Babel (32 page)

Leon mumbled, ‘Yes, yes.’

‘Eh?’ Darr repeated, leaning down, his face close.

‘Yes,’ Leon nodded, and a tremendous blow between his shoulder blades sent him sprawling forward onto his face. He lay stunned on the gravel and heard the crunch of their footsteps receding into the night, the growl of the car engine, then silence.

Kathy had reached Poplar, and was beginning to wonder what she could reasonably expect to do when she got to UCLE, when her phone went. She pressed the button and a voice she barely recognised whispered, ‘Kathy . . . Kathy . . .’

‘Leon!’ She skidded the car to the kerb and pressed the phone harder to her ear. ‘Is it you?’

‘Kathy . . . yes, I’m sorry . . .’

‘Are you all right?’ she demanded, hearing the panic in her voice. His sounded unnatural, as if he were being strangled, and there were sounds of other people in the background. ‘Where are you?’

‘Kathy . . . I’m sorry . . .’

‘For God’s sake, Leon!’ she almost yelled. ‘Never mind about being sorry! Are you all right?’

‘I’ve had a bit of bother. I was wondering if you could come and pick me up.’

He was on Commercial Road in Limehouse he said. She told him not to move and rammed the car into gear. At the next red light she rang Brock and told him she’d made contact and would ring back when she knew more.

Within five minutes she spotted him outside the pub he’d described, leaning in a patch of shadow against the wall. Her headlights caught him as she swerved to the kerb, and he jerked upright, looking dishevelled like a tramp. The lights seemed to alarm him and he stumbled as he turned to run.

‘Leon!’ She raced across the pavement and caught him.

‘Kathy! How . . . how did you get here so fast?’ He seemed astonished, disoriented.

‘Are you hurt?’ His nose was bloody she could see, and he was moving stiffly, but he was moving, and on his feet.

He shook his head and she threw her arms round him, laughing with relief. Her laughter seemed to drain the remaining tension out of him and he leaned back against the pub wall, holding onto her. They clung together in the shadow like that for a while until she whispered, ‘You’d better tell me what happened, you stupid bastard.’

They went into the pub where Leon had told the landlord that he’d been mugged and had persuaded him to give him coins for the phone. Kathy repaid the money and bought the barman a beer and Leon a brandy while he went to the gents and tried to clean himself up. The bar was glaringly bright and crowded, the music from a jukebox deafening, and she found a small formica table as far from the machine as possible. She watched Leon weave slowly through the beer drinkers towards her and remembered the government scientist’s words, ‘We’re all vulnerable’. Leon was looking very vulnerable at that moment, his hair and clothes more in order but his usual poise gone, his pride a major casualty. He sat opposite her and muttered a thanks and took a gulp of the drink and told her the story.

When he reached the end he paused for another sip of the brandy, his hand trembling as he raised it to his mouth. He choked and coughed, and said, ‘I’m sorry. You must think this is pathetic. I’m still . . . rattled.’

‘I know,’ Kathy said, and put her hand on his. ‘I know exactly how you feel.’

‘You?’ He smiled doubtfully, disbelieving. ‘Not you, Kathy. And the thing was that although I’d been through something like that before, the Sammy Starling thing, it didn’t help. I thought to myself how ridiculous it was, this happening twice, and me even more helpless and terrified the second time.’

‘It’s the same for everyone, Leon,’ Kathy said gently.

‘No.’ Leon shook his head adamantly. ‘Look at Brock and Bren, fighting those skinheads off in Shadwell Road, and you taking on those blokes at the cemetery the other day . . . I’m not like that. I was afraid.’

She wanted to explain to him that in the cemetery she had reacted without having time to feel afraid, and that afterwards she had suffered for it. She wanted to tell him that she had self-doubts every bit as severe as his own, and that they were more crippling for her, in her position, than for him. But she held back, not sure that she wanted to make a confession to him. And there were things to be done. Later, perhaps, she would decide to tell him ‘So Darr thought you were a private detective hired by Haygill to find out if he was screwing his wife?’

Leon nodded, gulping down the last of the brandy. ‘She is a blonde, isn’t she? I remembered that Darr was with a blonde woman when I arrived at the club yesterday. He put her in a taxi and came to the bar and there I was. When I started asking him questions about her he must have put two and two together and made five.’

Leon shook his head glumly while Kathy smiled.

‘I’m sorry, Leon, but that really takes the biscuit. I wonder what Brock will say?’

‘Oh, we can’t tell him! That’s why I rang you.’

‘Rupert saw you at the club, leaving with Darr. He phoned Wayne, and Brock mobilised the troops. I phoned him on my way here to let him know you were safe. He’s going to need an explanation.’

Leon groaned.

She leaned forward and gently straightened his tie. ‘It hasn’t been your night, has it?’

‘No. But I’ll tell you what, Kathy. You and Brock should be careful. I was lucky, but those blokes, the Iraqis, they’re tough. I’m convinced that they’d have finished me off with one word from Darr. I’d hate to think what they’d do to anyone who really got on the wrong side of them.’

She nodded. ‘Did they keep all your stuff?’

‘Yeah. Probably threw it in the river.’

But in that, at least, he was wrong, for when Kathy finally delivered him to his parents’ house in Barnet, after he had made his explanations on her phone to Brock and silently endured Brock’s scathing assessment of his judgement and prospects, his mother opened the door to him with the news that a terribly nice Asian man had called with his possessions and a message that he must be much more careful in future.

19

T
he following morning everyone in the office seemed to be reading the
Herald
when Kathy arrived. Bren tossed her his copy as she walked in and asked what was going on.

‘This should stir the pot,’ he said. ‘Does Brock know the editor or something?’

Kathy caught the front page headline, ‘
POLICE PROBE UNIVERSITY STAFF
’, and thought oh-oh. But the front page was only a sampler for what lay inside. It reported that Scotland Yard detectives had begun reinterviewing staff at UCLE in connection with the murder of Max Springer, and in particular those staff in the Division of Science and Technology with international and Islamic connections, with the unstated implication that they were hunting for accomplices of the assumed murderer Abu Khadra. It ended with references to further articles inside;
Academic strife
, page 3;
Science feature
, page 7;
Editorial
, page 10. It seemed as if Clare Hancock had managed to take over the whole issue with her story.

It was her name against the
Academic strife
report, which gave a detailed account of the long-running and increasingly savage feud between Max Springer and Richard Haygill, including Springer’s ‘Dr Mengele’ jibe in the University Senate and culminating in quotations taken from his letter to the paper before he died. The article described these as coming from a document that had come into the hands of the newspaper that it had passed on to the police, and Kathy guessed that it was a measure of Clare Hancock’s faith that there was a bigger story behind all this that she’d been able to persuade her editor to use it. The quotes included Springer’s descriptions of UCLE as ‘an outstanding leader in whoredom’, and of Haygill as ‘Svengali-like’, as well as the prophetic final sentence, ‘Those who speak out against tyranny must offer their very lives to the cause’. Against these tirades, the repeated ‘no comment’ responses of both UCLE and Haygill were made to sound evasive and guilty, and allowed the reporter to come to the conclusion that the whole debacle must point to a deeper malaise at UCLE, to the failure of its administration to manage the affair properly, and to the possibility that both the university and CAB-Tech’s director had something to hide.

The
Science feature
on page 7, titled ‘
STRUGGLING TO CONTROL THE GENETIC GENIE
’ and written by the paper’s science correspondent, took a different approach. This focused on Max Springer’s accusations that CAB-Tech’s research work was unethical and beyond the control of the university or any other responsible body. It gave the familiar discussion of fears about the implications of genetic engineering a particular slant by looking at the way research companies operating in more than one country might evade ethical controls on their experiments and procedures. As a possible illustration of this, it named CAB-Tech’s BRCA4 protocol as one that had raised concerns among UK regulators. Kathy wondered where they had got that from.

The editorial pulled together these different themes by proposing a Royal Commission into the regulation of multi-national genetic research organisations, as well as an inquiry into the management of UCLE.

Kathy put down the paper and wondered if Clare Hancock had spoken to her the previous day just to gloat.

The first reaction to the
Herald
edition came at ten that morning, with a call to Brock from the UCLE President, Roderick Young, requesting a meeting. He arrived at Queen Anne’s Gate an hour later, and was shown into one of the ground floor meeting rooms. He shook Brock’s hand with a sombre nod, looked around with distaste at the spartan furniture, the unshaded fluorescent light tubes, the green moss staining the brickwork of the tiny courtyard beyond the window, then took off his coat and threw it across the back of a chair and sat down. He had arrived alone, telling his driver to call for him again in half an hour, and he began by asking that their conversation be off the record and not recorded. Brock agreed.

‘You’ll have seen the
Herald
this morning,’ he began, his voice a low growl as if he suspected people of listening at the door. ‘As you might imagine, it’s caused a good deal of consternation among my colleagues, particularly in Professor Haygill’s area. Haygill will be getting his own legal advice, as will the university. The articles are potentially extremely damaging to both UCLE and CAB-Tech, as well as to the individuals concerned, as you can well imagine. Haygill’s Principal Research Scientist handed in his notice this morning—’

‘That’s Dr Darr, is it?’ Brock interrupted, making a note on his pad. ‘Is he proposing to leave the country?’

‘I don’t know. Haygill’s trying to persuade him to change his mind. But that’s just a hint of the possible repercussions. Apart from the staff, the damage to CAB-Tech’s reputation and the confidence of its investors could be immense.’

The words were there, Brock sensed, but not the feelings. There was no anger, no outrage in Young’s voice. He spoke in a monotone, giving the impression of a chess player moving his pieces forward, one by one, to establish a position.

‘Professor Haygill is understandably incensed. He feels that he always behaved with total propriety towards Max Springer, despite outrageous provocation, and he is now being pilloried by the words of a dead man against which he can’t defend himself. He is in a mood to lash out, to defend himself, against anyone he perceives as an enemy. You understand?’

‘Of course.’

‘He even suggested to me that the
Herald
reports may have been deliberately inspired by the police.’

He paused and looked balefully at Brock for comment.

Brock said, ‘Really?’

Young gave the briefest of smiles, as if he hadn’t really expected to provoke a reaction.

‘Naturally I will attempt to counsel him to avoid entangling us all in unnecessary complications. But at some point his interests and ours—that is, the university’s—may diverge. May indeed have already diverged.’

‘Is that so? I seem to recall you describing CAB-Tech as the flagship of your university’s research effort, Professor,’ Brock said mildly.

‘Sometimes even the flagship must be sacrificed for the sake of the whole fleet. I’m thinking that it may become prudent, necessary, for the university to review the whole operation and management of CAB-Tech. Some kind of high-powered, external committee of review, with unimpeachable credibility. A senior judge, a retired vice-chancellor, a past president of the Royal Society . . . that sort of level. My dilemma is, that I don’t want to set up a sledgehammer to crack a nut, you see.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Well, if the problem is endemic, and the whole body is tainted, then clearly some powerful surgery is necessary. But if it’s localised to one or two misguided junior staff who can be isolated and removed without damaging the integrity of the whole, well, that’s a different matter. To be candid, Chief Inspector,’ and here Young fixed Brock with a frank, almost intimate little smile, ‘it would help me a great deal if I could have some guidance from you as to how deep, or should I say, how far up the CAB-Tech hierarchy your current investigations are reaching.’