Requiem (69 page)

‘But without you – ’ She shrugged. ‘There’s no case.’

‘Look, I’m very sorry, I really am, but there’s nothing I can do.’

She nodded reluctantly. ‘Thanks anyway. Oh, one last thing, Dr Konrad …’ She paused, trying to find a way of putting it. ‘May I ask – is this your own decision?’

He halted, his head thrust forward. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I meant, did you decide this thing yourself or would it have been – well, something that was discussed?’

He didn’t like the question any more than he’d liked it the first time round. ‘It was a matter of judgement,’ he said sternly. ‘
My
judgement, although I felt more than justified in sounding out my colleagues on the subject. As it happened, they all agreed with me.’

‘I see.’

His eyebrows shot together, his eyes hardened. ‘I’m not sure what you were suggesting there, Miss Field, but I take exception to it. I resent the implications – yes, I resent the implications very much indeed. Pressure, undue persuasion – that sort of thing could never happen here, and if it ever did then I’d fight it most vigorously! There
are
such things as ethics, you know, and we stand by them!’ Giving a stiff little nod he pushed at the door and was gone.

Daisy sat in the car for a while, debating whether she should go and tell Alice straight away. Alice’s place was only twenty miles to the west of the city, but it was twenty miles in the wrong direction and it was easy to persuade herself that she couldn’t afford the time. Even as she argued the matter she was aware, with some feeling of shame, that there was more to it than that. She was already giving up on the Knowles case, she realized; she was already allotting it less time.

She drove out of Reading and headed east towards London. There was patchy fog on the M4 and a contraflow system just the other side of Windsor, but she calculated she could get to Catch before it closed at six to pick up her messages from Jenny, and still have time to drop in at the flat to see how the repairs were going before getting back to Chelmsford for a couple of hours’ paperwork later in the evening.

Her conversations with Nick kept running and running in her mind, like a cassette player doomed to go on repeating the same tape. She heard every wrong note she had struck, every false comment, every idiotic statement. And hearing them, she was pricked again by uncertainty. Not just uncertainty over the money either – though there wasn’t a moment when that particular dread didn’t haunt her – it was the knowledge that he must be thinking badly of her, that he believed she had set out to deceive him over the animal testing. She minded about that. She wanted him to think well of her, she wanted him to enjoy her company, she wanted … Well, sometimes it was best not to think too deeply about what one wanted.

There had been moments – long moments – that day when they had been friends, when nice warm indecipherable messages had passed between them, when she had begun to think … But then whatever she had thought, it was too late now. It had been four days since the picnic, two days since she had left messages at the Kensington house and his accountant’s. His mind was undoubtedly made up. He’d probably already instructed his accountant to cancel the last payment.

I can’t talk about it now
. She saw him striding rapidly from the helicopter and pausing at the door of Ashard House.
I can’t talk about it now
.

It was just after six when she reached Catch to find Jenny and Alan gone, and Daisy’s replacement, Candida, nose down at her desk, scribbling hard, beavering, presumably, on another flow chart. From the outer office Daisy gave her an encouraging wave and reached into the bottom of the pending tray where Jenny hid her messages away from prying eyes.

There had been five calls for Daisy, one from Peasedale, marked urgent, saying he’d be in his laboratory until six thirty that evening and could she come and see him on a very important matter; another from Dermott, the Oban solicitor. Dermott’s call hadn’t been marked urgent and he hadn’t left any particular message, but Daisy snatched it up and reached for the phone straight away. It was three days ago, on Monday afternoon, that Mrs Bell had finally arrived at a cautious, irresolute decision regarding Adrian’s future. She would speak to Dermott first, she had announced, to gather his opinion, and then, if he couldn’t offer sufficient reassurances, she would consider Daisy’s suggestion again more seriously.

‘Ah, Miss Field,’ declared Dermott when she got through to him. ‘I had a meeting with the social services.’

‘You did
what
?’

‘I think we came to a good understanding. They appreciated Mrs Bell’s concerns for Adrian’s future, her worries about the psychotherapy. But they say that the doctors are unanimous in their judgement that the treatment put forward is, all things considered, the most appropriate. So I suggested a compromise.’ His voice resounded with self-congratulation.

‘
Why
did you go and see them?
Why?
’

There was a stiff pause. ‘I was instructed by Mrs Bell to look into the matter, to take whatever measures I thought necessary to secure Adrian’s future,’ he said defensively, ‘and I felt a conciliatory and reasoned approach would be the most beneficial, as indeed it has proved – ’

‘When did this meeting take place?’

‘What? I don’t see – ’ He gave a soft tut. ‘We met yesterday afternoon, at four.’

‘
God
…’ Automatically Daisy looked at her watch. ‘God …’ Her mind flew over the possibilities, but she could see only one outcome. ‘Can you fend them off for a while? Can you keep them talking for a few days?
Please
, Mr Dermott. It’s terribly important.’

‘I cannot see the point – ’

‘It would give us time to get Adrian away to England.’

‘
Really
, Miss Field, I think I’m best placed to judge the situation, and I cannot advise Mrs Bell to take such precipitate action. It’s far better, surely, to keep the matter on a reasonable basis – ’

‘They’ve never accepted he was chemically damaged, Mr Dermott, never! Don’t you see that this is the perfect excuse, just what they’ve been waiting for.’

‘Excuse? Really, Miss Field. These are professionals – ’

‘But they won’t be happy until they’ve got him in hospital, they won’t be happy until they can try out their theories – ’

‘You make it sound like some
experiment
, Miss Field! You make it sound as if these people don’t know what they’re doing.’

‘They’re trying to say it’s psychiatric, Mr Dermott. They’re trying to say it’s school phobia.’

‘I think you’re being a little overdramatic, Miss Field. From what I gather, the treatment that would be offered has been successful in the past. Adrian might be better off, you know. In hospital.’

‘Did they promise not to take him into care?’ she asked briskly.

‘No such undertaking was necessary,’ he protested, ‘because no such suggestion was made.’

‘Well, they wouldn’t, would they?’ Daisy snapped. ‘The social services aren’t known for sharing their plans with anyone, and certainly not parents. What about Mr Campbell?’ she asked in increasing agony. ‘Did they make a requirement that he stay away from Adrian?’

‘The general advisability of such a move was discussed,’ Dermott admitted cautiously.

‘But not demanded?’

‘No. As I’m trying to explain, Miss Field, it was a most amicable discussion.’

This was a bad sign. If they’d really been prepared to compromise, the banning of Campbell from the house would have been the very least of their requirements.

‘Will you at least keep in touch with them, just in case?’

‘If the situation merits it, certainly.’

Selecting a tone of exaggerated politeness, she said: ‘Thank you for keeping me informed, Mr Dermott. I really appreciate it,’ and rang off.

There was no reply from Mrs Bell’s number. She tried Campbell, but he too was out. She thought of Adrian alone in the garish front room, propped up on the settee with his eyes fixed on the flickering soundless telly, and dialled again, just to be sure, but there was no answer.

A chair scraped behind her, in what had been her office. Candida was pinning up a wall chart. It was after six thirty. She called Peasedale and found he hadn’t yet left. He wouldn’t say what the matter was, but sounded relieved that she was coming over. Scooping up her messages she made for the door, only to be called back by Candida who sped out of her office, plucked a hard-back notebook off the top of a filing cabinet and presented it to Daisy. The cover was labelled
Phone Log: Daisy Field
. Inside were columns for recording the date, time, length and distance of calls. Daisy made admiring noises, and scribbled
Local call, 3 minutes. How are you, Alan? Hope the efficiency drive goes well
, and spread a large signature across three columns.

Peasedale was standing wedged against the window, his hair standing up at odd angles against the light.

He cleared a seat for her. He seemed curiously reluctant to start. ‘I was summoned,’ he said eventually, ‘to the Lord God himself. Yesterday afternoon.’ He plucked at his hair nervously. ‘He said he’d heard that I was doing consultancy work for a private concern involved in speculative research. I told him I wasn’t
working
for anybody, that I took no salary, only expenses. But that didn’t seem to bother him. What concerned him, he said, was the effect on my reputation.’

‘He knew?’ Daisy asked very quietly. ‘But how did he know?’

‘He said my standing in the profession would be affected,’ continued Peasedale, not listening. ‘Well, that was the way he put it anyway. He said it wasn’t just the fact that I had taken the job on without departmental permission – though that would have been a fair point – it was the ethics of the thing. Ethics – God! I thought my one bit of safe ground was the ethics!’

Daisy was still trying to absorb the fact that an academic, a head of a university medical department, tucked away in an ivory tower far removed from government and media contacts, had heard about Octek.

‘How much did he know?’

‘Oh, enough. What we were trying to do, the set-up, that sort of thing … I told him more, of course, about why we were doing it and so on, but he didn’t seem too interested. He said that however good our intentions it was still a maverick project, and as such the results, if any, were bound to be ignored by the scientific community. I must say he got me there. I was a bit shocked. It had never occurred to me that our findings would be done down just because the project hadn’t been hatched by the university – just because there wasn’t a big name at the top of the letterhead.’ He added: ‘And I’m still not sure he’s right about that, you know.’

‘But how did he find out?’

‘What? Oh, I have no idea.’

‘Did
you
tell anyone?’

He shook his head vehemently. ‘Nobody. Only my wife, and she wouldn’t have told anyone. We don’t mix in university circles much anyway. No – however he heard, it wasn’t through
us
.’ He pulled an emphatic face.

Who, then, had done the telling? Who had conveyed the information so very accurately to the spot where it would carry the most weight?

A further half hour with Peasedale didn’t bring her any nearer to finding out, though it convinced her that, for all the head of department’s apparent concern for Peasedale’s career, the advice he had dispensed amounted to nothing less than a warning off.

Giving up any ideas of going back to Chelmsford that night, she joined the traffic snaking up York Way towards Tufnell Park. She drove automatically, her eyes locked onto the stream of tail lights and prepared herself to face the flat. A week ago the landlord had promised to send some men over to repair the ceiling absolutely instantaneously, so the chances of any work having been done weren’t good.

But she was wrong. Once she managed to find a light that was still working, she saw that someone had been in and pulled down the remains of the ceiling and pinned up a layer of plasterboard. But if they’d gone to the trouble of throwing covers over the furniture, it certainly didn’t show. Dust was everywhere, in a cloak far thicker than the original snowstorm. The stuff had penetrated every corner of every drawer and reached into the furthest depths of the highest kitchen cupboards. The shoulders of her clothes wore a white coating, like fine dandruff in a shampoo commercial.

She hunted around for a drink. There was some months-old cooking wine next to the stove, and in a cupboard above, an inch of vodka in a long-forgotten half-bottle hidden behind the Chinese spices. She took a sip, then, dispensing with formalities, knocked it back Russian-style.

Rummaging in a drawer she found a pad of paper, tacky with grit, and taking it to the table by the window, shifted some magazines, dusted off a chair and sat down. She compiled a number of lists: the first, of those who knew everything there was to know about Octek – barring of course the source of the funding. This numbered three: herself, Peasedale and Floyd. The second list, of those who knew some of the facts but not all of them: this contained the rest of the Octek employees, a total of five. Lastly, a list of outsiders, who knew bits and pieces, but not, significantly, the fact of Peasedale’s involvement. This included Octek’s accountant, Nick Mackenzie’s accountant and sundry lawyers. After some thought, she added Simon’s name, though again there was no reason for him to connect Peasedale to Octek. It was just possible he’d guessed, but it would have had to be one astonishingly accurate and assured guess. There was also Alan and Jenny, and, presumably, Candida.

None of it made sense. She knew all the Octek employees well. They were all committed; none of them would have talked. While the outsiders were either loyal or simply didn’t have the information to know Peasedale was involved.

She tore the piece of paper off the pad and, crushing it, chucked it in the direction of the waste paper basket.

She tried Mrs Bell again. This time she was home. She listened quietly to what Daisy had to say, she seemed to appreciate the growing danger to Adrian, but she would promise nothing, not until she had spoken to Dermott about it in the morning. Then, on the point of ringing off, she added: ‘But Dermott did well with the social services, did he not?’