Was it the anonymity? The secrecy? The fact they could hide it if anything went wrong?
Was it the caves?
Maybe that was it. Perhaps they were expecting trouble. Perhaps Jamie was a loose cannon.
She’d hugged Lizzie extra tight this morning and was more vigilant than normal on her journey to work. She checked her rear-view mirror and locked her doors and windows.
When she arrived at Eden House for the unusual Sunday morning brief, she looked up and down the street for anything suspicious.
The office was silent, and she expected to see nobody there, but everybody had beaten her to it. She found them sitting in their chairs, working seriously at their computers.
Wordlessly, they looked to her for strength and for her to decide their next move. It was unprecedented. They’d never been attacked as a team before. And Kelly had never felt so vulnerable and exposed.
She sat down at the head of the incident table and one by one, her colleagues took position around her. Kate sat down first. She looked tired and Kelly smelt cigarette smoke. Kate had started up again, and no wonder. Dan sat next to her and fiddled with his fingers. Emma pulled out a seat and Kelly had never seen the young woman appear so pensive. She was usually full of life and vibrancy. But now she had a new life to protect. It was an added worry.
Finally, Fin sat to her left and he had shadows around his eyes.
A quick check had revealed that Fin had stayed at a mate’s house last night so was absent from his usual address and Kate had been woken in the early hours by their new dog going nuts. Minor incidents took on new meaning and they peered at one another, waiting.
‘We have several choices,’ Kelly announced. ‘One, I go to Del Booker and tell him everything, and my guess is he’ll want to avoid the heat and I’ll be removed from the case. Two, we quietly drop the investigation and come up with some bullshit spuriouscausation and file it away. Three, we throw everything at it and nail these fuckers.’
Their shoulders lifted a little and then a lot. Kate smiled. Dan put his hand over Emma’s. Fin clapped.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m exhausted. I didn’t sleep. My father is recovering from a serious head wound which he is denying even exists. He’s also got a cast on his arm. An intruder came within twenty feet of my daughter’s bedroom. My faith is in us, here in this room. I’m not convinced this is a global intrigue that has invaded our beautiful space here in the Lakes, but if it is, and I’m open to persuasion, then I’m throwing everything behind chasing them out. I’m told what to do sometimes, I’m told what to eat, what to wear and how to speak. I’ve never been told what to think. And I don’t intend to start now. This investigation is open and we’re going to finish it, like we do all the others.’
She looked around the table and there was no dissent, just glances of admiration from her team. She wasn’t asking anyone to put themselves in danger. She was simply asking for hard work.
‘We work from here. The risk is mine. We’ll direct uniforms to gather the detritus, and our job is to find where this all leads. Nobody is to leave this office without explaining when and why.’
The atmosphere in the incident room transformed from unsure and cowed to upright and energised and she slapped the table.
‘Dan, I believe we have some lab results to share?’
Dan nodded. ‘Poor little Skippy the squirrel was poisoned for sure. He was overcome with a toxin that isn’t isolated on our databases, so I can’t give it a name, but nonetheless we have similarities with other chemicals and that means we can best guess the sample. It behaves like a neurotoxin, and I’ve been told it presents most like something called glutamate, which isan amino acid essential for normal life. It’s actually produced by the body and it’s vital for a healthy nervous system. However, in high doses, it’s lethal. The lab is working on it further.’
He looked around the room and was reassured that his colleagues were just about keeping up. ‘This sample was unique because of what it was attached to, a diuretic called hydroxy-11 and a testosterone compound known as androstene-3. The lab said they had never seen a real example of the compound under a microscope, though they had read about the existence of such drugs, mainly used for performance enhancement.’
‘Did they give you a name?’
Dan smiled. ‘They did. My old friend, N-14. During initial rounds of testing it destroyed the neurotransmitters of rats’ brains. The lab technician said she’d only read about it, she’d never seen it, neither had anyone she worked with. She was quite excited about it in a scientific nerdy kind of way.’
‘Holy shit. Do we have confirmation on the contents ofYouthBlast?’
‘I received a definitive yes from the lab in Dublin. The sachet contains the compound; it’s unequivocal. And I wonder if it’s linked to what happened to some of us last night. The lab made some inquiries outside the area to several other labs in London and the one in Dublin which specialises in metabolic disorders. These things get around, it’s a small world, and I wonder if their calls triggered a chain of information that got back to those wanting to keep its use hidden.’
Kelly googled the ingredients list again, sure now she hadn’t made a mistake. The asterisk and the reference had gone.
‘Do we know what links those labs have with parent companies and funders?’
‘Emma?’ Kelly asked.
Emma stood up and Dan squeezed her hand. She went to the front of the room and stood next to where Kelly wasseated and tapped the computer screen. The hush in the room demonstrated what everyone was thinking: that if they got their hands on the bastard who’d threatened Emma’s baby, they’d better run for the hills behind Penrith or get battered.
Information on several pharmaceuticals popped up on the large white screen and Emma sat back down so the others could absorb what they were reading.
‘These four companies are all owned by subsidiaries of Hampton-Dent,’ Emma said. ‘What’s that one?’ Kelly asked. ‘I recognise it.’
‘The Nirvana Project?’ Emma asked.
