Ordinary Thunderstorms

27

LUIGI HIMSELF PUT THE thick envelope on his desk.

“Thank you, Luigi,” Ingram said. “I’ll see you at six, as usual.” He was about to open the envelope when he experienced one of these new virulent itches again — this time on the sole of his left foot. He kicked his shoe off. Removed his sock and scratched vigorously. ‘Itch’ was far too inert a word to describe these potent irritations: it was as if someone had inserted a red-hot acupuncture needle beneath the skin and had wiggled it around. Moreover, they seemed to occur anywhere on his body — armpit, neck, finger-joint, buttock — and yet there was no sign of a bite or an incipient rash. Some sort of nerve-ending playing up, he supposed — though he was beginning to worry that they might have some strange connection with his nightly blood-spotting: every two or three mornings his pillow was imprinted with these tiny blood spots coming from somewhere on his face and head. Anyway, the itches had started a week or two after the blood spots — perhaps there was no connection (perhaps this was a natural consequence of ageing — he was no spring chicken, he reminded himself — and, once scratched, these itches went away immediately) but when they fired up they were unignorable.

He replaced his sock and shoe and returned his attention to Luigi’s package. It contained Philip Wang’s appointment diary. Ingram, acting on a hunch — acting on a need to outflank Keegan and de Freitas — had sent Luigi down to the Oxford Calenture-Deutz laboratory to retrieve it from Wang’s PA. He opened it and started at the beginning of the year, working forward. Nothing very dramatic, the usual daily round of a busy head of a drug development programme, boring meeting after boring meeting, only some of which were directly to do with Zembla-4. Then, as he drew closer to Wang’s last day on earth, the pattern begins to change: a sudden concentration of trips in the last week or ten days—“out of office”—trips made to all four de Vere wings where the clinical trials were taking place, in Aberdeen, Manchester, Southampton and, finally, St Botolph’s in London, the day before he was killed. Turning the page to the last day, Wang’s ultimate day, Ingram saw there was only one appointment: “Burton Keegan, C-D, 3.00 a.m.”

Ingram closed the diary, thinking hard.

None of this was out of the ordinary — which was why the police had given it no thought, he supposed — a research immunologist going about his business in an entirely typical way. Unless, that is, you looked at it from a different angle — the Ingram Fryzer angle.

He asked Mrs Prendergast to connect him with Burton Keegan.

“Burton, it’s Ingram. Do you have a moment?”

Burton had.

“I’ve just been called by the police about Philip Wang, trying to pin down his movements in his last day or two. They seem to think he came into the office the day he was killed. I told them that wasn’t possible — I never saw him in the building, did you?”

“No…” Keegan kept his voice expressionless.

“Exactly. Philip always popped in when he was here…So you never saw him, either.”

“Ah, no. No, I didn’t.”

“Must be some mistake, then. I’ll let them know. Thanks, Burton.”

He hung up and went straight to the lift and down to the lobby, trying to seem casual, unhurried. He had the daily security manager bring him the signing-in book for the previous month and flicked back through the pages to the day in question. There it was: the shadowy carbon copy revealing that Philip Wang had signed in at 2.45 and signed out again at 3.53. A few hours later he was brutally murdered.

Ingram rode the lift back to his office in deep thought. Why had Keegan lied? Of course, Wang could have come to the office and cancelled his Keegan meeting — but then Keegan would have said so, surely? No, everything pointed incontrovertibly to an afternoon meeting with Keegan at three o’clock on the day of Wang’s murder. What had it been about? What had been said? Why hadn’t Philip Wang come to see him?

♦

“What the hell’s it got to do with me?” Colonel Fryzer said impatiently, as he rearranged — ever so slightly — the vase of peonies, subject of his current still life.

“Nothing, Pa,” Ingram said, suppressing his own impatience, “I’m just using you as a kind of sounding board…” He decided to try flattery. “Get the benefit of your vast experience of the world.”

“Flattery doesn’t work on me, Ingram — you should know that by now. I detest it.”

“Sorry.”

“Your number two — what’s-his-name—”

“Keegan.”

“Keegan has lied to you. Ergo: he has something to hide. What could your Doctor Wang have said to him in that meeting? What would scare the shit out of Keegan?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What was this Wang chappie working on?”

“He’d spent the previous four days visiting the various hospitals where the clinical trials for a new drug we’re developing are taking place. Nothing unusual in that. The drug’s about to go for validation — here and in the US.”

“Is this Keegan involved in this validation process?”

“Absolutely. Very involved.”

The Colonel looked balefully at Ingram, then spread his hands. “This is your ghastly world, Ingram, not mine. Think. What could your Wang have said to Keegan that would upset him? There’s your answer.”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“At least you’re honest.”

There was a rap on the door and Fortunatus came in. Ingram felt almost shocked to see him.

“Dad, what’re you doing here?”

“Came to pick Pa’s brains. What about you?” Ingram kissed his son, who was wearing his usual infantryman-just-returned-from-combat outfit and, he noticed, had shaved his thinning hair to the shortest stubble.

“I’m taking Gramps to lunch.”

“I’ll be two seconds,” the Colonel said and disappeared into his bedroom.

The unoffered invitation hovered in the air, like a rebuke, Ingram thought, wondering if he should boldly suggest that he join them. He felt a strange emotion: three generations of Fryzers in the one small room but he realised neither his son nor his father wanted his company. He felt one of his burning itches start up on the crown of his head. He pressed hard on it with a forefinger.

“I’d love to join you,” he said, managing a rueful smile. “But I’ve got an exhibition.”

“You’re going to an exhibition?”

“No. I mean I’ve got an appointment.”

“Oh, right.”

The Colonel reappeared. “You still here, Ingram?”