Requiem (80 page)

‘Ah.’

‘She left a number. Dorking.’

Dorking? Duggan, the
Boy’s Own
pilot Duggan. But Ackroyd …

But no, wait a minute – Duggan’s
sister
.

‘Keen to speak to you, so she said. Shall I deal with it?’

Daisy remembered the invisible black box under her hand and said: ‘No … Don’t worry. It’s nothing important. Just give me the number.’

She had a wash and walked down the hill. She tried the Dorking number from the phonebox a few yards from Mr Patel’s, but there was no reply. She went into the shop and bought some supper. Mr Patel, his expression twisted into a comic picture of concern at the sight of her face, popped a packet of marshmallows into her bag when she wasn’t looking. On her way back she tried the number again, but there was still no one home. As she started up the hill again, she found herself looking over her shoulder. Was it possible? Would they bother with
that
as well? Surely not. And yet why not?

The thought powered her up the last of the hill and kept her occupied while she boiled up a steak-and-kidney pudding with frozen peas. Then she tackled the area around her bed, shifting furniture, clearing the dustsheets, making up the bed.

It was much later, in what felt like the depths of the night, that she heard the phone ringing from a long way off, as if from another room. The answering machine picked up, she heard a voice, a voice from another age, another world, a voice that had her stumbling awake and groping for the receiver.

‘It’s me,’ she interrupted groggily.

‘Daisy Field?’ asked a soft male voice.

‘Yes.’

‘Umm. We met in Virginia. Back in July. Umm, Alan Breck. You remember? With Paul Erlinger?’

She pulled herself up on one elbow, struggling to clear her brain. ‘Yes. Of course I remember.’

‘I wanted to talk. Is this a convenient moment?’

‘Yes, yes.’ She sat up and fumbled for the light. There was a short silence and for an instant she thought she had lost him. ‘Hullo?’ she prompted.

‘Look, I’m not sure you can help …’

‘Please, I can help. I can help!’

He gave a short laugh, nervous, cautious. ‘That day we met, you seemed … I got the feeling that you understood the, er … difficulties …’ His voice hung in the air, awaiting reassurance.

‘Oh yes,’ she said hastily. ‘I understood. I still do.’ She saw the dark figure in the diner, the restless hands, the furtive eyes.

‘It’s … well … There have been particular problems with EarthForce. You know what I mean?’

She gathered her wits and plunged in, hoping she was on the right track. ‘Security problems, you mean? Yes. Yes, I could see that.’

‘You could? You could? But …’ Another long pause. ‘It’s all right your end? It’s – I mean, I’d be safe, would I?’

Even as she began to make firm reassurances, her mind took off in a great leap of fear and she stalled in mid sentence. The black box! Christ! What was she thinking of! Her heart raced, her mouth was suddenly dry.

‘What is it?’ he asked sharply.

She was silent, in a momentary panic, but even as she fought her way free, it came to her that if she told him to stop talking and the reason why, then she’d lose any trust he might have, and that would be the end of that. She heard herself stalling: ‘Sorry – it’s the middle of the night here. I dropped the phone.’

A pause. ‘It’s a big step,’ he said uncertainly, as if debating the matter with himself.

‘Of course it is,’ she said, trying to urge him gently forward without actually feeding facts to the invisible ear under her hand. ‘But I can guarantee you all the support you need.’

He said suddenly: ‘Look, if I went ahead I’d need some sort of financial security for me and my family, at least until the worst is over. Maybe other kinds of security as well. Could you guarantee that?’

‘I guarantee everything. Whatever you need!’

‘And it’s safe. You’re sure?’

God, forgive me this.
‘I’m sure.’

‘And if I were to make a statement – go public – could you arrange the right outlets – you know, newspapers? TV?’

‘Absolutely. I have contacts, good contacts.’

‘But here in the US?’

She’d have to work on that, speak to Simon, but this wasn’t the time to show anything less than complete confidence. ‘Definitely. You just say the word. Just give me the when and how.’

‘The when?’ He sounded alarmed. ‘But
now
. I mean, I don’t think it’s safe for me here any more, I don’t think it’s safe for my family. And I thought you’d have the how. I kind of assumed you’d know.’ He was ready to be disappointed in her, she realized, ready to back off at any moment.

‘Give me a couple of days,’ she said rapidly. ‘I’ll fix everything. Money, security, media coverage.’ Sensing he still wasn’t convinced, she insisted: ‘You call back in two days and if you’re not happy with the way I’ve arranged things, we’ll think again. Fair enough?’

‘Okay.’ There was still an edge of doubt in his voice. ‘Okay. Tuesday.’

‘Tuesday. Same time.’

When he rang off, she sat for a long time, waiting for her heartbeat to slow down.

Tuesday. Just two days. God.

And the black box: what would Maynard and his friends guess from all this? Had she already put Alan Breck in danger? Christ.

She slept less than four hours more, and started her day well before dawn.

S
CHENKER, IN RARE
good humour after a sporting weekend in the Scottish Highlands, hummed the melody from
Top Hat
as he unpacked in his apartment high above Bryanston Square.

On Friday he had been the subject of a feature in the
Financial Times
and he reflected happily on the thought that it would have been read by everyone of importance in the City.

A copy lay in his case and he glanced at it now. The photograph was excellent: it had caught the fire of intelligence in his eyes, made a virtue of his rather thin mouth, given him an aura of tension and energy. The interviewer had also been kind: effortless high-flyer; talented trouble-shooter; tipped for greater things. And he had used Schenker’s grittiest quotes:
I consider my learning curve hasn’t reached its peak. The day you stop learning is the day you stop justifying your salary. Confidence comes from judgement, but growth comes from a certain degree of humility, from constant re-evaluation.

Good stuff.

As he picked a suit for the morning, the telephone rang. Unhurriedly, he slid the trousers into the overnight press and laid the jacket over the integral hanger before strolling across to the bedside phone. It was, he noticed, almost one a.m.

‘I need a word,’ said Cramm.

‘We’ll have half an hour before the divisional meeting.’

‘It can’t wait.’

Schenker, who rarely slept more than five hours a night at the best of times, offered: ‘Seven then. For breakfast.’

‘But I’m here. In a box, down in the square. It’ll take fifteen minutes at the most.’

As he waited, Schenker wondered if his purple silk dressing gown with quilted lapels wasn’t a little too flamboyant for Cramm’s eyes and, deciding that no risk, however small, was worth taking when it came to office gossip, he changed it for a black kimono.

Cramm appeared wearing holed jeans, an American-football jacket and a day’s growth of beard.

‘You look as though you’ve been sleeping rough,’ said Schenker in a tone not totally devoid of criticism.

‘I thought I’d better come straight over,’ Cramm said in a tone that had Schenker bristling slightly as he waved him forward into the living room. Unexcitability had always been one of Cramm’s greatest qualities, and it did not please Schenker to see that it seemed to have deserted him.

Offered a drink, Cramm took a Scotch and drank deeply.

‘Well?’ Schenker demanded.

‘There was a fire – you may have read about it – at a research laboratory run by a company called Octek.’

‘I hardly had time to read the papers. I was stalking at Lord Crowborough’s. Why?’

‘It was the laboratory I told you about, the one set up by the Catch woman.’

Schenker, pouring himself a ginger ale, lowered the bottle soundlessly to the bar top. ‘You said it wasn’t going to get off the ground.’

‘There was a time when it looked like that. But in the end it couldn’t be stopped.’

‘You surprise me.’ The sarcasm had been unintentional but he let it stand. If there were difficulties, then Cramm should have told him about them straight away.

Taking his drink, he sat on the sofa opposite Cramm and studied his assistant. In the past few months he had been leaving a lot to this young man. With a spark of unease it occurred to him that Cramm’s eagerness to serve, his dogged pragmatism and his precocious grasp of office politics may not have been matched by a corresponding level of judgement.

‘Tell me about the fire,’ he said.

‘It was an animal rights raid. Octek were using rodents. The activists broke in, liberated the animals and set fire to the place – ’

Schenker interrupted with an upheld finger. ‘These activists, why did they choose Octek?’

Cramm hesitated, uncertain as to the purpose of the interrogation.

‘Why not choose a more obvious target?’ Schenker persisted. ‘One of our own places, for example?’

Cramm got the idea; they were playing detective. ‘The place was unguarded,’ he said. ‘An easy target.’

‘And how would they know that?’

An instant followed, a taut silence in which Cramm’s gaze hardened. ‘They must have been tipped off.’

Schenker felt his mood descend another notch. ‘But it was definitely animal rights campaigners, was it?’

‘Yes.’ Cramm nodded emphatically, his eyes challenging Schenker to disagree, and in that moment Schenker’s heart completed its descent. He was no longer in any doubt that Cramm had got carried away, that the situation, if unravelled, would prove ugly. Absorbing this, he felt a flash of anger, barbed with sudden fears and anxieties. Then just as rapidly, he pushed these feelings aside. Anger served no purpose, not until he could see his way clear.

He put his glass to his lips and sipped his drink. ‘Go on.’

‘They’re going to try to pin it on us.’

‘Who are?’

‘Daisy Field and her group. They’re threatening to go to the press.’

‘On what evidence?’

‘Apparently the police are saying the job was too professional for animal rights people.’

‘That cuts both ways, surely. If it was too professional for one group, then why not for another?’ Without waiting for a reply he pressed on: ‘Is that all?’

Cramm shifted in his seat and studied his glass. ‘No … There’s something else apparently, some other evidence.’

‘That could link us to the fire?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what is it?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘We don’t know,’ repeated Schenker heavily. ‘Well, what
could
it be?’

Cramm retorted defensively: ‘I’ve no idea! There’s nothing for them to know.’

Schenker regarded him carefully. This, he decided, was probably the truth. ‘So what’s the problem?’

Cramm looked surprised that he should miss the obvious. ‘Well, the press could make it look very bad for us.’

‘But how? No paper will print a story without some facts to back it up. What facts could they have?’

‘I don’t know, but the Field woman’s boyfriend is a
Sunday Times
journalist.’

‘So? He’s a professional then, isn’t he, with a tough editor. No stories without solid substantiation.’

‘But she’s got something, so she says.’

‘Well, she’s bound to say that, isn’t she? It’s called rattling the opposition. Come on, Cramm, if there are no facts, there are no facts!’

Cramm nodded uncertainly.

Schenker said crisply: ‘I suggest you draft a suitably dismissive statement for the press, in case they try to run something.’ He moved to the edge of the seat, ready to get up and show Cramm out, but the younger man obviously hadn’t finished.

‘They’re planning to carry on,’ he said doggedly, ‘to start another lab and continue the work. They say none of this is going to put them off.’

‘Did you imagine it would? These people have to martyr themselves,’ Schenker scoffed with a wave of the hand. ‘Let them! Silveron’s okay. Nothing they can do is going to show otherwise. They’re just going to waste a hell of a lot of money.’ He slapped his knees and stood up. ‘That’s it?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Cramm replied. ‘They say they’ve got evidence that the Silveron trials were fixed. They say someone in a key position is prepared to talk. They’re threatening to go public.’

Schenker had the sudden sensation of having been in this job too long, of seeing events come round for the second or third time, like the rerun of a tired old film. ‘It’s not that madman again, is it? That toxicologist in Chicago – the one with the name?’

Cramm nodded. ‘Dublensky.’

He laughed derisively. ‘He’s just a nutcase!’

‘But there’s a chance, a risk – he might have documentation.’

‘What do you mean,
documentation
?’

‘He might have copied some data,’ Cramm said eventually, picking his way cautiously through the words. ‘Data that shows that some of the Silveron test results were lifted from another product.’