Alchemist (27 page)

‘It was some hours later that the accident happened,' Monty said, feeling a little relieved. If it was true that he'd been drunk after all, then it made the chances that it was all a ghastly accident more probable.

‘He was at work very early. Did he always do that? And you?'

Monty took a deep breath, buying time, feeling battered by the relentless questioning. ‘I often go in early, yes. I'm under pressure at the moment.'

‘Do you feel there might be any connection between Mr Seals' death and the fact that three women have died giving birth to Cyclops Syndrome babies after taking the Maternox fertility drug manufactured by Bendix Schere?'

Monty stared wonderingly at the sincere face in front of her.
Dangerous question
, she thought. Aloud she said, ‘I can't see any possible grounds for making such a connection.'

There was an uncomfortable silence between them. The reporter switched off the tape. ‘Is there anything you'd like to talk about off the record? I mean, I thought perhaps you might want to be a little more helpful …'

‘That's all I have to say, I'm afraid.'

The girl pulled a card out of her pocket and handed it to Monty. Her voice softened, changing from interrogator to friend. ‘If you think of anything else at all relevant, my direct line, home number and mobile are on this.'

Monty laid it on her tray without looking at it. ‘Of course.'

‘Nice talking to you again, Ms Bannerman. Hope you get better quickly,' she said chirpily.

Monty smiled at her. There was a good girl under there, beneath the ‘tough reporter' carapace. Wentworth was right about her, she would go far. But not at the expense of the Bannermans' goodwill at Bendix Schere.

The reporter hitched her bag jauntily on to her shoulder. ‘I haven't finished my investigations into Bendix Schere,' she said. ‘Not by a long chalk.'

Barnet
,
North London
.
1946

Daniel Judd, standing naked, closed the circle with an arc of the poker he used as his ceremonial sword. He had moved his bedroom table into the centre of the circle earlier, and draped it in black cloth. It was a few minutes to midnight and his mother had gone to bed a couple of hours ago; he was pretty certain she was asleep.

The first month after his father's funeral had been good; his mother had been subdued, numbed by shock. For the first time in Daniel's life – except for a blissful fortnight when she'd
been sick with flu – she had been no trouble at all. Then the shock had begun to subside and anger replaced it.

Her anger had, naturally, been focused entirely on himself.

It was his sins, she said, that had brought God's wrath on the family. God had killed Daniel's father because He was angry at Daniel. God had taken her husband to punish her for producing such a wicked son: a son who was insolent, who dared to question the existence of the Almighty. Who questioned everything around him.

He remembered her face four days ago, after church, when he had questioned the vicar about Satan. He had read a book in the library written by a man called Aleister Crowley that said Christians had killed hundreds of thousands of people for not believing in their religion, but that Satanists had not killed any for not believing in theirs. It had been a simple question, he thought. He had merely asked the vicar why that made Christians better than Satanists.

His mother had almost torn his ear off. She had dragged him all the way home by it, twisting it like a dishcloth, then had slapped him in the face until he could barely see. After that she had forced him to wash his mouth out with soap, and locked him in his bedroom whilst she read biblical tracts aloud on the other side of the door.

On the table inside the circle lay the page of a grimoire he had torn from a library book, a small ball of dough he had taken from the pantry, a row of his mother's hairs that he had combed from her hairbrush, a safety pin, a length of twine, a pair of scissors and a shoebox. A black candle was burning and he had already purified the room with salt and water.

He closed his eyes, visualized his mother's face, then opened them again and whispered the words of the incantation printed on the page before him. He finished by saying:

‘Be damned! Be damned!
My power is cursing you,
My power is hexing you,
You are completely under my spell.
Be damned! Be damned!'

Next he rolled the ball of dough between the palms of his hands, making it elongate. Pulling a strip off he elongated that as well and pulled two lengths from it. The
arms
, he thought. Then he created the legs, the head and the torso, and assembled the effigy. Using the point of the safety pin, he sculpted features in the face, then pressed the hairs on to the skull, cementing them in place with more dough.

‘Mother,' he whispered, proudly staring at his handiwork. ‘You are under my spell now. Oh yes, you are!'

He took the opened safety pin, pushed the point through the lower and upper lips he had just fashioned and closed the pin. Careful not to break or pull them off, he bent the arms back then, using some of the twine, tied them together.

He picked up the effigy, raised it in the air and held it aloft whilst he read out more incantations written in a language he did not understand, hoping that he was pronouncing them correctly. After this he laid the effigy in the shoebox, the inside of which was lined with a strip of black satin. Like a coffin.

He opened the circle with his sword and stepped out of it. Then, Daniel Judd stood on a chair and placed the box safely out of sight on top of his wardrobe.

London
.
Thursday 10 November
,
1994

The Chief Executive's intercom rang, one muted warble. He lifted the black receiver without breaking his concentration on the report from Conor Molloy that he was reading. The report summarized the prospects of successful US patent applications for Dr Bannerman's work on identifying and controlling the genes of a string of chronic diseases, including psoriasis, arthritis, asthma, arterial disease and stomach ulcers, as well as a key gene involved in the human biological clock.

‘Yes?'

‘Dr Crowe, there's a Ms Zandra Wollerton waiting downstairs
in the lobby to see you. She has no appointment and won't say why she's here.'

Crowe laid the report down on his desk, recognizing the name instantly from his meeting with Major Gunn last night. He swivelled to face his computer terminal, still holding the phone to his ear. ‘How do you spell her name?'

As his secretary gave him the spelling, Crowe typed the reporter's name, then hit the search key. Gunn had wasted no time since last night: on the screen appeared her full name; age 21; curriculum vitae and family history. This was followed by details of the circulation and ownership of the
Thames Valley Gazette
. It came under the umbrella of the news conglomerate Central & Western Publishing Plc.

Bendix Schere had spent just over one hundred thousand pounds advertising its over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, baby food and hospital services with Central in the previous twelve months alone. A reasonable spend, he reflected, but less than he'd hoped to find. The threat of withdrawal of advertising might work – no one liked to lose advertising revenue; but for a company the size of Central, it was not a major amount, and the ploy could backfire.

He had half an hour before his lunch appointment. Bringing Rorke in on this might be sensible, he thought. Rorke knew everybody and if the chairman of Central was a friend of his they might be able to kill the story dead in the water.

‘Bring her up,' he said into the receiver.

‘Major Gunn rang while you were on the line. He's in his office.'

Without acknowledging his secretary, Crowe disconnected, then got the Director of Security's internal secure line.

‘Good morning, sir,' Gunn said when he heard Crowe's voice. ‘I thought you'd like a quick update on Bannerman's daughter.' He took Crowe's silence as a cue to continue. ‘The reporter we were talking about last night went to see her in hospital this morning – we'd fixed the bugging problem and heard everything. Miss Bannerman's fine, in my view; she wasn't rising to any of it. My assessment is that it was Seals who told her about the Cyclops connection – and Seals also stirred it up with this Wollerton woman.'

‘You'll have your answer if she tries to get any more of the Maternox batch, won't you?' Crowe said sharply.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘So keep close tabs on it.'

‘I'll find a way, sir.'

‘Miss Wollerton is on her way up to see me now,' Crowe said.

Gunn sounded worried. ‘Want me in with you?'

‘No, I can handle her.' Crowe replaced the receiver and behind the glossy black expanse of his orderly desk and the squat back of the papier-mâché frog, he carefully composed his thoughts.

A few moments later his secretary ushered a young woman into his presence.

Crowe watched Zandra Wollerton walk towards him without raising his chin from the bridge of his interlocked fingers. ‘Take a seat,' he said dryly, fixing his eyes on one of the two wing chairs in front of his desk.

The reporter sat down, crossed her legs, switched on her tape-recorder and faced him defiantly.

‘So what can I do for you, young lady?'

‘Are you aware, Dr Crowe, that three women who took your company's fertility drug, Maternox, have died during childbirth, and that all three gave birth to babies deformed with Cyclops Syndrome?'

‘You took the trouble to inform our Medical Information Department of this a fortnight ago, I believe, Miss Wollerton. Do you have something new to add?'

‘I'm interested in your opinion as Chief Executive of Bendix.'

‘We monitor any reports sent to us from doctors on possible side-effects from our pharmaceuticals. I understand we've received no such reports from the doctors of these three women, and would assume therefore that they do not share your view as to any connection. Do you have medical training yourself?'

‘No.'

‘You may be interested to know that worldwide last year, thirteen million women became pregnant thanks to Maternox.
The drug has been on the market for nine years without one single side-effect notification from any doctor anywhere in the world.'

‘Fifteen million women if you include sub-licensed versions.'

Crowe was surprised by her thoroughness, but did not let it show.

‘Dr Crowe, a Chief Lab Technician in your Genetics Research Division died yesterday morning,' she continued. ‘Presumably there is no connection between his death and that of the three women? I mean, I understand that he was originally a senior technician in the lab where Maternox was developed.'

‘I would be very careful, Miss Wollerton.'

‘Ms,' she said with a disarming smile. ‘And I'm always very careful. Now, you are presumably aware that all three women who died had taken Maternox from the same batch number: BS-M-6575-1881-UKMR.' She recited it like a child in class.

Crowe was aware that he was crushing his knuckles together, despite himself. ‘On what information are you basing that statement?'

‘I happen to know it's accurate,' she said, with an arrogance that made him want to shake her.

She glanced round the office, at the grey walls unrelieved by any photographs or prints that would give anything away about its occupier. ‘Don't you find it oppressive in here without windows?'

‘I'm not interested in discussing architecture,
Ms
Wollerton. Perhaps you could answer my question?'

‘I never reveal my sources.' She widened her eyes in defiance.

Crowe made a mental note to phone the Legal Department the moment she left and have them contact her paper. This young woman was a wild cannon, dangerous. Too smart for comfort. And what the hell
was
her source? Seals? It must have been. Employees knew the strict rules forbidding any contact with the press other than through Public Relations.

‘You are aware, I assume, Dr Crowe, of quite how rare Cyclops Syndrome babies are in Britain?'

‘I'm afraid I'm not a walking encyclopaedia of medical statistics.'

She smiled, unfazed by his aggression. ‘Then I think this will interest you: there's an average of two a year. So three within two months is a little startling. Particularly when the only link between them is that the mothers all took the same batch of your fertility drug.'

‘And you would like to infer something conclusive from that?'

‘No, but it's enough to go to press on. And the death of Mr Seals, with his connection, adds some interest to the story.'

He sat up straight and laid his fingertips very lightly on the edge of his desk. ‘And that's why you wanted to see me, to tell me this? I would have thought if you were so confident in your story you needn't have bothered.'

‘I'm very confident. I just thought it would be fair to give you the chance to comment. Bendix Schere is obviously concerned – if they weren't they wouldn't have threatened the publishers of my newspaper with advertising withdrawal.'

The remark almost pulled the rug from under him. Who the hell had been on to the paper? Gunn! His thoughts flailed. What the hell did that jumped-up paratrooper think he was playing at, barging in like that! Gunn's judgement used to be good – more than good, in fact – brilliant. But if he was losing it now …

With great effort the Chief Executive of Bendix Schere switched to a conciliatory tack, and his vermilion lips parted into a smile. Creases appeared like cracks in the porcelain white of his face. ‘Maternox has helped many millions of infertile women to enjoy motherhood, and neither they nor their babies have suffered any above-normal percentage of health problems. If you want to go to press with wild allegations for no other reason than to gain column inches for your career, I advise you to think hard about the greater consequences.'