‘What multinationals? The agreement is purely with local Chinese companies.’
‘I’m so sorry; I misunderstood you. When you talked about antivirals, I assumed, as they’re all fairly new products, you must have got the patent holders involved. Because you wouldn’t be dealing with counterfeiters and pirates, now would you, Minister?’
There was a deathly silence in the hall as Mukooyo glared at Suzanne. She smiled back at him, although a little voice in the back of her mind was screaming that she might have gone too far.
The silence was broken as the Minister’s aide, sitting in the front row, coughed discreetly and pointed to his watch. Mukooyo jumped up and held out his hand to Suzanne.
‘I’m so sorry, I have to go! I’ll be in touch—and again, I wish you luck with your programme.’ As he walked through the hall, there was a smattering of applause, but Suzanne noticed not all the delegates were clapping.
2: SWAZILAND; SEPT 2004
It was early evening when Suzanne, Chibesa and WB left the conference hall. Along the street, trees were silhouetted against an orange sky. Although this was not her first visit to the region, Suzanne was still enthralled by this nightly spectacle, a brief display in an unfamiliar palette, before the light disappeared. There is no dusk in Africa.
‘I don’t really want to go back to the compound yet,’ Suzanne said. ‘Can we grab something to drink first?’
‘Sure, why not?’ Chibesa replied. ‘Why don’t we try the ice-cream parlour over there?’
‘A beer would slip down really well,’ WB said ‘and look, they even sell Tusker.’
The day’s heat lingered still. WB went inside to buy the drinks, while Suzanne and Chibesa took a small table on the dusty, crowded forecourt. Strings of lights stretched between trees above their heads. They flickered and faltered a couple of times then came on fully. Within seconds they were attracting beige moths that beat huge wings against the bulbs. In the doorway, the insectacutor buzzed and flashed continually as smaller insects were trapped and fried.
At the next table, a woman and three young girls were sharing the parlour’s speciality, Rainbow Ice. They were dipping their spoons into a glass dish filled with myriad coloured ice-creams topped with cream, rolling their eyes extravagantly at each mouthful.
Suddenly the youngest girl looked across at the new arrivals. Her spoon fell on the table as she stared open-mouthed. Suzanne smiled at the child who slipped out of her seat and toddled up to the table. Reaching out a small, sticky hand, she gently stroked Suzanne’s arm before running back, giggling, to her family and hiding her face in the woman’s lap.
‘Oh, bless her.’ Suzanne waggled her fingers in a wave at the child, making her giggle even more.
‘That’s probably the first white skin she’s ever seen,’ said Chibesa.
‘Here you go,’ said WB, arriving with the tray of drinks, ‘Tusker, Kenya’s finest, for Chibesa and me; Sprite with no ice for you, Suzanne.’ They sat sipping their drinks and watching the activities in the street, no less busy in the evening than it had been all day.
When the team had arrived in Swaziland two days earlier, they’d been told they wouldn’t be staying at the country’s only hotel as every room had been taken by the conference delegates. Chibesa, team secretary and logistics supremo, had been quick to reassure his companions.
‘Apparently, we’re going in the King’s Villas, whatever they are,’ he told them. They turned out to be a compound of four-bedroomed houses which Suzanne thought would be more at home in leafy Surrey suburbs than the African bush.
‘There are twenty altogether. They were built to accommodate the overspill of dignitaries during an international conference last year,’ WB told them after chatting to their driver on the way from the airport. To Suzanne’s dismay, they put her alone in one villa while Chibesa and WB stayed next door. She ignored the leopard skin curtains and lion skin rugs of the twin King and Queen Suites on the ground floor, locking herself instead in one of the smaller Princess rooms upstairs. Even so, her first two nights were disturbed by unfamiliar creaks inside and rustlings outside. Now, as they headed back after their drinks, she was not sorry they would be leaving tomorrow.
As their cab drove away, a slight figure in the long, loose-fitting cotton dress of the local Muslim women stepped out of the shadows, her face shrouded by a headscarf.
‘I must speak to you,’ she whispered. As Suzanne and her colleagues stared at her she shook her head. ‘But not out here; it’s too dangerous. Please, can we go inside?’
Chibesa glanced at WB, who nodded, then pulled a key from his pocket and opened the door of the men’s villa.
‘Of course. Come on in—you too, Suzanne.’
In the lounge, the young woman stood, looking as though she might flee at any moment, peering anxiously through the plate glass windows into the darkness beyond. Only when WB closed the curtains did she relax. The hand holding the scarf across her face was darker than might be expected and, as the material slipped to her shoulders, Suzanne was not surprised to see the woman was African, not Asian.
‘So, madam, what can we do for you?’ asked WB gently, gesturing towards the zebra-printed sofa, on which the young woman now perched herself.
‘I wanted to speak to you at the conference,’ she replied, ‘but I was afraid.’
‘I remember seeing you there,’ Suzanne said, ‘you were talking with the Kenyan Minister.’
‘Yes, I’m Sara Matsebula, chief pharmacist at the Swazi National Hospital. I’ve met Minister Mukooyo previously at conferences.’
‘And do you agree with his viewpoint on counterfeits?’ Suzanne tried to keep her voice steady, but the day’s events were starting to catch up with her.
‘Of course not,’ Sara replied, ‘although I don’t believe he’s necessarily corrupt or evil—he’s just being pragmatic.’
‘So what’s with the cloak and dagger act?’ Chibesa was blinking at her short-sightedly as he polished his glasses on the bottom of his embroidered shirt. ‘Sara’s not a Muslim name. Why the disguise? Did you think someone would report you to Mr Mukooyo?
‘Oh, the danger doesn’t come from the Minister,’ Sara exclaimed. ‘It comes from Banda!’
‘Banda? What’s that?’ Suzanne asked.
‘Not what; who! They’re a group based somewhere in Southern Africa; no-one knows exactly where, but they pop up in most of the countries around here. They’re behind eighty percent of the counterfeits in this region. Lots of people suspect they know who they are, but no-one will speak out against them, not openly anyway.’
‘Go on.’ Suzanne sank down into a giraffe-print armchair and waved her colleagues to sit as well.
‘I want you to take this.’ Sara pulled a large manila envelope from her bag. ‘I’ve been gathering information for years. It’s only bits and pieces, but I hope the IHF can do something with it.’ She dropped the envelope on the glass coffee table, before rubbing the tips of her fingers as though to rid them of dirt or slime. Then she stood up and pulled the headscarf back over her head. As she turned towards the door, Suzanne spoke.
‘Why, Sara?’
The young woman looked back.
‘Why what?’
‘Why did you risk coming here tonight? Why have you offered to help us when you obviously believe it puts you in danger?’
‘For Ruth.’ The words were barely audible. ‘My sister Ruth. Our mother died seven years ago. There were only the two of us and Ruth was still at school. She couldn’t wait to get on with her life; she wanted to be a hairdresser. But I promised Mother I’d make sure she finished her studies first. She was very bright, but always getting into trouble for talking too much in class.
‘A few months after Mother died, Ruth’s teacher called me, saying she was worried. Ruth had changed, gone very quiet, and frequently complained of feeling sick. At first, I assumed she was still grieving for Mother, but when she started getting up several times each night to drink litres of water, I took h
er to the doctor. As I suspected, she’d developed juvenile diabetes and needed regular insulin injections from then on.’
‘The poor girl! That’s a terrible thing for any child to have to deal with, let alone one that’s lost her mother.’ WB tutted and shook his head. He took Sara’s arm and guided her back to the sofa. Once more, she sat on the edge of the seat as she continued talking.
‘I normally brought her insulin home from the hospital with me. But one day last year, I forgot to get the prescription filled out. We have a little pharmacy near our house, so I collected the insulin from there. Only, whatever was in the vial, it wasn’t insulin. Ruth went into a coma and died two days later.’ Tears ran down Sara’s face as she finished her story and she rubbed them away with the back of her hand. Suzanne’s hand was across her mouth and her eyes stung with unshed tears.
‘I promised Mother I’d look after Ruth; but I failed. I can’t help her, but I’ll do what I can to make sure no-one else has to suffer like she did; no other relatives have to feel the way I do.’
3: ENGLAND; OCT 2004
The plane was delayed by two hours leaving Lusaka. The passengers sat in the brightly-lit new terminal, staring at the departure board and talking in the low murmur of anxiety Suzanne had seen so many times before at airports. It was an overnight flight due to take off at eleven pm, so all the shops and cafés had long closed; there was nowhere to get anything to eat. Suzanne was glad she’d remembered to buy some bottled water when they were still open. She gazed longingly at the sliding doors to the executive lounge, where she knew the more privileged passengers would be enjoying late-night snacks and complimentary drinks in comfy chairs.
One of the few aspects of her former corporate life which she missed was the option of travelling in some degree of comfort. When she’d transferred to the regulatory world, her expenses budget would only stretch to economy tickets although she had on occasion splashed out and upgraded her tickets herself. But she’d left even this option behind when she took on this new role. She could just see the headlines screaming from the front of the red tops: Regulators travel in luxury while beneficiaries struggle to pay for drugs. She wriggled on the unyielding plastic chair and stared at the departure board once more, praying for the ‘delayed’ to turn to ‘boarding’.
Suzanne had worked on a large manufacturing site in the north-east of England for nine years before being recruited initially by the UK regulators and then by the European Medicines Agency. Five years down the line, she was seconded to the IHF’s anti-counterfeiting programme. This trip, consisting of the conference in Swaziland and follow-up meetings with individual government officials and regulators in Zambia, had been the kick-off for the campaign in Africa. The organisers were delighted when the Kenyan Health Minister accepted their invitation to be Guest of Honour at the conference, but after his comments and their edgy public debate, Suzanne wasn’t so sure.
At one-twenty am, they were called to the gate, where they found they would need to verify their luggage before boarding. Walking across the tarmac with the rest of the passengers, Suzanne picked out her suitcase from the untidy pile and wearily handed it to the airport official who grinned sympathetically at her as he checked her name off on his clipboard and slung the case on the conveyor belt rising upwards into the dark belly of the plane.
Once they had all boarded, there was the inevitable tussle to get all the hand luggage in the overhead locker: ‘a real triumph of hope over experience’ as someone had once described it to Suzanne. And then, within minutes, they were all seated, the emergency drill was explained, and they were off the runway and speeding northward, with all the lights switched off.
The delay to their flight meant they missed the early morning arrival slot and comparative calm of Heathrow. By the time they reached the immigration booths, they were competing with several other planeloads from America and the Far East. Suzanne hated having to queue to enter her own country, but at least it meant there was no wait in the baggage hall; the cases were already circulating on the conveyor when she arrived. At least, most of them were. Suzanne’s was missing! She’d seen people in the past wait for bags that never arrived—and had felt sorry for them as the realisation dawned that something had gone awry but this was the first time it had happened to her. As the last of her fellow passengers wheeled away their luggage, she looked once more at the single bag still on the conveyor: it was the same colour as hers, but the make was different and there was some lettering on the side—someone’s initials, she assumed.
‘It looks like someone’s taken my bag by mistake,’ she said as the young girl on the lost property desk smiled sweetly at her. Yes, you can afford to smile, thought Suzanne; you’ve just had a good night’s sleep in your own bed!
‘Never mind, luv,’ was the cheery reply; ‘we’ll sort it out. Now,’ grabbing a form and a laminated card with pictures of cases of all sorts and sizes, ‘can you just pick out what yours looks like and we can go from there.’
Mercifully, the journey on the Heathrow Express was painless and just after ten am, Suzanne emerged into the bright sunshine outside Paddington Station. As it was Sunday, the usual commuter crush was missing, and the queue for a taxi was quite short. As she sped through the streets of London, heading for the river and her sunny Vauxhall flat, she breathed a sigh of relief remembering she had changed the bed and tidied up before she left. She could take a quick shower, and then crawl into fresh bedclothes and sleep for the rest of the day.
When she reached her front door, the double lock was not engaged, although she knew she’d activated it before she’d left home. A friend had agreed to pop in and water her plants while she was away; obviously he’d forgotten to relock it. Didn’t he know how dodgy it was, leaving your home unprotected these days? She’d have to say something when she went round to collect the keys later on.
But the next thing that hit her was the smell of cigarette smoke, mixed with something else, and the fact that the lights were on in the hall and the kitchen. There were dirty cups and plates in the sink and on the draining board; an empty pizza box was on the table, together with an overflowing ashtray and several empty beer bottles.
Suzanne strode down the corridor to the spare room. Wrenching open the door, she glanced at the huddled shape under the duvet before yanking open the curtains. The tousled head on the pillow turned; a pair of bright green eyes opened slowly, drifted shut again—and then flew open once more. A rueful grin appeared on a face flushed with sleep.
‘You’re back then, sis; did you have a good trip?’
‘No, I didn’t have a good trip; I’ve had the trip from hell—and I was expecting to get back to my nice neat flat and have a good sleep.’
‘Okay, you go and get your head down—and I’ll see you later.’ The eyes closed again and a freckled hand pulled the duvet up over a tanned shoulder. Suzanne grabbed the corner and tugged hard, pulling the bedclothes onto the ground. There was a howl of protest.
‘What are you doing here, Charlie?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were still in Greece.’
‘Um, we ran out of money; had to come home,’ was the mumbled reply.
‘But why are you here? Why aren’t you at home with Annie?’ There was a silence. ‘She’s thrown you out, hasn’t she? Charlie, what have you done now?’
‘Nothing really, sis,’ came the muffled reply as the recumbent figure struggled to regain control of the duvet. ‘There was this waitress I used to work with, in the bar—but it was nothing really, just a bit of a laugh.’
‘Yes, well, Annie never did have much of a sense of humour when it came to you and other women.’
The green eyes were open once more and gazing up at her appealingly.
‘I thought you wouldn’t mind if I kipped here while you were away—and I was going to clear up this morning—had a bit of a late night of it.’
‘You and me both, Charlie,’ retorted Suzanne, ‘you and me both.’ She stared at the figure in the bed, trying to hold on to the
anger that had flooded her head when she’d realised her privacy and order had been breached, but it was too late—and she was too tired. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘I’m going to bed. When I get up I expect this place to be spotless and every sign of tobacco (or whatever else you’ve been smoking) to be gone; and then we’ll talk about what’s happened and where you’re going to be sleeping tonight.’ She waited for a response, but all she got was a gentle snore. Pulling the door closed behind her, she dragged herself across the hallway to her own room and threw herself on the bed, fully clothed, as exhaustion finally overcame her. Waking a couple of hours later, she undressed, took the shower she had been promising herself since the previous night in the airport, and crawled between the fresh cool sheets. She lay awake for a few moments, acknowledging the fact that there was no sound coming from the rest of the flat. Her last thought before falling into a deep dreamless sleep was that once again, she was going to have to play the responsible sibling role. Charlie, or Charlotte Agnes Jones as their parents had christened her, might be two years older than Suzanne, but she had always been happy to turn to her younger sister for help whenever things went wrong. And with Charlie, things seemed to go wrong with alarming regularity.
4: ENGLAND; OCT 2004
By the time Suzanne woke, it was mid-afternoon and an empty stillness told her she was the only occupant of the flat. Dreading what she might find, she tightened the belt around her kimono and headed for the kitchen.
There wasn’t a dirty cup or plate in sight, the table was spotless and a scent of lavender hung in the air. In the spare room, the bed was made. It was as though her visitor had never been there.
Just then, she heard a key in the lock—and the front door opened. It was Charlie, carrying a bag of shopping in one hand and a big bunch of lilies in the other.
‘Hi, sis. Did you sleep okay?’’ She dumped the bag on the kitchen table and thrust the flowers at Suzanne. ‘Here—I wanted to say sorry. Now, are you hungry?’
Counterfeit! Page 2