Fatlands (8 page)

‘Yes. So it would seem,' he said quietly.

‘So why you? I mean what made you different from all the rest?'

‘I don't know,' he said for what was obviously the one hundred and fourth time. He was getting angry again. ‘Why don't you ask them?'

‘Because I'm asking you.'

OK. So I should have been more compassionate. The guy was in pain. But he was also still alive, and all the way down the line he had disappointed her. What's more, he knew that I knew it. ‘Look around you,' he said with barely concealed exasperation. ‘We're the biggest research unit in the country. And I'm the head of it.'

‘Yeah, but cancer. It doesn't make sense. If the ALF are going to blow up people, surely they'd pick their targets with a little more public relations in mind.'

He snorted. ‘You don't know much about animal rights, do you, Miss Wolfe? That's the whole point. In the eyes of the ALF all scientists are monsters; it doesn't matter what they do. It's means, not ends, they're concerned with. I believe it's what's called a gulf of understanding. For medical science progress is impossible without testing. For animal rights any test which involves what they see as suffering to animals is no progress at all. There's no middle ground.'

Nice little speech. Word perfect. Still, he was right. Despite all the publicity, I didn't know much about their philosophy. I also didn't know that much about his job. But maybe he wasn't allowed to talk about it.

‘So how do they justify the suffering they cause?'

He stared at me. ‘I have no idea. Perhaps when you catch them, they'll tell you.'

It was clear the interview was drawing to a close. He rubbed a hand over his eyes. I watched him. His whole face was rigid, the jawbone set against any further feeling. He seemed like a man caught between exhaustion and fury. But what I didn't get now I couldn't see myself getting later. ‘I wonder, do you have any of these threats that I can see, Dr Shepherd?'

The answer came slow and precise, as if he was talking to a child. ‘No. I have given them all to the police.'

Time to start leaving. I put my bag over my shoulder and held out my hand. Play them right and you can get some of the best stuff from exits. ‘Well, thanks for seeing me, anyway.'

He hesitated, then took my hand. His touch was clammy. I tried to imagine being fourteen with him as the centre of my universe, but I just couldn't get there; somehow he didn't seem old enough to be a father. But then he must have been young when she was born, mid twenties or even less. Maybe he had never quite finished with his youth and went looking for it amid the test tubes and lab assistants. It was an uncharitable thought, but then there was definitely something about him I didn't like. Or maybe ‘like' was the wrong word—‘didn't feel comfortable with' was probably more accurate. Still, grief turns people inside out I have been told. Parents especially. Fathers and mothers. I wondered how they were going to conduct the funeral. Have separate services and bury the corpse twice? What corpse? I tried not to think about it.

Oh, yes indeed, I still had a whole slew of unanswered questions. I went for a first parting shot. ‘About Mattie's mother—'

But he didn't let me finish. ‘There's nothing to say about her. My wife is a disturbed, unstable woman. We haven't seen each other for a year.'

‘Disturbed and unstable,' I repeated. ‘But not violent?'

His eyes narrowed. ‘And what does that mean?'

I waved a hand. ‘Nothing. Only that I'm trying to find out who killed your daughter. And since it was pretty obvious the device was intended for you, I—'

‘My God, you think it was Christine?' This time he laughed. It was not exactly an infectious sound. ‘No. She gets too much pleasure from having me alive. Anyway, it's not her style. Christine would have trouble changing a plug, let alone constructing a bomb.'

Well, that sorted out that one. On the other hand it sometimes takes two to be electrically incompetent. Maybe he was the kind of man who needed to do it all himself. In which case I certainly wasn't looking at an absent-minded professor, the sort who regularly misplaced theatre tickets. I saw Mattie whirling round in her father's study, phone to her ear. One last question. I was careful how I phrased it. Right at that moment, apart from the person on the other end of the line, I was the only one in the world who knew about that phone call. And just for the present I wanted to keep it that way. So I asked him when he had last talked to his daughter. He treated it as an odd question, one implying neglect rather than affection. Maybe it did.

‘I don't see that it's any of your business. Now, if you don't mind I have a lot to do.'

You betcha. Like finding a cure for cancer before the suppressed guilt makes you ill yourself. Don't reckon your chances. ‘Of course. You're right. I'm sorry.'

I got to the door before I turned. ‘Oh—stupid thing, really. Mattie was under the impression that you'd given me the theatre tickets for last night. I wasn't supposed to have them, was I?'

He looked at me as if I was slightly deranged. How irrelevant could something be. He'd never know. ‘No. They were at the theatre. Why do you ask?'

I shrugged. ‘Just wanted to check I didn't owe you some money.'

I went back to the office. Not because I had anything to do there, but because it felt better than going home. Frank had gone back to the leftovers of the
tapas
and the echoes of Spanish cedillas in his ear. One of these days I'll get to meet his family, the indestructible Ginny. As marriages
go it didn't sound too bad. At least they weren't out to kill each other.

Of course I didn't believe it was Mattie's mother. I had just wanted to rattle Shepherd into some unguarded remark. In retrospect it didn't rate as one of my greatest interrogations. My technique or his personality? Let's call it a draw. My only consolation was that I couldn't believe the police had done much better.

The phone took the top of my head off, but then the office doesn't get too many calls on a Sunday evening. Frank had put the machine on so I just let it go. After the beep a man's voice said in a chatty kind of way: ‘Well, off spending Sunday with the family, eh, Frank? I thought that was one part of this job you used to like. Listen, I thought you might want to know we brought in Ben Maringo, had a few words with him. He says it's no one he knows, but then he claims nobody's talking much to anyone these days. Gave us a few leads, though. I'll let you know when we do. Cheers. Oh, and by the way. Don thinks your girl's a cutie.'

Well, wasn't I the lucky one? In all kinds of ways. A present from the police. How nice. Nice of Ben Maringo to have such a distinctive name, too. Even nicer to find that his name was in the phone book. Granted, it didn't make the rest of Sunday night any easier, but at least for once Monday offered something to look forward to.

I
would have got there earlier if my car hadn't given up the ghost and I hadn't had to sit around waiting for the AA. It was mid-afternoon when I finally arrived at the small Victorian terrace on the outskirts of the Hackney Marshes, its faç ade badly in need of a coat of paint. Any worry that I might not have found the right Maringo was dispelled by the poster in the front window.
SAY NO TO ANIMAL TESTING
. And the picture of a dog cowering in terror as a hand with a scalpel approached it. For the boys to have him on file he probably had a record. And for them to think him worth a visit, it must have been for something pretty meaty, if you'll forgive the word. Clearly, whatever the consequences, it hadn't done much to change his views.

The doorbell didn't work, but then that's not something to hold against anyone. I rapped the knocker loudly. The door was opened hurriedly by a youngish woman, fair, wispy hair cut short but in no particular style. From under her feet a cat whipped out and into the road. She frowned at me and put a hand up. ‘The baby's asleep.'

‘Oh, sorry.' I smiled. ‘Is Ben in?'

‘Yes.'

‘Great. Can I see him?'

She opened the door without really giving it much thought. Ben clearly had a lot of visitors. Either that or she didn't know him that well. Two rooms led off the narrow hallway on the right. Friends of Ben would have known which one to find him in. But then that's the nice thing about Victorian terraces—there's not exactly a rich choice of functions. I opened the door to what once would have been called the front parlour. The room was sparsely decorated with a sofa and a couple of chairs, a big dark rug on unpolished floorboards.

And a rabbit. Once you'd seen it, it was hard to take your eyes off it. It was large and white and sitting in a corner. At first glance it was so still you might even think it was stuffed, but look a little longer and the nervous twitching of the nose gave it away. It was sort of implicit in the twitch that this was a bunny who'd been to hell and back. I dragged my eyes away in search of its saviour.

But Ben Maringo had another love as well as animals. In a dark blue carry-cot next to him lay a small, sleeping baby. I don't know what made me think it, but it seemed clear this was his first child. It made him a late father. From his fair, thinning hair and lined face he was at least in his mid forties. He looked up. He was tired. But then the baby was very young.

‘Hello, Ben.'

‘Who are you?'

There were a number of answers I could have given him, but after a visit from the ATS I thought he'd appreciate it if I told him the truth. He didn't say anything for a while, just looked at the baby, tucking the covers in around the sleeping form. ‘So, how did you find me?'

That was a little more tricky. ‘I … I can't say,' I said apologetically.

‘So much for anonymity under the law,' he said, but with more resignation than bitterness. The door opened
and the young woman stuck her head round. She nodded rather nervously at me. ‘Ben, if you're all right, I'll slip out and get the stuff from the chemist. I think he'll sleep till I get back.' Now I noticed a small, dark spot on her T-shirt front. A nursing mother is always on the run. So says Sister Kate and she should know.

‘Yeah, OK. Oh, and Martha. You better get some more baby scissors. I can't find that pair anywhere.'

She nodded and was gone.

‘How old is he?' I said in the silence that followed.

‘Five months.'

‘Does he sleep?'

‘Off and on. Hasn't quite got the difference between night and day yet.'

‘My sister says you have to train them young.'

‘Yeah, well he and I have only just been introduced.'

He paused. ‘I was elsewhere when he was born. Detained at Her Majesty's pleasure.'

‘What did you do?'

‘I took some animals for a walk. They hadn't been well and they needed the fresh air. Unfortunately I had some trouble getting their cages open.'

I shot a glance at the rabbit. Police exhibit no. 234, or a trophy from an earlier raid? Neither Ben nor the rabbit saw fit to tell me. To have only just met the child he'd presumably fathered, Maringo must have done, say, a year out of a possible three-year sentence. Which means it wasn't just the cages he wrecked. So he was the real McCoy. No wonder the boys picked him up so fast. On the other hand if they'd really had their suspicions, he wouldn't be back here in the bosom of the family.

‘I'm surprised they didn't tell you.'

‘I didn't get to you through them,' I said, which was not entirely a lie.

‘Hmm. But no doubt you want the same thing?' I
didn't say anything. ‘You know, I suppose, that the ALF have denied responsibility.'

‘No. No, I didn't know that.'

‘Of course nobody believes them.'

‘Do you find that surprising?'

He sighed angrily. ‘Every time the same superiority, the same stupid ignorance.' And for the first time his voice forgot the sleeping child in the room. ‘You don't understand at all, do you? I don't suppose you've even thought about it?'

First Shepherd, now him. I was getting tired of being harangued. I wanted to shout back at him, tell him that what I understood was what I had seen on the road that night. Maybe that would shock him out of his pathetic righteousness. Trouble was he was right. I didn't understand. And if I was going to find Mattie's killer, it would be better if I did. Or at least learnt how to pretend.

‘So why don't you tell me?'

‘Because you'd still think we were nutters.' He shook his head. ‘That's the pity of it.We tell ourselves we're doing all this to make people think—about the suffering, the immorality, the cruelty. But because nobody wants to listen, we end up doing exactly what we condemn, using violence to get our message across. And all that does is to make people deafer.' He looked up at me just to prove he was right.

‘I'm listening,' I said quietly.

‘Are you?' He smiled. 'I doubt that. You wouldn't want to change what you believe. It would turn your life around too much. And you've got too much to lose. Like everyone else. That's how it works, you see. Even when we do make the headlines, nobody's interested in putting our side of the case. When did anyone ever ask you to seriously consider what it's like for animals to be under our power? Or what it does to us to exercise that power?

‘
Dumb
animals.' He said it with a sudden impatience. On the edge of my left field of vision the rabbit moved, a small but significant advance towards the centre of the action. Maybe it was reacting against the description. Come on, Hannah, no excuses now. Listen to what the man has to say. ‘They're not like humans at all. I mean we've got souls, intelligence, sensibilities. All they've got is instinct: the will to survive, the desire to mate, a need to care for their children. No, not like us at all, eh? And then there's the feelings. Contentment, hunger, stress, fear, panic. Oh, and pain. They're particularly good at feeling pain. So in a way it's lucky they're not like us, isn't it? Because if someone “experimented” with us the way we do with them it would be considered obscene. A crime against nature …'