‘I’m not proposing I break away from the new regime, reading all that there is here for us to read, but I’d like to run another string through the synthesizer,’ said Sato.
‘Go ahead,’ agreed Parnell at once. ‘Anyone else?’
This time there was no response. Parnell said: ‘OK, let’s keep reading. Anyone get any brilliant ideas, let’s hear them right away.’
As he read, with growing acceptance that he wasn’t going to get a lead, Parnell felt the disappointment of the others at San Diego’s unsuccessful efforts to find link between their 1918 flu discovery and the genome map they’d chosen from one of the most commonly eaten Chinese chickens, although conceding immediately that the connection was not the direct focus of their investigation but a naturally ongoing – and maybe ultimately successful – progression of it. Initially the only movement in the outside laboratory had been Sean Sato moving around his equipment, but that soon ended. No one bothered to leave for a coffee break, all accepting Kathy Richardson’s offer to bring it in. Lunch was more to rest wearily fogged eyes than to eat. No one took more than half an hour away from their desks or benches.
Without any conscious decision, six o’clock had evolved into the time for their end-of-day review, and that Friday night Parnell stuck rigidly to it, coming out of his side office precisely on time and bringing everyone up with the cry of: ‘OK, guys. Day’s over, as well as the week. Make it a full weekend. I know you’re going to take stuff home, like I am, but keep it light. The way we’re working we’re going all of us to end up brain-dead, and brain-dead we’re no use to anyone, certainly not to wives or partners or loved ones…’ He was instantly aware of the abrupt attention from everyone at the remark, not sure himself why he’d said it. It had just come naturally and there hadn’t been any clog of emotion when he’d said it. He hadn’t even been thinking of Rebecca. ‘Let’s clear our minds and our heads and start again on Monday,’ he concluded.
Parnell didn’t intend waiting until Monday, of course. And he had other work in mind, as well.
Parnell arrived at McLean just after seven on the Saturday morning, his reading until midnight bringing him two thirds of the way through the Scripps material. He put what remained of the American documentation beside that from San Diego on his desk, everything temporarily suspended, sure what he intended would only take up the morning, possibly even less. He accepted that there would have to be an explanation for the rest of the unit when they saw the obvious evidence of an experiment, but was unconcerned about it. He was, after all, working in his spare time, and by Monday he would have completed all the necessary reading, so he’d be further ahead than anyone else. On all their benches and desks there were sections of both dossiers obediently left for the following week. Parnell concentrated his experiment upon the medicines to which the additional expectorants and the rifofludine partial-preservative had been added, recording the dosages of each to his carefully separated test mice, from each of which he first took a blood sample to provide a comparative DNA string to measure the effect, if any, of the new formulae against the old. He was almost at the end of his preparation when the other idea came to him and he physically stopped what he was doing, considering it. With the exception of the three new constituents, every drug had gone through the required three-phase licensing process, and those three ingredients could not, in themselves, be humanly harmful. He wasn’t, anyway, considering human testing as such, just a shortcut to extend the experiments beyond mice.
He prepared each petrie dish with a measured sample of every brand product containing liulousine, beneuflous and rifofludine. It was difficult extruding the vein in his left arm and he inserted the hypodermic awkwardly, hurting himself, but he managed to withdraw sufficient blood identically to match the drug measures already in the culture dishes.
He was concentrating so totally upon storing them that he didn’t hear Beverley Jackson come into the laboratory. The first he knew of her presence was when she said: ‘What the hell are you doing?’ And so startled was he that he came close to dropping the culture dish in his hand.
He turned to face her at the door, aware that the shirt sleeve of his left arm was still rolled up and that the hypodermic, with some blood remaining in the chamber, was lying very obviously on the bench alongside Russell Benn’s samples.
‘I’m just working my way through something,’ Parnell said, inadequately.
Beverley came further into the room, absorbing everything as she did so. ‘For Christ’s sake, Dick, you’re experimenting on yourself! What is it? What have you injected? Tell me you haven’t done anything stupid! Holy Christ!’
‘Stop it,’ he said, hoping his calmness would calm her. ‘I haven’t injected myself with anything. I just needed human blood and I was the only donor.’
‘What for?’ she persisted, looking more intently at the neatly stacked bottles and phials. Before Parnell could answer she said: ‘They came from the chemical division a couple of days back, right?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m just carrying out a few tests, that’s all.’
‘Why? Why on these specific samples when we’ve got hundreds of others we haven’t even looked at yet? And when we’re supposed to be working exclusively on the flu research, which, incidentally, is what I’ve come in here today to go on doing.’
It could only be his suspicion that there was some connection with Rebecca’s killing, but he couldn’t compromise Beverley in any way. ‘I want you to trust me. Trust me and not talk to anyone about what I’m doing. Which is what I am going to ask everyone else on Monday, when they see the mice and the cultures.’
‘It’s personal?’
There was only one inference if he answered that. ‘Trust me.’
Beverley regarded him steadily for several moments. ‘Am I going to regret coming in here today?’
‘You could go.’
‘I’m logged in, at the security gatehouse. As you are.’
Shit, thought Parnell. ‘You don’t know anything. You’re not part of anything. There’s probably nothing to know or be part of.’
There was another silence. ‘Were you and Rebecca doing something you shouldn’t have been?’
Beverley was too clever, too prescient, Parnell conceded. ‘Neither Rebecca nor I were betraying Dubette in any way. Nor were – or have – either of us done anything illegal or against the company.’
‘I’ve got to trust you on that?’
‘I’m asking you to trust me on that,’ qualified Parnell.
‘Do I get to know sometime?’
‘I can’t answer that. Like I said, maybe there’s nothing to know.’
‘It would have been a good day to stay at home, wouldn’t it?’
‘It would have avoided a lot of complications.’
Beverley Jackson didn’t reply and Parnell accepted, surprised, that he’d had the last word.
They read – Parnell retreating into his private office – for the rest of the morning. He was surprised, although not as much as he had been earlier, by her sudden arrival at his office door. ‘What are you doing about lunch?’
‘I hadn’t thought about it. Probably won’t bother.’
‘You know what you look like…?’
‘Don’t!’ stopped Parnell, realizing he hadn’t even bothered to shave that morning. ‘And yes, I know. Everyone keeps telling me.’
‘Shit,’ completed the woman, refusing the interruption.
‘That’s it. That’s what everyone keeps telling me.’
‘Did you make breakfast?’
‘I didn’t have time.’
‘What was dinner last night?’
‘That really was shit. A prepared lasagne: I didn’t get all the plastic covering off, before the microwave. It didn’t add to the flavour. But then I don’t think anything could have done.’
‘You lectured us last night, about the danger of being brain-dead?’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re a mess. And getting messier. For a lot of reasons I know and for a lot more that I don’t. What I do know is that a messed-up – fucked-up – head of department is even more of a danger than being brain-dead.’
‘I’ll do better – eat better, get better – tonight.’
‘I know you will,’ said the woman. ‘I’m personally going to see that you do. But also that you shave first. Christ, you really are a fucked-up mess!’
