(2013) Looks Could Kill (28 page)

November 2005, one week later

Emma had brought forward her annual job planning meeting with the Medical Director, Dr Michael Martin. She caught him surreptitiously puffing on his pipe out of the window as she entered his office.

“How come the smoke detector didn’t go off?” she asked.

“I removed the batteries,” he replied. He left the pipe on the window sill, closed the window, and leant back in his chair. “Well, Emma, it’s been hard to find a TV channel that’s not been proclaiming your virtues. I suppose it’ll be breakfast TV next.”

“They asked, but I declined talking about butterflies on the red sofa. They tried interviewing Pablo, though, but didn’t get very far. It’s a good thing they didn’t bring cats and dogs into the studio as the person trying to interview him could have got torn to shreds.”

“They bought the story about him going looking for furry friends, then?”

“Hook, line and sinker, it would seem. No-one seems to have spoken to anyone who was actually at the zoo.”

“Have you seen the helicopter video?”

“Yes. Rather surreal I thought. It would have been hard to explain the resolution of the standoff if the butterflies hadn’t descended into the enclosure.”

“Was that you as well?”

“Probably; butterflies respond to UV light and they must have been attracted to my eyes.”

“It’s all a bit above me, you know.”

“Me too, but I guess I’ve got to live with it.”

“So, you’re here to ask for a sabbatical?”

“That’s the idea although I’m not sure where it’ll take me.”

“To far and distant lands, if MI5 have their way, I’d imagine.”

“Not if Daniela has a say in the matter.”

“We’ll miss you. You’re a damn fine doctor.”

“Thanks, Michael. That means a lot to me.”

“Your office will be ready and waiting for your return. By the way, I don’t suppose you can resurrect frozen gerbils. My kids simply won’t accept replacements.”

“Not at the moment, but I could always add that to my personal development plan for next year.”

Michael laughed. “Well, goodbye for now, Emma. And very best of luck.”

Michael saw Emma to the door. He opened the window and relit his pipe. He pondered on their conversation. Emma was a fine doctor but she was naïve. And like good soldiers turning rogue that could also happen to doctors. He knew Fred Bannister from the Territorial Army and trusted him, but he wasn’t so sure about his bosses in MI5. Emma had a gift and MI5 would milk it for all its worth. He’d need to keep a close watch on her, sabbatical or not.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I’d like to thank my husband Henry Andrews for all his support during the gestation of this novel. He and my sister Vivien Hunot read the first draft and somehow made enough encouraging noises to keep me going through subsequent revisions. I’m also grateful for the professional opinion and advice given by Max Pemberton and Celia Hayley which helped greatly in sorting out the novel’s rather meandering construction and in separating the wheat from the chaff. Nisha Shah made helpful comments about child development and medical matters, but I take responsibility for any medical errors in the text.

The science in the novel is sometimes real and sometimes hovers tantalisingly close to reality. Functional MRI has advanced dramatically since 2005 and mapping the perception of pain is an important research area with definite clinical applications. Functional MRI has even entered the domain of companies offering supposedly fool-proof lie detection, and in fact the US Department of Defense partially funded the research behind the technique.

Neurobiofeedback has been used for the treatment of a wide variety of disorders, including chronic pain, and a variety of neurobiofeedback systems are available for use in the home, including ones based on the PlayStation or Xbox.

Our understanding of the brain is still in its infancy and many believe that there are untapped abilities just waiting in the wings to emerge. The notion of psi energy produced as part of a primitive fight or flight response was the subject of an unsuccessful research grant application I made in the late 1970s. Parapsychology - remote viewing, in particular - was actively researched by the US Department of Defense from World War II until the 1970s. Conspiracy theorists believe that MI5 is using parapsychology on a daily basis to subjugate the entire UK population.

The evil eye has been the subject of extensive folklore, but butterflies don’t usually figure in written accounts of it. There’s an excellent account of the evil eye in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_eye. The droch-sh
ù
il remains a potent belief in the Scottish Highlands, although clan Armstrong doesn’t have a monopoly on the legend.

Butterflies, like most insects, respond to ultraviolet light and they have been known to group around humans or animals, including gorillas. They are probably also attracted to certain animal pheromones, such as that in female Indian elephant urine.

Professor Xavier in the ‘X-Men: First Class’ movie refers to heterochromia as “a very groovy mutation”. Whilst it can be caused by a mutation, heterochromia iridis is usually an entirely benign, autosomal dominant condition that’s found infrequently in humans and frequently in other species.

A genetic unit, derived from the firefly, which can be inserted into other life forms to spark bioluminescence, has been developed at the University of Cambridge, but it’s been limited to lighting up E. coli bacteria and tobacco plants so far. A gene from jellyfish has also been inserted into mice embryos to create mice that glow green under fluorescent light. But Mr Armstrong Senior probably wouldn’t be interested in that.
 

Biography

David Ellis worked in the NHS for 25 years and was a consultant liaison psychiatrist for 17 years. He was an undergraduate at St Peter’s College, Oxford in the 1970s and then a research scholar at Worcester College. His first foray into print was when writing on music technology to supplement his medical school grant. He has written books on medical computing and using computers to make music. He co-authored a book and software package to teach anatomy to medical students. He lives in North London with his husband and two cats. He doesn’t eat meat and goes to the gym daily. This is his first novel.