Palindrome Read online

  Gabriel nodded.

  “Are there no good scientists here in Oxford?” Gearing asked in all innocence.

  “There are, but they’re very few,” Palmer answered. He looked at Gabriel. “You may be thinking that I believe I’m one of them, but I’m not. Not now, anyway. I was once. Even Forsyth (to his credit) spotted that. We didn’t always see eye to eye but he encouraged me to pursue my ideas. But when they were too bold, too adventurous, he took me to one side and advised me to tone it down. So I spent much of my career writing worthy but meaningless scientific papers for him — hundreds of them. Forsyth helped to get them published in major journals. He’d ring up the editors and make a big stink whenever one of our papers was rejected. He knew that looking good on paper was the way to get ahead. It helped me to get tenure here.

  “The one time I made an effort to describe something that was really important — the role of palindromes in cancer — Forsyth abandoned me when there was the first whiff of controversy. He hung me out to dry even though I’d said in the Nature paper that we hadn’t worked out the full story. Forsyth and I went our separate ways after that. That made it difficult to get funding. But Forsyth had taught me well. He showed me how to survive, even as a fraud in Oxford.”

  Palmer held up his glass and proposed a toast. “To Oxford and its frauds,” he declared, before drinking off a full glass of claret. None of the others joined him.

  “Well, if you are one, Ken, then you’re in good company,” said Gearing, a short, sharp-featured man with thinning grey hair and very pale skin. “There have been quite a few here in Oxford. Edmund Backhouse and his Chinese manuscripts—”

  “Bugger Backhouse,” Palmer said. His nose was half-buried in the claret glass.

  After Palmer refilled his glass he continued to speak about science with the air of a lonely pioneer. His talk was coloured by a real malice towards colleagues, particularly those he considered his “intellectual inferiors” (a favourite phrase). He castigated them for what he regarded as their addiction to dutiful, low-risk science and even deprecated his current sponsors. “I’ve had to get into bed with the whores of industry to keep going.”

  Gabriel was surprised how little Hewitt was affected by Palmer’s invective. He looked at Gabriel and dutifully made excuses for him. “Ken’s always like that at this time of the evening.”

  When Palmer had settled down somewhat Gabriel asked who was replacing Matt Taylor during his absence.

  “No one,” Palmer said resentfully.

  “This whole affair has been a big blow to the company,” Hewitt broke in to say. “You know, we spend a small fortune on PR, on trying to get the press to notice our company. Now without spending a penny, this happens, and we find the name of Nebotec in the papers every day — but for the wrong reason. That kind of publicity is damaging to the share price. It wipes out the news that next week we’ve got a high profile symposium on the anti-cancer drugs we’ve developed.” His next words were clearly aimed at Palmer. “I wish that was a little more prominent in the minds of some people in the lab when they speak to the press.”

  “It will all blow over,” said Palmer. “Give it time. I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually increased the numbers attending the conference. There are likely to be quite a lot of press there. Interested to find out what Anna was working on.”

  “Did Anna fit in at Nebotec?” Gabriel asked

  “She did and she didn’t,” Palmer answered. “She was what I was not — a pathologist. It was her misfortune to follow in

  Forsyth’s footsteps and think that she was a scientist as well.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Gabriel.

  “Ken means she could be a bit of a nuisance,” Hewitt said. “She was, let’s face it, different.”

  Palmer was quick to reply: “You seem, James, to be suggesting that I objected to her on the grounds of race. But nothing could be further from the truth. It was just that she had such a disruptive effect on our work.”

  “Didn’t she work hard enough?” Gabriel asked.

  “She worked hard enough all right. That wasn’t the problem. She just didn’t seem to appreciate the aims of our research and was not always, shall we say, co-operative.”

  “Meaning?”

  “She was something of a crusader type. Neither industry nor science has a place for people like that. Time is money and she wasn’t very responsive to my efforts to keep the work moving forwards in the right direction. I set exacting standards in the lab. And, believe me, they’re exacting for a reason. On more than one occasion I was compelled to take Anna aside and talk to her. She was always going back and checking all the results when any one was slightly out. It was maddening. She could be very obstructive. She was not as smart as she believed herself to be and she did not like being told that she was wrong. I know, given the current tragic circumstances, that what I say must sound unfeeling and insensitive but none the less that is how it was. I hope I’ve made my position clear?”

  “Abundantly,” Gabriel answered. “Did the others in the lab like her?”

  “The others!” Palmer shook his head; his mouth wore a sarcastic smile. “Anna was an attractive creature and she used that attraction to enlist sympathy. Quite a few fell under her spell.”

  “She was working at the lab the night she was murdered? Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it was Matt Taylor who found the body?”

  “Yes,” Hewitt answered quickly, as if to make sure that his reply got in before that of Palmer. His eyes met those of Palmer; it was as if he was seeking Palmer’s approval before continuing. “You can’t imagine what it was like when he burst into my office.”

  As though anxious to avoid having to give any precise details about what happened that evening, Hewitt suddenly fast forwarded the subject away from Matt Taylor and onto the police and all the disruption they caused when they arrived at Nebotec. There was not a doubt in Gabriel’s mind that Palmer noticed and approved Hewitt’s change of tack.

  Gabriel’s glass was empty and Palmer, trying to fill it from the decanter, was just prevented by Gabriel’s hand covering the rim. That gesture had the effect of summoning more criticism of Anna Taylor from Palmer.

  “Anna never really understood the science we do at Nebotec. That is my opinion and I voiced it many times to her when she was alive. I kept telling her that you can’t drive a truck through all the data just because the result of one experiment doesn’t fit. She almost asked for trouble.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Gabriel.

  “She passionately believed that whatever she thought was right. She was that sort of woman. Her husband told me that she often argued about the bill in restaurants and took things back at supermarkets if they were not quite right. I could well believe it. She could never just let things go.” Before continuing, Palmer glanced toward Hewitt and asked, “Isn’t that right, James?”

  Hewitt said nothing but in his silence and the way he lowered his gaze there was agreement.

  “She was argumentative about everything,” Palmer said. “The animals, the staff. They all had rights; the company had none.”

  The conversation continued to wander back and forth over Tuesday’s tragedy. Hewitt was concerned by the effect on the company. Palmer was oddly silent, sunk in his own thoughts from which he occasionally emerged to give Hewitt an irritable look.

  At exactly eleven Palmer pronounced himself tired, and they rose and went back to the senior common where they collected their coats.

  Palmer accepted Hewitt’s thanks for the evening with a sullen nod. He turned to Gabriel.

  “So can we count on your help regarding that business we spoke about?”

  “It depends exactly on what it is you need.”

  “Just looking at a few slides of mouse tissues to see if one of the drugs we’ve developed has any effect on them.”

  “The sort of science you think we pathologists can do then,” Gabriel said with a half-smile
. “It’s nice to know you believe we’re good for something, Ken. Are you sure you can trust us to come up with the answer you expect?”

  “I very much doubt that even you could contrive to get this wrong, Adam.” He took off his gown and threw it over his arm. As he turned away, he said, “Mind how you go. It’s wet out there.”

  Chapter 4

  Snug & raw was I ere I saw war & guns

  Gabriel, Hewitt and Liz Reynolds, hard rain blowing into their faces, said little to each other as they stumped back round the quadrangle to the college entrance.

  Liz with a wave and a brisk “Good night” peeled off at one corner, skipping up Staircase 7 to her college room. A few seconds later Hewitt, carrying a half-open umbrella, was shaking hands with Gabriel beneath the arch of the college entrance.

  “Good night and I do hope you and Liz can help us with our work,” he said.

  Gabriel nodded but said nothing.

  Hewitt, perhaps misconstruing his silence, added, “The company’s keen to develop more links with the University and we’re happy to pay for the services you provide.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” Gabriel answered before hastily withdrawing his hand and saying good night.

  The two men set off in different directions. As Gabriel walked back to the car, he reflected that before this evening the task he had for some obsessive reason set himself had been reasonably clear: finding out more about the events surrounding Anna’s death. What she had been working on — palindromes — had only been a side issue. But now the worth — or lack of worth — of palindromes struck him as central to what he might uncover. He could not get it out of his head that they were just nonsense. After all, it did not matter which end you started from with them — they made the same sense: no sense: nonsense.

  In the short distance between the college and where he had parked his car Gabriel got very wet. He took off his coat and threw it into the back of the car. It was a relief to be out of the rain, in his car, leaving Oxford for Boarstall after an evening that had gone on too long and begun to feel increasingly unpleasant.

  As he turned into Saint Giles, he saw the figure of Hewitt striding purposefully along the pavement, water pouring off his black umbrella. Gabriel had not thought to ask whether he might want a lift and suddenly felt guilty on that account. He tooted his horn and Hewitt, after taking a few seconds to realise what was being offered to him, opened the passenger door and got in.

  “That’s lucky,” he said as he put on his seat belt. “Do you go past Nebotec on your way home? I live out in that direction.”

  Gabriel nodded. “It’s on my way,” he said, which was not entirely true, but he did not wish Hewitt to feel any sense of obligation.

  “My company car’s out of action again and the garage didn’t have a loan car for me,” Hewitt said, as though excusing himself. “I should use the garage Ken does. He never has problems that way. You know, I’ve an expensive company car but it spends more time in the garage than on the road. You can’t rely on buses in Oxford and I was hoping to catch a taxi in St Giles. But who knows on a night like this how long I’d have to wait?”

  Hewitt paused and took the opportunity to cast a few glances at the careworn state of Gabriel’s car, an old Peugeot. Gabriel rarely cleaned it and Hewitt looked as if he was reconsidering the taxi option.

  Gabriel drove in silence up the Woodstock Road. On one side there was an expanse of college playing fields, rugby and football pitches that stretched down to the canal.

  Hewitt pointed a finger past Gabriel towards a close that contained a tall modern building behind one of the fields. “That’s where the Taylors lived, in one of those apartments. They paid a lot for it. Must have bought at the top of the market, which, of course, has gone down since the credit crunch. I wonder if Matt will struggle to keep it now that Anna’s gone? I don’t know if there was any life insurance.”

  “From what you were saying at dinner it sounds as if Matt Taylor was in a bad way when he came to your office the night Anna was killed.”

  “Yes. He was like someone out of his mind. His hands were covered in blood. I had trouble calming him down and getting any sense out of him.”

  They drove on in silence until Gabriel asked rather naively, “Did Anna and Matt Taylor get on well together?”

  “They seemed to get on as well as any couple.” He smiled. “No worse than Frances and me anyway, although that’s not saying much. I never think it’s a good idea for a husband and wife to work together in the same place. They either get on well and form a clique that gangs up on the rest of the staff or end up falling out over some work issue. Either way, the work is affected.”

  “And which way was it with the Taylors?”

  “I’m not sure. I think it’s fair to say that Matt found Anna quite a handful. She was strong-minded in her work and I guess she must have been like that at home.”

  “I remember she was that way in the lab when she worked in our department,” Gabriel volunteered.

  “Yes, she could be a tough cookie. She didn’t just accept what Ken or Matt said. She challenged them and, of course, that was a problem sometimes. As Ken said, this is a critical moment in Nebotec’s development. It’s important, more important than ever, that we’re all pulling in the same direction, singing from the same hymn sheet.”

  Gabriel noted the mixture of metaphors.

  “Ken said she seemed to like making difficulties. But I’m not so sure. She wasn’t the sort of girl to rock the boat for no good reason. Some of her criticisms were sound. We had to do more experiments to deal with them and that irritated Ken. It delayed us in our timetable of drug development but, even so, you can’t blame her for doing her job.”

  “Surely her husband could have spoken to her if she was such a problem?”

  “I don’t know whether he did or he didn’t but I’ll lay odds it would not have done much good. She was difficult to argue against when she thought she was right. And she could be quite persuasive in her own way.”

  Hewitt seemed to be trying to speak in measured tones about Anna Taylor but the more he spoke about her, the more it was obvious to Gabriel that he did not regard her as just another Nebotec employee. Lowering his tone, Hewitt concluded a little wistfully, “She was a nice kid. I’ll miss her even if Ken won’t.”

  They reached Hewitt’s house. A tall thick fir hedge entirely concealed the house from the road. The new brick posts that flanked a metal gate in an opening of the hedge indicated to Gabriel that the house, like those around it, was large and modern.

  “Good night and thanks for the lift. I’ll send you an invitation to the cancer drug symposium we’re holding. We’ll be talking about PLF, the anti-palindrome drug we’re working on. Even if you aren’t interested in the lecture, you’re very welcome to the food and drink.”

  “Thanks, I’ll try to come. I’m surprised you’re going ahead with it. You must have enough worries at the moment.”

  “What do you mean?” Hewitt asked. He looked concerned. “The murder, the police, the press — all that sort of business.”

  Hewitt’s face instantly wore a smile. His expressions changed quickly.

  “We really can’t afford to stand still. Life must go on. We’re still in business, you know.”

  Gabriel watched him open the gate and disappear behind the hedge at the front of the house. He was about to drive off when he heard something fall over and Hewitt swear loudly in anger.

  There was then the sound of a door opening and the voice of Hewitt complaining, “Why couldn’t you put the porch light on? That’s the second time I’ve knocked over the bin this week. You knew I was coming home late.”

  The front door was slammed shut and then there was silence.

  Gabriel set off again and after a mile or so crossed a roundabout that passed over the Oxford ring road. A minute later, he slowed down his car when it approached a sign to the business park on which Nebotec was sited. On sudden impulse he took the turn and drove a sh
ort distance along a kerbed road that contained a motley of small enterprises — carpet warehouses, auto repair workshops, van rentals, and the like. Further along, the road opened into a kind of second estate which was less entrepreneurial and more industrial.

  There was an expanse of green before a large refrigeration works (what was that? Gabriel wondered) and then, a little further on, just beyond a row of cultivated bushes, the Nebotec site.

  A tarmac drive led up to a wire fence and double gates beyond which the Nebotec buildings glistened in the yellow soda lights. Half way along the drive a sign pointed towards a cycle path that led back to Oxford. There was a brick plinth along a small elevated patch of lawn at the front of the Nebotec. This contained a small multicoloured sign — Nebotec: Drug Discovery — printed with thin slanted lettering to make it appear arrow-like. What did that signify? Gabriel wondered. Certainty of direction? Swiftness of action? A progressive future? Or maybe it was just meant to look good.

  He turned the car round and parked off the road near the cycle path. A large truck, its lights on full beam, pulled out of the refrigeration works. The lights illuminated the wire fence that ran around the site. The fence stretched to open fields at the back but at one corner was lost behind a hedge not far from the cycle path. If the murderer had used a cycle then it was likely he would have come and gone from that direction.

  Gabriel got out of the car and peered down the cycle path. He could see nothing but tall dark trees, probably willows, in what looked like a black hole. He walked up to the wire gates which were festooned with blue and white police tape on which was printed redundantly “Police. Do Not Cross”.

  Gabriel stared at the Nebotec building which was not that far from the main entrance. It was two-storied, flat-topped, and looked as if it was made from Lego blocks. The walls were made up of alternate dark and light blue panels punctuated at regular intervals by windows. Gabriel guessed that the offices must be at the front and the labs at the rear which meant that they could be reached, if someone had wished, without entering the main building by going down a drive that ran from the main entrance towards what he guessed was a loading bay at the back.