A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(114)

MacPherson shuffled his feet. “’Ye know as well as I. It’s a murder.”





CHAPTER 23


Deborah had been as good as her word. When St. James returned home, Cotter told him that she had arrived herself only an hour before. With an overnight case, he added significantly. “She talked of ’aving a load o’ work ahead, printing up some fresh snaps, but I think the girl means to stay till there’s word of Miss Sidney.” As if in the expectation that St. James would interfere with her plans upon his own arrival, Deborah had gone directly up to her darkroom where the red light glowing above the door told him she was not to be disturbed. When he knocked and said her name, she shouted cheerfully, “Out in a bit” and banged about with what sounded like unnecessary vigour. He descended to his study and placed a call to Cornwall.

He found Dr. Trenarrow at home. He did nothing more than identify himself before Trenarrow asked about Peter Lynley, with a forced calm that said he expected the worst but was keeping up the pretence of all being well at the heart of the matter. St. James guessed Lady Asherton was with him. Bearing that in mind he gave Trenarrow only the barest information.

“We found him in Whitechapel. Tommy’s with him at the moment.”

Trenarrow said, “He’s all right?”

St. James affirmed this in as indirect a fashion as he could, leaving out most of the details, knowing that their recitation to Trenarrow or to anyone else was something that belonged by rights to Lynley. He went on to explain Tina Cogin’s true identity. At first Trenarrow sounded relieved to hear that his telephone number had been in the possession of Mick Cambrey all along, and not in the possession of an unknown London prostitute. But that relief was fleeting, and it faded to what seemed to be discomfort and then finally comprehension as the full implications of Mick Cambrey’s double life dawned on the man.

“Of course I didn’t know about it,” he responded to St. James’ question. “He’d have had to keep something like that completely to himself. Sharing that sort of secret in a village like Nanrunnel would have been the death—” He stopped abruptly. St. James could imagine the process of Trenarrow’s thoughts. They certainly weren’t out of the realm of possibility.

“We’ve traced Mick’s activities to Islington-London,” St. James said. “Did you know Justin Brooke worked there?”

“For Islington? No.”

“I wondered if Mick’s trip there somehow grew out of the interview you and he had all those months ago.”

Over the line, he heard the distinct sound of china upon china, something being poured into a cup. It was a moment before Trenarrow answered. “It may well have. He was doing a feature on cancer research. I spoke of my work. I no doubt mentioned how the Islington company operates, so the London facility would have come into it.”

“Would oncozyme have come into it as well?”

“Oncozyme? You know…” A shuffling of papers. The sound of a watch alarm going off. It was quickly silenced. “Damn, just a moment.” A swallow of tea. “It must have come up. As I recall, we were discussing an entire range of new treatments, everything from monoclonal antibodies to advances in chemotherapy. Oncozyme fits into the latter category. I doubt that I would have passed it by.”

“So you knew about oncozyme yourself when Mick interviewed you?”

“Everyone at Islington knew about oncozyme. Bury’s Baby we called it. The branch lab at Bury St. Edmunds developed it.”

“How much can you tell me about it?”

“It’s an anti-oncogene. It prohibits DNA replication. You know what cancer is all about, cells reproducing, killing one off with a large dose of the body’s own functions gone completely haywire. An anti-oncogene puts an end to that.”

“And the side effects of an anti-oncogene?”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? There always are side effects to chemotherapy. Hair loss, nausea, weight loss, vomiting, fever.”

“All of those are standard, though, aren’t they?”

“Standard but nonetheless inconvenient. Often dangerous. Believe me, Mr. St. James, if someone could develop a drug without side effects, the scientific world would be dazzled indeed.”

“What if a drug was found to be an effective anti-oncogene but, unfortunately, it was also the cause of more serious side effects?”

“What sort do you have in mind? Renal dysfunction? Organ failure? Something like that?”

“Perhaps something worse. A teratogen, for example.”

“Every form of chemotherapy is a teratogen. Under normal circumstances, it would never be used on a pregnant woman.”

“Something else, then?” St. James considered the possibilities. “Something that might damage progenitor cells?”

There was an extremely long pause which Dr. Trenarrow finally ended by clearing his throat. “You’re suggesting a drug causing long-range genetic defects in both men and women. I don’t see how that’s possible. Drugs are too well tested. It would have come out somewhere. In someone’s research. It couldn’t have been hidden.”

“Suppose it was,” St. James said. “Would Mick have been able to stumble upon it?”

“Perhaps. It would have shown up as an irregularity in the test results. But where would he have got test results? Even if he went to the London office, who would have given them to him? And why?”