Requiem (53 page)

He was interrupted by the waitress who deposited iced water and menus in front of them and, in an abrasive monotone, rattled off a long list of specials. Paul, momentarily silenced by the unexpected turn the conversation had taken, rallied sufficiently to order orange juice and eggs and hash browns with waffles and maple syrup.

Daisy ordered doughnuts. Their friend wanted only coffee.

‘You never saw this data yourself then?’ Paul asked.

Their friend shook his head. Despite the air-conditioning, he was sweating slightly. ‘No. I just – heard about it.’ He looked at the table, he looked at his hands; just occasionally he looked up at them in a series of darting uncertain glances. ‘My contact – the one who told me about all this – well, now it seems … he built the whole thing up. You know, sort of misled me. I mean, he didn’t
mean
to mislead me, but he kind of put the wrong interpretation on the figures. He thought they’d been fixed, made to look good – like I told you in my letter. But now – well – ’ He took another gasp of air. ‘He’s pretty sure he was mistaken.’

His words settled over the table like a blanket of lead. For a moment Paul looked as though he was going to cry.

‘This data, these figures – what were they exactly?’ Daisy asked.

He took a sip of water. ‘Well, they, er …’

The waitress sped up in her soundless soft-soled shoes, slid cups and cutlery noisily onto the table, and poured the coffee.

‘You were saying?’ Daisy asked as soon as she had left.

He glanced past her, checking that the waitress was well out of earshot but also, Daisy suspected, delaying the moment. ‘They were, er, some of the main toxicology test results.’

‘And how were they fixed?’

‘But they weren’t fixed,’ he objected with an awkward smile.

‘Quite. But when your contact originally thought they might have been fixed, how did he think it’d been done?’

He didn’t want to go into that. He glanced at Paul as though for help, then gave a nervous mirthless laugh. ‘He thought the results had been massaged … helped along a bit. Improved.’

‘Is that easy to do?’

He shifted his shoulders reluctantly. ‘I don’t know about easy … But it’s certainly possible.’

‘Has it happened before?’

‘Maybe. No one’s sure. But once,’ he embarked conversationally, ‘oh, years ago – there was a rumour. A product was withdrawn.’

‘Your contact – he’s with Morton-Kreiger?’

He drew back again, considering whether he should make this most basic of admissions. Finally he nodded briefly but miserably, as if he was already angry with himself for having gone this far.

A door sounded. Some customers came into the restaurant, their voices raucous in the silence. Their friend stiffened and looked around him. Daisy knew then that it was only a matter of time before he made his escape. Outside, the sunlight had intensified, casting hard shadows.

‘You were going to tell us something else,’ she said, waiting for his eyes to drag back to hers. ‘You said, for
one
thing the data wasn’t what it appeared to be. What was the other thing?’

He made a show of searching his memory before saying with forced casualness: ‘Oh, yeah … I was going to say that, er … my contact no longer has access even to the
summary
data. He found the file had been, er, removed from its usual place. It’s never been returned. There’s very little he can do to get it back. Officially he has no reason to call on it, you see.’ He spread his hands. ‘So … That’s it, I’m afraid.’

Why, Daisy wondered, has our friend gone to all the trouble of stringing these stories together? Why has he bothered to come and meet us when it would have been so much easier to leave a message saying he’d changed his mind or, even simpler, not to have shown up at all? Why, when he’s scared sideways and every which way, has he risked showing his face?

The waitress brought the food and a fresh pour of coffee. The doughnuts were the size of cartoon car tyres and glistening with frosted sugar. Paul, faced by a large plate of eggs and hashed potatoes, dug straight in, though that didn’t prevent him from cross-questioning their friend at length, going over each fact in plodding detail as if by sheer repetition he might coax more out of him. Daisy could have told him he was wasting his time. Their friend had already lied himself into a corner and, however uncomfortable he might feel about that, he wasn’t going to back down now.

‘Wouldn’t your contact know if the figures had been massaged?’ Paul began. ‘I mean, wouldn’t it have required collusion between a whole group of people?’

‘But MKI didn’t carry out the trials themselves,’ he explained quickly. ‘It was a company called TroChem.’

‘Oh,’ said Paul, feigning innocence. ‘And who’re TroChem?’

‘They set up about eight years ago, offering specialist toxicology testing. They’ve earned a reputation for being hyper-efficient and cheap. They’ve been very successful.’ Their friend’s hesitation had disappeared, Daisy noticed. And it wasn’t just that he was on safer ground; he spoke with the ease of someone who knew exactly what he was talking about. A laboratory technician then? No, he was brighter than that. A scientist.

‘There weren’t any checks carried out on the work? No independent assessments?’

He hesitated slightly then shook his head and frowned.

‘So,’ Paul continued, ‘it’d be hard to tell that the figures had been massaged, would it? I mean, from the outside?’

He liked that question; it gave him another opportunity to pour cold water on the idea of any stray information just lying around. ‘Absolutely impossible,’ he said. ‘You’d need complete access to all the lab results, all the data. You’d need to get full access to TroChem’s records.’

‘Or you’d need someone to talk,’ Daisy suggested gently. ‘Someone who’d seen the data and was sufficiently qualified to know what the figures meant.’

His eyes blinked up at her. He didn’t say anything.

Paul picked up a waffle and, dribbling maple syrup over the top, used it to break the yolk on his fried egg. ‘There’s something I’m not clear about here,’ he said. ‘This contact of yours – he’s a scientist, right?’

‘I can’t say … I really don’t think I should say.’

‘Of course,’ Paul said hastily through a large mouthful. ‘I just wanted to know if he – your contact – had the expertise to assess the data when he had it in front of him.’

Alan Breck’s face was transparent; Daisy could see him fighting his way round his self-imposed obstacles. ‘But I told you, he didn’t have access to the full data,’ he said. ‘
No one
could have made judgements about anything without having the data!’

‘But he saw enough to suspect the possibility of – hell, let’s be clear what we’re talking about here –
fraud
?’

‘I told you – he was mistaken. Really, he got it wrong!’ His voice was taut and thin.

Paul nodded slowly. ‘Right, right. Well …’ He mopped up some egg and forked it rapidly into his mouth. ‘Maybe we can still persuade the EPA to review Silveron.’ He was thinking aloud. ‘Approach them another way.’

‘The Aurora testimonials,’ their friend interjected with something like relief, and Daisy realized that he’d been trying to lead them to this point. ‘If you’re so concerned – that evidence should be enough, shouldn’t it? You’re in contact with Burt, aren’t you? You only need some backup – an expert or two – and then you can file for deregistration, can’t you?’ He looked back and forth between them, like a child seeking reassurance.

‘We’ll give it all we’ve got,’ said Paul, licking syrup off his fingers.

‘At the very least the EPA will have to postpone approval. I mean, won’t they?’ He sounded as though he needed to believe it very badly indeed.

‘But if that fails?’ she asked quietly. She felt Paul give her a questioning look. ‘What happens if the Silveron launch doesn’t get postponed? Suppose we have a repeat of the situation in Britain?’

Their friend didn’t reply. His eyes were very large behind the lenses of his glasses.

‘Britain?’ he echoed.

‘We’ve got two sick people, and another two possibles. And those are just the ones we know about.’

In a sudden movement he removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘That’s bad,’ he said, and there was a gasp in his voice.

Paul tried to ease the moment along. ‘It could be a lot worse.’

Daisy kept her eyes on their friend. ‘Let me ask you one thing,’ she said, ‘do you believe Silveron is a safe product?’

He closed his eyes, then replaced his glasses very slowly and with elaborate care. ‘Well, I can’t judge – ’ He caught her eye. ‘No,’ he said eventually, with a short baffled sound. ‘I’d guess not.’

A noisy family arrived in an adjacent booth. ‘More coffee anyone?’ Paul asked brightly, looking for the waitress.

Their friend caught Daisy’s eye. There were all sorts of messages in that gaze – fear, regret and something she couldn’t quite read. A plea for understanding perhaps. As Paul turned back, he quickly looked down at his hands again.

She realized suddenly: it was Paul that was the problem. It was Paul that their friend didn’t trust. Their friend had taken the trouble to come and deliver this message personally, not out of the goodness of his heart, but because it was vital for Paul to believe that he could be of no help in the matter, that he knew absolutely nothing, that, most important of all, there was nothing to know. The whole business had been an exercise in disinformation.

Why? Fear? Distrust of security at EarthForce? Or distrust of Paul himself? Did he know something about Paul that she didn’t?

‘Don’t go away,’ she said lightly, and went in search of the washroom. From her bag she took one of her visiting cards, emblazoned with the Catch logo, and, balancing it on the side of a basin, scribbled on the back:
If you ever change your mind, please call me
, and added her home number. Then, on an impulse:
Anything you say will be safe with me
.

She went straight back in case he might try to leave while she was gone. He was still there, though she noticed that he had manoeuvred himself closer to the end of the bench.

Paul was talking about the Aurora workers. She slid in next to him, opposite their friend, and, leaning forward on one elbow, slid the card under the table. She found his knee. He looked startled, his eyes swivelling nervously between hers and Paul’s, then, as understanding dawned, he moved his hand down to meet hers.

T
HE CLINIC WAS
the last word in restrained elegance – or, as Hillyard liked to pronounce the word in his jocular moments, ‘elly-
garnce
’. The place was new, built in muted brick with blue window frames, tinted glass, a ruthlessly landscaped strip of garden, and a large splash of flowers around the entrance. No expense spared. And one would hope not, at their prices.

He parked in a space marked ‘Doctors only’ and, whistling softly, marched into the foyer.

The accounts department was like a small bank, the customer service area separated from the clerk by a glass screen. Two Arabs in full garb were blocking the only window. They were bent over some papers as if they were having difficulty in understanding them. They were probably reading them upside down.

He inserted a shoulder politely between one of the Arabs and the window and said to the female clerk in his most attractive voice: ‘Hullo there. I’ve come to settle Miss Kershaw’s bill and I’m a bit pushed for time.’ He gave her a collusive wink which she carefully ignored. ‘You couldn’t just hurry it along for me, could you?’

Turning away, giving no indication that she’d heard, the clerk tapped a code into her computer and looked idly at the screen.

Still smiling, Hillyard thought: Stone-faced bitch. The clerk swivelled in her chair and suspended her hand over a printer. The printer obediently spewed a document into her grasp which she ripped off and passed under the glass partition.

‘Is this for me?’ he asked with exaggerated surprise.

She gave a brief nod.

‘Why, thank you,’ he said, clasping his hand to his heart like some dreadful old ham on the steps of Elsinore, when what he really wanted to do was reach through the glass and grab the stupid woman by the throat and give her a good shake.

He went through the bill, item by item. Daily in-patient rate. Operating theatre hire. No mention of the actual operation, he noticed, no mention of that creepy word
termination
. Surgeon’s fee, a healthy little three hundred and fifty quid. Now how many such jobs would that guy do in a morning? Six? Ten? It was all right for some; nice if you could get it.

He looked up to find the clerk watching him. He raised his eyebrows and gave her an exaggerated look of surprise, and she quickly looked away. He took the money from his wallet and counted it out. The notes were new and adhered to each other, and he took care to count them a second time. He didn’t want to give old Stone-face the satisfaction of pointing out a mistake.

The Arabs, having asked a question and been rebuffed, had fallen back from the window to regroup. Hillyard thrust the bill with the money on top of it half-way under the partition. As the clerk reached for it, he dropped his hand back onto the money, pinning it to the counter. ‘You’ll tell them upstairs that it’s paid, will you?’