Double Blind

by Carrie Bedford

  I hung out in the lobby until Eric appeared through a set of glass doors and strode towards me, dressed in a well-cut suit, white shirt and green silk tie. He didn’t have an aura, which made me feel better, given Macintyre’s nasty threats against him. “Let’s go to the cafeteria,” I said. “I need caffeine.”

  “Tell me about Anita,” he said, while we waited our turn to be served. “Is she really safe?”

  Assuring him she was, I watched his face blanche when I told him that Audley Macintyre had kidnapped her.

  “But why?” he asked.

  “It’s all to do with a drug manufactured by Litton Bernhoff Pharmaceuticals,” I said. “Let’s sit over there, where no-one can overhear us.”

  We sat at a table in a quiet corner.

  “Do you know anything about LitImmune?”

  Eric looked startled. “LitImmune? Well, yes. The damn drug has the potential to erode sales of my company’s current immunosuppressant medications, so I’ve been keeping a very close eye on it. It’s in trial right now at several hospitals in the UK. It’s in an RCT, which is a randomized control study, where some patients are receiving LitImmune and some are receiving a different, but proven and known medication — one from my company, actually. They’re using a double blind trial where neither the provider nor the patient know which medication is being administered.”

  “So how can the drug’s effectiveness be tracked if no one knows who’s receiving it?”

  “Generally the trial continues for a predetermined number of cases and then the results are tabulated. Certain people have access to the ongoing data in case there are unusual results. Although uncommon, sometimes a drug is so beneficial that every patient receiving it has good results, in which case the trial is stopped early. Dr. Reid, as head of the department, and the Chairman of the Research and Investigation Committee would have had access to the data.”

  “And what does it do? LitImmune?”

  “It’s basically a new class of immunosuppressant. It eliminates the need to combine multiple drugs to achieve the same result, which is to ensure the body doesn’t reject the new organ. In theory, its side effect profile is good and its post-transplant success rate is superior to anything else on the market. That’s what Litton Bernhoff is saying anyway.”

  “Did Dr. Reid talk to you about it?”

  Eric’s face contorted. He almost looked as though he would cry. “Yes, he came to me to talk about concerns he had. He didn’t say much, just that he thought side effects of LitImmune weren’t being fully reported. I had no idea he was so upset about it. I mean, upset enough to commit suicide.”

  “He didn’t. Macintyre killed him.”

  Eric sank back in his chair, eyes closed.

  “Did Dr. Reid tell you who was doing the under-reporting?” I pressed on.

  Eric opened his eyes. “No. He was rather tight-lipped about it. I got the impression that he knew, but didn’t want to point fingers. It must have been a doctor on his staff.”

  “Yes, we’re reasonably sure it was Dr. Schwartz. And possibly Dr. Marks was involved too. Neither of them turned up for work today.”

  “So you’re telling me that Macintyre and Schwartz were working together? They killed Reid and kidnapped Anita?”

  “Macintyre did the dirty work. I think that Schwartz was being paid by LB Pharmaceuticals to mess with the reporting. He somehow obtained Dr. Reid’s login and password and used them to hide his trail when he made edits to the patient records.”

  “Damn.” Eric ran his hand over his eyes. “There’s something else that might be pertinent then. Pending final approval of the drug, LBP has secured contracts to supply LitImmune to several European countries, including Germany. It’s quite a coup. The German health services hold medications and manufacturers to very exacting standards, and they’ve rejected many other drugs in the last couple of years. And of course, LBP really needs all the help it can get. Profits are way down for them right now.”

  “So, it would be bad timing for LBP if Dr. Reid had told anyone about the alleged side effect issues?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. The Germans would withdraw approval immediately.”

  “Who would Reid have talked to?” I asked. “If he had decided to tell anyone?”

  Eric thought for a few seconds. “He could have gone to the MHRA. That’s the regulatory agency for drugs and healthcare. They would have investigated.”

  We stopped talking while an elderly woman shuffled past with a tray of tea. I leaned forward towards Eric. “Does Simon Scott have a connection to LBP?”

  Eric looked surprised. “Scott? The politician?”

  “He has a meeting with the Managing Director of Litton Bernhoff late tomorrow afternoon. Is there any way he’d know what it is that LBP is trying to hide?”

  Drumming his fingers on the table, Eric appeared to ponder the question.

  “Scott was a doctor before he went into politics,” he said eventually. “And he was still practicing when LitImmune was in initial trials. Also, as Shadow Secretary for Health, he would probably be aware of any significant contracts for overseas sales of UK-manufactured drugs. And I think he’s friends with the head of the MHRA. They went to Cambridge together.”

  “So it’s possible he would have heard if there were any irregularities, like unreported side effects?”

  Eric nodded. “It’s possible.”

  A young couple wandered towards our corner. The woman, who was very pregnant, was giggling, leaning into her partner. For a moment, I was sad, remembering Josh’s emails to Helena, and the conversation he and I still needed to have.

  I dragged my attention back to Eric. “Macintyre has been hired to stop any leaks of bad reports on LitImmune,” I said. “The question is who hired him? The Managing Director of LBP?”

  I pressed my fingers to my temples. A headache was brewing and I could do with an aspirin.

  “My guess would be Gerald Hunter,” Eric said. “He resigned from my company, PharmAnew, about four years ago. Resigned under pressure, which means he was fired, but it didn’t show up on his resume that way. There’d been an internal investigation into test result manipulation and my company wasn’t happy with the findings. They didn’t bring any charges against him, but they made it clear he had to move out. LBP took him on, specifically to develop channels for LitImmune. He’s Executive Director, New Products Worldwide or some such title. If anyone can prove that he’s been hiding negative results, his job is on the line and he would almost certainly be charged and fined. There’s a lot at stake for him, not to mention a huge fine for the company.”

  “Yeah, but from what I’ve read,” I said. “Drug companies pay massive penalties all the time, and it doesn’t seem to slow them down.”

  Eric nodded. “It’s true. These drugs are worth so much money that a manufacturer will take risks. If they get caught, they just pay up. Last year, Barton Pharmaceuticals paid almost five hundred million in fines for marketing its antipsychotic drug for uses that hadn’t been approved. It happens more often than the public realizes. But LBP is short of cash right now, mostly because of some bad management decisions over the last few years. They almost certainly don’t have enough to pay a large fine. More to the point, I think there would be more than just money at stake. The LBP Managing Director has a reputation for being a real tyrant. He’d turn Hunter over to the authorities in a heartbeat. I’d think Hunter would be terrified of facing criminal charges and prison time.”

  I pushed my empty cup around on the table. Was I right that Audley Macintyre could be after Scott? The link was tenuous. Macintyre hadn’t mentioned Scott at all during his self-aggrandizing revelations in the cellar.

  “This is a lot to take in,” Eric was saying. ”And what about Macintyre? Is he really a sales rep who also happens to be a contract killer?”

  “I was wondering about that too,” I said. “Have you talked to him much? Does he know what he’s talking about when it comes to LBP’s drugs?”

 
“Hard to tell. It’s not very difficult to read the literature and spout it all back, especially if you have a good memory. All he needed to do was dress up in a suit and tote a bag full of samples around. Gerald Hunter would have been able to get him an ID and some false paperwork. Come to think of it, Macintyre’s only been around for about six months. I assumed he’d just transferred in from a different territory.”

  Eric took a swallow of his coffee, which had to be cold by now.

  “So going back to Scott,” he said. “If you really think Macintyre is after him, you have to go to the police straightaway.”

  “I have. And I’ll tell them about Gerald Hunter too. There’s one other thing. Macintyre was making threats against you. He knows you talked with Dr. Reid and he assumes you know about the altered records. You should be cautious, perhaps lie low until the police catch up with him.”

  Eric swallowed back the rest of his coffee, stood, and buttoned up his jacket. “Thanks for the warning, but I don’t think so. If Anita can carry on working through all this, I damn well can too. Bloody Macintyre. I never did like him.”

  “Thanks, Eric. I appreciate your help.”

  Wending my way back across the lobby, I called Parry to give him an update. He greeted my news with a long silence. “Are you there?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes. Thank you for sharing this with me.” He sounded distracted. “I appreciate the call, Kate.” As I disconnected, I wondered if he was a drinker or had problems at home.

  I pushed open the front door to a blast of cold air just as my phone rang. I moved back into the warmth of the lobby to answer it. It was Chris Melrose.

  “Kate. It’s Chris. I’m back in London and I’d like to see you. Can we meet?”

  “When?”

  “Now, if you can. I just got off the train. Where are you? I’ll come wherever you want me to.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Chris walked through the front doors of the hospital in jeans, hiking boots and a fisherman’s sweater, with a battered backpack hanging from one shoulder. He shook my hand before we crossed the lobby to the cafeteria. My day just kept getting longer.

  “Why did you want to see me?”

  “Apparently the police are looking for me,” he said. “Something about explosives? Did you send them after me?”

  “Yes.”

  We stood at the counter, waiting for someone to serve us. “I can’t believe it,” he said, scooping up a handful of sugar sachets from a basket near the till.

  “I’m sorry, Chris, but you had those orange stains on your hands when we saw you at the teashop. Anita said they were probably caused by nitric acid, which is a component of an explosive.”

  “Anita said that? Well, she’s right. It was nitric acid. I study Chemical Engineering. That’s what I do, for hours every day. I mess around with chemicals.”

  “You’re volunteering on Scott’s campaign, which seems suspicious. Besides, where have you been? I rang you a few times and you never answered.”

  “I was up in Scotland, in a place where there was no signal,” he said.

  We stopped talking when a young blonde server asked us what we wanted. Another coffee seemed like a good idea. We carried our cups to the same chairs that Eric and I had vacated thirty minutes earlier.

  “I don’t understand,” Chris said. “When my phone service came back on, I had voicemails from someone called Clarke telling me to report to the nearest police station. My friend, the chap I was traveling with, made some discreet enquiries and was told that there’s an alert out for me. Bloody hell, Kate. All that because of some stains on my fingers?”

  “And the photos,” I said. “That wall of clippings upstairs. What’s that all about?”

  “You snooped around my house?” He got to his feet, looking down at me sadly. “I thought we were friends.”

  “So why all the mutilated photos?”

  “My mother did that.” Chris sat back down, his handsome face tight with anger. “After Scott dumped her, my mother went back to Greece, to her parents’ home in Arachova, but her father was furious about the shame she’d brought on the family and put her more or less under house arrest. She kept house for her parents and three brothers, and she looked after me. Her mother tried to help her, but apparently her father was the driving force in the family and everyone did as he said. After three years, Mum packed up and left. We came back to London, and she got a job as a clerk for a building supply company.”

  Chris stopped talking to drink more of his tea. His hand trembled slightly. “She managed the office job for a few years,” he continued. “It paid for our rent and a babysitter for me. I stayed with a neighbor during the day. Mrs. Gleason. She smelled of mothballs but she was nice enough to me, in the way that kids measure nice, which meant that she let me eat sweets and watch television all day. I was a pudgy little kid.”

  “That’s hard to imagine,” I said.

  “Yeah well, then I went to primary school and stopped eating junk food. My mum married William Melrose about that time. They bought a house and did it up. He had a decent job, so there was more money to spend. We even went on vacation for the first time, to Cornwall, and he built sand castles on the beach with me. We had a good few years and then things started to go wrong. He lost his job and then he got sick. He died when I was fifteen. My mother went to pieces. She started blaming Scott for everything that had gone wrong in her life.”

  “So she put those pictures up and defaced all of them,” I said.

  He nodded. “I haven’t had the heart to go in there and make any changes since she died.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. It was a terrible outcome for a bright young woman who’d wanted to be a doctor.

  Chris put down his cup. “I need you to tell the police I’m not building a bomb. You started this. You have to make it stop.”

  “Did you hear about the bomb scare in London yesterday?” I asked. “The police think it was aimed at Scott. Were you involved?”

  He shook his head. “Of course I bloody wasn’t. My mate Kurt and I were hiking near Loch Lomond. There was no phone, no tv.” He must have seen the doubt on my face. “This was a trip we planned weeks ago. I work with Kurt at the meat market. He’s into all that camping, hiking, mountain climbing stuff. I don’t mind it, and I enjoy his company. So, no, I didn’t hear about a bomb.” He paused, picking at a thread on the sleeve of his shirt. “Is Scott okay?”

  I nodded. “He’s fine.”

  “Kate, I don’t know why you think I want to hurt him. I can’t ignore the fact that he’s my father. It’s impossible to forget what happened to my mother. To some extent, we are all products of our past. But what I can do is change my future. By being educated, and working hard to save money, I can avoid living the life that my mother led. To me, that’s the best way to keep my past firmly where it belongs. To even think of doing something to harm Simon Scott would destroy everything I’m working for.”

  “I realize that now,” I said. “But with the photos in your house and the explosives residue on your hands, it seemed sensible to warn the police. Then you disappeared after leaving the restaurant. I didn’t know what else to think.”

  He shrugged. “Why were you so convinced that there was a threat? You seemed awfully sure there was something specific.”

  Unwilling to pursue that discussion, I looked in my bag for my lip balm. My certainty came from seeing Scott’s aura, and that wasn’t something I could share with Chris.

  He looked at me, waiting for an answer.

  “I have a source, a sort of inside track,” I said. He raised his eyebrows, but that was as much I was willing to say.

  “Do you believe now that I’m innocent?” he asked after a pause.

  “Yes.”

  He shrugged. “Not sure why I care what you think. Damn, Kate.”

  I grasped my coffee mug in both hands, looking down at the beige liquid, which was the same color as the table top.

  Chris’s hand tou
ched mine. “Friends?” he asked. When I looked up at him he grinned. His eyes crinkled at the corners just the way his father’s did.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “You look exhausted, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  I realized that he had no idea what had happened to Anita, didn’t know about Macintyre or the drug cover-up. I gave him a succinct version of events. When I’d finished, he sat back, shock on his face. “My God, I’m really sorry,” he said. “I like Anita, you know. It makes me mad that anyone would try to harm her.”

  Did Chris have a crush on Anita? It was possible, now that I thought back to the way he acted around her, angling his chair to face her, walking next to her when we were at the campaign rallies.

  “Or you, of course,” Chris added.

  “Yeah, well. We’re both fine now.” It wasn’t true. Anita still had an aura.

  “You really think this Macintyre character might be going after Scott?”

  I shrugged. I honestly didn’t know what to think. Even though Macintyre hadn’t set off the bomb, I still had a feeling that he intended to stop Scott from talking to the Managing Director of Litton Bernhoff. But maybe I was completely off track. Or perhaps binoculars man was working with Macintyre. I should call Parry and suggest he look into that.

  “I’ll call Detective Clarke about the alert,” I said. “And I think you should go see him and give him your side of the story.”

  He nodded. “I’ll do that tomorrow. For now, I want to get home to change. I’m planning on going to Scott’s campaign speech at the Wentworth hotel in the morning. It’s the last one before the election.”

  “Haven’t you had enough of political speeches?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said standing up and hefting his backpack over his shoulder. “I feel that this could be my last chance to talk to him. If his party wins and he becomes Prime Minister, I’ll never get near him. At least tomorrow I can see him up close. If that’s the best I can do, then it’s better than nothing.”

  “I really think you should talk to DCI Clarke before you do anything else,” I said. “We need to get that alert lifted, or you could be arrested at any moment.”