Palindrome Read online

  The hall filled up suddenly and then, on the stroke of ten, the lectures began.

  Palmer spoke first, welcoming everyone to the symposium. He addressed his audience familiarly, as if everyone there knew each other and was in the same business. In his usual formal way he began by redundantly thanking them for coming. Gabriel was again reminded of a village gathering, now not so much a fete but a protest meeting against something ghastly such as a council plan to site a waste incinerator next to a local school. He had almost expected that proceedings would begin with a minute’s silence in memory of Anna but Palmer made no more than a brief reference to recent events at Nebotec and how this “had not failed to interrupt the significant work going on there”. The audience listened in silence like fellow conspirators.

  Palmer spoke seriously but none the less skilfully, developing a narrative line that in very general terms outlined what was known about palindromes and cancer. Like a politician he cleverly mixed suggestion with statement and in parliamentary fashion, every time he had an important point to make, gripped the lectern as if it were a despatch box. He also managed, not directly but in the way he spoke, to give the impression that the work to be presented was all the product of his own intelligence and effort, claiming in effect the labour of his civil servant lab staff as his own.

  The speakers that followed him in the morning session were not as practised. During the second talk, given by a biochemist from San Diego, Gabriel found himself several times drifting off to sleep in the semi-darkness of the lecture theatre.

  He roused himself in time for Taylor’s talk which was crammed, overfilled in fact, with scientific data: chemical formulae, complex graphs and long tables with text too small to be read easily. He spoke oddly in a stiff, taut voice. He often glanced down at his notes and from time to time looked at his wristwatch which he had taken off and put next to his notes. His slides were confusingly arranged, overloaded with text and contained a few spelling errors. Like a lot of laboratory scientists he was more at ease presenting his results than explaining them. He paused after showing photographs of the grafted mice with humps of tumour on their back as if not certain what words he should use to describe them. He was out of his comfort zone too when describing the microscopic appearance of the tumours that had been treated with PLF. He went through these slides quickly and Gabriel was surprised at one point to hear his own name (but not that of Anna Taylor or Liz Reynolds) mentioned.

  For a time Gabriel lost interest in what Taylor had to say and began studying other members of the audience. A few rows down he spotted a dark-skinned man who was staring intently at Taylor. When the lights came on there was a brief ripple of applause. The dark-skinned man, who was perhaps the only male there not wearing a tie, did not join in but made his way immediately toward the exit door. He looked visibly upset and Gabriel guessed that he was Anna Taylor’s father.

  There was a small reception with food afterwards. Gabriel found himself a little apart from a group of about eight who stood opposite the entrance to the lecture theatre. As usual he felt uncomfortable in a tie and jacket. He did not seem to know what to do with his arms; he folded and unfolded them and it was with some relief that he accepted a glass of wine from one of the circulating college waiters.

  He made a move to join a small group of Nebotec staff that had assembled in the centre of the foyer. Palmer at the edge of the group caught sight of him approaching and to Gabriel’s astonishment walked quickly away. Though his action did not attract the notice of others, Gabriel interpreted it as the act of a man who deliberately wished to avoid speaking to him.

  Gabriel had received his invitation to attend the symposium from Hewitt, and he wondered if Palmer was upset that he had not cleared it with him first. In his experience scientists were touchy about such things. They were jealous and secretive of their results; they did not like to share with anyone even a part of the glory which they regarded as theirs and theirs alone.

  When Taylor joined the group Gabriel held out his hand and, though he knew who he was, spoke inquiringly, by way of introduction, “Matt Taylor?”

  “That’s right, yes. Ah, Professor Gabriel.”

  The two men shook hands.

  Gabriel delivered his condolences and Taylor said, “Yes, it was a terrible shock. Unbelievable. I’ll don’t think I’ll ever get over it.” He spoke slowly, as if to obscure a trace of a Northern accent. His answer seemed not to invite further talk on the subject of Anna’s death and Gabriel changed tack.

  “I’m looking at the slides that Anna was working on.”

  “Yes, I know. Anna didn’t find anything in the tissues. They were all normal.”

  Taylor seemed to speak of Anna as if she were still alive and in the next room. He sounded strangely impassive as if the enormity of her death had not struck home.

  “Thanks, by the way,” Gabriel said, “for the honourable mention in your talk. I didn’t really merit it. It was Anna’s work, after all. It’s a great shame that she never saw it presented.”

  “Oh yes,” Taylor answered. He struggled to mount an adequate response. All he could think of saying after that was: “Do you know the others here?”

  Gabriel found Taylor’s unwillingness to talk about Anna off-putting. Even allowing for the circumstances, his blankness seemed cold and uncaring. Underlying it was a certain vulnerability which, combined with his boyish good looks, Gabriel guessed, must make him attractive to women; they would not be able to resist the temptation to mother him.

  Gabriel did not realise that Taylor was looking at him, waiting for an answer. “Do you know the others here?” he asked again.

  “Some of them,” Gabriel answered. He shook hands with Vishant Samant and was introduced to Tina and Harry Simms.

  “And of course you know Ken.”

  Gabriel nodded. Taylor’s use of Palmer’s Christian name sounded odd and Gabriel guessed that he was not normally on first name terms with him.

  “I would like to meet with you regarding the slides I’m examining,” Gabriel said. “If you are not too upset perhaps I could call round. I’d like to sort out a few details for my final report.”

  “You can meet me at work. I’ll be going in tomorrow. I won’t be moping at home.”

  “11 o’clock?’

  Taylor nodded. He looked Gabriel in the eye with his habitual calmness of expression. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, as if not sure how best to distribute it. He held his wine glass between long thin fingers and every now and then popped a canapé into his mouth.

  Gabriel separated from the group and was about to put down his glass and take his leave when he was accosted by Hewitt who was accompanied by a short, very thin, woman with dyed red hair and a thin-lipped disapproving mouth.

  “Awfully glad you could come,” said Hewitt. “Quite a good turnout really, given the circumstances.”

  “It’s been very interesting,” said Gabriel. “Thank you for inviting me.”

  Gabriel shook Hewitt’s hand and smiled when he introduced him to Frances, his wife. He wanted to ask Hewitt about the prospects for PLF, the anti-palindrome drug, but abandoned his intention when one of the college catering staff suddenly came up to Hewitt and whispered something in his

  ear. Hewitt excused himself and went off with him.

  “Looks like a catering emergency,” Gabriel said to Frances Hewitt when he was left with her.

  “I would have thought that it’s one already,” she answered in a decidedly posh accent, the kind that always made Gabriel doubt whether it was genuine. “I can’t see why the college couldn’t have provided some decent food and wine. That would have done more to impress all these drug company types than boring talks about tumours and molecules. I mean the food is just so bad. Cardboard canapes and squidgy vol-au-vents. The wine tastes like vinegar.”

  “Do you often come to these events?” Gabriel ventured.

  “I’m a non-executive director of the company so I’m dragooned by James into com
ing. But I loathe them. They’re so boring.” She finished her wine and held out her empty glass to Gabriel. “Would you mind dear? I shouldn’t really be drinking at this time of the day. Got to drive home and all that. But I’ll try the red. It can’t be worse than the white.”

  Gabriel turned round and picked up a glass from a small table covered by a white tablecloth on which there were rows of glasses filled with red and white wine. Frances Hewitt’s small eyes lit up for a second when he handed the glass to her.

  “Did you know Anna Taylor?” Gabriel asked.

  “Oh yes. Dreadful about the murder. James was saying that she was very clever in the lab. Popular with all the staff, apparently.”

  There was something in the way she said this which prompted Gabriel to ask, “What do you mean?”

  “That she seems to have gone out of her way to make herself very easy to like. She’d do anything for anyone, apparently. James said she was very obliging.”

  Gabriel said nothing in reply and that encouraged Frances Hewitt to continue.

  “She wasn’t your ordinary Indian girl. Very outgoing, I mean. Most Indians I know like to keep themselves to themselves. By the way, have you been through Tooting recently? My nephew is doing medicine at St George’s there. It’s like a Bombay market. You wouldn’t recognise it.”

  “She was born in England,” Gabriel observed. “And she was married to an Englishman.”

  “So she was. Do you think she’ll have a Christian funeral? What’s the alternative? They wouldn’t cremate her publicly, would they? Like one of the Gandhis.” She laughed. “What way would you like to go?”

  Gabriel said something about wanting to shuffle off quietly. It barely interrupted Frances Hewitt’s flow. The more she talked in her posh posh accent the more Gabriel disliked her. It was difficult to imagine how the handsome Hewitt had ended up with her. Her face was ugly; her cold grey eyes, coupled with the sophisticated malice of her voice, gave her the dangerous quality of command. She complained a lot and was clearly a difficult woman to please. Other people scarcely existed for her or at best were there only to be criticised and damned.

  “I read in the papers that her father was quite well off,” she said. “Apparently he owns a chain of newsagents in London. Typical second-generation. Parents keen for her not to get her hands dirty and to work all hours, the way they did. Encouraged her to do medicine. Did you know her well?”

  “I supervised her doctorate. I didn’t see much of her after she married Matt Taylor.”

  “James and I went to tea with the Taylors once. Ikea furniture and Homebase wall lights. Everything clean and predictable. Predictably cheap, I mean. She even cooked a curry for us.”

  Frances Hewitt paused and looked at Gabriel directly as if it had just occurred to her that she should stop and evaluate his response to what she had said before continuing in the same vein. For just a second she looked unsure, but then something like instinct took over and, unable to stop herself, she continued her attack.

  “I’ll tell you one thing. She didn’t half go out of her way to be friendly with everyone at Nebotec, particularly the men in the company. They drooled over her. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? And she was very ambitious.” She cast an appraising look in Gabriel’s direction before adding in a stage whisper, “A lot of damned nonsense has been written about that girl in the papers. ‘Brilliant Oxford scientist’, my arse.”

  Gabriel said nothing. He resisted the conventional response of nodding agreement, something which Frances Hewitt seemed to note and interpret (correctly) as a wish to dissociate himself from her comments.

  When at last Hewitt returned, Gabriel muttered a hurried goodbye and managed to extricate himself from their company. Even as he was leaving he could hear Frances Hewitt’s voice across the room.

  “James, would you mind getting me another glass of wine from that table behind you. Here’s my empty. No, not the white, the red. It’s the lesser of two evils.”

  Gabriel saw him as he walked back down the High Street towards his college. He was waiting for the London bus.

  “Forgive me but are you Anna Taylor’s father?” Gabriel asked.

  The Indian man stared at him for a few seconds. He nodded his head and whispered, “Yes.”

  “I’m Professor Gabriel. Anna used to work with me. We once spoke on the phone before Anna left my department. Perhaps you remember?”

  Again a nod.

  “I’m sorry about Anna. It’s dreadful, what happened.” Anna’s father continued to stare at him for a few seconds before he spoke in a thick but understandable accent, “Do you think it would have happened if she had stayed in your department?”

  “I’m not sure you can ever think about things that way,” Gabriel said by way of an answer. “It seems she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “She was where she wanted to be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked at Gabriel. His thick lips were turned down at the corners.

  “She was always determined to do things her own way, to do what she wanted.”

  “You can’t blame her for that. She had her own life to lead.”

  “You don’t know how she shamed the family. Her mother got sick with all the trouble.”

  He was silent for a while. He stood, head slightly bowed, his hands interlocked in front of him as if he were in a church. His back was straight as a soldier’s. He looked stern rather than sad.

  Quite suddenly his eyes turned towards Gabriel and he looked at him long and carefully before saying, “I remember you were surprised when she left the University.”

  “Yes. But I appreciated that it was her decision.”

  “But you couldn’t understand it?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “She was like that. She always wanted to do what she wanted, to forget where she came from, who she was. That’s why she married...” He could not bring himself to say Taylor’s name. “Anyone but an Indian,” she used to say.”

  “You disapproved?”

  He nodded.

  A bus pulled up. Anna’s father made a move towards it but realised it was not the one for London but the airport when the driver opened the door and began loading bags into the luggage bay at the side of the bus.

  “She said that she didn’t want to end up like her mother,” he said to Gabriel when he turned to face him again. “Do you know how much that hurt her? And me?”

  “People say things they don’t really mean.”

  “Do you really think so? I hope you’re right.” His voice was dull, tinged more with regret than resentment. Suddenly he asked, “Do you think she died doing something that was worthwhile?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Are you married, Professor Gabriel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Children?” he asked doubtfully.

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t understand.”

  “Something was bothering her,” Gabriel said. “Do you know what that might have been?”

  “I don’t know. I hardly ever spoke to her after she married.”

  “Didn’t she speak to anyone? To your wife? She had a sister, didn’t she?”

  “None of us spoke much with her. She kept herself to herself. She wanted to make her own life. What do you think she would have wanted to tell us?”

  “I don’t know. But I do know that she was worried. Something at Nebotec worried her very much. She tried to contact me.”

  He looked up. “Have you told the police?”

  “Yes.”

  Gabriel waited for him to speak again but he stayed silent. He looked as if he was struggling to control his grief. Gabriel felt awkward. There was nothing he could say or do to help him.

  The bus for London arrived. A queue formed before the driver’s door. Gabriel shook hands with him before he went to join it.

  “I’m sorry about Anna,” Gabriel said, feeling an urge to express his condolences again.

 
; “Sorry?” he answered a little moved. “Thank you but it doesn’t matter now.”

  “The truth matters,” Gabriel answered.

  Chapter 8

  Put it up but not on the tub, put it up

  “I didn’t see anything wrong with the tissues in any of the Nebotec slides,” Liz Reynolds said. “Did you?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Everything looked normal.”

  Liz looked at Gabriel intently. She cleared a dry throat as she waited for him to speak again.

  “I’ll let Palmer know our results but hold onto the slides until we can look at those the police took away. They were the ones Anna was looking at when she was killed.”

  “Why? Do you expect anything to be different in them?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s generally not a good idea to report a case before you’ve looked at all the slides.”

  Liz shrugged her shoulders then changed the subject to Poole’s review of the pathology service. She had done much of the data collection herself, being more proficient at using computers than Gabriel who was frankly baffled by them. She was outraged by all the extra work it involved. She said that people in the NHS like Poole got a lot of satisfaction out of imposing management process on others.

  “The only reason he got the position of Medical Director is because he was more prepared than any other member of the medical staff to do management’s bidding,” she said. “He should be called ‘Poodle’ not ‘Poole.’ ”

  Gabriel laughed. “Well, at least you don’t have to go to the management board meeting.”

  Liz remained unsmiling. “Thank God for that.”

  She folded and unfolded her arms. She was a stick insect of a woman, all muscle and bone, not an ounce of fat. She cycled to work, went for a run every lunch time and regularly competed in marathons. Her flat-chest, russet cheeks and angular bony chin were not immediately attractive and gave her something of an uncompromising air. She was in her mid-thirties, unmarried and (as far as Gabriel knew) had no partner or boyfriend. Perhaps she scared off men with all her energy.