Brian Freemantle - Dead End

Parnell didn’t intend waiting until Monday, of course. And he had other work in mind, as well.

Parnell arrived at McLean just after seven on the Saturday morning, his reading until midnight bringing him two thirds of the way through the Scripps material. He put what remained of the American documentation beside that from San Diego on his desk, everything temporarily suspended, sure what he intended would only take up the morning, possibly even less. He accepted that there would have to be an explanation for the rest of the unit when they saw the obvious evidence of an experiment, but was unconcerned about it. He was, after all, working in his spare time, and by Monday he would have completed all the necessary reading, so he’d be further ahead than anyone else. On all their benches and desks there were sections of both dossiers obediently left for the following week. Parnell concentrated his experiment upon the medicines to which the additional expectorants and the rifofludine partial-preservative had been added, recording the dosages of each to his carefully separated test mice, from each of which he first took a blood sample to provide a comparative DNA string to measure the effect, if any, of the new formulae against the old. He was almost at the end of his preparation when the other idea came to him and he physically stopped what he was doing, considering it. With the exception of the three new constituents, every drug had gone through the required three-phase licensing process, and those three ingredients could not, in themselves, be humanly harmful. He wasn’t, anyway, considering human testing as such, just a shortcut to extend the experiments beyond mice.

He prepared each petrie dish with a measured sample of every brand product containing liulousine, beneuflous and rifofludine. It was difficult extruding the vein in his left arm and he inserted the hypodermic awkwardly, hurting himself, but he managed to withdraw sufficient blood identically to match the drug measures already in the culture dishes.

He was concentrating so totally upon storing them that he didn’t hear Beverley Jackson come into the laboratory. The first he knew of her presence was when she said: ‘What the hell are you doing?’ And so startled was he that he came close to dropping the culture dish in his hand.

He turned to face her at the door, aware that the shirt sleeve of his left arm was still rolled up and that the hypodermic, with some blood remaining in the chamber, was lying very obviously on the bench alongside Russell Benn’s samples.

‘I’m just working my way through something,’ Parnell said, inadequately.

Beverley came further into the room, absorbing everything as she did so. ‘For Christ’s sake, Dick, you’re experimenting on yourself! What is it? What have you injected? Tell me you haven’t done anything stupid! Holy Christ!’

‘Stop it,’ he said, hoping his calmness would calm her. ‘I haven’t injected myself with anything. I just needed human blood and I was the only donor.’

‘What for?’ she persisted, looking more intently at the neatly stacked bottles and phials. Before Parnell could answer she said: ‘They came from the chemical division a couple of days back, right?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m just carrying out a few tests, that’s all.’

‘Why? Why on these specific samples when we’ve got hundreds of others we haven’t even looked at yet? And when we’re supposed to be working exclusively on the flu research, which, incidentally, is what I’ve come in here today to go on doing.’

It could only be his suspicion that there was some connection with Rebecca’s killing, but he couldn’t compromise Beverley in any way. ‘I want you to trust me. Trust me and not talk to anyone about what I’m doing. Which is what I am going to ask everyone else on Monday, when they see the mice and the cultures.’

‘It’s personal?’

There was only one inference if he answered that. ‘Trust me.’

Beverley regarded him steadily for several moments. ‘Am I going to regret coming in here today?’

‘You could go.’

‘I’m logged in, at the security gatehouse. As you are.’

Shit, thought Parnell. ‘You don’t know anything. You’re not part of anything. There’s probably nothing to know or be part of.’

There was another silence. ‘Were you and Rebecca doing something you shouldn’t have been?’

Beverley was too clever, too prescient, Parnell conceded. ‘Neither Rebecca nor I were betraying Dubette in any way. Nor were – or have – either of us done anything illegal or against the company.’

‘I’ve got to trust you on that?’

‘I’m asking you to trust me on that,’ qualified Parnell.

‘Do I get to know sometime?’

‘I can’t answer that. Like I said, maybe there’s nothing to know.’

‘It would have been a good day to stay at home, wouldn’t it?’

‘It would have avoided a lot of complications.’

Beverley Jackson didn’t reply and Parnell accepted, surprised, that he’d had the last word.

They read – Parnell retreating into his private office – for the rest of the morning. He was surprised, although not as much as he had been earlier, by her sudden arrival at his office door. ‘What are you doing about lunch?’

‘I hadn’t thought about it. Probably won’t bother.’

‘You know what you look like…?’

‘Don’t!’ stopped Parnell, realizing he hadn’t even bothered to shave that morning. ‘And yes, I know. Everyone keeps telling me.’

‘Shit,’ completed the woman, refusing the interruption.

‘That’s it. That’s what everyone keeps telling me.’

‘Did you make breakfast?’

‘I didn’t have time.’

‘What was dinner last night?’

‘That really was shit. A prepared lasagne: I didn’t get all the plastic covering off, before the microwave. It didn’t add to the flavour. But then I don’t think anything could have done.’

‘You lectured us last night, about the danger of being brain-dead?’

‘Yes?’

‘You’re a mess. And getting messier. For a lot of reasons I know and for a lot more that I don’t. What I do know is that a messed-up – fucked-up – head of department is even more of a danger than being brain-dead.’

‘I’ll do better – eat better, get better – tonight.’

‘I know you will,’ said the woman. ‘I’m personally going to see that you do. But also that you shave first. Christ, you really are a fucked-up mess!’

Parnell managed to finish all there was to read by two a.m. on the Monday without finding a direction from either the English or American flu discoveries, to pursue his unit’s particular search. There was always the possibility, he told himself, that someone else in the pharmacogenomics section had spotted something he’d missed – it was at least a slender straw at which to clutch. He was at McLean by seven, determined to be the first there, although still without an explanation for the experiment Beverley had caught him conducting on the Saturday, trying to convince himself that, as head of the department, he didn’t necessarily have to provide one. He’d expected Beverley to press him further during dinner but she hadn’t, not in fact referring to it once, which he didn’t fully understand. Most of the time the talk had been light, although they’d obviously discussed the influenza project, but not in any depth, Parnell warning that neither of them at that stage had completed their reading, creating the need to avoid one misguiding the other with half-formed or ill-formed impressions. And although there’d been no indication of it, Parnell tried to overcome any difficulty Beverley might have by openly referring to Rebecca. That had been the moment he’d expected Beverley to challenge him about that morning’s experiment. They hadn’t talked at all about her ex-husband. He’d enjoyed the evening – positively, physically, relaxing. Beverley chose the restaurant, in a part of midtown he hadn’t been to before, and met him there. It was traditional home-town American cooking, which dictated portions sufficient to relieve an African famine, even though he tried to order minimally. He decided the only thing missing from the rib-eye steak were hooves and tail. As he had anticipated, Beverley initially led the conversation, but gave way to him as the evening progressed, and by its end he’d realized, surprised, that he was dominating the exchanges and Beverley appeared content to let him, not once trying for the last word. He refused her demand that they split the bill, which she accepted without continuing argument, and they’d parted quite comfortably outside the restaurant, without any awkwardness about nightcaps at another bar or either’s apartment. In the cab on his way back to Washington Circle, Parnell found himself wondering what possibly could have gone wrong between Beverley and her husband. That reflection prompted the half thought that he’d found the first evening with Beverley easier than he had with Rebecca, but that was where he’d halted it, as a half thought not to be completed. It left him feeling guilty, which was worsened throughout the following day by his failure to pick up something from the San Diego or London research. Richard Parnell wasn’t a man upon whom the rarity of professional disappointment rested easily.