Gurs was a humdrum place: a few sombre old villas, a disused railroad. Some desultory bungalows surrounded a tired-looking town hall, even the Brasserie d'Hagetmau was resolutely shut. It was a place sucked of life by bigger towns nearby. Or just a place no one especially wanted to live.
The sharpest corner brought another row of bungalows, with gardens lush from recent rain.
'This is it, the right number,' said Amy, gesturing at the last bungalow in the row. The bungalow was slightly isolated; it stood opposite a modern and rather ugly church, with offices attached. Beyond was scruffy wasteland.
They walked up the path. The front door was painted a self-consciously cheerful yellow. David had the sense of curtains twitching elsewhere in the silent suburban street; old faces peering. He turned. No one was looking.
He pressed the doorbell. A faintly ecclesiastic chime was heard. Nothing happened. Amy peered at the windows.
'Maybe no one is in…'
He pressed again. Wondering where Miguel was. Then he heard a noise. A yell. Someone was shouting at them, from inside.
'What…?'
The shout was heard, again. Angry and panicked.
He lifted the letterbox lid and peered.
A young woman was crouched in the hallway. And she had a shotgun. She was trembling, and her grip was clumsy, but she was pointing the shotgun at the door. At David and Amy.
17
Detective Sanderson was sceptical about Simon's mission to interview Professor Emeritus Francis St John Fazackerly, one time winner of the Willard Prize for Human Genetic Research, and now the ex-boss of GenoMap.
'Good luck. And you'll need it, mate,' said Sanderson, his cheerful voice quite clear on the mobile phone pressed to Simon's ear. The detective added: 'He's an evasive old fucker, we talked to him last week.'
'Yes?'
Simon crossed Euston Road, and stared at the gleaming offices of the Wellcome Institute: this whole area was full of medical research centres and high-tech university faculties, and young undergraduates laughing outside pubs who made Simon feel all of his forty years. He spoke into the phone:
'Doesn't he know anything about Nairn?'
Sanderson scoffed, 'If he does he ain't saying. Tomasky nearly got the thumbscrews out — you seeing him at the GenoMap gaff?'
'Yes.'
'He asked to meet us there, as well. Guess he prefers neutral territory.'
Simon headed down Gordon Street.
'Detective — '
'Mate, call me Bob, fer fuck's sake — '
'Bob — Detective — Bob — '
Bob Sanderson laughed. 'If you get anything on these blood tests do tell — maybe your sleuthing skills will prove a bit better than ours.'
'Bob, you make it sound like you…don't exactly trust him?'
The line was silent. Simon repeated his question. The DCI replied slowly, 'Not sure I do. There's just something…well, evasive, likesay. Check it out.'
The call concluded, the journalist pushed through the battered, paint-peeling door. He took the lift to the top floor where an old, old guy in a tweed jacket, with a wattly neck and yellowy eyes, was waiting to greet him. The man looked barely half a social class above a tramp. Yet, as Simon's research had told him, this man Fazackerly had been — once — amongst the best geneticists of his generation.
Fazackerly fixed his eyes on his visitor. The scientist's yellow-toothed smile was lordly yet repulsive, like a monitor lizard grinning after a large meal of diseased goat.
'Mister Quinn from the Daily Telegraph. Do come in, and excuse the mess. I'm still moving my ancillary documents. Two months later!'
Fazackerly opened a glass door and guided his guest through the main lab of the GenoMap project, as was. Evidence of the project's closure was all around. Much of the machinery had already been dismantled, there were big half-sealed crates sitting in the dusty silence, with fridge-freezer sized machines inside, waiting to be shipped.
The old professor pointed at a couple of the bigger pieces of equipment, and listed their names and functions: the thermocycler for rapid segmentation, the vast lab microwave for sterilization and histology, the DNA sequencers for analyzing fluorochromes. Simon scribbled the strange words and purposes in his notebook; it felt like he was taking dictation in Latin.
Then Fazackerly invited the journalist into a back office, closed the door, and sat down at a desk. Simon sat opposite in a steel chair. A black and white photo of a Victorian-looking man lay flat and dusty on the desk.
Fazackerly nodded in its direction. 'Just taken it down off the wall. It's Galton.'
'Sorry?'
'Francis Galton, bit of a hero. The founder of eugenics. Did some excellent work in Namibia.'
The scientist took up the framed photo and slid it into a cardboard box at his side; the box also contained three empty bottles of whisky.
'Well, Mister Quinn, I imagine you have some questions, like your police friend?'
'Yes.'
'To speed things up, what say I give you a little background?'
'OK.'
Fazackerly began to waffle: about human genetics and the genome project and the problems of funding pure research. Dutifully, Simon scribbled.
But the journalist was beginning to sense what the Scotland Yard detective had been implying: Fazackerly was evasive, filling the air with mellifluous but distracting verbiage, as if aiming to decoy.
He needed to hurry the dialogue along.
'Professor Fazackerly. Why exactly was the GenoMap project closed down?'
The interviewee sniffed the air.
'Because we quite ran out of money, I'm afraid. Genomics is an expensive business.'
'So there was no…political element?'
A flash of the yellow teeth.
'Well…'
Silence.
'Professor Fazackerly. I know you're a busy guy. I'll come clean.' Simon stared directly at the professor. 'I've been doing my Googling. GenoMap was set up mainly with private funding from corporations to continue the work that was begun by the Human Diversity Genome Project at Stanford University. Yes?' 'Yes…'
'Were you closed for the same reason as the Stanford project?'
For the first time the scientist appeared uncomfortable.
'Mister Quinn. Please remember. I'm just a retired biologist.'
'What coaxed you out of retirement?'
'I think GenoMap is a grand idea: we are, or rather we were, aiming to map the differences between different human races…and if we manage that then it could be of momentous benefit.' 'How?'
'Medicines. There are, for instance, new medicines available for people of African descent in the United States for their particular problems with hypertension. And so forth. At GenoMap we were hoping especially for some insights into Tay Sachs disease, which seems to be especially common with people of Ashkenazi Jewish
