Requiem (19 page)

‘Ah,’ Nick said, though he remembered nothing about it. Leaning forward, he redirected the driver. ‘A toxicologist?’ he murmured. ‘I met one of those this morning.’ He told her what had been said in the hot airless room high in the clinic.

‘Ah, well, they only know what they’re given the opportunity to know,’ Daisy declared, moving into her polemic mode. ‘And that’s only what other people have told them, isn’t it? They believe in research, but they forget that the only research that’s being done is what the chemical companies and the governments
choose
to have done.’

So clear-cut again; so sure. ‘There must be other research programmes,’ he argued half-heartedly.

‘But why should there be? Who’s going to fund them? Groups like ours don’t have the money, and the big charities only support the projects the doctors advise them to support. And the doctors aren’t interested in the idea of wide-ranging non-specific chemical damage. It upsets their neat little theories of disease. They want tidy little boxes – viral disease, bacterial disease, neurological disease,
any
disease as long as it can be seen under a microscope – and when their box theories won’t fit, they throw up their hands and say the problem doesn’t exist. What’s failing, of course, is Western medicine itself – stuck in tight compartments, totally reliant on drugs and drug companies, spineless,
visionless
.’ In full flood, she had an extraordinary almost hypnotic fluency, so that her words flowed without break or hesitation. She gave an impression of both rehearsal and spontaneity, as well as vibrant indignation.

‘And if things don’t fit,’ she went on, ‘you throw them into a convenient catch-all, which in Western medicine is psychiatry, which has to have pulled off the greatest intellectual coup of the twentieth century, by passing itself off as scientifically based when in fact it’s the only totally non-scientific speciality, based as it is on almost complete ignorance of the organ it’s meant to know about.’ She paused, as if to remind herself of what she had set out to say. ‘No, they’re simply not interested in difficult untreatable diseases. Untreatable diseases make them feel powerless, and powerlessness makes them resentful and uncooperative. If they can’t fire drugs at something, then they don’t want to know about it. And I tell you’ – she waved a finger, emphasizing her point like a seasoned politician – ‘they certainly don’t want to know about anything that suggests we’re on the brink of widespread trouble, not to mention environmental disaster.’

But one disaster was more than enough for Nick; he couldn’t take on responsibility for the rest of humanity as well. He let Daisy talk on for a while until, realizing she had lost her audience, she broke off quite amiably and lapsed into silence for the rest of the journey.

P
EASEDALE, A YOUNG
bird-like man with thinning hair and spectacles, was summing up. ‘Not much to offer you, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Consumed in large quantities Reldane would, of course, poison anybody. But in a small dose – I can’t find any evidence to suggest it could cause such catastrophic symptoms.’

Daisy glanced across to Nick Mackenzie by the window. He was sprawled gracefully in his chair, one elbow on the sill, gazing intently out at the blank walls of the building opposite. Daisy, who for once had been keeping commendably silent, now burst out: ‘But what about inhalation? Surely if you breathe something for an
hour
…’

Peasedale shook his head apologetically. He was perched on a high stool, his long limbs entwined in its legs like a double-jointed insect. ‘If you breathe enough of almost anything over a long period, then you’ll get adverse effects. That’s true of even the commonest fumes – petrol, glue, spirit-based substances. And of course cigarettes. But you wouldn’t get such dire symptoms after just an hour, not when the substance is mixed with plenty of air, as it was in this case. The only circumstance I can think of that might change that would be previous exposure to a chemical or chemicals that create extreme sensitivity, then – well, I suppose even something as modest as Reldane could provoke a strong reaction.’

There was a silence as they waited for Nick to respond. But he seemed to be completely absorbed by the view from the window, and it was left to Peasedale to prompt him.

‘Has your wife been exposed to any strong chemicals in the past, Mr Mackenzie?’

‘What?’ He seemed to wake up only with an effort. ‘No. Nothing unusual. Just the usual hotchpotch.’

‘You mean …?’

He half turned. ‘Oh, antibiotics, that sort of thing. But not recently – she won’t take anything like that now – when she was younger.’

That was it then. Mixed with Daisy’s disappointment was a creeping sense of guilt. All that chatter, all that confidence – she regretted it, not only because it now looked totally misplaced, but because normally she would have known better than to raise false hopes. Something had gone wrong; she had misplayed the scene in the car. It was partly that old demon of hers, optimism; partly her uncharacteristic nervousness at meeting Nick Mackenzie. She’d banged on like an inane schoolgirl.

‘Can’t you run some tests?’ she asked Peasedale.

‘What sort of thing? If you mean standard toxicology tests, they were done on Reldane’s active ingredient years ago. I looked it up. There was some evidence that, given in massive doses, the active ingredient might eventually cause cancer in a tiny proportion of rats.’

Nick’s voice drifted in from the window. ‘They test these things on animals?’

There was a short silence. ‘Certainly,’ Peasedale said.

‘That can’t be necessary, surely?’

‘There’s no other way, not if you’re going to be absolutely certain.’

Nick gave a visible shudder and resumed his study of the scene outside the window.

‘The original tests,’ said Daisy, picking up the argument again. ‘If they show cancer, surely that’s significant.’

But Peasedale wasn’t going to have words put into his mouth. ‘Almost anything will cause cancer, given in sufficient quantity for a long enough period. But we’re not talking cancer here, are we? We’re talking about another sort of illness, a different set of symptoms. Now, if we were looking at something like 2,4,5-T, as found in Agent Orange, then we might have something. It causes all sorts of weird symptoms which don’t show up in standard tests – immune dysfunction, enzyme and hormonal imbalance, that sort of thing.’ He turned to Nick. ‘You
are
sure it was Reldane and not something else?’

The sun had emerged from behind a cloud, driving golden shafts into the room and illuminating Nick Mackenzie’s face in harsh brilliance.

Eventually he stirred. ‘It was definitely Reldane,’ he said in a soft voice.

‘She’s seen a toxicologist?’

A slight pause. ‘A couple.’

‘And the symptoms – these guys couldn’t suggest anything?’

‘Not really. They got excited about her memory loss, about mixing up her words – getting her sentences back to front, you know – and about her gut troubles. Then just as quickly they got unexcited again. Said they couldn’t find anything.’

‘Did they do a biopsy?’

‘I’m not sure – ’

‘It involves taking a minute amount of tissue, usually with a needle.’

‘Oh – that. Yes, they did it once – no, twice. I wouldn’t let them do it again. Hurt her too much.’

‘What about enzyme levels? Did they measure those?’

‘I suppose so – yes. They said they’d looked at everything, anyway.’

Peasedale gave a wide shrug. ‘In that case, I don’t know what to suggest. And you say your wife hadn’t been taking any prescription drugs recently?’

Nick shook his head. ‘Neither of us ever took anything.’ He added wryly: ‘We went up to Scotland to escape all that, you see. Chemicals, pollution … Funny, when you think about it.’

No one smiled.

‘What about water? Could she have drunk contaminated water?’ Peasedale suggested.

Nick didn’t reply, so Daisy answered for him. ‘Mr Mackenzie had a sample sent down from the house supply. We had it tested. Nothing wrong with it.’

‘Tell him the rest,’ Nick said to Daisy, looking at her for the first time in a long while. ‘Tell him what you told me on the phone.’

Daisy drew a breath. ‘They said it was some of the best water they’d ever tested.’

‘You see,’ Nick said with gentle irony. ‘Clean air. Clean water. Perfect.’ With a last look at the sky, he stood up. ‘Thank you, Dr Peasedale. You’ve been most helpful. Very informative.’ There was no sarcasm in his tone, only resignation, and Daisy had the feeling that it was only by this rather forced show of manners that he was managing to keep himself together.

She followed him towards the lift. His expression didn’t invite conversation. When they came out into the street he strode towards the waiting car in the same cannon-shot way that he had emerged from the clinic. When she caught up with him he was holding the car door open and waiting for her to get in.

She murmured: ‘But my office – it’s out of your way.’

‘Your – ’ He frowned suddenly. ‘Oh? I thought – lunch? You haven’t time?’ He asked it tentatively, with an awkward sideways look, as if he wasn’t at all sure of getting a positive response.

‘Of course – yes. If you want to. Of course.’

He gave a sudden fleeting smile, a look that flickered up to her eyes and away again, and she realized that for all his apparent confidence and bodily grace he was essentially a reserved man. It was hard to reconcile this with the image of the seasoned stage performer who stood up in front of thousands of people, but as they set off, she realized her first instinct had been right. He hardly ever looked people in the eye for very long, not when he could possibly avoid it, and when he was forced to, he screwed up his eyes into a tight frown, as if this could offer him some degree of camouflage.

He said: ‘I appreciate all you’ve done.’

Done? She caught the past tense with a twinge of alarm. ‘I’ve done eff-all,’ she said firmly. ‘Yet.’

He was silent for a moment, then began haltingly: ‘You know … in the old days – in the Sixties anyway – we all used to blame everything on the system. It was very … well, convenient, I suppose.’ He shot her a quick glance. ‘But you wouldn’t remember that. You’re only – what?’

‘Thirty-two.’

He squinted at her. ‘Oh? You look younger.’ He said it as a statement of fact, not flattery.

He continued thoughtfully: ‘Blaming the system used to be a great let-out. It covered everything – the government, the law, the welfare state – anything you liked. When Alusha became ill I was desperate to find an
it
or a
someone
to blame, just like in the old days. I longed to come face to face with the person or
thing
that could let this happen. I wanted to – well, create stink, show them – I don’t know. I just wanted
them
to suffer like Alusha was suffering.’ He gave a gesture of resignation. His hands were long and slender. ‘But really – what would be the use? Even if such a person existed, or an organization or a
thing
, and even if they were exposed or whatever, it wouldn’t change much, would it?’

‘But it would!’ she said emphatically, forgetting her intention to show restraint. ‘It
could
. It might prevent this sort of thing happening again.’

His mouth turned down into a look that she was beginning to recognize, an expression that suggested she was being naive and idealistic.

‘But it wouldn’t get Alusha better, would it?’ he pointed out, looking at her for the first time without frowning. She noticed the vivid blueness of his eyes, and how the skin at the edges was crinkled into islands of strong lines, as if under happier circumstances he smiled a lot.

‘But it might,’ she continued doggedly. ‘Once they find out what happened – how this stuff actually caused the damage – then they might be able to find a treatment.’

‘But they’re never going to find out exactly how the stuff did what it did, are they?’ he said patiently. ‘Not if one’s to believe Peasedale – which I do. So there’s not much point in …’ He paused, choosing his words. ‘… Well, going on with it. I’m sorry. I really feel my wife has to be my first priority. I have to concentrate on finding a doctor who can help her, a doctor who can find out what’s wrong. I can’t spend more time on this sort of thing.’ He waved a hand apologetically. ‘I don’t mean your campaign’s not
worthwhile
– far from it. It’s just … I really can’t get involved.’

‘You mean – ?’

‘Your campaign – I wouldn’t be able to do it justice.’

He was giving up, she realized. He was telling her that, despite everything – his apparent interest in Catch, his agreement to publicise the case – he didn’t want to be involved any more. In which case the campaign had, within the space of just two weeks, won and lost the most valuable asset it had ever possessed. The odd thing was she didn’t blame him at all, although this didn’t stop her from feeling an unaccountable sense of loss, as if something really important had been taken from her.

‘I understand,’ she said, managing a small smile.

‘I’ll be pleased to help when this is all over, when my wife’s better. Tell me over lunch, what I might be able to do.’