The Severance Trilogy Box Set

by Mark McKay

  Torres didn’t bother to hide his displeasure. ‘Who the hell do you think we are? If you’re suggesting that Hackett Pharmaceuticals would stoop to murder in order to gain a commercial advantage then you’d better be very sure about your facts, Mr Severance. Your accusation is not only ridiculous, it’s insulting and it’s slanderous. Ask me something relevant, or leave.’

  ‘We apologise,’ said Russell. ‘What’s your relationship with the retreat centre?’

  Torres made himself calm down. ‘The patent will enable us to claim sole rights on the cultivation of the plant. We can license it, of course. We’re working with Ascension to grow and distribute it on the natural health market. In Europe and America, mostly.’

  ‘When do you intend to start distribution?’

  ‘As soon as the patent is approved. It may take several years to get our new drug through trials. In the meantime, we can sell the product in its natural form.’

  ‘And you’re quite sure,’ said Russell, ‘that Conrad Steadman doesn’t work for Hackett Pharmaceuticals?’

  ‘Quite sure, Inspector,’ said Hamilton.

  ‘In that case, we won’t take up any more of your time.’ He stood up to leave, but Nick remained seated.

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ he said to Torres, ‘are you Spanish?’

  ‘That’s right. Formerly of Madrid, now of Cambridge. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just wondered if you might know people in Peru, that’s all.’

  Torres laughed. ‘This is a British company, but we’re multi-national. We have an office in Iquitos, one in Lima and others all over the world. I travel a lot and yes, I have friends in Peru. It is an advantage to have a CEO who speaks Spanish, especially as we do a lot of work in South America. It’s one of the reasons I got the job.’

  Nick stood up. ‘Thanks for your time.’ He turned to Hamilton. ‘If Steadman suddenly pops up, do let us know.’

  Hamilton had no answer for that.

  ‘My secretary will show you out,’ said Torres.

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Russell. ‘I’m sure we can find our own way.’

  They took their leave. It was a frosty end to proceedings and no one shook hands.

  ‘It stinks,’ said Nick as they descended in the lift.

  ‘Is that intuition or logic talking?’ asked Russell.

  ‘I’m going to find out more about Edward Torres. And just how invested in Peru Hackett Pharmaceuticals really is. They out and out lied about Conrad.’

  ‘That was my feeling, too. I’ll look at Harry Chambers and see if there’s a connection to Hackett somewhere.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  Nick pondered the answers Torres and Hamilton had just provided them with. If Hackett was getting approval for the patent in three weeks from now, then there wasn’t much time left in which to tempt them into murdering another researcher. Using Conrad as the hit man, presumably. Nick needed to talk to Henderson and set that trap as soon as possible. All he needed in the meantime, was someone to act as bait.

  Chapter 11

  Nick talked to Henderson about the best way of getting a message out to the pharmaceutical community. There were a number of research discussion forums on the internet and Henderson’s suggestion was to post something on one of them. Once they had their pretend researcher on board, that person could open an account and write something provocative about the ‘Stallion of the Amazon’. If Conrad was monitoring the forums it might be enough to make him act. But they didn’t have long to do it. Nick wondered when the help Oyama had promised would show up.

  He was in the greenhouse at the cottage a few days later, looking at the plants. They were growing, but they didn’t seem to be thriving like the plants he’d seen in Peru. They seemed more fragile in an English climate and even with the artificial stimulus provided by the greenhouse environment they were still struggling. He heard the sound of a car approaching and went out to see who it was. A taxi was coming down the driveway.

  It pulled up in front of the cottage and Oyama got out. He’s back early, thought Nick. Then Oyama went to the rear of the car and opened the door to let someone else out. It was Mariko. She exited slowly, putting her weight on her good leg and using a crutch for support.

  He walked towards them as fast as his sore ribs would permit. This was definitely a surprise. Surely Mariko should still be in Japan, doing whatever needed to be done after her father’s unexpected death. She smiled as he greeted her with the customary bow, and returned it. He wanted to hug her, but stopped short of doing that. They had shown their affection for each other that way before, but it wasn’t the traditional Japanese way and he was never quite sure when the circumstances made it OK. He could see that recent events had taken their toll. Her face was drawn and the eyes had lost some of their usual sparkle. Oyama didn’t look much better. He helped them with their luggage and they all went inside.

  ‘I’m sorry about your father,’ said Nick, once he and Mariko were seated in the lounge. Oyama was in the kitchen, making tea.

  ‘Thank you. The funeral was the day before yesterday. A lot of people came. I didn’t realise he knew so many people. But what happened to you, Nick?’

  He explained his still bruised complexion and what had been happening since Oyama had left for Japan.

  ‘Is there anyone who can act as a pharmaceutical researcher for me?’ he asked Mariko.

  ‘You are looking at her,’ came the reply. She smiled at his surprise. ‘You know I can play a part, Nick. Just tell me who I need to be.’

  ‘But what about your leg? And why aren’t you still in Japan?’

  ‘The leg is OK. I can put my weight on it for a while, but I still need the crutch, sometimes. As for Japan, we thought it might be a good idea to leave the country for a while. I don’t think the people who killed my father wanted to kill me, but while I’m recovering it is easier to be somewhere else.’

  ‘Was it Yamada?’

  Mariko’s eyes narrowed. She was angry and hurt and he knew from experience that it made her dangerous. ‘He came to the funeral. Can you believe it? We have no proof, though. Not yet.’

  ‘What makes you think you’re safe here? He sent an assassin here once before.’

  Oyama appeared with the tea. He handed each of them a cup.

  ‘We thought about the scenario on the flight,’ he said. ‘As your researcher, Mariko will need somewhere to live. Not here, of course.’

  ‘There is an apartment we can use in central London,’ said Mariko. ‘We keep it for CDS people who are here on business.’

  ‘What will happen to the CDS?’ Nick wanted to know.

  ‘It is being discussed,’ said Mariko. ‘I will probably take over, but some of the politicians and administrators involved are not convinced it is a job for a woman.’

  ‘I thought you did everything already.’

  ‘Yes, but doing everything and being the boss are not the same things.’

  Nick thought it best to drop the subject and returned to the business of the fake researcher. The apartment Mariko had mentioned was in Kensington. It was on the ground floor of a two storey terraced house. They would move Mariko in there tomorrow and then, with Henderson’s help, compose a few posts for the online forum that would sound authentic. They’d include an email address for a Dr Mariko Watanabe and ensure it was obvious that she was working on a freelance basis for Sanderson-Phillips. Maybe drop in a reference to Kensington, as well. With an entry for Mariko Watanabe on the Kensington and Chelsea electoral roll database, any would be killer would have all the data they needed to track her down.

  ‘Now I’m back,’ said Oyama once the plan was clear, ‘I can go back to work on the sword. I must ring Shauna, she needs to understand this part of the process.’

  ‘Who is Shauna?’ asked Mariko.

  ‘Hasn’t he told you about his assistant?’ said Nick. ‘She’s his apprentice.’

  This revelation prompted a rapid dia
logue in Japanese. Mariko became suddenly amused and Oyama suffered what must have been an attempt to wind him up with a good grace. He produced his mobile phone and waved it at her and then disappeared into the kitchen, presumably to make the call.

  ‘No,’ said Mariko, reverting to English. ‘He kept very quiet about that.’ She laughed. He liked her when she laughed, and right now it was helping to shift the rather sombre atmosphere that had descended on the place since her arrival. She realised it, too.

  ‘Sorry, Nick. I’m not the best company at the moment.’

  ‘I understand. Want to practise Aikido in the morning?’

  He got another laugh. ‘With your ribs and my leg? We can try.’

  Oyama came back. ‘You will meet my assistant in the morning,’ he said to Mariko.

  ‘His affectionate assistant,’ quipped Nick. ‘Well, as far as he’s concerned, anyway.’ Then he remembered something. ‘It’s a pity you can’t practise. Shauna is quite accomplished and I’d like your opinion on her technique.’

  ‘I can stand for fifteen minutes or so. I can’t move that fast, but it would be a good test for me. I’ll do it if she wants to.’

  Mariko decided she wanted to unpack and then rest for a while. They’d go over the finer points of their plan that evening. In the meantime, Nick could contact Henderson and get a draft post prepared. The rest would be up to Conrad.

  When Shauna arrived the next day, she wanted to know if he’d found his man in Norfolk.

  ‘I thought you might call me and let me know,’ she said, looking mock-offended. ‘And what happened to your face?’

  I’ll be glad when this bruising finally goes and everyone I meet doesn’t ask that question, he thought. He just told her that he’d found his man and they’d got into a bit of a scrap. And he’d disappeared.

  ‘Anything I can do? Go back to the list of surgeons, perhaps?’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I’m making other enquiries.’

  She was introduced to Mariko, who was curious to make her acquaintance. Mariko was simply ‘a friend from Japan’ and was just dropping in on her way to London. There was no time for the two women to have a practice session, Shauna only had till this afternoon. She had to work a late shift at St Thomas’s. She’d driven down to the cottage this time and so she offered Mariko a ride back into London. Nick said he’d come along and they all went up to the apartment that afternoon. Once they arrived, Shauna only stayed long enough to help bring in the luggage. She had to get ready for work.

  ‘She seems nice enough,’ said Mariko, once Shauna had gone. ‘Where did Katsu meet her?’

  ‘She’s a student. They met at the dojo in London.’

  Mariko looked thoughtful. Whatever the thought was, she kept it to herself. ‘Let’s look at my new home.’

  It was a two-bedroom apartment. Modern, clean kitchen and fittings. Rather bare of ornaments or anything personal, as nobody really lived there on anything like a permanent basis. But it was furnished and functional. Mariko pronounced herself satisfied.

  They’d agreed that Mariko would create an account online and start posting, just to give herself some history. Then in three days from now, she’d start leaking the dummy research. Nick would come and stay with her in a day or two, but he’d be as unobtrusive as possible.

  ‘Ready, Dr Watanabe?’ he asked her, once they had the place in order.

  She smiled. ‘Ready. Let’s just hope that after all this, we get a bite.’

  DCI Russell attended Harry’s funeral. He did it as discreetly as he could, but in his Italian suit he stood out from the hard-faced men Harry had worked for like a sore thumb. They could smell a copper from 100 yards anyway, didn’t matter what he was wearing. They acknowledged his presence with a nod, but they had nothing to say to him. Any connection from Harry to Hackett Pharmaceuticals went through Conrad, who remained at large. It was obvious that the common interest was cocaine, but until that cocaine showed up there wasn’t a lot Russell could do. The question was, when would it show up, and where? He decided to do some digging on Hackett Pharmaceuticals, just to see if anything interesting came up. Before he went back to Cornwall he met with Nick to share his findings. They were back at the Notting Hill Gate station once more. This time another DCI sat in. His name was Jack Richards and he was working the Ray Curtis murder.

  ‘There are around twenty Conrad Steadmans in the UK,’ began Russell, ‘but none of them fits the profile of our man. I would say that’s not his real name. So at the moment he’s a bit of a dead end. We’ve got an alert out for him, just the same.’

  ‘And he’s the prime suspect for both murders, then?’ asked Richards, who was a younger version of Russell. Slimmer and not so well-dressed, and not so permeated with the ‘realism’ of his older colleague.

  ‘He is,’ said Russell. ‘So, we believe that Steadman has some connection with Hackett Pharmaceuticals, regardless of the fact they say otherwise. The motive for the murders is the huge amounts of money Hackett stand to make when their patent goes live. That’s one avenue of investigation. On the other hand, the fact that Harry Chambers worked for the Chaplain family, whose main source of income is cocaine, strengthens our hypothesis that Steadman and the Chaplains are in business together. The best way to wrap this up would be to catch Steadman and his partners red handed with the product. And grill him about Hackett at the same time. He’ll go to jail for a long stretch, whatever the outcome.’

  ‘What did you find out about Hackett Pharmaceuticals?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Their published accounts and annual reports don’t tell us much. They are heavily invested in South America, but what they’re invested in isn’t stated. The interesting part is more about Edward Torres.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He may be formerly of Madrid, and he was certainly born there. His father Xavier, however, was Peruvian and Edward, or Eduardo, grew up in Peru. Xavier Torres was a prominent member of the Shining Path group. He was killed in 1994 by government forces, in Lima.’

  ‘Shining Path?’ asked Richards.

  ‘The armed wing of the communist party. The people’s army. Terrorists, if you’re more right wing. They’re still active, though not to the extent they once were. They’ve shifted their focus into the drugs trade. Now they’re narco-terrorists, certainly as far as the US is concerned.’

  ‘And does Torres still have connections with these people?’ enquired Nick.

  ‘I don’t know. But when he said he had friends in Peru, he was understating the case. I would say he probably has lots of friends in Peru.’

  ‘We need to find out more about Torres,’ said Nick. ‘I’m getting a bad feeling about him.’

  ‘Oh, something else came up on the balance sheet that might interest you,’ said Russell. ‘Hackett Pharmaceuticals owns the Stone Park Clinic.’

  ‘That is interesting. Norfolk would be the perfect place, too…’

  ‘For what?’ asked Richards.

  ‘To bring in 25 kilos of cocaine with your first shipment of natural products from the Amazon,’ said Russell. ‘And they start shipping when?’

  ‘In three weeks,’ supplied Nick.

  Russell grinned like the proverbial Cheshire cat. ‘We’ll keep a discreet eye on the Norfolk clinic. If and when this ‘Stallion of the Amazon’ arrives, so will we. If we’re right, both Conrad Steadman and Edward Torres will have some awkward questions to answer.’

  The next day, Nick moved in with Mariko. He kept a low profile. If any shopping needed to be done, she went out and did it. She could walk to the supermarket and back in twenty minutes and she used the walk as physio for her leg. She was improving day by day. She went to a herbalist and came back with the ingredients for some concoction that she said would help Nick’s ribs to knit together faster. He raised his eyes when she offered him the tea, so she reminded him that he was an employee of the CDS and this was an order. He drank it. Fortunately, the taste was much more tolerable than aya
huasca.

  She posted her ‘research’. In summary, it said that she had been using the Sanderson-Phillips lab to isolate the active ingredient of ‘el semental de la Amazonia’ and she would be publishing her findings in the next ten days. She made no reference to Hackett Pharmaceuticals. It would appear as if she was making this breakthrough in ignorance of the fact they’d already done it. Someone replied to the post, telling her that Hackett had a patent application on this ingredient already, so she added fuel to the fire by saying she didn’t care about that. If it interfered with commerce, that was too bad. Science was her guiding light, not money.

  ‘That should get your Mr Steadman going,’ she said. ‘If he’s looking.’

  Otherwise, there wasn’t much to do, other than wait. They talked of course, about everything and nothing in particular, but waiting in a heightened state of awareness was a tiring business. Five days went by and nothing had happened to give them cause for concern. Mariko hadn’t spotted anyone who might be more than casually interested in her on her daily walks to the supermarket. Nick was beginning to think their best bet for finding Conrad would simply be to wait for the cocaine to show up in Norfolk. Time began to drag, and they were bored.

  But he was feeling a lot better, now. The bruising had gone and Mariko’s tea might just have done him some good. The ribs didn’t hurt anymore, so he decided it was time to test them. Late that evening, just for the sake of doing something, he went out for a run. The streets of Kensington didn’t make for ideal running conditions but he kept away from the main roads and took it easy. When he got back to the apartment forty-five minutes later, he was pleased with his performance. It looked as though he was almost fully recovered.

  It was 11.30pm and there weren’t many people in evidence. He opened the front door and walked down the hallway leading to the door of the apartment. Just as he stopped and bent down to remove his running shoes before opening it, he froze. His sixth sense went off like an alarm clock. He knew without doubt that Mariko wasn’t alone in there. And whoever was with her was giving off a seriously unpleasant vibe. Almost like a bad smell. In fact, there was a trace of a bitter, nasty odour, but he couldn’t identify it.