Palindrome Page 15

“I don’t know. I just wasn’t sure.”

  “I seem to remember that you were at the same medical school as Anna. Isn’t that right?”

  Tom Duncan’s smile faded. He looked at Gabriel as if he had found him out in some way. His hands clutched his notebook.

  “Anna and I were in the same year. We knew each other but weren’t close friends or anything.” He paused before adding rather oddly, “I always got on with her.”

  “Do you know someone who might have wished her harm?”

  Tom shook his head. Gabriel wondered if he knew that Anna intended to apply for the Clinical Tutor post. He was about to ask him but thought better of it, respecting Brook’s instruction not to let others know of the letter he had received from Anna. Instead he changed tack.

  “You’ve done some work for Professor Palmer, haven’t you?”

  “A little tissue typing,” he answered vaguely, “but I never got very far with it.”

  Gabriel laughed. “I’m not surprised.”

  Tom Duncan tried very hard to look as if he understood what Gabriel found so amusing but his expression had more of a grimace than a smile about it.

  Chapter 11

  Rats live on no evil star

  Cowley had a lot of cheap housing for rent and was popular with students and young couples beginning the life trail. Its population was multicultural — the preferred term for immigrant — and it had a scene that was considered vibrant — the preferred term for crowded — and it was said to be exciting — the preferred term for traffic-ridden. When Pat and he had first moved to Oxford, Cowley was looked upon as a down at heel area. The two of them had bought much of their furniture from the junk shops that used to pepper the high road. Now these establishments, like the many second-hand bookshops that had been there, were gone and replaced by coffee bars, restaurants, a Tesco Metro and innumerable estate agents.

  Fifteen Edgar Close was a low, two-storey house that had an air of neglect. Sandwiched between two similar houses that had bedrooms built into the gables, it was distinguished by a half-timbered garage that separated it from its neighbour on one side. Gabriel unlatched the gate and walked slowly up a narrow path, sidestepping an old television which had been thrown out. A smell of curry and garlic grew stronger as he approached the front door.

  Gabriel pushed the button on the door and waited. He heard nothing and pushed it again after vainly trying to discern some sign of life through the pebbled glass of the front door. Realising finally that the bell must be broken, he knocked several times on the glass pane of the door.

  It was a while before Gabriel heard the sound of someone approaching. A moment later the door was opened by Vishant Samant who was clearly surprised by Gabriel’s visit.

  “Hello, sir.”

  “Hello, Mr Samant. I’m sorry to disturb you on your weekend but I wondered if I might have a word.”

  Samant looked at him with a stupefied expression, not quite being able to take in immediately what faced him. “Surely, sir. Come in. My wife’s outside. She’s putting out the washing. The rain’s stopped.”

  Samant held the door open and ushered him into the front living room. Down the corridor Gabriel saw a small girl playing with a cardboard roll, swinging it from side to side like a sword.

  “The bell doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked since we’ve been here.”

  “How long has that been?” Gabriel asked tactfully. He was grateful that Samant outside of work decided that it was not necessary to call him “sir” all the time.

  “It’s over a year now since we moved here from London,” Samant said as he sat down.

  The living room was occupied mainly by two large sofas which were both covered by dark blue throws that looked suspiciously like bedcovers. The walls, which did not contain a single picture, were painted peppermint green and scuffed here and there with black marks. The room was cold as well as smelly — an unpleasant combination. Gabriel wondered if Samant was the type that kept down costs by not turning on the heating. On a low table beneath the window, there was a very large new plasma television; it looked like a central altar piece in this room which curiously lacked decoration.

  “What can I do you for?” Samant asked.

  Samant’s odd phrasing sounded comical. Gabriel did his best not to smile when he answered, “I was hoping to finish my work next week. I just want to know more about the slides I’m looking at. Would that be all right?”

  Samant looked puzzled but nodded his assent. He was trying as best he could to avoid Gabriel’s eyes but because he was sitting exactly facing him he didn’t know where to look. In the end he directed his gaze above and behind Gabriel to where the wall met the ceiling. He felt uncomfortable and showed it.

  Gabriel gave him a reassuring smile then pulled out a small box from his coat pocket. He opened it, revealing a row of microscope slides slotted into grooves. Extracting one of the slides from the box, he asked, “When was this slide cut and looked at by Dr Taylor?”

  Samant held up the slide and read what was printed on it at one end. “It looks like one from the first batch. But I can’t be sure. Dr Taylor often asked for recuts.”

  “What makes you think it was from the first batch?”

  “The printing on the slide label isn’t very distinct. So it may have been from the time we changed the printer ribbon on the labelling machine.”

  “I see. Did any of the others in the lab look at the slides?”

  “Sometimes Dr Palmer and Dr Matt.”

  “Before or after Dr Taylor looked at them?” Gabriel asked, his curiosity aroused.

  “After.”

  “How exactly were the slides delivered to her?”

  “We put the slides in her In tray in the lab after we’d cut and stained them. She left them in her Out tray when she’d finished with them.

  “And when were the slides filed? The same day?”

  “No. We have a lot of work in the lab and we don’t get round to filing them until a few days after they’re returned. By then we’ve got quite a few to sort through and put away in the slide filing room. Sometimes she asked to see slides again and Tina or me got them out for her.”

  Gabriel nodded and smiled encouragingly at Samant. “When was the last time she asked you to do that?”

  “A couple of weeks ago. She wanted to look at the slides from the first PLF experiment.”

  “Why do you think she wanted to look at them again?” Gabriel asked, his smile narrowing.

  Samant shrugged and said casually, “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s in the slides.”

  “Matt Taylor told me that Anna usually let you take the tissue samples from the mice. Is that right?”

  Samant nodded.

  “But she didn’t the last time. Do you know why?”

  “No. She just said she wanted to. So she did.”

  Gabriel looked at him pensively. “Who exactly prepared and cut the sections? Tina Simms or you?”

  Samant paused to consider this question as if deciding whether he should answer it truthfully or not. “I did,” he said finally, having decided perhaps that it did not matter too much one way or the other what he answered.

  “It’s a pity Anna asked for that experiment to be repeated,” Gabriel said, looking directly at him. “I mean, she might not have been killed if she hadn’t been working late, looking at the slides that evening.”

  “But she often worked late.”

  “You mean she waited for Matt Taylor to finish his work and they went home together?”

  “Yes. Sometimes.”

  “But not all the time?”

  “No. She sometimes worked late on her own.”

  “Did other people work late on those evenings?”

  “Sometimes Dr Palmer, sometimes Dr Matt.”

  “Mr Hewitt?”

  Samant paused before answering. “He worked in another building. I wouldn’t know if he did.”

  “You never worked late to cut more slides?”

  Samant s
hook his head.

  “And apart from Tina Simms and you, did anyone else cut and stain the slides that Anna examined?”

  He shook his head again and fingered his moustache. His hands were dark brown, his wrists too. A dirty handkerchief was tucked into his cuff. Gabriel noticed that he wore his wristwatch facing inwards.

  Gabriel looked at Samant and tried to guess what exactly he meant by his negative response. His answers were very careful, very brief. Did he know something and was keeping it from him? Very probably.

  “But you wouldn’t know if anyone did, would you, if Tina and you left at 5.00? Somebody could have cut slides and used the equipment there to stain them.”

  “It would have been possible,” he began, but then he stopped what he was about to say. “But no, no one except Tina and me knew how to use a microtome to cut the tissue sections. You need practice to produce a good section for staining. It’s not easy to do.”

  “Palmer or Matt Taylor never asked you to cut and stain sections?”

  He looked down, as if making an effort to remember, then looked up at Gabriel and shook his head. At the same time he crossed his knees. This last movement seemed to prompt his next words. “Would you have a cup of tea?”

  Gabriel hesitated but then allowed Samant to persuade him.

  “It’s warmer out the back,” Samant said, getting up and directing Gabriel, like an ushering butler, into a back room that had a large window which looked onto the garden. The smell of curry and garlic was even stronger here as the room was next to the kitchen.

  Outside in the garden there was washing hanging everywhere: shirts, underclothes, and sheets, some of them highly coloured. There was also an enclosure with three children, two boys and a girl, all with their hair cut very short, running around furiously. He saw again the little girl, dressed in a blue frock, no more than three years old, wielding her long roll of cardboard.

  “We tend to sit more here because we can keep an eye on the children when they’re playing.”

  “Are they all yours?”

  He nodded. “And there’s my wife.”

  He pointed to a very young woman, obviously pregnant, dressed in a light dress for the weather. She was hanging up washing that billowed back at her in the breeze. When she came inside Samant did not introduce her. Gabriel nevertheless stood up and said, “How do you do?” She bobbed her head at him but said nothing. She did not smile.

  Gabriel wondered if her response indicated that her English was limited. She seemed to know where Gabriel had come from for she kept casting him looks that were full of disapproval. Gabriel found it difficult to be in her company and peered vaguely before him, trying desperately to ignore her suspicious looks.

  Samant spoke abruptly to her, probably to order tea, as she went into the kitchen from where Gabriel heard the sound of the gas being lit and a kettle boiling.

  Gabriel could easily imagine Anna being upset by the way Samant spoke to his wife. There was nothing immediately obvious to suggest physical abuse in the relationship between husband and wife. Still, she was very young to have three children and another on the way. Samant clearly made no allowance for her condition. Anna, coming from an Indian family and being able to understand what the two of them said to each other, would have had more insight into their relationship.

  Out in the garden the sun shone through the crisp air. The grass was long and the ground looked sodden from the morning rain. In one corner of the garden there was a small vegetable plot and beside it a rather dilapidated greenhouse.

  “I see you grow your own vegetables.”

  Samant nodded. “Yes, I like to. The house is rented. We want to buy soon our own house. Then I maybe can take some of the garden with me. Do you see that greenhouse? I’ll take that. Dr Anna helped me to bring it here.”

  “Is that when she borrowed the estate car from Mr Hewitt? Tina Simms told me something about that.”

  “Yes, we used his car to collect it,” Samant answered, colouring a little. To disguise his discomfiture he again played with the ends of his black moustache. There was something guilty about this movement as if he made it to ward off further questions.

  The conversation was awkward and strained. Samant found Gabriel’s abrupt visit and the incongruity of meeting him outside work uncomfortable, something he hinted in his next words. “You know, Dr Anna is the only one from work to have come here. Dr Palmer and Dr Matt never did.”

  He sat forwards in his chair, his podgy hands nursing one another on his knees. The skin of his face glistened on his temples and upper lip.

  When the tea arrived Samant seemed grateful for the temporary respite from the need for conversation with Gabriel. His wife produced a syrupy sweet containing sugared almonds. She silently encouraged Gabriel to try it before she sat down next to her husband. Gabriel had a mouthful which he found unpalatably over-sweet.

  “Thank you, it’s delicious,” he lied, putting down the plate. He paused for a moment then continued. “Dr Taylor’s death must have come as a great shock to you and your wife.”

  “Yes, sir. She was very good to us. She was the only one that helped us. Now—”

  He did not continue and Gabriel wondered what exactly he was going to say.

  “But at least the drug she was working on, this PLF, looks as if it is going to be useful in cancer treatment. That’s something, anyway.”

  Samant nodded. “Yes, for sure.”

  “Which means that Nebotec is going to be profitable and you will have a secure job there.”

  “Yes, for sure that’s what Mr Hewitt and Dr Palmer say.”

  “They’ve said that to you?”

  “Many times.”

  “I suppose they must have said the same thing to Anna.”

  Samant hesitated then shook his head. “I don’t know. I suppose so.”

  “How do you get to work from here?” Gabriel asked.

  “Bicycle.”

  “I suppose you use the cycle track to the business park. Did you use it the day Anna was killed?”

  He nodded. “I came straight home.” “Directly from the lab?”

  He nodded.

  “And you saw no-one?”

  He shook his head and glanced briefly towards his wife as he did so. She turned her gaze away from her husband and looked toward the back garden where the children were playing. Her back was straight and still, and her head, with its black shiny hair, hardly moved.

  Gabriel felt sure from the way she looked away that she understood what her husband had said. Just how much of all this business did she understand? What was going on?

  Gabriel stared at Samant and then at his wife. There was something odd. Mechanically he went on talking but all the time he was thinking that he had to get out of that stinking rented house, get away from Samant, get away and think.

  “I’d better be going,” he said after finishing his tea as quickly as he could.

  He mumbled an apology for disturbing both of them on a Saturday and thanked them for the tea. After shaking Samant’s limp hand, he collected his coat from the hall and stepped out into the bright winter sunlight which, after the rain, seemed to have repainted the tiles of the houses in the close a glistening red.

  As he walked down the path Samant called to him. “If you have more questions, sir, I’ll be at Nebotec on Monday in the afternoon. I have to go with my wife to the hospital in the morning.”

  Gabriel acknowledged his words with a wave but said nothing. He was keen to get away and was fearful of being called back.

  It began raining again when Gabriel drove from Samant’s house to the hospital. There was much more traffic than he expected on the weekend. His progress up a steep hill was slow as vehicles were parked on both sides of the road. This was a common phenomenon in the narrow roads of Oxford where cars in both directions could only advance by following an unwritten code of enforced — your turn-my turn — courtesy. A male van driver compelled to wait his turn wore a hateful look and did not acknowledge
Gabriel’s signal of thanks when he passed him.

  As it was the weekend there were plenty of spaces in the hospital car park. To provide income for the hospital Trust, the control of car parking had been “outsourced” to a private security firm whose staff zealously patrolled in their white vans. This firm of sharks did not blink at making the life of the sick and those who looked after them miserable; their employees were encouraged to issue parking fines and clamp cars without any thought for the distress or ill-feeling it caused. If that was the way the world was going, Gabriel thought, retirement could not come soon enough for him.

  Gabriel walked through the empty pathology laboratory to his office. When he passed the registrars’ room he was surprised to find Melanie sitting in front of her microscope.

  “I left on Friday before I had time to look at the slides for the tumour meeting on Monday morning,” she said. “The surgeons have added some late cases for discussion, as usual.”

  Gabriel shrugged his shoulders as if to say “What do you expect?” He told her to bring the slides through when she was ready and asked if there were any more referral cases from abroad.

  “I don’t think there are any new ones, but they’ve sent more radiology on that case from Kuwait — the rib tumour which you thought was a metastasis. It turns out the patient is female not male. We couldn’t tell from the name because it was foreign.”

  “I thought it looked like a metastasis from a breast cancer,” Gabriel said.

  “That’s what Tom thought as well. He’s upstairs in the lab, finishing off an experiment.”

  “Are the slides in my office?”

  Melanie nodded and smiled. She chattered on, blushing a little. Just before turning round to look down her microscope again, she asked, “You didn’t come in a minute or so ago, did you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s just that I thought I heard someone in the lab. It could have been Dr Reynolds. She sometimes pops in to the lab on weekends to do her work.”

  “Is she still in?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t see a light on in her room when I went to the lab a few minutes ago.”

  Gabriel simply nodded before walking off. He entered his office and sat down at his microscope. The case from Kuwait, a few microscope slides in a small tray, lay on top of a tall pile of trays filled with slides of cases he had to report.