Brian Freemantle - Dead End

‘Match to what?’ pressed Jackson.

Dingley shrugged. ‘We got a half thumb print – a right thumb – from the flight number scrap of paper. It wasn’t Ms Lang’s. Didn’t match the two Metro DC guys, either. Or you, Mr Parnell. We want it kept under wraps, obviously.’

‘You think it could be the person who killed her?’ asked Parnell.

‘We won’t know what to think until we match it,’ said Benton.

‘Judge Wilson made some court orders,’ reminded Jackson.

‘Sir?’ queried Dingley.

‘About civil suits and claims, for wrongful arrest,’ said the lawyer.

‘Which you haven’t pursued?’ said Benton.

‘Not yet. If Mr Parnell chose to sue, there’d legally have to be full disclosure.’

‘Yes, there would,’ acknowledged Dingley, smiling now.

‘I think my client and I should talk about that, don’t you?’

‘Full, legally required disclosure might be interesting,’ said Benton.

‘Anything, beyond what we’ve got, would be interesting,’ said Dingley. ‘Mr Parnell’s in a kind of limbo until we get somewhere with this, wouldn’t you say?’

Parnell hadn’t considered himself to be in any sort of limbo, but supposed he was. He’d definitely have to speak to his mother tonight. And reply to the letters. There’d been two more that morning, one enclosing cuttings of the English media coverage of the case. The extent had surprised him. One article had, quite wrongly, identified him as the leading British research scientist in the genome-mapping breakthrough. He said: ‘If you all think this might break the logjam, let’s do it.’

‘We’ll discuss it,’ cautioned Jackson.

Jackson began that discussion directly upon leaving the FBI field office building. ‘They’re good.’

‘What?’ frowned Parnell.

‘Those guys back there, they’re good. They got exactly what they wanted.’

‘I’m needing some help,’ said Parnell. As usual, he thought.

‘Ed Pullinger, the FBI counsel, was in court, remember? He heard the judge’s orders. The Bureau are getting the closed door. A civil suit might be the way to open it, just a little. It would certainly tighten the media screw on Metro DC police department.’

‘You mean that was a set-up back there! The whole meeting?’

‘I think so. Even to the disclosure about the thumb print.’

‘Jesus!’

‘From their point of view, it’s a good move.’

Beverley abruptly came into Parnell’s mind. He said: ‘You warned me to be careful of police harassment, as well as being a target for whoever killed Beverley. Won’t the risk of harassment increase if we sue?’

Jackson shook his head, positively. ‘Not even Metro DC would dare. It’ll act more as a protection. I should have thought of it earlier.’

‘But is it really likely to get the investigation any further forward?’

‘We shan’t know that until we serve the writs and start demanding disclosure,’ said Jackson.

Dwight Newton had expected an inquisition but not that it would be led by Grant, nor that it would be so scathing. With virtually no defence, he tried to hide behind jargon – talking of hypoxanthine guanine phosphoribosyl transferase instead of HPRT, and mutations and the unpredictability of drug cocktails – but there was sufficient knowledge among some of the board members not to be deflected, and at one stage the white-haired president told him to cut the scientific crap and explain the problem in words they would all understand. Newton tried, too, to shift the primary responsibility onto Russell Benn, minimizing his function to that of a secondary check, but was refused that escape by having to concede – as he had earlier had to admit to Edward C. Grant at one of their private encounters – that if that had been his role, then he’d singularly failed to perform it.

The accusations and recriminations logically gave way to a slightly less hostile – but even more commercially based – debate upon the damage to public confidence – as well as that to be expected from the regulatory authority – that Dubette would suffer from any leaks, publicity or exposure, which brought into the exchanges a renewed use of words like catastrophe and disaster and meltdown. And kept the concentration upon Newton. He tried, in a desperate snatch for recovery, to stress Parnell’s assurance of discretion, to be confronted by two separate challenges from directors, about the loyalty of the rest of the pharmacogenomics unit, who’d demonstrated his blatant scientific inefficiency. Which were the precise words that were used, blatant scientific inefficiency.

It was not so much the final straw that broke the camel’s back, but the final, unendurable bruise from the misdirectedly wielded stick. More loudly than he had intended, Newton said: ‘OK! Let’s take a few things into consideration here. I am-’

‘You’re not,’ Grant stopped him, positively, refusing any awkward defensive outburst. ‘A mistake was made. Mistakes do get made. It’s the nature – the sometimes inevitable result – of the business we’re in. It’s been isolated – dealt with. I do not recommend – would argue as strongly as possible against – any reprimand or censure…’ He paused, a man with the fifth ace in his hand. ‘This is, in fact, an unrecorded composition of the board, and therefore restricted by regulations, of which I am sure we’re all aware. I repeat, a mistake was made – a series of mistakes. We’re all of us fallible. Those mistakes have been corrected. We are, I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, meeting in unrecorded session, to which all of us agreed earlier. One of the regulatory restrictions is that decisions made during such discussions legally need to be confirmed by a recorded meeting of the board, the records made available to an annual meeting, or by a specially convened meeting of shareholders…’ The pause was as timed as the words were rehearsed.

‘But that means…’ said a voice.

‘Each of you know the terms of reference of the board’s composition – the company restrictions I have just outlined. My concern – which I anticipated to be the concern of us all to preserve the company – is to limit within corporate legality the sort of public exposure we’ve agreed during this discussion would lead to the total destruction of Dubette…’

Newton was never to be sure that, however briefly, his mouth didn’t visibly fall open in his incredulity at the piratical manoeuvre. Certainly the expression on at least three of the men around the table was of astonishment. Another began scrabbling through a document case, Newton presumed in a search for the company formation regulations.

‘I don’t agree with this… it can’t possibly be legal…’ said the man who had first protested.

‘Everyone has a copy of our formation and incorporation documents,’ said Grant, looking at the man still rummaging through his briefcase. ‘For those who haven’t, I’ll specify the section I’m referring to – it’s paragraphs four through seven – but I’d draw your attention to paragraph nine. Those preceding sections, four to seven, can be superseded by a majority vote, here and now, for us to go on record. Or for a special shareholders’ meeting to be convened.’

‘To commit commercial suicide, like lemmings jumping off a cliff!’ said the outspoken objector.

‘Each of us around this table agreed the terms, presumably upon the advice of our individual investment lawyers,’ said Grant. ‘I certainly did.’

The searching man found what he was looking for, consulted it and sat back in his chair, shaking his head.

Grant said: ‘I am not coercing this board into anything illegal, merely reminding it of its operational parameters. Our research vice president, Dwight Newton, has acknowledged and apologized for his oversight and his error. I propose that is how it remains, a rectified matter restricted to a very limited number of people. The alternative is in your hands, as I have already set out.’