Hen's Teeth

by Manda Scott

  NOTE: Work is continuing in an attempt to develop a form active only by the injectable route. In the meantime, the clinical efficacy of the oral form carries significant health risk. All effort is being made to alter the binding protein to avoid this.

  The memo was dated two days before he died.

  Carries significant health risk. Oh, hell. Malcolm, you poor bloody idiot, you even told them how to do it.

  She looked at me, questioning. ‘He means that eating the eggs would give you an insulin overdose?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what killed him?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think it’s what killed Bridget. She had all the signs of insulin poisoning on the blood results, but we couldn’t find any insulin. That’s because we were testing for the wrong sort. The tests are run for bovine insulin, not the human type.’

  ‘Can you test for it now?’

  ‘We could if someone hadn’t destroyed all her blood samples.’

  ‘Deliberately?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hell.’

  ‘Quite.’

  I watched her for a moment. She looked almost involved enough.

  ‘We might be able to test some of Malcolm’s blood if we could find the samples. Would you be interested in helping us take a look inside another computer?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight. Now.’

  ‘Is this legal?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  There was only the briefest hesitation before she stood up. ‘Why not?’

  Lee tailed us out of the upstairs bar, collected the car from the parking meter and picked us up at the traffic lights opposite the Underground station. From there, it was a bare five minutes’ drive through the mid-evening traffic to the centre of town.

  The Anatomy Department sat smothered in the shadows, at the end of the alleyway. A statuesque mausoleum with no lights visible at any of the windows. Anatomists are not renowned for working late.

  Lee nosed the Saab gently into the small yard at the back, where the meat wagons from the mortuary park to unload their offerings, and flipped an official University Medical Authority permit on to the dashboard. It might have been legitimate.

  She pulled a couple of pen torches from the glove compartment and handed one to me. ‘We’ll play it straight as far as we can. If there’s a reception committee, we make our excuses and leave.’ She passed me a spare car key. ‘If it gets hot, you two get out. I’ll see you back at the farm.’

  ‘Right.’

  Inside, the foyer was dead to the world. Cold, dark, creepy and inhuman. Still one of the most depressing places I have ever been. The darkness hid the monsters in their jars on the stairs and we were careful to keep the torch beams directed only at the steps. The giantess on her plinth in the corner of the archive room was more difficult to conceal, but the computer next to her proved to be enough of a short-term distraction.

  It hummed to life and lit the gloom with a phosphorescent green glow. Janine pulled up the padded chair and began tapping keys.

  ‘Password.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What’s your password to open the system?’

  ‘Oh. Here.’ I passed her a file card Lee had given me with the jumble of letters and digits written on it.

  ‘Thanks.’

  More tapping. Lee backed over to the door to keep an eye on the corridor.

  Janine dug a disk out of her bag and pushed it into the spare disk drive.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Malcolm Donnelly.’

  ‘Middle initial “D”?’

  ‘Right.’

  The disk drive whirred and chomped through blocks of data.

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Christ, that was quick.’

  ‘I know.’ Her voice carried the edge of a smile. ‘Hopeless amateurs.’

  ‘That’s handy. Can you tell when they stripped out the file?’

  A pause and the rattle of keystrokes.

  ‘Saturday morning.’

  The morning after the night before. The night we raided the lab.

  ‘Any idea who?’ asked Lee from the doorway.

  ‘Not a clue, sorry.’ She opened the file and the screen filled with text. ‘What do you need to know about Malcolm?’

  There were two pages of text. At the top was the reference number we needed to let Lee find whatever was left of the body. The rest showed dates of processing and where the various organs had gone.

  ‘This’ll do.’ I began to copy the number on to the back of the file card with the password.

  ‘Hold on then.’ The screen blanked out just as I copied the last digit of the number. More tapping, more whirring of disk drives. ‘Right. Let’s go.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Why not? I’ve shifted the stuff you need on to the floppy disk, we can go back to Rae’s and print it out there.’ The half of her face I could see in the torch beam looked very satisfied with life. ‘It’s far safer than hanging around here. And a lot more legal.’

  Lee came over from the doorway and I handed her the card with the serial number. She seemed mildly impressed.

  I flashed the light towards her. ‘Coming with us?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ve got someone to meet in town. I’ll see you back at your flat later on.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Eleven thirty. Leave a message on the answer-phone if you can’t make it.’

  ‘Right.’

  Rae’s flat was empty when we arrived. The fastidious tidiness made me as uncomfortable as ever. Not a fold of curtain or a tapestried cushion out of place. It sets my teeth on edge.

  Janine, with the unconscious care born of natural instinct, shook the rain off her jacket at the top of the stairs and carried it through to the bathroom, where she hung it over the shower rail to dry. I flicked the worst of the rain off mine and hung it on a convenient chair in the hallway, where it dripped slowly on to the pastel wool of the carpet. Then I followed her into the spare room and found a piece of flash computer hardware that I had never seen before standing on a desk near the bed. I dragged the chair in from the hall and sat back to watch the technology at work.

  Whatever it was, it came up with the goods. The disk disappeared into an internal drive and, three minutes later, a small ink-jet printer hidden under the desk spewed out a two-page history of the corpse of one Malcolm D. Donnelly, deceased. Useful as evidence if it ever came to that.

  Janine lifted the sheets from the printer tray and held them delicately by the edges, blowing gently to dry the ink. Printer ink on carpets like these would be little short of catastrophic.

  I read through to check the one thing I hadn’t had time to read over her shoulder in the dark of the records room: sometimes blood samples are taken and stored for later use in routine screening of population studies, especially if the deceased is fit, reasonably young and did not die of any contagious disease. It’s the kind of thing that’s so routine, it would be easy to forget to cancel it.

  Half-way down the second page there was a check in the right box. If it was telling the truth, then there was a sample with Malcolm’s serial number in the Anatomy freezers and we should have another piece of the jigsaw by morning.

  I settled back in the chair to read the rest of the file, feeling more than usually optimistic.

  ‘What do you think of Elspeth?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I looked up to see Janine staring straight at the screen, her face glowing oddly in the fluorescent glare, like a jaundiced vampire.

  ‘Elspeth Philips. Do you like her?’

  Hardly.

  ‘She’s in the police, Jan.’

  ‘I know that. I hadn’t realized that you discriminated against other women on professional grounds.’

  ‘It’s nothing personal. I just don’t trust the police. Force of experience.’

  ‘She likes you.’

  I doubt it.

  ‘How do you know? Has she asked y
ou about me?’

  This time she laughed aloud. ‘If she was going to ask questions, Kellen, I don’t think I’d be the one she picked first. Even a policewoman has more tact than that.’

  ‘If she did, would you tell her?’

  Wrong question. The amused animation in her face faded to nothing.

  ‘You really don’t trust me, do you?’ she asked.

  Pass.

  Janine played absently with the function keys, and the ghoul-green glow of the screen transformed into a searing yellow. The question that was not a question hung in the air like an afterthought.

  There is a time and a place for everything. I would rather it wasn’t here and now.

  I walked over to the window and opened it, letting in the noise of the traffic from the road below and the steady background splatter of the rain. A wall of cold, wet air pushed at my face, a sobering focus, like a bucket of river water. I turned back to face her.

  ‘If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t have given you the disks and I wouldn’t have asked you to help tonight.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Irony, my dear, is a waste of time.

  ‘I was going to ask you to do something else. Would you rather I didn’t?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve got the number to a modem that’s linked into Malcolm Donnelly’s hard disk. Everything he ever did is on there. What we got on the floppies is the tip of a fairly large iceberg. I want to try to hack into the system and get the stuff out.’

  ‘Is the modem switched on?’

  ‘I have no idea. It was a couple of days ago, but it may have been switched off by now. There’s only one way to find out.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She tapped again at the keys and the screen became a swirling red haze, washing out over her face in an angry rush of colour that was entirely at odds with her voice.

  She turned to look me straight in the eye. It’s not something she normally does outside the bedroom.

  ‘Do you think you know me, Kellen?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Do you think I know you?’

  I stayed where I was, holding her gaze. ‘I have no idea.’

  Her eyes broke away and she looked back at the screen. ‘No. Neither do I. Odd, don’t you think, after two years sharing the same bed?’

  Definitely a rhetorical question. I let it go.

  She cleared the screen and began to open a communication file. ‘If I do this for you, I want some real time to talk.’

  ‘That’s blackmail.’

  ‘I know.’ She smiled bleakly. ‘I’m learning. Do I have a deal?’

  I turned to look out of the window, watching the rain chase a teenage couple down the road to the bus shelter, and thought about what I had to lose. Everything or nothing, depending on your point of view.

  She was watching me intently when I turned back.

  ‘You have a deal.’

  ‘Good.’ Her smile broadened into something more real. ‘What’s the number?’

  I gave her the phone number I had taken from Malcolm’s desk and she keyed it in. The hard drive hummed and the screen generated a picture of a phone with a happy smile in the centre of the dial to keep us amused. Then it drew a cross through it. The smile drooped at the edges.

  She swore and hit a few more keys but the picture stayed the same. ‘No line. Either it’s the wrong number or they’re not on line.’

  ‘It’s the right number, we’re just three days too late. Whoever reported the break-in to Laidlaw had switched the phone line off. I should have asked you on Saturday.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Saturday wasn’t a good day.’

  True.

  ‘We need to know what’s in there. If the line was reconnected, would you try again?’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘No. It’s too late to set it up. Tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Not from here. It’s too easy to trace back to this address. It’s not fair on Rae.’

  ‘Could you bring the stuff out to the farm tomorrow night?’

  She considered for a moment and nodded slowly. ‘If you want.’

  I did. I drew her a map, showing her how to get to the farm, and warned her about the alarm system. Then we sat together, on the bed for a while, talking irrelevancies and sharing fragments of gossip as if the earlier conversations had never occurred. Just after eleven, she saw me to the door with a promise to meet at eight the next evening, provided I could organize a link through to the computer at the other end.

  Nine

  Back in the street, the storm had blown itself out for the moment; the rain was sporadic and the wind had dropped to a mild breeze. It would have been a pleasant enough walk back to the flat if I had been feeling in the mood for solitude. I wasn’t. I quite badly wanted people around me, company to keep me from thinking too deeply and I had half an hour before I was due to meet Lee. It’s a long time since I rode the Underground for the fun of it.

  I flipped a quick mental coin and then turned left along Byres Road, taking the long ramp down into the Kelvinside Underground station. The last train of the evening was due in and the Outer Circle platform was crowded with the dregs from the bars and pubs, leaning on each other or the back walls for support and understanding. The train rattled into view as I stepped off the stairs and I let the swaying herd siphon me in its wake on to the last waiting carriage.

  A drunk lay flat on his back, snoring boisterously and taking up half a dozen seats on the main bench – four for his stretched-out form and one on either side where even the semi-inebriated chose not to sit. The rest of us crammed into the remaining spaces, or not, depending on relative stability. As virtually the only sober passenger, I saw it as my citizen’s duty to stand at the doorway, holding on to the handrail for support and staring out at the darkness of the tunnels, listening to the various lilting melodies floating out into the ether.

  George’s Cross passed in a sodden flash. No one gets off at the dirty end of Great Western Road in the middle of the night unless they really want action. Even the rats carry bike chains as essential defence accessories.

  Two minutes down the line, the train began to slow down for the stop at Buchanan Street and the more aware among my fellow travellers began to make their way up the carriage to join me at the doors. We could see the lights of the platform ahead of us when the rails rattled and the train speeded up.

  ‘Wha’ the . . .’ asked a woman behind me, swaying backwards with the acceleration and missing a communion with the drunk only by a remarkable display of agility and balance.

  The overhead speaker gave a feedback whine and broke into a rash of static.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this train will not be stopping at Buchanan Street station. All passengers for Buchanan Street, please disembark at St Enoch’s Square. Thank you.’

  There was a general rumble of disquiet.

  A voice from down the train broke through the throng as Glasgow drunk, the original urban warrior, pronounced judgement.

  ‘Fascist bastards.’

  My sentiments entirely.

  We sailed into the platform at speed. The night-darkness outside the window flashed into bright electric daylight, illuminating the crowd that gathered in a knot at the foot of the steps and highlighting the artery-bright streaks of blood that smeared out between a dozen pairs of booted feet.

  Only one of the potential passengers was keeping aloof from the milling crowd. A lone figure in a Barbour jacket lounged back against the wall nearest the rails, watching the train speed past with the faintest of irritated frowns. Our eyes met and held as we passed each other and there was a brief moment of contact before the train hurtled into the tunnel at the end of the platform.

  Every sense screamed danger. I craned my head back suddenly in a desperate and entirely futile need to see the body on the platform behind us. But the walls of the tunnel had closed in again and the outside world was blank darkness, leaving me only an after-image of a shadowed figure with hooded eyes an
d a mane of the brightest copper hair I have ever seen. And over and over at the back of my mind, I heard mad Mhaire’s voice telling me that I had blood on my hands and not all of it was mine.

  The five-minute ride to the next station took an eternity. Plenty of time for the street fighters and urban hell-cats sharing the carriage to agree on the political alignment of the Underground management and determine the only sensible course of action – verbal abuse combined with strategic physical violence.

  I stood in silence, staring out at a vacuum, and held my brain on ice right at the point where it was about to tell me that the body on the platform was Lee.

  A taxi driver circling St Enoch’s Square accepted a tenner to jump the queue and drive me the quarter-mile back to Buchanan Street. He kept his mouth shut en route, which was little short of miraculous but did nothing at all to improve my belief in the inherent goodness of fate.

  On the platform, the vultures still circled, oblivious to the sirens and blue flashing lights of the ambulance as it squealed to a halt behind me.

  It was the first time in my life I used the ‘Let me through I’m a doctor’ line and it was worth every second of the five years’ training. The crowd parted as the water before Moses and when it closed again I was in the centre, kneeling beside a body that was not, after all, Lee Adams.

  It was a man: mid-height, Caucasian, short blond hair, dressed in a scruffy blue sweatshirt and old Levi’s. He was curled up in a final spasm, one hand clutching at the small, reddening patch on his sweatshirt where the knife had gone in, the other reaching up towards his face, groping to protect a nose that had smashed as he hit the floor. When I tipped his head back to feel for the carotid pulse, the hand fell away, spraying another gout of foaming arterial blood on to the platform to cheer the vultures and revealing at the same time a pair of pale, cloud-grey eyes that stared out into a vacant world.

  It was Danny Baird and he was dead. Professionally dead.

  The wail of police sirens stopped abruptly at the north side. Too late to seal the station and far, far too late to catch a man with fox-red hair and murderer’s eyes. But not too late to make life unnecessarily difficult for those of us still hanging around. I stood up carefully to avoid the blood and shook my head to confirm the worst. The crowd sighed in unison and parted to let me out as easily as they had let me in. There were enough of them to give me cover as I headed for the southern exit ramp.