Alchemist

  A dark shadow slid across Monty’s mind. Maternox. Had Anna been taking Maternox right up to her pregnancy? Was it Maternox that had helped her become pregnant?

  Should she warn her?

  Warn her of what? That three out of millions and millions of successful Maternox pregnancies had gone wrong? When there was no proof that it was Maternox that had caused the problem – far more cases would be needed before any causal link could be made. Warn her and in so doing frighten her, perhaps needlessly?

  Would Anna thank her? Or would she take it as an act of spite? A pique of pure jealousy?

  There was nothing, Monty decided, to be gained from telling her, not unless she had a great deal more evidence. So she waited until their drinks arrived, then raised her glass and clinked it against Anna’s.

  ‘To the sprog!’ she said.

  ‘I want you to be a godmother, Monty. Will you?’

  Monty sipped her spritzer and felt the cold of the ice cubes against her lips. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Thank you, I – I’d love to. Have you thought of a name yet?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve chosen them for both a boy and a girl.’

  God, Monty thought, I hope it works out OK for you. I really, really do.

  42

  ‘Any more on the accident?’

  Conor was startled out of his concentration by the sound of Charley Rowley’s voice.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  Rowley leaned in through his office doorway, looking his normal dishevelled self. His pancake face was puffier than usual, as if he’d had a late night. ‘Just wondered – saw you chinwagging with Bannerman père et fille in the canteen yesterday. She is worth spending time on.’

  Conor nodded in agreement. ‘She is.’

  ‘Probably something in the rule book forbidding nooky between employees. But I certainly wouldn’t say no.’

  Conor found himself resenting the remark, and realized he was feeling possessive. Possessive over a girl he had not even dated. Not yet. ‘You already have a very nice girlfriend,’ he said, thinking of the ambiguous Louise who had been at Rowley’s dinner party and had acted like a hostess, dividing her time between the kitchen and the dining table.

  ‘Lulu?’ A rather pained expression appeared on Rowley’s face, like someone reminded of a debt. ‘Yah, Lulu’s all right.’ He glanced round at the bundles of documents. ‘Fucking stupid to arrive at work drunk,’ he said, rapidly reverting to his original subject. ‘Unheard of in a company like this. Unbelievable!’

  ‘Too unbelievable,’ Conor said, but the nuance was lost on Rowley.

  The bright mid-morning sunshine did nothing to lift Monty’s apprehension as she walked across the car park. The feeling increased as she stepped into the chillier air in the shadow of the Bendix monolith, then entered the cathedral-like splendour of the white marble lobby.

  It was half past eleven. She had put in a couple of hours earlier at the old lab, rummaging through some of the archive files for information on her father’s published papers that Conor Molloy needed, and she had thick wodges of photocopies in two Manila envelopes tucked under her arm.

  There was a quiet hum of activity in the lobby; a steady stream of employees, like worker ants, escorted visitors in and out through the turnstiles, and the flower-scented air was resonant with the muted bonhomie of power greetings and power partings.

  Unusually, all the lifts were in use. Monty waited, staring at her reflection in the beaten copper of one of the doors, but it was too diffused to be of much use as a mirror. Then she yawned, feeling very tired suddenly.

  She had slept badly last night, with an endless succession of anxiety dreams about Anna Sterling producing a hideously deformed baby and saying, repeatedly, Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?

  She was distracted by what sounded like the swoosh of a lift descending. The sound faded. It had come from the Directors’ lift, which she had been in a number of times during the negotiations for the sale of her father’s laboratory, and which was set apart from the rest of the lifts. Must have gone down to the health hydro in the basement, she assumed.

  There was a ping and a door behind her slid open. She turned and followed a group of Japanese businessmen in, all of whom stood in obedient silence as the lift rose.

  When she arrived in her office she logged into her computer and called up Conor Molloy’s full request list. Then she called Conor’s internal extension, wondering if he was at his desk, and was surprised when he answered almost instantly.

  ‘Conor Molloy.’

  ‘It’s Miss Bannerman speaking. Are you very busy this morning?’ she asked, and was pleased by the way his voice brightened when he recognized her.

  ‘Hi! Busy? You kidding? I feel like some Egyptian pharaoh entombed inside a pyramid. You should come up and see the paper in here. I never saw files like it in my life! What was your father trying to do – get in the Guinness Book of Records for publishing more papers than any other scientist? Seems like every time he goes to the bathroom he publishes a paper about it – I mean I’m surprised he hasn’t published his goddamn shopping lists – or maybe he has and I haven’t got there yet!’

  Coming from anyone else, criticism of her father would have angered her. But she simply smiled. ‘He’s pretty chaotic – you probably will find several shopping lists in there somewhere.’

  ‘I’m going to need your help on some of this. How was your evening?’

  She wondered, with a start, if he was referring to her visit to Walter Hoggin. Couldn’t be; there was no way he could know about that; it had to be just an innocent question. ‘It was fine, thank you,’ she said, a little surprised.

  ‘I enjoyed our Monday lunch. Your father’s quite a character.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘Are you free for lunch on your own any day this week?’

  Take your pick, Monty thought. I’m free every single day. But she didn’t want him to know that. ‘I’ll just check my diary.’ She waited a moment. ‘I can only do today or tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘Well, how about today?’

  ‘Sure. Shall I meet you up in the canteen?’

  ‘I thought we could go out some place – have a change of scenery. There’s a little Italian down the road – you go out the front entrance, turn right, cross over one set of lights and it’s on the next corner. Called Il Venezia?’

  ‘I could meet you down in the lobby. Wouldn’t that be easier?’

  He sounded evasive. ‘Better to go separately. One o’clock OK?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I’ll call them, make sure they have a table. Any problem and I’ll call you right back.’

  When Monty hung up she went straight to the washroom and carefully checked her make-up, then her hair. It had been a cold morning down in the country and she had dressed more for warmth than glamour today, in a black polo-neck sweater and bouclé suit; now she wished she was wearing something a little softer, but it would have to do.

  Conor Molloy was already at Il Venezia when she arrived, tucked away behind an alcove table. It was a bustling, old-fashioned place, with tourist posters of Venice on the walls, and the poor lighting gave a small measure of privacy.

  He stood up as she approached. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hello!’ she said, feeling a beat of excitement. There was a warm smile on his face and his deep brown eyes were focused on her in an expression of pure welcome.

  He helped her off with her coat and held her chair whilst she sat down. Then he sat back down opposite her. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  She looked at the empty bottle of San Pellegrino in front of him and gave him a grin. ‘A large mineral water on the rocks, please.’

  ‘You can have something alcoholic if you want – I’m not going to tell on you.’

  She shook her head. ‘Mustn’t break company rules, must we?’

  He looked at her for a moment, trying to figure out whether she was joking, then grinned back. ‘They probably have random breath tests
in the corridors.’

  ‘Nothing would surprise me,’ she said. ‘So what’s with the secrecy? Why couldn’t we be seen walking here together?’

  He signalled to a waitress and ordered a second San Pellegrino water, then looked back at Monty. ‘Employees are not encouraged to socialize.’

  ‘But surely we’re expected to have working lunches.’ She smiled. ‘Isn’t that being a little paranoid?’

  ‘With Bendix Schere I don’t think anyone can ever be paranoid enough.’

  She stared back at him, remembering with a chill the time that Jake Seals had looked around the pub and suddenly clammed up. But Bendix couldn’t watch and follow all their employees all of the time. Impossible. And why would they want to?

  ‘You look dynamite!’ he said suddenly. ‘Love your outfit.’

  She touched her jacket, surprised. ‘This? It’s just an old thing I chucked on this morning to keep warm.’

  ‘It looks really good on you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, flattered, noting his own modern-cut double-breasted suit. There was something caring and solid about him that made her feel very at ease in his presence.

  ‘Now, tell me about yourself,’ he said. ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

  Her drink arrived. The waitress poured out half a glass, gave them menus then hurried off. Monty shook her head, feeling very relaxed. ‘No one special at the moment.’

  He nodded and there was a comfortable silence and air of anticipation between them. But Conor’s next words caught her off guard. ‘So … why do you think Jake Seals’ death was no accident?’

  ‘Oh, you mean what I said in hospital? I was probably just in a state of shock at the time.’

  ‘You seemed OK to me. In fact you seemed amazingly rational considering what you’d just been through.’ The patent attorney raised an eyebrow. ‘Something obviously made you feel things were not right somewhere.’

  ‘I –’ She touched the rim of her glass, glanced round then leaned even closer towards him. ‘There is something – but it’s not much.’

  ‘Tell me. You can trust me totally – nothing you say will go beyond this table.’

  She watched his face, studied his eyes. Yes, she thought. You’re an almost total stranger to me, and yet I feel that I know you.

  She told him about Hubert Wentworth, about when he had first come to see her with the news of his daughter’s tragedy. And about the two other women who had died giving birth to Cyclops Syndrome babies. About how she had approached Jake Seals for information about the Maternox capsules. Then Zandra Wollerton’s strange break-in and her subsequent death. Finally she told him of her approach, after Jake’s death, to Walter Hoggin.

  Her hands were shaking when she had finished. She tried to pick up her glass, but suddenly did not trust herself to hold it. ‘The rational explanation is that it’s all just coincidence, right?’

  Conor had a distant expression on his face now. ‘That what you really think?’

  ‘It’s what I hope.’

  The American said quietly, ‘Bendix Schere has this benign public face, but none of us really knows anything about most of its Directors. We don’t really even know who owns the company. The only thing we know for sure is that with a best-selling drug like Maternox there are an awful lot of bucks at stake.’

  ‘Enough to kill for?’

  ‘A few years back the World Health Organization publicly accused Bendix Schere of killing more babies per month than the Hiroshima bomb.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Through their powdered-milk sale techniques in the Third World. You didn’t hear about that? Bendix Schere never sued. And considering how litigious they are, that seems pretty much an admission of guilt, right?’

  She frowned.

  ‘How’s this for a very nice little scam. They have teams of salesmen posing as doctors and nurses out in countries like Ethiopia. They approach pregnant women and tell them that in the West we don’t breast-feed any more – that it’s not hygienic and that powdered milk has more vitamins. And to demonstrate how much faith they have in powdered milk, they offer these women a free supply for the first month after their baby’s born.’

  Conor sipped his water, then continued. ‘So the mothers take the powdered milk for the first month, during which time their own natural milk dries up. They’re then stuck having to buy the Bendix Schere powdered milk for the next couple of years. Half of them can’t afford it, and so their babies starve; those that can afford it, somehow, mix it much of the time with contaminated water, and rapidly discover the powder doesn’t contain the antibodies that their natural milk would. And guess who’s around to supply them with the drugs they then need. Get the picture?’

  She nodded, horrified.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Take this Maternox business – what do a mere handful of lives matter in that kind of a scale?’

  ‘You really –’ Her voice choked. ‘You really mean the company is capable of murdering people? Zandra Wollerton, Jake Seals?’

  The waitress came over and hovered. ‘Couple of minutes, please,’ Conor said, then looked back at Monty. ‘I don’t think the company is capable. I know.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You have to trust me, Montana. I know.’

  Monty was so distracted she barely registered Conor Molloy’s breach of company protocol in using her Christian name. ‘The powdered milk – the real ethics are horrific – but Bendix probably argue that there’s a high mortality rate among Third World babies anyway, and I imagine they can produce statistics proving their powdered milk actually saves lives.’

  ‘That’s exactly what they do. But the fact remains that they’ve never dared sue.’

  Monty wondered what exactly drove this man. She glanced disinterestedly at her menu. Maybe his tale was right, but it sounded to her more like student militant rhetoric, the little people versus the Big Institution paranoia that used to be rife on campuses throughout the sixties and seventies.

  ‘If that’s how you feel about Bendix Schere,’ she probed, ‘why are you working for them?’

  ‘I can’t give you that answer right now,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You’ll understand one day – I hope.’

  She smiled. ‘You’re very mysterious.’

  He parried the remark with a fleeting raise of his eyebrows, and leant back in his chair. ‘Tell me more about this Jake Seals character.’

  ‘I know very little. He was – I suppose – rather cocky. Definitely didn’t fit the Bendix mould.’

  ‘So he might have upset some guys?’

  ‘I’m sure he did. He upset me – I found him difficult at first. But I came to respect him, he was professional and very, very thorough.’

  ‘Do you buy the theory that he came to work drunk?’

  ‘I was sold it by a senior police officer – he wouldn’t have made it up.’

  ‘Was Seals conscious when you got to him?’

  ‘Yes – but delirious.’ She remembered something, suddenly. ‘Is there someone called Wolf in the company?’

  ‘Wolf? As in the animal?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘I guess it would be easy enough to find out. Why?’

  She recalled the pitifully incoherent cry that had come from Seals’ melting face, before his voice had faded into moans. Wolf. Woooolllfff.

  The memory made her shudder. ‘He was trying to tell me something. Wolf. It was the only thing he said to me.’

  The American’s eyes narrowed with acute interest. ‘Just wolf?

  ‘Yes.’

  Without relaxing his eyes, he said, ‘Interesting. Very interesting.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘They do one helluva good pasta here,’ he said, ignoring her query. ‘If you even half like pasta it’s worth having.’

  ‘Is it a person, someone you know of?’

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ he said.

  For the first time since she
had met him, Conor Molloy was looking awkward. Wolf very clearly did mean something to him, but whatever it was he evidently wasn’t about to tell her.

  43

  London. Thursday 17 November, 1994

  Conor pulled into the Bendix Building a few minutes before seven. He was an hour earlier than normal this morning, and it was still dark. As he opened his door, he scanned the almost deserted car park that was floodlit as brightly as a tennis court, looking for Charley Rowley’s coupé BMW, and was relieved not to see it.

  He hurried in through the lobby, slipped his card into a turnstile, nodding at the guard, the one with the grizzle of grey hair who looked sick, and walked across to the lifts. Moments later he stepped out into the Group Patents and Agreements twentieth-floor reception. A surly security guard with a boxer’s face and a crew cut checked his ID in silence, then Conor slid his smart-card into the door and pushed it open.

  He was greeted by a dull whine, and down the far end of the corridor saw a Filipino woman hoovering the green carpet. As policy, the cleaning staff had only a minimal grasp of English, and were illiterate. Cleaners were a common tool of industrial espionage.

  He walked past the woman, turning right just past a row of notice boards which, apart from a list of statutory regulations, were virtually bare; most notices were posted by eMail. He walked on a few yards past his own office, stopped outside Charley Rowley’s slightly larger one, and peered in through the window. The room was dark, the desk bare. Rowley was definitely not in yet. Good, he thought. Excellent!

  He slipped his smart-card into his own office door and the light automatically came on as he went in. The room smelled of polish and looked freshly cleaned. One single night away from the office always seemed much longer, somehow. He hung his Crombie and jacket up, unlocked the metal cupboards and began the first chore of each day, which was to remove the bundles of documents he had put away the previous night, and lay them out, some on the floor and some on his desk. Normally, the next thing would be to switch on his computer terminal and log in, then read his eMail, but today he deliberately left the machine off. Instead, he opened a folder marked ‘Acute Pustular Psoriasis Application’ and began to read through one of the seven papers Dr Bannerman had published on identifying the genes for this disease.