Magda felt her senses entering overload as he once more came level with her. She kissed him with unbridled passion before allowing his lips to descend to her nipples. Meanwhile, she felt his finger gently begin rubbing her. She was already wet and her legs parted languidly, invitingly, the pain subsumed by heightened desire. She needed him inside her. She needed to feel the power of a man so that she could finally reinforce her womanhood .
‘Now,’ she gasped, suddenly aware of Bach’s Concerto in D Minor as it headed into Largo ma non tanto . ‘Please, now.’
Kelly took his cue and gently spread her legs apart. He positioned himself between them and entered her with the expertise of one who had had experience of making love to a disabled person. It was an expertise he thought he would never have to use again. ‘No, don’t you move,’ he whispered. ‘Let me do it, dear Magda.’
The Countess could feel the burning pain in her legs beginning to break through, but she was determined not to reveal this to him. The battle between pain and ecstasy could not afford to be lost. ‘More,’ she gasped. ‘More.’
His thrusting became more and more urgent until it seemed he was trying to keep pace with the Allegro and within a few seconds the able and the disabled had reached a simultaneous orgasm that left them both not only exhausted, but with a satisfaction that was utterly profound.
Magda sighed deeply. Ecstasy had indeed triumphed over Agony. Here in her arms was a man who had fulfilled an urgent need, both emotional and physical. Their mutual pain had been subsumed in sublime moments of passion, moments that she desperately wanted to believe would be repeated.
Furthest from Magda von Esterhazy’s mind was there any notion that her kind and gentle lover had once been a cruel and calculating killer. And that he had plans to be so again.
CHAPTER 12
The trattoria was almost empty when Fiona Harrington took her place at a corner table and faced the man who had so recently become her lover. She leaned forward and kissed Tring lightly on the lips. After a fortnight of almost incessant, wonderful sex, she had had to admit to herself that she had become infatuated with the man. She believed that he, too, held similar feelings towards her, and that was why she had decided to reveal to him the truth about her duplicity and the reasons for it. Quite simply, she trusted the scientist. Nothing in his manner or his words led her to believe that he was anything other than the antithesis of what she had so far discovered about the owners of Parados Pharmaceuticals. Yet she knew that some of her revelations might place him in danger, and that one in particular might make him want to end their relationship there and then. The time was now right, and it was a chance she had decided to take.
‘If we’re going to have a working lunch,’ her lover said jokingly, ‘then we should be at my place. As you know, I can rustle up a wicked tagliatelli con funghi, and then we can get down to afters.’
‘I thought you said you could spare only a few minutes for lunch. I’m not interested in a wham-bang-thanky-mam, my dear sir.’
Tring laughed. ‘If you’re not careful, my girl, I’ll talk shop and bore you to death.’
Fiona smiled knowingly. He was about to find out that this was exactly what she intended they do.
The waiter, a weasel-like man with a pencil-thin moustache, sidled over to them for their order. They both decided to go for Scaloppini Milanese accompanied by a bottle of Montepulicano.
Fiona was grateful when the wine arrived. She needed to loosen up. It was clear that so far she had successfully concealed the tension that was gnawing at her. The poor man didn’t have an inkling of what was about to hit him. She downed the first glass in almost one gulp.
‘Hey, go easy there, my little fresh-faced country girl,’ said Tring. ‘Save some for the meal.’
Almost immediately, Fiona felt the effects of the alcohol invade her brain. Her eyes fixed on the empty glass in her hand. She felt her cheeks flush like a robin’s breast on a cold winter’s day. She suddenly felt almost overwhelmed by guilt.
‘Hey, what’s wrong Fiona?’ asked Tring, noticing the uncharacteristic change in her mood.
‘I think I’m falling for you big time, Jonathan,’ she said quietly, at the same time cursing the lifting of inhibition brought about by the wine. What a stupid thing to say. They hardly knew one another. It was not the way she had planned to go about the matter.
If Tring was taken aback by her confession, he didn’t show it. He gently took both of her hands in his and looked into her glistening eyes. ‘The feeling’s mutual,’ he said kindly. ‘I think you know that.’
In one way Fiona felt relieved, but in another it made the whole thing worse. Once she revealed to him the truth, he might feel that she’d used his affection for her to further her own ends; that her words of endearment were as empty as the lies she had told.
‘There’s a lot about me that you don’t know, Jonathan.’
‘Ah, those secrets you once mentioned. Well, I promised I’d never ask, right?’
She looked into the grey-green eyes that reflected both learning and naivety. He was simply a scientist who was about to get caught up in something, the consequences of which neither of them could foretell.
‘I’m not an IT sales consultant, Jonathan,’ she confessed. ‘I’m an investigative journalist.’
If Tring was surprised, he didn’t show it, for if that was her secret, then it was no big deal. He paused for a moment before, ‘So who are you investigating? Me?’
‘In a way, yes, but only because you happen to be at Parados.’
‘Now you really have to explain,’ said the scientist apprehensively.
‘The Proctors are who I’m really after.’
‘But I thought you were Sharon Proctor’s best buddy.’
‘She thinks so, yes.’
‘You’d better begin at the beginning.’
‘Martin Locke.’
‘My predecessor?’
‘Yes.’ Fiona hesitated and breathed deeply. She was about to play consequences. ‘Locke contacted me the day before he died. He said he’d found out about me through a mutual friend. He said he had some information for me, information that would put his boss in jail and could possibly bring down the Government.’
Tring whistled. He knew Proctor was ruthless, but if what she was saying was true, then Locke’s untimely death might take on more sinister proportions. He killed him, you know. The words of his colleague, Harold Spencer, flooded his mind. Spoken months before and soon after he had arrived at Parados, he had dismissed the Mancunian’s misgivings as pure conjecture. Tring looked squarely at Fiona. ‘Do you think Locke was murdered?’
‘I don’t know, but whatever Locke had on the Proctors is dynamite.’
‘Do we have any clue where this information might be?’
‘That’s the problem. I’ve been drawing blanks and I thought you could help.’
‘Become a whistleblower, you mean?’
‘Look, Jonathan, my job is to expose wrongdoing wherever I find it. You know as well as I do that there is so much evil and corruption in this world that if we weren’t there to reveal it, then it would be a far sorrier place than it is already.’
‘A rather romantic view of the media, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
She flushed in anger. ‘Well, if you’re not going to help me—’
‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t,’ he said quickly, ‘but this is not without its risks. I could lose my job.’
‘If you found out the truth, I would think you’d want to.’
There was certainly logic in that, thought Tring. ‘Okay, my little investigative reporter, tell me all you know.’
In between bites of the scaloppini, Fiona Harrington told her lover how he had ingratiated herself into the Proctor circle, how she had met Sharon Proctor at a cocktail party and how they had quickly become firm friends.
‘She’s only thirty-one, six years older than me, and married to an ugly old brute nearly twice her age.’
‘Money,
’ said Tring bluntly. ‘She told me she was born on the wrong side of the tracks.’
‘Yes, you’re right, although, in her way, I think she loves … maybe that’s the wrong word … maybe she’s very fond of him.’
‘I think it’s the power and money she’s very fond of,’ he said, polishing off the last of the wine. ‘They’re the most powerful of aphrodisiacs.’
‘And power is what drives the pharmaceutical industry.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve learnt a lot about the industry over the last few months, and what I’ve learnt stinks.’
Tring was taken aback by her vehemence. ‘Hey, hold on a minute. I work in it, you know.’
Fiona, her small nostrils flaring, was champing at the bit. ‘I’m not talking about the scientists, I’m talking about the suits and the marketing men, the guys who promote the scandalous practice of bribing GPs to prescribe particular medicines while most patients are never told why they might suddenly and mysteriously receive a new medicine for a long-standing illness, or that these medicines could conceivably put them at risk. It’s a way of discovering very rare adverse reactions that may not have shown up in clinical trials. They set up promotional studies, pretend they’re science and damn the consequences.’
Tring was not a monk. He knew that in the past some companies had targeted doctors with potentially dangerous drugs, and also that tragedies like thalidomide were embedded in the public psyche. There were also other disasters: the first Pill scare, pressurised aerosol inhalers that killed thousands of asthma sufferers, and the link between the anti-arthritic drug Opren and jaundice. ‘I didn’t think post-marketing surveillance went on any more,’ he said meekly.
‘Post-marketing surveillance,’ she said sarcastically. ‘The usual gobbledygook they come up with to provide a smoke screen for wrongdoing.’
‘Don’t tell me this is happening at Parados,’ said Tring with a tinge of apprehension.
‘No, I don’t think it is, but it’s rife elsewhere.’
‘Well that’s a relief then … that it’s not us, I mean.’
‘Not so quick, Jonathan Tring. Your company is still too close to the Medicines Control Agency and the drug committees. There are even a couple of minor shareholders who serve on those committees.’
‘Well, I don’t know who they are. Who told you all this, anyway?’
‘Sharon Proctor.’
‘My, you have been a busybody, young lady.’
‘Maybe, but I’m more interested in what she hasn’t told me.’
‘I think you might have to do that woman a big favour to get any more out of her.’
Fiona’s heart pounded. Her lover had hit the mark, albeit unwittingly. This was the moment she had dreaded. Was it really necessary for her to tell him when she knew it could destroy their relationship? Would he understand that she had sold herself to the devil for the sake of a higher ideal: truth? Sharon Proctor had expected her every whim to be satisfied. Not to accede to her request might have placed her whole endeavour in jeopardy. Sure, the American had told her that her interest in the professor had been only transient; that what she had done was for a sexual high, a feeling of consummate power. But would Jonathan understand that?
‘Hey, you’re shivering, darling,’ he said, and rubbed her right hand. ‘I’ll tell them to turn the heating up.’
‘No, it’s not that,’ she said quickly. ‘There’s something else I have to tell you.’
Tring smiled. It was certainly a day for surprises.
‘You remember Proctor’s fancy dress birthday bash where we met?’
‘How could I ever forget?’ Visions of rampant sex in the dark and the rustling of the panniered evening gown flooded his mind.
Fiona remained silent for a few seconds. This was the moment she had dreaded ever since Proctor’s party. She took a deep breath. It was now or never.
‘Jonathan,’ she said almost inaudibly, ‘it wasn’t me.’
From the comfort of his car, Kieran Kelly watched with feigned insouciance as his prey left the Italian restaurant. The man may have been a boffin, but he was certainly tall and strong enough to represent a potential problem when it came to the snatch. The Irishman had already watched the scientist parade his expertise on the rugby field. For the junior level at which he played, Tring was as hard as they came. But few men were as those portrayed by the movies. He found that when confronted by a shooter, most targets preferred to practise pragmatism rather than heroics. And there was nothing like a pistol in the face to bring a recalcitrant to order.
From a distance of only a few yards, Kelly noted that the scientist wore a worried frown. Maybe he’d just had a tiff with his girlfriend, he thought. She was certainly a looker, with a figure that most women would die for, and some men might kill for. But he was not interested in the perfect, the unblemished and the pristine. As he drew away to follow his quarry’s silver Mercedes, the Irishman leaned forward to increase the sound on his car’s CD player. Bach’s violin concertos had possessed him ever since he had made love to Magda von Esterhazy. The music was at once both comforting and a torture. It had now been two weeks since he had seen her. Two weeks in which he had forsaken her in order to track Jonathan Tring’s every move, monitor his every habit. Two weeks in which the single-mindedness of his purpose was being gradually eroded by his desire for the woman. But the Irishman knew deep in his heart that he would have to bear this complication; that he would have to take this unnecessary risk. He yearned for Magda’s voice and the silky softness of her milk-white skin. What must she be thinking of him? A man who was interested only in a one-night stand; a man who got his kicks from making love to a cripple, and then dumped her. The music pounded his brain, each cadence pummelling a message of love, of guilt, of subterfuge. ‘Damn you,’ he screamed aloud, and veered away from his quarry. Tring could wait. So could Dr Martin Townsend and the Secretary of State for Health.
Kelly pressed the ‘on’ button on his mobile phone. As the bleeps made their connection, his mind raced to concoct a suitable excuse. He had told the Countess that he had had to fly to Belfast for a few days to see his children. A few days, however, was not two weeks. He recalled that her telephone number was ex-directory. It might offer him a way out, but would she still want to see him? His heart leapt as she answered the call, and he immediately found himself tongue-tied.
‘Hello, who is this please?’ she enquired, her voice tinged with apprehension. ‘Is there anyone there?’
‘Magda?’ he said at last.
‘Yes,’ she answered, her heart missing a beat as she recognised his voice.
Kelly decided to launch into his excuse immediately in order to allay her fears. ‘Hello, Magda, how are you? I’m so sorry not to have called you. My boy was sick so I had to stay on. As you know, I programmed your number into my mobile phone and then mislaid the damn thing – the phone, that is. I couldn’t remember your number, and as you’re ex-directory, I was like an Irishman who’d mislaid his pint of Guinness.’
Her laughter was a mixture of relief and concern. ‘Is the baby okay?’
‘Yes, he’s fine now. It was touch of bronchitis. It’s all that damn wet weather we have.’
‘Are you calling from Belfast?’
‘No, I’ve just got back.’ He steeled himself for the vital question, suppressing the dichotomy raging in his mind because deep down he knew he had to see her again. It was every much a need as was his compulsion for revenge. ‘Can I see you this evening?’ he asked. It was almost a whisper.
For Countess Magda von Esterhazy, the Irishman’s plea was affirmation that she had not misread his intentions after all, that her days of self-doubt could be consigned to the recycle bin and then emptied. She could tell by his tone that he bore her genuine affection, and at that moment she pledged to herself that she would never ask more of him than that which he was prepared to give.
Try as he might, Jonathan Tring could not get Fiona’s revelation out of his mind. Gu
nning his SLK out of the slip lane and onto the M11 motorway, he was glad that he had allowed his initial shock to be replaced by pragmatism. He’d reassured Fiona that it wouldn’t make any difference to their relationship. At the time Fiona and Sharon Proctor had carried out their switch, his new girl friend had been a complete stranger. In a way, it had laid to rest a nagging doubt about a girl who would ravish a strange man without a word between them. He liked to think of himself as a liberated individual, but the actions that night had been disturbing as well as exhilarating, and he was glad that the demon at the ball had not been her. However much he could understand Fiona’s ulterior motive in doing Sharon Proctor’s bidding, he found less fathomable the dark sexual forces that would impel the American to carry out such an act of subterfuge, even to the extent of slipping in hazel-eyed contact lenses. He was honest enough with himself to admit that prior to his affair with Fiona, he had found Sharon Proctor alluring. This feeling had been compounded when she had told him of her devotion to her ugly husband. Her words, chosen to forestall approach, had, in effect, issued a challenge. But Fiona had changed all that, and Tring now looked upon his employer with a mixture of contempt and pity.
Within fifteen minutes, the professor was pulling into his parking space at Parados. He had just switched off his engine when Harold Spencer approached. The beetle-browed head of clinical research was enjoying a pipe-smoking break.
‘Nobody smokes those things any more you know, Harold,’ said Tring, laughing through his open window.
‘One of the delights of life, my friend,’ replied the bluff Mancunian. ‘Oh, and another of the delights of life is looking for you, Jonathan.’ Tring’s raised eyebrows begged an explanation.
‘When the blonde goddess summons a devotee, he shall obey,’ said Spencer with mock pomposity.
‘Shit,’ muttered the scientist. Sharon Proctor was the last person he wanted to see. He climbed out of his car, pressed the remote to lock it, and then turned to face Spencer. ‘Harold?’
Cry of the Needle Page 15
