Palindrome Read online

  She took another sip of sherry before adding: “And there were consequences. Something like that sticks to you like mud. Palmer found it more difficult to get grants from the large Research Councils to fund his work after that. He gets most of his money from industry now. He’s sold out to them really and hardly does any college teaching. He expects others, like me, to do that for him. He’s a great survivor is our Palmer.”

  “The biotech companies love a chancer, an ideas man, like Ken Palmer,” Gabriel said. They see him as someone who’s more likely than dusty academic types — like me — to come up with something they can sell.”

  Suddenly the door was flung open and the large figure of Palmer appeared. He advanced on Gabriel. He was massive and imposing; a strand of grey hair bounced up and down across his brow; his gown billowed behind him.

  “Gabriel, I saw you were down for dinner this evening. It’s good of Liz to bring you along. I virtually had to swim across the quad through this drizzle. My gown’s all damp. Feel it.” Liz Reynolds felt it. “You know, I used to have to make my way to school through this kind of treacle almost every day when I was a boy in Edinburgh.”

  Palmer wore a grey suit, white shirt and college tie. All this imposed an impression of formality; it complemented his polished voice which contained not the faintest hint of a Scots accent.

  “Drink?” Palmer asked.

  Gabriel shook his head. “Liz has already offered me a sherry. I have to drive home”

  Ignoring Gabriel’s protest, Palmer immediately proceeded to pour two drinks from a decanter.

  “Tart’s drink, sherry.” He gallantly raised his glass to Liz. “Present company excepted, of course.”

  Despite Gabriel’s objection Palmer handed him a glass and added, with a studied lowering of his voice, “I suppose you’ve heard about this dreadful business at Nebotec. Anna Taylor. One of your old students. Dreadful. Never known anything quite like it. Have you seen what the television people are saying?”

  “No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”

  “They’ve really gone to town. Brilliant Oxford scientist murdered. Lock up your daughters. A madman’s on the loose.”

  “Well, they may be right.”

  “The police are draining the ditches and have got the divers out along the Cherwell. God knows what they expect to find. It’s my impression they do that for every murder that’s committed near water, just to show they’re doing something.”

  “Has it affected the work at Nebotec?”

  “Of course it has. The police spend half the day questioning the staff, and the staff spend the rest of the day talking about what they were asked — even though the police tell them not to. Hardly any work’s getting done. You should see the place. Blue and white police tape everywhere. The lab’s virtually shut down. You can’t move without bumping into one of those forensic chaps in a white space suit.”

  “Do you know if they’ve found anything?”

  “God knows,” Palmer replied before abruptly changing the subject “You know, our old sparring partner, Forsyth, used to say that science was murder. Just for a change he was right. Of course, by that he meant that the amount of effort required to do decent science exhausted you almost to death.”

  “Ian was a shrewd Scot,” said Gabriel. “He had his own way of saying and doing things. But he was a very good pathologist.”

  “Yes. And like so many his real talent was in pathology rather than science.”

  Palmer’s words insinuated that Gabriel was cut from the same cloth. Gabriel resisted Palmer’s challenge to argue with him. Perhaps that was because in a way he agreed with Palmer. He saw himself as a pathologist first and a scientist second. Virtually all his research ideas had their origin in what he saw down the microscope; it did not bother him that Palmer thought such ideas were still rooted in the 17th century when that instrument had been invented.

  “Ian was as much a clinician as he was a researcher,” Gabriel answered. “He liked to support research because he wanted it to help in diagnosis and treatment.”

  “We didn’t have much to do with one another in later years, Ian and I. Two Scotsmen in the same room, you know. One from Edinburgh, one from Glasgow.” Palmer took a sip of whisky and then declared with something of his earlier panache, “It was bound to end in tears.”

  Gabriel was spared the embarrassment of a reply by a quiet knock at the door.

  A tall, well-dressed man in a dark grey suit timidly entered the room. He nodded to Palmer. He wore an uncertain smile as he approached their group.

  “This is Jim Hewitt, the CEO of Nebotec for his sins,” Palmer said by way of introduction. “I’ve got into the habit of inviting him to dinner when he finds himself — all too rarely, these days — on this side of the pond.”

  “Come off it, Ken,” Hewitt answered. “I spend most of my time here.”

  Gabriel introduced himself to Hewitt and the two men shook hands.

  The chief butler approached Palmer and whispered in his ear, “Not very many tonight, sir,” at the same time slipping him a piece of paper on which was scribbled a list of names.

  “Thank God for small mercies,” Palmer declared, tugging briefly at his gown. He emptied his glass. “It seems I’m in the chair at high table this evening, being the most senior Fellow.” He turned to Gabriel. “We’d better get going. Mustn’t keep the other Fellows and their guests, not forgetting the students, waiting.”

  The four of them set off and processed the short distance from the senior common room to the dining hall, walking on the stone slabs that framed the main quadrangle. Liz Reynolds put on her gown as she walked. As guests, neither Gabriel nor Hewitt were required to wear gowns.

  Palmer led the small group, speaking all the time to Gabriel without even bothering to turn his head.

  “I’m glad you’ve chosen this evening to come. It gives me a chance to talk over some research that might involve Liz and you. Now that poor Anna’s gone and the lab at Nebotec isn’t fully operational because the police have wrapped up so much of it in plastic, we’re going to need outside pathology support to complete our work. Not the way we planned it, of course. But need’s must. I’ll seat Liz next to me at table and work on her. Hewitt will be next to you. He can fill you in on what we’re up to.”

  Just after marching into the dining hall through a set of large double doors, Palmer laughed and, turning to Gabriel, said with deliberate irony, “Oh, by the way Adam, it’s awfully good of you to have made the effort to put on a tie for us this evening. I’ve spotted the way you wander round the department in casual antipodean attire.”

  Gabriel, caught a little off balance by this remark, managed to reply, “I didn’t want to cause you any aggro’, Ken.”

  “You’re right, Adam,” he said with a smile. “You wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “What did you work on at Columbia?” Gabriel asked Hewitt when they sat down for dinner in the Hall.

  “I’m afraid I’ve never really worked on anything in particular,” Hewitt replied, casting an eye over the noisy throng of students dining at the refectory tables below them. “I trained as a chemist but I haven’t worked in a lab for years. Research always seemed like too much hard work for me. I was more attracted by the business side of science and so I did an MBA after I left college and then looked around for opportunities.”

  Hewitt’s voice was pitched on one note. It reminded Gabriel of American newsreaders who announce the results of a baseball game in the same unemotional tone they deliver news of a disaster in which hundreds have lost their lives.

  “I spotted that the European biotechnology industry had been lagging behind that in America for years. I thought that was weird as I noticed a lot of the top scientists in the big US firms came from Europe. Most had left academia here to go to the States because that was the only way they could get the secure funding they need to do their work and make a decent living at the same time. You know, there’s really no rival to the big American firms like
Merck or Amgen in Europe. That’s because there’s no financial incentive for such companies to exist here.”

  “The brain drain,” Gabriel said, but his observation barely interrupted Hewitt’s flow.

  “Right. European governments have poured billions of euros into “technology corridors” and other top down schemes to create biotechnology clusters. But they don’t run efficiently because they’re too Europolitical; that’s why they’ve produced almost nothing of real value. There seemed to be a gap in the market here to exploit European science and market it globally, and so I managed to persuade a group of investors in the States to provide the funds to set up Nebotec.”

  “Couldn’t you raise the funds in Europe?”

  “Most of our shareholders are American institutional investors because I encountered unbelievable difficulties trying to raise the investment capital for the company here. The Europeans, particularly the French, want to be in charge. They like to put their own people, often their relatives, in the company. They were tight with the cash as well. They couldn’t understand why we needed so much money at the beginning. “We’re happy to provide more money when you can show us that you need it,” they told me. But what they don’t realise is that a drug discovery company like Nebotec needs the money early on. You know, we’ve spent quite a few millions in investment but we haven’t any products for sale. Yet we’ve still managed to grow — and grow quickly — because we have investors who believe in the drugs we’re developing. We have several that are ready to be submitted for FDA approval and a couple that are about to go into early stage clinical trials. We have high hopes for one Ken is working on. That drug alone could have annual sales of $5 billion. I can’t tell you the details but we’ve got a deal in principle with a major US drugs firm. They’re willing to stump up several millions for a ten per cent stake in Nebotec and have offered us milestone payments worth up to $1.6 billion provided the drug meets expectations.”

  Hewitt’s voice may have been unemotional yet his face was far from inexpressive. Money made him smile and the smile that lit up his smooth face stretched his lips, revealing a set of perfect teeth. It was a smile that could have leapt from the advertising pages of an American magazine.

  “You’ve got to think big in this industry. That’s what they do in Silicon Valley. The problem with most biotech start-ups is they don’t do that. That’s why they fail to grow beyond a certain size. Our firm’s got a good portfolio of potential drugs and we’re on the verge of a massive deal with Ken’s drug. None of that would have been possible if we’d thought small and just had to make do with whatever funds we could raise in Europe. I have to spend a lot of my time in the US, managing these big deals, talking to American investors.” The note of his voice hardly changed when he joked rather feebly, “At least, that helps me to escape the English weather and my wife — she’s English, by the way.”

  Gabriel was attracted and repelled by Hewitt, by his clean cut advertisement features, by his voice, by his fixation on money and performance: his whole salesman style. The smallest movement of his mouth or nose, the faintest glance or frown seemed to reveal his materialistic philosophy. Gabriel was tempted to criticise what he said and provide a corrective to his enthusiasm, but was reluctant to interrupt him when he was in mid-flow.

  “A good CEO needs to guide the firm by identifying what the market needs, securing the edge in intellectual property and maintaining the confidence of investors — especially if the company has as yet no established revenue stream.”

  “What happens if one of your potential blockbusting drugs goes belly up and doesn’t live up to expectations?” Gabriel asked.

  “It could be a devastating blow, particularly if one fails late in the game after a lot of money has been invested. Drugs giants like Amgen are big enough to survive such a huge blow, but not Nebotec. That would wipe us out.”

  “What’s Palmer’s role in all this?”

  “He came to us with an idea about the palindromes he’d identified in the DNA of cancer cells and persuaded us to invest in the development of drugs to target them. Most people believed that they were non-functional or that they just coded for nonsense proteins that are formed when a cancer cell divides. But Ken showed that they play a role in accelerating the growth of cancer cells. Do you know his work?”

  Gabriel nodded. He recognised this as the MT-1 story in another form. He would have warned Hewitt but something held him back. Perhaps it was a native dislike of his salesman approach toward science. In any case, Hewitt was so carried away by his own performance and believed so strongly in his own rhetoric that Gabriel was sure his opinion would have counted for very little with him.

  “Ken expects a lot of people in the lab. He’s a real tyrant. If the results aren’t coming because someone’s done an experiment incorrectly or got something wrong in their calcs then look out. He’ll find that person out and humiliate him.”

  “And did he try that with Anna Taylor?” Gabriel asked.

  Hewitt did not answer the question directly. “Ken was frustrated by how long she took over her path reports and he found it difficult to argue with her over them because all she’d say is: “That’s what it looks like down the microscope.” There’s no arguing with that, I guess.”

  “And Matt Taylor? What does he do?”

  “He pretty much runs the lab.” Hewitt shook his head. “That’s not an easy job. Not with Ken, anyway. But he’s used to the way Ken works. He’s a good scientist in his own right. He’s very focused and devoted to Ken.”

  Hewitt continued to talk about his business, always enthusiastically and boastfully. The more Gabriel listened to him the more his character struck him as a little like that of a malignant cancer cell. His sole aim was for Nebotec to be more successful than rival drug companies, to be more profitable than them, to get ahead at the expense of others.

  It was something of a mercy for Gabriel when Palmer suddenly rose to put an end to their supper — four courses admirably done and served with very fine wines. The other diners rose as well and waited for Palmer, his fists on the table, to mutter a short Latin prayer. Palmer looked a little embarrassed and Gabriel suspected that was because he did not understand a word of what he was saying.

  “Amen,” one or two of the diners, including Gabriel and Hewitt, chorused.

  They moved to a private dining room for “afters”, as Palmer called it. The numbers at high table were greatly diminished, the four of them being joined only by Gearing, a Classics Fellow, and his guest, a visiting Canadian scholar; the six of them followed the Oxford custom of not sitting next to those who had sat beside them at dinner and Gabriel found himself at Palmer’s right hand.

  “I suppose Hewitt has filled you in on what he likes to call our Mission Statement,” Palmer said with a little laugh.

  “He’s mentioned that you’re still working on palindromes, if that’s what you mean?”

  “Not exactly, but it is one of our main themes of drug development.”

  I don’t know much about palindromes,” Gabriel said. “I haven’t much of an idea about what they do. Does anyone? The textbooks say that they’re found in all cells, not just cancer cells.”

  Palmer’s reply was curt. “Some of us write textbooks — that’s you Gabriel. Some of us read them — that’s Liz there. Some of us sell them — that’s Hewitt, of course. And some of us — that’s me — despise them.”

  Gabriel smiled. “So you don’t accept the dogma that they’re just simple sequences of DNA which don’t code for anything in particular.”

  “Certainly not. How could anything so universal be so unimportant. That doesn’t make any sense in evolutionary terms. DNA sequences that read the same forwards as backwards are perfectly designed to act as a control on gene transcription, either as a lubricant or a brake. They’re found in the simplest and the most complex of organisms. It was their excessive frequency in some cancer cells that made me think they might be a promising target for therapeutic intervention.�
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  Gabriel persisted. “Wasn’t that what you were working on with Forsyth before he died?”

  “Yes. And I see you’ve clearly inherited his scepticism about the idea of palindromes.”

  “From the way you speak you’d think they were the very essence of life.”

  “They may very well be,” Palmer replied in all seriousness.

  James Hewitt and Liz Reynolds had ceased their conversation and were listening to what Palmer was saying. Even Gearing and his guest, a stout, fair-haired man who wore a smile on only one side of his face, were silent. Palmer looked reflectively at his hands before continuing.

  “You know, science is just a job for most academics. Intellectual factory hands, that’s what most of them are. They turn up every day and do no more than turn on the machines, one of which — the least useful — is their brains. They don’t get their hands dirty, like real factory hands. And they’re lazy, not just physically but also intellectually. Ideas on a plate, that’s what they want. The problem is they’re not encouraged to think outside the box when they come down from the University. They don’t question the dogma and just end up doing the same experiments over and over again. In career terms, of course, that’s what’s required. They get away with it as long as their work manages to keep getting published, preferably in major scientific journals like Nature or Science, and they continue to generate the research funds. And this complacency is worst here in Oxford. We think we’re the best simply because we hold high table dinners at colleges where we say grace in Latin and sit next to academics like Gearing here, who studies Lycian dialects. But the majority of scientists here aren’t clever at all. They aren’t interested in their subject. They’re only interested in perpetuating their pitiful careers. Academic science is a charade.”