That following Sunday afternoon, Anna strolled up to him at their prearranged
rendezvous, leant her bicycle against the table, and enquired about his search.
“Nothing,” said James.
“Disappointed?” Anna asked.
“No, not at all. I never expected to find
anything there. But we should tick off everything on Cam’s list. I was going
down that way anyway. Is this OK?” he asked, noting her lycra attire and waving
vaguely in reference to the outdoor table he had chosen in preference to the
seating inside.
“I’m still hot from the ride,” she assured
him. “It’ll do fine. Daylight saving only finished a few weeks ago, but I’m
already tired of finishing work after dark and flitting home as quickly as
possible. It’s good to be in the open air.”
They might be in the open air, James thought,
but they were hardly immersed in raw nature. True, the ambience was dominated
by the spectacle of distant trees more than by the faint sound of even more
distant traffic, but the immediate view was distinctly artificial. He glanced at
the AstroTurf and patched asphalt directly in front of the café. Slightly
further on, visible in the middle distance through the open gates in the high
brick wall surrounding the old convent, was a large carpark. Anna might soon revise
her seating preferences when the shadow of the massive convent building deprived
them of what little sun was slanting fitfully through the late autumn clouds.
Still, no doubt she’d had some degree of relief from urban tedium during her
ride along the bike path beside the river. James, enjoying the two-day
interlude in his own schedule of deadlines, sympathised with her wish to
escape. No doubt she and Daniel needed a break from the hard slog of wrestling their
paper into a suitable condition to run the gauntlet of peer review. Which
reminded him …
“Where’s Daniel?” he asked as she returned
from the serving area carrying a drink. Anna didn’t exactly sigh before
replying, but when she did speak her tone was distinctly flat.
“He said he wanted to do a bit more work on
the part of our paper dealing with fourth dimensional vector analysis,” she
replied. “He promised he’ll be here by four.”
James wasn’t sure how to respond, but he
didn’t need to as Anna continued, becoming more animated as she went on.
“I know the paper’s important,” she explained
with exasperation, “and I know we need to get something published soon or our research
output will start looking substandard, but I think he’s getting obsessive about
it. Apart from anything else, I think he’s getting stale. I really think it
would be more efficient in the long run if he took a break from it now. Can you
say something to him?”
James stared back at her in surprise, and
then grinned.
“Yes, you’re right,” she said wearily, “it’s
sure to be useless, but if you can think of any way to give him some sense of
proportion about things, give it a try, will you?”
James nodded. He assumed that Anna would be
glad to leave the topic, and it didn’t make sense to start talking about Cam’s
problem until Daniel arrived, so he reverted to the next most obvious subject
matter.
“How’s Tina?” he asked. “I thought she might
come along with you today,” he added.
There was a slight hesitancy about Anna’s
reply.
“Alex didn’t want to,” she said.
…. Daniel appeared.
“Sorry I’m a bit late,” he ventured.
“What?” he asked Anna in the time-honoured fashion
of the male member of a couple sensing some looming controversy.
“How did you get here,” asked Anna, in a tone
more interrogatory than conversational, her eyes fixed on Daniel’s casual
street clothes.
“I drove,” replied Daniel in a ‘so what’
tone, before almost instantly following up with, “Oh sorry, I forgot. When I
looked at the clock,” he hastily continued, “it was almost four, and the only
thing I thought about was that if I jumped in the car straightaway I’d be
almost on time. I completely forgot about cycling.” He looked apologetic,
clearly hoping to be forgiven for not being dressed and equipped to accompany
Anna on her return journey.
… Daniel, sensing that Anna was in
two minds about whether to launch into an exasperated tirade in front of James,
hurriedly changed the subject.
“I got an email from Cam,” he announced. “He’s
abandoned that isotope project …”
“What?” exclaimed James.
…..
James hoped what he was thinking wasn’t
motivated solely by cowardice, but he decided even if it were he had better say
it.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this. I mean if
there’s someone willing to do harm to Cam to stop his work shouldn’t we respect
his decision? Particularly with what he said about having no way of telling
whether it would stay at a not serious level. He didn’t go into detail but he
could mean serious violence, even something life threatening.”
Anna acknowledged the validity of his
argument.
“But you’d have to think that Derwent & Graham
would stop short of murder,” she said. “They don’t seem to have gone that far
yet, anyway. And even if they were ruthless enough to do it, I think that it
would be an absolute last resort.”
“Why?” asked James.
“If they don’t want Cam’s idea to become reality,
they won’t want any progress he’s made on it getting any publicity in case
other scientists or companies pick up on it. While Cam’s alive they can rely on
him and his colleagues to keep any good results secret. But if a man Cam’s age,
in good health, suddenly dies there’s sure to be a thorough enquiry. They’d
have to be worried that the truth would come out. And if it did, there’d be all
sorts of journalists and other busybodies desperate to find out what Cam had
been working on.
“Even if they find Cam hasn’t dropped it, I
think they’ll gradually escalate the pressure, hoping he does and that he’ll keep
his mouth shut before it gets to the stage of anything drastic happening.”
James was not entirely comforted by her
analysis. He could think of lots of things short of actual killing that he’d
prefer not to provoke.
“But you’re right, James,” Anna conceded.
“Even if I’m right – and I may be wrong – we can’t do it until we get Cam’s
permission. But till then we might as well check our calendars,” she reflected.
“We shouldn’t make it too soon. We might as well finish all the investigations
we can here before we go over.”
James nodded.
“But we can’t use email to get permission,
and I’d be hesitant to use the phone either. How will we tell Cam?” he asked.
What will I tell Alex? thought Tina guiltily.