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  Earlier Zoe told Gavin that two bottles of her phosphate buffer solution had disappeared. He told her that a student had probably sneaked into the lab and pinched them to save making their own. It happens when someone runs out of reagent in the middle of an experiment. They'll get some unexpected results using salty tap water he said. Serves them right for stealing my bottles she said.

  Gavin Shawlens and Tyler Wattsin walked along the corridors toward the main lecture theatre.

  "Olly's aunt's like, really worried. Is he in trouble with the Uni?"

  "No I need to talk to him about research, that's all."

  "She'll be like, really chuffed meeting you. Someone high up in the Uni."

  "Where does she live?"

  "She's a bit funny like, you being a top boss from Uni. I'll need to do like, introductions so she feels comfortable," Tyler sounded hesitant.

  "Okay let me know where and when," Gavin said as he opened the door to the lecture theatre.

  Professor Kevin Buzzwall looked up at the audience in the tiered Sir James Chadwick lecture theatre and introduced Dr Gavin Shawlens to the audience consisting of the Department of Sports Biology's research community of academics, postdocs, research assistants, postgraduate and undergraduate research students.

  There were almost fifty people in the lecture room. Dr Gavin Shawlens spent forty-five minutes giving an overview of his own research and the work of his research group at the University of Kinmalcolm then fifteen minutes answering questions.

  At the cheese and wine after the seminar Gavin circulated around the various academics with Professor Buzzwall to meet all of the research team leaders. When he met Suzie Griffan he stopped circulating and settled into a discussion with her.

  The CASTER group had concerns about the research publications of Professor Buzzwall, Professor Kwan and Dr Griffan. As people drifted away from the cheese and wine, Gavin decided that Suzie Griffan looked the least intimidating of the three and therefore a good place to start probing their research.

  Suzie thanked Gavin for his seminar. He had read enough of her papers to keep her engaged in work conversations. As they stood chatting with two research students in the cheese and wine room she told Gavin that she was struggling to understand the biochemistry in some of her recent results. He agreed to look at them with her.

  "Now!" she sounded surprised.

  "Why not I've got nothing planned."

  "Cool," she said as she led him to her laboratory.

  She asked and he confirmed he'd signed the University's confidentiality agreement. Suzie's lab was very large and fitted out with sports equipment. The room was bright with natural light from overhead glass windows. The room was cool almost cold. Her office was at the opposite south end of the room.

  As Gavin walked into the room he saw a row of eight cycle ergometers and three bicycle rollers against the east wall. Against the west wall there were a row of ten large programmable treadmills capable of raised incline.

  In the centre of the room they walked over inter-locked mats about eight metres square. At the back of the room were stacks of two-metre balance benches and racks of dumbbell weights, squat and dip racks, kettlebell kits, barbell kits and weights.

  As they approached her office Gavin saw two laboratory benches equipped with a range of physiological testing and measuring equipment, four professional rowing machines and four large grey steel storage cupboards.

  "Brilliant range of kit you've got here Suzie."

  "Yes we've had good research funding over the years," Suzie said as she took her seat at her desk.

  Gavin's phone rang and he apologised to Suzie. He saw it was from Zoe so he turned back to answer it.

  "I need to take this. I've told my people at Kinmalcolm that they must get my approval before they order equipment. Don't want to go back and find an electron microscope sitting on my bench," he lied.

  He walked out of her office toward the end of the lab to be sure Suzie couldn't hear. Suzie picked up a note that had been taped to her computer screen.

  "Can you speak?" Zoe asked.

  "Yes."

  "Where are you?"

  "The electrophysiology lab talking with Suzie Griffan."

  "Heads up! Rolley has uncovered evidence that there is large scale dealing in sports drugs. Jemard Edmond was a user and Oliver Mansole is a dealer. We'll talk about this back at the flat."

  "Do you want me to ask Suzie about Oliver or Jemard?"

  "What context?"

  "Don't know."

  "Well you're going to look pretty stupid if not suspicious when she asks why you want to know. Get the context before you open your mouth. Speak to you later."

  As Gavin Shawlens walked into Suzie Griffan's office he said loudly into his phone.

  "I want three quotes. Get another quote. Bye."

  "Sorry about that," he said as he waved his phone in the air.

  Gavin Shawlens lifted a chair and sat beside her rather than opposite her across her desk. She finished reading a hand-written note left on her monitor. She lifted a folder titled 'Research Results' and put it back in her desk drawer. Her demeanour had changed markedly and he saw an angry look on her face.

  "You've got a bloody bare-faced cheek," she said accusingly.

  "Excuse me," Gavin looked confused.

  "One of my students just told me you've been trying to contact Oliver Mansole. What the hell do you think you're doing questioning my students? What the hell do you want with my technician?"

  26

  Electrophysiology lab

  Gavin felt Suzie's sharp steely eyes pierce his head. He saw the veins in her neck were protruding fiercely. She looked ready to blast him with some riot act about not poaching technicians or not seeking confidential information from technicians or not going behind her back to undermine her academic position or some other transgression.

  "I run the judo club at Kinmalcolm. I thought he'd help me organise an inter-university match. I was told he's in the University team."

  "I see. Well ... okay. Well ... fine. The last time he was seen was after a judo match in the Student Union," Suzie sounded embarrassed.

  "What do you mean last seen?"

  "He's gone AWOL."

  "Do you think something happened to him?" Gavin asked and thought he could keep going while she was on the ropes.

  "I hope not. He's an excellent technician. It's not like him to dropout like this and leave me in the lurch."

  "I'm sure he'll turn up."

  "He'd better. He's got a lot to lose. He's due a big payment for the work he did on our energy project."

  "Your energy project. Oh yes I've read your paper on that work."

  "We've developed a product to boost energy for improved athlete performance," she said proudly.

  "Wouldn't that be considered cheating?"

  "People take carbs for energy and they're not banned. Our product will fall into that natural category. People will take carbs for energy plus our product to max the energy efficiency. Our product will be on sale in pharmacies for everyone so there is no unfair advantage," she said and sounded like a sharp saleswoman.

  "Which energy system are we talking about?"

  "None other than the king of energy, adenosine tri-phosphate."

  "ATP of course. I should have guessed. What are you doing with it?"

  "We have a catalyst that can get it into action faster and deliver more energy to muscles. What do you think?"

  "From what I've read I have to say I'm not convinced."

  "We've only published preliminary studies. We have to keep the main stuff under wraps for the moment," she said to counter his doubt.

  "Why?"

  "Commercialisation. We'll have our product 80PGen on the market in a few weeks."

  "Some of your results have got me confused."

  "What results?"

  "It was the first paper on the cycle ergometer trials. You reported an eighteen percent increase in muscle power output. I don't understand ho
w you could achieve an increase of that level."

  "Impressive isn't it. Look I'm going to tell you a secret Dr Shawlens. I'm bursting to tell someone," she smiled wildly.

  "I do love secrets."

  "The Olympic record for men's four kilometre individual pursuit sprint is four minutes fifteen seconds," she gushed out.

  "Okay."

  "One of our cyclists has done it in three minutes fifty-eight seconds. Unofficially!" she gushed again.

  "A one off?"

  "No that's it. He did it three times in succession."

  "Wow. Seventeen seconds off the record. How is that possible?"

  "The catalyst delivers more energy into the muscle. The muscle works harder. Performance is greater," she said with authority.

  "I can't argue with that. So how does 80PGen achieve this?"

  "It increases the efficiency of the ATP reaction."

  Gavin Shawlens smiled back at her the way he often does to one of his students who has got the wrong end of the stick. He moved over to a white board, picked up a marker pen and wrote the ATP reaction on the board.

  Adenosine-P-P-P ==> adenosine-P-P + P + 1 energy packet.

  He wrote the word muscle above the word energy and drew a looped arrow from energy to muscle.

  "You're kidding right? This is already a very efficient biochemical reaction honed by billions of years of evolution. You can't suddenly make it better," he said in his softest put down voice.

  She smiled back at him, took the marker pen from his hand and wrote a new equation under his.

  Adenosine-P-P-P ==> adenosine + 3P + 3 energy packets.

  She drew a looped arrow from her word energy to his word muscle and beside her arrow she wrote x3.

  "Are you saying you can release the three packets of energy from ATP in a single step," he asked and almost couldn't believe his words.

  "Yes."

  "Jeesus. That's brilliant. A masterpiece."

  He stepped back from the board and his jaw dropped as he took in the magnitude of what she had just told him.

  "This is worthy of a Nobel Prize. It's awesome. Really awesome," he said and she saw astonishment in his face.

  "I knew you would appreciate what we've achieved."

  "Why not publish this? You'll be famous in five minutes."

  "A Nobel Prize doesn't make serious money. Our product will give us the money to open our own independent lab and do the research we want to do and not what research councils want us to do. We want a noble prize; The Buzzwall Institute of Advanced Sports Biology."

  "Arise and be recognised, Professor Suzie Griffan," he announced.

  "I don't mind if I do," she replied with a coy expression.

  "So then. Who is the biochemical genius that achieved this?"

  "The commercial backers are the biochemists."

  "I can't believe this. This is such an enormous discovery. Do you think they'd let me get involved? I could do some enzyme work," he pleaded with her.

  "What kind of enzyme work?"

  "There are loads of metabolic pathways that depend on the ATP reaction for energy. There are millions of experiments waiting to be done with a faster ATP reaction. I need to think which one to start with. There are some key metabolic energy bottlenecks. What if these energy bottlenecks can be overcome? What would that do to human metabolism? This is so exciting."

  "I know. It's fantastic isn't it?"

  "Totally amazing. So how does the body cope with this?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "With every action there is a reaction. Your catalyst will release lots of phosphate faster than normal. How does the body deal with that?"

  "Not sure I understand you."

  "ATP isn't consumed; it's recycled in mitochondria. Three energy packets are not normally released at once because recycling is slower. Fast energy release and slow recycle will cause a phosphate imbalance. Scale that up and you'll have surplus phosphate."

  "Won't the body scrap the surplus phosphate?"

  "The body scraps waste Suzie. Phosphate isn't waste. It's too valuable to scrap."

  "I see," she said and felt a swarm of panicky butterflies in her stomach.

  Suzie's neck started to flush red and it spread up into her lower cheeks. She had worried that the whole project was too good to be true. She never liked the commercial partners and didn't like their methods. SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! She thought.

  "Let me get this right. Your product can strip phosphate out of ATP faster than muscle mitochondria can recycle the phosphate back into ATP. It will generate a surplus so what happens to the surplus?" he said as he stared at the equations on the white board.

  "I ... I don't know. All I know is muscles stay at peak longer giving great performance."

  "Did your subjects experience any side effects during the trials, any biochemical disturbances?"

  "I would be lying if I said there was nothing. We have some glitches," she confessed.

  "Anything I can help with?"

  "That's kind of you, maybe you could. We have an issue with heat."

  "What kind of issue?"

  "You know athletes. You tell them one dose of 80PGen is what they need and they'll go away and take three doses. The product is supposed to be taken orally but some inject into the muscle because it works more quickly. High doses seem to generate a lot of heat," she said and he heard fear in her voice like she shouldn't be telling.

  "Heat. Does 80PGen alters their TEM?"

  "What's TEM?"

  "It's the thermal effect of a meal."

  "Sorry, what's the relevance of TEM?"

  "When we eat a meal about ten percent of the energy in the food is used to produce heat. When we eat surplus food the body helps maintain constant weight by burning off some surplus energy as heat," he lectured.

  "Okay why is this important for us?"

  "The mechanism involves unhooking normal ATP metabolism and shunting the energy away from ATP production to heat production. Some people have a high capacity to burn surplus energy as heat.'"

  "Oh you mean like my boyfriend Dave. He can eat everything in sight and not gain any weight."

  "His surplus food energy is burned off as heat."

  She looked a little more comfortable and she led him back into her office and they sat down at her desk.

  "While others and I'm one of them have a low capacity to produce heat. My surplus energy is used to make stored fat."

  "I understand, in fact that's me too," she replied and patted her waist.

  "Maybe your subjects produce more heat because 80PGen shunts more energy toward heat production."

  "Can the heat production thing be turned down?"

  "Of course it's simple enough to block the shunt with enzyme inhibitors."

  "What inhibitors?" she fired back at him.

  "How does 80PGen make ATP give up its three packets of energy?"

  "Sorry that's secret until we have patents and all that stuff finalised. Do I understand you correctly? You are saying heat production can be controlled with some simple inhibitors."

  "I would need to do some work on suitable inhibitors but yes I am."

  "If you can nail this heat problem then our commercial backers will cut you in for a share of the profits. You'll become very wealthy. You would have the funds to do all the enzyme studies you want to do."

  "It has occurred to me that maybe you have something even more important than an energy boost for athletes."

  "What's that?"

  "Just the ultimate diet pill. Take 80PGen with food and more energy will be shunted to heat than fat. Eat what you like. Don't get fat just get warm. Think about it," he said excitedly.

  "The backers haven't said anything about a diet pill."

  "They should be thinking about it because the potential is enormous."

  "Maybe we should look into it," she said meaning her and him.

  "Who are the commercial backers?"

  "I'll tell Professor Buzzwall what you've said. He's the acad
emic liaison. I'm sure they'll all want to meet you and talk about these points," she said and stood up.

  She offered her hand and as he stood up he shook hands with her.

  "I'll be in touch," she said as he walked out of her office.

  27

  Petersfield, Hampshire

  Zoe Tampin smiled as she paused at the drinks trolley to top-up her coffee while listening to her team discussing the latest ill-conceived government tax on vacant bedrooms in local council owned homes.

  "Someone put a whole minute's thought into the bedroom tax," Rolley said and everyone laughed.

  Zoe had called them together for a catch-up meeting with Alan Cairn in a conference room in the Lainstorm House Hotel in Petersfield. She had chosen a charming 17th century country house standing elegantly in twenty-two acres of beautiful Hampshire parkland. It oozed quality and featured an old traditional courtyard with delicate archways on three walls. The hotel had served a good dinner and they were finishing off the cheese and biscuits with tea and coffee. Both Gavin and Rolley ignored an international a la carte menu and had a fillet steak.

  "What does that mundane choice tell you about these two academics?" Zoe whispered to Elaine.

  "They don't eat out much," Elaine replied and Zoe agreed.

  The meeting was primarily for Alan Cairn because Zoe contacted each team member two or three times each day to ensure she was always on top of developments. During dinner she quizzed and queried each of them to make sure they were best prepared to update Alan Cairn.

  While they finished off their tea and coffee Zoe set up a conference call using the phone projector function on her SEM phone. She set it up so that Alan Cairn could watch and listen to the group and they could see him projected on a screen. When Alan Cairn was online he asked Zoe to chair the meeting and said he would chip-in as and when required.

  Zoe asked Elaine if there were any operational issues. Elaine reported no negative ripples in the University relating to Gavin Shawlens or Rolley Morgan. No one had queried or questioned their qualifications or raised any concerns about their visit to the University.