Harry Bingham - Sweet Talking Money

Bryn read the situation quickly and crouched in front of Cameron, squatting awkwardly with his weight skewed on to his stronger knee.

‘Dr Wilde, I don’t know what’s happened in between my phone call and now, but I can see you’re in shock. If you want me to go, please say.’

She said nothing.

‘Right. I’m going to stay. Now I can help you best if I know what’s going on. What is it? Some kind of attack? An intruder?’

There was no sign of forced entry, and Cameron was on the third floor, but it was best to be sure. The scientist gave no response.

‘An intruder? No intruder?’

Bryn bashed at her with his voice, studying her face carefully for information. It seemed to him she was telling him ‘no’.

‘OK. What else? Perhaps …’ Bryn was about to try other avenues when he noticed a fixity in Cameron’s expression. She was staring at a letter lying open on her table. ‘This letter? You came home from work, found this letter, and it gave you a shock? May I read it?’

There was no sign in her face, so Bryn went ahead. It was a short note, from the editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Medicine : ‘Thank you for your recent submission to this office. Unfortunately, we do not consider this paper to be of sufficient interest to our readership at this present time.’ There was another sentence or two of blah-blah. A pretty standard rejection, as far as Bryn could tell.

‘You submitted an article to the Journal and it was rejected.’ Bryn hesitated. The American Academy of Medicine published the world’s most prestigious medical journal. If medical science was athletics, then publication in the Journal was like running in the Olympic finals. ‘Cameron,’ he said, using her Christian name for the first time, ‘it’s not surprising to get a rejection like this. Even great scientists get rejected sometimes. There are tons of other places where you can get your article published.’

‘Right. The Redneck County Medical Gazette . The Baldhead Mountain Parish News .’ Cameron’s eyes were large and smoky-blue, but the skin around them was puffy and grey, and the eyes themselves red-rimmed and desolate.

‘No. Real journals. Respected ones.’

Cameron slowly shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. You don’t understand.’ Then, after a long pause, finding what she had to say almost impossible to speak, she continued. ‘They told me … they said they …’ Just as it seemed she had petered out, she burst into life. ‘Oh, goddamn it! They told me my results weren’t acceptable. They thought I’d fixed my data.’

‘Fixed? They thought you cheated?’

But she had snapped shut again, her screen of hair falling forwards over her face. All the same, you didn’t need to be much of a psychologist to see that Cameron had no more fixed her data than she had swum the Atlantic. He gripped her by the shoulders and forced her face up towards him, brushing her hair back from her eyes.

‘They thought you cheated, but you obviously haven’t. So there’s a mistake. And mistakes are fixable.’

‘Fixable?’

Bryn wished he’d used another word. ‘Correctable. Mendable. They think you fixed your data. You didn’t. So sort it out. Ask for independent checks, whatever.’

Cameron shook her head. ‘There’s an ethics committee,’ she said. ‘Apparently, I’ve got to collect my work. Hand it over for investigation.’

‘First step,’ said Bryn, ignoring her. ‘Find out how the mistake happened. What did they say? What did they think went on?’

Cameron stared at him, trying to make up her mind whether to trust this battering ram of a stranger. In that instant, Bryn realised that her silence up till now had been less because of her shock, and mostly because of her uncertainty over him. Still uncertain, she continued. ‘They didn’t say. They wouldn’t say, but personally I …’ She shook her head, reluctant to continue.

Bryn took her by the shoulders again. ‘Speak, Cameron. I do better with words. What are you saying? You have a suspicion about something? You don’t know, but you have a suspicion?’

She nodded, slowly.

‘Who? You have colleagues, co-workers, lab assistants? Anyone you argued with? Had a fight? Fired?’

‘No. Kati, my lab assistant, she’s my best friend. She wouldn’t. Not her. But …’

‘Yes? But? But, who?’

‘Look, I don’t know, but …’ She shook herself, as though physically shrugging away her shock, as though literally stepping into a more aggressive, defiant state of mind. ‘Listen. Our Head of Laboratory Services used to be a creepy guy named Duaine Kovacs. One night I found him down with my rats. Late at night. I don’t know what he was doing there. I screamed at him.’

Bryn didn’t quite follow. ‘You think he knifed you, because you screamed at him once?’

Cameron shook her head. ‘When I found him, he was clearing up a spillage. Blood. He’d cut himself. After he left, I looked at a few drops under the microscope. Good stuff, blood, it tells you everything.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, Kovacs was in a state. Unhappy blood. Like, way worse than yours. I ran some tests. Alcohol. Dope. Cocaine. Prozac. Tons of stress factors. I reported him, of course. I mean, I wouldn’t care. If someone wants to take coke, that’s their problem, but in a laboratory – in my laboratory, messing around with my rats … I wasn’t having it. He was fired.’

‘OK. So we have our mole. Question is, why on earth would the Journal believe him rather than you? He was fired after all.’

Once again, Cameron’s face clouded and Bryn probed hard to read what was written there. ‘Something else, Cameron. There’s something else you’re not telling me.’

She sighed, a sigh which began down in the soles of her feet. ‘Damn right, there’s something else.’ She paused again, gauging her little-known visitor. ‘The night Kovacs was fired, he was drunk, high, I don’t know what. He burst in on me, yelling abuse, how my experimental results would never see the light of day, how they were going to see to it.’

‘They who?’

Cameron shrugged. ‘I don’t know. That’s the point. They … whoever.’

Bryn felt a flicker of excitement flashing from nerve to nerve across his body, like a lightning flash that briefly illuminates an entire landscape. He didn’t know why or what, but he knew he was on to something important. He leaned forward. ‘Let me understand. When you send a paper to the Journal or any other scientific publication, they get it reviewed, right? Half a dozen independent reviewers comment on whether the article is good enough to be accepted. Did your paper go out to reviewers, or was this rejection just based on the editor?’

‘Oh, no. The editor, he was keen – I mean, was keen.’

‘Do you know who he chose to review your paper?’

‘Sure. I’m not supposed to, but I found out.’ Cameron gestured at the mountains of paper surrounding her desk. ‘In the yellow binder, there.’

Bryn found the binder and pulled it out. Pasted to the inside flap was a list of six reviewers, names and numbers.

‘Good.’ He brought the list back to the sofa. ‘Now, I need you to think. Look at these six names. Tell me if you can think of any reason why they might be hostile to you or your paper.’

Cameron looked at the list for about two tenths of a second, then shook her head. ‘No. Why be hostile? It’s only science, for God’s sake.’

Once again, Bryn did his bully-boy act, squeezing Cameron’s shoulders so that she was forced to look up into his eyes. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Nothing: in the world happens without a reason. Nothing. If a handful of intelligent scientists chooses to believe some coked-up laboratory manager without even checking with you, then there’s a reason. Once we work it out, we probably know who’s behind all this. OK?’