Prescription for Murder

by David Williams

  ‘Even though the bank’s been staking them?’

  ‘Not our policy. Anyway, Bob Larden wanted to look like a member of a successful team, not its indispensable leader.’

  ‘Because that makes a small company look vulnerable? He’s wrong there.’ Jumbo was pontificating again. ‘People like an obvious leader, and leaders hardly ever get run over by those proverbial buses.’ He’d been avoiding buses for years, along with all other forms of public transport. ‘Was Closter Drug a loser when the management bought it?’

  ‘More or less, yes. That wasn’t the fault of the present management team though. Larden and his right-hand man, a much younger chap called Hackle, they’d been brought in from another pharmaceutical company about a year before. There really hadn’t been time for them to turn the situation round.’

  ‘And Closter hasn’t got a real wonder drug of its own yet?’ Jumbo put the bull question as casually as he could.

  Treasure hesitated. ‘Not quite yet. The recent success has been with me-too products. Our own versions of formulas just out of patent.’

  ‘At lower prices?’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘Sounds too simple.’

  ‘It’s not really. You need a lot of finesse to do it profitably. There’s a great deal of competition. And the Department of Health is red hot about safety.’

  ‘But it’s still work for marketing people, not chemists?’

  ‘No. For both. Some of the products are identical to the ones first patented. Others are … well, refinements.’

  ‘Reworkings of other people’s discoveries. I’ve heard of that,’ Jumbo commented dismissively. ‘I’d have thought the lifeblood of a pharmaceutical company should be in dramatic discoveries made by dedicated researchers.’ He was a romantic on plenty of subjects in addition to pretty women – and definitely on the subject of how other people should run their businesses. ‘Isn’t that where the real profit is?’ he pressed.

  ‘The first part of your premise is true. The lifeblood ought to be in discovery. Innovation. Unfortunately the bit about profit doesn’t always follow,’ Treasure replied, thinking that if the same applied in the construction industry, the profit-oriented Jumbo Crib-Cranton would long since have moved to pastures new. ‘It’s estimated nowadays that it takes nineteen years of sales, world-wide, to cover the development cost of a new drug.’

  ‘Astonishing.’ Jumbo fixed the celery jug with an accusing stare, as if the fault might lie inside it.

  ‘More so when you know that new drugs can only be patented for twenty years. And that includes the ten years or more they’ll stay in the testing stages.’

  ‘Ten?’ The speaker extracted a short piece of celery from the jug and salted the end.

  ‘And that’s less than the average, before a new drug is approved. It’s sometimes as much as fifteen.’

  Jumbo shook his head as he chewed. ‘So companies like Closter could stand to do better with their me-too products than the real innovators?’

  ‘It could happen, yes.’

  ‘Which is why Closter don’t do any serious research?’

  Treasure shook his head. ‘I didn’t say that. I was— ’

  ‘I see. What about coffee?’ Jumbo had interrupted after looking at the time. ‘We’ll go downstairs.’

  While his host was signing the bill at the cashier’s desk near the door, Treasure fell in with a mutual friend of theirs at the top of the carved mahogany staircase. The man’s name was Starch, a member of the club who had been lunching alone. He was an orthopaedic surgeon of some eminence and close to retirement. He and Treasure knew each other because both were trustees of one of the opera companies.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ asked the amiable Starch later, as the three entered the coffee room on the ground floor, with its celebrated bow-front on to St James’s.

  The surgeon was tall, slim, and stooped, with a high-pitched, dry voice – in contrast to the thickset, straight-backed Jumbo with his penetrating bass grumble.

  ‘Delighted,’ Jumbo replied, but with a signal lack of enthusiasm. As it happened, this had nothing to do with the newcomer. On enquiry from the dining-room manager upstairs, Jumbo had learned that the new waitress was a Turkish-speaking Cypriot. It wasn’t something he intended telling Treasure, but the error rankled.

  ‘I’m much taken with this flotation of yours, Mark,’ Starch volunteered as they settled themselves in deep leather armchairs.

  ‘So’s Jumbo,’ said Treasure. ‘I’m glad there’s so much interest. Bodes well for the success of the issue.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve already put in for a modest stake,’ Starch affirmed. ‘It’s a good little company. With er … with promise of even better to come it seems.’

  ‘In your line, of course,’ said Jumbo, waving for the steward. ‘Port, anyone?’ The others shook their heads. ‘Just coffee for three then, please, Cyril,’ he ordered.

  ‘Not really my line,’ said Starch, as the steward went away. ‘You could say almost the opposite. All this progress in chemotherapy is rapidly destroying the future for the honest saw-bones.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Treasure with a chuckle.

  ‘Good thing if it does, too,’ said Jumbo, still irritated enough with himself to be taking it out on others.

  ‘Oh? But you were telling us the other day what a success your prostatectomy has been,’ the surgeon observed, a touch of amusement showing on the edges of the slim mouth.

  ‘Er, yes, it has. Bloody painful though,’ Jumbo re-acknowledged with reservation. ‘Till they put me on to a new painkiller. Chemicals again, you see?’ he added. ‘Anyway, I’ve been pumping Mark for privileged information. Except so far he hasn’t told me anything I couldn’t have read in the papers.’

  ‘I’ll send you our Investment Division’s analysis of Closter prospects if you like,’ said Treasure with a sly grin. ‘No charge.’

  ‘You’ve both seen the lunchtime edition of the Evening Standard I expect?’ enquired the surgeon. And because the others said they hadn’t, he went on. ‘There’s a report in the City section about Closter’s new drug.’

  ‘Is there now,’ said Treasure, his face clouding. ‘That’s supposed to be under wraps— ’

  ‘Hidden, it seems, even from close friends and valued customers,’ Jumbo interrupted with a glower.

  ‘Until the news conference tomorrow,’ the banker completed. While his host had been speaking he had reached for a copy of the paper from the table behind them. Now he rustled through the pages to the City news. ‘I was just about to mention the fact when you said we should come down for coffee, Jumbo. Ah, here it is.’ He studied the item for a moment. ‘Yes, they’ve jumped the gun. Pity. It’s given the subject a dramatic importance it really doesn’t require.’

  ‘I’ll decide that when one of you tells me what the subject is,’ said Jumbo, still affecting hurt feelings.

  ‘It’s a new drug for migraine. Not before time either,’ said Starch. ‘One of my sons is a martyr to migraine.’

  ‘It’s not such a common malady, is it?’ said Jumbo, who happened never to have suffered from it himself. Treasure passed him the paper.

  ‘Very common indeed,’ the surgeon supplied. ‘And one of the oldest ever recorded. Hippocrates gave us an account of it in about 400 BC. Approximately one person in ten gets it. It has many manifestations.’

  ‘So a cure would be profitable?’ Jumbo’s interest had measurably heightened.

  ‘Very much so. A lot of drug companies have been researching more effective treatments for years.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Treasure, ‘Closter being one of them. We patented a formula six years ago. There’s no secret about that.’

  ‘So why does the Standard suggest there is?’ demanded Jumbo, taking off his gold-framed half-spectacles after reading the report.

  ‘It doesn’t exactly. It simply assumes the news conference tomorrow is to announce further progress on that particular Closter project. And as it happens t
hat’s perfectly correct.’

  ‘You have other projects like that one?’ asked Jumbo, scratching the hairy orifice of one ear with the end of his spectacles.

  ‘Several. But none as advanced as this one.’

  ‘Why isn’t all this in the prospectus?’

  ‘It is,’ said Starch.

  ‘It is,’ said Treasure, almost at the same time. Both speakers smiled as the banker went on. ‘You didn’t read enough of the small print, Jumbo. There are details on three research projects at various stages of development. All involving formulas we’ve patented. Curiously, till now the media haven’t shown interest in any of them.’

  ‘Because they don’t sound at all exciting the way they’re covered in the prospectus,’ said Starch. ‘Difficult subject to handle in that way, I suppose. I expect there are legal restraints on a company being over enthusiastic about anything in a prospectus.’

  ‘Very much so,’ the banker replied seriously.

  ‘Good thing too, of course,’ Starch accepted, tweaking the end of his aquiline nose. ‘Anyway, you’ve decided to give the migraine project an airing tomorrow? Any special reason?’

  ‘Yes. Though I’m not sure it’s an adequate one,’ said Treasure. ‘There’s been a positive development since the prospectus was drafted. The results of the first clinical trials. They’ll be formally reported in an article in one of the medical weeklies next Monday.’

  The surgeon frowned. ‘But Closter have decided to give a news conference about them now. Handy for the flotation of course, but pre-empting the medical journal report. Hmm. Quite sensible, I expect.’ But there was a detectable degree of professional diffidence in the tone. Such information, the speaker seemed to infer, was best disseminated with restraint. A responsible learned journal provided just that. One didn’t give advance grounds for revelation in the tabloids.

  ‘It was a recommendation from the company’s public relations consultants,’ said Treasure uneasily. ‘The report should have been published last Monday. It was delayed for some reason.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Starch quietly, dropping his gaze to study the fingertips of one hand.

  ‘Parasitical breed, PR consultants,’ Jumbo thundered, even more loudly than his comment in the dining room about stockbrokers – but with less likelihood of giving offence. There were no members of the club in the public relations business.

  ‘I’m afraid the news conference was arranged without enough consultation.’ Treasure rearranged a glass ashtray on the occasional table beside him.

  ‘You mean they didn’t ask you, and you don’t approve?’ Jumbo challenged, metaphorically twisting the knife to confirm his prejudice. He leaned forward in his chair to deal with the coffee that had just arrived. ‘Typical.’

  ‘Let’s say the decision may have been taken too lightly,’ said Treasure, without directly answering the question. It was quite true that he hadn’t been asked, though that was not of itself unusual. He was very little involved in the company’s line management decisions. Nevertheless, the significance of calling a news conference at this particular time had been strangely overlooked – something compounded by the fact that too few of the Closter Drug working directors had been consulted over the matter either. ‘We considered cancelling, but decided that would only make the thing worse,’ he completed, without much conviction.

  Chapter Two

  ‘The bit in the Standard makes it much worse. Professor Garside was unhappy enough before,’ protested the nearly bald man in the white laboratory coat.

  His name was Stuart Bodlin. He was a Doctor of Science, unmarried, and dedicated to his work. He had been Research Director at Closter Drug for eight years. The hair loss was deceiving. He was only just forty, of slight build, and diminutive with it. His wide forehead and sunken cheeks gave him a skeletal look that was somehow emphasised by the over-large spectacles, as it usually was also by a pale complexion.

  The paleness didn’t apply now because the face was pink with anger.

  ‘Well, by all means, let’s address ourselves to restoring the happiness of the good Professor Garside at the earliest possible time,’ said Dermot Hackle, the Marketing Director. He was a few years younger than Bodlin, tall, fair and athletic, with rugged good looks. His diffident air suggested effortless superiority while disguising an underlying arrogance.

  ‘There’s no call for … for sarcasm,’ stammered Bodlin, getting angrier by the second. He was standing in the centre of the room, shoulders hunched, feet together, arms folded tightly in front of him. ‘Garside is the best academic biochemist we could have got. He’d almost agreed to write his paper straight away. Just using the clinical data from the first trial results. He was so impressed with them. Like everyone else.’ The speaker paused for grim emphasis. ‘Well five minutes ago he rang Mary. He’s decided now he’ll wait for the results of the second trial.’

  ‘I’m afraid someone had shown him the newspaper report. He didn’t know there was to be a news conference, of course,’ put in Dr Mary Ricini, the attractive twenty-nine year old Medical Director of the company. ‘It’ll mean another six months before he does the paper.’ She crossed her shapely legs under a short skirt: the eyes of two of the three men present registered the movement more than just perceptibly.

  ‘Not necessarily six months, surely? Anyway, I’ll talk to Garside myself. I suppose we should have warned him about the conference.’ The speaker was Bob Larden, the Managing Director, a fleshy man of middle height, with dimpled cheeks but cold eyes. The gaze he now switched from Bodlin to Dermot Hackle showed impatience, though his tone had been irritated as well. Everyone in the room knew the news conference had been his own idea, like the decision not to tell Professor Garside and a few other key people that it was happening. ‘One thing’s certain, Stuart, we have to go ahead with it. The news conference, I mean. There’s no alternative. Cancelling would only invite speculation. Dangerous speculation. I agree, the whole thing’s unsatisfactory all the same.’

  The four were in Larden’s office at the company’s Longbrook headquarters. This was off the Bath Road, twenty miles from London, between Heathrow Airport and the booming town of Slough. Albert Closter, the firm’s founder, had built the place in the late twenties. It was a long, mostly single-storey building, rendered all over in dazzling white, and set on high ground beyond a rising grassed bank. In the middle, the flat-roofed, two-storey office block bellied forward in a wide curve, strapped by heavy metal windows at both levels. The windows were interrupted by an intimidating main door with a threatening, coffered entablature set behind a semicircular ripple of steps. Stunted round towers flanked this centre section and punctuated the start of the two long and low side wings, windowless on the front elevation – one housing the factory, the other the laboratories. There were more towers at the outer ends. The architect, Thomas Wallis, was said to have imagined the place as a desert fortress. Few people ever recognised his concept without prompting – and often not even then, the idea being a touch romantic for East Bucks. The place had recently been declared a protected building, some thought as a reminder to posterity never to do anything so boring again.

  Larden’s office was on the upper floor at the front. It was adequately furnished, but without ostentation or even much warmth. There was close carpeting, but blinds, not curtains, on the three windows – nor were there any pictures hanging above the fitted wooden bookcases. The leather upholstered chairs, the desk, the elaborate telephone and other desktop impedimenta were all sternly functional. A long, rectangular table, in teak like the bookcases and the desk, was set at one side and used for meetings larger than the present one. The only uncompromisingly decorative feature in the room was a silver picture frame on the desk that held a colour photograph of a stunningly beautiful young woman with auburn hair.

  ‘Look, we all agreed last night that the advantages of having the news conference outweighed the disadvantages,’ said Hackle, this time seriously. He was seated, like Mary Ricini. Only Bodlin had elect
ed to remain standing. He and the woman doctor had broken in on a meeting of the other two a minute before. It was shortly after two o’clock.

  ‘I didn’t agree,’ the tight-lipped Bodlin protested quickly.

  ‘Oh, come on, Stoo baby,’ drawled Hackle in a breathy imitation of the late James Cagney. ‘You wen along wid da rest of us guys in de ent, dincha?’ he completed, in a high register. His mimicry was very professional, and could generally be relied on to bring down the temperature – except Bodlin’s contemptuous reaction this time implied that Hackle had underestimated the heat.

  ‘You did go along with us, you know, Stuart,’ Larden insisted with a contrasting formal sharpness, but still making use of the point that Hackle had guyed.

  ‘All right. Very reluctantly I did, and with a lot of reservations. I certainly said we’d regret having it. And we have. Already. Now the reason for it has been leaked by someone. Seromig has been … it’s been cheapened. Cheapened and sensationalised before it’s ever been presented professionally.’

  Seromig was the provisional name given to the new migraine drug developed by Stuart Bodlin.

  ‘Nobody’s leaked anything. It’ll all be in Medical News on Monday in any case. We’re just making sure the significance of the first clinical trial isn’t overlooked. And the Standard is hardly a sensational paper.’ This was Hackle in a normal voice that was more matter-of-fact than reasoning.

  ‘Well if that’s so, why have they tried to pre-empt the story?’

  ‘Better than tried. They seem to have succeeded,’ Mary Ricini volunteered, also without emotion. Bodlin had brought her along for support, but her manner was a good deal less excited than his.

  ‘And wasn’t there supposed to be an embargo on any information till the news conference?’ Bodlin now demanded. ‘So there’d be no mistakes in the reporting? Obviously someone’s told the paper something.’

  ‘Not according to Penny Cordwright. We’ve checked with her,’ said Hackle.

  Penny Cordwright’s London public relations consultancy was handling all the arrangements for the news conference.