Deadly Motive

Book 2: DS Jack Mackinnon Crime

by D.S. Butler

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; British Thrillers; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

A man is found poisoned by the deadly toxin aconite. A note found at the scene leads Detective Sergeant Jack Mackinnon to a University of Oxford laboratory, where staff and students are desperate to hide their association with the victim.

As Mackinnon gets closer to the truth, he finds his own family could be at risk.

Release date: January 16, 2014

Print pages: 432

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

 

 

TED SANDERS CREPT ALONG PARKS Road, keeping to the shadows. It was eleven pm and quiet, but he knew he needed to avoid the spying eyes of the surveillance cameras.

 

When he reached the junction, he stood still for a few moments and tried to slow his breathing. He needed to be calm tonight.

 

He lowered his bag onto the pavement, circled his shoulder to relieve the ache and felt the blood tingle back into his arm.

 

He looked towards the University of Oxford’s science area. Sandstone university buildings decorated with grimacing grotesques lined the road. The perfect image for a tourist postcard of Oxford.

 

But not for long.

 

Ted saw his target on the opposite side of the road and smiled. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt forward to hide his face. He had chosen the navy blue, hooded sweatshirt and black jeans so he could blend into the darkness.

 

A friend told him the university had installed an extra twenty security cameras when they started construction on the new animal house. Ted knew where they were.

 

He crouched down and snatched up the carrier bag. He needed to get on with it. Tonight, timing was everything.

 

Looking down, he saw a deep red stain on the pavement.

 

He felt a stab of fear.

 

Evidence.

 

He lifted the bag and scowled at the red liquid oozing from a hole in the plastic. Some spilt on his hand, and he rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. It felt sticky.

 

He saw red splashes on his trainers. He looked behind him to the path he had taken along Parks Road. He knew he had left a telltale trail. It didn’t matter. No one would notice it tonight in the dark.

 

A sharp cry carried over the night air and Ted stopped to listen.

 

Although the protest should have been over hours ago, chants from animal rights protesters echoed in the distance. That meant some of the protesters were hanging around on the outskirts of the science area, but they wouldn’t interfere. The university had an injunction that banned them getting too close to the science area.

 

They wouldn’t even see Ted tonight.

 

He turned right into South Parks Road and passed the Dyson Perrins Laboratory and the Inorganic Chemistry building on his left. The old buildings stood tall. Blue plaques on their walls detailed their history and listed the names of scientists who had worked there.

 

Tonight, he had no interest in these historic buildings. Tonight, he was heading to one of the newest buildings in the area.

 

The Chemistry Research Laboratory stood opposite the older science departments. It looked as if it had been constructed entirely of glass. The red brick Dyson Perrins Laboratory, on the opposite side of the road, reflected in its dark glass walls.

 

His friend, Alex, worked in the huge glass building and had kept Ted supplied with information. Some details were more useful than others. He told Ted about the high security involved when the Queen attended the official opening of the glass building last year.

 

Ted stared at the stark, cube-shaped building. He wondered what the Queen thought of it. According to Alex, the building had won an architectural award, but it was a perfect example of the type of architecture Prince Charles hated, which was almost enough to make Ted like it.

 

But all that had nothing to do with why he was here tonight.

 

Ted had chosen this building because it stood on the corner of Mansfield Road, directly opposite the construction site for the new animal house.

 

Hoarding and a high, spiked, steel fence surrounded the site. He would not be able to get anywhere near it. It would be stupid to even try; and even if he could, what would be the point? No one would be able to see his work through the barriers.

 

Security was tightly controlled at the site and the entrance opened only twice a day for the construction workers and trucks transporting the building materials. He had watched them for weeks, plotting and waiting for the perfect opportunity.

 

The construction workers turned up every morning, wearing balaclavas to hide their faces while they worked. They were ashamed of their involvement.

 

But not ashamed enough.

 

Alex assured him the chemistry department did not use animals in any of their laboratories, but Ted didn’t think that would weaken his message. It was still a university building, after all, and the side facing the new animal house had an expansive white wall. A blank canvas. Everyone who saw it would understand his message.

 

Ted crouched at the side of the building. He wanted to make sure no one could see him from inside.

 

The lights from one of the labs shone down over the courtyard. Someone was working late. The labs had motion-sensing lights that switched off automatically when the lab was empty. He felt a line of sweat travel down to the small of his back.

 

He hadn’t planned on this. The labs were supposed to be empty.

 

But the occupied lab was on the top floor, so it was unlikely they would see or hear him, and a security check usually took place at midnight, which meant he couldn’t wait.

 

He would have to take a chance and do it now.

 

Inside the Chemistry Research Laboratory, Ruby Wei walked into the lab’s write-up area, waving her arms wildly over her head to trigger the lights.

 

The motion-sensing lights were part of the new chemistry building’s eco-drive: if there was no one in the room, there was no need to waste electricity on lights. This worked fine during the day when lots of people were in the lab, but at night when it was quiet, the lights would turn off if you sat still for more than five minutes.

 

A split second after her manic arm-waving, the lights flickered back on. She pulled a chair up to her computer and logged into her email account. She was supposed to be writing up an experiment, while her cells were incubating, but she couldn’t concentrate.

 

She stared at the computer screen. She needed to reply to her father’s email, but she had to choose her words carefully. Over the last few weeks, she hadn’t been calling or emailing her parents as regularly as usual.

 

Her parents had sent an email, saying they understood it was because she was  so  busy  in  the  lab  trying  to  finish  her PhD.

 

It wasn’t true. Well, maybe it was partly true; she was nearing the end of her project. But if she were honest, she avoided speaking to her parents because she didn’t know how to tell them she wasn’t coming back to China. At least not yet.

 

Ruby stood up, yawned and walked between two desks towards the huge windows that ran along the edge of the laboratory and overlooked South Parks Road.

 

What was that? A movement? Was someone out there? She stared out into the darkness.

 

The bright fluorescent strip lights inside the laboratory made it difficult to see anything outside. The orange glow of the street lamps looked dull in comparison.

 

She stood by the window for a moment, looking at her own ghostly reflection staring back at her, and pressed a hand to her chest. She could feel her heart thumping.

 

She waited until she was absolutely sure there was no one out there. She was imagining things. The protests against the new animal house had made her nervous; that was all.

 

She turned away from the window and glanced back at the computer screen. She had to find the courage to tell her parents that she wanted to stay in Oxford.

 

Ruby had left China aged sixteen, and she had studied for her A-levels, her degree and now her DPhil in the UK. As each year passed, she became more attached to her adopted country and less connected to her homeland. That didn’t mean she never wanted to go back. She would go home someday. There were things she missed.

 

Since leaving China eight years ago, she had been home only once, to spend Chinese New Year with her relatives. It had been a wonderful trip, and she enjoyed visiting her extended family and telling everyone about her life in the UK, but it was just a trip, which was very different from going back permanently.

 

Of course, she loved her parents, and she knew her parents loved her. They were extremely proud of their only child’s achievements. They loved her, but they didn’t really understand her.

 

A year or so into her DPhil at Oxford, over video chat, she tried to explain to her parents an exciting result she had found in her research. She had been working on a human protein and trying to discover its structure. In the lab, they’d used a method where they grew crystals of her protein and bombarded it with X-rays.

 

The pattern of the diffracted X-rays were then analysed by computer, using all kinds of complicated mathematics, which, if Ruby was honest, she didn’t fully understand yet. Then, just weeks later, to Ruby’s amazement, she sat in front of her computer screen and saw the loops, the ribbons and the perfect helices that made this protein.

 

She just sat there for ages, staring at it, mesmerised by the idea that, although this protein existed in the blood of every single living person, she was the very first person to see it.

 

At that moment, no one else in the world knew what it looked like.

 

When she tried to describe the feeling to her parents, there was an awkward pause before her father asked if that meant she would get a good grade.

 

Soon, she would be able to tell them about the post-doctoral position she hoped to get, working in Dr. O’Connor’s laboratory. She hoped he would confirm it this week so she could tell her parents that she had a good job lined up.

 

Good career prospects were important to her parents, and the job offer might soften the blow when she told them she wanted to stay in Oxford.

 

Ruby glanced at the window again. Working at this time of night gave her the creeps. The fact that no one could enter the building unless they had an access card was reassuring, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone lurking around after the protest this afternoon.

 

She shivered.

 

When the light directly in front of him flickered on, Ted froze.

 

His muscles tensed, ready to run, but he forced himself to stay crouched on the floor. The light came from a ground floor lab, only a few feet away.

 

He felt his breath quicken as he squinted towards the lab and realised he recognised the person who had triggered the lights.

 

Ruby Wei, the Chinese student in the same research group as Alex, stood silhouetted by the window and was staring straight at him.

 

Ted pushed his body back against the wall, away from the light. The darkness should protect him. If he stayed still, she probably wouldn’t recognise him or even see him.

 

She just stood there, staring out of the window. Had she spotted him?

 

If she had seen him, she would have shown some reaction by now. Almost a minute passed before she moved away from the glass. He watched her walk away from the window and pick up a white lab coat.

 

Why was she in the lab at this time of night? Didn’t she have a life?

 

He glanced at his watch; he had to get on with it because security would be here soon. He took a deep breath and then smiled.

 

He would do it now, right under the silly cow’s nose.

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

RUBY CHECKED THE LARGE WHITE clock on the far wall. O’Connor’s cells had incubated long enough, and it was time to go to the tissue culture room and check on the results.

 

She shrugged on her lab coat, walked through the glass-walled laboratory into the corridor, passed the three other smaller laboratories and opened the door to a white, windowless room.

 

Shelves covered three walls of the small room and solutions of various colours, which contained nutrients to grow the cells, lined each shelf. In one corner of the room stood the laminar flow hood, a piece of equipment she used to prevent contaminants infecting the cells.

 

Ruby sat on a stool in front of the hood, reached up and switched on the air-flow, then picked up a bottle of ethanol and squirted it all over the bench to disinfect it.

 

She opened the incubator and removed a stack of Petri dishes that had the date and experiment number written around the edge of each plate. Stretching her arms into the hood, Ruby selected the relevant Petri dishes, containing the cultured human cells, then moved them over to the microscope.

 

She turned to the neighbouring lab bench to grab her lab book and opened it, balancing it on her lap. Date, sample number, and observation were the headings for the neat columns she drew in the lab book.

 

She liked working at this time of night; she could use the best equipment without booking it, and she could work without interruption.

 

Returning to the microscope, she put the first Petri dish under the magnifying lens, looked through the eyepiece and adjusted the focus. The pink-tinged cells came into view, as if appearing through a dense fog.

 

The first dish contained the control cancer cells. None of O’Connor’s toxin had been added to these cells, and they had grown and divided happily. The pink-tinged cells were plump and healthy. She recorded this in her notebook before moving onto the next dish. These cancer cells were no different. She scanned the whole dish, looking for cells that were sick, shrivelled or dying, but she couldn’t see any — all the cells looked healthy.

 

Ruby frowned and sat back from the microscope. It didn’t make sense. This morning, she added the toxin O’Connor had provided. The cancer cells should be dying.

 

Muttering a curse under her breath, Ruby slid the next dish under the microscope. She looked down again at perfectly healthy cells. Why had the experiments failed? O’Connor had given her samples of the toxin to work with and he had already shown in his own experiments that the toxin worked well and killed the cancer cells.

 

Repeating O’Connor’s experiments was a test. If he was happy with her work, she was likely to get the job in his lab, but he would not be happy if he knew she could not get this experiment right. He would think she was incompetent.

 

Unhappily, she noted in her lab book that neither the  cancer cells nor the normal cells appeared to be susceptible to the toxin O’Connor had given her.

 

Disappointment was common in research. She knew she could repeat the experiments again with different concentrations of the toxin and possibly get a different result. But this experiment had already been a success in the hands of O’Connor – so why wasn’t it working for her?

 

She would have to admit her failure to O’Connor. He would assume she had made a mistake, that she couldn’t be trusted to perform even the simplest experiment.

 

She put the cells back in the incubator, squirted the work surface with ethanol, wiped it clean, and wondered how long she could keep her failure secret from O’Connor.

 

Unable to do anything to change the situation tonight, she decided to go home. She switched off the machinery, walked back along the corridor and through the laboratory. The lights flickered into action as she walked. She exchanged her white lab coat for her outdoor coat and made to leave.

 

Halfway to the exit, Ruby patted the top of her head. Yes, she had done it again. She was still wearing her lab glasses, and as usual, her hair had wrapped itself around the protective eyewear. She tried to remove the glasses. How did they manage to get so tightly tangled in her hair?

 

After trying to free strands of hair and only causing more of a tangle, she grabbed the glasses in one hand and her hair in the other and pulled. Ouch! Still, it was better to lose a few strands of hair now than have a repeat of last week, when she had made it all the way to the bus stop before realising they were still there, perched on top of her head.

 

She hadn’t noticed anyone giving her funny looks either. Someone might have looked her way, curious as to why she had hideous, plastic glasses sitting on top of her head, but perhaps they had assumed they were a wacky Chinese fashion statement.

 

She left the troublesome glasses on her desk, buttoned up her coat and walked out into the main corridor that linked the laboratory side of the building with the administrative section. She pulled her access card out of her pocket and swiped it through the card reader. The light on the reader flashed green and she passed through the first of many doors on her way out of the chemical biology department.

 

On her way out, Ruby saw Jeff, one of the security guards, at the end of the corridor. She raised her hand to wave, and he replied with a mock salute. He always did that. It was “his thing”. Ruby wondered if she did something that people would talk about and say, “Oh, that’s just Ruby’s thing.” Knowing her luck, they would probably remember her for the ugly lab glasses she always forgot to remove.

 

Ted peeled back the plastic bag to reveal canisters of blood red spray paint.

 

He picked up one of the cans and shook it. Although one of the other tins had leaked all over it and the surface was damp and tacky, it still contained paint.

 

At first, to avoid getting paint on his fingers, he held the can out at an awkward angle. Squirting the aerosol, he sprayed letters in great, sweeping arcs. Warmth spread through his body, and intent on his task, he ignored the backsplatter of paint.

 

When he had finished, he took a step back and lifted his head to admire his work, but as he did so, the hood of his sweatshirt slipped backwards. He scrambled to snatch it back up and turned away from the wall.

 

There was a surveillance camera to his left. Would it have caught his face?

 

He swore, bundled the paint tin back into the carrier bag and made his way to the nearest exit, across the courtyard, keeping his head down.

 

He was halfway across the courtyard when the alarm sounded.

 

Ted swung around, expecting to see the police or, at the very least, the university’s security guards, but it was only the Chinese girl. She had come outside, but now she was running back towards the entrance of the building.

 

She must have seen him, sounded the alarm and be running for help.

 

He backed up against the wall.

 

The girl stopped at the entrance and gave the door a firm tug. Ted heard it click shut, and the alarm stopped after the door was secure.

 

Ted exhaled and fought an urge to laugh. He realised the alarm must be triggered if the door is left open for longer than a few seconds. That was a surprise. He hadn’t known about the door alarm, but there was no harm done. He watched the girl make her way across the courtyard and shrunk back against the red brick wall, hoping she would not pass him on her way to the exit.

 

Her head lifted sharply as cries from the protesters got louder. The girl increased her walking speed and passed only a few feet away from where Ted hid in the shadows.

 

He glanced up at the nearest surveillance camera and cursed himself again for letting his hood slip while he sprayed the paint. He had been so absorbed in the task, he had forgotten about the cameras.

 

A shout, closer now, ended in a cackling laugh.

 

Ted felt a flash of anger. He was sure the noise came from the animal rights campaigners and the protest finished hours ago. The people hanging around gave the rest a bad name.

 

The newspapers would write about these protesters, the troublemakers. They would not write articles about a mother bringing her child to a protest, so that he or she would grow up knowing right from wrong; and he doubted he would see an article on the elderly woman who sat outside the construction site every day, on a hunger strike.

 

Ted swallowed his anger and watched with relief as the Chinese girl left, walking briskly towards the exit furthest  from him.

 

He smiled.

 

It was time to finish his work.

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

 

JACK MACKINNON STIFLED A YAWN as Debra Collins continued her guided tour of the potted plants in her conservatory.

 

She stroked the spiky leaves of a yucca plant and explained it was a rare species from Mexico. The plant looked exactly  like the one his parents used to have, years ago, but he smiled and tried to look interested, or at the very least, still awake.

 

When she began to pronounce the Latin names of each of the plants in turn, Mackinnon realised his feigned interest may have been too convincing.

 

Mackinnon snuck a glance at his watch. Ten pm. He and Chloe had arrived at the party two hours ago. In another half an hour or so, they would be able to make their excuses and go home, without appearing rude.