Chris Collett - [Tom Mariner 01] (28 page)

‘So what we have here are the initials of children and their mothers. That makes sense. The last initial of each pair seems to match up.’

‘It’s only one child: Eddie and I are not on here.’

‘The youngest child?’

‘No, Michael’s got a younger sister, Carol. But Michael’s autistic, like Jamie. It’s the autistic child.’

‘So this is about autistic people and their parents, and what?’

Anna thought for a moment. ‘Medication,’ she said picking up the envelope that came in the post. ‘This is what Eddie sent me. The rest of this stuff is about different kinds of medication. Those PSTIs I was telling you about. And when I met Liz Trueman, she was full of how well Michael is doing these days, mainly because of the new medication he’s on.’

‘But Jamie doesn’t take anything, does he?’

‘Not yet, but I think Eddie must have been considering it. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but given that he was having mega-problems with Jamie’s behaviour, and all the residential homes seem to want to have that option open to them, he must have been. The ones that don’t use medication routinely are incredibly expensive.’

‘And Eddie wasn’t exactly rolling in it.’

‘So he was being more or less forced into it, in the same way that I am. But Eddie being Eddie, he wouldn’t have taken that step without doing some thorough research. It’s what all this is about.’ She indicated the other rows of figures. ‘Maybe he wanted to compare Jamie’s data, whatever that may be, with others’ before making the decision.

‘

Mariner was unimpressed. ‘But if that’s the case then this is pretty harmless information. Who else would be even interested in it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Because no one would. If this was Eddie’s so called “drug story”, Darren was right. It was a wind-up. The drugs Eddie was talking about were these PSTIs. And the project was “personal” because it was for his own use.’

Anna wasn’t about to give up so easily. ‘But if that’s all it was, why would anyone need to wipe it off his computer?’

‘They could have been after anything,’ Mariner pointed out. ‘This database was one of the items that was left. They could have already successfully destroyed what they intended to.’

‘So that’s it?’ Anna was crushed. ‘All this stuff is irrelevant after all?’

‘Well it may be helpful to you. But I can’t see how it will help us find Eddie’s killer.’

‘I’m not really sure if it will be much good to me,’ Anna said, finally conceding defeat. ‘As you said, without titles for any of the fields, there’s no way of knowing what the remaining data could be. It’s impossible to tell what the units are for these numbers, let alone what they represent. I’m sorry. I seem to have wasted your time, too.’

Mariner smiled. ‘Not entirely. It means we’ve effectively ruled out another possibility.’

‘Would you like a coffee or something?’ Anna said, quickly, partly because she didn’t want him to leave yet.

‘Okay, thanks.’

Anna got up to put the kettle on. Mariner picked up the envelope. ‘This was all Eddie sent you?’

‘That’s it. Oh, unless you count a shoebox full of old letters he left with our solicitor. They went back years, and were addressed to my dad, not Eddie. I left them where they were.’

Mariner was staring thoughtfully at the computer screen.

‘If you’ve got Jamie, it shouldn’t be that difficult to work out what the rest of this means,’ he said.

Anna came back to the table with the coffee. ‘Is there any point?’

‘Eddie must have thought so.’

Anna shrugged. If he really wanted to, she’d let him get on with it.

‘Let’s start from what we do know. We’ve got your mother’s initials, Jamie’s initials, Jamie’s date of birth, then a number, 2.1. How old was Jamie when you found out he had autism?’

‘Older than that, much older, in fact not really until he went to school, even though Mum had been up at the doctor’s with him every other week for years. Everything was put down to colic or teething, or the terrible twos and, she was told he’d grow out of it. It wasn’t until he was about five or six that autism was even mentioned.’ She looked across the page. ‘In fact this next column is more likely to refer to that.’ The fourth column said simply March 1977. ‘It would make Jamie almost six. That was more like the time he was diagnosed.’

‘Okay, that’s good. It would account for the variation across the other kids, too. Presumably they were diagnosed at different ages. So what is this 2.1?’ Jamie’s rating appeared lower than many of the others, which were anything ranging between four and nine. What could it be measuring if not time? Quantity? But of what? Measurement?

Height? No, too small. Suddenly Mariner thought of Greta’s tadpole. ‘What about Jamie’s weight, when he was born?’

‘He was seriously underweight,’ said Anna. ‘Tiny. You should see the photographs.’

‘So it could be that.’

‘I suppose it’s possible.’ She sounded doubtful, but Mariner pressed on.

‘Let’s go with that for now. Okay, so we’ve got some names, dates of birth, birth weights, dates of diagnosis.’

‘So what? It still doesn’t tell us why all these people are on the database, except that all these people might be diagnosed autistic on those particular dates.’

‘Which still doesn’t tell us why it was important enough for Eddie to go to all this trouble.’ Mariner picked up the envelope. ‘You’ve been through this information?’

‘Yes, it’s about drugs, but the only common factor seems to be that none of them is particularly safe. The only one that doesn’t appear to have endless awful side effects listed is this one, Pinozalyan, but that’s because there’s hardly any information about it.’ Anna showed Mariner the short paragraph.

‘This is all there is?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I tried the Internet, but there was nothing. And when I went to ask Dr Payne about it this morning, he’d never heard of it either. Mark, my friend’s partner, is a GP.

He said he’d look into it for me, but he hasn’t come back to me yet.’

‘Pinozalyan,’ Mariner read. ‘A relaxant. Prescribed for the treatment of insomnia. Acts as a depressant to hormone serotonin, which controls levels of arousal and anxiety. So that would be useful for treating someone like Jamie, wouldn’t it?’

‘You bet. Anything to calm him down and help him sleep more would be a miracle drug.’

‘And there’s no mention of side effects?’

‘That’s what makes it unique.’

‘But your doctor hadn’t heard of it?’

‘No, he was pretty dismissive actually. But then he did have a packed waiting room this morning.’

Mariner was saying the name over and over to himself, frowning as he did so.

‘You’re spending too much time with us,’ remarked Anna.

‘It just has a familiar ring to it, as if I’ve heard it somewhere before. Pinozalyan, Pinozalyan.’

‘No Sally-Ann,’ murmured Jamie, suddenly, from where he lay on the floor. Mariner and Anna stared at each other.

‘Oh my God,’ said Anna.

‘God,’ repeated Jamie.

Mariner tried it again. ‘Pinozalyan,’ he said.

‘Sally-Ann,’ the echo bounced back at him.

Mariner shuffled through the papers. Impramine,’ he said out loud. Nothing. ‘Ritalin.’ Silence. ‘Pinozalyan.’

Jamie shook his head irritably, ‘No Sally-Ann.’

Mariner looked at Anna. ‘Well, that has to be more than coincidence.’

‘He must have heard Eddie say it.’

‘And why would Eddie say it? Because it was of some significance. Maybe Eddie had stumbled across a drug that would help Jamie that has no side effects. What exactly did the doctor say when you asked him about it?’ Mariner asked, showing a renewed curiosity. ‘Just that he hadn’t heard of it.’

‘But did he ask what it was, or how you’d come across it?’

Anna thought back to her brief meeting with Dr Payne.

‘No, he didn’t. That was strange, wasn’t it? He just cautioned me against going down that route. He reminded me about my mum and dad.’

‘So without even asking for more information he actively put you off the idea?’

‘I suppose he did. Do you think it could be illegal or something?’ Suddenly Anna began to share Mariner’s gathering interest. ‘That might have given Eddie his story.’

But Mariner was less sure. ‘If a drug’s illegal, normally the first place you’d find it would be on the Internet and you’ve tried that. Unless it’s just unavailable.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, either it’s so new that it hasn’t yet been clinically approved in this country. Or it could be like Viagra.’

‘Viagra?’

‘Yes, it’s for…’

‘I know what it’s for,’ Anna said, curious about where this was going.

Mariner shifted in his seat. ‘Yes, well. When Viagra first came on the market, if you remember, the government tried to withhold it in this country because of the predicted burden the massive demand for it was going to place on the NHS,’ he said. ‘It was thought to be too expensive and too popular to make it widely available. But in the end, the government had to bow to public pressure, because anyone could get hold of it from the US and a vast Internet black market for it was going to develop. Once people knew about Viagra they wanted it. You’ve been looking at drugs that might be of benefit to Jamie, haven’t you. But what puts you off?’

‘The side effects.’

‘Right, so you don’t go for anything. But say one company developed a drug that was both effective and free of side effects. What would you do then?’

‘I’d grab it with both hands.’ Anna was beginning to see what he was getting at.

‘As would any other person who’s caring for someone with autism. And the NHS would have to foot the bill.’

‘Except that there wouldn’t be anywhere near as much demand for it as for something like Viagra. It wouldn’t be much of a bill.’

‘Wouldn’t there? I thought autism was on the increase.

And don’t some treatments for illnesses like multiple sclerosis run into tens of thousands of pounds, just for one person? If Pinozalyan turns out to be considerably more expensive in the first place, then the cost would soon mount up. And what better way to avoid having to pay out for any drug than to suppress it.’ He was becoming perceptibly more animated.

‘But that’s immoral.’

‘Which I would have thought made it exactly the kind of story Eddie would have been interested in,’ Mariner concluded, with faultless logic. ‘This database could be the list Eddie was collating of the people who would potentially benefit from the drug, were it available. Including Jamie.

And there’s your scandal: all these people being denied an effective drug that doesn’t carry the side effects that all the others do.’

‘But how would Eddie have found out about it in the first place?’

‘He was an investigative journalist. He’d have ways and means. And he certainly had the motivation. Now, assuming that these other initials also belong to autistic kids, where would Eddie have got the names? Jamie’s day centre?’

Anna was doubtful.

‘The people there have a whole range of learning difficulties.

I’m sure there wouldn’t be enough specifically with autism.’ Remembering Susannah’s parents, she scanned the column of initials. There was no S, but then she remembered the comment from Susannah’s father: ‘I hope you’re not going to start stirring things up…’

Perhaps Eddie had tried them, but they didn’t want to be involved.

‘So maybe it’s not just autism we’re talking about.’

For a few minutes they both sat staring at the screen, hoping it would yield an answer. It didn’t, and eventually Mariner sat back, rubbing his eyes. ‘Christ. It’s like having the first three pieces of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle and trying to fill in the rest.’

Because when it came down to it, all they had was speculation.

Without specifics they had reached another dead end. Anna knew it, but Mariner wasn’t about to admit it.

‘There must be a bigger picture, something that would help us to complete it,’ he said.

Anna couldn’t help but admire his doggedness. It was doubtless what made him good at his job. ‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Call it a gut thing.’ Right on cue, Mariner’s stomach gurgled loudly.

Anna laughed. ‘You trust a gut that makes that noise?’

‘Sorry.’ Mariner grinned, mildly embarrassed. ‘I’m late for my appointment with Mr Lau.’

‘Mr Lau?’

‘The proprietor of my local Chinese takeaway.’

‘We haven’t eaten either,’ Anna realised suddenly.

‘Jamie will be famished. You can stay and have something with us if you like, though it will only be pizza. I haven’t yet found anything else that Jamie will eat. Apart from chocolate ice cream.’ She tried to make it sound casual, take it or leave it, but she hoped he would stay.

‘Pizza sounds good, thanks.’

‘And how about a proper drink? Or are you on duty?’

‘I officially went off duty hours ago,’ said Mariner. ‘I could murder a beer.’

‘Help yourself. I don’t drink the stuff and it doesn’t look as if anyone else will be coming back for it.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ though to Anna’s ears, he didn’t sound entirely truthful. The microwave pinged to indicate that the pizza was ready. Jamie stayed sitting at the kitchen table until he’d eaten two slices.

‘That’s a record,’ Anna observed. ‘You must be a good influence.’

‘Not on everyone.’ Mariner’s blue eyes held hers for a moment and something in the air crackled. Then the phone rang.

‘Hello, Anna? It’s Mark. I’m sorry it took so long, but I’ve got you the information you asked me for about Pinozalyan.’

Fantastic. ‘Hold on a minute, Mark.’ Anna switched the phone to speaker mode so that Mariner could listen in, too.

‘I’m not sure how much use this will be,’ Mark went on.

‘Are you certain this is the drug you’re looking for?’ To double-check he spelled it out.

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘Okay, here goes then. But, be warned, we’re talking ancient history here. Pinozalyan was on the market between 1957 and 1973. Basically it acted on the pineal gland, blocking the electrical impulses that inhibit the release of the hormone melatonin. Melatonin is what makes you feel sleepy; Pinozalyan was used in the treatment of insomnia.