He sounded slightly tense and Eva was struck by the fact that he apparently had no idea what kind of information she had, but had somehow been convinced to see them – at home – anyway. Was that odd? Irene obviously held considerable influence.
When Eva started speaking, it was with an uncharacteristic lack of confidence. ‘My brother works… well, he worked… only that is to say he’s… well he’s dead. But… ’ To her horror, Eva heard herself stumbling over her words. This did not happen to her.
She immediately shut her mouth to stop the flow of confusion. Mansfield was looking at her expectantly; she gazed back at him and suddenly realised that she didn’t want to tell him anything. She sat there mute, as the atmosphere in the room started to get strained.
Finally, she forced herself to speak. But she chose her words carefully.
‘This situation – with the algae – it wasn’t an accident.’
She looked for a reaction; Mansfield’s face registered nothing.
‘Although the algae was genetically engineered to be the main ingredient in a health supplement, from the information we have here… ’ she produced the memory stick ‘…there seems to be another, rather more sinister motive for the distribution of the algae – a profit motive.’
Eva looked over at Mansfield. She was surprised to see that he didn’t look at all shocked. Perhaps as a politician he was used to this kind of thing, perhaps he didn’t believe her, or perhaps he already knew all about this. Eva had no doubt that governments often had big business’s interests at their heart, maybe even to the detriment of the public at large. The question was whether that was happening here or not.
Suddenly he spoke.
‘Well, I wasn’t expecting that!’
Eva smiled tensely and Mansfield shifted in his seat, crossing one leg over the other and studying Eva and Leon’s faces in great detail. Eva felt like she was sitting on a knife edge. Had this been a mistake?
‘I have to say that if you had walked in off the street and given me this spiel I would have had you committed. We have had quite a few nutters claiming this algae business is a government conspiracy, the first step on the road to Armageddon, that kind of thing.’ He smiled as he spoke jovially. ‘But as you seem to have the backing of someone rather powerful, I feel like I should at least read these documents.’
Mansfield leaned across the table and picked up the stick, examining it as if he expected to see some revelation inscribed across the outside. ‘Is this the only one?’
‘No,’ Eva replied, failing to notice Leon’s slight shake of the head. ‘Leon has a copy and there is one other copied stick.’ Her voice trailed away.
‘Of course,’ said Mansfield. ‘Well, we won’t need them all if they’re identical.’
Mansfield stood up. ‘I think I should go and see what this contains and then perhaps we can reconvene to further these discussions?’
Eva stood up and smiled as Mansfield pushed his chair back under the table.
‘Feel free to use the facilities on this floor or request any refreshments you might need. My assistant will be pleased to help,’ he said, indicating the smart-suited woman who once again appeared at the door.
Leon pulled himself to his feet and the two men nodded at each other before Mansfield delivered a corporate smile to Eva and walked out of the room with the memory stick in his hand.
Turning to Leon, she opened her mouth to speak but he got in there first.
‘I have to go.’
‘What?’
‘I have to go.’
‘WHAT? Where?’
‘There is something I must do.’
‘What do you have to do right now that is more important than this?’
‘I’m sorry.’ He stood up. ‘I will be back soon.’
‘Leon… ’
Eva kept her voice low, not wanting Mansfield to hear them. ‘Leon.’ He didn’t respond, but turned away from her. Eva made a grab for his arm. She had to talk to him about Mansfield. During their short time with him, all her bullshit censors had gone off. She started walking after him towards the door, but when she realised he wasn’t going to stop, she stopped herself, watching his broad back disappear through the mahogany door frame as he marched away along the carpeted corridor.
Eva’s mind began to whir. There had to be a reasonable explanation. She didn’t have the energy to stop trusting him again, she needed a fucking ally in this situation. She looked around at the cosy office, reminiscent of a gentleman’s club complete with stuffed stags and priceless crystal and tried to calm herself down. The room was panelled on all sides with a dark wood and smelled deliciously of pine furniture polish. It was furnished opulently with plenty of red velvet, gold brocade and extravagant displays of enormous lilies. Rather outlandish tastes for an MP.
Eva gazed at the open door and waited several minutes to see if Leon would reappear. Then she walked over to it and stepped outside. Someone was standing with his back to her at the far end of the corridor, gesticulating frantically, one hand pinning a phone to the side of his head. It was Leon.
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘I HAVE THEM, RIGHT HERE.’
‘John, I must ask you to destroy the phone I gave you. Or, at the very least, to refrain from calling this number any more. I have already explained our position and now you must take whatever action you need to in order to survive this. But don’t call me any more.’
Mansfield was irritated by the CEO’s logical, calm tone; as if he were a wise parent giving advice to a panicking child, not a corrupt businessman who had just reneged on a deal that would effectively cost Mansfield his life.
‘Wait, you don’t understand.’
‘I don’t wish to have to end your involvement in this with any kind of finality, John.’
Mansfield hesitated for a second whilst the implication behind the CEO’s words sunk in. For the first time in this whole episode he could suddenly see how much danger he might be in. He was entirely disposable; once he had fulfilled his side of the deal he had very little leverage. Until the appearance of Eva Scott. Thanks to her, perhaps he could save his own skin and get the money that was rightly his. Mansfield took a deep breath and then he started his attack.
‘Eva Scott, she’s here, in my house.’
There was silence on the other end of the line and Mansfield heard the phone click onto hold.
Several seconds later the CEO returned. ‘How has this happened?’
‘She has a memory stick with documents on – I’ve looked through it and it’s enormously incriminating, it contains a lot of information on the real purpose of the supplements.’
‘Have you read it all?’
‘Yes. And I can see now that making money from… from fat people wasn’t your only motivation.’
Silence.
‘The algae spreads uncontrollably,’ Mansfield continued, purposefully trying to increase the level of aggression in his tone. ‘That was never part of the original plan. I’m assuming if investors have asked any questions up to now you have been claiming this was all a mistake, that you never knew the algae would spread like it does.’
The CEO said nothing.
‘Well, this memory stick proves that’s not the case; that you have been using those companies the entire time and you are basically going to make them the scapegoats for whatever it is you are about to do. They won’t be happy. We both know what these people would do to you if I passed this information on to the investors.’
Mansfield sat back in his chair; he was breathless and his chest was tight. He had never threatened anyone before.
After several minutes had elapsed the CEO spoke. Gone were the polite tones of his cut-glass accent. All pretence at manners had vanished.
‘I should have you killed.’
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You’re not in a position to survive if I send this information out. I could do that right now before you have time to action anything.’
‘What do you want?’<
br />
‘I just want what I have always wanted, that is all. I want my money and I want to disappear.’
By the time Leon returned to the room they were to wait in, Eva was once again composed. She was angry and uneasy but she couldn’t bring herself to confront Leon. If she lost him as a collaborator at this critical moment then she would be carrying the considerable burden of everything that was going on alone. He was the closest thing she had to an ally and, even though he behaved erratically, so far he hadn’t actually done anything against her interests. As far as she knew. Even so, when he walked back into the room, she couldn’t stop herself from looking for some kind of indication that he wasn’t who he appeared to be.
‘Mansfield isn’t back yet.’
‘No.’
Eva waited to see if Leon would provide an explanation for his quick exit but he took a seat back at the table by the biscuits. ‘Why did you tell him there was more than one copy of the stick?’
Not only was there going to be no explanation for the disappearing act but there was also criticism for Eva’s handling of the situation. She was about to spit out a sharp reply and then she stopped.
‘You don’t trust him, do you?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Habit.’
‘Would you like to follow me please?’ Before Eva could ask any more questions they were interrupted by Mansfield’s assistant. Leon was clearly unnerved at her almost silent arrival.
‘We were asked to wait here,’ he said, remaining at the table and meeting her glacial smile with a little Arctic charm of his own.
‘Mr Mansfield has asked me to take you downstairs whilst he finishes some business. He won’t be long.’
Eva looked from Leon to the woman and then back again. Leon inclined his head slightly, sighed and then pushed himself up from his chair and began walking towards the door.
‘Are we going back down to the ground floor?’ asked Eva.
‘No,’ was the reply, ‘I’m to take you to the first floor. Mr Mansfield will meet you there. Shall we go?’
Eva nodded and the suited woman turned quickly out of the room with Leon behind her.
She was leading them back towards the stairs, her light, trotting footfalls in direct contrast to Leon’s heavy, powerful tread. All around them the house was completely silent and still, almost as if waiting to see what would happen next.
‘I will leave you here,’ she said as they reached the first floor, an altogether less comfortable environment than the plush surroundings of the third. ‘If you could just wait in that room over there, third on the left.’
‘Sure.’ Eva nodded and glanced at Leon who now seemed a lot more tense than he had been up on the third floor. His violent mood swings were unnerving.
Leon stopped halfway down the hall, halting them both just outside the door they had been instructed to go through. Blinding afternoon sun was streaming through the doorway, making it impossible to see what lay on the other side.
He stood motionless, staring at the light as if waiting for something or someone to appear. When no-one did, he took a few paces in front of Eva and stepped through the gap into the light-filled door space. And then disappeared.
By the time Eva had realised the trick the brightness of the light had played on her eyes another figure was already filling the doorway. A slighter figure with quick movements who immediately reached out towards her and took a painful grip of her right arm.
Instinctively, Eva tried to wrench herself away and run in the other direction but the fingers around her arm were like a vice and she felt herself being propelled through into the larger room as if she weighed no more than a feather.
A sick feeling overwhelmed her. This had been a big mistake.
‘Miss Scott.’
Blinking at the white spots swimming in front of her eyes, Eva recognised John Mansfield’s voice coming from somewhere directly in front of her. As her vision cleared she saw him sitting behind an enormous desk, a huge piece of modern art behind him and indecipherable sculptures framing the desk to the left and the right. He was smiling but the smile made Eva’s skin crawl.
She found herself propelled forwards towards an uncomfortable-looking, high-backed chair where she was unceremoniously pushed down onto the cushioned seat and then lashed tight with tape to the arms. As her wrists were tied down, the smell of menthol drifted up into her nostrils. She remembered it from the park in Paris and looked up at the man fastening her to the chair. Black eyes smiled back at her. Hello again, Eva.
A shiver travelled down her spine.
Leon was seated in a similar chair to her right where he was staring at John Mansfield. To Leon’s right was a man holding a gun trained on Leon’s head.
‘Administer it, Joseph,’ said Mansfield, his voice shaking slightly. Eva got the impression that no matter how much he might be enjoying his powerful position, Mansfield hadn’t done this before.
Her mind began to rush. ‘Administer it…’
The black-eyed man moved over to a small wooden flip-top desk in the corner of the room. The design reminded Eva of her desk at school but this one was polished and varnished until it shone in the early afternoon sun streaming in through the open windows. He opened the top of the desk and removed a small leather case of the type Eva had seen before in the park in Paris.
She started to struggle in her chair. One of the guards forced her to sit still by punching her in the side of the head and Eva groggily aimed a savage kick at any part of him near enough to reach. She heard him grunt as her heel made contact with his calf and was rewarded with another blow to the side of the skull, this one so hard that it made her head start to spin. She heard Leon protesting and then vaguely registered the sounds of a fight on the other side of the room. Then she felt a sharp pain in her right arm before the dizziness gave way to black.
Tom Chard took Legrand straight to the morgue to look at the bodies of Rob Gorben and Terry Dowler. Legrand spotted and made a note of the red mark on Dowler’s right thigh, the result of a needle being inserted under the skin and a substance injected into his body. On Gorben, Legrand could find nothing. He and Chard had turned and turned the body, to the great chagrin of the pathologist who insisted that he had already done this himself and could they please not disturb the corpse, but still they had found nothing. There wasn’t even anywhere the injection could have been administered without leaving an obvious mark – the man didn’t have pierced ears or tattoos, the skin over his skull was smooth and they had checked every other orifice but there was no sign of anything unusual.
‘So, they both died in exactly the same way,’ said Legrand as the pair sat down in a local pub with a pint as they waited for their late lunch order of ham and mustard sandwiches on white bread. Legrand looked at his watch. 3pm in London, 4pm in Paris, no wonder he was so hungry.
‘Yep,’ said Chard. ‘Both had the same odd combination of diseases and that same implausible advancement of the conditions.’
‘And yet they both seem to have managed to contract whatever it was from different sources.’
‘It can’t be a coincidence, there must be a link.’
‘Agreed,’ said Legrand as the waitress delivered two enormous plates of triangle-cut sandwiches lined on the outside with crisps.
‘Do you think the second man ingested something?’ said Chard, nodding his thanks at the waitress.
‘You saw the autopsy report, nothing in his stomach at all. He died in the morning. His wife said he skipped dinner the night before.’
‘The only other way it could have got into his system is if he absorbed it.’
‘Nothing on the skin.’
‘What about his lungs?’
‘Youngish man, non-smoker, should have been in peak condition but, according to the report, the lungs were full of scar tissue because of the fibrosis.’
‘Bad.’
‘Yes. That would have made it difficult to see if there was anything else in his lu
ngs right?’
‘I guess so. But they must have taken a sample of the lung tissue.’
‘What if he inhaled something?’ said Legrand suddenly as the thought struck him. The other man hesitated for a second and then the idea seemed to fall into place.
‘We need to speak to the pathologist again. I’ll call him now, ask him to go back and check the lungs,’ said Chard, retrieving his phone from his pocket and punching in a number.
Legrand took a bite of the thick sandwich and recoiled slightly at the overly soft, unfamiliar bread. He washed the mouthful down with a large gulp of the strange, bitter ale his friend liked to drink and wished he had a baguette and a cold pression in front of him instead.
Everything had taken a rather strange turn and he had an uneasy feeling about the way this case was going. He glanced up at the TV in the pub which was reporting the same disaster he had read about on the train on the way over – the UK being overcome by some strange algae. Given the reported scale of the problem he had been surprised to find such vague coverage in all the papers he had been able to get hold of. Legrand’s mother had been a keen environmentalist and after a lifetime of lectures he knew the dangers of water pollution to countries so dependent on fresh water. Surely this strain of algae was a really big deal? But since he had arrived the situation seemed to have calmed. He had received a call confirming his return Eurostar tomorrow and there seemed to be no hint of a water shortage in this London pub.
Chard put down the phone, looking slightly aggrieved, and took a long draught of his drink.
‘What is it?’
‘I spoke to the pathologist again and he was pretty annoyed with me.’
Legrand laughed at the offended expression on Chard’s face. ‘Why?’
‘He accused me of all sorts – telling him how to do his job, accusing him of not doing it properly. He is a very angry man.’
Legrand risked another bite of the sandwich, quickly followed by more beer. ‘So what did he say?’
‘He says he’s already carried out a thorough inspection of the skin and there’s nothing to suggest any suspicious contact with anything that could have caused the death.’
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