When he reached the end he paused for another sip of the brandy, his hand trembling as he raised it to his mouth. He choked and coughed, and said, ‘I’m sorry. You must think this is pathetic. I’m still… rattled.’
‘I know,’ Kathy said, and put her hand on his. ‘I know exactly how you feel.’
‘You?’ He smiled doubtfully, disbelieving. ‘Not you, Kathy. And the thing was that although I’d been through something like that before, the Sammy Starling thing, it didn’t help. I thought to myself how ridiculous it was, this happening twice, and me even more helpless and terrified the second time.’
‘It’s the same for everyone, Leon,’ Kathy said gently.
‘No.’ Leon shook his head adamantly. ‘Look at Brock and Bren, fighting those skinheads off in Shadwell Road, and you taking on those blokes at the cemetery the other day… I’m not like that. I was afraid.’
She wanted to explain to him that in the cemetery she had reacted without having time to feel afraid, and that afterwards she had suffered for it. She wanted to tell him that she had self-doubts every bit as severe as his own, and that they were more crippling for her, in her position, than for him. But she held back, not sure that she wanted to make a confession to him. And there were things to be done. Later, perhaps, she would decide to tell him ‘So Darr thought you were a private detective hired by Haygill to find out if he was screwing his wife?’
Leon nodded, gulping down the last of the brandy. ‘She is a blonde, isn’t she? I remembered that Darr was with a blonde woman when I arrived at the club yesterday. He put her in a taxi and came to the bar and there I was. When I started asking him questions about her he must have put two and two together and made five.’
Leon shook his head glumly while Kathy smiled.
‘I’m sorry, Leon, but that really takes the biscuit. I wonder what Brock will say?’
‘Oh, we can’t tell him! That’s why I rang you.’
‘Rupert saw you at the club, leaving with Darr. He phoned Wayne, and Brock mobilised the troops. I phoned him on my way here to let him know you were safe. He’s going to need an explanation.’
Leon groaned.
She leaned forward and gently straightened his tie. ‘It hasn’t been your night, has it?’
‘No. But I’ll tell you what, Kathy. You and Brock should be careful. I was lucky, but those blokes, the Iraqis, they’re tough. I’m convinced that they’d have finished me off with one word from Darr. I’d hate to think what they’d do to anyone who really got on the wrong side of them.’
She nodded. ‘Did they keep all your stuff?’
‘Yeah. Probably threw it in the river.’
But in that, at least, he was wrong, for when Kathy finally delivered him to his parents’ house in Barnet, after he had made his explanations on her phone to Brock and silently endured Brock’s scathing assessment of his judgement and prospects, his mother opened the door to him with the news that a terribly nice Asian man had called with his possessions and a message that he must be much more careful in future.
19
T he following morning everyone in the office seemed to be reading the Herald when Kathy arrived. Bren tossed her his copy as she walked in and asked what was going on.
‘This should stir the pot,’ he said. ‘Does Brock know the editor or something?’
Kathy caught the front page headline, ‘ POLICE PROBE UNIVERSITY STAFF ’, and thought oh-oh. But the front page was only a sampler for what lay inside. It reported that Scotland Yard detectives had begun reinterviewing staff at UCLE in connection with the murder of Max Springer, and in particular those staff in the Division of Science and Technology with international and Islamic connections, with the unstated implication that they were hunting for accomplices of the assumed murderer Abu Khadra. It ended with references to further articles inside; Academic strife, page 3; Science feature, page 7; Editorial, page 10. It seemed as if Clare Hancock had managed to take over the whole issue with her story.
It was her name against the Academic strife report, which gave a detailed account of the long-running and increasingly savage feud between Max Springer and Richard Haygill, including Springer’s ‘Dr Mengele’ jibe in the University Senate and culminating in quotations taken from his letter to the paper before he died. The article described these as coming from a document that had come into the hands of the newspaper that it had passed on to the police, and Kathy guessed that it was a measure of Clare Hancock’s faith that there was a bigger story behind all this that she’d been able to persuade her editor to use it. The quotes included Springer’s descriptions of UCLE as ‘an outstanding leader in whoredom’, and of Haygill as ‘Svengali-like’, as well as the prophetic final sentence, ‘Those who speak out against tyranny must offer their very lives to the cause’. Against these tirades, the repeated ‘no comment’ responses of both UCLE and Haygill were made to sound evasive and guilty, and allowed the reporter to come to the conclusion that the whole debacle must point to a deeper malaise at UCLE, to the failure of its administration to manage the affair properly, and to the possibility that both the university and CAB-Tech’s director had something to hide.
The Science feature on page 7, titled ‘ STRUGGLING TO CONTROL THE GENETIC GENIE ’ and written by the paper’s science correspondent, took a different approach. This focused on Max Springer’s accusations that CAB-Tech’s research work was unethical and beyond the control of the university or any other responsible body. It gave the familiar discussion of fears about the implications of genetic engineering a particular slant by looking at the way research companies operating in more than one country might evade ethical controls on their experiments and procedures. As a possible illustration of this, it named CAB-Tech’s BRCA4 protocol as one that had raised concerns among UK regulators. Kathy wondered where they had got that from.
The editorial pulled together these different themes by proposing a Royal Commission into the regulation of multi-national genetic research organisations, as well as an inquiry into the management of
UCLE.
Kathy put down the paper and wondered if Clare Hancock had spoken to her the previous day just to gloat.
The first reaction to the Herald edition came at ten that morning, with a call to Brock from the UCLE President, Roderick Young, requesting a meeting. He arrived at Queen Anne’s Gate an hour later, and was shown into one of the ground floor meeting rooms. He shook Brock’s hand with a sombre nod, looked around with distaste at the spartan furniture, the unshaded fluorescent light tubes, the green moss staining the brickwork of the tiny courtyard beyond the window, then took off his coat and threw it across the back of a chair and sat down. He had arrived alone, telling his driver to call for him again in half an hour, and he began by asking that their conversation be off the record and not recorded. Brock agreed.
‘You’ll have seen the Herald this morning,’ he began, his voice a low growl as if he suspected people of listening at the door. ‘As you might imagine, it’s caused a good deal of consternation among my colleagues, particularly in Professor Haygill’s area. Haygill will be getting his own legal advice, as will the university. The articles are potentially extremely damaging to both UCLE and CAB-Tech, as well as to the individuals concerned, as you can well imagine. Haygill’s Principal Research Scientist handed in his notice this morning-’
‘That’s Dr Darr, is it?’ Brock interrupted, making a note on his pad. ‘Is he proposing to leave the country?’
‘I don’t know. Haygill’s trying to persuade him to change his mind. But that’s just a hint of the possible repercussions. Apart from the staff, the damage to CAB-Tech’s reputation and the confidence of its investors could be immense.’