Third Strike

CHAPTER 12

Because Madeleine had arranged our tickets back to New York, the three of us sat up towards the sharp end of a British Airways Boeing 767. She’d managed to pull some strings to get us a good last-minute deal in Club. Besides the obvious comfort and convenience factors, it made sense from a defensive point of view.

The check-in line for BA Club World was short and enabled us to fast-track through Security, minimizing our exposure time in public areas. We didn’t know if Blondie and Don were working independently in the UK, or if they had assistance from someone who might be keeping a watching brief. As it was, we cut things fine enough so that by the time we’d been through the usual rigmarole of metal detectors and patdown searches, we went more or less straight to the departure gate.

My mother was subdued on the flight. She had adopted a mournfully tragic air at being dragged away from her home under these circumstances and she kept it up throughout the journey, graciously weary in allowing the cabin crew to dance attendance on her.

We got into JFK around lunchtime. Sean rang Parker as soon as the plane pulled up to the jet bridge. The call was short and to the point.

“He wants us in the office right away,” Sean said. “He’s sending McGregor to pick us up.”

I nodded but didn’t get the chance to do much more than that. The aircraft door finally clunked open at that point and the press of people began pushing towards freedom.

Sean had been cool with me since I’d left his bed that morning, carefully placing himself across the aisle to leave me alongside my mother, where the layout in Club meant our seats faced each other. I’d tried to persuade myself he was just being professional, that the alternative was to sit with her himself or leave her somewhat out on a limb. But the fact I knew there was more to it than that created a low-level anxiety I couldn’t seem to dispel.

By the time we walked out through the main doors of the terminal into the weakening autumn sunshine, there was a huge dark blue Lincoln Navigator idling by the curb, with limo-black tint on the rear windows. If Parker’s employees shared one common denominator, it was their efficiency.

Behind the wheel was a young black Canadian called Joseph McGregor. He’d joined Parker’s outfit fresh from two tours in Iraq. I’d worked with him before and he was an excellent driver—he reckoned New York at its worst was a walk in the park compared to the streets of Basra under fire.

He stayed behind the wheel and kept the engine running while we loaded our bags. Even my mother’s voluminous hard-shell suitcase looked a little lost in the SUV’s cavernous rear load space.

She allowed us to hustle her into the plush leather upholstery of the backseat without seeming to notice the speed of our departure. I climbed in alongside her, leaving Sean up front, and McGregor gunned the V-8 and sped away.

“So, what’s the panic, Joe?” Sean asked.

“Better ask the boss,” McGregor said, uncharacteristically evasive.

Sean merely shrugged.

McGregor took the Queens-Midtown Tunnel under the East River and into Manhattan. Once we emerged, my mother spent the journey with her neck cranked to take in the towering buildings. I could identify with that, at least. Much as I tried not to let it show, I was still frequently overawed by the sheer scale of New York City, and Manhattan was tightly packed yet sprawling at the same time. As we approached midtown, the affluence of the area seemed more apparent.

“Where are we going?” my mother asked at last, starting to look flustered. She waved a hand towards her outfit—a stuffy tweed skirt and pale pink twin-set with the cardigan draped around her shoulders. “I mean, I don’t know if I’m suitably dressed.”

“Just the office.” Sean’s face gave away nothing of his opinion about such a trivial worry. “You’ll be fine.”

My mother was still fretful. “Perhaps I ought to have changed,” she said.

She looked carelessly smart in a well-bred, English kind of way. I debated on telling her that in New York, black was the new black, but decided against it. Informing my mother she was in danger of making a fashion faux pas would be enough to send her into a tailspin, and I reckoned we were going to have more than enough on our plate coping with her today.

“You’ll be fine,” I repeated, aiming for reassurance rather than exasperation. I’m not sure I quite pulled it off, but she let the subject go.

Instead she said, in a rather small voice, “When do you think I might be able to … see Richard?”

If it was me, I thought savagely, and it was Sean who was in trouble, I would never have stopped asking that question from the moment we got off the plane. It would have been my first—my only—concern. Why wasn’t it yours?

“That depends,” I said curtly, “on whether he’s out on bail.”

She looked hurt. Sean half-turned in his seat and I saw McGregor’s head tilt slightly to the rearview mirror, so that I was regarded by three reproachful pairs of eyes instead of one.

Despite the traffic, the journey didn’t take long. Parker’s offices were in a newly renovated building with an imposing entrance onto the street and a uniformed doorman. McGregor treated my mother with deference, calling her “ma’am” as he led her across the lobby. If he’d been wearing a cap, he would have tipped it.

I turned my head away so I could avoid the speculation that formed in her eyes as she now regarded me. As if maybe her daughter wasn’t associating with quite the thugs and peasants she’d always feared.

We took one of the express elevators, which whisked us up to the agency offices, and stepped out into the discreet opulence of the reception area. I saw my mother register the newly installed Armstrong Meyer nameplate behind the desk and resented the quickening of her interest.

Bill Rendelson toned down his habitual hostility in front of outsiders. He led us straight through to Parker’s office without his usual snide comments, pulling the door closed behind us. Inside, sitting drinking coffee, we found Parker Armstrong—and my father.

Both men rose when we entered. My father was still in the same suit he’d been wearing when I’d last seen him, but the shirt was clearly freshly laundered and he looked clean-shaven, showered, even rested, damn him. Only the discolored patch across his cheekbone gave away that he’d been through any kind of rough treatment. And that, I knew, was due to me.

I was suddenly very much aware of having just got off a seven-and-a-half-hour flight after very little sleep for the last three nights.

He went straight to my mother and, just for a second, I thought I might actually be about to witness genuine emotion between them. Then, when they were just a couple of paces apart, he seemed abruptly to remember the circumstances that had brought them here, and faltered, settling for a brief kiss on the cheek that was herculean in its restraint.

“Oh Richard,” my mother said, her voice wobbling as her face dissolved, as if she’d only just been holding it all together until now. “I’ve been so very frightened.”

“I’m so sorry, my dear,” he said, sounding somehow rusty. “It’s all over now.”

A gross exaggeration, in my view, but I didn’t like to point that out.

“They came into the house, Richard,” my mother went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. She dug in her handbag for a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “Into our home, and threatened me.” Tears broke her voice. “They said such a—awful things would happen.”

“I know.” With a sigh, he finally folded her uncomfortably into his arms and they stood there for a while in that stiff embrace.

Then, over my mother’s bent head, his gaze shifted past me to Sean. “Thank you … for going to my wife’s aid,” he said in a quietly frozen tone, like he could hardly bring himself to express gratitude to Sean. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to express it at all to me.

Sean nodded. “You can repay us with a little honesty,” he said coolly.

My father tensed, as though his first response was denial, closely followed by the realization that he had very little choice. Gently, he put my mother away from him, guided her to a chair and handed her off into it with the kind of practiced delicacy I imagined him using on a critical patient’s dazed and grief-stricken next of kin. When he spoke, it was over his shoulder and with quiet dignity.

“I’d like a moment alone with my wife first, if you don’t mind.”

We’d all of us been through the military machine at one time or another, enough to respond instinctively to the innate command in his voice. My father ran his operating theaters with an iron hand tougher than any general’s and he was used to being obeyed utterly.

“Of course,” Parker said. “Just let Bill know when you’re ready.”

We filed out. As I closed the door behind me I saw my father take the chair next to my mother’s, close but not touching, and begin to speak in a low voice. Whatever he had to say, I considered, it had better be good.

Parker led us into the same conference room where we’d had our last confrontation, and took the same seat at the head of the table. I hoped we weren’t in for a rematch.

“Damn, he’s good,” he said with a rueful smile, blowing out a breath. “I don’t think I’ve ever been elbowed out of my own office before.”

“How long has he been here?” I asked. “I mean—I’m surprised they let him out of jail.”

“Well, they didn’t so much let him out as our legal team wrestled him loose,” Parker said. “The amount they charged for it, I was right about our lawyer putting his kids through college. I just didn’t realize he’d be able to fly them there in his own Lear 55.”

“Quit stalling,” Sean said, parting his jacket and taking a chair. “You were being very cryptic on the phone. What’s happened?”

“We’re taking serious heat,” Parker said bluntly. He ran a frustrated hand through his prematurely grayed hair. “Somebody’s been digging and they’ve been digging hard and deep. The Simone Kerse thing, for starters.”

“But that was nothing to do with you,” I said, then caught the look on his face and instantly regretted my unguarded choice of words. One of Parker’s men had been killed on that job and I knew that wasn’t something he took lightly, by any means.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “What I meant was, Simone wasn’t your responsibility—she was ours. Mine, to be exact. And I was the one who lost her.”

“You didn’t lose her, Charlie,” Sean said. “Under the circumstances—”

“Nobody listens to circumstances,” I cut in, selfrecrimination making my voice harsher than it should have been. “The hard facts are that I was the one tasked to protect her and she died on my watch. After that, nobody cares about the how and the why.”

It was my own argument, but it hurt that he recognized the truth of it enough to fall silent.

“I realize it wasn’t your fault, Charlie,” Parker said. “But you know as well as I do how easily the newspapers put their own spin on things. And that’s not the only thing they’ve come up with.”

I recalled the report he’d practically thrown across this very table at me only two days previously, and knew whatever they’d found now it had to be worse.

Parker flicked his eyes at Sean, then back to me and said, “Look, I don’t believe half of what they’ve printed, but—”

“Tell me,” I said through suddenly stiff lips.

He sighed heavily. “I don’t know where they’ve gotten half this stuff, but they seem to think you’ve had run-ins with the cops not just here, but in the UK and Ireland, and with the security services in Germany. They’re claiming that you’ve killed at least half a dozen people, making out you’re some kind of crazy …”

He looked at my face and his voice trailed off.

“If you believe that about Charlie,” Sean said coolly, staring Parker straight in the eye, “then you should never have taken either of us on in the first place.”

Parker shrugged. “What I believe is immaterial,” he said, but he was rattled. “It’s other people’s perceptions that are the problem here.”

“Why?” Sean demanded, letting the word crack out. “If she was a guy, everyone would be queuing up to buy her a beer and listen to the war stories. But because she’s a woman, the fact that she’s good at her job and has proved it in the field is considered somehow indecent.” He tilted his head as though he had the other man on a microscope slide. “I thought you were more enlightened, Parker.”

“Tell that to our clients, Sean,” Parker snapped back. “We lost another contract this morning. They’re leaving like rats off a sinking ship!” He held up a hand when Sean would have countered, pinched at the bridge of his nose for a few long moments, trying to relieve the tension. “I’m sorry,” he said at last.

“Don’t be,” I said roughly, trying not to make my despair obvious. “You brought us in as an asset not a liability, and I’ve brought this trouble down on you.”

He waved away my latest apology and seemed to make an effort to focus. “What we need—”

There was a sudden knock on the door and Bill Rendelson stuck his head round without waiting for an invitation, his expression sour.

“You got calls stacking up, boss,” he said shortly. His eyes slid to Sean and me and, if anything, his face grew even more thunderous. “And they’re ready for you to go back in.”

“Cards on the table time,” Sean said, and his coolly indifferent tone was a challenge all by itself. “I assume you don’t have a significant drinking problem?” The wording was a nicely irritant touch, implying as it did that the older man did indeed have an issue with alcohol and the only subject under discussion was the severity.

My father didn’t so much glare at Sean as subject him to a withering scrutiny most people would have shriveled under. Probably me included.

“Of course I don’t.”

He and my mother had seated themselves in two of the client chairs, side by side, forming a united front. Parker had taken his customary seat behind the desk and I wondered if he was trying to reassert his authority by such a move. I hovered in between, leaning on a corner of the desk as though ready to play for either side, depending how things were going.

“In view of your somewhat public confession, there’s no ‘of course’ about it,” Sean said with a deadly smile. He sat down in one of the client chairs opposite my parents and crossed his legs, apparently totally at ease, before adding quietly, “So, are you going to tell us what the real story is here? What really happened to this patient of yours who died in Boston?”

For a moment my father didn’t speak, then he gave an audible sigh, as though gathering his inner resources. “Jeremy Lee had severe spinal osteoporosis,” he said at last.

“Osteoporosis?” Parker queried as we exchanged blank looks. “That’s the kind of thing little old ladies get, isn’t it? Makes them fall down and break their hips.”

My father gave a pained nod at this somewhat simplistic view. “In essence, yes,” he allowed. “But it affects in excess of two hundred million people worldwide—twenty percent of whom are men. That’s more than forty million, and the problem is growing.”

“What causes it?” I asked. “And what caused it in this case?”

“It’s a popular misconception that it’s down to calcium deficiency, but that’s not the whole story. We have an aging population, more sedentary lifestyles.” My father shrugged. “But in half the cases of osteoporosis in men, the cause is unknown,” he said. “Although smoking can affect bone cells, and drinking inhibits the body’s absorption of calcium, Jeremy did neither.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, Mr. Foxcroft,” Parker said, “we have a lot of homegrown medical talent over here. Why were you called in?”

My father favored him with an austere smile. “To begin with, Jeremy was misdiagnosed and had lost a certain amount of faith in his colleagues,” he said. “By the time he contacted me—or rather, his wife did—he was very ill. Miranda was hopeful that there might be a surgical option that would offer him some relief, and I think it’s fair to say I have a recognized level of expertise in that area.”

At this point it seemed to occur to him that the events of the last few days might have sullied that spotless reputation somewhat. A shadow, no more than a flicker, passed across his face. My mother, sitting next to him, snuck her fingers through his and squeezed. For a moment he squeezed back, then disengaged his hand. He never once looked at her directly.

“Miranda called me and asked for my help,” he added simply. “So I went.”

It must be nice, I thought with fierce jealousy, to have the kind of friendship with my father that motivates such an instant response.

“And was there anything you could do?” Sean asked.

My father shook his head. “I did some tests to see if there was the possibility of installing titanium cages to support Jeremy’s vertebrae, but it was too late for that. His bones were like chalk. By the time I got there he was in a wheelchair, his spine had almost totally collapsed and he was in constant pain.” That shadow again, darker this time. “It was … difficult to see him like that.”

I felt the transfer of his anger. “And what was being done for him?”

“Not much beyond palliative care,” he said, dismissive. “They’d tried him on synthetic bone-stimulating hormones in an attempt to increase his bone density, but without success. According to his notes, over the past few months his condition had deteriorated at a rate I would normally have expected to take years. I ruled out anything environmental, went back several generations to eliminate the hereditary angle. It seemed to me that the hospital was making little attempt to find out the root cause of his illness.”

“Surely,” Sean said, frowning, “if he was getting older—”

“Jeremy was in his early forties,” my father cut in. “I met him when he was a young student over in London. Hardly an old man, would you say?”

“So, what happened?”

“I discovered that the hospital was involved in clinical trials for a new treatment for osteoporosis developed by the pharmaceutical giant, Storax. It’s not yet licensed, but they’ve had some remarkable successes so far. I contacted them to see if it might be possible to use it in this case.”

“I didn’t think you were such a risk taker, Richard,” Sean said.

“Sean,” my mother said in quiet censure. “A man’s life was at stake.”

My father acknowledged her intervention with a faint nod. “Miranda voiced her doubts but, by that stage I felt there was very little to lose and I convinced her we should give it a try. I felt we had few options left open to us.”

“And what did Jeremy Lee feel about this?”

“Jeremy had picked up an infection and lapsed into a coma,” he said, no emotion in his voice. “Storax were reluctant to extend their trial at this stage, but in the end I … persuaded them.” He gave another small smile. “They sent two of their people up to Boston to administer the treatment. And that’s when we discovered that Jeremy had already received it.”

“Hold on,” Parker said. “You mean he’d already been given this Storax treatment and was still getting worse?”

“That’s how it appeared. My suspicion was that the hospital had been using him as an unwitting guinea pig.” He took a moment that might have been to calm himself, and his expression afterwards was almost rueful. “I’m afraid I may have made my dissatisfaction with this state of affairs somewhat clear.”

I suppressed a smile. My father in full righteous flow would be a sight to behold.

“Can you prove any of this?” Sean asked, and although his tone was absolutely neutral, my father bristled anyway.

“Sadly, no,” he said sharply. “The Storax people were doing more tests to confirm it when I was asked to leave—politely, of course—by the hospital administrators.”

“And you agreed?”

He shrugged. “I had no choice. My position there was afforded as a courtesy, not a right. Before I left, I made it clear to the hospital that I was intending to take the matter further. Unfortunately, I never got the chance.”

“What happened?”

“Jeremy died that night. Miranda got the call around midnight and I drove her to the hospital, but it was already too late.”

Again, he paused, took a breath—the only outward sign of his distress. He was talking about the death of a friend and he might have been discussing having missed a bus.

“What actually killed him in the end?” Parker asked quietly.

“In my opinion, a hundred milligrams of intravenous morphine,” my father said.

“Are you sure?”

“As I can be—and before you ask, no, I can’t prove that, either,” he said, glancing at Sean. “Not without access to his notes. Maybe not even then.”

“But you were sure enough at one point to make a public accusation to that effect,” Sean said, quirking one eyebrow. “Wasn’t that somewhat … foolish if you didn’t have any proof?”

My father’s chin came up. “Yes, as it turned out,” he said calmly. “The following morning I received a telephone call informing me of my so-called drink problem and telling me what would happen to Elizabeth if I didn’t participate in my own downfall.” His eyes flickered closed for a moment. “They were rather graphic and very detailed,” he added with grim restraint.

“Oh, Richard,” my mother said softly, her eyes on his face.

“We have to take this to the police,” Parker said, reaching for the phone on his desk. “If we—”

“No.”

There it was again, that quiet command. It was enough to bring Parker up short. His hand stilled and he regarded my father in steady silence for a few moments before he asked in a level tone, “Why not?”

My father didn’t reply immediately. He leaned forwards in his seat, clasping his hands and seeming absorbed by the way his fingers linked together. Eventually he looked up, his gaze taking in the three of us, ranged against him.

“You must think I inhabit a very rarefied little world,” he said, his voice reflective and almost a little remote. “And I suppose that in some ways, I do. I am not accustomed to being manhandled, to having my family threatened, and I find I … don’t care for it.”

“They won’t do it again,” I said, fast and low. “Trust me. They won’t get the chance.”

“No, they won’t,” my father said with a brittle smile. “But not because you’ll be there to take on all comers, Charlotte, I assure you.” He straightened the crease in his suit trousers and brushed away a piece of lint from the fine cloth before he looked up again. “When I was a medical student I had a bit of a reputation as a poker player,” he said. “I always knew when to bluff and when to fold a bad hand.”

“And you feel this is a bad hand,” Sean said. “So you’re going to fold, is that it?” He couldn’t quite keep the sneer out of his voice, but my father didn’t rise to it.

“I don’t know who was behind my coercion and Elizabeth’s unfortunate experience, but I can only assume they have some connection to the hospital,” my father said. “They had a major civil action brought against them last year for medical negligence, which they lost—somewhat disastrously—and they can’t afford another. It would appear they’re prepared to go to extreme lengths to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Sean ducked his head in acknowledgment of the point. “That’s a fair description,” he said. “But what about your supposed friend, Jeremy Lee? What about his widow? You’re just going to walk away and leave things as they are?”

My father’s face whitened. “The longer I stay, the worse I’m making the situation for Miranda,” he said. “I’ve been totally discredited as any kind of expert witness. Trying to redress things now will only make them worse still. My best course of action is to go home as soon as possible, so we can try to put this whole thing behind us.”

My father rose, automatically buttoning the jacket of that immaculately tailored suit, and helped my mother out of her chair. She clung to his arm. He turned to face us.

“Thank you—all of you—for your assistance,” he said, not quite meeting my eye. His gaze just seemed to scutter across me from Sean to Parker and back again. “But there is nothing more you can do here.”