by Peter James
‘God is with me!’ she called out. ‘God will stop the tram!’
‘PRAYER!’ Daniel’s voiced hissed intently, like burning, melting flesh.
A shadow slid across the wet tarmacadam in front of her; chromium glinted; another klaxon sounded.
‘PRAYER!’
A bell clattered.
‘PRAYER!’
Someone shouted.
‘We are all equal in God’s eyes, Daniel,’ she said loudly and broke into a run. ‘He knows, Daniel. He sees you, stupid child. He knows you are evil!’
Had to beat the tram. Had to. God would help her beat it. Bearing down, a shadow, streaks of rain, wiper swinging through its arc, the driver’s face behind the glass beneath his peaked cap. The Church mission, could not be late.
‘I am never late!’ she announced to the world.
‘PRAYER!’ Daniel’s voice was a command now. Her son was so strong, had grown so big, only seventeen years old but he was a man, a grown man now with a penis as big as her –
Oh God, what am I thinking? Forgive me, God, Almighty God forgive me …
‘PRAYER!’
She outstretched her arms, clasped her hands together, praying as she ran. ‘Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done –’
The toe of her rubber boot struck something, pitching her forward. The tarmac rushed up, thumping her hard in the midriff. She lay, momentarily stunned, her arms still outstretched, hands pressed together, and continued the Lord’s Prayer in a breathless whisper.
‘In earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And–’
A shout momentarily distracted her, then she continued. ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’
There was another scream, louder, more desperate. The ground was trembling now. She was aware of the shadow bearing down, but she had to finish the prayer. Had to …
The voice that came through into her head was her son’s voice again.
‘O LORD SATAN! I COMMAND YOU TO TAKE AWAY FROM MY MOTHER THE POWER TO PUT HER HANDS TOGETHER IN PRAYER!’
The pain tore her mouth and her eyes open. She heard the squeal of brakes, the grating slither of metal sliding on metal. It felt for an instant as if a filleting knife had scooped out all her internal organs. A shock wave pulsed through her like the cutting of a surgeon’s knife.
Cutting through her wrists.
Blood jetted in uneven spurts like water from an airlocked tap. Then the pain shot from her guts to the ends of her arms. She cried out in agony. It was as if white hot pokers had been pressed against her wrists. The pain went as fast as it had come, and was replaced with complete numbness.
She could see her hands, one to her right, the other to her left, upside down, at impossible angles. Blood was dribbling from both of them. They looked like toys, made of waxwork, joke-shop hands. They must be models someone had dropped in the road, lobbed from the open window of a tram as a sick trick.
The metal in front of her eyes had stopped moving now. Someone was screaming hysterically behind her. Someone else was retching. Hilda Judd tried to move her hands, to put them together in prayer, to lever her body up. But all that moved, slowly and raggedly, were the two bloody stumps of her wrists.
65
Thursday 24 November, 1994
Monty was woken by a sharp, metallic chime, followed by a click, then a whirring sound. As she opened her eyes, momentarily confused, she saw a square of green-grey light. Then she remembered she was at home, with Conor. He was sitting up in bed with his laptop computer in front of him.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
He tapped a key without replying, and a moment later she heard the sound of a modem dialling. Then he leaned over and kissed her tenderly. ‘Just need to check something. I plugged into your phone socket – hope you don’t mind?’
The clock in the top right corner of the screen said 3.55 a.m. She watched curiously as he slid a finger around the mouse pad and tapped another key, opening the incoming mail section of an electronic mailbox. Then her eyes widened in amazement. Repeated all the way down the left-hand column was the word ‘Maternox’.
He opened the first eMail. It was a sales report. Monty read the sender’s name: [email protected]. (D. Smith, Sales Director, Bendix Schere Australia Ltd). It was addressed to [email protected]. Alan Lowe, who she had met, was the Group Sales Director, and based in the Bendix Building.
On the next line beneath these two addresses, Monty read the letters: bcc: [email protected].
The initials ‘bcc’ usually stood for ‘blind copy’, and ‘Eumenides’ rang a bell from her Greek mythology. ‘Where did you get this Maternox stuff from?’ she asked.
‘Bendix Schere very kindly mail it to me.’
‘Oh yes?’ She caught the humour in his eyes.
‘Sure, except they don’t know they’re doing it.’
‘Eumenides?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Wasn’t she one of the Furies in Greek mythology? One of the three merciless goddesses of vengeance?’
‘No, it was a name people used for the Furies. It actually means “the Kindly Ones”.’ Conor clicked on another eMail message and read through it; it contained statistics from Germany showing monthly comparative sales of the percentage market share of Maternox on a trend analysis. Conor closed it and opened another.
‘So, you have an eMail box at this company – Minaret?’
Conor frowned in concentration.
‘Couldn’t the Bendix boffins trace it?’
‘Be very hard – they could only do so by a fluke and I’ve set up a couple of trip wires.’
‘Trip wires?’
‘If anyone in the Bendix system tumbled this, it would send me a warning signal and at the same time trash the contents of the mailbox.’
She smiled approvingly, feeling very wide awake now. ‘So you’re not just a pretty face, are you, Mr Molloy?’
He dug a finger into his cheek and his brow furrowed deeply. ‘You know your mythology, right?’
‘A little. I’m a bit rusty.’
He angled the screen more towards her and pointed at a word.
‘Polyphemus,’ she read.
‘Remember who he was?’
‘Yes, one of the Cyclops.’ It took a brief moment before the penny dropped. ‘Christ!’ She leaned forward and read the short message. It said simply:
MEDICI FILE: Password change. Note existing password expires midnight tonight GMT. Replace with: polyphe^mus.
It was signed: B. Gunn, Director of Security.
Conor picked his cigarettes off the bedside table, shook one out and lit it. ‘So is that name a happy coincidence? Or have we just lucked into the jackpot?’
‘I thought we’d decided we didn’t believe in coincidence any more,’ she said.
‘Yup, you’re right. That’s exactly what we decided.’
Conor had searched his car without success for his missing glove. He must have dropped it somewhere, although he could not for the life of him think where. He had not left the office at all yesterday, and was almost certain he could remember taking his gloves off there and stuffing them into his coat pocket.
He hung up his coat, then sank heavily down on his chair and leaned back for a moment, collecting his thoughts.
It was ten past eight, a little late but just about respectable. It had taken a supreme effort of willpower to drag himself out of bed straight after making love to Monty again that morning. He now felt very tired, but was fuelled with elation both from the night he had spent with her and from his discovery. He was dying to make use of the password he had acquired, but that would have to wait until tonight. It would be foolhardy to attempt anything here.
He went and got himself a black coffee, then logged into his office computer terminal and checked his eMail.
There were twenty-one new messages in addition to another fo
rty from yesterday that he had not had time to deal with. He tackled the easy ones first. There were several from old college chums in Washington, who exchanged eMail with him regularly, mostly gossip, the latest scandal about the Clintons, the latest jokes, and occasionally serious news of developments in genetics.
It was strange how distant Washington seemed and he realized a little guiltily that he had not responded to the last two eMails from his mother yet. It was likely he was going to have to go over soon to deal with the first of the patent applications and he was not relishing the thought much. Apart from being a distraction to his real task, the fact that Crowe had told him to doctor the Psoriatak application worried him very much. If he got caught out, he alone would carry the can; it would be the end of his career, no question. And, more significantly, the end of his mission.
His screen told him he had a fax waiting and he called it up. It was a standard form letter from the US Patent Office informing him that the Psoriatak application had been received and that an examiner would be appointed shortly, who would be in touch.
The appointment of examiners was a lottery; some, he knew from bitter experience, were much tougher than others, although none were pushovers. It would make a big difference whom he got. Crowe was going to be watching this application every step of the way. Most chief executives in the pharmaceutical industry came from business rather than scientific backgrounds. In this respect, Crowe was unusual in having an impressive array of biochemistry qualifications and field-work experience behind him. He was as good a scientist, if not even better, than most of the people who worked for him. No one in Bendix Schere could pull any wool over his eyes in research.
Conor opened an envelope and removed a notification of a forthcoming seminar on the moral issues of patenting human genes. He had attended a lecture given by the same man before, in the States, and had not been impressed. He dropped the envelope and the three sheets of paper into the shredder beside his desk, and dutifully switched it on.
Then he scanned through the last edition of the monthly Human Genome News. As he did so there was a rap on his door, and, using his smart-card, Charley Rowley let himself in.
‘Good morning, Mr Molloy.’
‘Hi.’
‘You’re late again,’ his colleague said. ‘Rough night?’
‘Don’t give me grief, Mr Rowley, I’m feeling fragile.’
Rowley seemed more serious than usual. ‘I need to talk to you. Could we meet for an early lunch – say twelve thirty?’
‘Sure.’ Conor wondered if he had some information for him, but said nothing.
‘There’s a pub called the Northerner – you walk past King’s Cross station and turn right at the end of the block, and it’s just along the road. About five minutes’ walk from here.’
‘I’ll find it.’
‘See you then.’
The Northerner was an unprepossessing joint with nicotine-stained ceilings and rock music that was playing too loud. The place had a sour, vinous smell, and its desultory lunch-time clientele consisted of two workmen in thick boots, a man in a cheap-looking suit reading a newspaper, a couple of old men on their own with their beers and cigarettes, and an elderly woman delivering a monologue to the barman.
Conor spotted Charley Rowley seated in an alcove, looking totally out of context in his dandy chalk-striped suit.
As Conor approached him, Rowley drained his glass and stood up. ‘I thought they did cooked food here at lunch time – but they only have sandwiches – let’s go find somewhere else.’ He said this more loudly than was necessary, and without waiting for a response from Conor headed out of the pub.
‘I’m happy with just a sandwich,’ Conor said, surprised, and wondering if his friend had had an altercation with the landlord. He was even more surprised when Rowley hailed a taxi, bundled him into it, and told the driver to head for the Cumberland Hotel.
As the taxi drove off, Conor turned to Rowley. ‘What’s up?’
‘Stare straight ahead, don’t look round, OK?’
‘Sure,’ Conor said, mystified.
Rowley turned sideways and peered out of the rear window. ‘Yup, I was right. The suit in the pub is jumping into a taxi behind us.’
He turned back to Conor, dug his hand inside his coat and pulled out a letter-sized envelope. ‘Little prezzie for you. Tuck it away safely.’
‘Is this what I think it is?’
‘The Maternox template you were after. It has the original spec of the product licence.’
Conor pushed it carefully into the inside breast pocket of his jacket. ‘I owe you one. Thanks.’
‘Donada.’ Rowley pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, ignoring the ‘Thank you for not smoking’ sign on the driver’s partition, then glanced surreptitiously out of the rear window again. ‘You know that stuff you were on about at the weekend, about the company – ’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe you’re not being so paranoid after all. I had one hell of a game getting my chum to agree to part with that template – I’ve never known anyone get so cagey.’
‘What did you say to him?’ Conor asked, concerned.
‘It’s OK, no worries. I gave him some mumbo-jumbo about the Department being asked to look for ways of extending the Maternox patents – see if there’s any room to manoeuvre with the design.’
‘Would he have had to talk to anyone else?’
‘I think that was the problem, particularly regarding the samples you wanted. I’ve had no joy on that score so far. They’re all under some kind of security lock and key. Seems like I must have rattled someone’s cage.’
‘Which is why we’re being followed?’
‘I could be mistaken – but I’ve seen that suit’s face around the Building. Seems a little odd that he came into the pub thirty seconds after me, left thirty seconds after me, and got into a taxi going in the same direction.’ Rowley glanced at the ceiling of the taxi, as if he were looking for a bug. ‘There’s definitely something not right going on. Don’t worry, I’ll try again when I get back from Hawaii. I’ll pull a bit of rank if necessary.’
‘Hawhere?’
‘I’ve just been told this morning I have to fly to Hawaii tomorrow.’
Conor still looked uncomprehending.
‘Yup – you know we have one of our biggest plants out there.’
‘Aaah, Hawaii Hilo – yes.’
‘Something’s cropped up – I’m not sure what – but we do a lot of product development out there, and it seems they’re on to something pretty exciting. I have to go over and talk about the British and European patent end.’
‘There are worse places to be this time of year,’ Conor said.
Rowley grinned. ‘You could say that.’ He sucked on his cigarette. ‘Except I’m not big on hot places – wet English summers suit me fine.’
‘I’ll happily trade,’ Conor said. ‘Jesus! I’ll be thinking of you sitting on your ass sunning yourself, swilling Margaritas and cooling down in the ocean.’
‘I’ll be doing the first two, but not the last. I can’t swim.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Nope. Fear of water. Hydrophobia – or whatever it is. I was probably bitten by a rabid dog when I was an infant.’
‘Bendix Schere might have a pill that could cure you. I worked on the patent application for a phobia tablet at Merck.’
‘Tell you one thing I do know,’ Rowley said. ‘There’s some fucking gorgeous crumpet in Hawaii. Want me to bring some back for you?’
‘Tell you what you could bring back,’ Conor said. ‘The Hilo plant manufactures all the Maternox supply for the West Coast in the States. It would be kind of useful to get a handful of batch samples.’
‘Nullo problema,’ Rowley said. ‘Watch this space!’
The taxi crawled along in the slow-moving traffic; a couple of times the driver looked irritatedly over his shoulder, but said nothing as Rowley continued smoking.
‘Let me ask you something,’ Conor said. ‘When w
e were talking on Saturday you mentioned some rumour about a secret underground floor beneath the health hydro in the basement. You said it was supposed to be filled with hundreds of dwarves listening to headphones. Where did that story come from?’
Rowley frowned. ‘Actually I think it was from the Head of Department when I first started.’
‘Gordon Wright?’
‘No, a chap called Richard Drewett. Poor bugger died of a brain tumour – at forty-two – only about a year after I joined. Shame, you’d have enjoyed working with him; he didn’t give a toss for the company’s regulations either.’
66
In spite of the Bendix Building’s ionized, pollution-free, pure-as-the-Swiss-Alps climatic environment, Monty felt badly in need of some daylight and a few lungfuls of real air, however thick with carbon monoxide and diesel particles it might be.
She went out on her own at lunch time and strolled up Euston Road. It was a crisp day, with a clear blue sky overhead. She was feeling tantalized by the fact that Conor was only a few floors apart from her, in the same building, and she couldn’t talk properly to him. At least they would spend the whole weekend together and she was really looking forward to that.
She went into a newsagent’s to buy a paper and browsed idly through a rack of magazines.
‘A RARE AND CANDID INTERVIEW AT HOME WITH SIR NEIL RORKE.’
The headline on the front of Hello! magazine jumped out at her. She bought a copy, walked further along until she saw a sandwich bar with a few tables, one of which was free, and went in.
She ordered a prawn salad sandwich and an orange juice and sat down. Opening the magazine eagerly, she flicked through until she saw the Chairman of Bendix Schere. He was standing by a gilded mirror in an elegant period room, one arm resting on the shoulder of a dark-haired woman, who was seated on a Louis XIV chair. She was packaged in dramatic high-necked couture, and her jaw was set in the kind of masked smile that only a face-lift can produce.
The caption beneath said: ‘One of Britain’s most colourful businessmen invites us into his Kent country home and tells us about his private and public worlds.’ And on the facing page the accompanying article began with a quote from the man himself. ‘The pharmaceutical industry has awesome power. I feel my responsibility very deeply.’
