Brock looked puzzled. ‘A cultural region? Do you mean, a racial group?’
‘The more I learn of human diversity, Chief Inspector, the more convinced I am that the term “racial” has no meaning except as a cultural category.’
‘But surely genetic disorders aren’t cultural?’
‘The ones we study are.’ He reached across the table to the glossy brochures and flicked through one of them until he found what he was looking for. He handed it to Brock, pointing to a map of the world on which certain regions, principally in North Africa, the Middle East and parts of South Asia, were shaded pink. The title read, ‘Global distribution of areas where consanguineous marriages exceed 10% of total. Source: World Health Organisation’.
Haygill said, ‘The custom of cousins marrying has been entrenched in some societies for thousands of years. There are sound practical reasons for it, strengthening family structures, stabilising relationships within clans, and so on. Unfortunately it also leads to a much greater frequency of errors in the copying of the human book. The risks of stillbirth and serious congenital malformation are approximately doubled for the offspring of couples who are first cousins. This wasn’t especially noticeable when external factors such as malnutrition and disease resulted in high infant mortality, but when living and medical conditions improve, as they have throughout these regions, congenital malformations and chronic disabling diseases in children become more and more apparent. That is our project, Chief Inspector, to find gene therapies to offset the effects of consanguineous marriages.’
It was said, Kathy thought, with an enormous dignity and exhaustion, as if the task and the responsibility were both so noble and so vast that any individual would risk being crushed by it.
‘How could Max Springer object to that?’ Brock asked.
‘How indeed. How indeed.’
‘And naturally, the countries that suffer from these diseases would want to fund the work.’
‘Yes, through various agencies, the Arab World Bank, the Islamic Health Foundation, and so on. They’re listed in the books there. They support a number of teams, some in the Middle East and Pakistan and some in the States, one in France, and us in the UK. We each have particular paragraphs of the book to study, and are developing our own techniques for interventions.’
‘And you’ve made a point of recruiting staff from those regions also, have you?’
‘As far as possible, yes.’
‘They form a close-knit team, I imagine? Strong sense of loyalty to you and to the project?’
‘Yes.’ Haygill frowned at him. ‘You have a point?’
‘Oh, it’s just the story we heard about the Christmas e-mail problem, Professor. It made me think that your Muslim team members must feel rather isolated here, somewhat embattled, perhaps, to react in that way?’
‘It might seem a trivial matter, but they had some justification for feeling that they had to make a point. This wasn’t the first incident. But I’m sure we’ll resolve it all in due course.’ He passed a hand wearily across his eyes.
‘I thought it was resolved.’
‘Not yet. An arbitration committee has been appointed, but it hasn’t heard all the evidence yet. But Springer had nothing to do with this.’
‘And the earlier incidents?’
‘Oh, some of our laboratory technicians had a somewhat unfortunate sense of humour. They dubbed our project…’ he winced and lowered his voice, ‘… the “super-wog project”. They even had a scurrilous newsletter that they produced. You can imagine the kind of offence that caused when it got out. There was a disciplinary committee, and the university wanted to dismiss them outright, but the union fought that as an excessive penalty. In the end they were kept on, but moved to another part of the campus. It left a great deal of bitterness all round. Hence the sensitivity to the Christmas e-mail.’
‘I see. And again, Springer had no involvement in any of this?’
‘Absolutely not. As I say, I’d be very surprised if any of my team, beyond Tahir Darr perhaps, has ever heard of Max Springer. And if you have the slightest reason to doubt it I’d be very much obliged if you’d interview my people as soon as possible and clear this up, because these rumours of some kind of Islamic fatwa against Springer are potentially enormously damaging to us. Do you see that? The reports were causing untold consternation in the Gulf when I left. They’re wondering what the hell is going on at UCLE, and I want to distance ourselves absolutely from whatever has happened.’
‘I appreciate your cooperation, Professor Haygill. As a start I’d like a complete list of CAB-Tech staff, preferably with some information on their background.’
‘That’s easy. We keep profiles of our research team updated on file for our funding submissions. I’ll get a copy run off for you.’
A giant blood-red sun hung low on the western horizon as they left the CAB-Tech ziggurat, its light glinting on the dark surface of the Thames, shimmering off the prisms of the university buildings.
Kathy turned her collar up against the cold. ‘This place is weird, isn’t it? What’s it trying to be, Disneyland? And the people! The editor of the book of life; a girl wasting five years of her life writing about a theory of action that no one will ever read; a mad old man shot dead on the lecture theatre steps… Only the students seem normal.’ She watched a group of them hurrying towards the doors of the cafeteria, a couple kissing in the shadow of an overhanging balcony, a youth whistling past on a bike.
‘Got time for a drink?’ Brock said. ‘Somewhere normal.’
10
T he warm fug, the smell of stale beer, the dimly lit browns and creams of the saloon bar of The Three Crowns were all reassuringly normal. Around the walls were old photographs of it in its heyday as a watering hole for the dockers, shipwrights and sailors who had once populated Shadwell Road. From her seat by the window Kathy could see out between the red velvet curtains to the evening crowds of turbaned and saried shoppers who had taken their place, but with rather less patronage for the pub.
Brock sipped his pint thoughtfully as he worked his way through the sheaf of staff biographies Haygill had supplied, each helpfully provided with a photograph in the top corner. He set aside six, which Kathy considered. There were two Pakistanis including Dr Darr, one Egyptian, two Iraqis and a Lebanese. All had impressive academic pedigrees from a mixture of Middle East, UK and US universities, and all had doctorates in the biological sciences with the exception of the Lebanese, who was the team’s systems analyst and chief computer programmer.
‘You see, what I’m thinking, Kathy… well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’
‘That one or more of these might have put the gun in your wild young tearaway Ahmed’s eager little fist.’
Brock nodded. ‘Not a conspiracy, necessarily, but something like that. We have a tightly knit, somewhat paranoid group, devoted to their great cause and to Haygill, who is being unjustly harassed by some mad old coot who just won’t shut up. And maybe, at the end of another long, hard day, Haygill says, in that weary way of his, “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” or words to that effect. Not seriously, just out of exasperation.’
‘So you’d be looking for someone with some connection to Shadwell Road.’
‘Yes. Someone who lives around here, or worships at the Twaqulia Mosque across the way perhaps. Someone who heard about Ahmed beating this pub up, and knows what a charge he’d get from a real mission. Something really important, part of a jihad, involving a real gun, brought in from the Middle East with some shipment of scientific equipment or something.’
‘Sounds plausible.’
‘Mm. Pity.’
‘What?’
‘I was just thinking that you would have been the ideal one to tackle these lads, Kathy.’