Deep Blue Sea

by Tasmina Perry

  ‘“Controlled Test of Rheladrex. Report number six.” This is it,’ she gasped.

  She sank to the floor and sat cross-legged to speed-read it. Much of it didn’t make sense, much of it was in impenetrable jargon. But one paragraph in particular stood out.

  ‘Dr Adriana Russi, formerly of Denver Chemicals, confirms that there were problems in clinical trials – before and after approval.’

  Dr Russi’s number was written beneath the text in biro. Another name and cell number were scrawled on the cover page. Rachel could make out the word Maddison, spelt with a double D and with a heart over the I.

  ‘Well there’s someone you should probably speak to,’ said Liam, typing something into Google on his iPhone.

  ‘You’re right. I wonder where that area code is, though? I don’t recognise it.’

  Liam looked up as if he regretted what he was about to say.

  ‘It looks like Adriana Russi lives in Rome.’

  44

  Under any other circumstances, Diana would have leapt at the opportunity to fly to the Eternal City. She adored its energy, its history, its passion. It wasn’t just a city for lovers; a market trader in the Campo de’ Fiori could sell you a bag of ripe peaches with such zeal and delight it could make you feel as if they would somehow transform your life. And perhaps for a few moments those sweet, succulent fruits actually would. The food seemed more flavoursome in Rome, the light softer, its nights more sultry and full of magic. It was a city that made you feel alive, which was why it felt wrong to be here, right now, looking for the reasons why Julian had died.

  Diana had had incredibly mixed feelings about Rachel’s discovery of the report into Denver’s wonder drug. When she had found out about Madison Kopek, she had thought she would welcome any explanation about her husband’s suicide that did not involve a relationship with another woman. But the truth was that there was no comfort in any reason, and that was something she hadn’t truly appreciated when she had persuaded Rachel to look into his death.

  Rachel hadn’t said out loud that she thought Julian had been murdered. It was something Diana had extrapolated from her sister’s suspicions about Madison’s death, Ross’s attack, Julian’s investigation into Rheladrex and the urgency with which she wanted to talk to Adriana Russi.

  Diana wasn’t completely naïve. Julian had been the head of a multi-billion-pound company and the stakes were high. He had taken decisions that made – or cost – millions, decisions that affected people’s lives, not always in a good way. She knew that Rachel might not be too far off-base with her theories. But murder? The very idea of it haunted her thoughts and her dreams. Only last night she had woken up drenched in sweat, and for a few seconds had believed that she was still in her nightmare, a patchwork of bloody images that didn’t quite knit together. It was too gruesome a notion to fit into her world, even one that had been rocked by suicide.

  They had checked into the Exedra hotel, chosen by Rachel for its rooftop pool overlooking the city, although Diana had a feeling they were not going to be in the hotel long enough to check out its facilities.

  ‘Dr Russi does know we’re coming?’ she asked as Rachel hailed a white taxi and instructed the driver in wonky Italian to take them to Trastevere. It had only just occurred to her.

  ‘Of course she does,’ said Rachel, settling into the back seat. ‘How do you think I know her address?’

  ‘I didn’t like to ask.’

  Rachel glanced up with irritation. ‘She just might be a bit cagey.’

  ‘Cagey?’

  ‘Sounded a bit paranoid on the phone. Not surprising really.’

  As the taxi grumbled through the crazy, traffic-clogged streets, past a statute of Julius Caesar and over the green-grey river that snaked through the city, Rachel buried her nose in Julian’s Rheladrex report as if she were doing last-minute swotting for an exam.

  ‘I’ve started therapy.’ Whether it was something to fill the silence, a way of exchanging information or a hope that it would lead subtly to a discussion about Adam Denver, Diana had no idea why she said it.

  ‘Good,’ said Rachel, looking up from the report.

  ‘You think so?’ Rachel’s approval was suddenly important to her.

  ‘I just hope you haven’t told her anything that you haven’t told me.’

  Adam’s name was there, on the tip of her tongue, but then the taxi ground to a halt, almost flinging them forward off their seat and taking all discussion off the agenda.

  ‘We are here,’ said the driver.

  Adriana Russi’s apartment was in a tall, crumbling sandstone building opposite a bustling market and a row of cafés where people spilled out on to the streets at small wicker tables loaded with tiny espresso cups and bowls of pasta.

  They searched for an empty table at the quietest bar, slipping a waiter a ten-euro note to find them somewhere. Rachel sent Dr Russi a text, and after twenty minutes, a forty-something woman with dark blond hair cut into a bob approached them. She was plain-looking, but she made the best of herself in pale chinos, a neat blue Oxford shirt and loafers. If it wasn’t for the deep lines around her eyes, she could have been an Ivy League college student rather than a professor.

  ‘Mrs Denver?’ she asked in perfect American-accented English.

  ‘Yes – this is Diana. I’m Rachel Miller, her sister.’

  Dr Russi took a seat overlooking the street and looked around. Diana wasn’t sure if she was seeking out the waiter or someone else.

  ‘Thank you for meeting us.’

  ‘I couldn’t say no to the chief executive’s wife, could I?’

  ‘So you worked for the pharmacovigilance department of Denver Chemicals?’ asked Rachel after they had ordered coffee. It was thick and black and almost stuck to her lips as she sipped it.

  ‘You know that,’ said Dr Russi, not unkindly.

  ‘We know it but we don’t exactly know what it means.’

  ‘I am sorry about your husband,’ said Dr Russi, directing her attention to Diana.

  ‘News travels this far?’ said Diana quietly.

  ‘People are always interested in their former employers.’

  ‘So you met Julian?’ asked Rachel quickly.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Was it about Rheladrex?’

  Dr Russi fell silent.

  ‘Do you know why I left Denver?’ she said finally.

  ‘Can you tell us?’

  ‘I would if I hadn’t signed a confidentiality agreement when I joined the company and a gagging clause when I left.’

  At that moment Diana could understand the buzz of Rachel’s job. It was a series of puzzles you had to unlock, a game, a cat-and-mouse chase where you used your skill to tease out of people what you wanted. Diana had always relied on her looks for that purpose, but seeing Rachel in action made her wish more than ever that she had her sister’s smarts.

  ‘Diana is the CEO’s wife. A member of the Denver family,’ began Rachel pointedly. ‘They sign off every pay cheque, every redundancy, every contract, every arrangement . . .’

  Dr Russi looked uncomfortable, but then softened.

  ‘Rheladrex was an enormously exciting drug for the company. Everyone has heard about the obesity problem in America, but it was the global opportunities that really excited every single pharmaceutical lab in the world. I mean, did you know that there are as many overweight people in China as there are in the States? This one drug had the potential to transform the company. Generate profits that it could then plough back into revitalising research and development.’

  ‘What made it different to other anti-obesity drugs on the market?’

  ‘Its effectiveness. The fact that you could use it long-term,’ said the doctor bluntly.

  ‘And was it safe?’

  She pause
d. ‘Rheladrex jumped through all the appropriate hoops to get approval,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘Adriana, please talk to us. We know that Julian supported you.’

  ‘How much do you know about clinical trials in the pharmaceutical industry?’ she said after a moment.

  ‘Not as much as you do.’

  ‘Drugs trials are generally conducted by or on behalf of the companies manufacturing them. Is it any wonder when trials then tend to produce results that favour them?’

  She didn’t wait to hear their reply.

  ‘Of course, no one wants a drug to be unsafe. Thousands of drugs don’t make it to market and of those that do, possible side effects are always put on the literature that accompanies the medication.’

  ‘You mean all the tiny writing on the leaflet that we never take any notice of?’ said Rachel cynically.

  ‘Perhaps you should,’ replied Dr Russi. ‘Then again, perhaps you would never take so much as an aspirin if you believed it. But medication is about risk management. Is the tiny chance that I might suffer a side effect worth the benefit this drug might bring me? For most people, it is.’

  ‘You were going to tell us about your role at Denver,’ said Diana. ‘What is pharmacovigilance exactly?’

  ‘When a drug is approved by the FDA, it still has to have a period of review. That’s what I did. I monitored drugs. We particularly looked out for adverse side effects.’

  ‘And you found some with Rheladrex?’ said Rachel, leaning her elbows on the table.

  Dr Russi nodded. ‘I had my reservations about it from the start. I felt it was too close in compound structure to another diet drug that was pulled off the market over a decade ago. So I wasn’t entirely surprised when we started to receive reports of heart and respiratory problems amongst people who had taken the drug for longer than nine months.’

  ‘I thought you said it was supposed to be an obesity drug suitable for longer-term use,’ said Diana, getting drawn into the story.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ replied Dr Russi.

  ‘So why didn’t you report it to the FDA?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘Let’s just say I encountered resistance from my superiors.’

  ‘Simon Michaels?’ asked Diana.

  ‘He wasn’t directly involved, but perhaps he would have been informed about it.’

  ‘Surely they can’t do that?’ said Diana, aghast.

  ‘There are ways of burying the truth,’ said Adriana obliquely. ‘Twisting the definition of regulatory requirements to meet your purposes.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I was asked to leave.’

  ‘Fired?’

  ‘I was given a financial incentive to bring my period of consultancy to an end,’ she said diplomatically. ‘It all left a very bad taste in my mouth. I left America and came back to Italy, which is where I am from.’

  ‘What was your connection with Julian Denver?’

  ‘I had very little awareness of him whilst I was working for Denver Chemicals. Obviously you know the name of the CEO of your company, but beyond that we had no contact. I was settled back in Italy, actually, doing some academic work at one of the universities, when Julian got in touch with me.’

  ‘When was this?’

  At first she looked reluctant to tell them.

  ‘Six weeks ago. He flew to Rome to meet me. He knew I’d been working on Rheladrex in the pharmacovigilance department and had heard I had left the company, learnt I’d been paid off. I don’t know how, but he seemed to know about the potential side effects of the drug. He said that someone he knew was taking it and had died. He wanted to know what I knew; he wanted to know all the risks.’

  ‘So you told him?’ said Rachel.

  ‘He was the CEO of the company. I couldn’t not. I told him that we were potentially sitting on a ticking time bomb that could cause fatalities, irreparable damage to people’s lungs and hearts, not to mention billions in potential payouts. I told him that I felt the senior management at Denver Chemicals were underreporting the adverse effects to the FDA.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He talked about pulling the drug.’

  Diana felt her heart surge. The image of Julian, a hero – flying across Europe to do the right thing blotted out all thoughts of him as the unfaithful husband.

  ‘Just like that?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘Voluntary withdrawal.’ She nodded.

  ‘And is that usual?’

  ‘When you have a drug with known adverse side effects, there are a few things you can do,’ said Dr Russi carefully. ‘You can carry on marketing it and wait until you get pulled up by the FDA or one of the other pharmaceutical regulatory bodies.’

  ‘And what happens then?’

  ‘Sometimes the FDA asks you to put a black box warning on the drug – it’s an alert that goes on the packaging. That’s the strongest warning they require and signifies that medical studies indicate that the drug carries a significant risk of serious or life-threatening side effects. Or you get ordered to pull the drug off the market. Voluntary withdrawal does happen, but not very often.’ She sipped her coffee.

  ‘What did Julian think?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘Julian was cynical about black box warnings,’ said Adriana. ‘Yes, they decrease usage, but millions of people will still take the drugs. Julian had a grave moral dilemma about keeping such a drug on the market. He said that saving lives was more important than making money. We weren’t sure how dangerous Rheladrex really was, but something was wrong with it and he didn’t want to take the risk. Before I was fired, I copied a lot of my reports, took them home. Just in case. I gave them to Julian, and when he’d read them his mind seemed to be made up that the drug was too dangerous to stay on the market.’

  Adriana reached into her handbag and pulled out a five-euro note, which she put under her saucer.

  ‘I should go.’

  ‘Please, stay,’ pressed Rachel. ‘This is really helpful.’

  ‘Honestly – I want to put all this behind me, not get dragged back into it,’ she said softly. ‘I tried to do something commendable, but when it didn’t work, I took the pay-off from Denver. I’m not proud of that, but it now means I can do lower-paid jobs that might make a positive difference. The sort of difference Julian wanted to make.’

  ‘Do you think Julian’s opinion might have put him in danger?’ said Rachel quietly. Diana felt her lungs tighten.

  ‘I hope not. Because then I am also in trouble,’ said Adriana, rising to her feet. ‘Now I really must go.’

  Diana watched her disappear down the busy street, then closed her eyes tightly, as if she wanted to block out what the woman had told her. When she opened them again, Rachel was on the phone.

  ‘Who are you calling?’ she asked.

  ‘Adam.’

  She inhaled, but no oxygen seemed to draw inside her.

  ‘What are you calling him for?’

  Rachel was shaking her head as she stabbed the digits on her phone.

  ‘Julian wants to pull the most profitable drug the company has ever had, and weeks later he is found dead.’

  ‘But what do you expect Adam to do? Fly back to New York and accuse Simon Michaels of being a murderer?’

  ‘No,’ she said, her tone hard. ‘But having heard all that, we can’t just sit back and do nothing.’

  45

  Beach Blanket Babylon in Notting Hill was one of Rachel’s old haunts, and she was glad that it hadn’t changed a bit. It had been almost fifteen years since she had first come here as a bright-eyed student who was impressed with everything the capital had to offer, but even now she still found it delightfully atmospheric, with its little nooks and crannies and flamboyant baroque decor.

  She had come here every Friday night with h
er friend and colleague Carl Kennedy, a journalist almost as flamboyant as the restaurant’s interiors, to gossip and bitch about their fellow workers, PRs, rival papers and each other’s often non-existent love life. Tonight it felt serendipitous that she had agreed to meet Carl for a social catch-up dinner at the exact time when her investigation into Julian’s death seemed to be getting somewhere. Back in the days when they had worked together, he had been her sounding board. Alistair, their old editor, used to say that Carl was in possession of a unique mind, which was certainly more polite than some of the other hacks in the office, who used to joke behind his back that he was ‘on the spectrum’.

  ‘Darling, I knew you’d be here first!’

  Rachel almost didn’t recognise Carl when he walked in. His hair was shorter, neater, and he was wearing a tweed jacket, jeans and an enormous pair of trainers that looked as if they belonged on Justin Bieber.

  ‘You look fabulous,’ he said, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘Although I was rather hoping you’d turn up in that little black wetsuit of yours.’

  ‘How have you seen me in a wetsuit?’ she said, hitting him with the cocktail menu.

  ‘I have to say, the Giles-Miller website is a very well-put-together marketing tool. Sexy bloke, sexy girl teaching you how to scuba-dive. I pop in occasionally, see what you’re up to.’

  ‘I feel like I’m being stalked.’

  ‘Alleviating tedium I think is a more correct way of describing it. Opportunities for titillation in rural Norfolk are rather hard to come by.’

  Rachel cracked up laughing. It was as if the years had fallen away and nothing had changed between them.

  ‘So what have you been doing? I can’t believe you left the paper.’ They had kept in sporadic email touch, through which she had found out that Carl had left London and joined the family business.

  ‘Cut loose,’ he said, surveying the wine list. ‘You know everyone had to reapply for their jobs. I was apparently deemed disposable.’