Brian Freemantle - Dead End

‘You’re with me.’

She sniggered an uncertain laugh and actually looked around the crowded bar. ‘It’s not easy to take that on board.’

Parnell said: ‘That’s what I did, the first time I was warned – actually looked around me as if expecting to see someone coming at me.’

‘Has anyone? Come at you, I mean?’

‘No.’

‘Maybe there was something…?’ Beverley stopped, looking awkwardly into her drink.

‘I think that’s a big part of the investigation, trying to find out if there was anything in Rebecca’s past,’ guessed Parnell. He definitely had to use the excuse of getting his own car back to talk to Howard Dingley or David Benton.

‘I’m sorry… I wasn’t…’ Beverley stumbled.

‘It’s OK.’

‘It seems unreal… talking about murder and the possibility of someone trying to murder you. Talking of terrorism! All unreal. I don’t think I ever believed it… properly took it in… when Barry used to talk about cases… killings.’

‘I thought it was right I should tell you.’

‘Thank you.’ She sniggered again. ‘This seems unreal as well, doesn’t it – you warning me I might get hit by a bullet meant for you?’

‘They go in for car accidents,’ corrected Parnell.

‘You didn’t answer my question, about testing those French formulae improvements. It was something to do with Rebecca, wasn’t it?’

‘She was curious about it, that’s all.’

‘With good reason.’

Parnell shook his head. ‘Not because she thought there was anything wrong with them. They went outwith the normal delivery system.’

‘Hardly sufficient to become curious.’

‘It doesn’t seem to be, not now,’ accepted Parnell. ‘It did to her.’

‘What did you mean about everything coming down to money?’

That had been a stupid, unthinking remark, acknowledged Parnell. ‘I don’t want you – any of you – to get mixed up in this, any more than you already have been. I’m sorry now that I asked you all in the first place. It had to be done in a hurry, for the confirmation I needed to get it stopped.’

‘To get what stopped?’

‘The production and distribution.’

‘Distribution where?’

‘Stop it, Beverley.’

‘We – the unit – are involved.’

‘No more.’

‘Did Dwight Newton and Russell Benn sign it all off as being safe?’

Parnell refused to reply. She was back in her last-word mode, he decided.

‘You know what I find strange?’ she continued, undeterred. ‘If I was head of an entire division, a vice president, or the research director, and a guy told me that something I’d cleared as safe could – would – kill people for whom it was prescribed, the first thing I’d do would be to demand it be proven to me under proper laboratory conditions.’

‘It was more important to put a stop on it – on the production and marketing.’

‘I’d have still wanted proof before I did anything.’

‘I offered them the opportunity. They didn’t take it. My priority was getting it halted.’

‘The other guys were uneasy about what happened today.’

‘I gave them – and you – my word it won’t ever be that way again. And it won’t.’

She sipped her beer in silence for several moments. ‘It’s a pretty impressive success for the department, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose it is.’ It was the first time he’d thought of it being that.

‘What did Newton say?’

‘They were both numbed. But he did thank me.’

‘They weren’t professional – cut corners,’ declared the woman. ‘They should be called to account for that.’

‘Not everything was made available to us. I’ve asked that it should be.’

‘You going to go over their heads, complain to New York?’

‘I hadn’t thought of doing that,’ admitted Parnell. ‘That’s what Newton said he had to do, talk to New York.’

‘Let’s hope he does it.’

‘He can’t avoid it!’ exclaimed Parnell.

‘You’d be surprised what someone will do to keep five hundred thousand a year and stock options.’

‘He can’t avoid it,’ insisted Parnell, although another sand speck of doubt settled in his mind.

‘It’s late,’ Beverley suddenly announced.

‘We should eat,’ accepted Parnell. Giorgio’s restaurant was less than a hundred yards up Wisconsin Avenue. It was unthinkable that he should go there with another woman, totally innocent and uninvolved though they were.

‘I’ve got something ready at home,’ said Beverley.

Parnell later decided that it was probably the thought of Giorgio’s trattoria and the celebration he’d planned with Rebecca there that prompted his response. ‘You mind if I drive home with you? In your car, I mean?’

Beverley looked steadily at him, understanding immediately. ‘You are taking it seriously, aren’t you?’

‘If I’d been with Rebecca that night, she would probably still be alive.’

‘Or you’d both be dead.’

‘I prefer it my way.’

Beverley took his arm again on their way back to Washington Square but Parnell could feel a stiffness. Beverley’s apartment was off Dupont and they drove there in silence. As she parked she said: ‘I didn’t like that.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m being overreactive.’ He made no attempt to get out of the car.

‘There’s enough for two,’ said Beverley. ‘I was going to butterfly it anyway.’

It was, coincidentally, rib-eye steak, large enough easily to be shared between the two of them. There was salad and a Napa Valley red but not a lot of conversation.

As he helped her clear away, Parnell said: ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you.’

‘It’s OK,’ said Beverley, in a voice indicating that it wasn’t.

‘We’ve only been out together twice,’ said Parnell, trying to lift the mood. ‘Maybe we should avoid each other from now on.’

Beverley held him for several moments with one of her direct looks. ‘Maybe,’ she said, in the same voice as before.

‘I’m at dinner, with guests,’ complained Edward C. Grant.

‘This can’t wait,’ insisted Dwight Newton. He could hear people in the background.

‘What?’

Newton told him. Unsettled by the length of the silence from the other end, Newton said: ‘You still there?’

‘I’m going into the study. Wait.’ The line went dead and then picked up again, without any background noise. Grant said:‘You told me it was safe, Dwight. You said you and Benn had run all the checks and that it was safe.’

‘I double-checked Russell’s tests,’ tried Newton.

‘But you didn’t, did you?’

‘He didn’t do this test.’

‘Why didn’t you? You take two weeks and tell me everything’s kosher, Parnell takes two days and discovers it’s fucking fatal!’

‘It’s a genetic discipline.’

‘This… whatever it’s called… is known not to affect mice, upon which Benn did test, but it does affect humans, right? That’s what you said.’

‘I know what I said.’ Newton wished he hadn’t sounded so uncertain.

‘So, it would have been obvious to do the comparison.’

‘It wasn’t done,’ capitulated Newton.

‘You know I should fire you? And Benn?’

‘Yes.’ But you wouldn’t, Newton thought.

‘But that I can’t, because of the attention it would attract.’

‘You want us to resign?’ That wasn’t possible either.

‘Still too much risk of publicity. You’re hanging on by a thread, both of you. Hanging on by default. You hear what I’m saying?’

‘Yes.’

‘Benn with you?’

‘No.’

‘You tell him what I’m telling you.’

‘You pressed me on this… wanted the decision you got,’ said Newton, clumsily.