Sweet Talking Money

by Harry Bingham

  ‘Paranoiac, for sure, and what do you think? A little hypomanic, could be?’

  ‘Uh, I guess. Mental health. Not my field.’

  Bryn said nothing, just worked to clear the office as fast as he could. He’d filled sixteen crates and already his back was beginning to sing out warnings.

  ‘Bryn?’ said Cameron.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There are some pretty good drugs these days. I could put you on something.’

  ‘Lithium,’ said Kati. ‘Have you thought about lithium?’ ‘Yeah, good, start you on lithium, maybe? Or you want me to refer you to a specialist?’

  Bryn dropped the crate that he was holding.

  ‘Your ethics committee.’ he said. ‘The one that was going to investigate you. Have you ever heard of it in your life before?’

  ‘I’ve never been framed in my life before,’

  ‘They wanted you to collect up all your research data, protocols, everything.’

  ‘Just like a committee, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Then hand it to them.’

  ‘Not much point collecting it otherwise.’

  ‘Corinth. Not an ethics committee. Corinth. Fantastic idea. They just ask you to collect everything significant from your last five years of research and hand it over to them. Perfect. That’s why we need to clear out tonight. Make bloody sure that they get nothing, nothing at all.’

  Cameron paused. Then, ‘Not just paranoia, Kati. Schizophrenoform psychosis. Florid stage. Lithium, for sure. But I’d have to think about chlorpromazine. Maybe clozapine, risperidone.’

  ‘You think I’m nuts,’ said Bryn. ‘You find me any reference to that ethics committee, anywhere, ever.’

  ‘Kovacs had the run of this office and my lab,’ said Cameron. ‘If they wanted stuff, they could have just taken it,’

  ‘For God’s sake, woman,’ said Bryn, more impatiently than he’d intended. ‘Have you ever actually opened your eyes in here? Look at this place.’

  Even after twenty-four crates of paper had been cleared and stacked, the room was still overflowing with paper. Cardboard trays of collection bottles sat on top of computer keyboards which rested on paper foothills that led up to the mountains all around. The four anglepoise lamps sat like herons pecking nourishment from the sea of clutter. Cameron looked around.

  ‘It’s kind of … crowded, I guess.’

  They worked on for a while in silence. It was back-breaking labour, and one by one the two women, short of sleep and short of food, dropped out, leaving Bryn to finish. His own back complained angrily now, and his dodgy knee had twisted badly on the icy pavement outside. At length, with the office empty but for the computer hardware, the anglepoise lamps, the bare workbenches, and the sheets of chipboard idle on their concrete blocks, Bryn stopped. Cameron had collapsed with exhaustion and delayed-onset shock and was snoring away on one of the chipboard sheets, covered up with Bryn’s greatcoat.

  ‘OK, then. One at a time,’ said Bryn, beginning to load the PCs into crates.

  Kati hesitated, instead of helping him. ‘Technically –’ she began.

  ‘I know. Technically, these PCs belong to the biotech crowd, not you. But then technically, as an employee of Berger Scholes, I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. And technically, Brent Huizinga didn’t do anything criminal by destroying your reputation and sabotaging your work.’

  He yanked out the power cords and Kati, silently and solemnly, helped him to steal them.

  5

  The final stage was the laboratory. Kati took a quick inventory of the place where she’d spent so many hours.

  ‘This PC,’ she said. ‘And this.’

  She placed her hand on a domed chamber about four feet in diameter. It was built of white metal, had a control panel at the side, and a number of leads connecting it to the computer.

  ‘And this would be … ?’

  ‘The correct term for this would be the White Blood Cell Immune Modulation and Reprogramming Facility.’ Kati stroked the domed surface with affectionate familiarity. ‘But since it’s where blood cells come to learn how to be better blood cells, we usually just call it the Schoolroom.’

  Watched anxiously by Kati every step of the way, Bryn hefted the Schoolroom to the truck.

  ‘No, not on the crates. It needs cushioning. Don’t just drop it. Gently. There.’

  Kati settled some old blankets under the Schoolroom and all around it, till it was swaddled like a baby on New Year’s Eve, peering up at them like a giant white eye.

  ‘D’you want to feed it?’ he asked. ‘Get it some treats for the journey?’

  Kati looked at him, her face still clear and pretty after an exhausting night. ‘Don’t joke,’ she said. ‘The Schoolroom is your future now. You’d better take care of it.’

  The comment shot home like a crossbow bolt. The Schoolroom is your future now … Was he really going to throw in one of the most lucrative careers open to a human being, in favour of … what? Some twenty-something scientist who did good things for rats, whom he’d met properly little more than twelve hours before, who’d had her paper rejected by a top American medical journal, who’d been accused of cheating and was unable to clear her name?

  ‘I must be mad,’ he said, settling the blankets more closely round the big white dome. ‘Mad as they come.’

  6

  There remained one last ritual of departure.

  Bryn woke the sleeping Cameron, and let her blink and stretch her way into wakefulness.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘If I’m not still dreaming, I’m in trouble.’

  ‘Good morning,’ said Kati, stroking her hair clear of her eyes.

  ‘What’s good about it?’ said Cameron, shaking it back again. ‘I am still dreaming, right?’

  Kati ruefully shook her head.

  ‘Delirious? Suffering from a rare idiopathic brain disorder?’

  Kati shook her head.

  ‘Maybe to all of those,’ said Bryn, ‘but we still need to get out of here.’

  Cameron stared at him: the ultimate proof of the weird turn her life was taking. She stretched some more, allowing the kinks and pressure points down her spine to give a full report on their night’s entertainment. ‘God, could you guys really find nothing more comfortable than chipboard?’

  Bryn gave her a sheet of paper and a pen. ‘You need to write a message,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s going to wonder why you’ve just upped and gone. You need to give them a reason.’

  ‘Reason? Well, hell, that’s easy. Dear Everyone, I cheated and now I’ve gone to hide. Or how about, Dear Everyone, this English guy I hardly know thinks that everyone’s out to get me and it turns out that paranoia is infectious.’

  ‘Welsh,’ said Bryn. ‘I’m Welsh. Say anything except the truth.’

  Cameron ignored him and wrote fast, holding the paper so only she could see it. Once done, she folded it, addressed it, and left it in plain view for anyone to find. Despite her self-control, her hand trembled slightly and her ears burned at the shame of finding herself in this situation. Bryn didn’t ask to read the note, Kati gave her boss a supportive squeeze, and the three of them marched to the loaded truck.

  Bryn put the key into the ignition, but before switching on, he made a speech.

  ‘From now on,’ he said, ‘secrecy. Our first and only rule. Other companies have assets. They have mines, or power plants, or aeroplanes, or shops, or miles of phone cable, or factories, or warehouses. We have none of that, just knowledge, the information that’s in this truck, and the genius that’s in your heads. We need to take care of it.’

  ‘Better get another driver, then,’ said Cameron.

  ‘Buckle up,’ said Bryn, doing as he advised and checking the empty road in his wing mirror. ‘Corinth went to considerable trouble to ruin you – trouble and expense. They’ll be watching carefully now, to see which way you jump.’

  ‘And?’ said Cameron. ‘Which way are we jumping?’

  Bryn grinned at her, tu
rning the key in the ignition until the big truck vibrated with the desire to leave. ‘You’re not just jumping,’ he said. ‘You’re going to disappear.’

  FIVE

  1

  The Arctic Circle was having a good month for the export trade. Not content with dumping a shedload of snow on Boston, it had delivered a country-sized blanket overnight express to the British Isles, with further deliveries already in transit. At London Heathrow, nervous air traffic controllers watched their disappearing runways and reached for the panic buttons.

  Somewhere off the west coast of Ireland, Bryn’s jet nudged its course northwards by a few degrees and a not-very-apologetic pilot informed the passengers that their new destination would be Birmingham, not Heathrow. A ripple of conversation flowed through the economy seats at the back of the plane, but up in business, where Bryn sat, there was barely a flutter of interest as the travel-hardened veterans of the air revised their plans and helped themselves to sausage and egg.

  At Birmingham International, Bryn hired a car and pointed it not south-east down the M40, but southwards down the M5. Six weeks since Cecily’s departure, he still hadn’t admitted the fact to his parents, and the time had now come.

  As he drove into Wales, climbing out of the Wye valley into the Brecon Beacons, the snow on either side of the road thickened to a mantle six inches, sometimes a foot deep. For all his initial swerve in the truck in Boston, Bryn was well used to driving through snow, and he negotiated the ascending lanes skilfully, coming to rest at a farm on the top of the road, the last farmland before the open hills. He honked his horn, a clear note in the crystal air.

  Hearing the sound, his mother came anxiously to the door of the slate-roofed farmhouse. She looked at the unknown car with suspicion, before lightening into a flurry of smiles and greetings as Bryn swung his bag out of the boot. Welcoming him, scolding him, offering food by the bucket-load, she bundled him indoors.

  ‘If only you’d told me, I’d have got something ready. As it is, there’s nothing except a couple of pasties and last night’s shepherd’s pie and a bit of beef left over from the weekend and I could warm up –’

  ‘Mum, please. It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, and I had breakfast on the plane.’

  ‘On a plane again? There was a crash last week. In Delhi, was it? I wish –’

  ‘Not last week, the week before. And it wasn’t a crash, it was a near-miss. And as you say, it was in Delhi.’

  ‘So not Delhi, then?’

  ‘No, Mum – coffee, please, yes, but no beef, honestly – I was in America. Boston.’ Gwyneth Hughes’ expression puckered in a look of renewed concern, as America was, to her, a land awash with gangsters, guns and drive-by shootings; the only place on earth more dangerous than London. ‘And yes, I was careful. And yes, I did get Dad some Jelly Beans.’

  Her next two questions having been taken care of, her frown smoothed away, although a hint of caution remained in the eyebrows as though reserving the right to be worried at any time. ‘And Cecily?’ she asked. ‘How is she? No news, I suppose?’

  The question meant, ‘Have you got her pregnant yet?’ As the daughter of one sheep farmer and wife of another, Gwyneth had always known that fertility is the first and most important property of the female.

  ‘No, nothing like that, anyway.’ Bryn breathed out in a long sigh. His mother’s anxiety to be hospitable had released itself in his coffee. Six spoonfuls of coffee granules, a splash of water, and milk so thick it was virtually cream. He sipped it, knowing that he had to finish, even though he had a passion for real coffee, carefully blended, properly made. ‘Cecily and I have decided to separate. She’s gone her own way. We’ll get a divorce through in time.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Gwyneth stood at the sink, apron on, tap full on, staring out on to the farmyard, her last dark hairs turning grey. ‘You’re sure, are you? Maybe she just needed a holiday. Goodness knows there are times I’ve wanted one.’

  ‘No, Mum. It had stopped working. It’s final.’

  ‘Final, is it? Bryn …’ Gwyneth tailed off, but her son knew what she wanted to ask.

  ‘No, it wasn’t anything I did. There wasn’t another woman involved. Cecily did find … She’s with another man now. Lives in the Caribbean.’

  ‘The Caribbean? Oh, Bryn.’ She rinsed her hands and composed her face before turning round. ‘My poor love.’

  Bryn nodded, a bit too choked to respond. As the weeks had passed, he’d come to see that Cecily had been right. Over the years since their wedding, they’d floated too far apart for any amount of emergency repair work to mend the damage. If you leave a hill farm neglected for too long, the hill will claim it back, no matter what you do at the last. All the same, however sensible it might be to cut his losses, the fact remained that he had to start out all over again. He turned his head away and set his jaw against the possibility of tears.

  ‘It’s all OK at work, though?’ said Gwyneth, tactfully reading the need for a different subject. ‘It can be a blessing, work, staying busy.’

  ‘Work’s fine,’ said Bryn, regaining control of his vocal cords. ‘But I don’t know, I’m thinking of leaving, to be honest.’

  A surge of relief swept into his mother’s voice. ‘Oh, I do hope so. Your dad could use the help, Bryn. He’s not been so well lately and I know Dai has his hands full.’

  Bryn’s elder brother Dai, the family success story, had retired from professional rugby a few years ago through injury and started up a construction company, specialising in agricultural buildings for local farmers. Nothing would please his mother more than Bryn joining forces with Dai and helping his dad out on the farm in his spare time.

  ‘Lord, no. Not that. I’ve got a lot of options, but I’ll probably end up setting up on my own.’

  ‘Oh … I didn’t know you could do that.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You know, set up your own bank, just one person. I thought you needed …’

  Bryn laughed. In the fourteen years of his banking career, his mother had understood nothing about how he earned his living beyond the fact that he worked for a bank. ‘No, I won’t set up my own bank. I’m thinking of going into health technology. Medicine.’

  Gwyneth searched her repertoire for an appropriate response, but came away empty-handed. She raised her eyebrows, put her hands to her perfectly set hair, and gave her son a big multi-purpose smile. ‘Medicine,’ she said. ‘That’s nice.’

  Meanwhile, outside, the first flakes of a new snowfall began to cover up the tyre tracks and footprints that had speckled the yard outside with black.

  2

  ‘You’re kidding.’ Cameron wasn’t fazed.

  ‘I know. I ought to be joking. I bought it over the phone. I was snowed up in Wales, and all I had was my dad’s blurry fax machine. It looked OK in the photo.’ He gestured around, trying to explain how he’d got drunk with his brother Dai one lunchtime, stumbled across to the farm office, peered at a string of small and fuzzy fax images of buildings, selected one on the basis of price alone, and then faxed through a signature on the contract before he’d had time to take a second look.

  ‘You’re not kidding? Seriously?’

  They were standing inside, but their coats were on and their breath built castles in the freezing air. From a hole in the roof water dripped, joining the pools of water covering the floor.

  ‘It’s not all bad,’ said Bryn. ‘It’s cheap. We can fix it up. And it’s big. We wouldn’t have got this much space, if –’

  ‘If you’d actually bought, like, a building. You know, those things with walls, a roof, lighting, heating –’

  ‘No water on the floor,’ said Kati. ‘No concrete slipway heading into a river.’

  ‘No boats. No smell of muck that’s been allowed –’

  Oh my God,’ said Kati, as a fat black rat ambled out of a stack of rotting timber and lolloped across the floor to a hole in the wall before disappearing. ‘No rats, for heaven’s sake. I mean, don’t get me
wrong. I like rats, but there are limits.’

  They had a point. Cameron and Kati had obediently done what Bryn had begged them to do. They’d gone home to their parents, in Chicago and Vancouver respectively, and spun some yarn about looking to start the next phase of their work with a new research institution, possibly in Europe. They’d sent out letters to a handful of American colleges and research companies, deliberately weak applications that would be quite likely rejected even if Corinth wasn’t quick enough to stamp on them.

  And then they’d disappeared. They took holiday flights down to Mexico City, went by bus north to Tijuana, then via a couple of further flights moved on into Latin America before catching a mainline British Airways flight direct from Rio to London. As Bryn had said, ‘Not even Corinth is going to keep up with your movements. They’ll probably catch at least some of your application letters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they snoop around your parents’ neighbourhoods, trying to pick up your trail. All they’ll see is a story of failure. Most likely, they’ll assume you got some research post in Europe. As far as your folks are concerned, you should let them think the same thing. Corinth will keep an ear to the ground, but they’ll never find you. Not here.’

  Cameron poked an oil-spattered tarpaulin with her foot. Water sloshed around in the folds, but at least any wildlife under the surface stayed put. ‘You can hardly blame them,’ she said. ‘This isn’t exactly where you’d expect to find us.’

  Bryn sighed. The Fulham Boathouses had certainly been cheap, and yet, in Bryn’s half-inebriated state, the estate agent’s photo had been deeply misleading. In the foreground of the picture there had been an old Victorian wharf reconfigured as modern offices, and it was this Bryn thought he’d been buying. Dominating the rear, the boathouses had stood untouched since the Fulham Boating Association had gone bankrupt in 1973. The wooden walls were wet to the touch, and large areas of timber were so rotted away that Bryn could easily enough have put his fist through the side of the building. Inside, apart from the rats, there was little enough: rowing-boat hulls covered with tarpaulins or left to rot along with everything else. The only object of any grace was a lofty barge-style houseboat, of the sort that the Oxford colleges used to keep.