Alchemist (39 page)

Daniel's gaze went from the eye slits in the animal heads to the naked girl, then back to the animal heads. The way they were looking at him, the way they were raising their athames, filled him with dread.

A trap, he realized. He had been brought into a trap.

He spun round but the door was blocked by the Magister Templi and the High Priestess, both naked as well. The Priestess was holding her athame. The Magister Templi was holding a huge sword high above his forehead as if he were about to strike Daniel. And they were both solemn, unsmiling.

‘You have renounced Jesus Christ the Impostor,' the Magister Templi said, staring him directly in the eye for the first time. ‘You have renounced God. You have chosen our way instead. You have sworn an oath of secrecy to us.'

‘But why should we trust you, Theutus?' the Priestess said in a sneering tone.

‘Can we believe in you, Theutus?' the Magister Templi challenged.

‘Or would it be better to sacrifice you now, Theutus, and spare you the agonies of physical torture later?'

Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel saw the Magister Templi's sword rise a fraction higher and noticed his knuckles whiten on the hilt. For the first time his courage deserted him completely. He wanted to turn and run, but found he could not move a muscle. His whole body was paralysed – but not by fear. He was being
held
by some unseen force that was more powerful than anything else he had ever experienced. It held him a prisoner, rooted to the spot and helpless.

London. Friday 18 November, 1994

Conor hastily washed the last of the shaving foam off his face, then splashed on some Eternity aftershave. 6.58 a.m. Twenty minutes before he needed to leave for work.

He draped the damp towel around his shoulders as meagre protection against the chill – Jesus, this apartment was cold – and walked into the open-plan kitchen area. He made himself a mug of coffee and carried it into the living room where his laptop computer lay. Following the procedures in Minaret Internet's instruction manual step by step, although he was familiar with the software anyway, he logged into his mailbox to see whether his efforts of yesterday had yielded any results.

Almost instantly along the top of his screen appeared the words;
TRANSFERRING
… 1
OF
25.

Shit!
he thought, with a broad grin, and dashed to his bedroom to get dressed while the mail was downloading.

As he was straightening his tie, he heard the gong on his computer announcing that the transfer of messages was complete, and went back in to log off. It was seven fifteen. He debated whether to look through them now, which would make him late, or to read them at work.

After a moment's hesitation, he shut down his computer, closed the lid and put it in his briefcase. Having taken half the afternoon off yesterday, he decided he ought to be in on time. He could read the mail on his laptop in the office and no one would know what he was doing. He scooped up his car keys and left, burning with curiosity to know exactly what had fallen into his net.

Monty was having a bad morning. Her father, upset by the news of Walter Hoggin's death, was in a filthy temper, made worse by his being unable to find a particular file. He swore he'd had it in the office only a couple of days previously, but Monty was convinced it must have been misplaced during the transfer from Berkshire. If it didn't turn up she would have to go into their old lab over the weekend to hunt for it, but she didn't relish that prospect. It was depressing enough going there during the working week now, let alone when the building was completely deserted.

Only a handful of their original staff were still there, as the final wind-down took place, and within a month even they would be gone, some tempted into early retirement, others to work at the Bendix plant in Reading where Walter Hoggin had
gone. But it was Walter's death, more than the takeover by Bendix Schere, which symbolized the end of an era, and she was dreading the funeral.

When she'd reached the Bendix Building just after ten she'd found a message from Conor Molloy waiting on her voice mail box but, ringing him back, she had in return got his recorded voice and had left another message.

She came back up from the Stacks on the floor below, the nickname given to the massive filing room that served as an archive for all the labs, where copies of all the documents and research notes automatically printed off the computers every weekend were stored in fire-proof cabinets as back-up for the computer files. But her search there had revealed no trace of the missing file either.

She was just inserting her smart-card into her office door when she heard the phone ring. She hurried in and grabbed the receiver. ‘Hello?'

‘Miss Bannerman. Good morning – we've finally made contact.'

‘Mr Molloy. Hello.' The formality struck her as particularly absurd now that she felt an increasing bond of friendship with this man. ‘How did your moving go?'

‘Fine, no problem. Except I'm still unfurnished.' He paused. ‘How you doing?'

‘Not great. I –' She glanced through the window into the corridor, saw a technician coming out of the lab door opposite, and pushed her own door shut, lowering her voice. ‘Could we meet outside somewhere? I need to talk to you. Can you do lunch?'

‘No – I have a meeting here. I've a gap right now, I guess – any good?'

Monty glanced at her watch. It was 11.10. ‘Yes.'

‘How about the same place we had lunch, in ten minutes?'

‘Fine.'

As she hung up, she realized her hands were shaking.

Il Venezia
was in the mid-morning lull between breakfast and lunch. Monty arrived first and went over to the alcove where they had sat before, keeping on her coat.

She'd only beaten Conor by a minute. The door opened and he walked in, clutching his briefcase, the collar of his Crombie turned up. The sight of him immediately made her feel reassured.

He walked over to her with a grim smile. ‘Hi,' he said, pulling up a chair and sitting down. ‘I have something interesting to show you.'

‘Oh?' Everything about him seemed so safe, even the way his strong hands flipped open his briefcase and took out his laptop. The Italian waitress came over.

‘What would you like?' Conor asked Monty.

‘Just a cappuccino.'

‘And I'll have a double espresso – and a doughnut. Have one yourself,' he said to Monty, ‘they're really good here.'

She smiled at his appetite, the attraction she felt towards him increasing with every moment she was in his company.

The waitress went off.

‘Are you OK, Montana? You look very pale.'

Monty watched until the waitress was a safe distance away, then looked back at the American. ‘Do you remember on Tuesday I told you I'd asked our old Chief Lab Technician, Walter Hoggin, to see if he could get some Maternox samples?'

‘Uh huh.'

She twisted her fingers together nervously. ‘He died yesterday. Had a heart attack.'

Conor frowned. ‘How old was he?'

‘Sixty-six.'

‘Did he have any history of heart disease?'

‘Not that I know of.'

He was quiet for a moment. ‘Where did it happen?'

‘At the Bendix lab in Reading where he worked.'

‘Where was he taken to hospital?'

‘I – I don't know. Why?'

‘You don't know if it was a public hospital or a Bendix one?'

‘A Bendix hospital?'

‘Sure – one of the Bendix clinics – that's where staff usually get taken.'

‘I was told he died in the ambulance.'

The waitress brought the coffees and two fat, circular doughnuts, then departed. Conor studied his espresso, then he said: ‘You ask Mr Seals to get you the information and the capsules and he dies. The newspaper reporter gets involved and she dies. Then you ask your Mr Hoggin for help and he dies. That's a lot of coincidences.'

‘Where does the point come at which you stop believing in coincidence?' she asked.

Now he was eyeing the doughnut. ‘When you're a kid growing up, you get to a certain stage where you stop believing in the tooth fairy and in Father Christmas. There's no specific date, no mark drawn on a wall; it's a gradual process, right? You realize, slowly, that things don't make sense any more the way you've been perceiving them, and that's when you start to figure out the truth.'

‘I think I'm at that point now,' Monty said. ‘I think actually I'm way beyond it.'

Conor picked up his snack and bit a chunk out of it, licking the oozing custard inside, and chewed for a moment. He swallowed, then held the doughnut out in front of her as if it were an exhibit. ‘See the glaze?'

‘Yes,' she said, a little surprised.

‘That's made from the same gel Bendix Schere uses in its labs for testing DNA. They're the largest manufacturers in the world of this gel.'

She looked down at her own doughnut and grimaced. ‘Seriously?'

‘Uh huh.'

‘I'm not sure it looks so appetizing all of a sudden.'

‘Didn't you know, Bendix Schere's everywhere.' He put the remaining portion of his doughnut back down on the plate and wiggled his fingers. ‘Little tentacles creeping out. They're slowly working towards a monopoly on the world's health. They're already heading towards a monopoly on baby food. Here and there they're making inroads into adult food.' He raised his eyebrows. ‘Where do they stop?'

‘I don't know. Where?'

He opened his hands and shrugged.

‘And you really believe they're prepared to kill?'

‘If the reason's good enough.'

‘OK, what
is
the reason?'

He raised the lid of his computer and switched the machine on. ‘See if this means anything to you.'

He moved his chair so that he was sitting beside Monty, and opened the ‘In' section of his electronic mailbox. Moving the cursor down, he double-clicked on one item and it came up on the screen. It was a memo from Linda Farmer, Director of Medical Information to Dr Vincent Crowe, and it said simply:
Confirm we may have 4th Maternox problem. Kingsley C. (Mrs). Under observation. Will report further.

‘Does that mean anything to you?' Conor asked.

Monty stiffened, then suddenly drummed the table with her index finger. ‘Where – where did that come from?'

Conor gave her a conspiratorial wink. ‘I can't answer that right now. Just tell me if it means anything to you?'

She nodded, the words of Zandra Wollerton, when they had met in the hotel, flooding back to her.

I'm waiting for one more pregnant woman to die in labour from a virus and give birth to a Cyclops Syndrome baby, then I'm going to sit on her family doctor's tail round the clock for a week until he bloody well talks to me
.

Conor looked at her expectantly.

‘Zandra Wollerton's files,' she said. ‘There must be something in her files at the paper.'

‘I'm not with you.'

She drained her coffee. ‘Give me your home number. I'm going to Berkshire right now and I'll call you this evening.'

He sounded hesitant. ‘Sure, I'll give you my home number – but listen – you need to be really careful about saying
anything
on the phone. Use it to arrange to meet, but nothing else. And I think we both need to watch who we talk to from now on.' He sipped some of his coffee. ‘I'm going to the country tomorrow – to spend the weekend with my immediate boss, Rowley. Come across him?'

She hesitated. ‘I think I may have met him very briefly.'

‘He knows his way around the company, and he's OK. If
the opportunity comes up, I'll talk to him to see if he knows anything.'

Monty was precise. ‘What we need is to get hold of some Maternox samples from the suspect batch and have them compared to other Maternox capsules.' She gave him the relevant batch number.

He nodded. ‘I'll see what I can do.'

She stared at her untouched doughnut, but had no stomach for it.

Berkshire, England. Friday 18 November, 1994

Monty found the sprawling Enterprise Park industrial estate off the Reading ring road without difficulty, pulled the MG up beside a large sign listing the companies, and wound down her window. A strong wind immediately blasted her face.

Central & Western Publishing Plc – Thames Valley Gazette. Unit 26
, she read and wound the window up again, the car rocking slightly in the gust. She drove on, past a row of modern industrial buildings in identical dark grey livery, then she saw the name of the newspaper emblazoned on a four-storey structure much older and shabbier than the rest.

She parked in a visitor's space, then hurried towards the front entrance of the building, the wind savaging her hair. She'd phoned Hubert Wentworth from a call box after leaving Conor Molloy, and he'd suggested an afternoon meeting. Her watch said 3.15.

In the centre of the lobby a uniformed security guard sat tall behind a desk and politely asked her to take a seat whilst he contacted Mr Wentworth's office.

Monty sat in a low chair and picked up a copy of the
Gazette
, scanning the headline: ‘Local Vicar Plans Xmas Visit to Bosnia.'

Christmas, she thought. Only five weeks away and she
hadn't made any plans at all. She was due to accompany her father to Washington at the beginning of December, and wondered if she could persuade him to stay on afterwards and take a holiday; skiing in Vermont?

She used to love Christmas as a child when her mother was still alive. But the only ones she'd enjoyed in the past decade were the two that she had spent with a boyfriend at his family's Yorkshire farmhouse. Then she'd realized she was probably more in love with his large, welcoming family and the warmth they radiated than with the man himself. With the result that she'd let the relationship peter out. But there had been plenty of moments during the past eighteen months when she'd wondered whether she had thrown away her last chance of getting married.