The Best of British Crime omnibus (34 page)

‘Another question for Doctor Bodlin,' Miss Welling interrupted, her delivery quickening after a glance at the time. ‘One of interest to humane readers in all countries. How many thousands of defenceless animals did you exterminate while experimenting to get so far with Seromig, Doctor?'

‘That's … that's a grossly exaggerated figure.' There were signs of sweat breaking out on Bodlin's brow, and on the bald patch above it.

‘You mean it was less than thousands?'

‘Of course it was,' Mary Ricini interjected coolly. ‘In answer to your loaded question, Miss Welling, we mostly used rodents. I don't have a note of the numbers involved, but relatively few were wasted. Those that died did so painlessly, and in the defensible cause of relieving human suffering.'

‘At the expense of inducing animal suffering. How many animals other than rodents were involved, Doctor Bodlin?' the questioner returned. ‘And please can he answer for himself?'

The Medical Director looked daggers at Miss Welling but remained silent.

‘About a hundred and fifty, I think.' Bodlin mopped his forehead with a huge white handkerchief. ‘Two hundred perhaps.'

‘Or three or four hundred perhaps? So you can't be sure how many dogs, monkeys and other poor creatures perished in agony?'

This produced an instantly sympathetic stir from the audience.

‘Oh come, Miss Welling. We all know better than that,' said Dermot Hackle in a patronising tone. ‘Animal experiments are subject to strict procedures and inspection. Nothing perishes in agony.'

‘We don't all know better, but a lot of us are learning something.' This was the
Tween
girl who had turned to nod approvingly at Kirsty Welling. ‘So why do you have to murder dogs and monkeys, for God's sake?'

‘It's necessary. Not to murder,' the confused Bodlin corrected hurriedly, while wishing again he hadn't been made to come: he disliked speaking to lay audiences at the best of times. ‘It's necessary,' he repeated, in a voice so constricted that some listeners had to lean forward to hear him. ‘In checking for toxicity for instance. You have to … to waste some subjects. So you can analyse all their organs. Every type of tissue. Without exception. Meticulously. You should understand, it's an essential step in the creation of safe drugs.'

‘Thank you, Doctor, that was very illuminating and reassuring. Not that most of us needed reassuring.' This was Treasure, now quite determined to close the session. ‘Time's pressing, I'm afraid. Thank you all for your attention. Let's get some lunch shall we?' he went on quickly. ‘The buffet's ready on the left over there. Please help yourselves. And if anyone has more questions, feel free to ask them while we're eating.'

But few in the audience had been listening to the last words. Most heads had turned to learn the reason for the commotion at the back of the room.

The disaffected rumble from the door was first countered by stentorian protests from Penny Cordwright on high volume. Then even her stern admonitions were drowned by the chanting of the figures filing down the right-hand side of the room.

More than a dozen respectably dressed young men and women were making a determined advance in the direction of the official party. Penny Cordwright seemed to be bouncing herself at the leading members, like a large, out of control beach ball, but without at all impeding their progress.

‘This is trespass. You've no right. Out! Out!' she cried, arms waving.

‘Stop animal experiments! Stop animal experiments!' the intruders called back in penetrating unison. Since entering the room, each had donned a large round lapel badge bearing the words of the chant.

‘Right, I'm getting the police,' Miss Cordwright now shrieked with decision, pushing empty chairs aside as she reversed her direction.

The directors at the table were dumbfounded.

The audience of newsgatherers waited expectantly on a bonus happening.

The insurgent group halted under the company banner fixed to the wall. Still chanting, the members quickly closed up in a straight line. Each one unfolded a large yellow oblong cloth, stencilled with a single red letter. The cloths were then held high in front of their bearers.

CLOSTER DRUG read the wall banner.

MURDERS ANIMALS was now appended immediately beneath it.

And standing on a chair with a serious-looking camera, Kirsty Welling was taking flash photographs at a furious pace, and in a thoroughly professional manner.

‘It all happened so quickly, you understand?' said the dinner-jacketed Bob Larden. He was answering Alison McFee, wife of the Production Director.

‘But time enough for them to get those awful photographs.'

‘Only just. Before we had their banners down. But they were well rehearsed.'

‘Took you all a wee bit on the hop, I expect. Terrible.' The lengthened ‘terrible' came out as a sort of brief Highland lament.

The jolly, short, and ample Mrs McFee, in an equally jolly and ample but long red taffeta gown, studied Larden intently over her champagne, the glass held two inches from her lips: there was a triangle of glazed smoked salmon on toast in her other hand, also poised in mid-air. She was blinking expectantly through spectacles with decorated frames so wide that Larden thought she looked ready for take-off. Abruptly her mouth darted to envelop the smoked salmon. She swallowed hard, then blinked again, but there was no intermediary sign that she had chewed anything.

‘And Dermot punched one of the beggars?' said Hughie McFee, in a questioning way, as though the report might still need confirming. A lean, craggy Scot, with thinning, white wavy hair, he was standing beside his wife, feet well apart, knees a fraction bent, with both hands grasping a tumbler of undiluted malt whisky in the proximity of his navel.

‘He hit him all right,' said Larden.

‘Yes, Mark told me,' Molly Treasure offered, while wondering how Mrs McFee kept her glass up like that without her arm getting tired, also how the lady secured, let alone managed to consume, so many of the cocktail canapés that were being circulated but only fitfully. ‘Very brave,' Molly continued. And here's the hero himself. Are you good at fisticuffs, Dermot?' she asked Hackle who had just joined them.

‘He used to box,' said Rosemary Hackle, from beside her husband, but so quietly that only he heard. Nervously she pinched the top button of the white blouse she was wearing above a cheap but cheerful, cotton flowered skirt.

The Closter Drug directors, some with spouses, were met for a celebration dinner in a river-front suite at the Savoy Hotel. A long table was set for twelve on one side of the room, with a small bar in the charge of an attentive, tail-coated waiter near the door.

Mark Treasure and Jane Larden, who had been admiring the view of the Thames across the still busy embankment, had just turned to greet the Closter-Bennets, the last couple to arrive.

Bob Larden, the host, asked Molly and the others to excuse him. He moved across to speak to Stuart Bodlin who had been standing a little apart with Mary Ricini.

It was the first full day of stock exchange trading in the new Closter Drug shares, and six days since the ill-fated news conference.

‘I have to say that punch wasn't intentional,' Hackle admitted, stroking the unusually square jaw. ‘I was grabbing for one of the banners and happened to hit the face behind it.'

‘Blacked his eye, didn't you?' asked Alison McFee, her head bobbing behind her glass.

‘Dermot used to box,' said Mrs Hackle for the second time, but the words still went largely unheard. She was used to that. Shy and self-effacing, she had only made the effort to speak because she knew her husband would complain later if she stayed silent all evening. He called her a mouse. She consoled herself that she was a caring, faithful mouse. The others had been looking mostly towards Molly Treasure the celebrity: Rosemary Hackle had been looking soley towards her own husband.

‘Mark said your victim left swearing he'd have the law on you,' said Molly. She looked cool in a simple, sleeveless black dress, her only jewellery a small diamond brooch and a pair of diamond earrings.

‘When he was being helped out by two of his own lot, yes. The management hadn't quite arrived by then. They came soon after, of course, but the demonstrators disappeared damn quickly.'

‘Is the man or the organisation, whatever it's called, likely to sue you for assault? To get extra publicity? Isn't that why they were there?' asked Alison McFee. As if by magic, a square of glazed caviare had materialised in her free hand.

‘They're called Stop Animal Experiments. SAE for short.'

‘Used to stand for stamped addressed envelope,' Molly interposed wanly. ‘One supposes it's a ginger group. That concentrates on upsetting pharmaceutical companies.'

‘That's what we think,' said Hackle. ‘But we've never heard of them before. Anyway, no one's sued me yet. They may have been waiting to see if we're going to law against them. Or maybe they're planning a worse vengeance on me.'

‘I hope not,' said Molly with feeling.

‘You'll need to keep your wits about you for a wee while. Especially after dark,' advised Mrs McFee.

‘Perhaps the SAE is pledged to non-violence?' said Molly.

‘Not very likely. They're animal protectors not nuclear protestors.' McFee drained his glass.

‘And the magazine, what was it called,
Natural World Tomorrow
? No one's ever heard of that either, have they?' asked his wife. She paused for enlightenment, but got none. ‘Beats me how any of them got in at all.' Her lips closed over the stuffed olive she had just acquired.

‘Oh, they were so utterly respectable,' Hackle said. ‘I mean, hundreds of people go for lunch at the Connaught Rooms every day. If this lot had arrived waving placards and dressed for a demo, they wouldn't have got past the doormen. As it was, their banners were pocketed and they were better dressed than any of the journalists at the news conference. Of course, Penny Cordwright should have insisted on proper credentials from the Welling woman.'

‘She didn't have an invitation?'

‘Certainly not. But Penny was so disappointed by the turn-out, at that point she'd have let anyone in who owned a pencil let alone a notebook. She even provided La Welling with an identity sticker. Wrote her name on it. The woman never wore it.' Hackle pushed down the red silk handkerchief blossoming from his breast pocket, but not so deep as to spoil the insouciant effect. He swallowed some champagne. ‘As for the other demonstrators, Penny Cordwright didn't react fast enough. Neither did the rest of us, I'm afraid.'

‘Aye, it was a pity you let the lassie with the camera get away, Dermot,' said McFee, making it sound as if that had been entirely Hackle's fault.

‘You talking about the Welling woman? That escape was well planned,' remarked Mary Ricini who had just moved to join them. ‘She beat it to the door while two of the others tipped chairs over behind her to stop pursuit. In any case she was working from behind a block of gormless reporters. I'm afraid we were just too slow.'

‘Why did you let the animal rights photographer get away, darling?' Molly Treasure demanded lightly of her husband who happened now to be standing close by, but with his back to her.

‘Because, at the time, I was doing my best to de-flag a nubile young woman,' he answered blandly, turning about. ‘I succeeded too.'

‘Sounds like a fertility rite,' rejoined Molly.

‘She was the one holding up the N in animals,' said Mary Ricini. ‘I was having a go at the man holding the A next to her.' Like Molly, the woman doctor was dressed in black, and just as fetchingly.

‘The demo got minor headlines at the weekend, but Seromig was hardly mentioned,' said McFee. ‘The earlier leak in the
Evening Standard
was almost fuller. All rather defeating the original Closter objective. That didn't displease our worthy Stuart Bodlin, but he'd paid for the privilege with some unpleasant haranguing from the audience.'

‘Most of the national media stayed away from the conference. They picked up the Seromig story from the medical press report on Monday,' Dr Ricini offered quietly, with a glance at Treasure. ‘There have been some quite full accounts since.'

‘Which incidentally gave our competitors something to think about,' the banker commented.

‘But did the demonstration do the flotation harm, Mark? In the City?' The questioner was Jane Larden, who was now on Treasure's right. She was a tall, bold beauty – her build a little more generous than slim – with high, pronounced cheekbones, almond-shaped brown eyes, and a shock of frizzed red hair. Despite the smile after her words, there was more of confidence than warmth in her general manner.

‘The flotation might have been a marginally greater success without the demo,' said Treasure. ‘The offer was over-subscribed, after all. Not by much, but even so, over-subscribed.'

‘So the pictures in the two newspapers that chose to print them didn't damage us?' This was Mrs Larden again, with a shrug – an expressive movement of exquisite, bronzed bare shoulders. She was sheathed in a model gown made of a sparkling silver material. Alison McFee had already decided that the dress had cost more than both McFees spent on clothes for a whole year.

‘I'm thinking they're neither of them papers that have a significant readership amongst the investing public,' said McFee.

‘Is that why we're not suing anybody?' Mrs Larden demanded.

‘The lawyers advised against any legal sword-rattling,' said Treasure. ‘The less publicity the episode attracts the better. A law suit would have opened the thing up again. Your husband agreed. If we believed the rumpus or the following publicity seriously affected the flotation, that would have been different. Of course, to say that we murder animals is an outrageous lie and it should have been refuted. But I doubt any sane person believed it.'