The Devil's Landscape

Fifteen

Steven accepted the slim file holder that Jean Roberts handed to him on arrival. ‘Such a sad business,’ she said.

Steven agreed and they spoke for a few moments about the tragedy before Steven asked about the whereabouts of John Macmillan.

‘He’s with the Home Secretary as we speak.’

Steven nodded and said, ‘I’m not sure which one to feel sorry for.’ He took the file off to the library and settled down to read.

Under the heading of Yale Fire Tragedy, he read that Dr Paul Leighton and Dr Carrie Simpson, both aged twenty-six, had died in a late-night blaze in the laboratory where they worked as members of Professor Dorothy Lindstrom’s research group at Yale University. A photograph of a missing window surrounded by blackened stonework pinpointed the location of a second-floor lab. The cause of the fire was under investigation. Two other newspaper articles reported much the same thing. A smaller article from an inside page and dated two weeks later recorded that the fire department had found a leak in a gas supply pipe to have been the cause of the fire.

Steven continued reading through cuttings taken from provincial papers published in the respective areas where the two had grown up. Both had been the pride of their families, having excelled at high school and college and having gone on to do PhDs and gain prestigious post-doctoral positions at Yale University where a glittering career had been predicted for both. Steven put the cuttings gently to one side, sad stories but nothing to add substance to why Tyler had made the comment he had... or maybe it was he who had read too much into it and it had been meant to be taken at face value.

Steven examined the last two cuttings, both written around the time of Dorothy’s announcement that she was leaving Yale to move back to the UK. One had gone for the human-interest angle, concentrating on how upset Dorothy had been by the tragedy, fully understanding her desire to move away and start afresh, but the other had chosen to dwell on how upsetting this decision had been for other members of the group who felt let down. One aggrieved student however, had pointed out that something like this had been coming for some time as all had not been well in the lab before the fire: there had, he claimed, been some serious friction between Dorothy and her senior researchers.

‘Well, well,’ murmured Steven. ‘There you are...’

Steven drove over to Capital University, ostensibly to ask Dorothy how the trawl through Barrowman’s files was going but mainly to engineer the chance to speak to Jane Lincoln. He had expected Dorothy to ask about Barrowman and be anxious to know how the hunt for him was going. Instead, he found her elated that she had uncovered enough data and results in Barrowman’s files for at least three papers in decent journals, something she felt her backers would be pleased with.

‘Well done,’ said Steven. ‘that must take some of the pressure off.’ It must be good to know you don’t actually need Owen Barrowman in person to secure funding.’

For one awful moment Steven thought Dorothy had read his mind. She seemed to stare at him before asking, ‘Have the police found Owen yet?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Let’s hope he gets the help he needs when they do.’

‘Indeed.’ Steven put an end to the awkward pause and went on to tell Dorothy that the Sci-Med lab was currently examining the computer Barrowman used at home. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as they’ve finished. In the meantime, I was wondering if I might have a word with Jane Lincoln?’

‘Of course,’ said Dorothy, ‘although I don’t think she and Owen were great friends.’

Steven was happy with the misunderstanding surrounding his reasons. ‘No matter, I don’t think I’ve had a chance to speak to her before. It would be good for me to know all the members of your group.’

Dorothy nodded and went off to fetch Jane. ‘You two can use the seminar room,’ she said when the pair returned.

‘I’m not sure I can help you,’ said Jane as they sat down, ‘I didn’t know that much about Owen’s work.’

‘Actually, it wasn’t that I wanted to talk to you about.’

The smile — which Steven had found open and honest — faded from Jane’s face leaving slight bemusement. ‘Really?’

‘I understand you were with Dorothy’s group in the USA at the time of the fire at Yale?’

‘Yes, it was my first post doc position, I’d only been there a few months.’

‘It must have been a terrible time.’

‘It was, but I think Dorothy is the one you should be speaking to...’

‘I understand she took it very badly at the time and I didn’t want open up old wounds. I thought I’d ask someone who was fairly new to the lab and wasn’t so personally involved...’

Jane swallowed as if going into defensive mode, but Steven suspected this was for ethical concerns rather than anything to do with guilt. ‘What is it you want to know?’

‘The two senior post-docs who died in the fire, they were working in the lab at night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know what they were doing?’

‘It’s not at all unusual for researchers to be in the lab at night,’ said Jane. ‘We all do it.’

‘Can you be more specific about what they were doing?’

‘I understand they were repeating some experiments to confirm earlier findings.’

‘Earlier findings...’ said Steven, hoping that the pause might encourage Jane to say more. When it didn’t, he changed tack. ‘I’ve been going through the newspaper reports from the time and a few articles written around the time of Dorothy’s decision to leave the USA,’ he said. ‘I came across a suggestion of some bad feeling between Dorothy and her senior post-docs before the fire. Do you know anything about that?’

‘These things happen.’

‘Do you actually know what the problem was?’

Jane was clearly uncomfortable with the line of questioning and Steven could see that she was struggling with fears of being thought disloyal, but she was on the hook and that was where she would stay until she came out with all she knew.

‘Paul and Carrie were excited about their latest work and were keen to publish their findings — they were confident that they’d come up with a major breakthrough, but Dorothy said no.’

‘Why not?’

‘She didn’t believe them.

‘But surely, they must have shown data, facts, figures?’

‘They did but Dorothy wouldn’t have it. She insisted mistakes must have been made and wouldn’t allow them to proceed. She gave them a lecture about how scientists had a social responsibility as well as a scientific one to make sure their conclusions were beyond all doubt. She was adamant she didn’t want to be subject to the criticism that scientists often announce findings without any thought being given to the consequences.’

‘Handing matches to the baby,’ said Steven.

‘Exactly.’

‘So that’s why the two post docs were repeating their work in the lab that night?’

‘Not quite...’ said Jane. ‘Dorothy had insisted that their work was flawed and shouldn’t be repeated. She asked Paul and Carrie to work on something else.’

‘Wow.’

‘Paul and Carrie felt sure that their work was watertight but accepted they had to do what they were told. You don’t want to make an enemy of someone as important as Dorothy. They started out on a new project but decided to repeat their original work at night, maybe hoping to convince Dorothy to change her mind.’

‘Instead they died.’

‘Two nice people, two brilliant scientists at the very beginning of their career, an absolute tragedy.’

‘Do you actually know anything about the findings that caused all the trouble?’ Steven asked.

Jane adopted a reluctant expression but continued. ‘Some of us working in neuroscience had known for a while that there was danger lurking on the horizon, especially those of us with a foot in both pharmacology and neuroscience. On the one hand, we studied human behaviour and on the other control of it. Using appropriate drugs, we could make a violent man passive, a calm man aggressive, a sad man happy, a happy man sad. The more we learned the more we could change things through the use of drugs. But of course, science doesn’t stop there. We had to know more about what the drugs do... what pathways they follow... we always have to know more...’

‘And that’s where the danger lies?’

‘We may not like what we find.’

‘Did Paul and Carrie find out something that fell into that category?’ asked Steven.

Jane took a deep breath and said, ‘In spades. They came up with a series of results that challenged everything the human race has always believed about itself — that we are all individuals with self-determination and decision-making powers, perhaps made in the image of God and harbouring a soul if you’re religious. Their results showed that we as human beings were only individual in the sense that our biochemical make-up varied from one person to another. We were little more than a collection of cells and chemical reactions, something which could be altered at will with the application of the correct knowledge — something which we were fast accumulating. It wouldn’t be long before we could alter every aspect of a human being.’

‘Maybe even create one?’

‘Given time.’

‘I can understand why that could upset a whole lot of people...’ said Steven.

‘Dorothy is a committed Christian,’ said Jane filling in the blank. ‘Paul and Carrie’s results contradicted just about everything she’s ever believed in.’

‘I can understand her reluctance to believe them.’

‘I think the questioning of her religious beliefs might have been as big a factor in her mental collapse as the deaths of Paul and Carrie.’

‘How about now, is she still a committed Christian?’ Steven asked.

‘I think so...’

Steven was interested in Jane’s pause. His expression suggested he was waiting.

‘A Roman Catholic priest appeared in our temporary lab one day at Yale. He was in Dorothy’s office when I came back early from lunch and she was shouting at him.’

‘Did you hear what the argument was about?’

Jane shook her head. ‘Not really. I just remember Dorothy shouting, “No way.” Then she saw me through the glass and didn’t say any more. The pair of them emerged some ten minutes later looking a bit guilty and Dorothy introduced me to the priest whom she said had been a great comfort to her, Father Liam Crossan.’

‘Strange,’ said Steven. ‘Did Dorothy talk much about her religious beliefs?’

‘Almost never,’ Jane replied. ‘I suppose she knows what most scientists feel about religion. She keeps it as a very personal thing.’

‘And then she made her big decision about the future of her research?’ said Steven.

‘Her big announcement,’ agreed Jane, ‘A change of field and a move to a new country. Although she never said as much at the time, I suspected she had decided to check out Paul and Carrie’s findings by moving the work on to the next level.’

‘DNA and epigenetics?’

Jane nodded. ‘There was only so far you could go with the techniques involving drugs and volunteers that Paul and Carrie had been using. The genes on your DNA have the capacity to specify all the different chemical substances in your body. If we can link gene products to drug action and find controllers for these genes...’

‘That’s where epigenetics comes into the picture,’ said Steven. ‘Well, that explains nicely why Dorothy made the move. How about you, why did you come with her?’

‘I went to Dorothy and told her what I thought she was up to and she didn’t deny it. She said that, despite misgivings, she had to know the truth. She invited me to join her in the move to the UK. I agreed... providing that no results would be covered up whatever they said.’

Steven smiled and said, ‘And I thought science was pretty straightforward.’

‘I wish.’

‘Where did Owen Barrowman fit in?’

‘He applied to Dorothy for a job and was well qualified: she felt we needed his experience. He could bring us all up to speed in the new techniques we’d need Most of us were new to epigenetics and the plan was to investigate as many possible facets of gene triggering as possible, which would be interesting in itself, but would also let us see a way into what Dorothy and I really wanted to work on.’

‘Paul and Carrie’s findings?’

Jane nodded.

‘How did it work out?’

‘Everything was fine in the beginning. Owen was a nice guy and taught us a lot. In exchange, Dorothy agreed to him pursuing his own line of research with psychotic criminals, which he was pretty far along the road with. Everyone was happy.’

‘But then Owen changed?’

‘He became very secretive and seemed to imagine people were conspiring against him. I’m assuming it was some kind of mental breakdown, poor guy.’

Steven nodded.