Jones was in a big hurry now, and barely took in the meaning that might lie behind her words.
‘Spit it out, Connie, I really do have to go.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know quite where to begin...’
There was another pause. Would she never get on with it?
‘Well, you know what it’s like here. We’re not exactly flavour of the month at RECAP.’
‘No. But that’s nothing new, is it?’
RECAP — REsearch into Consciousness At Princeton, Connie Pike’s life’s work — was a project which had always hovered on the questionable fringes of established science.
‘Of course not,’ Connie agreed. ‘It’s just that, well, things have happened. You’re in a hurry. I won’t go into detail. But things have happened that have made Paul and I think that people in high places want to close us down altogether.’
Jones wasn’t surprised. In fact it had always been something of a mystery to her that RECAP had survived as long as it had in its own wonderful crazy backwater at the famous Ivy League university.
‘I’d be very sorry about that,’ she responded truthfully enough.
‘Well, it’s a lengthy old story, and maybe I don’t really know what I’m talking about... but I just thought you might be able to help. You were always the one who could do what others couldn’t...’
Her voice tailed off. Jones would indeed be deeply sorry to see the end of RECAP, but Connie Pike was taking her into territory she had no wish to re-enter. Nor was she keen on using whatever influence she might have to help save RECAP. The project wasn’t something that any ambitious academic would wish to be too closely associated with. And Sandy Jones had always been rather more ambitious than she liked to admit.
‘That was many years ago, Connie,’ she said.
‘Well I thought maybe you could do something... have a word...’
‘A word where, exactly?’
‘Well I don’t know, Sandy, but I was hoping you might.’
‘I can’t just go around sticking my nose into areas that no longer concern me, Connie, not even for you.’
She mentally kicked herself. She hadn’t meant that to come out the way it did, but the damage was already done.
‘I’m sorry, Sandy,’ Connie responded at once, her voice unusually small. ‘I know you’re busy, this is obviously a bad moment.’
Connie Pike was tough, but not always as tough as she talked. Jones knew she’d hurt her feelings, and she did adore the bloody woman after all.
‘Look, why don’t I call you back.’
‘I’d appreciate that, Sandy.’
Connie sounded curiously formal. Quite unlike herself. Jones felt a small pang of guilt, sparked by a half-forgotten legacy of long ago.
But all she said was: ‘OK. Fine. I really do have to go now, though. But I’ll call you, tomorrow at the latest.’
‘Thanks, Sandy.’
Connie hung up at once. No banter. No more insults. Jones reflected that she hadn’t even said goodbye properly. There was something wrong, something definitely wrong. Damn. She’d call Connie back tomorrow, for sure. Just as soon as America was awake.
Two
Four days later Jones was at her home just outside the little East Devon seaside town of Sidmouth. Northdown House had been built in the 1920s on a site chosen for its spectacular views over the Jurassic coast and out to sea.
This was the place where she had brought up her twin sons, now twenty-year-old students, largely on her own. She was really on her own nowadays, except when either of the boys descended for a weekend, and the house was far too big for her. However, she loved it, had never quite been able to get over the fact that it was hers, and had as yet proved unable to make the intelligent decision to downsize.
It was early evening. She was sitting at her kitchen table with a sandwich and a glass of wine, having just returned from a day in London at the BBC. Through the rest of the week her university duties had consumed virtually every waking moment. She remembered suddenly that she hadn’t returned Connie Pike’s call, and cursed her tardiness. She would do it straight away. As soon as she’d finished her sandwich.
She’d switched on the TV as a matter of habit. It was tuned to Sky News, as usual. Jones was a news junkie. But the volume was low, and her mind was elsewhere. Suddenly though, something the newsreader was saying both alerted and alarmed her. It couldn’t be, could it? She turned up the volume.
‘...police are still unclear of the cause of the explosion at Princeton. It is hoped that the laboratory at the heart of the blast will provide enough forensic evidence to ascertain exactly what occurred. Early reports suggest that the university may have been targeted by an unknown terrorist group. New Jersey police refuse to confirm whether or not they suspect foul play, but the entire area is now a designated crime scene. The explosion occurred just after eight thirty this morning, and the two scientists known to be already working in the RECAP laboratory at the time of the explosion, Professor Paul Ruders, and project manager Constance Pike, are missing, presumed dead.’
Jones felt a numbness spread through her body. She stared at the TV screen, willing it to tell her more, or best of all, tell her the item was just one big mistake.
There was a roaring and a screaming inside her head. A part of her that she valued perhaps more than anything else, a part of her half-forgotten, totally neglected, and probably more important and more significant than anything else in her life, except her sons, had been suddenly ripped apart.
Paul and Connie were dead. It couldn’t be true. And yet it was. She switched to CNN, which carried an almost identical report. She checked online, and quickly found the same item. Just a few paragraphs, so far. Those special people, their hopes and dreams, their work, their extraordinary special work, to all intents and purposes destroyed, and it only merited a few paragraphs.
Jones felt a stab of pain in her heart.
Connie’s phone call had been a cry for help. Jones had known that at the time, of course, which only made matters worse. There remained a bond between them, between all of them, really, who had been involved with RECAP during those heady pioneering days towards the end of the previous century.
Connie had been trying to tell Sandy something, something that had been worrying her, something about the project. And Jones hadn’t even bothered to call back. Now it was too late. Connie was dead. Jones vowed that she would at least try to find out what it was that had clearly been so important to Connie Pike. She had to. For Connie. For Paul. For all of them.
Her first call was to Thomas Jessop, the Dean of Princeton University. Thomas was the second in his family to achieve the elevated post. As a leading academic of international renown Jones was in touch with Jessop, as she was with a number of university chiefs worldwide. In addition she remembered Thomas as a post-graduate student at Princeton, when his late father Bernard had been dean. It had all seemed a little cosy to Jones when Thomas was appointed to the top job, but now she was rather glad of the link.
She didn’t have his mobile number, so dialled his direct line at the university, which switched immediately to message service. She left a brief message but did not expect a reply, not in the near future at any rate, even though it was early afternoon in Princeton on a working day. She guessed that the entire university would have been cleared. After all, she’d already learned from the news bulletin that at least part of the campus was now a designated crime scene.
She then tried the university switchboard number, just in case. It rang and rang. Again no surprise.
Finally she sent Thomas Jessop an email, then went into the Princeton website in order to call up and print out the staff list which she knew included email addresses as well as, in most cases, direct line phone numbers. She copied a message, asking for information about the blast, to everyone on the list.