Sharon, Achebe, and the rest of the Met had managed to keep it quiet long enough for the West London wetland to be secured and to complete the initial investigation of Fayole’s colleagues. No one was arrested and, despite police requests for discretion, the interviewees were happy to add to the stream chatter springing up around the peculiarity of a police forensics unit descending on a soggy, uninhabited nature reserve. The waterway where a colony of the altered algae had been found was now blocked off from the river, but the danger was far from over. “As long as we don’t know what the catalyst is, we can’t assume it isn’t still in Sinkat,” Rhys told a briefing of the City Councillors. “And until the police catch whoever’s behind this, we also can’t assume there aren’t tanks of both algae and catalyst ready to be dumped into the river somewhere else—maybe in Limedog, or some other city with a gillung population—Bristol or Glasgow or Gateshead.
