Ordinary Thunderstorms

6

INGRAM SPREAD THE NEWSPAPER flat as Maria-Rosa hovered with the coffee pot.

“Just a drop,” Ingram said, his eyes not leaving the page. He was reading about the man who had killed Philip Wang and was both highly intrigued and somewhat astonished. Ingram read on.

Adam Kindred, 31 (pictured right), was educated at Bristol Cathedral School where he was deputy head boy. He won a scholarship to Bristol University where he studied engineering. Mother died when he was fourteen, one older sister, Emma-Jane, father — Francis Kindred — a long-serving senior aeronautical engineer on the Concorde project…

Ingram looked again at the picture of the smiling young man. A wedding photo. How did someone like this become a killer? This Kindred then won another scholarship to America — the Clifton-Garth scholarship — to Cal-Tech where he studied for a PhD in applied engineering. Was this a clue? Ingram wondered, suddenly suspicious — the US of A…At Cal-Tech Kindred became part of a team developing minute gyroscopes for NASA. Nothing there about drugs or pharmaceuticals, no apparent involvement in the world of medicine, Ingram reasoned, nothing to suggest an interest in Calenture-Deutz and its business. He read on.

So, this Kindred fellow acquires his PhD and takes up a post as associate professor at the Marshall McVay University, in Phoenix, Arizona, where he helped design and build the world’s largest cloud chamber at Painted Rock, the Western Campus of Marshall McVay University, in the Mohawk Mountains near Yuma. (What in god’s name was a cloud chamber? he wondered. Ah, something to do with climatology.) Kindred became an associate professor and received tenure at the Faculty of Climatology and Ecology, Marshall McVay University…

He skimmed a few lines. MMU was a private institution, 2,000 rich students, over half of them graduates, with a student — faculty ratio of 6:1, founded and endowed by a multi-billionaire who had made his fortune mining bauxite around the world. Ingram sipped the coffee Maria-Rosa had poured, calculating. So, Kindred had been away, living and working in America for eight, nine years, time enough for anyone to suborn him. He listed the four or five obvious rivals in his head, the big drug companies, the ones with vast amounts of money, time and, above all, patience. He should check to see if any of them were involved in this Marshall McVay University — an endowed professorship, a research programme. But it made no sense: why go for an engineer⁄climatologist? They would have wanted a doctor, somebody in the medical world. Why would they recruit an engineer turned climatologist to kill Philip Wang and thereby try to destroy Calenture-Deutz? Ingram read on.

Kindred married — one Alexa Maybury, 34 (pictured left), a realtor with Maybury-Weiss in Phoenix, Arizona. The marriage ended in divorce some months ago. Kindred resigned his position at the university and returned to London where, on the very day after he had committed the murder, he had been offered the job of senior research fellow in climatology at Imperial College’ (an offer that had been hastily withdrawn, apparently).

Ingram pushed Maria-Rosa’s cooling coffee away. There was no sense in this — it must be blind chance. Why would this young, successful academic kill Philip Wang and ransack his flat? Was it sexual, perhaps? Drug-fuelled? (Ingram was still vaguely impressed at how many drugs young people consumed today, far more and far more effective than those of his youth.) What clues to the dark, vicious side of Adam Kindred’s personality lay buried in this laudatory, blameless curriculum vitae?

He looked up. Maria-Rosa was hovering again.

“Yes, Maria-Rosa?”

“Luigi, he here. With car.”

♦

On the way in to Calenture-Deutz, Ingram called Pippa Deere, head of public relations, and asked for the Adam Kindred profile in the newspaper to be copied and circulated to all board members prior to the extraordinary board meeting. Everyone had to know whom they were dealing with — the whole conspiracy clearly had huge and complex ramifications.

He rode the lift to the Calenture-Deutz floors of the glass tower, feeling — and he was happy to acknowledge the feeling — unusually important and strong. He had summoned all the board members to this extraordinary meeting because he had formulated a plan and wanted to make an important announcement that would have a bearing on the reputation of the company. He bustled around his office for a while making numerous enquiries of his personal assistant, Mrs Prendergast, on the whereabouts and presence of the other board members. Mrs Prendergast was an unsmiling, fifty-something, wholly professional woman. Ingram, after a couple of years, realised he could barely function — in a business sense — without her and consequently she was munificently rewarded with free holidays, stock options, unilateral salary rises. He knew her first name was Edith and thought she had two grown-up male children (photos on desk) but that was about all — and they were ineluctably Mr Fryzer and Mrs Prendergast to each other.

When she finally told him that everyone was present in the boardroom he slipped down the back stairway to the ‘Chairman’s dining set’ as he fancifully called the small dining room off the boardroom (he had furnished it himself: a decent oak table and ten chairs, a long walnut dresser-base, some nice paintings — a Craxton, a Sutherland, a big vibrant Hoyland) where he planned to have a quick, covert brandy before he addressed the board, just to get his juices flowing. He felt a strange attack of nerves, as if there were some evil premonition about what was happening, what was in the air, not like him at all — a little Dutch Courage was called for — though he excused himself, simultaneously, by the knowledge that it was not every day that one of your closest colleagues is viciously murdered.

So he was more than a little annoyed to find his brother-in-law already there in the room, in the ‘set’, casually helping himself to a large whisky from the bottles grouped on a silver tray on the walnut dresser-base (under the vibrant Hoyland).

“Ivo,” Ingram said with a wide false smile. “A little early, no?”

Ivo Redcastle turned. “No, actually — I’ve been up all night, in a recording studio. I got your message at three a.m. Thanks, Ingram.” He took a large gulp of whisky and topped his glass up again. “If you want me to stay awake this will have to do.”

It was impossible now for Ingram to pour himself a proper drink so he helped himself, with bad grace, to an apple juice. He glanced at his brother-in-law — downing his second whisky — and noted for the thousandth time that Ivo, for all his silly debaucheries and pretensions, was still an absurdly handsome man. In fact, Ingram thought, there was something faintly creepy about how handsome he was: the thick, longish black hair swept off his forehead to one side, forever flopping down, the straight nose, the full lips, his height, his leanness — he was almost like a cartoon of a handsome man. Thank god he wasn’t intelligent, Ingram thought, gratefully. And at least he had shaved and was wearing a suit and a tie. Everyone had to have a ‘Lord on the Board’—so he’d been advised when starting out in business — and acquiring a brother-in-law that fitted the category seemed both ideal and simple but, as everything with Ivo, Lord Redcastle, there were endless complications. Ingram looked at his watch as Ivo set his glass down — it was not quite 9.30 a.m.

“I see the dyer’s hand has been at work,” Ingram said.

“I don’t follow.”

“The new lustrous blue-black sheen to your copious hair, Ivo.”

“Are you implying — insinuating — that I dye my hair?”

“I’m not ‘implying’ or ‘insinuating’ anything,” Ingram said evenly, “I’m stating. You might as well hang a sign around your neck saying, ‘I DYE MY HAIR’. Men who dye their hair can be spotted at a hundred yards. You, of all people, should know that.”

Ivo went into what Ingram could only describe as a brief sulk.

“If you weren’t family,” Ivo said, his voice trembling, “I’d actually punch you in the face. This is my natural hair colour.”

“You’re forty-seven years old and you’re going grey, just like me. Own up.”

“Fuck you, Ingram.”

Mrs Prendergast opened the door to the set.

“Everyone is ready, Mr Fry⁄er.”

♦

The meeting went well, initially. The full board was there, executive and non-executive members: Keegan, de Freitas, Vintage, Beastone, Pippa Deere, the three Oxbridge professors, the ex-Tory cabinet minister, the retired senior civil servant, a former director of the Bank of England. They sat soberly and seriously as Ingram made his short speech about the tragedy of Philip Wang’s death and the debt that everyone at Calenture-Deutz owed him. It was only as he moved on to speculate about the future and the new drug that Philip had been working on that the first interruption took place.

“Zembla-4 is unaffected, Ingram,” Burton Keegan said, raising his hand as an afterthought. “I think everyone should know: nothing of Philip’s work will have gone to waste. The programme continues — full force.”

Ingram paused, irritated: Keegan should have sensed he wasn’t finished.

“Well, I’m delighted to hear that, of course. Still, Philip Wang’s contribution to the success—”

“Actually, Philip had pretty much signed off on phase three, isn’t that correct, Paul?”

De Freitas responded to Keegan’s cue.

“Yeah…Effectively. I spoke with Philip two days before the tragedy. We were at the end of the third stage of clinical trials — and he was more than happy with everything. ‘Full steam ahead’, were his precise words, if I recall. He was a happy man.”

“But he hadn’t actually signed off, as far as I’m aware,” Ingram said.

One of the professors chipped in (Ingram couldn’t remember his name). “Philip was more than happy — the data was really superb. He told me himself just last week — superb.”

Now that Ingram had been interrupted so comprehensively a general buzz of conversation grew around the long, glossy table. Ingram leant towards Mrs Prendergast.

“Remind me of that man’s name, Mrs P.”

“Professor Goodforth — Green College, Oxford.” She looked at her list. “Professor Sam M. Goodforth.”

Ingram remembered him now, another new appointee to the board, simultaneous with the arrival of Keegan and de Freitas. Ingram cleared his throat, loudly.

“Good news, excellent news,” he said, aware of how bland he sounded. “At least Philip’s work will survive.”

Keegan had the grace to hold his hand up this time.

“Burton, do go ahead.”

“Thank you,” Keegan said, smiling politely, “I’d like the board to know that we’re flying Professor Costas Zaphonopolous in to take over the day-to-day supervision of the final stage of the trials before we submit our NDA to the PDA. Our New Drug Application,” he added politely for the benefit of any uncomprehending nonexecutive directors, “to the Food and Drug Administration.” He turned to Ingram. “Costas is Emeritus Professor of Immunology at Baker-Field.”

Reverential mutters of approval from the other professors round the table. Ingram felt a twinge of unease — who was this man they were flying in, and at what cost? Why hadn’t he been consulted? He saw Ivo cleaning his fingernails with the sharp tip of the pencil that had been placed on the blotter in front of him.

“So much the better,” Ingram said, feeling that he had to reassert his authority — he still hadn’t had the chance to reveal his piece de resistance.

“Right, now—” he began and then stopped. De Freitas had raised his hand. “Paul?”

“I should say, for the record, that there is some data missing from Philip’s files.”

Ingram kept his face blank, authoritatively blank. “Data missing?”

“We think,” de Freitas flourished his copy of the Kindred profile, “that Kindred may have it.”

The professors gasped. Ingram felt that sick premonition again. Something bad was going to happen, he couldn’t see it yet, but this awful death was just the beginning.

“What kind of data?” Ingram asked, in a quiet voice.

Keegan pitched in now. “Data that is incomprehensible to anyone not wholly cognisant of the Zembla-4 programme. We think Kindred has it — but he doesn’t know what he has.”

Ingram’s instincts were hard at work — he felt high anxiety now: Keegan and de Freitas’s insouciance didn’t fool him at all — this was very serious. He was suddenly glad he’d had an apple juice and not a brandy.

“How do you know this data is missing, Burton?” he asked, carefully.

Keegan smiled his insincere smile. “When we went through the material recovered from the London flat we became aware of inconsistencies. Stuff we expected to see wasn’t there.”

Ingram eased himself back in his chair and crossed his legs. “I thought the London flat was a crime scene.”

“Correct. But the police were most accommodating. We informed them of the importance of the Zembla-4 programme. They gave us complete access.”

“I don’t get it,” Ingram said. “Do the police know data is missing? Doesn’t that provide motive?”

“They will know, in the fullness of time.” Keegan paused as de Freitas whispered something in his ear. Keegan fixed Ingram with his dark, intense eyes, and then they traversed the table. “For the sake of the Zembla-4 programme it’s best that this knowledge is kept within this room.”

“Absolutely,” Ingram said. “Absolute discretion.” There were mutters of agreement from around the table. Then he said ‘Good’ three times, cleared his throat, asked Mrs Prendergast for another cup of coffee and announced that he had decided that Calenture-Deutz should offer a reward of £100,000 to anyone who assisted the police in the capture and arrest of Adam Kindred. He put it to the board for a vote of approval, confident that it would be unanimous.

“I couldn’t disagree more fervently,” Ivo, Lord Redcastle said loudly, casting his pencil down on his blotter where it bounced, impressively, twice and then skittered off the blotter to the floor with a thin wooden clatter, less impressively.

“Ivo, please,” Ingram said, managing a patronising smile but feeling all the same a surge of heartburn warm his oesophagus.

“Just let the police do their job, Ingram,” Ivo said, pleadingly. “This only muddies the water. We offer this kind of sum and every money-grubbing loser will be deluging the police with spurious information. It’s a terrible error.”

Ingram kept his smile in place, reflecting that it was rather rich for one money-grubbing loser to so denigrate his tribe.

“Your objection is noted, Ivo,” Ingram said. “Will you note it, Pippa?” Pippa Deere was keeping the minutes. “Lord Redcastle disagrees with the Chairman’s proposal…Good, duly noted. Shall we vote on it? All those in favour of the reward…”

Eleven hands went up, including Keegan’s and de Freitas’s, Ingram noted.

“Against?”

Ivo raised his hand slowly, a look of disgust on his face.

“Carried.” Ingram basked in his insignificant triumph for a few seconds, knowing full well that this small revolution on Ivo’s part was a misguided act of revenge for the hair-dyeing accusation — clearly it still rankled. Ingram wound up the meeting and everyone dispersed.

“Nothing personal,” Ivo said, as they left the room. “I just think that rewards are iniquitous, corrupting. Why not hire a bounty hunter?”

Ingram paused and tried to look Ivo in the eye but he was too tall.

“One of your close colleagues has been horrifically murdered. You’ve just voted against the one thing we as a company, as his friends, can do to help bring his murderer to justice. Shame on you, Ivo.” He turned and walked into his dining set ready for his brandy. “Have a nice day,” he said as he closed the door.