A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(107)

“A man named Michael Cambrey visited Project Testing, Department Twenty-Five, several times over the past few months. He was murdered last Friday.”

“I’m not sure how I can help you.” Malverd sounded perplexed. “Twenty-Five isn’t my regular patch. I’ve only stepped in briefly. What is it that you want?”

“Anything you—or anyone else—can tell me about why Cambrey was here.”

The lift doors opened. Malverd didn’t exit at once. He appeared to be trying to decide whether he wanted to talk to St. James or merely to dismiss him and get back to his own work.

“This death has something to do with Islington? With an Islington product?”

That certainly was a possibility, St. James realised, although not in the manner that Malverd obviously thought. “I’m not sure,” St. James said. “That’s why I’ve come.”

“Police?”

He took out another card. “Forensic science.”

Malverd looked moderately interested at this piece of information. At least, his expression indicated, he was talking to a fellow. “Let’s see what we can do,” he said. “It’s just this way.”

He led St. James down a linoleum-tiled corridor, a far cry from the reception and administration offices below. Laboratories opened to either side, peopled by technicians who sat on tall stools at work areas that time, the movement of heavy equipment, and the exposure to chemicals had bleached from black-topped to grey.

Malverd nodded at colleagues as they walked, but he said nothing. Once he removed a schedule from his pocket, studied it, glanced at his watch, and cursed. He picked up speed, dodged past a tea cart round which a group of technicians gathered for an afternoon break, and in a second corridor, he opened a door.

“This is Twenty-Five,” he said.

The room they entered was a large, rectangular laboratory, brightly illuminated by long ceiling tubes of fluorescent lights. At least six incubators sat at intervals on a work top that ran along one wall. Interspersed among them, centrifuges squatted, some open, some closed, some humming at work. Dozens of pH metres lay among microscopes, and everywhere glass-fronted cabinets held chemicals, beakers, flasks, test tubes, pipettes. Among all these accoutrements of science, two technicians copied the orange digital numbers which flickered on one of the incubators. Another worked at a hood, from which a glass cover had been pulled down to protect cultures from contamination. Four others peered into microscopes while another prepared a set of specimens on slides.

Several of them looked up as Malverd led St. James towards a closed door at the far end of the lab, but none of them spoke. When Malverd rapped once sharply upon that door and entered without waiting for a reply, the few who had given him their attention lost interest.

A secretary, who appeared as harried as Malverd, turned from a filing cabinet as they entered. A desk, a chair, a computer, and a laser printer hemmed her in on all sides.

“For you, Mr. Malverd.” She reached for a pile of telephone messages which were joined together by a paper clip. “I don’t know what to tell people.”

Malverd picked them up, flipped through them, dropped them onto her desk. “Put them off,” he said. “Put everyone off. I’ve no time to answer phone calls.”

“But—”

“Do you people keep engagement diaries up here, Mrs. Courtney? Have you evolved that far, or would that be too much to expect?”

Her lips whitened, even as she smiled and made a polite effort to take his questions as a joke, something which Malverd’s tone made difficult. She pushed her way past him and went behind her desk where she took out a leather volume and handed it over. “We always keep records, Mr. Malverd. I think you’ll find everything in perfect order.”

“I hope so,” he said. “It’ll be the first thing that is. I could do with some tea. You?” This to St. James, who demurred. “See about it, will you?” was Malverd’s final comment to Mrs. Courtney, who fired a look of nuclear quality in his direction before she went to do his bidding.

Malverd opened a second door which led to a second room, this one larger than the first but hardly less crowded. It was obviously the office of the project director and it looked the part. Old metal bookshelves held volumes dedicated to biomedicinal chemistry, to pharmacokinetics, to pharmacology, to genetics. Bound collections of scientific journals vied with these for space, as did a pressure reader, an antique microscope, and a set of scales. At least thirty leather notebooks occupied the shelves nearest the reach of the desk, and these, St. James assumed, would contain the reported results of experiments which the technicians in the outer lab carried out. On the wall above the desk, a long graph charted the progress of something, using green and red lines. Below this in four framed cases hung a collection of scorpions, splayed out as if in demonstration of man’s dominion over lesser creatures.

Malverd frowned at these latter objects as he took a seat behind the desk. He gave another, meaningful glance at his watch. “How can I help you?”

St. James removed a stack of typescript from the only other chair in the room. He sat down, gave a cursory look at the graph, and said, “Mick Cambrey evidently came to this department a number of times in the last few months. He was a journalist.”

“He was murdered, you said? And you think there’s some connection between his death and Islington?”