Knife After Death: A chilling crime thriller
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The consultant smiled at them both. "So that's agreed then. You both let me try and arrange a new and urgent transplant for Peter, and you then hold off on writing your article until Peter is recovered? Peter? Susie?"
They both nodded.
"Excellent." The consultant looked at his watch. "It's almost midnight. First things first then. I'll call my wife...give her the bad news, and then I'll arrange a hospital bed for you, and possibly one more for me."
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About thirty minutes later, about the same time that the body of Mr Wallace was placed in the mortuary at the hospital, young David Burns died. Twenty minutes after that, a policewoman walked into the hospital with a signed document that would allow Dr Jamieson to give the gift of life to two other people in Scotland: a new heart for a man in Glasgow, and new kidneys for a journalist in Edinburgh.
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Dr Jamieson's office was on the ground floor of the hospital. His office looked out onto the fields around Little France, an area of farmland not too far from Craigmillar.
When the Police were called to the hospital very early the next morning, they discovered that the window to the consultant's office had been broken, allowing an intruder forced access into the consultant's office.
An alarm had been sounded at 3.30 a.m. in the morning, but by the time the hospital security staff had responded to it, whoever it was that had broken into the office of Dr Jamieson was long since gone, via the window he had broken in through.
Dr Jamieson had spent most that day in surgery, performing a kidney transplant operation on a young journalist from the Evening News.
It was only when he returned to his office after the operation that he had a chance to examine his office properly.
Strangely, the intruder had seemingly stolen nothing. Or at least, that is what Dr Jamieson had initially first thought. It was only later upon his return from Barbados, a month later, that he would discover that someone had removed the file he had built up on SP-X4 and the StemPharma Corporation, along with his notes on Peter Nicolson and all his other patients who had been treated with the revolutionary new drug, ...and also the white ceramic knife that he had confiscated from Peter Nicolson.
Chapter Ninety Seven
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StemPharma Corporation
New York
Philip Grant's Office
May 16th
9.30 a.m.
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Philip Grant was sat nervously staring at his computer screen, waiting for the New York Stock Exchange to open.
His stock had vested first thing this morning. Within minutes he would issue the "Sell" order on all his stock.
By lunchtime he would be rich. Very rich indeed.
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Philip Grant had not heard anything from Mat in Scotland. No news was not always good news, but in this case, it probably was. He had been commissioned to prevent the journalists and the doctor in Scotland from submitting reports to the Medical authorities and publishing the newspaper article revealing the adverse affects of SP-X4.
No newspaper article had yet been printed. No contact had been received from the British MHRA. The share price of StemPharma Corporation had continued to increase slowly over the past months, and now his shares had vested.
Mat had seemingly succeeded in his commission. When he returned to the States, Philip Grant would once again pay him in full, but this time the bonus would be larger than normal.
Mat had done well.
Philip Grant was just about to do even better. He had already set up his account to dump his stock, in regular groups, over the course of the morning and throughout the rest of the day. Philip had taken the day off, just to watch the cash deposits in his trading account increase, hour by hour, as the money from the sales poured in.
"Ahh!...," the VP of Sales and Marketing exclaimed aloud. The first five hundred thousand dollars cash from the sales had just shown up in his account! Philip had started to sell his shares at the current value of $41 a share. He knew the price would slowly erode during the day as he dumped so much stock, but he would accept that. He had no choice. Basing his calculations on a medium share price of $35, Philip reckoned that he would bank the best part of $43.75 million dollars today before tax!
$43.75 million!
Philip sat back, smiled, lit the cigar that he had been keeping for the past few years for this very special moment, and relaxed.
No more worrying. No more fears. No more arguments with his wife about how much she had spent on clothes. No more stress.
From now on he would never worry about the patients of StemPharma again.
As far as Philip Grant, the VP of Sales & Marketing was concerned, ...they could all go and fuck themselves.
Today was going to be the best day of his life!
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William Lawson wiped the sweat away from his brow. He knew that the security guards at the airport would be looking for anyone who appeared to be suspicious or nervous. He had to blend in. To stop shaking. He had to focus.
This would be the first time that he had flown to the United States. He had always hoped that when he did make it over the big pond, it would have been in much happier times. He had often dreamed and planned of spending a fortnight in Orlando with his wife and two children, visiting Disney World and Universal Studios. Laughing. Screaming together on the rides. Having fun together. As a family...
But now that was never going to happen.
His wife had left him. His children were scared of him. And William could not blame them. He understood their fear. He too was scared. Shitless. About what had and was still happening to him.
The heart transplant had saved his life. Without it he would have died.
But in many ways, it may have been better if he had.
Since he had woken up with the new heart inside himself, he had not been the same person. He felt as if he was being slowly possessed by the spirit of its previous owner.
He knew that his wife thought he was mad. He had spent hours talking to his consultant at the Royal Infirmary about it, but even he had denied that there was anything wrong with him. "It will go away," he had insisted. "It will settle down!"
It had started with a fascination with knives.
"Knives," William had come to believe, "...were a thing of beauty. An art form."
His personality had then begun to change...he had always loved climbing...always...but now he was obsessed with it. He spent every weekend away climbing in the mountains. His obsession had been costing his family a fortune.
Then there was the spicy food...he had started to crave spicy food.
But that was nothing...nothing compared to the dreams, the nightmares, the night sweats and screaming his head off with fear and repulsion at 3.30 in the morning at what he had just seen happening in his mind.
Every night now he dreamt the same dreams.
Erotic dreams. Kinky dreams. Violent dreams. Dreams in which he killed women.
And one man.
A German soldier.
It had got so bad, that at one point William had made a botched attempt at suicide: a cry for help, more than anything else.
William Lawson had begged the consultant to help it all stop, but he had said there was nothing to be done. "Don't worry."
Convinced that he was being possessed by the spirit of the previous owner of his heart, William had started trawling the internet to see if anyone else who had had organ transplants had reported similar experiences.
Bingo!
He was not alone.
There were hundreds!
William had gone back to his consultant. He had begged for help. Strangely, when he had mentioned the phenomena of 'cellular memory syndrome' to the consultant, he had nodded. Almost admitting that he knew all about it.
Why had he not mentioned it previously?
&
nbsp; It was then that the consultant had insisted that it had something to do with the drugs. He had said that he was 'in discussion' with the company that made the treatment.
So, it was the drug company that was to blame! The consultant had then explained that it was the drugs that were causing this, accentuating and apparently amplifying a natural and existing phenomena that had already been reported, but which was now significantly enhanced. And that was the end of the conversation with his consultant. He would not say anymore. He said that there was 'regrettably nothing more that he could do!"
It was at that point that William's attention had shifted from his consultant to the manufacturer of his drug treatment. Someone was to blame. Someone was responsible for what was happening to him.
He had called the drug company a thousand times. Written to them. Not once, but at least ten times.
No one would talk to him.
Eventually he had managed to find out who was responsible.
That same day, his wife had left him. Fed up of the lack of sleep, the arguments, his sudden mood swings, his obsessive watching of "Saving Private Ryan" over and over again. She had taken the kids and gone, and William's life had almost come to an end.
He was nothing without them.
Someone would pay!
He had started drinking, even though the doctors had said he shouldn't. But it was the only way that he could escape. For a while it had worked, but then, in the past few weeks the hallucinations had got worse.
William had had enough.
If StemPharma would not reply to his letters or take his calls, he would go to them and make them listen!
Last week, while he was drunk and desperate, he had broken into his consultant's office, stolen the file on SP-X4, and found the correspondence between Dr Jamieson and a Philip Grant.
He had read everything on the file. All about SP-X4. All about the consultant's efforts to understand more about cellular memory syndrome. All about the other transplant patients who were being supervised by Dr Jamieson during the initial commercial trials of SP-X4 in Scotland. And lastly all about another patient called Peter Nicolson who had apparently been given the kidneys from the same donor that had been the source of William's beloved new heart.
According to the file, Peter Nicolson had also been experiencing similar, if not identical symptoms and experiences as William had. Unfortunately there were no contact details within the file, and when he had gone online to track him down, it turned out there were over a hundred Peter Nicolsons in Scotland!
The thing that made William mad, was that from the dates on the records in the file, the consultant had been perfectly aware that there was a problem with SP-X4 for quite some time, but had initially denied this to William and then not discussed it with him until only very recently.
Even worse was the fact that StemPharma were not recognising there was a problem. StemPharma had been giving the consultant the brush off almost as much as the consultant had been giving it to William, even though they must have known exactly what the problem was.
However, it was not all bad news: in reading the correspondence between the consultant in Edinburgh and StemPharma, one name had risen above all the others. The name of one man who was seemingly ultimately responsible within StemPharma for SP-X4.
A man with whom Dr Jamieson had had repeated correspondence, and from whom no real answers had been obtained.
Philip Grant.
Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the StemPharma Corporation.
The best part was that on one single email that was copied in the file, the email signature from Philip Grant had contained all his relevant details: his address, his direct line in the office and his 'cell' phone number.
Later this evening...or late afternoon US time..., William Lawson from Edinburgh in Scotland was going to pay Mr Philip Grant a little social visit.
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William was almost at the security gate now, where he knew he would have to take off his shoes and belt and empty his pockets of absolutely anything metal. It was very important, very important, that William had no metal on his body that might set off the alarm.
He was having second thoughts now. Perhaps this was an incredibly bad idea. The likelihood of them discovering the knife that was strapped to his thigh was very small, but now he was only two people away from the security gate, he was cursing himself for having not put the knife in his luggage. If the security guard did a quick body search, perhaps he would feel it strapped to the inside of his thigh. But if he did make it through the metal detector without anything sounding, he should be in the clear.
From the moment he had seen the knife he had fallen in love with it. He knew his new obsession with knives was not healthy, but the knife he had found within the file that he had stolen from the consultant's office was like no other he had ever seen. It was, most probably, like no other knife you could buy anywhere in the United Kingdom. It was special.
William was a mechanic. He knew a lot about tools, about metals, about materials. The knife that was now strapped around his leg was made of some sort of ceramic. He had never seen anything like it before. Its blade was sharp and strong, and the hilt, although a slightly different shade of white, seemed to be made of the same material.
Who had manufactured it? Where had it come from? How had it come to be in the file?
William had become obsessed with the knife. He had sat stroking the blade with his fingers as he had watched the film Saving Private Ryan several times since the robbery.
It helped him to think. To plan.
The perspiration was running off his brow again, as he wiped it off and stepped forward to place his coat, watch, coins, small rucksack, shoes and belt into a blue plastic bucket on the conveyor belt.
In his mind, he was counting repeatedly from one to seven, his lucky number, his counting getting faster the closer it came for his turn to be searched.
It was his turn at the metal detector gate now. He put his hands slightly up in the air, almost inviting someone to search him, and he stepped through, breathing in and holding his breath, dreading the sound of a little beep, or for a red light to flash, indicating the presence of metal.
The security officer in front looked at him, raised his arm, and then waved to his right, indicating that William should walk to the conveyor belt and pick up his things.
William breathed out.
He stood in a small line waiting for a few people to pick up their things from the conveyor belt. He saw his bags and personal belongings come out of the X-ray machine, and trundle down to bang into the other blue plastic buckets containing other people's private possessions.
Patiently, he waited, then as the person in front of him picked up their possessions, William stepped forward.
He scooped up his bag, his shoes and belt...everything that belonged to him, and walked past the people in front of him to a row of seats against a wall, onto which he dropped his possessions, and slowly began to put everything back where they belonged.
He put on his shoes, his belt. Replaced the coins in his pockets. Put on his jacket.
Then he walked away from security and into the departure lounge of the airport.
William couldn't believe how simple it had been. All that worrying had been for nothing.
It was slightly uncomfortable to wear, but in a strange way, William found the feeling of the knife strapped to his thigh very comforting.
Very comforting indeed.
Chapter Ninety Eight
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StemPharma Corporation
New York
Philip Grant's Office
May 16th
4.30 p.m.
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Philip Grant stared at the figure on his laptop screen, announcing in dollars, the exact balance that had now been paid into his account from the vested shares that he had sold.
It was an eye-watering figure, slightly less than he had hoped for, due mainly to
the fact that the stock-market had reacted a little more adversely to the growing knowledge that someone was dumping stock. Questions were being asked. The price was falling. In the past hour, the stock price had reached a three month low of $31.48.
Yet, in spite of it all, Philip Grant was a very happy man indeed. The years of fantasizing and dreaming were finally at an end.
From now on he could do exactly as he planned. Exactly.
The first thing he had done this afternoon was to transfer $10 million offshore to a secret bank account that his wife knew nothing about. It was his security, just in case now he was rich and carefree, he decided to find another 'new model'. After all, twenty years together was a long time. He had once heard said by a friend at his golf club that man was not biologically designed or built to spend all his life with one woman. He had evolved so that he could spread his seed with as many partners as possible.
Now that the remaining balance in his bank account had reached $30 million, perhaps he could afford to experiment a little. To have a little fun, to play the field a little, before it was too late. It was just an idea, but one certainly worth thinking about.
The phone on his desk rang again.
All afternoon he had been ignoring the phone, letting the callers leave voice messages that he would simply ignore and never have the need to answer again.
He had decided that today was going to be his last day at StemPharma.
Philip Grant stared at the phone. It had stopped ringing, but then it had started again.
He smiled to himself. He knew it would be a customer, probably complaining. Customers always complained...they never simply called up to say 'thank you!' or how much they loved you. For his whole life Philip Grant had been putting up with shit from customers, always smiling, always apologising, always trying to be ever-so-fucking-nice, so that his customers would like him and feel guilty about complaining. During all those years, there had been just one thing that he had always dreamed of doing, but never done. Why not do it today? It would be his little way of celebrating!