Ordinary Thunderstorms

46

IT WAS ALL COMING together fairly nicely, Adam thought, as he leant over Amardeep’s shoulder and looked at the computer screen. They were correlating the porters’ work log with the CCTV record of the same day.

“There she is,” Amardeep said, pointing to the screen. “Trolleyed out of de Vere into intensive care on the 4th.” He pointed at the log. “By OPP 35.” He checked the outpatient porter number against a name. “That was Agapios. Then…” he flipped a few pages and searched the CCTV images. “Then she coated on the jth. Look.”

“Quoted?”

“Coated. That’s what we say at St Bot’s. She coated — she died…So we move her to the morgue.”

“What about the next one?”

Amardeep scrolled down to the next name on Adam’s list, then flicked through the CCTV images. It was the same result — trolleyed out on the iyth of the month, coated on the 23rd. All five of the St Botolph names on Philip Wang’s list had died in intensive care.

“Can we find out cause of death?”

“This is just the porters’ work log,” Amardeep said, his voice vaguely offended. “You need the clinical files. Why you want to know all this stuff anyway?”

Adam noticed that Amardeep’s eyelashes were about an inch long. “They just wanted some data at de Vere,” he said vaguely. “Bit of a pain — but thanks a lot.”

Back in his flat at Oystergate Buildings that night, Adam spread out his accumulating material on the floor in front of the flat-screen TV. He took out the relevant documents and printouts from what he found himself calling — though very aware of its thriller-esque pretensions — the ‘Zembla File’. The key item was his photocopy of Philip Wang’s list of the fourteen names of the dead children from the clinical trials. Then Adam had his own certificate for the purchase of ten ordinary shares in Calenture-Deutz (460 pence each) that he had bought online when he’d moved to St Bot’s and with it the glossy Calenture-Deutz brochure he had been sent as a new shareholder. He flipped it open to the usual euphuistic preface (who actually wrote this guff?) by Ingram Fryzer, Chairman and CEO, both photograph of the man himself and his flamboyant signature provided, the horizontal dashes of the T of’Ingram’ distinctly separated from the vertical downstroke — more like a mathematical symbol than a letter. With the brochure had come an invitation announcing a press conference open to all shareholders to be held early next month at the Queen Charlotte Conference Centre, WC2. Adam had also cut out one of the Zembla-4 advertorials from a glossy magazine and alongside it printouts of articles from learned journals eulogising Zembla-4’s curative powers — culled from the internet — and a colour photograph of Ivo, Lord Redcastle, that he had snapped the day before outside a Covent Garden restaurant.

He had opened a sub-dossier on Ivo, the lord, containing the paragraph devoted to him in Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ireland, a magazine article about his house in Netting Hill, and a sarcastic and abusive gossip piece about his new, third wife’s art exhibition. Adam had been looking for a weak link in Calenture-Deutz and he had decided fairly quickly, after searching the backgrounds to the names of the other executives and board members, that Lord Redcastle would be the most promising target.

As far as he was concerned his prime motive was only to end this pursuit. He wanted to stop being hunted by this man — whoever he was — a chase, he was now sure, that originated with Calenture-Deutz and this new drug, Zembla-4. He wanted, if at all possible, to have his old life back, insofar as that was feasible. Somehow, by grotesque happenstance, he had been drawn into a deep and complex conspiracy and he had to extricate himself — guile, tenacity and privileged information were his key weapons. But behind this first objective was the desire, also, to somehow avenge innocent Mhouse’s violent death, and it seemed to him that the only way he might achieve both aims was to attack Calenture-Deutz itself, rather than confront its homicidal agent. If Calenture-Deutz felt itself wounded or severely threatened, then perhaps it would back off. Philip Wang had unwittingly placed in his hands the information that might work as potent leverage on the company. He didn’t know — yet — what the precise details were behind these fourteen deaths but he was more than sure they constituted some sort of massive cover-up. He had in his possession fourteen potential smoking guns. Something had gone very, very wrong in the clinical trials of Zembla-4: so wrong that the rapidly, fatally sickening children had been rushed from the de Vere Wing to intensive care. Whatever it was, whatever rogue reaction the drug stimulated, was what had ensured Philip Wang was killed, and had brought about the death of Mhouse. In all likelihood, if circumstances had been favourable, he should have been killed also in order to keep this secret — whatever it was — secret.

He went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea. These thoughts always shook him up. The stark reality intruding behind the patient, deductive reasoning — unwelcome, disturbing. Danger signs suddenly present in a young child, some Calenture-Deutz doctor realising the inescapable consequences, porters hurriedly summoned to remove the evidence to intensive care, a quiet blurring of the data and the record. Seriously ill children: hundreds, thousands, had received and benefited from Zembla-4, but fourteen had perished…Statistical inevitability. But why such violence and ruthlessness? Was there some governmental, security issue in play here? Were these clinical trials cover for something else more devious and, on a national dimension, embarrassing to the government or the security services? What was at stake? What would happen if these fourteen deaths were made public? And then he stopped himself — go no further down that road. The deaths of chronically ill children were in themselves not enough, there had to be something more. It had to be highly significant that the dead children in St Botolph’s had been moved to intensive care from the de Vere Wing some days before they had eventually died. The de Vere connection was obscured if not ruptured. How many children died in St Bot’s in a given week? Ten, a dozen? Do⁄ens? It was a huge hospital, its paediatric wing was enormous. Five children dying in the de Vere Wing where clinical trials for a new drug were in progress would have set scandalous whispers flowing. He would bet his life that all the other deaths logged by Wang had also occurred in intensive care. So there must have been something about the symptoms that first appeared that set warning lights flashing. Some doctor or whoever was supervising the trial must have known. Get them out of here — they’ll be dead in a matter of days…He sipped his tea. He needed to talk to someone who knew about drugs, who knew about Big Pharma.

He went back into his sitting room and opened another file. He had been routinely collecting articles for the past couple of weeks from broadsheet newspapers and serious news magazines that dealt with the manufacture of drugs and the machinations of the pharmaceutical industry, trying to gauge if there was one journalist he might go to who would be able to interpret his patchy evidence. He had narrowed it down to a shortlist of three names: one in The Times, one in the Economist and one in a small specialist journal called Global Finance Bulletin that he had found abandoned in a Tube train carriage. Dry and fact-laden with no illustrations apart from graphs and diagrams, it seemed aimed at governmental policy makers, lobbyists and financial institutions

— the subscription was an impressive £280 per year for the four issues. It was based in London and there was one journalist, called Aaron Lalandusse, who wrote in every issue on the pharmaceutical industry. Adam sensed that this Lalandusse was his man.

His mobile phone rang and Adam started — he was still not fully accustomed to the thing, symbol of his new, though modest, upward mobility in society. It was either the hospital or Rita.

“Hello, stranger,” Rita said. “You avoiding me?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve been very busy, ridiculously busy. I was going to call you.”

“Where are you?”

“At home.”

“I get off duty at six. What about you?”

“I’m not on till tomorrow. Shall we have a drink somewhere?”

“Where?”

“I can come to you. I’ve got a scooter now. Bought one yesterday.”

“Hey. Wheels.”

“It’ll work out cheaper.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“Anyway, I could whizz over to Battersea.”

“Why don’t we meet halfway,” she said, and told him the name of a pub she knew on the river. He said he’d see her there at seven.

“Don’t bring your scooter,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because I haven’t got a helmet.”