Lethal Factor Read online

  I could see Jeremiah in the distance, bending over a pitchfork, and I walked over to him. He was working in a huge compost enclosure, forking and turning the rotting material, his muscular arms bare despite the chilling wind. I caught the whiff of him as I came over, the acrid, goatish acetones of a man who drank too much. I knew that smell well because once, a long time ago, I’d reeked of it myself, despite gallons of breath freshener.

  Jeremiah stopped working and leaned on his pitchfork as I greeted him, a bucolic portrait of the gardener interrupted. I looked over his work. This was serious composting, with the three square ditches for before, during and after results. It would have made a lovely composition, I couldn’t help but notice, with the ordered vegetable beds running behind him and the twisted bare vines hanging over the shed in the background.

  ‘How long have you worked here, Jeremiah?’ I asked.

  He wiped his hand across his forehead, replacing the leather hat lower on his head.

  ‘About ten years, on and off. They came and took me work boots,’ he complained. ‘Bloody coppers. Why would they do that for?’ He looked down at the new-looking sneakers he was now wearing. ‘A man can’t work in these bloody things.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ I asked.

  He pointed to a little cabin at the back of the property. He must have seen my look of surprise, because he said, ‘It’s all I need. Single man like myself.’

  I nodded and walked over towards the little dwelling, aware of his eyes following me. The cabin was approximately the same size as my father’s garage, with one door and window along the eastern side and another window opposite. I walked round the back and peered inside. No curtains and the glass was dusty and cobwebby. But I could see that every surface was covered with curling, fly-specked pin-ups. Blondes with huge breasts offered themselves to the observer; brunettes coyly beckoned around their curves; a redhead in tight white shorts bent over to smile in a rather strained manner through her legs. These were images from the past, old-fashioned, even innocent. There was an unmade bed, a sink and a table with some chairs.

  Charlie had once joked that I’d end up something like this, living in a shed like our father. It was a sobering thought. At least, I hoped I’d make the bed. On a wooden box that served as a bedside table, I could see a framed photograph of a heavily made-up woman, slightly taller than Jeremiah, standing beside him with her arm around his waist. Her tallness, the size of the hairdo and the curling black eyeliner put me in mind of a drag queen. They appeared to be at a club; I could see the outlines of poker machines stretching away in the background.

  Maybe Jeremiah had had a more interesting life than the usual convent gardener.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Jeremiah,’ I said. ‘What do you think I should be looking for?’

  He shook his head. ‘You should be looking for the bloke who frightened Sister Gertrude on Good Friday.’

  I was all ears. ‘What bloke?’

  ‘Don’t you coppers talk to each other? I told all this to them already.’

  This made me very angry indeed. I often have reason to be extremely pissed off at the inefficiency of my colleagues, but this was a murder investigation, and the failure to pass on this sort of intelligence to me was inexcusable. Jeremiah rubbed a hand across his sweaty forehead again, streaking his temple with dirt.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said.

  ‘It was Good Friday,’ he said. ‘I remember because she ran back into the chapel. She was late for the afternoon service.’

  The miraculous crucifix was bleeding, I thought, and Gertrude was running late.

  ‘He was a big, ugly-looking man,’ Jeremiah recited. ‘Fair hair, solid build, big yellow beard. I turned round when I heard their voices and saw her running away from him. He took off after her but when he saw me looking at him, he cleared off.’

  ‘Which police officers did you talk to?’ I was feeling distinctly left out of the picture.

  Jeremiah rubbed the brim of his hat. ‘How would I know? They were just cops. They’re all the same to me. They just mean trouble.’ He flipped his hat back on his head. ‘You should be talking to them. Not me. They shoulda told you all this.’

  I stuffed my notebook away, wanting heads to roll.

  ‘Hey?’ he called after me as I turned the corner of the building, hurrying round to the front portico. ‘When will they give me boots back?’

  I made some sort of noncommittal noise and continued, going up the few steps, knocking on the large doors. Ethelberta opened up. ‘Sister,’ I said. ‘Did the police come out here on Good Friday?’

  She frowned. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘They did. I put them in the parlour and they spoke to Sister Gertrude. Why?’

  ‘And what did they want with her?’

  Ethelberta shook her head. ‘I really can’t say,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t my business.’ A bell rang behind her and she started to close the door. ‘My job is to let people in and let people out.’

  I found a large bag to seal up Father Oswald’s miraculous crucifix on the back seat, set off and took the Rockwell road. I found the little village, a small fast food shop, a petrol bowser and a pub with a scattering of houses that soon petered out as I left the township. I bought a milkshake at the shop and, following the directions the woman there gave me, I found myself bumping over a dirt road off the highway signposted ‘Holy Cross Hermitage’. I bumped along for several hundred yards till I came to a dusty clearing with a small stone chapel, not much bigger than my garage, and surmounted by a stone cross.

  I got out of the car and looked around. It seemed deserted and in a paddock at the back of the chapel, where I’d found some stairs leading to a locked back door, a few cattle nosed the long dry feed. I saw a butcher bird carolling in his smart suit and another smaller bird, possibly a thornbill, alarming in a high-pitched note. I walked back to the front again, but the wooden double doors were locked. It was useless trying to peer through the windows. There was dust on the outside I could rub away, but there was nothing I could do about the layer inside the glass. I scribbled ‘please ring’ on my card and shoved it under the doors. Then I went back to my car.

  I turned in off the highway down the short dirt road that led to the Worthingtons’ bumpy driveway, trying to control my anger with the nuns and the local coppers and turn my attention to the man I was about to visit. Hidden behind almond and walnut trees well back from the road was the pretty house on the hobby farm that had been Digby and Livvy’s pride and joy. I wondered if Digby would keep it up or sell it, but then I remembered the impressive poultry breeding shed he’d built, with its antiseptic entrance tray and bran and mash processors, his malting shed for his home-brew not to mention the colonies of Myrmecia pilosula in their floor-to-ceiling glass housing. It would be hard for him to leave all those interests. Digby’s research was why he got up in the mornings, I knew, but he’d always done it in tandem with Livvy, and I wondered now how he’d manage without his partner. The late Mrs Worthington had never really been my cup of tea, with her secrecy about her work and her perfectionism, qualities that were very irritating in a social context, yet essential for an outstanding researcher. I remembered my own days as half of a couple with its mindless routine, brutish domesticity and the odd rare flash of liveliness.

  I parked and got out, shivering in the cold air. The weather had turned extremely nasty, gunmetal clouds lowering overhead, a drop in temperature and a bleak wind from the south-west that cut to the marrow. I wrapped my coat tighter round me but the front door opened before I had time to knock.

  I was shocked at how dreadful Digby looked with his grey face and red-rimmed eyes—worse even than he’d appeared in the hospital foyer. He ushered me in wordlessly and I followed him over to the fireplace where a good blaze warmed the room. The place still stank of concentrated bleach. ‘What
have you done to your hand?’ I asked, noticing three fiery red blisters on the top of his right hand.

  ‘Jumping ants,’ he said. ‘Once they clamp on, they just keep stinging.’ He barely glanced down. ‘I hadn’t really noticed them.’

  Above the fireplace, Livvy sat in a portrait dated in the bottom right-hand corner sometime in the 1970s, a pretty young woman with dark hair and folded hands. The artist had failed to capture the high-beam intelligence of her eyes, but in other aspects it was a good likeness. Framed stills from their various thespian triumphs lined the mantelpiece with Livvy’s dried herb arrangements scenting the air of the cosy room. Digby looked dazed . . . He’s about ten years older than me, in his late fifties, a slightly stooped, underweight man, with a smooth face, a lot of forehead and very little hair. Classic ‘egg-head’ body structure, Charlie once said. Digby stared off into space and I almost felt I was alone in the room. He remained standing motionless, staring sightlessly at something or someone that I couldn’t see. My childhood experience and then years in major crime squads had given me familiarity with death; I was used to the expression of raw, deep grief in the families and friends who surround every homicide. To me, death is as much a part of life as sex or breakfast and I have to remind myself that not everyone has my familiarity with it.

  ‘Let me get you a drink,’ I offered. I knew my way round the house reasonably well from the times I’d driven Jacinta over for the horses and then picked her up later. I went out to the refrigerator on the back verandah, coming back with one of Digby’s bottles of home-brew. ‘Give me a scotch as well,’ he said.

  I poured him the sort of measure I’d have once made for myself and handed it to him. He knocked it back and I took his glass and refilled it.

  ‘It’s probably not a good idea to have too much of this,’ I said, passing him the second one. As I did, I couldn’t help noticing the scribbled title on a folder on top of a pile on the desk near the fire—‘MAP kinase kinase’—the name of a signalling protein in human cells. I knew Digby was a driven and devoted researcher, but surely he hadn’t been working at a time like this? Although, this might be his way of coping, burying his feelings in work. In an effort to pin down a spinning world, I’d noticed how grief-stricken people often fasten onto the strangest things. I remembered the new widow at my uncle’s funeral creating a huge fuss, holding proceedings up because she couldn’t find his regimental flag to drape over the coffin. Then I recalled that searching for sites for cell-snipping proteases, such as MAP kinase kinase, was Livvy’s field. That would be typical of her, I thought, as I noticed her handwriting on some of the printed pages spilling out of the folder, working right up to the last.

  ‘Lennie Lowenstein’s on his way,’ said Digby. Noticing my glance, he tucked the papers back into the folder. ‘How can I possibly host his visit? I can hardly put one foot in front of the other.’ His movements were slow and painful, like those of a much older man.

  ‘Don’t worry about that sort of thing,’ I said. ‘We can look after him.’

  I don’t think he heard me.

  ‘I’ve been trying to work out how she could possibly have become infected,’ he said, holding his glass. ‘The only places she’s been are the flat in town and out here. I’ve been at both places. She hasn’t been anywhere different from me. Yet somehow,’ he said, ‘she was exposed to a huge dose of spores and I wasn’t. I can’t see how that’s possible.’

  He stood frowning at the drink in his hand, lost in his attempt to impose logic onto fate. Then he looked up at me but his eyes stared straight through me. ‘By the time the diagnosis became clear, it was too late. It was all through every system.’

  That’s the story with anthrax toxicity. Even with massive doses of antibiotics and with every active bacteria dead as a doornail, the collective effect of the lethal proteins created by the organisms in the body’s cells is fatal.

  ‘One moment she was here, then she just died,’ he said. ‘They did the chest X-rays and I could see the mediastinum was enlarged. By then, it was too late.’

  I poured myself a mineral water and let it stand. Digby stared at the portrait of his dead wife on the wall.

  ‘Livvy was an outstanding person,’ I said. ‘And a terrific scientist. It is a great loss to the whole community and of course the most dreadful blow for you.’

  He turned from the portrait and looked up at me from over the top of his glasses. ‘She was better than me,’ he said. ‘No one will ever know how much better.’ I saw the ghost of a smile. It vanished. ‘If she’d been in better health,’ he said, ‘she might have pulled through this.’ There was a silence.

  ‘This is the third BA case now, Digby,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a crisis happening.’ I wanted to talk it over with him, why the killer had used spores instead of an easier method, but this wasn’t the time or place.

  Again, I don’t think he even heard me. He tottered over to the desk, and sank down in the armchair, stroking Livvy’s folder with its arcane title, his face expressionless and somehow looking even smoother than it ever had. But he was restless and couldn’t stay in one place very long. ‘I thought it was just that bad flu,’ he said, getting up again and walking over to the fire. He kicked a log and an explosion of sparks flew upwards. ‘I thought it was just an acute respiratory infection. Phil Havelock thought the same thing.’ Behind him, the walls were lined with bookshelves full of volumes, mostly scientific.

  Outside, the wind lifted and moaned around the corners of the log cabin and a nearby crow cawed to its mate.

  ‘If only I’d thought of BA earlier. I should have. With the Bonning case and everything.’ Digby kicked the log again. ‘No wonder her inhaler didn’t give her any relief.’ He turned to me, appealing, ‘But everyone’s had that flu, Jack. It was the sort of mistake anyone could make.’

  ‘Of course it was,’ I said. ‘Anthrax was the last diagnosis anyone would think about.’ I recalled what I’d read earlier on my crash course in BA. The symptoms of the inhalational form of BA—sore throat, headache, sore chest—were all flu-like. But all the while, the silent explosive invasion of the airways, the oedematous swellings of the area around the lungs and the lymph glands growing more toxic with every minute.

  ‘So when she suddenly got worse,’ he continued, ‘I was worried about pneumonia—or meningococcal disease, not bloody anthrax.’ His voice trembled on the last word. ‘Even when she complained about the pain in her chest and lungs, I was still thinking pneumonia. Or pleurisy. She’s had them both before. But this wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. I should have twigged earlier.’

  You can’t blame yourself, I thought, but it sounded too trite to say and I didn’t. He slowly returned to the floral armchairs. Again, the glassy eyes over the horn-rims. ‘And all the time it was lethal factor and oedema factor kicking in.’ His tortured eyes again sought mine. ‘How did this happen?’

  I thought of the double-bagged tissue samples at the hospital and the great care taken with Level-three pathogens: the rigid safety protocols in place in labs and at the hospital, one-way doors, rushing air-locks, constant sterilising. The care I’d taken when handling the bacteria was standard operating procedure. Accidental exposure was out of the question. Besides, BA is not contagious person to person. ‘I have no idea,’ I said.

  Slowly, Digby walked over to the piles of folders on the desk and started putting them into a bright red and orange sports bag. He seemed to become aware of my presence again, and put the bag near the door. Then he stood leaning over the table, head bowed, the ant bites fiery red against the tight skin on the backs of his supporting hands. ‘How the hell did Livvy get this damned thing?’ he whispered.

  I took a deep breath. Here was my chance. He’d opened the door himself. ‘Digby,’ I said, relieved that he’d led me to what otherwise might have seemed insensitive behaviour at such a time, ‘this might sound a strange question
, but did Livvy get anything in the post? Any sort of surprise gift? Anything unexpected?’ I thought of the chocolate heart. ‘Chocolate, for instance?’

  Digby glared at me as if I had gone mad.

  ‘Here I am,’ he burst out, ‘with my wife of thirty years lying dead in the hospital morgue and you’re asking me about chocolates?’ He pushed himself away from the table and his voice boomed. It was the first sign of life I’d seen from him.

  ‘Hear me out,’ I said. ‘Tony Bonning was sent a gift through the mail. Chocolate. I found spores of Bacillus anthracis all over the red foil the chocolate was wrapped in. He was dead three days later.’

  ‘Spores?’ Digby whispered. It was hard to gauge his expression. ‘You found BA spores?’

  I nodded.

  I saw comprehension dawn as his eyes widened. ‘Someone’s sending anthrax through the mail?’ he whispered. ‘You’re asking me if we got anything in the mail?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That I jumped down your neck.’

  I shrugged to show him I hadn’t taken offence. He thought a moment and shook his head. I waited. I could see him thinking hard, trying to remember.

  ‘Just think back,’ I said. ‘Anything unusual.’

  He slowly shook his head. ‘Nothing. Nothing I can think of.’ He looked around the room like someone in a dream and I wondered if he was feeling that everything had changed and that even these familiar, ordinary furnishings could now be hiding a vicious enemy. ‘The only thing that’s come through the mail apart from the usual bills was the bottle of aftershave my sister in Perth sent me for my birthday.’

  Unless his sister was a homicidal maniac, I thought, that was probably not the source. ‘Anything else?’ I persisted. Again, he shook his head. My mind was running with possibilities, some discounted straight away, some filed for later sorting.

  ‘But,’ he said. ‘Livvy died of the inhalational form of the disease, not through eating chocolates like Tony Bonning.’