‘She has her own guard, guv.’
He gave her a look that said all she needed to know about the competence of private security guards.
She took out her phone.
‘And now we’ll find the pathology lab,’ he said.
‘We’d better ask.’ She stopped a porter wheeling an oxygen cylinder along the main pathway and they were soon heading in the right direction.
The technician who greeted them inside the door was clearly a junior, but he showed them in to the scientist in charge, a large, bearded man called Pinch, who was sitting on a bench eating a banana. He eyed them as if they’d come to ask for money. When they showed their IDs he jumped to attention, tossed the peel into a bin, wiped his hands and offered them coffee.
All Diamond wanted was the test result, but Ingeborg accepted for them both. The kettle was hot and the coffee was instant, so it shouldn’t delay them long.
Pinch explained that his staff supplied their own mugs and there weren’t any spares. ‘Hope you don’t mind drinking from a glass beaker. I promise you, they’re clean. Haven’t contained anything of human origin. Not today, anyway.’
Diamond wouldn’t touch his, he decided.
‘So how can I help?’
They asked about Clarion’s towel.
‘That’s been tested, yes.’
‘With what result?’
‘Traces of glycerine-based make-up, for sure, and face powder, but also a corrosive I wouldn’t recommend putting anywhere near your face.’
‘Acid?’
‘Alkali, in fact, but no less dangerous. Sodium hydroxide.’
‘Caustic soda,’ Ingeborg said with a sharp intake of breath.
A shocked silence followed.
Finally Diamond, appalled, said, ‘Isn’t that what they use to unblock drains?’
‘Right. We didn’t believe it at first, so we repeated the tests. That’s why we took so long.’ Pinch poured the coffee. ‘Help yourselves to sugar.’
Neither reached for the spoon. Ingeborg’s face had drained of colour.
‘There’s no question, then?’ Diamond said.
‘It’s caustic soda for sure, available from your friendly, neighbourhood hardware store. As you doubtless know, it comes in powder form as tiny flakes or granules. Add a solvent such as water and you’ll remove most blockages.’
‘And most of your skin.’
‘If you come in contact with it. In these safety-conscious times it’s a wonder the public is still allowed to buy the stuff.’
‘How does it work?’
‘It’s inert until added to water.’
‘So it could be mixed with something dry, such as face powder, and it wouldn’t react?’
‘Correct.’
‘And being white in colour it would blend in with powder,’ Ingeborg added. Horrible as it was, the presence of caustic soda on the towel had to be fitted into a scenario.
‘What would have activated it?’ Diamond asked.
‘Assuming it was applied to her skin?’ Pinch said. ‘The surface moisture may have been enough. If she was wearing a moisturiser, that would certainly have done it.’
‘She had another layer over that, the glycerine-based cream you mentioned,’ Ingeborg said. ‘If it was mixed with that –’
‘I’m not sure it was,’ the scientist said. ‘We recovered a number of dry particles from the towel. Actors powder their faces, don’t they?’
‘If they do, it’s over some layers of make-up.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I understand it gets warm under the theatre lights. If she started sweating, the process would begin for sure and she might not be aware at first. It forms a slime on the surface and the action can take out the nerve endings as well as the skin tissue. By the time she became aware, it would already have been well advanced.’
‘This may explain the delay we’ve all been puzzling over,’ Diamond said. ‘Nasty.’
‘Worse than nasty,’ Ingeborg said. ‘It’s fiendish.’
‘Does she know yet?’ Diamond asked.
Pinch shook his head. ‘We needed to confirm the results. This is tricky territory. We report to the medics, not the patient or her representatives. We informed the doctor treating her after we ran the first tests, but when
