Knife After Death: A chilling crime thriller

by Irvine, Ian C. P.

  So Philip Grant picked up the phone, determined to speak to his last customer and tell him or her to 'go fuck yourself!'

  "Hello? Mr Grant? Is that a Mr Philip Grant?"

  "Yes, Hi, this is he..." Philip replied, determined to enjoy this.

  "Mr Philip Grant of the StemPharma Corporation?"

  "Yes, this is still 'he'..."

  "Mr Philip Grant of the StemPharma Corporation, the pharmaceutical company that invented and now sells the SP-X4 treatment?"

  "Absolutely. This is absolutely him. That's me. Definitely me!"

  "Good. My name is William Lawson. I am a patient who has been taking your treatment...I know it's short notice, but I'm visiting New York today and I will very shortly be at your offices. I was hoping to meet you just before you leave the office tonight to talk about the drug, and the effects it is having on me..."

  "Mr William Lawson? Well, frankly, I simply don't have the time or inclination to meet with you to discuss your problems. I know we have never met, Mr Lawson, so please don't take this personally, but I would just like to suggest that you actually just fuck the hell off. In other words, please stop your stupid, pathetic, fucking complaining, and fuck right back to where you have come from. I have had enough of stupid customers complaining all the fucking time. You took the drug, right? You're still alive? Yes? So, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING AND FUCK RIGHT OFF!"

  Philip Grant hung up.

  "Boy, did that feel good!" he thought to himself.

  Something flickered on his computer screen and his attention was drawn back to his bank balance which had just updated itself with the latest figure. Another deposit had been made.

  $32 million.

  Philip was having a great day.

  .

  --------------------

  .

  William Lawson had paid the taxi-driver, giving him a '7' dollar tip. '7' was his magic number. It used to be '4', but since the operation, the transplant, '7' had replaced '4'. Recently he thought about the number a lot. He knew it was a magical number, that it had special significance. He looked for the number wherever he went, seeing it on car number plates, on house signs, in advertising in shop windows.

  The number was everywhere.

  He saw the number in his mind first thing in the morning when he woke up, and he saw it in his mind's eye last thing at night before he went to sleep.

  And when he was nervous, he had started counting repeatedly to himself, "One, two, three, four, five, six...SEVEN." Over, and over again. As he had done whilst queuing up to go through security at the airport.

  He was counting to seven now, even as he stood across the road from the entrance to the StemPharma Corporation in New York.

  After paying the taxi-driver he had gone into the reception area of the company and spoken to the receptionist, telling her he had an appointment with Philip Grant, the VP of Marketing. She had called through to his secretary, and then told William that unfortunately Mr Philip Grant had already left the office and gone home.

  "Sorry for your wasted journey. Have a nice day!" she finished, smiling comically and tilting her head to one side as she emphasised the word 'nice' in her last sentence.

  William had walked outside of the building, returning to look again at the parked car he had seen in the 'parking lot' as he had walked into the office building: the car that was now still parked in the parking bay that had the sign 'Mr Philip Grant : VP of Sales and Marketing' emblazoned proudly in black writing on a wooden board that was attached to the wall of the office building.

  The anger had been steadily building up inside William all day long. It had reached a new peak after his earlier phone conversation with Mr Grant, during which the stupid Mr Grant had made the big mistake,...the huge mistake of telling William to 'fuck off'.

  But now that the pretty receptionist had just told him to 'have a nice day!' and lied to him that Mr Grant had gone home, the rage within him rocketed almost out of control.

  William reached inside his jacket pocket and felt the knife that he had removed from his thigh and taken out of its protective leather sheath. As he counted from one to seven, repeatedly, trying unsuccessfully to calm himself down, he ran the tip of the finger along the edge of the exposed blade.

  He walked back and forwards in the parking lot, -at all times keeping an eye on the car and the door to the reception area- while he counted and tried to think of what to do next.

  The rage had blinded him, and he found it difficult to think clearly.

  Several times people came out of the reception area, the doors automatically swooshing open in front of him and then closing behind them as they walked out into the evening air and over to their cars.

  None of them was Philip Grant.

  William knew exactly what Philip Grant looked like, having googled his name and found his picture on LinkedIn and Twitter, and associated with numerous articles and Press Releases from or about StemPharma.

  Philip Grant was tall, quite good looking, bald, and rather slim. Perhaps even skinny. He would be easy to spot when he did finally emerge.

  .

  Ten minutes later, William was hovering near the car when a man came out of the building, turned around towards the reception area, and stood looking at the glass edifice of StemPharma for a few minutes before he finally turned and made a bee line for the car in the spot of Philip Grant.

  William recognised him immediately.

  .

  "Mr Grant?", William asked loudly, as he moved quickly to intercept the VP before he got to his car.

  The tall man turned to look at William, continuing in his stride and pointing the remote control key fob at his blue Porsche.

  "Do I know you?" the man asked.

  "Yes. I spoke to you earlier on the phone...I wanted to meet with you this evening. You told me to fuck off!"

  "Ah...yes, now I remember. I must say, that I found our little conversation particularly enjoyable. Thank you..."

  William stepped in front of the VP, lifted up his hand and pressed it against the chest of the man in front of him, who in real life was not much taller than William himself.

  The VP stopped, stared at the man in front of him, the smile disappearing from his face.

  "Please remove your hand and step aside."

  It was a simple sentence, but spoken with a sudden, cold, cutting edge.

  William pushed his hand harder against the man's chest.

  "I need to talk to you. No one tells me to fuck off like that. Especially when I have just flown all the way from Scotland to see you!"

  "Scotland?"

  William saw the recognition in his eyes. The word 'Scotland' had had a visible impact on Mr Philip Grant of the StemPharma Corporation.

  Did Philip Grant know all about William's case? Had he known about his suffering all along, and had still lied about the effect of SP-X4? Had William lost his wife, his children, his job, ...and his sanity, ...because of this man?

  This man that had told him to simply 'fuck off?'

  A white, blinding fury surged within William, adrenaline, anger and months of pain and suffering colliding in an explosive instant, during which the last vestiges of sanity were driven from his tired, weakened mind.

  After that it all happened very quickly.

  A security guard emerged from the reception area of StemPharma, shouting after Mr Grant and asking if he was okay.

  At the same moment Mr Grant pushed forward against William, knocking his hand aside, and stepping toward his car.

  William saw the guard coming towards them, he felt the VP push past him, and as he was cast aside, he reacted instantly by reaching out and wrapping his arm around the neck of the slightly taller man.

  William was a very strong man. Like many other climbers, his body was far more powerful than it looked.

  As he spun Philip Grant around towards the security guard, his free hand reached quickly inside his jacket pocket, immediately pulling out the unsheathed knife and bringing it quickly
up to the throat of the VP whose back was now pulled tightly against William's chest.

  Time seemed to slow down, but not slow enough for William to make any sense of what has happening.

  It was almost like as if it was a film that was playing out in front of him, in which he played a starring role: and it was just like one of the many visions that he had experienced and enjoyed in his own mind over the past few months.

  He felt and even saw his hand rise up towards the throat of Philip Grant. He felt the initial resistance of the ceramic knife as it swept into and then through the skin, sinew, tissue and cartilage of the man's throat.

  He saw the blood spurt out and cover his hands, and he felt and enjoyed the resistance of the man struggling in his arms.

  William felt powerful, strong, invincible, incredible!

  William released his grip on the dying man, closed his eyes and saw the number '7' flash in his mind, whereupon he felt a strange and curious blend of elation, satisfaction and ultimate, final relief.

  William smiled.

  .

  As the body slumped and fell from the man's arms to the ground, the security guard fired three times.

  William Lawson was dead before he hit the ground.

  Mr Philip Grant, multi-millionaire and the ex-VP of Sales and Marketing for the StemPharma Corporation, died a minute later in a pool of his own blood.

  Chapter Ninety Nine

  .

  .

  The Royal Infirmary

  Edinburgh

  May 16th

  11.30 p.m.

  .

  .

  Peter Nicolson stirred, his eyes blinking several times before finally opening.

  The lights around him were bright. He closed his eyes again, before reopening them more slowly and allowing things to come gradually into focus.

  He felt someone squeeze his hand, and he turned his head gently to find the smiling face of Susie looking over at him.

  "Hello stranger," she said gently. "Welcome back!"

  Peter tried to speak, but found it difficult.

  "Here, take a sip of water," she said, leaning forward and placing a glass of water in front of his lips, and helping him to drink from it.

  "You've been sleeping for a week now... They put you into an induced coma, to help your body recover."

  "How..." Peter coughed..."How did it go?" he managed to say.

  "Fine. You did excellently, Peter. Congratulations, the operation was a success!", and without saying another word, she leant across the bed and kissed him passionately on the lips.

  When she finally drew back and smiled at Peter, he said just two words: "Again, please."

  Susie obliged. Several times.

  .

  An hour later, Peter's bed had been raised up, and a pillow had been propped behind his head. A consultant had been in, checked him over, given him a positive thumbs up, and left.

  All things considered, Peter felt great.

  Dr Jamieson had left him a "Get Well Soon" card, and apologised that he would probably be lying on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean when Peter finally read the card.

  It was as Peter leant across bed to put the card on the table beside his bed that the miracle happened.

  Peter accidentally let the card slip from his hand down to the floor, and as he looked down at the card lying on the floor, he felt a sudden pang of unease and a slight dizziness.

  The floor was so far away, and he was so high up.

  Peter lay his head back on his pillow, closed his eyes, and smiled!

  .

  His acrophobia was back!

  .

  --------------------

  StemPharma Corporation

  Delaware

  June 28th

  .

  Nic White put down the phone and whistled.

  The news for the last six weeks had been almost universally bad, but now it had all just turned around.

  First, the murder of Philip Grant had caught them all off guard, shocking and saddening them all. However, rumours quickly started circulating that he had been murdered by a patient of SP-X4 who had suffered extremely negatively from cellular memory syndrome and had singled out Philip Grant for revenge.

  The news of his death was first broadcast by the local news station. The next day a local reporter had picked up on the rumours and had started to make some further more detailed investigations around his death and 'SP-X4'.

  After that events happened very quickly indeed. By the end of the week, the journalist appeared on TV with a more detailed report, outlining SP-X4, cellular memory syndrome and the role that SP-X4 had played in it all.

  By Saturday the internet, Twitter and Facebook were alive with the phenomena that they had tried to keep hidden, and suddenly hundreds, perhaps thousands of patients were publicising their experiences via the other new phenomena of Social Networking.

  In spite of the fact that the majority of the reports spoke highly of SP-X4 as a wonder drug that had saved their lives, the stock market reacted viciously.

  When the stock market opened again on Monday morning, the value of StemPharma fell to $6 dollars a share, at which point trading in the stock was suspended.

  By the following Friday, two other large pharmaceutical companies had approached the board of StemPharma and had made aggressive, competitive takeover bids.

  An emergency meeting of shareholders was called a week later, and within three weeks a deal had been signed, sealed and delivered.

  .

  What Nic found particularly interesting was that no one wanted to see the drug die. Everyone, including those with a keen interest in Medicine within the American Government, wanted to see SP-X4 survive.

  Nic was later to even hear rumours that the medical authorities of several foreign powers had made representation via official channels, stating their continued support for the treatment, albeit with some conditions for the initiation of new studies into how it functioned, explicitly in relation to the phenomena that it clearly enhanced.

  Everyone, patients, scientists and Medical Authorities recognised SP-X4 for what it was: amazing!

  No one understood it, but the bottom line was that it saved lives.

  Thousands of lives.

  And those that survived were almost all universally happy for the new life they had been given.

  SP-X4 was a hero.

  Nic White was a hero.

  And everyone in his dedicated team of geneticists, doctors and nurses were heroes too.

  .

  Nic White walked across to the drinks cabinet in his luxury flat in the bunker deep underground in Delaware. He took out a bottle of thirty year old Scottish Malt.

  He had a lot to celebrate.

  Nic White had just been made an offer he could not refuse. The new owners of StemPharma and the intellectual property rights of SP-X4 had effectively just doubled his salary and agreed to his single, new condition of continued employment: that as well as continuing to own, develop and oversee SP-X4, Nic White would be given $1billion dollars worth of funding to build a new team and laboratory to investigate and explore in greater detail the concept that 'consciousness' and 'memories' could be encoded within the DNA string: was this possible, and if so, what were the mechanisms by which it happened? What were the implications of this, and how could medicine benefit from it?

  Once again, Nic White would be conducting research at the forefront of human understanding and pushing back the boundaries.

  He was excited.

  In spite of all his worries, at the end of the day, it had all turned out well.

  Nic poured himself a whisky.

  He sat in his chair and sipped the amber, golden nectar.

  It tasted good.

  Chapter One Hundred

  .

  .

  Maciek's Story

  The Cuillins Mountain Range

  Isle of Skye

  Scotland

  September 8th

  The Year Befo
re

  10.30 a.m.

  .

  .

  Maciek turned to look at the peak of Sgurr Thearlaich.

  Then he looked at the picture of the 'Inaccessible Pinnacle' on the back of the map. He then looked back at the peak of Sgurr Thearlaich.

  It looked simple. He smiled to himself. He was going to enjoy this.

  .

  An eagle soared above his head, and Maciek looked up and watched it, seeing how it scanned the ground below for its prey.

  Maciek smiled. The eagle was a true hunter. Like himself: he surveyed his territory, found something he wanted to kill, and killed it. Whenever he wanted. Wherever he wanted.

  Standing up, Maciek watched as the bird circled high above his head, turning to follow the path of his flight.

  He heard the eagle crying loudly, and he watched in awe as it glided through the heavens, so high above the world of troubles below. So agile. So free.

  Maciek looked at his watch.

  It was getting late. He could now see other climbers making their way up the hill below. They would soon be arriving at the bealach below. He would have to hurry now if he still wanted to be the first to the top of the Pinnacle.

  A few minutes later he committed himself to the edge of the cliff and started the climb down in preparation for moving across to the peak of Sgurr Thearlaich.

  He was five minutes into the downward climb, when he heard the eagle crying again. Clinging to the rock face, Maciek looked around quickly, trying to see where it was.

  Its cries seemed to be getting louder, but when Maciek turned to look where the cry had come from, the massive bird had already flown away.

  As he continued his downward climb, again and again he heard the eagle crying as it swooped down towards him.

  Holding on tightly to the rock face, Maciek looked around again, anxiously trying to locate where it was.

  Even though Maciek thought that eagles were truly beautiful birds of prey, he was not stupid and he knew they were very dangerous. They should never be antagonised and were best avoided at all times during a climb or descent.

  It was as he looked below him that he saw the nest, about two metres directly beneath his feet, three young eagles squawking noisily in a combination of fear and hunger.