Deadly Motive Read online

  Deadly Motive

  by D. S. Butler

  Copyright © 2012 D.S. Butler

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Coming Soon

  1

  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 su
re 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 recognized 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 recognize 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.

  2

  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 thro
ugh 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?