“Sonia Petrilli. You never targeted her? Never sent her a letter?”
Lin shook her head, still frowning. “Barely remember the name, to be honest. It was always Whelan. Like I said before, the golden goose. I even heard,” she added, ‘that they’ve got plants out there that could kill you. Deadly nightshade and belladonna. Is that even legal in the UK?” Her passion grew by the word. “And what kind of botany garden needs a bloody metal fence and gate around it? It’s not a military base!”
I tuned out most of the end of that ramble, focused on Lin’s absent memory of Sonia Petrilli. That was strange. I had believed them to be partners in equal standing, but if Abbie was receiving more of the limelight, more of the credit than Sonia, that was something I wanted to look into more. It seemed Mills did too, as he pulled his notebook out and scribbled down a few quick words, putting it back in his pocket a moment later.
“When was the last time you protested them?” I asked her, and she leant back on the bollard, mouth screwed to one side as she thought.
“Last year, I think. They were working on a new herbal drug or whatever, and they were using pigs. Nasty business, you know, pigs are much smarter than people think they are,” she told us.
“Much cleaner too,” I added. “They’ve got a bad reputation, is all.” One of my neighbours growing up had pigs. I used to go and help to feed them sometimes when I wound my mother up too much. Lin smiled at me as Mills frowned, and I cleared my throat, focusing back on the current problem, rather than the sour guilty memory that wormed its way into my head.
“What about the current work going on there? The research project that Abbie is currently doing?”
“I don’t know much about it,” she admitted honestly. “Why? Should we be interested?” She narrowed her eyes.
“I hope not,” Mills stated blandly. The last thing we needed was a protest around a crime scene, drawing in attention from the press.
“Look,” Lin hopped down from the bollard. “She’s a mum, isn’t she? Abbie Whelan.”
“She is,” I confirmed slowly, suspicious as to how Lin was aware of such a fact.
“I remember seeing her in the street once, and I was going to go over, and you know, advocate, but she was with a little girl, so I thought best not,” Lin explained. “However much I might disagree with her work, however much I might hate her for it, I could never do that to a little kid.” She said it all with much earnestness, and I believed her. To stand against a person or a place was one thing, to attack and harm was another entirely. And Lin Shui, with the leaves in her hair and the save the whale patch amidst the collage on her oversized jacket, did not seem the sort of person to put a woman in the hospital.
“Thank you for your time, Miss Shui.” I handed her my business card. “If you think of anything that might be useful to our investigation, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.”
“Well, it goes against most things I stand for to take this,” she informed me, “but alright.” She tucked it into her jacket pocket, patting it for good measure. “Here.” She pulled a pen from her boot and a scrap of paper from her pocket.
“Email address,” she told me as she passed it over. “In case you’re interested in our cause. Or if there’s anything else.” She hesitated for a moment, her hands in her pockets, half-turned away from us. “The little girl, she alright?”
“She’s safe.”
Lin nodded and gave us a pained smile before flipping us off and darting back over to her friends.
“What a nice girl,” Mills mused. I grinned and jerked my head to the street.
“Helpful though.” I had to commend her for that. “Interesting that their focus was on Abbie more than anyone else. She barely knew who Sonia was,” I remarked as we walked back along the road.
“I thought as much too,” Mills agreed. “Maybe we should have a look into that. See how evenly their credit is distributed.”
“Definitely,” I said, steering us towards a pub across the road. “And we should get a better look at some of the lab’s past studies. Try to get through some of the red tape and see what exactly they’re doing out there. I’m guessing it’s not all garden parties and snails.”
“Developing a natural treatment for cardiovascular diseases,” Mills muttered. “Absolutely not. Do you think Dr Quaid will tell us much?”
“I think he’d tell us more than Sonia Petrilli would, considering how much is riding on this research for her. She’d want to keep it safe, after all.”
“Do you remember Abbie’s car?” Mills asked suddenly, “She had a sticker in the boot window, the same symbol as one of Lin’s patches. I just placed it now,” he added, glancing back over his shoulder to where the rally still echoed along the city.
“Really? Did you catch the name?”
“No,” he said in an annoyed voice, “but I’ll look into it later. Could be that Abbie was forming her opinions about the work she was doing. If she shared certain ideas with people like Lin, it could be that she wanted to do things a little differently.”
“Possibly,” I nodded, walking into the pub and holding the door open for him. “But I think today’s gone on long enough, mate. Let’s have a pint and start swapping theories again tomorrow.”
Mills laughed relievedly and relaxed, slumping over to the bar. I joined him, grateful to look outside and see the slowly changing sky as evening began to roll in. Today had been very long, in fact.
Eight
Thatcher
The next morning, I met up with Mills in the café down the road from the station. It was a crisp, bright morning, and I squinted in the sunshine as I strolled towards the small café with its
