Cocaine (22 page)

My mother had been on anti-depressants and tranquilisers for nearly three years. When I first saw her standing next to my father in International Arrivals it looked like she had aged nearly ten. That silent reunion had taken place two weeks before I found myself back in Cambridge.

My mother hugged me with tears streaming down her face. She had said not one word, not even my name. It was as if she was incapable of speaking.

‘Welcome home, son’, said my dad, offering me his hand. I shook it and we exchanged a look I will never forget. It was a look that screamed ’never again.’

‘I’ve learned my lesson’, I blurted out as my father drove us back home in the same old Saab with the worn black leather seats that he’d used to take me to the airport four years before. ‘I’ve
really
learned my lesson.’

Although my father was an astute man possessed of an enquiring mind, he never asked me exactly what lesson it was that I thought I had learned.

It was just as well.

I took a room at the youth hostel with some of the money my father gave me and I went straight into town to the University library. The library had the rights to claim legal deposit over all materials published in the United Kingdom, and I was particularly interested in the periodicals section. I pored over newspapers printed between November 1990 and January 1991, the period between being captured and sentenced, looking for a clue. There was none. Not a single line on my arrest or the trial. Kieran might be able to tell me something, but I didn’t need to go to Vancouver. Not just yet. I put on my coat, passed through the double doors and out into the cold.

The wind whipped across the courtyard, cutting into my body, welcoming me back to the Fens. Cambridge glistened under a blue sky and a crispy white coating of frost, just like a film-set against the backdrop of perpendicular architecture, the meandering River Cam, gaggles of students on bicycles slipping on the ice and the dons in their Morris Minors wearing multiple layers, their windscreens misted over. I was shivering because I had spent the vast bulk of the last four years eleven degrees north of the equator. I was thin and tanned and I wore long-johns under my jeans, an old pair of Kickers and three thick sweaters from Marks and Spencer’s topped off by a parka that I had last worn when I was fifteen.

The senior tutor handed me a sherry and stood with his back to the gas fire, warming his legs. He had me sitting in the same chair that I had sat in for my interview nine years before.

‘This is rather surprising, Ryan. An unexpected pleasure.’

‘Thank you, Mr Warmington. I must admit I didn’t expect to be here either.’

‘Research, you say?’

‘That’s right. After South America –‘

‘Yes how was it? Rather exciting, I imagine. Did you see Macchu Picchu?’

‘No. I didn’t make it all the way to Peru.’

‘Ah.’

‘But I am fluent in Spanish now. And I’ve got some interesting alkaloids experience.’

‘Commendable. Languages improve the mind, I think. Alkaloids, you say? You’re not touching your sherry?’

I took a sip from the little glass to keep him happy. Apart from the whiskies my father plied me with I hadn’t had a drink in three years.

‘The synthesisation of alkaloids. Anesthesia. I was touched by how many operative procedures in the developing world rely on potentially dangerous general anesthesia – ‘

‘Dangerous?’

‘They don’t wake up.’

‘Yes, of course. That’s simply awful.’

‘It was. Actually, I’ve prepared the first part of a thesis which investigates the development of a cheap, mass-produceable anesthetic that can replace its more traditional alternative.’

‘Ah yes, drugs for the masses, eh, Ryan?’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘Very laudable. Very laudable indeed.’

He fumbled in his pockets for something, but whatever it was, he didn’t find it.

‘
Did you bring the first part of your thesis with you?’

‘I put it on your desk. Sorry about the typos. I had to type it up from my shorthand notes, which were a little battered.’

‘I’ll have a look at it.’

I looked at the large pile of reading matter on his desk on top of which lay the ten page executive summary of my work, held together by a paper-clip.

‘No pressure, Mr Warmington, but if the college isn’t interested – and I’ll understand completely if it isn’t – then I will go to FutureChem. They’ve got my thesis too.’

‘That was quick.’

‘I’m just very keen to get started. I think I could really make a difference.’

‘Funding, you know, is always an issue, Ryan. I’ll need approval from the Master, and probably the bursar before I can do this. You’ll want to be recognized as a post-graduate of some sort, I imagine, which will entail re-admission to the college. The subject of your third-class degree may come up too – ‘

‘My recent experience negates that. FutureChem are interested or they wouldn’t have asked for the thesis.’

I watched him lick his lips. He could sniff money and he knew I knew it.

‘Ryan, my boy, leave it with me. It’ll go to the top of the pile, I promise you. When do you need an answer?’

‘Ideally, a yay or a nay by Friday week. I was going to take a few days to look up some old friends. I’ll be back in Cambridge next Friday.’ I moved over to him and reached out my hand to shake his. ‘I’d love it to go to the college. I want to help people, not line my pockets.’

‘Of course, of course’, he said, shaking my hand and smiling warmly. ‘Have a wonderful week, my boy.’

June 2007

Grasse was a moderately pretty town.

It lay about ten miles north of Cannes, spread over a succession of hills and home to the perfume industry. The light industrial theme also permeated the residential areas, infusing them with diesel fumes, unemployable youths and graffiti. The very centre of Grasse, the flag-stoned old town, was very atmospheric, albeit polluted by traffic. Only the pedestrian area held any charm for me, and it was to the pedestrian area that Stephanie took me, to an Indian restaurant set down a tiny cobbled alleyway running off the
Place des Aires
.

We ordered okra and keema nan, murgh jalfrezi and Cobra beer. Stephanie even had a glass of champagne. I had told her of my plan and she thought it seemed wildly implausible that anyone should want to do such a thing, to risk such a sum for what was a grid-locked, politicized industry cynically exploited by ad executives and marketing consultants, glossy magazines and women that worked behind the counter at Sephora.

‘Why?’, she asked me again, as if I were mad, tossing her hair over one shoulder and shrugging in the disdainful manner that the French have perfected.

I held out my folded copy of the Grasse edition of
Nice Matin
, the local paper on the Cote d’Azur, the three-week-old edition with the large advertisement in French announcing the sale of an unprofitable and run down perfume manufacturer one mile out of Grasse.

‘The brand’, I replied. ‘
Daillion
is an old brand. The brand has value.’

‘No-one in France think so. This factory, it is like the film.’

‘The one we watched last night?
The Money Pit
with Tom Hanks?’

‘
Exactement
.’

‘But if I buy it, Stephanie, you will agree to run it for me?’

‘We sleep together, we also work together? This is healthy?’

‘Sometimes the most unhealthy things can work. Petrol, for example. Nuclear power stations. You have a lot of those in France.’

‘You will need a lot of money, George, to do this. A lot of money, and a lot of dedication. You will pay me, I know you will, you are good to me, but you will need to invest. Perfume is not always – how you say – a high-margin business. You need volume too.’

‘Then we can diversify. Half perfume, half something else.’

‘What else can you make in a perfume factory?’

‘Come now, Stephanie. You have a chemistry degree. You can do better than that.’

‘
I can?’

‘
I want you to close your eyes and clear your mind of all thoughts, all preconceptions about this factory and what you think it can and cannot produce.’

She shut her eyes.

She could feel it going in. It would feel good soon. Probably. Perhaps if she wiggled it up and down a bit, like that. Hmm, that didn’t work. Maybe something was wrong. It could be the stars, or the planning, or perhaps the events of the last few hours. It could be anything, anything at all. It probably was not just anything, but was probably something.

This felt better. Yes. Much better. This was working. It could be working. Something was happening. Something good. Around the corner. No, not around the corner. Straight, straight, straight. Straight ahead. Curved, but straight. Strong, but soft. Smooth, but rough. Solid. It was definitely working. It could not be said to be failing. No-one could really tell yet. It was too early. Too early to tell. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow would be easier. Maybe she was doing it wrong after all.

Maybe she should stop.

Maybe not.

This was nice. One could get used to this. It was pleasant but exerting, stressful but at the same time releasing. It was not right, God knew that, not right at all. But it could not be underestimated, this…this…thing. Teaching could not deal with it. It was a natural thing, a thing borne of necessity, of desire, of faith, of belief and hope, a thing that could draw comparison with hellishness or glory in equal measure.

It was not an easy thing. He had said that before. Not easy. Maybe it would be easier after the first time. That first moment, when it went in, had been…had been…certainly it had been. It had been and gone and now it was back here again. Here one more time, here to stay, here forever. It would not go, not today, not now. It was happening. She was caught up in it. It was enveloping her. It was confusing…confounding. Still pleasurable, but confusing. Slower now, tiring. Slowing down. Fast. Getting slower. Much slower. Nearly stopping. Had it stopped? Was that it? Was that the end? The last bit had been slower, and made one doubt the first bit. Had it gone in?

Stephanie opened her eyes to see me smiling at her.

‘
My turn’, I said, pushing the tiny needle into a vein in my inner thigh.

23

‘
Nothing is ever done in this world until men

are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.’

George Bernard Shaw

‘
This is Jeavons, MacAllister and Brundle. Forsythe you may remember?’

I did and I shook his hand warmly. ‘Collingwood’s on location doing some research. United States. Stem cells. Very interesting.’

‘Sounds it.’

‘Hello Jacobs.’

‘Hello chaps.’

‘We’ll put you here, for now, and you’ll have your own room within the week.’

‘That’s great.’

‘You’ve been traveling, Jacobs?’

‘South America.’

‘Exciting stuff, eh? Get into any scrapes?’

‘Unfortunately not.’

‘Shame. Like a good scrape, don’t I, Jeavons?’

‘You are I assume referring to your annoyingly crass method of removing unwanted materials from
my
work-surfaces with your hunting knife, MacAllister?’

They all smiled. They were friendly. They were welcoming me as one of them, not just the man who’d been away for years and only had a Third to his name.

‘As you can see, Ryan, it’s nothing like FutureChem. Or South America for that matter.’

‘I can see that.’

‘You made the right choice?’

‘Thank you Mr Warmington. I do believe I did.’