Palindrome Page 18

The sequence of redundant “Doors opening... closing...” pronouncements was repeated on another floor. Nightmare words, declaring the obvious, as if you were unaware, incapable, blind. Some bureaucrat had no doubt argued that Health and Safety demanded installing it. Risk assessment, accreditation, validation, certification — that was what hospitals were all about these days. Talk, talk, leading to the wrong action with the solution of the wrong —that is, insignificant — problem and neglect of the difficult one that really mattered.

  A moment later he was knocking on the door of Palmer’s office. Palmer received him with the look of a reluctant host but made no objection when Gabriel asked if he could have a word with him.

  “I don’t know if you’ve heard,” Gabriel said, “but there’s going to be an almighty turnover of NHS staff here at the hospital.”

  “So? I’m University-funded. The college is my effective employer.”

  “It’s just that there are some University technicians employed in the Pathology research department who are part-funded by the NHS and I expect their positions will come under threat.”

  Palmer regarded Gabriel unemotionally. “Were they not gifted with your chair? As part of your dowry, so to speak, when you came to Oxford?”

  “My chair is partly NHS-funded, and what the NHS Lord giveth with one hand he can easily taketh away with the other. The management are planning a massive redundancy exercise to cut costs. They want to get rid of staff. That’s bound to have a big impact on research.”

  Gabriel spoke with neither conviction nor passion. He was simply stating the facts for Palmer to accept or dismiss as he chose. Brook might have used the same words.

  “I see.” Palmer’s voice had hardly any trace of a Scots accent. Indeed its foreignness in a sense lay in its complete Oxford perfection. His broad face was pale-skinned and had discrete lines which radiated from his broad nose.

  “It may, of course, not affect you so much as you have your Nebotec lab,” Gabriel continued. “That’s where most of your histology research is done now, isn’t it?”

  Palmer nodded. “Yes, but I still have students doing projects here. Some of the postgrads are leftovers from my time with Forsyth. There are a few joint projects with Nebotec that Taylor and I run.” In answer to Gabriel’s momentarily puzzled look, he explained, “I get Matt Taylor to do some of my graduate student supervision.” He moved on quickly. “I presume we’ll still keep the laboratory facilities.”

  “The facilities yes, the resources no. That’s exactly the sort of thing that will come under threat if Poole and co. get their way.”

  “You’ll just have to stand up to them. Fight the good fight. You’ll have my full support, of course. I’ll write as many letters as you like — to the University, the hospital, whoever...”

  Gabriel considered Palmer for a moment. He couldn’t make out whether he was being superior or matter of fact.

  “That’s probably not necessary,” he answered, “at least not yet. I just wanted to prepare you for what might be coming and know that I can count on your backing.”

  Palmer nodded his agreement. “Of course.”

  “There’s no guarantee that our department will be targeted but my suspicion is that they’ll consider us an easy target for their cuts.”

  “The situation is the same in the University, and the college for that matter. You have to watch your back and not believe everything that’s said.”

  It comforted Gabriel to see that Palmer was sufficiently relaxed to make conversation. He nodded his head in sympathy.

  Palmer leaned back and folded his arms. “Oxford’s a very materialistic place now. Not dreaming spires but expensive ones. The vice chancellor, the heads of departments, and the cursed administrators are only concerned with money. They think it’s their own and they’re unwilling to spend it, particularly on research. That’s why Cambridge is ahead of Oxford in science, and London is fast catching up in those abominable University league tables.”

  Gabriel saw his opening. He unfolded his arms and scratched his chin before saying with some hesitation and embarrassment, “You may be right, Ken. By the way, on the subject of supporting research, it seems that one or two of your staff have borrowed some items from the NHS lab. A few reagents and a microtome knife, Bill Chambers says. He raised the issue with me today. I’m bound to ask you to look into it.”

  Palmer shrugged his shoulders. “I can understand my students helping themselves to a few reagents we may not have here but I can’t think what they’d want with a microtome knife.”

  “It’s not like the old days any more when there was no clear distinction between the NHS and University departments. Now everything’s costed and has to be invoiced. There needs to be a paper trail.”

  “The problem is that the undergraduate students haven’t got sufficient funds to do their work. I’ve lobbied the faculty to give them a little for their project work but they say that what’s required has to come from departmental funds — of which there are none, of course. Matt Taylor and whoever else is supervising students tell them they have to make do with what they can. No doubt some of them are quite resourceful.”

  There was a pause in the conversation. The world for a moment had shrunk to that circle round Palmer’s desk. Palmer started to adjust his spectacles and then stopped awkwardly, as if he had been trying to control that gesture for years without success. He was the first to break the silence.

  “If you like I’ll speak to them.”

  “That would be helpful,” Gabriel responded.

  Palmer did not stick in his corner for long. He roused himself and came out fighting.

  “You know, Gabriel, I’ve very little in terms of public funding for the research I do here in the University. I don’t mind telling you I thought I was finished in research after that last paper with Forsyth. I had to go looking for cash. That’s when I spotted Hewitt with his shiny new company. He was dreadfully hard up for top drawer scientists with ideas. “Come to Nebotec, my dear fellow. You can carry on with your work. We’ll fund it.”

  Gabriel nodded but said nothing. He was struck by the determination in Palmer’s voice.

  “I’m not fettered by funding considerations at Nebotec,” Palmer said. “They’ve given me all I needed to prove the palindrome theory — what Forsyth wasn’t willing to let me have all these years. And my theory is right, eh Gabriel? The slides show that.”

  Gabriel looked up and met Palmer’s questioning gaze. He had been reflecting just a moment before with satisfaction that so far he had said very little about the PLF results. But then he really had nothing to say — nothing, at least, which he could say to Palmer.

  He sidestepped any potential awkwardness by avoiding the question and agreeing with him on the overriding issue.

  “You’re right. I know how it is. I’ve had to go cap in hand to the faculty myself to pick up scraps for the students I have in my lab. I always suspected that uncertainty in funding was the reason Anna Taylor left to join Nebotec. She was looking for security and could see how precarious funding for research was in the University.”

  Palmer nodded agreement. He noted Gabriel’s unwillingness to talk about the PLF results. He did not pursue the subject. Not directly anyway.

  “Of course, my position at the University is safe but it’s been noted by the Warden of the college and a few senior Fellows — Gearing’s one of them — that I do a lot of work in the private sector outside the University. They’ve tried to limit my influence at the college on that account. They say I should do more teaching. But what they don’t understand is that good science is time-consuming and expensive. And that it requires effort, real effort, to make a success of it. The Warden and other Fellows at the college would rather I spend my time spelling out biochemical facts to the middle class debutantes and squires who pass for students nowadays. They’re unhappy that I get others to fill in for me. You know, Forsyth did me a disservice making me a Tutorial Fellow; they’re so bogged down in teaching they
have no time to do anything. Why else do you think it’s taken a man like Gearing more than ten years to finish his magnum opus on Lycian dialects? It’s a fair bet the world won’t change its orbit when he finally publishes it.”

  “But don’t you think that the culture of the market is wrong for science?” Gabriel ventured.

  “Certainly not. Good science is good science wherever it’s done. The profit motive is irrelevant. You just need good scientists to do it and, dare I say it, even good pathologists like Anna Taylor, Liz Reynolds and you. You know that Liz was originally involved in the identification of palindromes in tumour cells?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Yes, she told me. She also told me that you two fell out and that she went off and finished her D.Phil with Forsyth when you didn’t put her name on the Nature paper you published.”

  “Liz was under the misapprehension that it was she who had somehow discovered palindromes and was the first to realise their significance. You know how pushy she can be. When she started making noises about how the results could be exploited and encouraging Matt Taylor, whom she was keen on at the time, to investigate the possibility of patenting the findings, I thought it was time for her to move on.”

  “Why do you think she was like that?”

  I don’t know,” Palmer replied evenly. “And when I don’t know I usually keep quiet. What do you think?”

  Palmer was looking at him His fingertips were intertwined, making a bowl of his hands. He sat impassively, filling the whole chair. His paunch sagged over his belt and moved slightly every time he breathed.

  “I don’t know either really,” Gabriel answered, “but since you’ve been good enough to ask me, I can only say that I’ve not met many who are as good at their work as Liz. Anna Taylor was a lot like her, I’d say.”

  “Perhaps. But this whole business wouldn’t have blown up without women like Anna and Liz.”

  “Couldn’t you control Anna?” Gabriel asked.

  Palmer gestured abruptly as though tired of arguing and having to explain a simple fact over and over again. “How could I? She was married to Matt Taylor and had insinuated herself into the lives of everyone at Nebotec. I couldn’t just move her on, like Liz.”

  “You can’t really blame Anna for being honest,” Gabriel began, mildly disapproving.

  “Of course not,” Palmer interrupted. “But I can for ignoring the results You know, Gabriel, the older I get the more difficult I find it to forgive people who can’t see or deliberately ignore the blindingly obvious. These people are not as clever as they think they are and they cause a lot of problems. You can only carry on doing science in the expectation of progress. Otherwise the work goes nowhere; it gets bogged down. Some people don’t understand that. Do you know what I mean?”

  Palmer hadn’t been able to resist asking the question. Gabriel looked a little startled to realise after a gap of a few seconds that it was not a rhetorical one; he felt pressured into agreeing with Palmer but he no more than nodded minimally to show that he was listening. Palmer’s hard-boned face had a strong imprint of temperament and character. More than concern for scientific advancement, for profit, he was driven by pride, scientific pride. It dominated everything even his retrospective anger towards Anna.

  “You know,” Palmer continued, “I’m getting on in science terms. I’ve little time left to make my mark, discover something significant that will not be forgotten, at least not immediately. You think you run science. You don’t. Science runs you. The results of experiments, they determine your next move. And, as you know, you can’t wait to get on with it. The last thing you want is to be held up by something or someone you can’t control. The government is bad enough: it’s anti-science.” He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “Perhaps I am too wrapped up in my work but I have no time for those who get in the way of it.”

  “Like Anna Taylor, you mean?”

  Palmer laughed. His face had a look of strangled disgust.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. Only that I could never really believe that she was as disinterested as she said she was when she expressed her opinion on the work at Nebotec. She was always currying favour with the management, Hewitt in particular.”

  “And with you?”

  “She didn’t even try. Perhaps she wanted her husband to be where I was at Nebotec and saw me as holding him back. She certainly didn’t like taking orders from me — or any man really. She was always overstepping her authority, going behind your back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Palmer did not answer. Something shifted behind his pale composed features — the shifting of a fault deep beneath a rock face.

  Gabriel tried again. “Why do you think she was killed?” he asked suddenly.

  Palmer looked directly at Gabriel when he answered. “I don’t know why she was killed. And, you know, Gabriel, I don’t care either. I’m only glad I wasn’t around when it happened.”

  Chapter 14

  No trace not one carton

  Gabriel’s cottage near the hamlet of Boarstall came with six uncultivated acres and stood well back from the road with the nearest house a hundred yards or so away, something Gabriel appreciated as his view was that the only point of owning land was to keep people out. Pat, in contrast, saw it as an opportunity to indulge a passion for cultivation; and so, with very little assistance from Adam, she had turned part of the derelict land into a neat arrangement of lawn and flowers as well as brought back to life a small orchard and kitchen garden, the produce of which (much to Adam’s annoyance) she insisted on sharing with their neighbours whom she frequently invited round.

  When he entered the kitchen Pat was scraping the bottom of a pan angrily. “That’s the second time this week you’ve come home late,” she said, not looking up at him.

  “I didn’t realise that you were counting.”

  “I wasn’t. I was complaining.”

  Gabriel watched her ladle a steaming rice dish onto a plate. He received the curry she served him with a slight bow of the head and sat down with her at the kitchen table.

  “I suppose you’re late because you were out trying to catch—” She left the sentence unfinished and got up almost as soon as she had sat down when the cooking timer began ringing.

  “I’m late because I had to see Palmer. He went on and on.”

  Pat smiled as she pulled a dish out of the oven. “It’s baked apple again tonight I’m afraid. I’ve got so many apples from the orchard. They’re going rotten.”

  Gabriel put down his fork and stared through the window out into the blackness. You would never suspect that Pat’s well-tended orchard was out there.

  Gabriel’s fork hovered over the mound of rice on his plate, as if hesitating to disturb it. Pat chose this moment to offer him another serving from the earthenware pot.

  “Take a little more, Adam. Look at all there is left!”

  “You cook enough to feed a regiment,” Gabriel said his mouth full. “There are just two of us, you know.”

  “It’ll keep and you look as if you need feeding.”

  “I thought we were supposed to be on your seven day diet. What day is it today?

  “Wednesday.”

  Adam always felt at a disadvantage in this kind of ping-pong dialogue when Pat served him food. She underlined her remarks with an ironic smile that reminded him that she was not only clever but could also cook — unlike him. For the rest of the meal her tongue did not stop wagging. She went on and on about how life had become more expensive and how about five years before a chicken had cost so much and now it was twice as dear; about how the supermarkets in Oxford were not only expensive but also had poor produce; and how she preferred to go to the Covered Market but it was a hassle as there was no parking and it was a long walk from the college.

  Adam did not respond and let whatever she had to say roll over him. When she had finished he felt her eyes fix accusingly upon him as if he were a social oddity.


  “How are you getting on playing detective? Have you decided who did the deed yet?”

  He shook his head and said, “No.”

  Ping.

  “What about the police?”

  “No.”

  “All you can say to me is “No” then?”

  Pong.

  “I’m out of my territory, out of my depth. Which is why I don’t know. There are all sorts of odd facts I can’t quite fit together. I can’t work out what it was Anna saw in the slides that made her realise something was wrong with the experiments being done at Nebotec. Everything looks normal. But I’m sure it isn’t. Just like Nebotec and the people there.”

  “Can’t you deduce it working from the known facts? Can I help?”

  “Not really. The trouble is the lack of facts: real facts, I mean. I don’t know a definite thing about Anna’s relationship with the people there apart from the fact that she didn’t get on with Palmer. They all seemed to like her or found her useful but at the same time they found her difficult because she was too honest, too principled or just too aware. I don’t know.”

  “So you still think the murderer must have been someone from Nebotec?”

  “It must have been someone who knew the Nebotec site fairly well, who knew something of the security system there, how to get in and out without being noticed; someone who knew something about labs and microscope slides too.”

  “It couldn’t have been someone from outside then, who visited the labs—”

  Gabriel was on the point of protesting but the ring of the telephone intercepted his reply. Pat leaned back and picked up the extension in the kitchen then almost immediately held it out for him. “It’s for you. It’s Nick.”

  He caught Pat’s eye on him and was startled by the hint of understanding.

  Grant’s calm, well-bred and rather bored voice at the other end of the line snapped him out of his introspection.

  “You left a message for me to ring?”

  “I wondered when you were next in Oxford.”

  “Tomorrow most likely. Why?”

  “There’s something I want to show you.”