Palindrome Read online

  Gabriel looked at her intently; he could not resist analysing people to determine whether they were normal or pathological. At his college a Hebrew Studies Fellow had once described him as possessing the perspicacity of Solomon and the perspicuity of Jeremiah. That was not a wholly unfair assessment as he was not always objective in his reasoning. There was always something a little vindictive about his diagnostic judgements: more often than not he was too quick to condemn people.

  “You know,” Gabriel said, “Poole was one of Oxford’s brightest when he was a student — clever, outgoing, a member of the Footlights; he produced the medical revue, played clarinet in the orchestra — a real Renaissance type. And when he graduated he was a decent physician — a good diagnostician. And an impressive researcher — very good with scientific data. But somehow the rewards for his efforts never came. He was not offered an academic position. He had played the game, done all the right things and no one had noticed him. No one had taken him under his wing and sponsored him, helped him to get on academically. So he became bitter — twisted, some would say. He changed sides and went into management. And being good at everything, he was good at that too. Now he’s hated by all the medical staff for not representing their interests and doing what’s expected in a management job. In a way it’s hardly surprising...”

  “You’d have thought he’d be more sensitive to our position,” Liz said.

  “Why? We weren’t sensitive to his. He was a young high flyer, knocking at the door, and no one opened it to him. He was impatient, like Anna, to get on.”

  “Maybe, he’ll end up like Anna,” Liz said grimly, with a smile.

  “Maybe,” Gabriel answered. “But, unlike Anna, it will be for a clear reason.”

  When Gabriel visited the Nebotec laboratories the next day he made his way down the corridor past the taped up door of Anna’s office to that of Matt Taylor. He could see Taylor’s figure through the glass window of his office door. He knocked and waited for Taylor to call out “Yes?” before entering.

  Taylor was leaning over an open drawer when he opened the door. “Oh hello,” he said as if they were old friends. “Do come in.”

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you?”

  “Not at all. It’s my first day back at work. Catching up, you know.”

  Gabriel was amused to notice the extreme tidiness, the almost feminine neatness of everything in Taylor’s office. The books on his bookshelves were all in a line and his pencils and pens were neatly stowed in a plastic holder. Next to it at right angles — there were a lot of perpendiculars and parallels in this small room — was a thin laptop computer which sat — Gabriel smiled when he saw it — on a leather blotting pad. Did Taylor wish to present himself as a man of the world as well as science? Was he trying to impress people with what impressed him?

  Gabriel remained standing, arms by his side. He went through his usual repertory of politeness. “I won’t keep you long. I can come back if you like.”

  “No problem. I’ve so much work to catch up on I don’t know where to start.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “Oh yes, of course. Anna used to tell me how hard you used to work after you came back from one of your trips. All the work that piles up.” He gestured for Gabriel to sit in a small office chair. “Have you any more trips planned?”

  “None for a while. How are you coping, anyway?”

  “I really don’t know. I’m still in shock, I suppose. I can’t really believe it. I feel bruised, as if I’ve been beaten up. But I haven’t got any mark on me to show for it. It’s just too unbelievable, all this.”

  Gabriel nodded but said nothing. Taylor spoke in jerks between quite long pauses. His voice was stiff, controlled. His Northern accent — Yorkshire, Gabriel guessed — marked him all the time; unlike Palmer’s it struggled to conceal its origin.

  “I was getting a bit fed up, kicking around at home on my own. I thought I’d be better here, back at work. But I keep bumping into policemen here. And there’s Anna’s room, down the corridor, all taped up. When I go to the lab, I have to pass it, you see.”

  “I understand,” Gabriel answered. He was rather put off by Taylor’s talk which was entirely focused on himself; he seemed to have no real sympathy for Anna.

  “Do you? I don’t think many do. Do you know what Ken has done?”

  Gabriel peered thoughtfully at Taylor from behind his spectacles. The question was rhetorical and did not require an answer.

  “He’s farmed out some of my work to the other research staff. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now. You’d have thought he wanted to get rid of me.”

  Just for a moment he looked helpless and sounded hurt, like an upset child. Was that what had attracted Anna to him?

  “None the less it looks as if your work on the palindrome project is going well,” Gabriel said encouragingly.

  “Yes. An FDA submission can’t be too far away.”

  “Anna would have been pleased.”

  Taylor blinked. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  Gabriel looked at him, puzzled for a second. “You don’t sound certain.”

  “I know it sounds dreadful to say this now but it was sometimes difficult to determine what she felt.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She was always a little negative about our results.”

  “Wasn’t she just being careful, like a good scientist?”

  “I suppose so, but she did have a tendency to overdo it. I mean, when you’ve got an outstanding result, and we did with the anti-tumour effect of PLF, then you should put all your efforts into exploiting it, both scientifically and commercially. You don’t put obstacles in the way. You go for it. That’s what Ken believes. And so do I. You can’t just keep sitting on the results, constantly re-examining them, doing the same experiments over and over. It just causes confusion.”

  Gabriel nodded. Again, from the way Taylor said “Ken”, he suspected that he was not on first name terms with Palmer.

  “Inevitably, there were problems at the beginning. In our first experiment Anna thought she saw something odd, some marrow abnormality that she thought was suggestive of malignancy.”

  “And?” Gabriel asked, looking at him intently.

  “Well, she never saw it again in any of the mice. Male or female. Test or control. They were all normal. Ken thought it must have been the batch of animals we got from the supplier. They might have been abnormal from the start or caught some viral infection which affected the marrow.”

  “What happened to the mice in that first batch?”

  “Most of them died. They were quite healthy for a time and then they just keeled over.”

  “You never saw it again in any other batch of mice?”

  “No. Most of them seemed to tolerate the antibody very well indeed. It’s against a nuclear factor that regulates palindrome expression. We call it Palindrome Limiting Factor: PLF for short. I gather you haven’t seen anything abnormal in the tissues you’ve examined either.”

  It dawned on Gabriel that he hadn’t mentioned what he had come to discuss with Taylor.

  “That’s right. All the slides show normal-looking tissues. How did you know that, by the way?”

  “I would have thought you would have mentioned it by now if you had. Of course, you don’t know whether you’re looking at slides from the test animals that received the drug or the control animals that didn’t. You don’t know the code. But if you say all the tissues look normal then obviously the drug has no effect on them.”

  “And that’s what Anna found?”

  He nodded.

  “I wonder whether perhaps I might ask you a few more details about the experiments.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “How were the experiments done?”

  “The mice, both those with tumours and those which were normal, were given a sliding scale dose of PLF for up to three months. Over this period we made various basic measurements, such as animal and tumour size and
weight, then at defined intervals we sacrificed the animals; we also collected their blood to look at their haematology and biochemistry, determined whether there were antibodies to the drug and did some other tests. At the end Anna sampled each of the organs and the tissues were processed in the usual way. The slides were delivered to her a couple of days later.”

  “She always sampled the tissues herself ?”

  “No, she usually let Vishie do that?”

  “Vishant Samant?”

  “Yes that’s right. That side of the work wasn’t very technical and once she’d shown him how to do it she was happy to let him get on with it. It released her to do other things.”

  “I’m interested in how the slides were labelled.”

  “That was really Anna’s department. I didn’t get involved in that. But as far as I understood it each experiment was given a code. Each mouse was given a sample number and each tissue was represented by a letter. So, for example, the number 32L represented mouse 32 Lung .”

  “Each animal represented one sample number?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the details of each sample — or animal, I should say, in this case?”

  “They were recorded in the pathology database and in the drug data sheets,” Taylor said, gesturing vaguely with a finger towards the Pathology laboratory. “Anna also kept a record in her laboratory diary. As I said, she looked at the experiments blind. She had no idea whether she was looking at a control or PLF-treated animal.”

  “Why do you think she was less convinced about the results than you?”

  Taylor’s face hardened. Some people have sore points where no forgiveness, even of the dead, is permitted. Taylor was a cold fish; a real scientist type.

  “I don’t know. She just couldn’t get that first result out of her head. She kept trying to repeat it. She could be quite stubborn. You may remember that from her time in your own lab.”

  Gabriel nodded before saying, “But you’ve no doubts about the results?”

  “None at all. They bear out the results in our tumour cell cultures. It’s a very interesting molecule we’ve found.”

  “How does it work?”

  “I can’t say too much as some of what we’ve done hasn’t yet gone through the patent process but, as I said, it looks as if it regulates the activity of a nuclear palindrome — I can’t tell you which one — and that probably controls the expression of several cancer genes. We’ve noticed a consistent change in the effect on one signalling pathway that’s involved in cell proliferation.”

  “The results are unpublished,” Gabriel observed.

  “That’s the way it is in industry. We have to guard our protein structure until it’s fully patented. Publication has to wait until the process has been completed; that could mean a delay of a year, or even more, before the information becomes freely available. We’re not like Oxford University scientists who can deposit the structure of every protein molecule they discover on the internet in a publicly accessible data bank.”

  Gabriel found himself continually irritated by Taylor. Perhaps it was his proprietorial use of the royal “we” to describe what went on at Nebotec. It made his interpretation of the results sound uncritical, a little like a parent too effusively describing the achievements of his offspring. Perhaps because of that Gabriel could not resist querying Taylor in the same way he had Palmer.

  “But aren’t palindromes found in every cell, normal as well as diseased?”

  “That’s right, but according to the palindrome theory some are overexpressed in cancer cells. Their effect is less pronounced in normal cells where they may be required for cell survival, but too much and — you know — they start behaving like tumour cells. We’ve done cell culture experiments that prove that’s what happens. A lot of palindromes are perfectly located to regulate the expression of cancer genes. Their structure helps: it’s all in the way the nucleic acid sequence reads the same forwards as backwards.”

  “Of course, that only means that the DNA sequence has been highly preserved throughout evolution,” Gabriel countered.

  “That’s right.”

  “Something that’s easily, constitutively formed.”

  Taylor nodded.

  “But isn’t that a potential problem. I can’t see how you can alter its activity just in cancer cells without affecting its function in normal cells.”

  “That doesn’t seem to have been a problem in our experiments. And there are parallels with other drugs. I mean look at the anti-TNF drugs they use for rheumatoid arthritis They’re made against a widely distributed protein but they don’t seem to have significant side effects.”

  Gabriel nodded. Taylor’s point was well-argued. Gabriel looked at him with new unconditioned respect. Cold fish or no, Taylor was one of those who knew his science. Did he know a lot more as well?

  “Anna was as enthusiastic as me about the results at first,” Taylor said. “She saw it as justifying her move into industry. But it’s funny—”

  “What?” asked Gabriel.

  “The better the results were the less enthusiastic she seemed to become about PLF. It was as if she wanted to switch off. Curious, as she went into industry to prove herself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To show her dad that she could be as successful as him in business. To make something of herself without his help. She was always trying to prove that.”

  “She never doubted the importance of palindromes?”

  There was a moment’s silence then Taylor said in a neutral voice, “She had her moments of doubt like all of us. But she always came round in the end.”

  “She never contemplated changing jobs, getting back into academia?”

  Taylor, lowering his gaze, shook his head. “Not as far as I’m aware.”

  “Do you know what slides she was looking at the night she was murdered?”

  Taylor looked up at him with expressionless eyes. He hesitated before replying, “They were from a set of mice that had been given the same dose of PLF as in the first experiment, I believe. She cut up the specimens herself.”

  “Really? Why didn’t she ask Vishant Samant or Tina Simms to do that for her?”

  “I don’t know about Tina but she seemed to have gone off Samant after she visited his house a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Why was that?”

  “She said it reminded her of her of her own family, the way Samant ordered his wife about. Apparently, Anna saw him hit one of his children and she threatened to report him to the local authorities if she heard of him doing it again. Samant’s applied for British citizenship with Anna as one of his sponsors; so, you can imagine that caused him some concern.” He paused before adding a little critically, “Anna has always been something of a campaigning type.”

  “You don’t know if there was any basis to her claim?”

  “She didn’t provide any direct proof of it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “And they seemed to work together well in the lab after that?”

  “As far as I could tell, yes. I don’t think Anna intended to take it further. But you could never tell with Anna. She was very driven, but she didn’t half make problems for herself by always being so principled.” Taylor, recognising his words might reflect poorly upon himself, was quick to add, “Of course, her honesty was very admirable. It’s what made her such a good scientist.”

  Gabriel stood up and said, “I won’t bother you any longer. By the way, do you know where I can find Vishant Samant.”

  “I don’t think he’s in today. He’s gone with his wife to the hospital. She’s having a baby. I can give you his mobile phone number if you want to contact him.”

  He scribbled down a number that was written on the white board behind his desk.

  “Thank you. There are one or two details about the slides that I need to clear up. I might try and see him before I give my final report.”

  “When do you think that will be?”

  “
Quite soon I expect. Goodbye then.” Gabriel got up slowly. “Incidentally—”

  “Yes?”

  Gabriel changed the subject. “You will keep me informed of the funeral arrangements. It must be a difficult time for you. Let me know if you need any help.”

  “The police say it will be a while before they release the body. But thanks, thanks very much. That’s very decent, very good of you.”

  “Goodbye.”

  The two men shook hands. Taylor’s was dry and cool and smooth.

  Gabriel contrived to leave Nebotec at the same time as Tina Simms and he asked if he could give her a lift into town.

  “That’s a bit of luck,” she said as she put on her seat belt. “I was worried that I might miss the bus. It comes every half hour. I didn’t fancy waiting for the next one. It’s freezing out there. Are you going back to the hospital? You can drop me anywhere inside the ring road where there’s a bus I can take into town.”

  Gabriel said he could take her into the town centre as he was going to his Oxford college to attend a Governing Body meeting.

  Most of the traffic was heading out of Oxford at that time and the journey did not take long. After Gabriel parked his car he invited Tina into the college for a coffee. She accepted without the slightest hesitation and a quarter of an hour later they were seated on a sofa in a corner of the senior common room, steaming white china cups in their hands.

  “She was nice, Anna was,” Tina said. “She was really friendly. She was marvellously good at helping and managing. The others are only good at managing, they don’t help at all.”

  She laughed, showing a set of perfect teeth.

  “Once Vishant complained to Matt Taylor that a piece of equipment in the lab kept breaking down. Matt was responsible for ordering but reluctant to ask Palmer for a replacement because he knew the old Scot — that’s what we call him — didn’t like spending money on us. Anyway, as soon as Anna found out, she sorted it. She didn’t bother with Palmer she just went to a phone and called up Hewitt himself. I don’t know what she said to him but Matt Taylor talked to him afterwards and we got the equipment we wanted.”