Reprobation

by Catherine Fearns

  ‘Who’s the expert?’ someone asked.

  Darren stepped forward quickly to take over from Quinn. ‘Erm. An expert witness from… the church,’ he said unconvincingly, turning to his incident board while Colette raised an imperceptible eyebrow at him.

  ‘Andrew Shepherd had no car, no social media, no siblings, the only family being elderly parents living near Cambridge. He hasn’t been in touch with them or used his bank account in the last three weeks. He doesn’t seem to have had a mobile phone contract either, and there’s no landline in this apartment. A very strangely off-grid life.’

  ‘Right, lads, so firstly,’ he pulled down the little finger of one hand as a ‘bullet-point’ gesture. ‘Where is Shepherd? Check local CCTV, check door-to-door on all the other storeys of Kenilworth House, check local churches since he was so religious. Second: who was he living with? There was someone else living in the flat, reported by neighbours to be a young woman who was rarely seen entering or leaving. Start with Missing Persons. Third: Stuart Killy.’

  At this he pinned up the photo of the severed foot. Even though everyone already knew, the image raised audible gasps. ‘This one is an absolute mind-fuck. One minute this case was all wrapped up as a lone religious nutter, the next we’re descending into druglord hell. Let’s see what the Killys have to say about this; one of their lot missing points to gang warfare, but there doesn’t seem to be anything going down at the moment. No doubt Titan are going to be all over it in no time, so let’s see how far we can get on our own.

  ‘Right, Quinn and I are heading over to Manchester. We looked up Shepherd’s two ex-colleagues from Cambridge; this photo,’ – he tapped the university photo on the board – ‘is clearly important to him. One moved to France years ago but the other is still working as a geneticist in Manchester. Name of Matthew Clancy. Since Shepherd lived such an off-radar life, we’re having to delve quite far back for contacts. Plus, he’s obviously still been working informally as a geneticist, God knows why, but he must have got that expensive lab equipment from somewhere.

  ‘OK, good work people, let’s close in on this guy.’

  7.

  Northern Genome Limited took up the top floor of a glassy high-rise in central Manchester, one of the many new architectural features that made up the pride of north-western urban regeneration. As they waited in the reception area, Quinn fingered the promotional brochure. ‘Northern Genome Ltd is pioneering the molecular medicine revolution. Our impressive range of services for synthetic biology includes DNA design, synthesis and custom cloning; antibody and viral engineering, bioproduction and genetically-engineered cell lines. Our diagnostics department allows smarter healthcare decisions through high-quality genetic analysis, through our trademark sequencing tools. We work with hospitals and universities worldwide, and we are proud of our reputation at the forefront of the growing genomic medicine market.’

  ‘Do you know what any of that means, you with your A level Biology?’ asked Swift.

  ‘I only got a C you know. Look, there he is.’

  She turned over the leaflet, and on the back page was a face they only barely recognised from Shepherd’s photo. His former colleague Matthew Clancy now looked older but also tanned and confident. Quinn read out loud: ‘Professor Matthew Clancy is founder, clinical director and CEO of Northern Genome Ltd. He gained his PhD from Cambridge University in molecular biology, before joining the revolutionary Human Genome Project. Following that he became Lecturer in Genetics at Manchester University, and in 2009 set up Northern Genome with the aim of being at the forefront of the genetic medicine revolution. Professor Clancy enjoys rowing and rugby, having been a Cambridge blue in both sports.’

  ‘He’s a bit of alright isn’t he?’ She elbowed Swift.

  ‘That’s for you to say. He looks totally up his own arse.’

  ‘Ah, hello detectives, sorry to keep you waiting.’ At that moment Professor Matthew Clancy appeared around the corner, with benign surprise. ‘I wasn’t expecting visitors today. Come into my office and we can talk.’ He was strikingly tall and broad, with a rich deep voice and kind eyes that looked earnestly into your own. He had a broad face with chiselled features and dark, slightly floppy hair in a style that harked back to the Nineties. He wore an expensive-looking blue shirt, open at the neck, suit trousers and immaculately-shined shoes. They went into his office, another glass box from which they could see white-coated figures moving slowly and silently around a lab. The smell was of disinfectant and new carpet, and Clancy’s cologne wafted past them as he went to sit on the other side of his desk.

  ‘So. What can I do for you, detectives?’ He bounced down into his office chair and placed his hands on the desk.

  ‘We’re trying to locate a former colleague of yours, Andrew Shepherd,’ said Swift, adjusting himself into his chair.

  ‘Andrew?’ Clancy looked genuinely thrown. ‘Ah, well I haven’t seen Andrew in a long time, I’m afraid. Is he in some sort of trouble?’

  ‘When was the last time you were in contact with him?’

  ‘Not for years. He was in poor shape – emotionally, I mean – when we parted company. I have felt bad about not keeping in touch really. What’s happened?’

  Swift and Quinn declined to answer and tried to look inscrutable.

  ‘Could you tell us about your history with him?’ asked Quinn. ‘We’re just trying to build up a picture at this point. You were on his team at the Human Genome Project in Cambridge in the Nineties.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Clancy nodded. ‘The Sanger Institute at Cambridge was one of the five international sites. But the project was already well-established by the time we joined. We were young mavericks – I suppose we were the glittering genetics juniors at Cambridge, and the university wanted us involved, plus they had extra funding to use up. So they allowed us to set up a sort of skunkworks team—’

  Swift interrupted. ‘And that was yourself, Andrew Shepherd, and one other…’

  ‘Laurent Baptiste, yes.’

  ‘And what did you do exactly?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how much you know about the Human Genome Project?’

  ‘Only the basic idea: to sequence human DNA, right?’

  ‘Almost. The project’s mandate was to map all the functional genes; that is, the genes that code for proteins. But that’s only one to two percent of the genome – the rest is what’s known as junk DNA. And our rather futuristic project was to look into this junk DNA, this biological dark matter.’

  ‘Dark matter?’

  ‘It’s an informal term for junk DNA – biological dark matter is the genetic material or microorganisms that are unclassified or poorly understood. At the time most of the human genome was a complete mystery, but the potential of this unchartered territory was, and is, huge. It was our team’s job to do some preliminary studies on this – to ascertain what could be done in the future, once the Human Genome Project was over. Of course things have moved on spectacularly since then; other projects have discovered far more about the potential of this so-called junk DNA. Some of which we are working on here, for example. But at the time, it was very very frustrating. We weren’t finding anything, and it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Plus we didn’t even know what we were looking for. The data collection and analysis was daunting; fifteen trillion bytes of raw data. With the technology we had at the time, it would have taken three hundred years of computer time to analyse it all. We felt we had been fobbed off, I suppose. Excluded from the real work.’

  ‘So how well did you know Andrew Shepherd? What was he like?’

  ‘We had been students together, and he was brilliant: prizes, scholarships. I initially felt very lucky to be assigned to his team. And he was the team leader, but unfortunately he had… well, I suppose some mental health issues, rather serious mental health issues. It was very slow going, and it got to him, I’m afraid. He stopped focusing on the task in hand and his behaviour at work became increasingly erratic, paranoid. In the end L
aurent and I felt we had to report him, because he was damaging our reputations. He simply couldn’t cope with not finding anything, and so he was began imagining things that weren’t there, coming up with bizarre theories that would have discredited the whole Human Genome Project.’

  ‘And why did you leave the project?’

  ‘When Shepherd was dismissed our team was disbanded, and there was simply no longer a job for me anymore.’

  ‘And you didn’t keep in touch with Shepherd?’

  ‘No, no, there was some unpleasant feeling, I suppose. On both sides. Like I said, I do feel bad about that. Tell me, what’s happened to Andrew, is he in trouble?’

  Swift ignored the question, and looked around the room and through the glass at the lab.

  ‘What is it that you do here exactly Professor Clancy?’

  ‘All the things it says in the brochure you’re holding.’ He smiled.

  ‘So you decided to leave academia then? Sort of sell out and go private?’

  Clancy was unruffled by the provocation. ‘Well, I suppose you could put it that way yes,’ he smiled. ‘But you know this really is the best way to be at the forefront of research. This is the future of medicine; we are at a frontier, but that means we are heavily restricted in what we can and can’t do at the moment. There are huge ethical implications in gene therapy.’

  ‘You mean like curing people of things that… aren’t everyone’s definition of a problem?’

  ‘Exactly, Detective. There’s a fine line between what is considered a ‘disease’, and a ‘trait’, and the implications of altering traits perceived as undesirable are large. Trait enhancement could negatively impact what society considers as normal and could promote discrimination towards those with undesirable traits. A slippery slope effect.’

  ‘And what’s your take on it?’ asked Quinn. This was getting off-topic but neither she nor Swift could help being interested.

  ‘Well, surprisingly for a geneticist, I’m rather conservative. I advocate a cautious approach to the moral and legal aspects. And I think it’s important for some of us scientists to put on the brakes, hold the floodgates, as it were. There’s a lot to be said for ‘God made us this way’.’

  ‘Are you religious, Dr. Clancy?’ asked Swift nonchalantly, without looking up from his notes.

  ‘Ah no, not at all,’ laughed Clancy. ‘I didn’t mean to give you that impression. Just a figure of speech, as it were. But… we all have to believe in something. And I believe in science.’ He smiled again.

  ‘Was Shepherd religious?’ asked Swift.

  ‘Yes, he was indeed. And that was part of the problem. He had some, shall we say, creationist ideas that were completely untenable for a scientist. Discrediting us, as I said.’

  ‘Did you know that Shepherd had moved up north?’

  Clancy paused. ‘No, no I didn’t.’

  ‘Bit of a coincidence isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really; to be honest it’s possible he could have followed me up here. He was a rather lonely character, there never seemed to be a girlfriend on the scene when we were at Cambridge, and he didn’t have much family. But there wasn’t… there wouldn’t have been a job for him up here. I certainly couldn’t have recommended him.’

  ‘Did you know he was a teacher? In a young offenders’ institution?’

  Clancy paused again. ‘No, obviously I didn’t, no. How surprising.’

  ‘And what about the other team member, Laurent Baptiste? Do you know what happened to him?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you’ve looked him up, he’s rather well known isn’t he? Laurent returned to France and made a lot of money in casinos. If you want to talk about selling out, detective. He was a brilliant statistician, brilliant. I suppose he found a profitable use for it.’

  They were about to leave, when Swift said, ‘So, just out of interest, Professor Clancy. When you do this gene therapy, how do you do it?’

  ‘As I say, it’s still really only being done at the very experimental level. But in theory, you create a mutated gene in the lab, then introduce it into the body via a virus, a retrovirus. Initially, the main obstacle is getting the body’s immune system to accept the virus.’

  ‘So, you would need to lower the body’s immune system. With, say, a steroid?’

  ‘Well, yes, exactly.’

  Swift and Quinn headed back to the car, both checking their messages. ‘Go on then, say it,’ said Swift without looking up.

  ‘OK then – you were really harsh with your questioning. You’re really going for this bad cop thing right?’

  ‘Just trying to push his buttons, you know. I’m not here to make friends.’

  ‘Is it because I fancy him, boss?’

  ‘Fuck off. Listen, that huge machine in Shepherd’s flat, the Revelon Sequencer. We can’t trace it because he removed the serial number. So where did he get it? They cost over £100,000. I saw three of them in Clancy’s lab. Let’s get a warrant to check Northern Genome’s phone and visitor records. But don’t raise any eyebrows here by requesting Northern Genome itself – request the whole building’s records.’

  ***

  Helen had finished cleaning the stone floor and dusting the pews, and then rounded off her Tuesday morning rota by laying out the Bibles and psalm books on freshly wiped shelving along the rows. She then took a few minutes to sit in contemplation, trying as ever to speak to God. She had struggled to focus during Terce this morning, and there was another hour before Sext in which she could perhaps clear her head and ask for God’s help. The Order’s daily programme was intense, with six compulsory prayer sessions beginning at six in the morning and ending at eight in the evening, and not including the public services administered by the Deaconess. In between all that there was the rota of cleaning, cooking and other duties, a full schedule of manual tasks that seemed almost designed to prevent any time for self-questioning. Helen usually had to do her University work in the evenings, staying up late under lamplight. When she did find time to herself she used it to pound the dunes and forest paths, trailing wet sand on her skirts and fancying herself as a female warrior in the Wars of Religion, or perhaps a misunderstood Jane Austen heroine.

  But today she needed to be in church. She felt His weight upon her, as she had all those years ago, and yet she felt somehow that this time she may be closer to a truth. God was testing her in some way, or was about to test her in some way, and she prayed for the guidance that was rarely forthcoming.

  St. Michael’s Church had been built as an Anglican chapel in the Gothic Revival style, all pointed arches, lattice-work and grotesques. But when it was endowed to the Sisters of Grace along with the house in the Twenties, the church underwent its own mini-Reformation; a stripping of the altars designed to remove any suggestion of joy. Now, with its austere white walls, plain wooden pews and stone pillars, the only concession to beauty in this church was the large stained glass window behind the altar, depicting the Crucifixion in glorious, gaudy colours. Other than this aesthetic indulgence, there was to be no distraction from communion with God.

  But Helen was currently distracted by the conflating images described by Mikko and Shepherd, and in particular the details – the cockerel, the wrought iron railings, the hooded figure, the precisely depicted colours of the sky. Of course images of the figure of Death and the gate to Heaven were ubiquitous in human cultures, so there was nothing strange in them both having the same dream or vision. But such details – could that really be a coincidence?

  She was disturbed by the sound of the heavy door creaking open at the back of the church, and the sounds of echoing footsteps, whispers and a cleared throat. Helen looked behind her, and there they were again, with a certain inevitability: those detectives. They walked down the central aisle towards her, Swift’s voice resonating off the stone pillars:

  ‘What kind of music do you like, Dr. Hope?’

  Neither of them seemed as gentle, or as on her side, as last time. They were brusque, almost hostile.
/>   ‘I… don’t…’

  ‘D’you like heavy metal?’

  As they reached Helen, Quinn took an iPad out of her bag, swiped her finger across the screen to bring it to life, and handed it to her. It took Helen a few moments of peering to realise what she was looking at. It was a post from Facebook, from a fan page for Total Depravity, with a photo which was captioned ‘Does Mikko have a new girlfriend????? Nooooooo!!!!’ It was a slightly grainy photo, taken from far away on someone’s phone, but unmistakeable nonetheless; it was him, and her, sitting on top of that picnic bench at the side of the motorway. They were side by side and the photographer had captured the moment when she had put her arm around him to comfort him. Helen looked in the mirror so little these days that she hardly recognised herself, and she was taken aback at this long-haired female figure in secular clothes, sitting with a man, on an adventure that she could hardly believe really happened. And she couldn’t help but feel a guilty thrill of excitement that she had been spotted with a sort-of celebrity. My one claim to fame, she thought. But Swift snapped her back into the present.