Deadly Motive

by DS Butler

  “Biscuits?”

  “Yes. They were there when I got there in the morning, at the main reception desk, in a white box with a bow on it, addressed to Mr Weston. I gave them to him and he put them in his tin.” She frowned. “I’d forgotten about those.”

  “And Weston ate them.”

  “Yeah, soon as I took them in, he had one. There were six; he didn’t offer me one though.”

  Charlotte’s shoulders slumped. “So you didn’t eat any?”

  Sally Turner looked down at the sheet and smoothed out a crease.

  “Well...” Sally flushed. “When he went to the toilet, I nipped in and got one.” She looked up at Collins, daring him to comment. “There were six!”

  33

  Ruby stirred the thick soup of her E.coli culture, catching a whiff of the sickly sweet smell of bacteria that seemed to cling to her clothes and hair.

  Today, she was growing up litres of the stuff, using the E.coli as miniature factories to produce a human protein. It was something most biochemists did.

  She had taken the human gene, inserted it into a piece of circular DNA, called a plasmid, and shocked the E.coli into internalizing the DNA. The small bacterium would be tricked into using the human gene as a template; and it would produce the human protein, just as it would make proteins from its own DNA.

  But the best developments in science still had not found a way to get rid of the awful smell.

  Ruby held her breath as she removed the cotton wool plug from the top of the flask, then took a small sample of the straw-coloured, cloudy liquid that contained the bacteria, using a pipette.

  By eye, she could tell it was not quite ready, but she put the sample in the spectrophotometer anyway. The spectrophotometer would measure the optical density of the solution and give her an idea of how much longer the cells would need to multiply.

  Ruby sighed as she looked at the digital display. According to the reading, she still had ages to go before she could add the next chemical and induce the cells to manufacture her valuable protein.

  Irritated, she stuck the cotton wool plug back in the neck of the flask and put the glass flask, containing the cells, back into the incubator that kept the cells at thirty-seven degrees while rotating them. The rotation churned up the liquid, aerating the bacterial cells and preventing the cells from settling on the bottom of the flask.

  She switched the machine back on, and it came back to life with a judder, sloshing the flask’s contents around in a miniature whirlpool, making sure the cells received vital oxygen.

  She closed the door of the incubator firmly and headed back to the main lab, away from the sickly smell. The main lab ran along the side of South Parks Road and as she entered, despite the soundproofing, she could hear the chants echoing through from outside.

  Thursday.

  Protest day.

  For most of the week, protestors were banned from the science area. They couldn’t come near the department. The university had applied for and been granted an injunction, which meant an exclusion zone ran along the outskirts of the science area.

  Thursdays were different. On Thursdays, the protestors were permitted to attend planned protests. They could stand on Mansfield Road or South Parks Road, with their banners and signs, and chant. Usually there weren’t that many of them, perhaps twenty or so, probably because most people had to work during the day.

  The chanting and shouting put her on edge. She tried to avoid going outside on Thursdays. Often during the week, she would stroll into the city centre to pick up a sandwich at lunchtime, or just to get some air, but on Thursdays, she made do with whatever the atrium cafe had on offer and had lunch here at the department.

  Ruby preferred to get outside into natural daylight and fresh air for thirty minutes or so, but when the protestors were outside, she felt it was safer to remain in the glass confines of the department. The protestors could see when you left and it was best to avoid any sort of confrontation.

  Ruby doubted the protestors would make the distinction between a student of the university who dealt with chemicals and a student that used animals.

  The closest Ruby got to working with anything living was with E.coli, and no one seemed to care about bacteria.

  The protestors cared about the animals kept in other departments, but they didn’t care about E.coli. Everyone draws their own lines in this country.

  Buddhists believe you shouldn’t harm any animals, not even insects. Although the human body is constantly killing off things like viruses and bacterial infections. So obviously, bacteria don’t count.

  Religion was discouraged in China. She thought that was a good thing. There were so many fights over religion. This kind of protest wouldn’t be tolerated in China either.

  Being questioned by the police yesterday had been awful. The police really believed the lab was linked to a poisoning.

  Aconite. The compound was terribly toxic, and whenever she handled it, she wore gloves.

  The aconite she had used for O’Connor’s experiments was very dilute; but even so, in the wrong hands, it could be dangerous. Of course, now, Alex had the solutions of aconite because he had taken over the project.

  The police questioned her first, of course, and she put that down to the stupid journalist.

  She wondered why she had been so reluctant to tell the interviewing officers everything she could. She hadn’t mentioned O’Connor’s involvement in the project, nor Ted’s passion for animal rights.

  It wasn’t loyalty, exactly. She thought it had more to do with the look in the policeman’s eyes when he asked her about Chinese herbal medicine. The tone of his voice had scared her.

  In all the time she had been in Oxford, she hadn’t experienced racism in a way that affected her. Once, some silly kids at the bus stop used their fingers to pull their eyes back at the corners and shouted out, “Slitty eyes.” And another time, while she was studying for her A-levels, some boys in her class had made up a silly rhyme, but none of that ever bothered her.

  But the look in the policeman’s eyes when he mentioned Chinese herbal remedies, with particular emphasis on Chinese, terrified her.

  She had visions of being locked in a British jail, never to return home again. She wondered if she had imagined it. The police had to be suspicious of everyone; it might not be because she was Chinese.

  Ruby sunk down into her chair in the write-up area and logged onto her university email account. She saw she had a new email from O’Connor. It contained a summary of the latest results from experiments with the aconite toxin.

  Everything was working well for Alex. Dr O’Connor had copied everyone in on the email. She clicked it shut.

  It didn’t make any sense. Why had her experiments failed? She never had this sort of problem before. With hard work and accuracy, she should have been able to reproduce results. That’s what she had always believed. It was science – not black magic. She added the components in the right order, in the right amounts, so why hadn’t it worked? Now Alex had the job, and she was sure everyone was thinking what a bad student she was.

  She navigated to the internet browser and opened up the vacancies page on the New Scientist website. She needed to look for a new post-doc position. If she didn’t find one soon, she would have to go back to China.

  She rubbed her eyes. She could really do with some fresh air before she had to go and induce the cells, but she wouldn’t go outside, not while the protestors were there.

  34

  Driving down South Parks Road, DS Jack Mackinnon and DC Charlotte Brown spotted a crowd of people to their left.

  “This must be the start of the exclusion zone,” Charlotte said.

  There was a Thames Valley Police public order van to the right, and people were milling about on both sides of the road.

  The protestors had hung signs across railings. One sign was a three-foot long poster of the skyline of the city of Oxford, all spires and sandstone. Words printed along the top of the poster said: Some
thing is rotten in the city of Oxford.

  “There aren’t that many people here. Want to get out and mingle? See what we can find out? We still have twenty minutes before we’re due at the research laboratory,” Mackinnon said.

  Charlotte looked down at her grey trouser suit. “We aren’t exactly dressed to blend in.”

  Mackinnon shrugged. “That could work to our advantage.”

  Charlotte said nothing as Mackinnon turned into a quieter side street and parked. The air was soft and warm for so early in the year; daffodils were out in full bloom.

  As she stepped out of the car, Charlotte took a deep breath to help her relax. There were only a few protestors here and the public order van was a comforting presence.

  “Of course, they’ll assume we are police so they probably won’t be too forthcoming, but it is worth a try,” Mackinnon said.

  Charlotte wasn’t worried that they might think she was a police officer; she was more worried they would think she was an academic, an even more likely target than a police officer. But she said nothing and followed Mackinnon down towards the exclusion zone.

  After DI Tyler broke the news about the lab break-in, DCI Brookbank was no longer satisfied to leave the questioning to Thames Valley so he had arranged for Charlotte and Mackinnon to speak to the researchers, hoping a visit to the lab might help move the investigation along.

  Charlotte looked around and took in the scene. There were a maximum of fifteen protestors in the area. They ranged in age from a child of primary school age to a grey-haired old woman, who stood hunched over, unrolling a sign.

  Charlotte started to walk over to the child, who was standing next to his mother, looking bored.

  “Why isn’t he at school?” Charlotte said to Mackinnon, before realizing he was no longer at her side. She turned and saw him several feet away, talking to a woman with red dreadlocks. Charlotte carried on walking towards the woman and her child. She smiled at them and said hello.

  The woman clasped the little boy’s hand and looked Charlotte up and down, her lips pursing in disapproval as she took in Charlotte’s grey suit and low-heeled shoes.

  Charlotte knew the woman had guessed she was not one of the usual crowd of protestors, but she decided to go for an informal approach anyway. “Do you come to these protests every Thursday?”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “As often as I can.”

  Charlotte nodded at the sign the woman held. It was a graphic picture of a tabby cat with something attached to its head. Half the cat’s face was contorted into a horrific grimace, and its right eye was squashed shut. “Christ, what’s that?”

  The woman leaned towards Charlotte. She let go of the little boy’s hand and pointed to the cat’s disfigured face. “That is the kind of experiment they are going to be doing in there.” She nodded in the direction of the construction site.

  Charlotte followed her gaze to the site where the new animal house was under construction. There wasn’t much to see. Temporary walls of sheet metal surrounded the site, with barbed wire running along the top.

  Only the top of the building could be seen, probably the third or fourth floor, she would have guessed. Squinting, she could just about make out two construction workers, perched on top of the half-finished building. Despite the mild weather for this time of year, they wore dark balaclavas. With the protestors so close, she couldn’t blame them for wanting to hide their faces.

  “Where did you get the picture? It looks horrific,” asked Charlotte.

  “On the net. You should have a look. Just use a search engine and type in ‘animal cruelty.’ Some of the things these scientists do...” She shuddered. “It’s a disgrace.”

  Charlotte looked at the image again and then at the little boy. “He’s a bit young for all this, isn’t he?”

  The woman frowned. “Not at all. I don’t hide the truth from him. He’ll grow up knowing what’s right.”

  Charlotte looked down at the little boy again. He didn’t look older than five or six, but he didn’t look distressed.

  “Right, I’ll leave you to it then.” Charlotte backed away and looked around for Mackinnon.

  She saw him by one of the tables set up on the pavement. The table was covered with leaflets with titles like “Anti-Vivisection” and “Primates Are My Mates.” He was talking to a lean man with a shaved head. Charlotte didn’t much fancy joining that conversation. She looked around for someone else to talk to.

  The grey-haired woman she’d noticed earlier caught her eye and smiled. Charlotte walked over.

  “Would you like to sign our petition against the building of the new Oxford animal lab?” the woman asked.

  Charlotte hesitated for a second before the woman said, “It’s all right. I can tell you are a policewoman.”

  Charlotte smiled. “I’m not trying to hide it. DC Charlotte Brown.” She held out her hand, and the woman shook it.

  “Maggie Price.”

  “So, Maggie, how long have you been involved in campaigning?”

  Maggie thought for a moment. “I’ve been protesting against this,” Maggie nodded towards the construction site, “since 2004. But I’ve been campaigning against animal cruelty since the seventies.”

  Maggie pushed the petition, clipped to a blue board, out of the way and put a selection of leaflets in its place. “I am proud of what we have achieved, but there is still a long way to go.”

  A man walked past them, dressed in camouflage gear, hands deep in his anorak pockets and hissed, “Pigs.”

  Charlotte turned, but he carried on, walking along to the next group of protestors.

  “We’re not all like that,” Maggie said. “Some of the less savoury characters certainly don’t help our cause.”

  “You mean like the characters who targeted the university with petrol bombs in 2006?”

  “Like any type of campaign, we attract our share of troublemakers: the ones who are only in it for the chance to go against the rules, as a personal crusade against authority. The majority of us just want to see animals treated well and not subjected to these painfully cruel procedures. You might be interested to come along to our next meeting?” Maggie handed Charlotte an A5-sized, pink sheet of paper, with the meeting details printed on it.

  A woman, holding a placard of a monkey with its eyes sown shut, interrupted their conversation. Charlotte nodded goodbye and turned away. Mackinnon had finished his conversation and was looking around, probably trying to spot her. She walked towards him.

  A piercing call from behind, so loud she couldn’t decipher the actual words, made Charlotte bend over at the waist and cover her ears.

  Confused and disorientated, she turned around and saw a woman in her twenties, dressed in a red fleece and red-rimmed glasses, wielding a megaphone.

  There were a few titters of amusement from the crowd of protestors and Charlotte saw camouflage-man smirking at her.

  “You just shouted in my ear, you stupid cow!” Charlotte shouted. She felt a rush of blood to her face and took a step towards the woman with the megaphone, who now looked slightly less sure of herself.

  Mackinnon strode over and put a hand on Charlotte’s arm.

  The woman put the megaphone to her lips, her hand shaking slightly, “No more animal cruelty…” she started to yell.

  Charlotte yanked the megaphone roughly out of the protestor’s hand. It fell and landed on the pavement with a metallic clang. Charlotte took a menacing step forward.

  The protestor stepped back, her eyes wide, glancing between Mackinnon and Charlotte.

  Mackinnon tightened his grip on Charlotte’s arm. “Leave it,” he said.

  A movement from behind the protester caught Charlotte’s attention. A uniformed officer from the Thames Valley moved into her eye line. He had a video camera and was recording the whole scene.

  Shit. All on film. Perfect.

  She whirled around and stomped off, up the road, towards the car, forcing Mackinnon to walk quickly to catch up with her.
<
br />   “What was that all about?” Mackinnon asked.

  “What do you think it was about? That stupid cow shouted right in my ear.” Charlotte shoved her hands deep into her pockets.

  Mackinnon said, “I saw that, but it was your reaction to it that concerned me.”

  Charlotte stopped walking and turned to face him. “Really? And what would you have done?”

  “I’m just saying the reaction was out of character for you.”

  Charlotte turned and continued walking. “You don’t know me all that well.”

  “Evidently.”

  “So it is all right for you to lose your temper, to get fired up. To have some stupid bust up with DCI Brookbank, but when I have a legitimate reason to be pissed off, I get you telling me not to overreact? What’s all that about? You get fed up of being Mr. Bloody Perfect?”

  Mackinnon said nothing as he fell into step beside her.

  “And don’t look at me like that, like I’m some sort of raving lunatic,” Charlotte said.

  “I’m not. But I haven’t seen you act like that before. I thought you were going to hit her with that megaphone.”

  For a reason Charlotte couldn’t understand, her throat started to ache and her eyes stung. She knew tears would follow. “I’m going to wait in the car. You can carry on talking to the protestors if you want.”

  By the time Mackinnon returned to the car, either the redness around her eyes had faded or he had the tact not to mention it.

  35

  Ruby hung her lab coat on a metal hook and opened the glass door to the write-up area. Alex and O’Connor were still sitting at Ruby’s workstation, in quiet conversation. They had been sitting there for over an hour.

  She had been trying to avoid them both since O’Connor had awarded the funding to Alex instead of her. She spent the last hour calibrating the pH electrodes just so she wouldn’t have to be in the same room as them.

  Why should she make it easy on them? She wanted to sit at her own desk, with her own laptop, and check her emails, and embarrassment wasn’t going to stop her.