Hypocrite's Isle

Eight

Mary returned to the lab shortly afterwards, outwardly calm and composed, and got on with her work as if nothing had happened. Tom gave a slight shrug of his shoulders and a glance in Gavin’s direction, which was returned with a slight widening of the eyes. Tom started to hum tunelessly as he pipetted diluting fluid into a series of test tubes, while Gavin went back to examining photographs with his eye lens. He was still doing this an hour later when Frank Simmons came out of his office and dumped a pile of scientific papers on his desk.

‘From my biochemistry reprint collection,’ he said. ‘I thought you might find them useful.’

‘That was kind,’ said Gavin with a jaundiced look that brought a smile to Simmons’ lips.

‘Not at all. What are you up to?’ he asked, seeing what was lying open on Gavin’s desk.

‘I thought I’d have a quick look through the GS report while you guys were at the journal club.’

Simmons nodded but felt suspicious. ‘And what has your quick look told you?’ he asked.

‘I think you were right. They seem to have done a pretty thorough job, but, at the end of the day, they didn’t get anywhere. They’ve no idea why the drug didn’t work on patients.’

Simmons had the distinct impression that Gavin was telling him what he wanted to hear. ‘Then maybe we should just leave it at that, shall we?’

‘Yes, boss,’ said Gavin. ‘No point in going up blind alleys.’

Simmons returned to his office and sighed as he slumped down into his chair. The fact that Gavin had quoted his own advice back at him was making him doubly suspicious about what Gavin was thinking. He knew it was all too easy for research students to go off at a tangent when they weren’t fully committed to their designated project, and that certainly would apply to Gavin, whose imagination had clearly been fired by seeing how well Valdevan worked in vitro. If Gavin’s heart was in something, he could be left alone to get on with it. If it wasn’t... he’d have to keep a close eye on him.

Simmons’ suspicions were well-founded, because Gavin had just discovered something that was occupying his full attention. He waited until Frank had returned to his office before picking up his eye lens and resuming what he had been doing. He had seen something in the report photographs that put a whole new slant on the Valdevan story and his pulse was racing. The more convinced he became of what he was seeing, the more excited he became, until he found it impossible to sit still any longer. Without saying anything to anyone, he got up, grabbed his jacket and left the lab.

Gavin started out across the Meadows. The blustery, wet weather of the past few days, with its accompanying strong westerly winds, had given way to clear skies and a slight but bitterly cold wind coming in from the east, but he welcomed the icy breaths he took as he headed for nowhere in particular at a brisk pace.

Because the drug had failed to kill tumour cells in patients suffering from cancer, the Grumman Schalk team had understandably assumed that either it had been inactivated in the body or had been prevented in some way from reaching the site of the tumour. They had put all their time and effort into determining what the problem was, but in the end had drawn a blank. Gavin now knew that they had been wasting their time. It was quite clear from the photographs he had been examining for the past hour that the drug had reached the tumour cells and had been active when it got there.

Close examination of the photographs of cells taken from patients showed what he now recognised as the typical membrane pinching caused by Valdevan, despite no mention of this by the company in their report — but of course, they had not been looking for slight membrane defects; they had been looking for cell death.

Gavin’s discovery had left him with a puzzle. The fact that you could have membrane damage without resultant cell death implied that the S16 was not an essential gene. If the drug could knock it out and the cells could continue to grow and divide, this was the very opposite of what he’d found in his lab experiments, where membrane pinching was always followed by cell death.

Forty minutes of walking round in circles deep in thought brought some measure of calm to his mind, which was important because he had decisions to make. Frank didn’t want him investigating the failure of Valdevan because he felt that Grumman Schalk had already taken it as far as it could go. But what he’d seen in the photographs was making him reluctant to stop and switch to studying something else, when so much remained unanswered.

Apart from anything else, biochemistry was not Gavin’s favourite branch of science. It could be long, tedious and boring, with constant, fidgety adjustments to experimental times and conditions being necessary before things started to work — if they ever did. What was certain was that he couldn’t start work on a biochemical study of the new strain and continue to investigate the failure of Valdevan. There weren’t enough hours in the day.

He supposed he could come clean with Frank: tell him what he had seen in the photographs and hope that he might change his mind, but on the other hand, he might not. He took a kick at a discarded Coke can lying in the grass beside the path and swore under his breath. He couldn’t leave things the way they were, he decided. One way or another he had to follow it up.

It dawned on him that he could work on Valdevan over the Christmas break. No one would be around at that time for nearly two weeks and, even if Frank should find out what he was up to, he could hardly insist that he work on something else in what was officially a holiday period. He felt more relaxed. All he had to do now was work out exactly what he was going to do...

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand the significance,’ said Caroline when the pair met in Doctors at eight and Gavin, full of enthusiasm, told her what he had discovered.

‘Don’t you see? The company thought that Valdevan wasn’t reaching the tumours in cancer patients — either that or it was being inactivated in the body in some way — but it wasn’t either of these things. The drug did reach the tumours and it was still active when it did.’

‘But it still didn’t work,’ said Caroline.

Gavin brushed the objection aside as if it were trivial. ‘I know, but the research angle changes, don’t you see? Frank’s been insisting that the company had probably investigated every angle that could be investigated, but that’s not true. They were asking the wrong questions about the wrong problem. They spent hundreds of man hours altering drug composition and changing the ways of administering it in order to ensure that Valdevan got to the cancer when it was getting there all along!’

‘Maybe the concentration was too low when it got there?’

‘They monitored drug levels in the patients. It was well above what killed the cells in the lab experiments.’

‘But it still didn’t work,’ said Caroline, leaning across the table to make her point. ‘Surely that has to be the bottom line, doesn’t it?’

‘But that’s exactly what I want to investigate,’ said Gavin.

‘But you’ll be right back at the beginning, and now you’ll have an even bigger problem to investigate than the company thought they had. You don’t even have a working hypothesis about why it didn’t work.’

‘It’s still worth doing,’ said Gavin stubbornly.

Caroline looked doubtful. ‘What’s Frank saying to all this?’ she asked.

There was a pause which allowed disbelief to grow in her eyes. ‘You’re going to say you haven’t told him?’

‘There’s a conflict of interest,’ said Gavin.

Caroline had to prompt him. ‘I’m waiting.’

‘Frank doesn’t want me spending any more time on Valdevan. He wants me to move on and try a biochemical approach, using a strain deficient in another gene.’

‘I’m with Frank,’ said Caroline. ‘If Valdevan didn’t work before, it’s not going to now. If one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world had to give up on it after shelling out millions of dollars, what are you going to come up with that’s so different?’

‘If they got the basis of the report all wrong, God knows what else they might have missed.’

‘Mmm,’ said Caroline.

Gavin took a sip of his beer and sighed deeply. ‘Okay, maybe I am getting a bit carried away here,’ he conceded. ‘But the company’s efforts to find out what the problem was were misdirected. They don’t count. It would be like starting over.’

‘But that’s exactly my point,’ agreed Caroline. ‘It would; and that means having an enormous mountain to climb with little chance of reaching the top.’

‘But it’s an exciting mountain, don’t you think?’ said Gavin, with what he hoped might be an argument-winning smile.

Caroline gave a small shake of the head. ‘Is it one you’d want to gamble your entire future on?’

Gavin made a face and started to examine his beer.

‘What Frank says is scientifically sound and sensible.’

Gavin continued examining his beer.

‘Don’t tell me I’m actually getting through to you?’ asked Caroline with an amused smile.

‘Look, I agree there’s a lot in what you say...’

‘Good. That’s a start.’

‘Okay, look, I’ll make a start on the biochemistry, but I’m not giving up on Valdevan and I’m definitely going to work on it over the Christmas break.’

‘As long as you make a start on the biochemistry...’ said Caroline, deciding to be satisfied with one concession. ‘Right,’ she announced. ‘No more beer. Let’s go see the Christmas lights.’

Although Gavin would have preferred to continue sitting in the warm, drinking lager and munching his favourite bacon-flavoured crisps, he agreed without argument, and seeing the look on Caroline’s face as they walked down the Mound and along Princes Street made it worthwhile.

‘You’re like a kid,’ he laughed as he watched her try to keep walking straight while looking up at the lights, occasionally pirouetting to enhance the effect.

‘I love Christmas and everything about it... people change for the better... it’s like the way it should be all the time... I want it to snow... I want to build a snowman... I want to drink mulled wine and sing “Hark the Herald Angels”... I want to go to see a school nativity play where Joseph forgets his lines and Mary drops the baby Jesus... I want to waken at three in the morning and smell a Christmas tree in the house... I love all these things... At least I used to...’ she added, suddenly coming down to earth. ‘But God, it’s going to be so different this time...’

‘Just take it one day at a time,’ said Gavin. ‘Christ! I sound like a Country and Western singer. Are any of the rest of your family coming?’

‘My aunt and uncle usually come up from Manchester, but they’ve decided it would be inappropriate this year. What a prissy little word. Makes me think of town hall officials.’ Caroline stopped walking and looked to the other side of Princes Street where the shops were. ‘I’m hungry.’

‘What d’you fancy?’

‘Something bad for me... a burger with heaps of chips and lashings of relish and fizzy Coke with lots of sugar and caffeine...’

Gavin grabbed her hand and they ran laughing across the broad street to McDonald’s on the corner of Castle Street.

They found a table by the window where they could look out and up at the floodlit castle while they ate.

‘Now I’m filled with remorse,’ said Caroline, putting both hands on her stomach and pushing her empty tray away.

‘Sin followed by remorse, the unending circle of life,’ said Gavin.

‘I am absolutely stuffed.’

‘C’mon, let’s walk it off.’

‘I’d have to walk to Birmingham.’

They dumped the detritus of their feast in the waste bin and left the warmth of the restaurant to hit the cold air again.

‘Frank’s asked me to Christmas dinner at his place,’ said Gavin.

‘That’s nice. Will you go?’

‘I made a right arse of myself the first time I went there. I think his wife, Jenny, hates me.’ Gavin told her about the episode with the cat. Caroline closed her eyes as it unfolded.

‘I’d never drunk malt whisky before...’

‘I’m surprised they’ve asked you back.’

‘Maybe they’re hoping I’ll say no? I said I’d let him know by Monday.’

‘Your call,’ said Caroline.

‘It might seem rude if I don’t go.’

Caroline’s eyes opened wide. ‘Did I hear that correctly? Gavin Donnelly is worried about appearing rude?’

‘Give me a break...’

Caroline moved in front of Gavin, smiling, and held both his arms at the elbows while she looked up into his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

Gavin, still with his arms pinned, brought his mouth down on hers in a long, hungry kiss. She didn’t pull away, although there was a degree of uncertainty in her response. ‘We agreed this was a bad idea,’ she said when they finally parted.

‘You agreed.’

‘This is entirely the wrong time...’

‘There’s never a right time or a wrong time to fall in love with someone.’

‘Please, Gavin, spare me the Christmas cracker philosophy. You’re a fortnight early and my head’s too full of other things right now.’

‘Right.’

‘And don’t put on that hurt expression.’

‘Right.’

‘And don’t agree with me so readily!’

Later, as Gavin lay in his bed looking at the moon, he wondered just how he was going to start a new investigation of Valdevan. Caroline’s earlier assertion that even if the drug was reaching the tumours and was still active when it got there, it still didn’t work, was finally getting through to him. She was right. He had made a breakthrough but it was an academic breakthrough, very satisfying but it wouldn’t change anything for the patients who’d been treated with it. They would still be dead. But why? The drug should have destroyed their tumours. The more he wrestled with this, the more he understood Caroline’s point that he had left himself with an even bigger problem than Grumman Schalk. They thought they knew what the problem was. He hadn’t a clue.

The photographs in the company report had definitely shown an effect that could only have been caused by the drug affecting the S16 gene in the tumour cells, but this made him wonder about the photographs of healthy cells in the original papers he’d consulted about the drug: they hadn’t shown any membrane aberration. Why not? Healthy cells and tumour cells were identical in terms of genetic make-up. Surely the drug should have affected the S16 gene in them too and caused the tell-tale pinching?

Gavin switched on the bedside lamp and got out of bed to start rummaging in the cardboard box he kept his reprints in. He started to shiver. A clear sky outside meant falling temperatures and the heating in the flat had been off for ages. Single glazing and the original, ill-fitting sash windows meant that the inside temperature became the outside one very quickly.

He found what he was looking for. It was a poor photocopy but the one he’d made on his first meeting with Caroline, when she’d loaned him her card. He searched in the pockets of his rucksack for his magnifying lens — which he’d bought the day before from Tom Brown’s Stamp Shop in Merchiston Avenue — and then put the relevant page into the pool of light provided by his bedside lamp. The pictures hadn’t improved any with the keeping but he was still pretty sure that there was no membrane alteration to the healthy cells.

Feeling mentally exhausted, he got back into bed, switched out the light and drew his knees up to his chest in an effort to get warm. The difference between tumour cells and healthy tissue cells was... division control. The tumour cells were undergoing uncontrolled cell division while the healthy cells were not... the tumour cells were showing membrane change but the healthy cells were not. There had to be a link — something that tied in with why Grumman Schalk had thought they had a specific drug against tumour cells. They must have seen tumour cells dying in the lab but healthy cells surviving. He would have to check out the effects of Valdevan on normal cells for himself. He couldn’t just rely on old photographs. He would set up that experiment at the same time as running the last of the Valdevan concentration tests. He would go down to the tissue culture suite first thing in the morning and see about getting some healthy cell cultures.

He could hear tuneless singing coming from outside on the front street and echoing up over the tenement roofs as some night straggler from an office Christmas party informed the world that he had done it his way. It brought a smile to Gavin’s lips. ‘Sure you did,’ he whispered, ‘Thirty years with Standard Life and you did it your way...’