‘One enquiry, again failed, into Bellamy. Complaint of undue and unreasonable force during an arrest. Montgomery was his partner. It was her evidence, denying everything, that got the accusation thrown out.’
‘Might help Parnell’s civil case. Doesn’t do much for us.’
‘None of it does unless Johnson tells us where he’s got his quarter of a mill from. And we sure as hell know he ain’t going to do that. He wouldn’t shift from careful saver and lucky gambler, not if we pulled his fingernails out.’
‘Lucky gamblers aren’t careful savers.’
‘Psychology isn’t evidence,’ reminded Benton. ‘You any luckier?’
Dingley smiled. ‘The half thumb print on the flight number is Johnson’s. Perfect match for prints off the handles of both flick knives, the knuckleduster, and on the butt of the Smith and Wesson in his uniform holster.’
Benton smiled back. ‘And he told us, on tape, that he didn’t know anything about that piece of paper!’
‘It’s not all good,’ cautioned Dingley. ‘Forensics took both flick knives to pieces. Not a scrap of fibre in either to match Rebecca’s cut seat belt. The grey paint debris from the bottom of his locker drawer isn’t from Parnell’s car. And the sheet of paper from his pocketbook isn’t a match to that on which the flight number is written.’
‘Shit!’ said Benton. ‘What about other fingerprints on the flight number?’
‘None. Just Johnson’s half print.’
‘That doesn’t fit!’ insisted Benton at once. ‘There would have had to be Rebecca’s mark on it!’
‘I know,’ agreed Dingley. ‘So do forensics. They checked every other article in Rebecca’s purse. Every one had her prints on it.’
‘You think it’s time we had another little chat with Harry Johnson?’ suggested Benton.
‘Not immediately,’ decided Dingley. ‘Why don’t we tell his lawyers we want to see him again in, say, three or four days: that something’s come up during ongoing forensic examination that we don’t understand? And then listen to the phone taps to hear who he calls?’
‘Right!’ agreed Benton, at once. ‘Why don’t we do that?’
‘We’re killing a lot of mice,’ said Ted Lapidus.
‘To save a lot of human lives,’ said Parnell.
‘Mice are genetically our closest match, right?’
‘Yes?’
‘What happens if they ever take over, start killing us off with their experiments to save their lives?’
‘I saw the movie,’ said Parnell. ‘I thought it was crap.’
‘The mice would have loved it.’
‘I gather nothing’s happening, apart from killing mice?’ questioned Parnell.
‘Nothing,’ confirmed the Greek geneticist.
‘Anything from Russell Benn?’
‘A hollow echo.’
A week ago, days ago, the impatience would have welled up within him, but now Parnell didn’t feel any frustration – not, that is, with his own unit’s efforts. But there were outside concerns which he was increasingly coming to believe he had professionally to confront – was remiss, in fact, for not having already done so. ‘You got any improved ideas, a quicker approach, I’m listening.’
‘I haven’t,’ Lapidus at once conceded. ‘We’re expecting too much of ourselves.’
Parnell accepted that wasn’t in any way intended as personal criticism, but just as easily recognized it could be taken as such. Although he had not intended to – couldn’t remember doing so – he supposed he could have infused his own unrealistic, overambitious expectation into the rest of his team. It would have been a bad professional mistake, if he had. Scientists in a hurry missed things – sometimes the most obvious – and almost invariably made mistakes, went the wrong way. And he was, Parnell acknowledged, thoroughly pissed off with misdirections, reverses instead of progress and, overall, too many dead ends. He couldn’t, though, declare a change of approach. Sorry guys. Got it wrong. Don’t go at it like a rat up a drainpipe. Relax. Take every weekend off, leaving early on Friday, start whenever you choose on Monday. Illogical to drive you, as I have been driving you. Too soon out of research science. This is my first managing position. That’s my problem. Sorry, like I said. Unthinkable, Parnell recognized. The sort of soul-baring that would once more – although worse this time – risk the cohesion he believed rebuilt from his last mistake.
He’d talk it through with Beverley. He’d become very comfortable – reliant was a word he refused to consider – in his relationship with Beverley. The guilt hadn’t gone but he’d got it compartmented now, packaged and locked away, everything under control.
He wasn’t sure – didn’t in fact believe – that Paris was under control – that what should have been called back had actually been withdrawn. With no contribution he could make to any of the eliminations or tests that were being conducted in his department, he crossed the corridor for another unannounced visit to Russell Benn, endured the coffee ritual, and after thirty minutes got the same impression as Lapidus, that the chemical and biological division were not only blocked in a dead end like his own, but that, unlike his own, were content to stay there, gazing at a blank wall until they got an exit map drawn or suggested by someone else.
‘You heard from Paris?’ Parnell demanded, finally.
‘About what?’ asked Benn.
‘Their misconceived idea.’
Benn’s face became fixed. ‘Do you see any point in talking about that any more? I thought you’d got your acknowledgement?’
‘I don’t want acknowledgement. I want to be told – and convinced – that none of it got out on to the market.’
‘Ask Paris. Or Dwight. I’m very definitely out of that loop and don’t want to be caught up in it again.’
Which was what Parnell did the moment he returned to his own unit, curious at the strength of Benn’s rejection. As on the one previous occasion, Parnell’s connection to the French chief executive was immediate, although Henri Saby’s response was noticeably more restrained on this occasion.
‘What’s the difficulty?’ demanded the Frenchman, the clipped English perfectly modulated.
‘I don’t know that there is one,’ said Parnell.
‘What, then?’
‘I received the missing test samples.’
‘You acknowledged that. And gave me the results,’ reminded Saby.
‘When we talked the last time, you told me there were batch designations from which you could tell if everything had been withdrawn? If, in fact, there had been any release?’ reminded Parnell, in return.
‘Yes?’
‘I thought by now all the checks and comparisons would have been carried out, through your marketing division and against their records?’
‘Is French marketing a matter for the head of Dubette’s pharmacogenomics?’
Too quick an answer – and the wrong answer, decided Parnell, feeling the first lurch of positive concern. ‘Yes, when Dubette’s pharmacogenomics unit discovered what could have caused human, not to say a commercial, damage to that marketing!’
‘I’m sorry,’ the Frenchman immediately retreated. ‘I did not wish to sound discourteous. I have already been in contact with New York. And with your vice president.’
‘Yes?’ questioned Parnell.
‘I think we’re straying outside the proper channels of communication, as I believe we did when we last spoke.’
‘It’s a simple question,’ persisted Parnell, careless of the irritation. ‘Have you got it all back or haven’t you?’ He didn’t need to be told, Parnell decided.
‘Let’s remain within the proper channels of communication,’ refused Saby, outright.
‘You’re…’ started Parnell, too loudly, but stopped.
‘What were you about to say?’ demanded the Frenchman.
‘We’re in the wrong channel of communication,’ said Parnell. Certainly you are, you evasive bastard, he thought, only slightly venting his feelings by slamming down the telephone. He slammed the office door, too, startling everyone in the laboratory on his way out.