Lethal Profit

by Alex Blackmore

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘At that point the country’s infrastructure will likely start to struggle with the lack of clean water for drinking. This will also affect hospitals and industry such as agriculture. We have stores of bottled water enough for drinking for five days but importing these from non-affected countries would be prohibitively expensive in the long term – even over a period of several weeks – and there just won’t be enough to go around to cover everything else we use water for in this country.’

  ‘Where the hell has it come from?’

  ‘We have no idea.’

  After walking to the Gare du Nord and buying tickets for a Eurostar leaving at 6pm, Eva and Leon drove around the city, reluctant to stay still until the moment the train pulled out of the station. They were driving through Montmartre, up and down the winding streets lined with boutiques and cafés that spilled tables out onto the pavement, streets so narrow that a tail would be impossible not to spot.

  ‘Do you know anyone in London who can help?’ asked Leon as they drove past an enormous wall of flowers outside one of the shops on the way down to Pigalle.

  Eva thought for a second. ‘Not really.’

  ‘I thought you were a journalist?’

  ‘Editor. Of a magazine. Not much use in this kind of situation.’

  ‘Is there no one you know who might have some kind of influence?’ Leon had allowed himself to be carried away by Eva’s conviction that travelling to London was the right course of action but was obviously now having second thoughts. Although even he could see there was clearly more need for the information they had on the memory stick in London than in Paris at that moment.

  ‘N… ’ Eva stopped herself. She was silent for several seconds and when she spoke there was a hard tone in her voice. ‘Only one.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Irene Hunt.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘She’s the woman who broke up our family.’

  Leon was silent, apparently taken by surprise.

  ‘She had an affair with my father,’ continued Eva. ‘They met whilst he was reporting in the Lebanon. At the time she was secret service – MI6 I think. He almost left my mother for her but in the end she refused to leave her husband.’

  With surprise, Eva heard the bitterness in her voice – even after all these years.

  ‘Do you think she could help us?’ Leon said cautiously.

  ‘I don’t know anyone else with any connections to that kind of sphere.’

  ‘Can you trust her?’

  Eva stopped and thought about that. Irene Hunt and her father had seemed unstoppably drawn into each other’s orbit when they had returned from the Lebanon, so much so that he had been willing to forsake decades of marriage for her. After the affair was discovered and the confrontation had ended, Eva’s mother had become seriously ill. Even though in the end her father didn’t leave, knowing that he would have if Irene had been willing to give up her own marriage had left Eva’s mother utterly bereft. The life just seemed to seep out of her. Once the fighting had stopped and there was nothing left to say she had simply taken to her bed. When she died, doctors had named her cause of death as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as ‘broken heart syndrome’. That affair had also been the reason that Jackson had felt compelled to leave, so in a way Irene Hunt had ruined all their lives. Could Eva really trust her?

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly.

  ‘What about the man we saw on the TV – Don Porter?’ said Leon clearly unsure about contacting someone like Irene Hunt who had apparently had such a negative impact on Eva’s life.

  ‘How would we even find him, Leon? You said yourself that the algae spreads like wildfire so we can’t leave it that long. Even if we find Porter, we’d never get close enough to explain what’s on the stick and how we got it in time. We would sound like crazy conspiracy theorists if we tried to tell people what we know. If we try and email this information to someone there’s little hope of it falling into the right hands in time and I don’t know who else we could contact who wouldn’t dismiss us straight away as insane. I can at least get close enough to Irene Hunt to force her to read this information.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eva a little too forcefully.

  Leon looked at her.

  She looked away.

  TWENTY-ONE

  INSPECTOR LEGRAND FROM THE Préfecture de Police gazed steadily at his sergeant who was busily scribbling notes as he finished a phone call with the pathologist who had carried out the post mortems on the three bodies they had discovered in Seine Saint Denis Département 93. Of the two teenagers found in the playground, the first cause of death had been easy to pinpoint – a slashing of the stomach with some kind of curved blade and nothing more complex – but the other two deaths – the second boy from the playground and the red-haired Englishman from the nearby apartment block – had sent the pathologists into a frenzy and Sergeant Gagnere was currently on the phone trying to find out why.

  ‘Well?’ Legrand asked bad-temperedly as soon as Gagnere had replaced the handset.

  ‘We’re going to have to go down to the morgue.’

  Legrand groaned. There was a reason he did the job he did and that was so he could deal with live criminals and victims. He would much rather leave the corpses to that morbid branch of scientists who seemed to relish poking around in the deceased. He reached for his heavy woollen coat. ‘Let’s get this over with then.’

  The pathologist on duty was an old colleague of Legrand’s – Dr Shume – and the policeman’s frosty demeanour melted slightly when he saw who was in charge of the autopsies. At least they wouldn’t receive some long, drawn-out lecture on the biological history of the patients or the rate of occurrence of these kinds of deaths since 1975. Legrand did not have time for that.

  ‘Shume, my friend,’ he said, shaking the doctor’s hand, ‘how are you?’

  Dr Shume, a small, wiry man with a silver halo of remaining hair and the handshake of an ox, grinned steadily at Legrand.

  ‘I’m puzzled to be frank,’ he said, cutting straight to the chase.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well, initially I just couldn’t figure out how these men had met such a grisly end. The boy has injuries consistent with being beaten, but not enough to have killed him; and the English man… well, he was a real puzzle.’

  ‘Obviously you opened them up.’

  ‘Yes, that’s when it became really confusing – they seem to have symptoms of several fatal conditions all rolled into one.’

  ‘That’s not so uncommon is it?’

  ‘No, but in this case they are illnesses that would have taken years to develop. They are normally present in much older people than these two who are virtually children.’

  Legrand said nothing.

  ‘Look,’ said the doctor, ‘I will show you the Englishman.’

  The doctor whisked a sheet from a metal gurney to reveal the corpse they had found in the apartment.

  ‘Can’t you shut his eyes?’ the inspector complained. The look on the man’s face as he had died was quite frankly rather disturbing.

  ‘Well, I left them open for a reason. You see they show externally the kind of trauma he was experiencing inside.’

  ‘Right,’ said Legrand uneasily. He was eager to get out of the morgue.

  ‘As I said, there’s evidence of several diseases here, none of which you would expect to see in someone of this man’s age, particularly at such an advanced stage that they would be fatal.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Myasthenia gravis, a chronic autoimmune neuromuscular disease characterised by varying degrees of weakness of the skeletal muscles. The body is dependent on muscles to function – the diaphragm, heart etc – so if these muscles become so weakened that they no longer work, essential functions like breathing will begin to slow down and then they will stop altogether as the organs collapse. Highly distressing if it occurs because th
e sufferer can feel it happening.’

  ‘And the other condition?’

  ‘Pulmonary fibrosis – replacement of normal lung tissue with thickened scar tissue that causes irreversible decrease in oxygen diffusion – it’s the body’s own immune system that triggers this, normally in response to inhaling something like asbestos. It’s a really horrible type of death because the patient is acutely aware of not being able to get a breath as the lung capacity is gradually restricted.’

  ‘No wonder he looked so alarmed.’

  ‘It’s certainly one of the least pleasant ways to go. Pulmonary fibrosis can be a secondary effect of an autoimmune disease like Myasthenia gravis but it would be rare.’

  ‘So then we’re not dealing with a murder?’

  For the first time in the conversation, Dr Shume paused. He frowned and then continued, ‘Well initially, that’s exactly what I thought but the speed at which these two conditions appear to have advanced is medically impossible.’

  Legrand looked blankly at Dr Shume. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s like I said, these conditions take years – decades – to develop. These bodies, in the condition that they are in, should not exist.’

  ‘How do you know that they were not already harbouring this?’

  ‘We have access to this man’s medical records,’ Dr Shume said, pointing at the corpse, ‘He worked at the British Embassy and every one of their employees is required to undergo both a full medical before starting work, as well as an annual check-up. The medical would have picked these up because for these diseases to have killed him now, they would have had to have been at quite an advanced stage in the past twelve months.’

  ‘When was the medical?’

  ‘He’s had several. The most recent was a month ago and there was no sign of even the beginnings of either condition.’

  ‘Is it possible for either one to become fatal within a month?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘And the boy?’

  ‘He is just fourteen – this could be the first time someone this young has ever died in this way anywhere in the world.’

  Both men fell silent. Legrand felt out of his depth. ‘OK, so it is not possible for this to have happened and yet… ’

  ‘It is not possible in nature,’ said Shume, interrupting. Legrand frowned. He did not like being interrupted.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Shume looked him straight in the eye. ‘Although it would require considerable resources, it would – theoretically – be possible for a genetic simulation of these diseases to be manufactured in a lab and then planted into the body.’

  ‘You’re not serious… ’

  ‘Look at this.’ He pushed the corpse onto its side and directed the Inspector’s attention to the back of the victim’s right thigh.

  ‘A puncture mark,’ said the Inspector, gazing at the small red welt.

  ‘Indeed. The other victim has one too.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ The inspector was becoming frustrated. The smell of death made him nervous.

  ‘I could be wrong inspector but I think these two were injected with something that artificially implanted the Myasthenia gravis, the Pulmonary fibrosis into their bodies and that subsequently led to their deaths.’

  ‘Artificially implanted?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Forgive me if I say that sounds a little fantastical.’

  ‘Forgiven.’ Dr Shume fixed Legrand with a beady eye. ‘However, I do think you need to consider the possibility that what you’re dealing with here, Inspector, is a very sinister, very clever serial killer.’

  After they had finally been forced to stop driving, Eva and Leon had parked Leon’s car and taken shelter in a secluded park five minutes’ walk from the station. It was rush hour in Paris, traffic was gridlocked; they couldn’t risk getting blocked in and missing the train. The park was really nothing more than a large, hedged garden circled in the centre by a gravel path but it felt far enough from the rush of people to give them space to think. However, it was not a comfortable environment. A group of men crowded around one of the park benches had watched them arrive, staring unashamedly at every inch of Eva’s slim frame. It was clearly an action calculated to intimidate but Eva had refused to increase her pace or show any sign of fear, despite her pounding heart. As she and Leon had walked over to a bench on the opposite side from the entrance and sat down, the men continued talking, occasionally glancing over at them, but did nothing.

  As they waited for the minutes to pass, Eva found herself struggling to control her emotions in a way she was not used to. Not once in the past 12 years had she felt this vulnerable and raw. The waiting was excruciating, both because of the pressure of what they needed to do and the feeling of being hunted. There was also an almost overwhelming urge to throw up her hands, push this whole thing on to someone else and run away. Eva had considered heading for the nearest police station – not the most illogical move – but she knew that was an idea that Leon would instantly shoot down and instinctively she felt maybe he would be right. Their story was too strange for it not to be met with suspicion. It would probably stand or fall on their characters and appearance and Leon with his split personality and Eva with her black eye did not meet the superficial requirements for solid and upstanding citizens. Besides, Eva’s experience with the fat policeman who had refused to give her any information about Jackson’s death had made her less than sure that the police would help them with any degree of speed or efficiency. That had also fed her natural distrust of authority – there was something so strange about Jackson’s files having just ‘disappeared’ that she felt speaking to the police might even be a dangerous move.

  Eva tried to silence her racing mind and looked up at the sky. She was exhausted; every fibre of every muscle felt strained. She closed her eyes, leaned back against the seat and took several quiet, deep breaths.

  When she opened her eyes, Leon was pacing up and down on the gravel in front of the bench.

  ‘Sit down.’

  He looked at her and then carried on pacing.

  ‘Seriously, do you want to draw any more attention to us?’ She nodded over at one of the nearest huddles of smoking men, a mass of hooded heads, bright white eyes and bent shoulders, who appeared to be becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the pair’s presence in the park. They could have chosen somewhere they stood out less, but there was only one entrance to this park and from where they were they could keep a close eye on it.

  It was in that direction that Eva was staring when she noticed a shadowy figure enter the park and start to move at speed in their direction.

  ‘Leon.’ She stood; instinctively, she grabbed her bag. She took one look at Leon reaching for his gun and then she turned and started to run. Before she had taken two steps she felt as if she was falling. All the breath was knocked from her body as someone caught her from behind. She felt her neck and throat being crushed as she was slammed backwards against the bench she had been sitting on. Another arm came over her head, across her chest and grabbed the belt loop of her jeans as she was lifted bodily from behind over the back of the bench and dragged backwards across the gravel. Panic reflexes seared through her brain and she fought and kicked and tried to scream but remained caught in the iron grip as another hand clasped her throat and fingers tightened around her vocal chords, choking her. The park pathway quickly disappeared from view and suddenly she was behind one of the high privet hedges that surrounded it.

  She was dumped on the floor and masking tape was quickly and brutally wrapped around her mouth and head, catching and tearing at her hair. She shouted out in anger but the noise was muted and useless. Eva was flipped over face down onto the ground, which was covered in the brown, wet leaves of autumn. She tried to raise her head to see where she was. Surely someone could see this, they were outside the park now. When she managed to get a glimpse of her surroundings, she realised she was completely hidden in the back of the
park where all the hedges converged to create a natural hiding place. She felt her hands being bound once again behind her, this time with some kind of tape, and then a boot obscured her vision before she was flipped over onto her back and roughly propped up against one of the hedges.

  Once she was upright Eva tried to calm her breathing, which was coming in raw, ragged gasps through the black tape. Where was Leon?

  In the small space with her were two people, both men, both dressed in black and wearing woollen masks over their heads.

  One of the men began trying to fasten the tape around her ankles. She kicked out at him and he delivered a sharp blow just below the knee of her left leg that sent scorching lines of pain travelling up to her hip and down to her ankle before her muscles started to go numb. She tried to struggle but her leg was lifeless and it weighted her in one place. Another of the masked figures produced a small black leather medical case which when opened fully revealed syringes, two of them.

  Just behind her on the other side of the hedge Eva could hear street noise. The man with the medical bag pulled out the first syringe and began to hold it up and tap the side. Neither of them spoke. A pre-arranged plan was being executed. Eva listened to the sound of her heartbeat singing in her ears.

  She bent her knees up and shunted herself backwards using her one good leg and this time sensed give in the hedge behind her. The men glanced at her but made no move to stop her and carried on with what they were doing. She pushed gently against the foliage with her back once again and realised that the hedge was made up of not one tree but several. There was space between each one, just a tiny amount but if she pushed hard enough she might be able to slide through. Eva began backing herself up more and more against the hedge by pushing with her one good leg and sliding the rest of her body against the floor, whilst the masked man prepared the syringe and his colleague left the sheltered space, presumably to collect Leon. Behind her back she rubbed her wrists together and realised the tape was a poor substitute for plastic cuffs and she could pull her wrists free. For several seconds she worked her wrists until she was able to pull one out of the loop of tape. She kept her hands behind her back as if they were still bound. She had to avoid anyone holding on to her arms, she couldn’t let them hold her down.