Harry Bingham - Sweet Talking Money

‘And Katz-Jacoby is exclusively funded by Corinth.’ Bryn finished her sentence, triumphantly. ‘We’ve got it, then. The smoking gun. The only weird thing is the coincidence. The editor seems clean, so how come he ends up with six Corinth stooges out of six? That doesn’t add up.’

‘Uh-uh. It figures. The editor will most likely pick one lead reviewer first, and talk to him about a possible slate of names. The most likely guy on this list is Freward. Like I say, he’s a jerk, but a good scientist with a decent reputation. Maybe the editor comes up with some suggested names, maybe Freward comes up with them all. Any case, by the time they’re done talking, Freward has packed the jury.’

‘Plus they’ve got Mr Smack-head Kovacs running around spreading rumours about you, just in case.’ He looked at Cameron admiringly. ‘They really took care to sabotage you,’ he said. ‘They must really respect your work.’

‘Thanks.’

‘No, really. You can’t beat the compliment … And Corinth. It makes sense. I might have guessed.’

‘You mind telling me why?’

Bryn paused to inspect his questioner. She was dressed in old jeans and a thin T-shirt which ran into puckered ridges at the shoulders. She was pale and thin, hair a mess, tear-stained eyes a visual disaster area. All the same, she wasn’t exactly bad-looking. All that high cheekbone stuff that women are meant to have, she had.

‘Corinth Laboratories,’ said Bryn. ‘An outstanding company. A decade ago it was a bit-part player. Some good drugs. Some bad drugs. Nothing much in the pipeline. But then they struck gold. They hired this guy Huizinga from outside the industry. Chemicals, I think, was his background. He shook up the company, top to bottom. He began licensing drugs, buying up small biotech outfits, research labs. And focus, he gave it focus. Before Huizinga, Corinth did a bit of everything. A chemo drug. A bit of respiratory stuff. Some anxiety medications. He ditched all that. The one good product they had was an anti-viral, Zapatone. It was big in AIDS –’

‘Zapatone? God, it’s toxic. Toxic as hell. There was a British study which showed –’

‘There was a British study which showed it shortened the lives of three quarters of the patients who took it. But that was Huizinga’s brilliance. He boasted about the study, made his salesmen lead with it. He went out and told the world that no drug in the history of the world had ever had such impressive anti-viral properties –’

‘Anti-patient properties –’

‘Whatever. They made a few tiny modifications to the drug administration protocol. Meaningless changes, but enough that they could say the British study was irrelevant to the way the drug was now administered. And that was that. Zapatone took off, and that was Huizinga’s cue. Ninety per cent of Corinth’s sales are now in anti-viral drugs, with just a couple of other sidelines they haven’t yet bothered to sell. Mostly now, the drug industry is looking for less toxic solutions. It’s a kinder, gentler industry, that’s the idea. But not Huizinga, not Corinth. They recognise that there are plenty of doctors out there who like the macho stuff. Toys for the boys, and guns for their chums. They put out these publicity handouts for Zapatone, overlaying a picture of the drug with photos of B-52 bombers.’

‘It’s criminal.’

‘Genius. Corinth was worth a couple of billion dollars when Huizinga came in. It’s worth fifty times that today – a hundred billion dollars, no less. If there were Nobel prizes for business, Huizinga would be a cert.’

‘I do not believe you!’

‘I’m not saying I approve, I’m just telling you how the world works. And say what you like, they’re smart. They’ve got the world’s biggest stable of anti-viral drugs. Your medicine is a threat. You said it yourself: under certain circumstances, your technology might be complemented by conventional drug therapy, but by Corinth’s slash-n-burn stuff? No way. As Huizinga sees it, it’s him or you.’

It was a tactless phrase on which to finish. Cameron’s eyes skated back to the letter still lying open on the table.

‘Right,’ she said grimly. ‘And at the moment, it’s him.’

And it was then, at that precise moment, that Bryn took leave of his senses.

To begin with, the only sign of the craziness which had come over him was a very rapid beating of his hand on the table, accompanied elsewhere by the focused stillness of concentrated thought. For three whole minutes, he stood there, oblivious of Cameron, unconscious of the world.

Then: ‘I’m a bloody fool!’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Fool,’ said Bryn, thumping his chest. ‘Moron. Cretin. Idiot. You mentioned an ethics committee. Tell me about it.’

‘I don’t know. Where bad scientists go to be interrogated, I guess.’

Bryn shook his head and stared wildly at her. ‘Kati. Your co-worker, Kati. Can we go and see her?’

‘It’s gone midnight.’

‘Is it? Damn. Well, come on then. There’s no time to lose.’

Cameron had no car, so they took a taxi over to her offices. The night was freezing, and frost sparkled on the grass. Above them, the sky was bright with stars, but a dark band in the north spoke of a weather front moving in.

‘Do you mind letting me know what’s going on?’ Cameron hurried along in Bryn’s turbulent wake, frightened by his bulldozer energy but also reassured.

‘Due diligence,’ said Bryn, storming up the steps leading to Larousse’s apartment. ‘That’s banker-speak for look before you buy.’

‘Honestly, she’ll be asleep,’ said Cameron. ‘Can’t we wait?’

‘Uh-uh,’ Bryn disagreed, pressing the doorbell solid for fifteen seconds. ‘She’s awake.’

A bleary Larousse came to the door in tartan flannel pyjamas, and stumbled through to her small living room, blinking to get the sleep from her eyes. She was one of those enviable souls, pretty even when caught in the worst possible moment. Clear-skinned and petite beneath a mass of dark-rosewood curls, she twisted her hair into a tie at the back so that it hung in a Pre-Raphaelite halo around her face. Cameron’s looks worsened in contrast. It wasn’t that there was so much wrong with her – apart from maybe her limp, mousy hair drooping down in front of her eyes – but she seemed to want invisibility, to avoid being looked at or admired. Bryn obeyed the silent instruction and concentrated his gaze on Larousse.

Cameron talked her through the events of the past few hours, ending with the broken-hearted admission: ‘They don’t believe us. They think we cheated. We’re under investigation, Kati … Oh, Kati!’

Bryn studied her carefully as Cameron recounted the story, but it was absolutely plain that Larousse was totally shocked, stunned by the very suggestion that they might have twisted their facts. Larousse and Cameron huddled up on the sofa together, cuddling and tearful. Bryn was almost totally sure of what he was about to do, but there was one last check he wanted to make.

‘Cameron, would you mind getting me some coffee, please?’

Larousse looked hard at her visitor. Cameron had barely introduced him and here he was, like some bear out of the Maine forest, bursting into her apartment at one in the morning, ordering her boss to make him coffee. ‘I’ll go,’ she said, starting to get up.

‘No. Please. I want a word alone. I have three – no four – questions to ask you privately. Cameron, would you mind …’

Cameron left to go into the kitchen, and Bryn turned to stare directly at Larousse.

‘OK. First question. Did you and Cameron cheat on that experiment? In any way at all? At any time?’

Colour rose in the young scientist’s face. ‘No. Absolutely not. Never. No way.’