Dead End

Fourteen

By Edward C. Grant’s edict, this New York encounter wasn’t at the corporate building but at an hotel, the Plaza on Central Park South, overlooking the park. It was booked from a reservations agency in an assumed name and paid for in advance, in cash. Dwight Newton was given the suite number by telephone, Grant’s cellphone to his cellphone, not through the hotel switchboard or traceably dialled. Surprisingly there was coffee on a separating table when Newton arrived. Grant waited expectantly for the vice president to pour. As he did, Newton said: ‘The FBI are investigating.’

‘I saw the newscasts, read the newspapers,’ said Grant, totally controlled, even-voiced.

‘What are we going to do?’ Grant had to be nervous to have arranged the meeting like this, like something out of a movie.

Grant frowned, concerned at the other man’s nervousness, to assess which was the major reason for his summoning the stick-thin scientist yet again on the first shuttle from Washington. ‘I’m not sure about that question, Dwight.’ said the disconcerted, white-maned man. ‘Not sure we need to do anything, are you?’

‘The FBI are investigating, for Christ’s sake,’ repeated Newton. ‘They’ll almost certainly want to question us.’

‘You,’ corrected Grant, still even-voiced. ‘They’ll almost certainly want to question you. I don’t see that I’ll be able to help them very much.’

Newton sat with his cooling coffee untouched before him, looking as steadily as possible at the other man, wondering how directly he could ask the awful question to get the awful confirmation of his every doubt. Not directly at all, Newton decided. Instead he said: ‘What shall I tell them?’

‘What is there to tell them? Rebecca Lang worked in your overseas unit. She was very competent, did her work well. We were very happy with her. We’re devastated by what happened.’

‘What if they ask about France?’

Grant lifted and dropped his shoulders. ‘Here again, I don’t see why they should. It’s got nothing to do with what they’re enquiring into, has it?’

Newton tensed himself, lips initially tight together. ‘Hasn’t it?’

Grant came forward from the opposing chair, elbows on his knees. ‘Dwight, I really am finding it difficult to follow you here!’

‘They’ll most definitely talk to security. Learn about the telephone monitor.’

‘So?’

‘Her name’s on the list, talking to Paris.’

‘She was in the overseas liaison unit! We’d be disappointed if she hadn’t spoken to Paris and a lot of other places abroad! The monitor wasn’t exclusively on her telephone, was it?’

‘No,’ conceded Newton, expectantly.

‘And her name isn’t the only one on the list?’

‘No,’ further conceded the other man, again. Fuck you, he thought. And then he thought, I wish I could – I wish so very much I could escape from the entanglement in which I am enmeshed… in which you are enmeshed.

‘She wasn’t being specifically targeted?’

‘Security came up with a lot of names,’ agreed Newton.

‘But none proved to be the suspected outside informant? Certainly not from any of the research-division telephones.’

It was all so easily, so satisfactorily explainable, Newton accepted. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We didn’t find an outside informant from the checks we initiated.’

‘But we’ve every right to be vigilant?’

‘Yes.’ Newton had the irrational impression of being stuck in a sucking morass, mud too thick to get out of, with the rising water creeping up to engulf him.

‘Could you get me another coffee, Dwight?’

The vice president poured, ignoring his own almost full cup. ‘They could come across the French things.’

‘Along with every other research experiment we’re conducting!’ exclaimed the Dubette president, genuinely incredulous. ‘But let’s stay with that, for a moment. Tell me about rifofludine. Does it have a preserving quality, in hot climactic conditions?’

‘To a degree,’ allowed Newton, reluctantly.

Grant sighed, theatrically. ‘Does it have a preserving quality, in hot climatic conditions!’

‘Yes.’

‘And the colouring additives make dosage administration and recognition easier in Third World countries?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which means we’re providing a necessary service – improving our products – for a specific market?’

‘Yes.’

‘I really thought we’d already talked all this through, Dwight?’

‘I suppose we had.’

‘We got anything more to talk through?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You really sure about that, Dwight?’

‘Yes, I’m really sure.’

‘I’m glad about that. Really glad we’re understanding each other. Now tell me about Parnell.’

‘I haven’t seen him yet. He rejected our attorney, Gerry Fletcher. But Baldwin kept Fletcher in court to represent Dubette’s interests.’

‘Why didn’t Parnell want our guy?’

‘Fletcher thought the only way was to enter a plea.’

Grant nodded, but didn’t immediately comment. ‘Parnell’s an ornery son of a bitch and isn’t that the truth?’

‘I guess.’ How much further – how much more – was he expected to capitulate?

Grant said: ‘That was a good move, keeping Fletcher in court to watch our backs. Important to keep ourselves up to speed on anything and everything that might adversely affect the company. There’s too much publicity: I’m worried about it affecting the stock. Let’s get the legal department to ensure a legal heavyweight better than Fletcher, in case we need him.’

‘Need him for what?’ risked Newton.

‘Unchallenged situations, getting out of hand. We’ve got nothing to hide, everything to protect. You understand what I’m saying?’

‘I think so.’

‘Get public affairs working. Give the media full access to what Rebecca Lang did: I don’t want Dubette fouled up in any mystery theories that her death had anything to do with what she was working on, OK?’

For a brief moment it was difficult for Newton to find the words, any word, to respond. ‘Don’t you think that might be difficult, in the circumstances?’

‘Tell public affairs full co-operation, with every media outlet. Maybe you head up a press conference. After all, we’ve got nothing whatsoever to hide. Remember that.’

‘Nothing whatsoever,’ echoed Newton, flatly. The water had to be almost up to his chin now. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to strain upwards to save himself or put his head down, to drown.

‘What do we know about Rebecca Lang? Family, friends, stuff like that?’ briskly demanded Grant.

Now it was Newton who frowned. ‘She and Parnell were going to get married, according to the papers and what he said on television. Her mother and father are both dead. Next of kin is listed on the personnel records as an uncle. Lives locally, in the DC area.’

‘Get personnel involved. Wayne Denny himself. Dubette will pick up all the bills. Whatever sort of funeral they want, they get. Reception afterwards, their choice, whatever, wherever. You attend. Showcross too, of course. Anyone else in the unit who wants to go.’

‘I understand.’ Oh God, do I understand! thought Newton.

‘Tell Parnell to take as much time off as he wants. Get Denny, anyone else you can think of, involved here, too.’

‘OK.’

‘How about you, Dwight?’

‘Me?’

‘What’s happened is horrifying. A member of Dubette staff – your staff-murdered. An attempt made, apparently, to incriminate a department head. Understandable that it would have gotten to you. It’s gotten to a lot of us, one way and another.’

‘I’m OK,’ lied Newton. He was anxious now to get away, no longer to feel he was drowning, to be part of whatever he feared himself to be part of.

‘That’s good to hear,’ said Grant. ‘Very good indeed.’ He came forward once more across their intervening table, arms on his knees, intense. ‘I want you to tell me something, Dwight. Something it’s very important for me to know – totally and completely believe. You don’t think – don’t believe – that anyone in Dubette is in any way involved or connected with whatever happened to Rebecca and almost happened to Dick Parnell, do you?’

‘No,’ Newton finally surrendered, as he’d known all along that he would, the nausea a physical sensation deep in his stomach. ‘I don’t think that at all.’ What would have happened to him, he wondered, if he’d said anything otherwise?

No one seemed to know how to react to his return. Parnell had accepted during the ride to McLean that he would inevitably be the focus of everyone’s attention, from the very moment of his arrival at the Dubette gatehouse, but hadn’t known how it would register. It started with uncertain looks – or pointedly no looks in his direction at all – from other drivers as he parked the rented Toyota only four spaces from where he’d left his own car three days earlier. There were more hesitant, early-warned faces at the windows and, as he got closer to the building, he was conscious of a lot of doubtful, needing-to-be-guided faces. Very occasionally there was a half wave or gesture of encouragement from people he didn’t know. In front of the elevator bank, three people – a man and two women – held back for him to get a car to himself. There were more half smiles and a few inconclusive gestures as he walked the gauntlet of the overlooked corridor into the Spider’s Web.

Initially the indeterminate attitude existed even in his own pharmacogenomics department, where everyone was already assembled in greeting, which they didn’t know how to make once he got there. It was Beverley Jackson who broke the impasse, coming towards him with both hands outstretched to prompt his reaching forward in response, leading the rest to follow with awkward handshakes and shoulder slaps.

‘We don’t quite know what to say – what to do,’ Beverley unnecessarily admitted.

‘I don’t know that there’s anything to say or do,’ said Parnell. ‘I seem to be causing some embarrassment.’

‘Whatever you want… need… just…’ Ted Lapidus’s offer trailed away, into more awkwardness.

‘I think I want to get back to work. Catch up on whatever needs to be caught up with.’

‘You quite sure you’re…?’ started Sean Sato, halted by the look on Parnell’s face.

Parnell said: ‘We just got a new unbreakable rule for the department. No one asks me if I’m OK, OK?’

Only Deke Pulbrow said: ‘OK,’ and then he said: ‘Oh shit!’

The Japanese American said: ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that… just that …’

‘Just that there’s nothing else to do or to say,’ Parnell finished for him. He allowed space into the discomfort, hoping to puncture it. ‘Thanks, all of you. To borrow Deke’s word, it’s been a shit time and will probably go on being a shit time for I don’t know how long. Whatever, I want things to go on here, without me if it’s necessary, with me, if and whenever it’s possible…’ He looked to Kathy Richardson. ‘Anything I need to do, need to know?’

‘A lot of media calls yesterday and already today. I’ve logged them.’

His newly installed answering-machine loop at Washington Circle had been exhausted by the time he’d got back from Georgetown the previous evening. Parnell hadn’t responded to any and let the tape fill up again without picking up the receiver. He shook his head in refusal and said: ‘Nothing else?’

The matronly secretary looked fleetingly at Beverley Jackson. ‘Your lawyer called. Said he was at the office number you have and would be, for most of the day, if you want to talk.’

‘Anything from Dwight’s office?’

The woman shook her head. ‘You want me to check?’

‘He’s not due back until this afternoon,’ accepted Parnell. ‘Just thought his schedule might have changed.’ He looked around the people still gathered around him, knowing they were expecting something from him but not able, at that precise, brief moment, to formulate anything in his mind. It was going to be difficult to force the pace, the dispassion even, but Parnell acknowledged that he had to evolve a way of conducting himself to make happen what he wanted to happen, for his life to go on at two separate, equally important levels, as unlinked and independent of each other as possible. Were the two levels equally important? Of course not. Finding Rebecca’s killer – who’d tried to incriminate him, as well – was the most important, his absolute priority. The department – this department – that had once, all too recently and far far too much, consumed him and his every thought was secondary now – very secondary indeed – to avenging Rebecca. Forcing himself to be still – certainly striving for a lightness that wasn’t there – Parnell said: ‘So, who’s made the breakthrough that’s going to make us all famous?’

The heads-lowered hesitation was the criticism he didn’t need of how wrongly placed the remark had been. It was Beverley who hurried in, trying to cover his difficulty, talking of three experiments she’d conducted upon mice with Dubette’s products without finding an immediate way of introducing a genetically linked improvement, which gradually opened the discussion among the others. It quickly became apparent to Parnell that virtually no experimental avenues had emerged to follow, which he hadn’t expected anyway, but it took away the atmosphere caused by his mistaken remark and he was grateful.

It was hard for him to concentrate as fully as he knew he should upon their individual accounts, but he managed sufficiently to ask the necessarily comprehending questions. More than once Ted Lapidus remarked that everything Parnell was being told had been fully discussed and agreed in the committee-style manner in which they had decided to operate.

Sean Sato was the last to contribute and almost from the moment the man began talking, Parnell’s attention became absolute. ‘Avian influenza?’ he queried, interrupting the man. ‘I thought you were focusing on Hepatitis C?’

‘We got a visit from Russell Benn, soon after you…’ Lapidus halted. ‘… on Monday. Tokyo’s heading up a project decided on by the company, the species-jumping of flu from fowls and wild animals to humans that causes epidemics that start in Asia virtually every year. The World Health Organization are warning that if a human being already suffering influenza becomes infected with bird flu, the two viruses could integrate and mutate into an unknown – and currently untreatable – strain transmitting from human to human very easily, to become a global pandemic like the one that killed more than twenty million people after the First World War.’

‘What direction is the project taking?’ asked Parnell. He wasn’t letting his mind drift now – properly, committedly, back at work. It felt good.

‘A vaccine,’ said Sato.

‘For humans? Or birds?’ asked Parnell.

‘Both, if possible,’ said Lapidus.

‘H5N1, the avian virus that emerged in early 1997, is too lethal to be grown in chicken eggs, even to hope to create a vaccine,’ Parnell pointed out.

‘That’s why Benn’s been tasked with producing something a different way,’ said Lapidus.

‘And why he wants us on board,’ finished Sato. ‘Everything Tokyo’s tried should be arriving later today or tomorrow.’

‘We’d better prepare the sterile laboratory,’ said Parnell.

‘Already done,’ said Lapidus.

‘I know none of you need to be told, but have you warned Kathy it’ll be out of bounds?’ asked Parnell, indicating her office, to which the secretary had already returned.

‘Very clearly,’ said the balding, pebble-bespectacled Peter Battey.

‘I like the way you’ve worked, while I wasn’t here,’ thanked Parnell, sincerely.

‘I…’ started Lapidus but at once corrected himself again. ‘We talked about it and decided hepatitis could wait. This is our first chance to get involved in a current priority programme.’

And he hadn’t been here when it was formulated, thought Parnell. But he was now. ‘Do we know if the competition are trying to do the same as us?’

‘Not at this level,’ said Mark Easton, the former Johns Hopkins geneticist. ‘But it’s an easy guess that they are. We’re talking megabucks on a global scale. Thailand – just one of seven or eight Asian countries farming chicken – exports one and a half billion dollars worth of poultry every year. Europe imports a third of the chicken Thailand produces.’

‘It’s good to be involved, even if it’s because our traditional colleagues across the corridor recognize that they need all the help they can get,’ said Parnell. ‘But from the rundown you’ve just given me, Sean’s working on it alone. If it’s a priority, with red lights flashing, shouldn’t we make up our own definition of a task force?’

‘Thought about that, too,’ assured Lapidus. ‘As I said, we don’t yet have the specimens to begin work, which we should be able to do tomorrow. Sean’s doing the groundwork. Now you’re back, it’s obviously your decision, but I was intending to join him, along with Beverley.’

The Greek had very definitely adopted the role of deputy leader, Parnell recognized. Which was good, providing it didn’t arouse any jealousy or resentment among the others. And that didn’t seem to have happened so far. ‘Sounds a good plan to me,’ agreed Parnell. ‘I’ll go across the corridor sometime to see how Benn and his people are working…’

‘I really don’t know how you’ve got the resilience to consider working yourself,’ said Beverley.

‘I’m not sure I have,’ admitted Parnell.

Harry Johnson was Grant’s second visitor of the day to the discreet Plaza Hotel suite, the bell summons repeated impatiently before Grant opened the door. The Dubette security chief was dressed for what he imagined the occasion to be, in a suit and tie but with the permanently shined, plasticized Dubette uniform shoes. The suit was baggy and stained, the shirt crumpled from previous wear.

‘Nobody saw me arrive,’ assured Johnson. ‘What’s going down here?’ His visit had been arranged in the same cellphone-to-cellphone way.

‘That’s what I want to talk about,’ said Grant. The hotel security needed overhauling, not to have questioned Johnson’s dishevelled presence. Grant hoped the man wouldn’t be remembered if any hotel staff were called upon to do so.

Johnson collapsed, uninvited, into an encompassing armchair, looked around the suite and said: ‘Nice place. Class. That’s what I like, class.’

When, wondered Grant, had the man sitting opposite ever experienced it? But then he sometimes frequented places that would have surprised anyone who knew him. ‘How the fuck did AF209 get into the frame?’

‘You wanted to discredit Parnell. Create a situation where you could dispense with him in such a way as to make him unemployable,’ reminded Johnson. ‘I didn’t know Rebecca Lang was dead – how she’d died. I didn’t stir this shit, like you did once before. Don’t forget that.’

‘Will I ever be allowed to?’

‘We’re a long way from the cliff edge,’ said Johnson, helping himself to the now virtually cold coffee.

‘You’ve involved the FBI, for fuck’s sake!’

‘I didn’t know Rebecca Lang was going to die! Didn’t know until I got the call from the Metro DC police guys. At which time I didn’t have the opportunity to talk to you. I had to improvise – use my own judgement.’

‘This isn’t good,’ insisted Grant. ‘It could all unravel.’

‘How’d she die? How – why – did Rebecca die?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Sir, a lot of unusual things – strangely coincidental things – happened that Sunday. Things I didn’t expect to happen. Rebecca Lang’s death the most unexpected of all. Can you help me with that?’

‘I told you, I don’t know.’

‘We gotta smelly bunch of shit to pick our way through,’ judged Johnson. ‘You wanna point out the path we’re going to take together, to make the stories chime?’

Edward C. Grant’s recitation was practically a repeat of his earlier conversation with Dwight Newton. At the end of it, Johnson said: ‘Could hold, if everyone in turn holds their nerve.’

‘What about the two Metro DC shitheads?’ demanded Grant.

‘They’re looking at the drop, if they start to flake. Know they’re looking at steak and cake if they stay cool. But they didn’t know it was murder, when we did the deal. If I’ve got to keep a handle on this, I need to know the facts…’ He sniggered. ‘Remember that, what they used to say in Dragnet. “Just the facts; just give me the facts.” I used to love that show.’

‘It’s too long ago to remember,’ sighed Grant, who considered Harry Johnson to be the one unavoidable, forever inescapable, mistake he had ever allowed to happen. ‘Don’t forget your drop, Harry.’

‘Or yours,’ came back the security chief, at once. ‘Everything’s superglued: nothing’s going to fall apart.’

‘You absolutely sure about that?’

‘I’m absolutely sure about that,’ echoed the fat-bellied man. ‘That’s what I’m employed to be, isn’t it – to be absolutely sure about everything?’

‘That’s what you’re employed for,’ agreed Grant, softly. ‘I won’t forget that. Nor should you, ever.’ But Johnson had forgotten, Grant thought. He’d become complacent, not properly – fully – thinking things through to their logical conclusion. Which made him a liability. Grant didn’t like liabilities, his own most of all.

‘So, we don’t have a problem,’ said Johnson.

‘You ensure that we don’t,’ insisted Grant.

‘You gotta drink anywhere here?’

‘Find a bar downtown,’ ordered Grant. ‘A long way downtown.’

The greeting was even more effusive than it had initially been on the day of Parnell’s threatened resignation. Dwight Newton was already around his desk, leg hitched upon its front. At Parnell’s entry he thrust forward and enclosed the Englishman’s hand in both of his, changing the grip as he was pumping up and down to slap Parnell on the shoulder. The gesture was timed to the second, abruptly ending for Parnell to be ushered into the already prepared chair, the grave look already in place when the head of research regained his own side of the desk.

‘Good to see you back, Dick. Damned good. A tragedy, an absolute tragedy, about Rebecca. You got my sympathy. The sympathy of the entire upper management of Dubette.’

‘Thank you,’ said Parnell. Illogically he felt the sort of embarrassment he guessed everyone had been feeling at encountering him, earlier.

‘I’ve got some things to tell you,’ announced Newton, carefully listing every assistance proposed by Edward C. Grant earlier that day in New York. ‘That’s from the president himself. And I’m to tell you you’re to take off as much time as you want. None of us can imagine what it was like – is like – for you. Just can’t imagine.’

‘What I’d like is to get back to work, as quickly and as uninterrupted as possible,’ said Parnell, repeating what he’d told his own team. ‘I’m not sure how Rebecca’s uncle will take the offer of help. I get the feeling he’s a pretty proud and independent old guy.’

‘Nothing for you to worry about. That’s for Wayne Denny and personnel. I want you to know something, on a personal level. I never believed for a moment that you could be in any way involved.’

‘Why not?’ The question blurted from Parnell, unthinkingly, and his surprise at uttering it was increased at Newton’s obvious and immediate confusion.

‘It was unthinkable… inconceivable. You were a couple. In love. Everybody knew that. You don’t murder the woman you love!’

Did everyone know it? Parnell supposed they did. ‘Someone murdered her and tried to frame me.’ Someone who certainly knew them both – knew their cars and their movements. Certainly Rebecca’s, when she’d left Washington Circle. But whoever it was couldn’t have known she wasn’t staying over. So, he and Rebecca would have had to have been watched, all the time. The killer would have had to follow her from Bethesda on Sunday morning, seen them leave the apartment in Rebecca’s car – both tightly, safely, seat-belted – been at an adjoining bench at Chesapeake Bay maybe, and driven behind them all the way back again. And then sat and waited and watched some more, as long as they had to, until Rebecca got into a position to be ambushed. Whoever had done that couldn’t have known Rebecca wouldn’t be staying overnight. So, the surveillance had to have been absolute, around the clock. It was obvious but Parnell hadn’t thought the sequence through. It would be more than obvious to the trained investigators from the FBI, too, but he’d still mention it, set it out to illustrate how meticulously it had all been planned.

‘What’s that flight number all about?’

‘I don’t know,’ insisted Parnell.

‘You didn’t know it was in Rebecca’s purse?’

‘No.’

‘She didn’t talk to you about it?’

‘No.’ The switch – and the interrogation – was intriguing, thought Parnell.

‘I can’t believe it, any of it!’ protested the head-shaking vice president. ‘It’s monstrous. The work of a monster.’ How many? wondered Newton. And led – or ordered – by the head monster? He was glad he’d changed into the white laboratory coat, sure the sweat that was gluing his body at the effort he was having to make would have soaked through his shirt to become visible.

‘I hear there’s a big project underway?’ said Parnell, anxious to move the conversation on, accepting that this interview was a required courtesy – sympathy offered, help extended – but there seemed little point or purpose.

‘I told you it didn’t work…’ started Newton, but then, quickly, said: ‘The flu research, sure. We’re really under the gun on this one. You think you’re going to be able to help?’

‘Flu – animal and human – is viral, that’s how it’s medically feasible for those viruses to mutate into one killer strain,’ said Parnell. ‘And viruses have genes we can isolate and experiment with. Which isn’t a promise for any sort of discovery, just my agreeing with you and Russell Benn that it’s well within the pharmacogenomics discipline.’

‘You work closely with Russ,’ urged Newton.

‘I plan to.’

‘Remember everything I said,’ insisted Newton. ‘Don’t forget Dubette’s family orientation.’

‘I won’t,’ undertook Parnell.

Kathy Richardson was waiting for his return, jotting pad in hand, to tell him Barbara Spacey wanted to see him.

He said: ‘Call her back and say thanks but I don’t want – or need – to see her.’

‘She said you’d say that.’

‘Makes her good at her job,’ said Parnell. ‘Call her.’

It wasn’t until he recovered the papers that he’d abandoned on the Monday morning that Parnell properly recalled what he had been working on, the compilation of their separate cancer file, which he’d been in the process of subdividing, eventually to establish a working routine when it became a project for the entire department. Now there was another more urgent project, one it was important they devoted as much of their undivided attention to as possible, which meant the cancer undertaking would have to be further postponed. But then it always had been one for the future, when they had exhausted all the immediate examination of possible Dubette updates. He’d attach himself to the flu research, Parnell decided. It was the first specific demand that had been directed at them, so it was right – would be expected – that he should lead it, as head of the department. Parnell felt a flicker of anticipation: it would, in many ways, be getting back to the pure research he’d known on the genome project in England.

Parnell was reassembling the cancer folder, to give to Kathy Richardson to file, when there was a sharp rap at the door just ahead of the secretary’s warning, and the shawled and long-skirted figure of Barbara Spacey surged into his office like a ship under full sail.

The psychologist said: ‘You didn’t want to see me but I wanted to see you.’

‘And Dwight Newton can see us both if he bothers to look, so you can’t smoke.’

‘See the sacrifice I’m making!’

‘You needn’t. I’ve banned the remark from the department but for just one last time I’m OK and I don’t need counselling.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I do.’ Child-talk, he recognized.

‘Your fiancee just got killed and you got charged with it and there’s an FBI terrorism investigation linked to an obvious murder, and you’re telling me you feel fine and just want to get on with the job?’

‘No. I’m telling you I feel anything but fine, because how could I feel fine after what’s happened, and I want the bastards who did it caught. But that I’m not suffering any psychological problem. But if I begin to think that I am, I’ll come back to you, OK?’ How often, too often, that word, those two letters, entered every conversation!

Barbara Spacey pulled a chair forward, to be closer to Parnell, as she had been at their previous session, and slumped into it. The voluminous clothes concealed her like an enveloping curtain, but beneath the folds Parnell knew she would be overlapping the seat.

She said: ‘Sorry buddy. Company instructions. Every care for someone in distress. They want another assessment.’

‘I’m not in…’ started Parnell and stopped, his mind focused, far ahead of this conversation. ‘Two assessments?’

The you-know-how-it-is movement ruffled Barbara Spacey’s layers of clothes like feathers. ‘You really want to discuss – to try to discuss – the circumstances? Let’s give everyone a break here! How do families look after families?’

‘Most of the time by not smothering each other.’

‘No, that’s a cop-out. You realize how much support Dubette are offering?’

‘I won’t be smothered! The way it’s going, you’ll know – Dubette will know – more about me than I know about myself.’

‘Isn’t that what families do?’ persisted the woman. Her hands were twitching over her handbag, which Parnell guessed contained her cigarettes.

‘No, that’s smothering, as I already told you.’

‘I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do,’ said the woman. ‘Give me a break, OK?’

To co-operate would be the quickest way to get rid of the psychologist, Parnell realized. ‘OK.’

‘Tell me how you feel?’

‘I already told you.’

‘Tell me again.’

‘Confused.’

‘Frightened?’

Parnell examined the question. ‘No, I don’t feel frightened. I suppose I should, but at this moment I don’t.’

‘Why not? You’re right, you should.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You think you can solve it, all by yourself?’

Parnell hesitated again. ‘No, of course I don’t think that! I’m a scientist, not a detective.’

‘But you’ve thought about it, solving it by yourself, exacting your own justice maybe?’

Barbara Spacey’s prescience was unnerving. ‘Sure I’ve thought about it! Wouldn’t anyone?’

‘I’m glad you’re being honest.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘We did this before, remember?’

Parnell didn’t. ‘Is that it?’

‘I think so.’ Her hands were actually moving, scratching at her handbag.

‘Do I get a copy, like before?’

‘It’s the law,’ she reminded him.

‘Like not smoking?’

‘What’s your point?’

‘What’s your verdict?’

Barbara Spacey smiled. ‘That confirms it.’

‘What the hell’s that mean?’

‘What I was deciding.’

‘You ducking my question?’

The psychologist shook her head. ‘You’re not so much of the asshole that you were before.’

For several moments Parnell stared at her across the desk, stunned. At last he said: ‘So, what’s that make me now?’

‘That’s the mystery,’ admitted Barbara Spacey. ‘I don’tknow.’

From behind the dividing glass between the two offices, Kathy Richardson was gesturing towards the telephone. To the psychologist, Parnell said: ‘Maybe you’ll never know. I analyse mysteries. I don’t want to have it happen to me.’

Barbara Spacey smiled. ‘I’ve got to go. I’m dying for a cigarette.’

Kathy Richardson was at the door, waiting to enter, as the psychologist left. The secretary said: ‘The FBI want a meet with you tomorrow, wherever you want. They’re suggesting ten o’clock.’

‘Tell them ten o’clock’s fine. At the Washington field office, to save him coming all the way out here.’