Alchemist

  Rowley answered Conor. ‘Look, man, I can get you what you want – no problem. But where’s this all going next?’

  Conor stared at him; there was something very decent about the guy and he suddenly did not feel able to hide the truth from him. ‘Charley – I have to warn you of something.’

  ‘I’m already there. You’re going to steal the formula and run off with it, right?’

  Conor stood up and peered through the snug doorway, but the only people in earshot were four elderly seated gents. He sat down again. ‘Look, I think you ought to know – the last two people who tried to get this information are both dead.’

  Rowley’s eyes widened in mock shock. ‘Come again?’

  Conor shrugged, made a snap decision, and told Rowley the entire story. When he had finished, Rowley looked shell-shocked.

  ‘Conor, I agree it all sounds seriously weird; but you’ve just got to be wrong. Bendix Schere is a fucking strange company, I admit – but in my experience it’s no different from any of the other pharmaceutical giants. They’re all ruthless, and bend the rules when they can. That’s the way of the world when there are megabucks at stake.’ He drew hard on his cigarette, then blew a long jet of smoke down at the table. ‘But as for killing people, no way. No fucking way.’

  51

  London. Monday 21 November, 1994

  The strong wind that had turned into a gale for most of the weekend was still blowing as Monty arrived back in London. She had tried phoning Dr Paul Corbin, the fourth Maternox victim’s doctor, after she had left the Gazette on Friday afternoon, but he had already gone for the weekend. The woman who answered had not sounded at all friendly or helpful.

  After a brief telephone conversation with Conor Molloy on Friday night, Monty had again debated whether she should tell Anna Sterling her fears about Maternox. But it was still only four cases out of hundreds of thousands of pregnancies. And apart from worrying about it, what could her friend actually do? Would a Cyclops Syndrome baby show up on an ultrasound scan? Monty did not think so; surely if it did, the other women would have known and presumably had their pregnancies terminated?

  On Saturday she had gone to their old lab and searched for her father’s lost file, but without success. On a whim, she had rented the film Silkwood from the video shop in Cookham, her nearest town. She had seen it before, a long time back; it was about a woman taking on the might of the American nuclear power industry and being killed for her troubles. Monty had thought she might be able to learn something from it, but all it did was spook her and give her bad dreams.

  Now, she parked in a tree-lined side street off the King’s Road, then walked, snugly parcelled in her Burberry, back towards the thundering traffic of Redcliffe Road, glad of some fresh air to wake her up after the grind into London through the Monday rush hour.

  A clutch of leaves helicoptered in front of her, then a piece of grit stung her eye. She stopped to dab it with her handkerchief. From some scaffolding across the road she heard a clinking of metal, then saw a heavy block and tackle strike the surface beneath the scaffold, making a small crater and spraying out shards of broken tarmac. A car braked hard and swerved.

  Christ, she thought, startled, and looked up angrily. If that car had been a few moments earlier it would have been hit. Several hard-hatted faces appeared over the top of the scaffold, looking down. The top of a tower crane hovered behind them. Another workman on the ground was shouting back and gesticulating wildly at something up above. Her eyes followed the direction in which he was pointing but could not see what he meant.

  Monty carried on walking, past the once-elegant Georgian terraced houses, counting off the addresses. 52. 50. 48.

  Number 46 was like all the others, its white paint dull and faded beneath layers of exhaust grime. She walked up the steps and stared at the list of doctors’ names on the bell plate, above which was a polished brass sign: ‘Ring and Enter.’

  Dr T. Paul Corbin was the third name down. She pressed the heavy, old-fashioned bell, then pushed open the door and stepped into a carpeted hall. There was a welcome warmth as the door swung shut behind her on the wind.

  ‘I’ll tell the doctor,’ a receptionist was saying in the dictatorial voice Monty recognized from Friday. ‘I’m sure he’ll call you as soon as he has a moment. I’m afraid he’s having rather a busy start to the day.’ When she’d hung up she looked at Monty. ‘May I help you?’

  ‘Yes – I need to have a very urgent word with Dr Corbin.’

  ‘Are you registered with him?’

  ‘No – I’m not a patient.’

  ‘He’s not taking on any new patients, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It’s – not me – I mean – it’s not actually about myself that I need, er, to see him.’ Monty kicked herself for not having better prepared what she was going to say. ‘But it really is very important.’

  The receptionist looked at her unsympathetically. ‘Does Dr Corbin know who you are, Miss – er – Mrs –?’ She was fishing for a name.

  ‘Bannerman,’ Monty said. In some circles the Bannerman name provided an instant entree, but here it registered a total blank. ‘No, he doesn’t know me. I actually need to speak to him about one of his patients.’

  Just then the door beside Monty opened and an elegant Chinese woman emerged. ‘Thank you very much, Doctor,’ she was saying.

  The doctor followed her down the corridor, held the front door for her, then walked back towards them. He was in his mid-fifties, with a solid but fit-looking physique, and his suave persona exuded an aura of the very finest bedside manners that money could buy.

  Brushing Monty aside with a thin smile of acknowledgement, he looked directly at his secretary. ‘How many appointments have I got this morning? I really need to go and see Mrs Enright as soon as possible.’

  ‘You have two waiting and another eight booked in.’

  ‘Do you think you could hold them for half an hour if I went now? You could explain it’s an emergency.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Doctor.’

  The doctor glanced at Monty then back at his secretary as if seeking an explanation for her presence. But the secretary ventured nothing and he turned away.

  ‘Dr Corbin?’ Monty said.

  He returned and looked at her pleasantly but quizzically. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry, the doctor is far too busy –’ The secretary tried to interrupt.

  ‘I need to speak to you very urgently,’ Monty said. ‘Just a couple of minutes?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any time at the moment. Can you tell me what it’s about?’ He smelled lightly of talc and his breath carried a hint of peppermint.

  ‘Yes – Caroline Kingsley.’

  His demeanour altered noticeably.

  ‘There’s something about her death that you ought to know.’

  His expression darkened. ‘I have a very sick patient waiting for me. Who are you? The young lady who rang last week from the press?’

  ‘Press?’ Monty said, surprised. ‘Zandra Wollerton?’ Then immediately she wished she had kept quiet. ‘Look, if you could just give me a few minutes I’ll explain. I can wait until you come back.’

  ‘I have nothing to say at all,’ the doctor replied curtly, turned and went back into his surgery.

  Ignoring an angry remark from the secretary, Monty followed him in. ‘Look, Doctor, please listen to me. I believe that Caroline Kingsley was taking Maternox for infertility problems. I work for Bendix Schere, and there’s something you ought to know about Maternox –’

  The doctor turned abruptly and rounded on her. ‘Let me tell you something, young lady. Allow me to spell it out for you very clearly. Miss Wollerton contacted me some time ago and informed me that there’d been three Cyclops Syndrome birth deformities in the past two months, following symptoms in the pregnant women similar to those experienced by my patient.

  ‘I contacted the Chief Medical Officer at Bendix Schere, a Dr Linda Farmer, to ask if they had any information on thi
s. The next thing that happened was a man turned up here on Friday afternoon with fifty thousand pounds in used bank notes which he offered me on condition I did not ask any more questions. You can tell your damned company that I am not for sale at any price. Now get out of my surgery.’

  ‘Dr Corbin,’ Monty said. ‘Please believe me, we’re on the same side.’

  The doctor pulled on a herringbone coat. He turned back to face Monty for a brief moment. ‘That is exactly what your colleague said on Friday. I intend speaking to the Coroner’s officer this afternoon, and the Committee for Safety of Medicines, and telling them exactly what has happened. Including the bribe that was made to me. Is that clear?’ Then he strode out.

  Monty followed him into the street. ‘Dr Corbin, I’m really pleased to hear you’re doing that! Please, listen to me. I’m not a reporter. My father is Dr Richard Bannerman, the scientist. I think there’s something very wrong with Maternox – let me come along with you in your car and tell you about it –’

  He stood at the edge of the kerb, completely ignoring her, waiting for a gap in the traffic, then dashed across in front of a taxi, which braked and hooted. Caught off guard by his recklessness, Monty missed the chance and had to wait for another gap. A terrific gust of wind screamed down the road, almost unbalancing her.

  The doctor was hurrying down the pavement on the far side. He stepped out into the road to skirt along the outside of the scaffolding, rather than through the covered walkway. Monty sprinted across and ran after him, gaining rapidly. There was another ripping gust, then high above her she heard a shout, followed by a metallic chime that sounded like a bell. Something hurtled past her face, so close she could feel the air it disturbed, and she flinched, startled, and stopped. Then it hurtled past in the opposite direction. A massive steel hawser, swinging drunkenly, she realized, looking upwards in shock.

  There were more chimes in rapid succession, loud, discordant. Something was moving at the top of the scaffolding, swaying. Then to her horror she saw an entire section of gantry disintegrate. Something dark tumbled down and with a terrific dull thud embedded itself, like a meteorite, right into the tarmac only yards from her. It appeared to be part of a pulley.

  She looked up again, deeply afraid, suddenly. Something else was plunging downwards now, a short distance in front of her, rotating like a boomerang. An enormous steel hook.

  ‘Dr Corbin!’ she yelled at the top of her voice.

  It hurtled straight down towards him. But before he even had time to react to her voice the hook struck the top of his head, the force spinning him round to face her.

  Her mouth was ripped open by the horror of what she saw: as if in some grotesque conjuring trick the flat shaft of the hook, with a broken shackle attached, had wedged in the top of the doctor’s cranium, and the curved point protruded a good eight inches out from his cheek, just below his left eye.

  For a brief moment he looked perfectly all right, just a little taken unawares, as if this kind of thing happened to him all the time. Then blood bubbled simultaneously out of his mouth and nostrils. Monty gagged at the sight. He was staring straight at her, his eyes wide open as if he had decided that he would listen to her after all.

  All of a sudden his legs buckled and he sank to his knees, his body crumpling forward like a marionette. The point of the hook struck the pavement with a clang, jerking his head back sharply, so he was still looking directly at her, but with eyes that were now sightless. The blood gouted from his mouth, and orange gunge began to ooze out from the top of his skull around the busted shackle attached to the hook. Then he rocked sideways in another ferocious gust.

  Monty turned away, clutching the top of a garden wall for support, and gagged again, fighting hard not to throw up on the pavement.

  52

  People had gathered around Dr Corbin, blocking him from Monty’s view. Somewhere close, a woman was screaming hysterically. In the distance she could hear the Doppler wail of a siren.

  ‘I saw it happen,’ a man said shakily.

  ‘They’ve been dropping things all the time – load of cowboys,’ a woman announced angrily. ‘I nearly got hit by a brick a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘Don’t know what they were playing at with that scaffolding – bloody great metal shackle took a chunk out of the road only half an hour ago.’

  ‘Should have walked under the cover – why did he go round the outside?’

  ‘Move away!’ someone shouted urgently from above.

  A blue light strobed through the faces. A white car with fluorescent stripes had pulled up and two policemen were getting out. The woman’s hysterical screaming continued.

  ‘Are you all right?’ a voice said, its owner halting momentarily.

  Monty stared blankly at a man in a sheepskin coat, and it took a moment before she realized he was talking to her. The siren was coming closer. Everything else seemed to have gone very quiet. Silent. The whole of London had fallen silent. She touched the brick wall gingerly, for support, and backed a few paces away; then a few more paces, her brain beginning to start working again.

  She looked up at the scaffolding; a whole section of the top superstructure was swaying precariously. Nervously she backed even further off and looked around, watched the crowd. Something, bile or saliva, was dribbling down her chin. Fumbling in her handbag, she pulled out a tissue and wiped it.

  A voice inside her head was screaming at her to get away. There were enough witnesses already, they didn’t need her. Get away, keep your name and face out of it, she thought, and backed off a few more steps. The wail of the siren was closer, its pitch altering suddenly to a banshee howl, like a sack of stones being swirled in the air.

  She turned and walked quickly on, and clumsily barged into a woman. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured, and carried on up the street, unfocusing, everything a blur, her brain racing now.

  Get away!

  She reached the Old Brompton Road and turned the corner, walking past a car showroom then a café, and saw a phone booth ahead. She went in and closed the door behind her, somewhat deadening the roar of the traffic. She took from her handbag the notes she had scrawled at the Thames Valley Gazette, and found the number she wanted. She struggled with fingers that were trembling so much she kept dropping the coins, then finally succeeded and pressed the right numbers.

  ‘Morgan Roth Delamere, good afternoon,’ announced a very pukka female receptionist.

  Monty vaguely recognized the name of the firm as something in merchant banking. ‘Could I please speak to Charles Kingsley?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Kingsley’s not in today.’

  Monty raised her voice to be heard above the roar of a passing bus. ‘Do you know where I could get hold of him – it’s very urgent.’

  ‘I’ll put you through to his secretary.’

  Monty thanked her and waited, then a pleasant woman came on the line. ‘I’m afraid Mr Kingsley has suffered a bereavement, and I don’t know when he’ll be in next.’

  ‘I need to speak to him very urgently – it’s in connection with his wife’s death. Do you know where I might be able to get hold of him?’

  Her tone became cooler. ‘Are you from the press?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘All I can suggest is that you leave your name and number, and I’ll pass them on when he rings in.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Monty said. ‘I have his home number, I’ll try that.’

  She thanked the secretary and pressed a new series of numbers. The phone was answered on the fourth ring by a male voice faintly muffled by crackle.

  ‘Hello. You’ve reached the London residence of Charles and Caroline Kingsley. We’re sorry not to be able to take your call in person right now, but if you leave your name and number and a short message after the beep, we’ll get back to you. Goodbye!’

  As she heard the beep Monty hesitated, debating. She decided just to leave her name and her home number and say nothing further. But just as she started to speak, she was
interrupted by a voice that came on the line.

  ‘Yersss, hello?’

  It sounded for an instant like a tape being played at the wrong speed. Then she realized it was the same male voice that had left the message on the machine.

  ‘Charles Kingsley?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I – I’m very sorry to hear about your wife’s death. I need to talk to you urgently – I think there might be a medical cover-up going on. Do you think I could come round?’

  There was a pause. ‘No, I’m sorry, no.’ His voice sounded slow and distant. ‘I can’t see anyone. Not at the moment. Thank you for calling.’

  The phone went dead.

  ‘Shit!’ Monty hung up, more angry at the man, for an instant, than sorry for him. Her hands were still shaking so much from the shock of what she had just witnessed that she knocked the receiver from the hook; it fell, cracked against the wall and swung from the end of its cord. She replaced it, checked the address on the sheet of paper again, then left the booth and hailed a taxi.

  The Roland Gardens address was a Victorian redbrick mansion block off Old Brompton Road in the indeterminate border between South Kensington and Earl’s Court, where some streets were bedsitter or hooker country and some were still gentrified. Roland Gardens had the distinct, if faded, air of the latter.

  Monty pushed the bell beside the name ‘Kingsley’, and waited, eyeing the grill of the speaker. There was no response. She tried a second time and waited for a full minute, but again there was nothing. Except that a tall, elderly woman, all lipstick and rouge, with a cigarette in her hand and a silk scarf around her neck, opened the door from the inside and stepped into the porch in a cloud of scent. Monty held the door for her and the woman thanked her regally, then picked her way carefully down the steps before stopping, looking sharply at her and saying incongruously: ‘Not like South Africa, dear.’

  ‘South Africa?’ Monty replied, puzzled by the remark, wondering if she had heard correctly.

  ‘Disraeli buggered it all up, of course. He was the man who ruined the postal system. Never been able to get a letter delivered on time since he died.’