George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt (27 page)

‘This is crazy,’ she said. ‘It’s late, you’ve had a fair deal to drink and —’

‘Not that much.’

‘— and shouldn’t be driving at all, let alone on your own,’ she finished. ‘So, please will you —’

‘That’s punter’s law, not policeman’s,’ he said, still sitting there. ‘Do you want me to stay or not?’

‘If you —’

‘Yes or no?’

‘Damn you, yes,’ she snapped after a pause.

‘OK. So invite me.’

‘Gus, I’m too tired for this crap. Come to bed, for God’s sake, and shut up.’

‘That’ll do,’ he said in satisfaction. He got out of the car. ‘I just needed to hear it from your lips. I’d love to go to bed with you, George, as long as it’s really me you want and not that Hungarian big mouth.’

‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Light dawns. This is another attack of the old machismo, is that it? For the last time, Gus. I am not even remotely interested in that man.’

‘You’re such a liar. You think he’s good looking, you think he’s interesting and you probably think he’s got a sexy bottom. I know you. You like sexy bottoms on men.’

‘Sure I do. The same way you like looking at girls in skirts that are shorter than curtain pelmets, so shut up and come to bed. This is a lot of nonsense. I can admire a man without wanting to go any further, for God’s sake. That’s how it is — was — with Zack Zacharius. Now, come on. It’s past one in the morning and I’m bushed.’

They slept till gone eleven the next morning and she woke to the smell of toast and coffee. She stretched luxuriously as she lay there listening to him pottering in the kitchen, and remembering. It had been well past three when they had finally fallen asleep; she had thought herself far too weary for more than a goodnight kiss, and had been taken aback by the way he had taken hold of her and pulled her close. That his need was urgent was indisputable, and her first reaction was no, not tonight. Too tired. But then another thought had taken its
place. He’s trying to prove something. That conversation about being invited to stay wasn’t just the half-bantering nonsense I’d assumed. He really isn’t sure. He needs to make certain that I’m telling him the truth about Zack. It was so chilling an idea that for a brief moment it threatened to douse the faint spark glowing deep inside her. But he had taken her hand and clasped it to his penis and that had been enough to set the spark into a positive firework display. From then on there had been no thinking at all. Just fireworks. Lovely.

He brought a tray and climbed back into bed, balancing it precariously on one upturned hand. She took it from him, just in time to prevent the bed being soused in coffee and they settled to an amiable breakfast, filling the bed with croissant flakes but not minding them too much.

‘Sunday,’ Gus muttered as at last they finished and he set the tray on the floor beside the bed, nearly falling out himself in the process. ‘I love it. Let’s stay here all day.’ And he tried to nestle closer.

‘It’s a tempting thought,’ she said. ‘But —’

‘No buts,’ he said sleepily. ‘Just stay where you are and leave it all to me. I’ll change your mind for you. Just like I did last night.’

‘It was as much my idea as yours,’ she began, but he laughed.

‘Like hell it was. You just wanted to go to sleep. But I convinced you, hmm? I can again. Unless you’d rather be somewhere else, of course.’

‘You know I wouldn’t. I just feel so …’

‘Immoral?’

‘Something like that. Lazy and squalid and —’

‘Mmm. Lovely.’

‘Make a deal. Get up this afternoon, OK? Do some work on this case.’

‘Work?’

‘Like decide what investigations you’re going to make — you said you were going to look into the backgrounds of the
Mendez and Lamark and Frean cases, remember? — and what I can do at this end to find out more. Let’s pool our ideas to see what might be going on with those deaths as well as the three attempts on Sheila.’

‘We can do all that much later this afternoon,’ he said. ‘After it’s dark.’

‘No. Say about three.’

‘Six, and you’ve got yourself your deal,’ he muttered, pushing his face into her throat. ‘Get up in time to go out and get some supper, do a bit of work after that.’ He was stroking her belly with one hand as he breathed warmly on her throat and it was, she decided, more than female flesh could bear.

‘All right then,’ she said. ‘Make it five, but no later. Oh, Gus, damn you …’

The phone woke her this time. She lay blinking into the brightness of the afternoon sun as it poured itself across the bed and tried muzzily to work out what day it was and why it was so bright. I’ve slept too long, she thought vaguely, and peered at her clock. Four-thirty? Why was it so light so early in the morning? And then she realized, shook her head to clear it and grabbed for the phone, as Gus stirred and mumbled beside her.

‘Hello, George? Did I disturb you? Were you out in your garden or something?’

‘I don’t have a garden,’ she said stupidly, shaking her head again to clear the sleep mists.

‘You’ll have to invite me to your place sometime so that I can see for myself,’ he said. ‘That was a good party last night, wasn’t it?’

‘Um, yes, I’m glad you enjoyed it too.’

‘It was great Great.’

‘Did Mike Klein enjoy it?’ Her voice sharpened a little as she became more alert. Beside her Gus turned over and pushed his head under the pillow to seek more silence.

‘I don’t know. Should I?’

‘You brought him,’ she said. ‘So I imagined you were close friends and you would have talked to him about it.’

‘Oh, we’re not that close!’ Zack’s voice was reproving. ‘He’s a bit of a dull stick, to tell the truth. I only took him along because he asked me to.’

‘He asked you?’

‘Mmm. Said he hardly knew anyone and would my friends mind if he tagged along, and I said, well we can only ask. Don’t tell me I’ve broken the rules of British behaviour again! We always take people along to each other’s parties in Toronto.’

‘Dinner parties are different,’ she said. ‘Anyway —’

‘Anyway, I didn’t call you to talk about Mike Klein.’ He sounded cheerful suddenly. ‘Listen, George, I’ve been going over my presentation, and with your new input I have to tell you I’ve made it a hell of a lot better. I have one last favour to ask you.’

‘A favour?’

Gus’s pillow moved, rose and then disappeared down the side of the bed as he sat up and rested his head against the board behind them, staring at her with his brows raised.

‘What sort of favour, Zack?’ she said, lifting her brows in return very deliberately so that Gus would feel included in the conversation. And after a moment she leaned towards him, tilting the earpiece so that he could hear Zack’s voice too.

‘I want to show you my star patient. The one I thought I’d show the funders when they come. See what you think and help me prepare him, huh? George, will you?’

She looked at Gus and he nodded. ‘Well, yes, I suppose so.’ she said. ‘When? Where?’

‘Tomorrow night. In the ward again? Just like last week.’ He sounded eager. ‘I’d really be grateful, George. I’m heartset on getting this funding, and I truly believe you can help me do it. Will you come tomorrow?’

Again Gus nodded at her and she sighed softly. ‘Sure, Zack.
Around seven-thirty, then? I’ll see you over on Laburnum Ward. Unless you can find somewhere less depressing.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. I’ll see you on Laburnum tomorrow. Goodbye, Zack.’ And she hung up the phone.

Gus wriggled down in bed again and sighed. ‘Another half-hour till we said we’ll get up,’ he said. ‘Come on down, doll.’

But she shook her head and slid out of bed. The fireworks had quite gone now, and she had other things to think about.

Laburnum Ward seemed a little less depressing this time. There were more nurses on duty and a number of visitors, which gave the place some buzz, and George relaxed her shoulders as she came in through the big double doors, aware for the first time of how tense she had been. Zack was at the nurses’ station with a pile of notes in front of him and he jumped to his feet as she came down the wide corridor towards him.

‘George! You
are
punctual. Thanks so much for coming. You’ve even beaten my patient to it. I told him to be here at seven-thirty’ — he glanced at his watch — ‘so he’s got a few minutes before he’s late. Come and sit down.’ He fussed with chairs as she came round to the working side of the station and accepted a seat.

‘I have his notes here,’ Zack said, pulling out a folder and setting it in front of her. ‘Do read them and get yourself filled in, huh? Then you’ll see why I’m so pleased with him. I can show you a video too. You know, before and after? I’ll go and see if I can find him meanwhile, hurry him along.’

‘That’ll be useful,’ she said and obediently bent her head to read the notes. The sooner she got her brain round all this stuff, the sooner she could get away. She was still uncomfortable with him, still had the nagging notion that he was deceiving her in some way and was still aware of Gus’s lingering
resentment of her contacts with the man, even though he encouraged them for the purpose of investigation. She didn’t like the way all that made her feel, but it had to be tolerated till everything was sorted out. Dammit all to hell and back, she thought with sudden anger, but she knew that was pointless. She concentrated on the notes.

José Christophe Esposito, she read. Aged forty-two. Occupation waiter/barman. Address … All the usual basic facts that started off everyone’s medical notes were there. Then came the history.

It seemed that Josey, as he was known to everyone (the diminutive was even used in the medical history), had had an uneventful healthy life up to the autumn of 1994. In September of that year he had been referred by his GP to the neurological department of Old East with a history of tremor and rapidly developing paralysis. The GP had suspected a rapid-onset Parkinson’s disease, pointing out that the first symptoms had appeared shortly after Josey had been involved in heavy physical activity (he had swum two miles on a sponsored charity event at the local leisure centre). The diagnosis had been borne out by Zack’s opinion. George skimmed through the accounts of the examination and the tests Zack had carried out, and moved on to read about Josey’s progress.

It had been a terrible experience for him. Given L-Dopa to relieve the paralysis, he had developed the uncontrollable writhing movements that could be a distressing side-effect of the therapy and had had to come off it, only to be very miserable because of the return of the paralysis, and indeed an extension of it. He had, in fact, needed a respirator on occasion because of his breathing difficulties.

By Christmas of ’94 Josey had been a very unhappy man, and, Zack wrote, had agreed readily to be admitted to a research programme. George looked at the consent form Josey had signed, which made it clear that he understood the risks as well as the possible benefits of taking part. The signature was little more than a spidery cross, duly witnessed by one of
Laburnum’s staff nurses. Clearly, he had been too far gone even to sign his name properly. A very sick man.

George turned the page to the account of the treatment he had had as part of the research. Fetal brain tissue had been used (Zack had noted meticulously that he had obtained it from the obstetric department, from a miscarried pregnancy, with the full consent of the mother) and a preparation of the nigral neurones obtained from the relevant section of infant brain had been implanted into the area of putamen controlling motor activity, but not the caudate nucleus. This, Zack noted in his rather sprawling handwriting, was not the same as previous attempts at such therapy in that it used a different sort of tissue preparation, one devised by himself.

Anyway, she read on, it hadn’t worked (and here Zack made a cross-reference to another of his patients, Miss Greenwich, for whom it had been efficacious), clearly to Zack’s chagrin. Since Josey hadn’t responded Zack had tried again with a different idea. This time he had used a preparation of fetal brain that included oligodendrocytes, together with a proportion of macrophage-generating tissue to scavenge for any antibodies that might lead to an immune response that would block the potential benefits of the oligodendrocyte implant. Zack had prepared both as intravenous injections rather than as a brain implant.

George lifted her head and stared, unfocused, into the middle distance. It read very far-fetched but it made a sort of sense that could be the basis of a real breakthrough. If Zack was putting back into the body of a man who was suffering from a disease that stripped his nerves of their vital covering a material that could replace that covering, while at the same time giving him additional cover with an injection that would prevent his own body’s immune system turning on the much-needed replacement cells — well, he truly would have done something very remarkable. Especially since it involved simply intravenous injections and not brain surgery.

She could see, hazily, the commercial development of a
pair of injections, given into the blood’ system rather than deep into the brain like the Parkinson’s treatment, and better still, that could be used for diseases other than Parkinson’s. Everything that was caused by loss of the nerve covering myelin. Motor-neurone disease, maybe. Ataxias of various forms. Alzheimer’s …

Inevitably, she thought of her mother and gave a little shiver. Could this treatment be of use to Vanny? The idea sent a surge of excitement through her and with some sternness she flattened it. That was the reaction of an uninformed lay person, not a doctor. She should know better than to expect miracle cures. And yet, what she had read in Josey Esposito’s notes had been so exciting and seemed to offer so much. But I must be scientific, she thought, bending her head to the notes again. Find out what happened, examine the patient, and see if the work can be replicated with other patients. One success means nothing; it could be a fluke.

But that in Josey’s case there had been a success was undoubted. She read the account of Zack’s examinations of him over the ensuing months up to the present. Of the way he had steadily and slowly improved, losing the paralysis, regaining control of his bladder and bowels (which had encouraged him hugely and, according to Zack, had led to a lifting of mood which was very marked), until in late May he had been fit to return to work on a part-time basis.