextrous man. Paper research is for government institutions and the development sections of large companies—where the living comes in, so to speak.”

  “Thank you.” Masters turned to Moller. “I think you were going to tell us something, Doctor.”

  “Yes. Botulism is anaerobic, but it is quite happy with nitrogen. There’s power here. Controlled power. Our friend had only to fit a syringe on the end of this line, and then he could use the powe
r of the nitrogen to drive his culture into the contents of the tin without any air or oxygen being involved.”

  “In much the same way as we originally envisaged?”

  “Oh, quite. But it makes it easier to know that there was nitrogen available. It doesn’t make the operation foolproof, but it probably explains why he was successful on some occasions, if not on others.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now what?” asked Green.

  Masters turned to Lockyer.

  “This will be distasteful, sir, but we shall have to search the lab or those sections of it where Wilkin worked. His private drawers and lockers particularly. You can, of course, be present, and Dr Moller, too, if you wish.”

  Lockyer shrugged. “We shall need keys. The masters and spares will be in one of the safes. I’ll get them.”

  The two sergeants were brought in to carry out the search. Not that it was either difficult or prolonged. The locker carrying Wilkin’s name in its slot contained seven tins of Redcoke foods, all of the strip variety. One was without a label. The label itself was discovered in one of the bench drawers. It had been carefully removed and lay flattened beneath several books. A phial of glue was also there.”

  “No syringe, Chief.”

  “Never mind. I want the source of the botulism. An old rusty tin or its contents sealed up in an airtight jar or something of that nature.”

  Moller turned to Lockyer. “Where would he keep it? It’s deadly, you know. Away from oxygen . . .”

  “What form would it take?”

  “We don’t know. A block of fish or meat or a soup made from it . . . we just don’t know. Except that it must be away from oxygen or air.”

  It was Masters who said: “I read that a distinctive feature of type E is that it can grow and produce its toxin at four degrees centigrade—the operating temperature of a domestic refrigerator.”

  Lockyer grimaced. “This is a cryogenics lab,” he said. “The people here have to work with very low temperatures indeed. Obviously we can’t lower the temperature of the whole lab. We have cold cabinets—no, not like the local delicatessen shop. Like a meat cold store. You walk into them. They’re graded. The least cold is, as Mr Masters has put it, at the temperature of a domestic refrigerator. That one is really a store-room for liquid helium and the like. We use helium in cryogenics for cooling other substances down to—well, as near to absolute zero as we need to go.”

  “Where is this cabinet, please?”

  “Through this door.”

  It was unlabelled. A metal cylinder with a brass tube at each end, each tube with a screw valve and an adaptor.

  “We shall have to test it, of course,” said Moller, “but it is quite simple. He connects one end to the nitrogen cylinder and the other to his syringe. Then he opens both valves, gives a controlled blast with the nitrogen and hey presto. The pressure blows a little of his culture into the syringe. He closes that valve. Then he closes the other. The space vacated by the soup is occupied by nitrogen.”

  “He’d make this himself?”

  “Nothing to it,” said Lockyer. “They’re standard parts. All he’d need is a soldering iron and probably some cement to make sure the solder was airtight.” He turned to Moller. “I suppose you’d like a box to carry it in?”

  “Yes, please. I don’t fancy having that around, even though I know it would be safe if the air got at it and I didn’t lick my fingers.”

  As they prepared to go, Masters asked for Wilkin’s address. He thanked Lockyer for his help and apologised for troubling him.

  They settled in the car, and Reed turned to Moller. “You didn’t handle that cylinder, did you Doctor?”

  “I was careful not to, and you wrapped it up.”

  “Good. It’s just that I want to go over it for prints before you and your boyos start on it.”

  “Don’t worry. Bring it round to the lab tomorrow morning, still wrapped up. You can then do your stuff before we open it.”

  “You’ll put it on a nitrogen cylinder?” asked Masters.

  “Just as he did. A teaspoonful of the contents will be more than enough for our tests.”

  “Eight o’clock,” said Green. “Time for a drink and food. When are you picking the boyo up, George?”

  “It will have to be tonight,” said Reed. “If we wait until tomorrow he’ll arrive at the lab and know immediately we’re on to him.”

  “Not quite,” said Masters. “Tomorrow is Saturday. He won’t be going to the lab. Or at least he shouldn’t.” He turned to Green. “You see the point, don’t you, Bill?”

  Green grunted. “You want to catch him red-handed. Tomorrow, being Saturday, he’ll likely go off to plant some of his doings. We keep him under observation and nab him.”

  “It would clinch matters.”

  “What if he doesn’t?” asked Berger.

  “If he doesn’t go to the shops, but goes to the lab the same applies,” said Masters. “We pick him up on the job. But I don’t think he will go to the lab. He won’t want to attract attention to himself. He’ll do his lab work at lunchtimes when he’s alone, or indeed, quite openly. If there are four or five boffins beavering away in that lab who’s going to notice why one of them is using various bits of apparatus that they all use frequently in the normal course of events? Besides, they are researching and experimenting. That means they can do virtually anything and nobody will be surprised.” He shook his head. “No, I don’t think our friend will have encountered any difficulty on that score. We shall, of course, have to talk to the colleagues he worked with. There may have been something useful they can recall.”

  “And if he stays at home, Chief?”

  “Then we’ve lost nothing. We can pick him up there as soon as we are satisfied he isn’t going either to the shops or the lab.”

  “So there’s nothing doing tonight anyway?” asked Green.

  “I’ll have to speak to Anderson. He may think we should move immediately or, alternatively, that we should keep Wilkin under observation. I personally think there’s no need, but the Home Office is involved and the AC may think it politic to get the thing over.”

  “There’s still a lot to do, Chief,” said Berger. “Those prints for instance. And we should compare them . . .”

  “What with?”

  “The tins in Dr Moller’s laboratory.”

  “Sorry, Sergeant,” said Moller. “They’ve been cleaned out of all recognition. Your only hope there is if that unlabelled tin in his locker has his prints, or if the ones with labels on have been already processed. You collected them, I suppose.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’d better let me have them, too, after you’ve dusted them. We’d better examine the contents.”

  They dropped Moller and proceeded to the Yard. Masters said to Green: “Do me a favour, Bill. While I ring Anderson at home, would you call Wanda from your office and tell her I’ll be home shortly. You’ll be ringing Doris, I suppose?”

  Anderson listened carefully to the phoned report and then replied: “I’m not going to interfere, George, and I’ll see that nobody else does. Play it your way. It is obvious that we should not forgo the chance to catch the chap in flagrante delicto, no matter what anybody else may think—just so long, that is, as you don’t allow him to plant any more of his doctored tins. That must not happen.”

  Masters assured him that every care would be taken and was just putting the phone down when Green entered.

  “My missus is with yours,” he said. “They were expecting us for supper ten minutes ago. And Wanda tells me she’s got a large, cold, prawn quiche, salad and sauté potatoes. And she’s got a shelf full of beer in the fridge.”

  “Right. What are we waiting for?”

  *

  “But why?” demanded Doris. “Why kill people you don’t know and who’ve never done you any harm? Kiddies, too. The man must be a lunatic.”

  “His buddies don’t think so,” replied her husband. “No, that’s wrong. I don’
t think he’s got any buddies. His colleagues. Lockyer doesn’t like him much, but he works well—plods along, you know, apparently a stable character.” He lifted a forkful of the prawn quiche. “By gum, love, this is good,” he said to Wanda. “I hope there’s another in the kitchen.”

  “As a matter of fact, there is. Just a small one. Made from the left-over bits.”

  “You really do spoil the fool,” said Doris. “It’s a wonder I manage to live with him after he’s visited you.”

  Masters put his knife and fork down. “That’s probably Wilkin’s trouble. Being spoilt at home. Doting, possessive mother . . .”

  “And a lad with a whatsit complex,” added Green. “Oedipus, wasn’t it?”

  “Oedipus was in love with his mother,” said Wanda. “In the wrong sort of way, I mean.”

  “That’s right,” agreed her husband. “The Oedipus complex is a psychoanalyst’s term for an infantile fixation on the mother, whether or not the father is about. Wilkin’s isn’t quite like that. He falls almost into the same category as the unmarried daughter who is expected to stay at home and look after ageing parents. But not quite, as I say. He was obviously over-protected as a child by a widowed mother who was too jealous of him.”

  “Jealous? Oh, you mean she didn’t want to lose him, too?” asked Doris.

  “Right. And jealousy is a form of the same selfishness as that evinced by the ageing parents of unmarried girls. It becomes demanding—just to prove that it is still a powerful enough force to maintain the hold. And a maintained hold ossifies over the years into an indissoluble link and becomes two-way. The object assumes some of the characteristics of the subject.”

  “You mean they grow alike?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Now what about that left-over quiche, love?” asked Green. “I reckon there must be an indissoluble link between that and the first one and if it has the same characteristics, then we should treat it the same.”

  “And eat it?”

  “With relish, poppet.”

  Wanda laughed and got up from the table to go into the little kitchen.

  “Bill,” scolded his wife. “You really have no manners at all. Asking like that.”

  Masters laughed. “Bill’s quite right. He’s brought us down to earth. I shouldn’t talk shop at the table.”