‘We never had that problem,’ said Lucy with the faintest tinge of wistfulness in her voice.
‘Well, if you think of anything let me know,’ said Steven getting up to go.
Lucy’s expression froze, causing Steven to ask, ‘Are you okay?’
‘I er... don’t have your number... I mean I don’t have your card any more...’
Steven closed his eyes for a moment as the awfulness came back. ‘God, I’m sorry,’ he said, leaving one on the bedside table.
‘Like I said,’ said Lucy, ‘it wasn’t your fault.’
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.’