Final Venture

28

I walked home looking over my shoulder. There was someone following me, a blonde woman in jeans and a padded jacket. She was about thirty yards behind me, making no real effort to stay hidden. A policewoman, I presumed, although it annoyed me that I couldn't be sure. I turned and waved at her. She stopped, lit a cigarette, and watched me.

My emotions were a turmoil. My confrontation with Art had played havoc with my already frayed nerves. Having an angry alcoholic waving a pistol in my face had scared the hell out of me. Art was unstable and dangerous, certainly to himself, probably to me.

But I also felt angry with Gil. I understood his point of view. Going through your colleague's desk was not something that he expected of his people. Revere was in severe trouble, and I wasn't helping much. He had been decent to me, and I had let him down.

But Gil's support was important to me. He had trusted me when others hadn't, given me his backing when I needed it most. He was a decent man, and I respected him. And now he wanted nothing more to do with me.

I didn't know whether Gil would have me back. I enjoyed working at Revere, and I didn't want to leave, especially not this way. A month ago, Revere had meant everything to me. It was still important: a link with an untroubled past. The future didn't look good. No wife, no job, and unless I was very careful, a bullet in the head. I couldn't afford to sit around. I had to get whoever had killed Frank and John before they got me. Only then could I hope to get my life back into some kind of order.

When I arrived home the light on my answering machine was flashing. For a foolish second I thought it might be Lisa. It wasn't.

'Hi, Simon, it's Kelly.' Her voice, usually strong and confident, was subdued. 'I called you at work, but they said you'd left for the day. I'd like to talk to you if I can. Give me a call.'

I dialled Boston Peptides' number straight away, and was soon put through. Kelly wouldn't say what she wanted to talk about. We agreed to meet for lunch at a cafe near Harvard Square, safely out of reach of her work colleagues.

It was a vegetarian establishment, infested by students. Although I was early, Kelly was already waiting outside, nervously smoking a cigarette. We muttered greetings and then joined the end of the queue at the food counter in silence. I chose a salad, and Kelly some kind of quiche, and we sat down at the only free table.

Kelly pulled out a cigarette, and then put it away again before the waiter had a chance to assault her. 'I shouldn't have come,' she said.

'I'm glad you did.'

'Lisa wouldn't want me to talk to you. Neither would Henry.'

'You must have a good reason.'

'I think I have.'

I waited. Kelly picked at her quiche.

'Lisa's in a bad way, and she holds you responsible.'

'I know.'

'I've been thinking a lot about it,' Kelly said, 'and I'm not sure she's right. I kind of trust you. And I think you should know what Lisa was worried about. What got her fired. I don't care what you do with the information as long as you don't use it against Lisa. Or me. You never heard any of this from me, OK?'

'OK,' I nodded.

As soon as BioOne took over Boston Peptides, Lisa wanted to get hold of some of the data on neuroxil-5. She wanted to see if she could use it in her work with Parkinson's.'

'So Henry Chan told me,' I said. 'But he didn't tell me much more.'

'At first Enema said no way. He runs everything with total secrecy, no one is allowed to know anything unless they absolutely have to. But Lisa can be pretty persuasive.'

I smiled.

'Somehow she got through to Enema. But he was very careful what data he would let her see. It was mostly just some of the early animal experiments, on aged rats.'

Kelly took a bite of her quiche. I waited while she chewed.

'The information was pretty useless, but it was all Lisa could get. As she studied it, she noticed something than Enema seemed to have missed.'

'What was that?'

'Several months after taking the neuroxil-5, quite a few of the rats died.'

I raised my eyebrows. Kelly saw it. 'Nothing wrong in that. Old rats die. It's kind of what you'd expect. Except that a higher number than usual died of strokes.'

'Strokes? Do rats get strokes?'

'Rats get many of the same kinds of diseases that we do. Especially in laboratories.'

'I see.'

'Do you know what a stroke is?' Kelly asked.

'Some kind of blood clot in the brain, isn't it?'

'Yes, it can be caused by that, or by the opposite, a haemorrhage in the brain. It can lead to paralysis, or death.'

'So this was serious?'

'Maybe.'

'What do you mean, maybe? If all these rats died of strokes, doesn't that make neuroxil-5 lethal?'

'It's not that easy. Most of the rats survived, or died of natural causes. It's just that a slightly higher proportion than usual died of strokes.'

'But Lisa thought this was significant?'

'She did. At first she spoke to Henry about it. He told her to talk to Enema. Which she did.'

I could see where this was going. 'And he said there was nothing wrong.'

'That's right. He said that Lisa's observations weren't statistically significant. When she asked for more data to check whether this was a real problem, Enema refused to give it to her. He said that it had been thoroughly analysed and there was nothing to be worried about.'

'But that didn't satisfy Lisa?'

Kelly smiled. 'You know her. She wouldn't be satisfied until she had seen the data itself. When Enema still refused to show it to her, she more or less called him a liar. She accused him of not checking the numbers carefully enough.'

'So he fired her?'

'Not surprisingly,' said Kelly.

It didn't surprise me at all. I knew that she had given Henry Chan a similarly difficult time over the years, but he had much more patience than Enever. I now understood why he felt that Lisa wouldn't fit into the new BioOne culture.

'Do you think Lisa was right to be concerned?' I asked Kelly.

'I didn't see the data myself; this is all stuff I heard from Lisa,' Kelly said. 'And I'd guess that statistically Enema was right. But I've worked with Lisa for two years. I trust her hunches. There may be something there, I don't know.'

'How can I find out?' I asked.

'You?' Kelly looked surprised. 'You can't.'

'Can you help me?'

Kelly looked down at her plate, now almost empty. 'I can't. Unlike Lisa, I don't have another job to go to if I get fired. Thomas Enever is a powerful enemy that I don't need right now.'

'Hmm. Have the clinical trials shown the same problem to be present in humans?'

'I assume not,' Kelly said. 'I mean all that data is shown to the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA would be pretty unhappy if everyone who took neuroxil-5 had a stroke the next day.'

'But what if it was just a few patients and it was several months later?'

Kelly thought about it. 'I don't know. The Phase One and Two clinical trials probably involved only about a hundred people, total. It is possible that something that affected a small minority of patients might slip through unnoticed. That's why they have these massive Phase Three trials, with a thousand patients or more.'

'And that's what's going on now, isn't it?'

'That's right. They end in March next year.'

'Do you have any idea about the results of these trials?'

'Are you kidding?' Kelly snorted. 'Only Enever knows. And at this stage, even he isn't supposed to.'

I remembered the note in Art's BioOne files about the trial being double blind.

'Is there any way of finding out?'

'No,' said Kelly. I paused to let her think. 'Not unless you actually go and talk to the clinicians who are conducting the trials themselves.'

'Can you get me a list of them?'

'No way,' Kelly said.

I was disappointed. I was sure Lisa had been on to something, but it was hard to see how I, single-handedly, could break through BioOne's wall of secrecy.

'There is one thing you could do,' Kelly said. 'I'm pretty sure that the Phase Two trial was written up in the New England Journal of Medicine. I remember the buzz in the industry when it was published.'

'So do I. That was when the BioOne stock price shot up, wasn't it?'

'Possibly. You're the money man. I just make the drugs.'

I acknowledged the dig.

'Sorry,' Kelly said. 'There will probably be a list of clinicians involved with the Phase Two trial there. Many of them will be signed up for the new trial. You could talk to some of them.'

'Thanks,' I said. 'I'll try it.'

We ate our food, Kelly hurrying so that she could get away without being seen.

'How's Boston Peptides getting on without Lisa?' I asked.

'We miss her. BP 56 is going well. We're getting the first responses from human volunteers. It looks like the drug is safe, although it seems to cause depression in some people.'

'Depression?'

'Yes. It can reduce the levels of serotonin in the brain. Kind of like the opposite of Prozac'

Depression.

Lisa had been taking BP 56.

I remembered her fragility a week or so after Frank's death, the way she had lost her temper with me, her uncharacteristic irrationality, her black moods, and most of all, my total inability to help her. A chemically induced depression, combined with all those other pressures, must have been very hard to cope with. No wonder she had cracked and run away.

'What is it Simon?'

Lisa had said she wanted to keep the fact she was taking the drug quiet from everyone at work. I wasn't sure whether that included Kelly, but it was probably up to Lisa to tell her, not me. 'Oh, I was just thinking,' I said, vaguely. 'It's not serious enough to fail the drug, is it?'

'Oh, no,' said Kelly. 'There are ways around it. It may be as simple as prescribing Prozac in combination with BP 56.' She looked at her watch. 'I've got to go. Do you mind if you wait here for a couple of minutes before you leave? I really don't want anyone to see us together.'

'OK,' I said, deciding that there was no need for Kelly to know that she was being watched as she spoke. 'You go. And thank you.'

She smiled quickly and left.

I waited a few moments, and sauntered round the corner to a bar I used to frequent, just on the Cambridge side of the bridge from the Business School. My female tail stayed outside. I ordered a beer, and thought through what Kelly had told me.

So Lisa had been depressed. Not the kind of depression that comes from stress at work, and grief, and marital difficulties, but biochemically induced stress, which would make the world seem bleak even in the most normal of times. Given the pressure Lisa had been under, the world must have seemed a very dark place indeed.

In some ways, this news made me feel better. Without the drug, I should have a much better chance of persuading her to come back to me. But I still needed to prove that I hadn't killed Frank.

So the next question was, was there a problem with neuroxil-5? I had to admit that there was a chance that the answer was 'no'. That the numbers that Lisa had seen were not from a valid statistical sample, and just represented the kind of false coincidences that happened all the time. Well, if that was the case, then I was wasting a lot of time and effort.

But what if Lisa's hunch was right? What if neuroxil-5 caused occasional strokes in rats? What would that mean?

It could mean the drug was killing some of the people it was supposed to be curing. That would be a disaster. For the Alzheimer patients who were taking it, for BioOne, and for Revere.

I wasn't sure what Frank and John had to do with this potential catastrophe. Frank had little involvement with BioOne, Art had always seen to that. But there was Art's cryptic comment that Frank had been asking questions about BioOne just before he died. And of course there was the message John had left, saying he had discovered something about BioOne that I would find interesting. Could that have been that neuroxil-5 was dangerous?

At the moment it was a big if. What I needed to do was find proof one way or another. I polished off my beer and took the 'T' home.

The New England Journal of Medicine was on the Internet. I quickly found an abstract of the article Kelly had mentioned. I had to call the journal directly to have the full article faxed to me. The title was A Controlled Trial of Neuroxil-5 as a Treatment for Alzheimer's Disease'. There was a formidable list of authors, but the first name on the list was none other than Thomas E. Enever. It described the Phase Two clinical trial on eighty-four patients with Alzheimer's. The sample was too small to draw definitive conclusions, but the paper seemed to suggest that the results were encouraging. There were no statistically significant differences in the 'adverse-event categories' between the group that had taken neuroxil-5, and the group that had taken the placebo. At the end of an article was a list of six centres participating in the study, together with the clinicians responsible. Kelly had suggested that it was likely that most of these would also be involved in the larger Phase Three trial.

It took an hour of fiddling about on the Internet before I had the names and addresses of these six centres. Four of them were in New England, one was in Illinois, and one in Florida, no doubt a prime Alzheimer's location. It was five o'clock. I resolved to see the four New England centres the next morning.

I made myself a cup of tea, and picked up the pile of junk mail that had arrived that morning. There was one letter with an address in handwriting I knew very well.

Lisa's.

I sat on the sofa and opened the letter carefully, hardly daring to read it. It wouldn't be about BioOne: it must have been sent before Lisa's mother had passed on my message to her. It just might be something about how she was sorry, how she missed me, how she wanted to come back.

Or it might not.

It wasn't.

Dear Simon,

I have some news for you. I went to the drug store yesterday, and my family

doctor today, and there is no doubt about it. I'm pregnant.

I felt you had a right to know as soon as I did. But you should also know that it doesn't change my decision to stay away from you in California. I want to put Boston, you and Dad's death as far away as possible from me. There are issues I can't face right now – whether you were involved in Dad's death, and whether I can ever trust you again.

Both our parents messed up in bringing us up. I don't want to do that with our baby. I hope that here in California I can start out again, create a new life for myself and for the baby inside me. I have felt so horrible recently, but at least now I have something to live for.

I know you've been calling Mom. Please don't try to contact me. I need to be away from you right now. I hope that I will get to the stage where I can see you again and talk to you again, but I'm not there yet.

Lisa.

I read the letter over again, just to make sure I had got it right. A turmoil of emotions bubbled inside me. There was a primal joy that I was going to be a father. That soon an individual human being would be born that I had a part in creating, that was part me.

If I ever saw it.

We hadn't planned it. We hadn't even really talked about children. We had both assumed they were something for the distant future. A potential conflict between us that we wanted to put off.

For each of us the union of different nationalities and religions hadn't been a problem. In fact it had been liberating, freeing us from the different traditions in which we had grown up. But for our future children? I felt a tugging desire to bring up our children with English accents, a public school education and an occasional acquaintance with the Church of England. This wasn't for my own benefit but rather out of a sense of duty to my family. My title, which I had neglected, should be passed on, and with it some of the traditions I had been brought up with. The trouble was, I suspected Lisa had similar, but opposite feelings. Judaism passes through the female line.

Anyway, that was all academic now. Lisa was pregnant. She was going to lay total claim to the baby and keep it in California with her. The irony hurt. I realized that I really was following in my family's traditions, fathering and then abandoning children around the world. Not for the first time, I wondered if I had any brothers or sisters my father hadn't told me about. How could I be so pompous as to get myself hung up on the stupid title? I was a fucked-up Englishman in danger of begetting more fucked-up Englishmen. The kid was lucky to escape me.

Oh, sod it. I didn't care whether my children were English, American, Jewish or Hindi. What I really wanted to do was have a child with Lisa. I knew I would be a good father, and she would be a good mother. I could imagine us all laughing together, the three of us, the baby an as yet unformed blur. We could build a strong happy family together, we really could.

If Lisa ever gave us the chance.

I wanted to spend as little time out on the street as possible, so I ordered a pizza and sat down to write Lisa a letter, care of her mother. I wrote several, tearing each one up, until I was interrupted by the door-buzzer. It was Martinez. I let him in.

'Want some?' I asked him, pointing to the pizza.

He shook his head. 'I stay away from junk food.'

'I'd have thought that was impossible in your job.'

'It's a challenge.'

I glanced at his physique. He did look lean and fit. 'Have a seat. I'm sorry I haven't invited you in before, but I thought you were happier on the street.'

'Yeah. That's what I wanted to talk to you about.'

'Oh, yes?'

'Sergeant Mahoney has called us off. He thinks he can't justify tailing you any more.'

I suddenly felt cold. I hadn't realized how comforting my semi-visible companions had become.

'But doesn't he know someone's trying to kill me?'

'Remember, technically we were putting you under surveillance, not protecting you.'

'Jesus,' I said.

'I shouldn't really be here,' Martinez smiled. 'It's not standard police procedure to inform a suspect that his tail is disappearing.'

'No, I can see that. Thank you. Doesn't Sergeant Mahoney care if I get shot?'

Martinez shrugged.

'He doesn't like me much, does he?'

Martinez shrugged again.

'What about you?'

'I'm just a dumb cop who does what he's told.' Martinez got to his feet. 'But I don't like seeing innocent people getting killed. So, if you get worried about something, give me a call.' He pulled a card out of his wallet and handed it to me. 'And be careful.'

'Thanks,' I said, taking the card. 'I will.'

It was very hard to get to sleep. Whoever had tried to kill me would try again. They were bound to. With my police escort, I had some hope of protection. Now I had none.

It might be that Mahoney had finally crossed me off his suspect list. But through the long night that thought gave me little comfort. Alone in my apartment, it was difficult to fight the fear. I had been very lucky that whoever had tried to shoot me the day before had missed. But they would try again, for sure. There was nowhere to hide. A bullet seemed unavoidable; the only thing I could do to delay it was to lock myself in, and the world out. Pull down the blinds, live on Chinese and pizza deliveries and wait and hope.

I felt small and alone in my bed, our bed. I so desperately wanted Lisa's warm body next to me, her embrace to give me comfort and courage. With her, I felt I could face the likelihood of death. Without her, that night, it was very difficult.

So I was going to be a father! I laughed to myself, a hollow bitter laugh. Who was I kidding? I wouldn't last a week, let alone nine months.

I pulled myself out of bed, and poured myself a Scotch. For a moment the whisky made me feel warm and almost safe. But then I poured it all down the kitchen sink.

Drinking myself into a stupor wouldn't save me. If I wanted to live, if I wanted my child to have a father, even one living thousands of miles away, I would have to do something. Soon.