Blue Genes - By Val McDermid Page 0,60

locked, even when we're working inside. No one gets in without the right combi¬nation." His smile was the smug one of those who never consider the enemy within.

"I suppose you have to be careful because you've got to account to the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority," I said.

"You're not kidding. Every treatment cycle we do has to be documented and reported to the HFEA. Screw up your paperwork and you can lose your license. This whole area of IVF and embryo experimentation is such a hot potato with the God squad and the politically para¬noid that we all have to be squeaky clean. Even the faintest suggestion that we were doing any research that was outside the scope of our license could have us shut down temporarily while our lords and masters investi¬gated. And it's not just losing the clinic license that's the only danger. If you did mess around doing unauthorized stuff with the embryos that we don't transfer, you'd be looking at being struck off and never practicing medicine again. Not to mention facing criminal charges."

I tore off another lump of nan bread and scooped up a tender lump of lamb, desperately trying not to react to his words. "That must put quite a bit of pressure on your team, if you're always having to look over your shoulder at what the others are doing," I said.

Gus gave me a patronizing smile. "Not really. The kind of people employed in units like ours aren't mad sci¬entists, you know. They're responsible medical profes¬sionals who care abut helping people fulfill their destiny. No Dr. Frankensteins in our labs."

I don't know how I kept my curry down. Probably the thought of being tended by the responsible medical pro¬fessional opposite me. Either that or the fact that I wasn't paying much attention on account of the fact that I was still getting my head around what he'd said just before. If I was short of a motive for terminating Dr. Sarah Black-stone, Gus Walters had just handed me one on a plate.
Chapter 15
A few days ago, I'd have reckoned that as motives for murder go, the prospect of losing your livelihood was a pretty thin one. That had been before Bill's bombshell. Since then, I'd been harboring plenty of murderous thoughts, not just against a business partner who'd been one of my best friends for years, but also against a blame¬less Australian woman I'd barely met. For all I knew, Sheila could be Sydney's answer to Mother Teresa. Some¬how, I doubted it, but I'd been more than ready to include her in the homicidal fantasies that kept slipping into my mind. Like unwanted junk mail, I always intended to throw them straight in the bin, but every time I found myself attracted by some little detail that sucked me in. If a well-adjusted crime fighter like me felt the desire to kill the people I saw as stealing my dream, how easy it would be for someone who was borderline psychotic to be pushed over the edge by the prospect of losing their pro¬fessional life. And from what I've seen of doctors over the years, borderline psychopaths is a pretty optimistic description of most of them. What Gus Walters told me handed motive on a plate to everyone Sarah Blackstone had worked with at St. Hilda's, from the professor who supervised the department to the secretary who main¬tained the files.

There was nothing I could do now about pursuing that line of inquiry. By the time I'd got home and driven to Leeds, it would be the end of the medical working day. I made a mental note to follow it up, which freed my brain to gnaw away at the problem which had been uppermost there since Bill's return. Never mind murderers, never mind rock saboteurs, what I wanted the answer to was what to do about Mortensen and Brannigan. The one thing I was sure about was that I didn't intend to roll over and die, waiting for Bill to find the buyer of his choice. As I walked back through the red-brick streets dotted with grass-filled vacant sites that lie between Rusholme and my home, I was plagued by the question of whether I could find a way to generate sufficient income to pay off a loan big enough to buy Bill out while managing to remain personally solvent.

The key to that was to find a way to make the agency work more profitably. There was one obvious avenue that