Sweet Talking Money

by Harry Bingham

‘Cameron, we have to do this properly. We can’t just rush out and spend money thinking that –’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Look,’ said Bryn, a little more gently. ‘The deal is, I take care of the business, you take care of the science. Now, I do genuinely welcome your help on the business side, that’s why I –’

  ‘I know. You’re right. I take care of the science.’

  ‘OK. So just tell me you have not gone and spent –’

  ‘I’ve gone and spent thirty grand on some science. A guy called Professor Hass from St Thomas’ med school. An old guy, but real good – you know, really strong on the numbers, excellent reputation. I was very impressed. Anyways, like I said, two months – boom – back on track.’

  ‘Cameron, please, would you mind telling me what’s going on?’

  ‘I’d be happy to,’ said Cameron.

  And she told him.

  6

  Having obtained entry to Bell Atlantic, it was child’s play to connect to Corinth’s switchboard computer. ‘They’re designed to connect, see?’ explained Mungo. ‘We’ve logged in correctly to Bell Atlantic, so the way Corinth looks at us, we’re totally pukka. They’re not even trying to keep us out.’

  The Corinth PABX gave Mungo a file listing everyone in the firm along with their switchboard extensions. A couple of keystrokes enabled him to listen to any conversation he felt like.

  ‘Wow,’ said Kati. ‘It’s as easy as that?’

  ‘’Course. We’re like the operator, or one of them old-fashioned party lines.’

  ‘So we can listen in to Huizinga, or Anita Morris, even?’

  ‘That’s the idea.’

  A few more keystrokes and Brent Huizinga’s deep voice was on the phone, playing from the cruddy little speakers on Mungo’s PC. Huizinga was talking about some quarterly report meeting; routine stuff, nothing of interest. ‘Suit-alert,’ yelped Mungo. ‘Money-droids on patrol! Lasers to vaporise!’

  ‘Quiet! Can’t he hear you?’

  ‘Coo-eeee, Mister Hooooo-zing,’ shouted Mungo. Nothing happened. Huizinga continued to burble gruffly from the tinny speakers. After a few seconds, Mungo typed in another command and the voice vanished.

  ‘Hey, shouldn’t we go on listening? Isn’t that the point?’

  Mungo shook his head. ‘We’re not the only kids in the playground. We aren’t far enough into the system to cover our tracks and we don’t want the cyborgs from Corinth wondering how come Bell Atlantic is listening in to their Supreme Commander.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So we don’t listen.’

  ‘What? You get us within earshot of the enemy, then tell us we mustn’t listen?’

  Mungo sighed. ‘Look, if you were spying on us, which would you rather have: five days solid of listening in to Cam’ron’s phone conversations or one single hour spent in her knicker drawer?’

  ‘Knicker drawer?’

  ‘Data files. Like one hour downloading data.’

  ‘You’d take the hour-long download. No contest, really.’

  Mungo nodded. “Course. Any day.’ He shrugged, as though what he was about to say was the sort of run-of-the-mill workaday suggestion that hardly needed mentioning. ‘So we need to get authorised to read Corinth’s data. Pop a back door on to her PC, and we can drop in whenever we like. If she can see it, we can see it.’

  Kati’s hands flew, to her mouth in astonished surprise. ‘Mungo! You’re serious?’

  Mungo nodded. ‘’S th’plan,’ he admitted, his single-syllable agreement plopping out like a burp.

  ‘You can do that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Well, no. Or rather, yes, only you’re going to do it.’

  ‘Me?’

  Mungo nodded. ‘Canadian Kate, cyber-queen.’

  7

  Bryn could take a hint.

  One morning, desperate to escape the gnawing anxiety of running a business which was teetering on the brink, he drove a hired van up to the Portobello Road. There, he bought three large metal trunks, and spent the morning assembling a collection of junk corresponding to the items of Cecily’s that he’d sold. He bought cheap framed pictures in place of the etchings, a set of four squalid old rugs costing thirty quid in place of her eighteenth-century Persian carpets, tatty wooden boxes instead of her ebony sewing chests, and a cruddy little sidetable in place of her Venetian chess table. On completing his shopping list he drove back to the boathouse, then waited till evening when the yard was empty.

  When the last patients had left, Rauschenberg and all the doctors and nurses had cleared away, Bryn hauled his purchases out of the van, stowed them roughly into the three trunks, and locked them. It was a golden June evening, swallows soaring high in the air over London, enjoying the last of the sun.

  Bryn grinned.

  He took a crowbar and busted the padlocks, ripping the clasps clean off. Then he wrenched open the trunks, doused the contents with petrol and set them alight. Once it was all burned out, he drenched the smoking remnants with bucketfuls of water mixed with sea salt, until the yard was full of charred debris floating in puddles of brine. He was finished.

  He bandaged the ruined trunks back up in corrugated cardboard and shipped them off to Cecily using the most disreputable firm he could find. Meantime, he sent her a letter, sweet as could be, apologising for the delay, giving her the shipment details, hoping all was well in her new life.

  ‘You ought to think about it,’ Cameron had said, as she told him how Kati’s belongings had been destroyed by fire while in the care of shippers. It had been a subtle hint, but not too subtle. Bryn had thought about it. As both he and Cameron had known perfectly well, Kati hadn’t lost anything in a fire.

  NINETEEN

  1

  Long Acre, Covent Garden.

  A restaurant French enough that the food is good, the wine is excellent, and the waiters are so contemptuous, you’d swear they were royalty. Allen Green and Cameron Wilde. Their first proper date.

  Things went OK. At the start, Cameron had been as nervous as a tightrope walker, and her nervousness had made her abrupt and hard-edged, a fiercely rational scientist right down to the tips of her fingers. The first course had passed in a highly technical discussion of Allen’s original field of expertise, respiratory disease, during which time Cameron had acted like a bloody-minded research supervisor. She wore a black velvet dress, but might just as well have worn chainmail for all the signals she was sending off. The breakthrough had come after the moules marinières had been cleared away.

  ‘Are you nervous?’ he asked.

  ‘Nervous? No. Why?’ He caught her arm, and the touch made her literally jump in her seat. ‘OK. I’m nervous.’

  ‘First big date for a while?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘For a long time, maybe?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her mouth was dry at the admission.

  ‘That’s OK. Can I make a suggestion?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Good. When I first started dating and I didn’t know what to say or I ran out of things to say, I just stuck some food in my mouth and pretended to chew. First dates are cringy for everybody. No one in the history of the world ever has had a first date they feel proud of.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  Allen smiled at her in his priestly way. Less a smile, it was more a way of giving benediction. ‘You’re beautiful. You’re smart. You think I care if you’re nervous?’

  She smiled back at him, chock full of relief.

  ‘And maybe one other tip?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You are allowed to talk about things other than science, you know.’

  She nodded. ‘True,’ she said, ‘sorry.’ Then didn’t know what else to say. She stuffed some food into her mouth. Too much. She began to chew, but she began to laugh as well. There was a short contest. The laughter won. Mashed-up breadstick spurted out over the tablecloth. She created a homemade île flotante in her wine glass and red wine flickered over the white linen. She
laughed louder. Her nervousness was over. Conversation flowed.

  2

  After pudding, Allen asked if she’d like coffee here in the restaurant, or back at his place.

  Cameron frowned. The evening had gone well – really well – but the nuts and bolts of dating were far more mysterious to her than the most complex reaches of immunology. She still grasped a breadstick in her hand, as a kind of jokey defence against finding herself short of things to say. This time she opted for the direct approach. ‘Do you want to know if I like coffee, or are you asking me if I want to make love?’

  Allen was taken aback, but only for as long as it takes a man’s mating instinct to overwhelm every other impulse – which is to say, in this case, about the twentieth part of one second. ‘If you feel ready to come back home with me,’ he began. ‘No, sorry, what I mean is, I’d love to make love with you. If that’s too soon, then say so, and we’ll take things slowly.’

  She shook her head. Part of her reason for success in science was an attitude which said that every minute wasted was a minute lost. She didn’t see why dating should be any different.

  ‘Sex,’ she said. ‘I don’t drink coffee anyway.’

  Back at his flat, they didn’t fuss over coffee, tea or other props of the conventional endgame. Cameron trotted round like a puppy exploring its new home. The flat had polished wood floors throughout, bare white walls, modern rugs and an eclectic collection of modern Italian designer furniture – Allen’s pride and joy.

  ‘Nice place,’ commented Cameron at length, leaning against a sofa of Japanese bamboo with grey suede cushions.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Allen, looking around. ‘If I hadn’t gone into science, I’d have loved to deal in contemporary furniture. Good drugs, good furniture. It’s all about clean design, clean action.’ To illustrate his point, he tilted the back of an improbable chrome rocking chair with a sliding leather seat. The back rocked, the seat shifted, all in one smooth motion.

  Suddenly remembering Meg’s commandment that no woman wearing velvet was allowed anywhere near cane or bamboo, Cameron rose hurriedly, shifting her seat from her bamboo perch and wiping the back of her dress in apology. She was standing a few metres apart from Allen, her bread-stick foolishly left back at the restaurant.

  ‘Just a sec,’ she said, darting into the stainless-steel-topped kitchen. There was an opening and closing of cupboard doors, then she emerged, crimson-red, waving a slice of bread. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I admit. Before I was nervous. Now I’m terrified.’

  ‘You want to leave it?’

  She shook her head, still crimson.

  ‘We’ll take it slow. Shout if you start to feel uncomfortable.’

  ‘Aaargh!’ Cameron pretended to scream, but forced a smile.

  He smiled back, absolving her. They were close now, standing straight, just a few inches apart. They kissed, her mouth yielding to his, her body bending to his hands. Cameron was unpolished but natural, responding hungrily to the suggestions of his touch. After a short while kissing, they moved through to his room.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he asked. ‘Don’t go faster than you want to.’

  She shook her head.

  She put her hand to the zip at the back of her dress, but he stopped her. ‘Important ritual,’ he said. ‘I undress you. You undress me. It’s not the fastest way of doing things, but for some reason it’s the best.’

  She took off his jacket, but had no idea what to do with a tie. She pulled it into a tight knot, then let him sort it out. He bent close to find the clasp of her necklace, figure out the secret of her earrings. She unbuttoned his shirt, hands stopping to explore the broad new territories of his chest, the strong join between arms and shoulder. He found her zip without looking, dropped the dress to the floor, swept his hands up the curve of her hips, the valley of her waist, the thrust of her breasts. She had trouble with his belt, but found the rest of the trousers easy. Faced with visible proof of his excitement, she paused, but at a sign from him allowed herself to touch it. Blood throbbed in response, and he pulled her close, removing her hand. They stood, her belly against his member, her breasts crushed against his chest, her scented head buried in the smell of his neck.

  The rest of their clothes fell to the floor. The bed (a stainless-steel frame suspended from four huge pillars of raw oak, a thick mattress and abundant white linen) was large and welcoming. They made love twice that night, once again the following morning. Cameron was uninhibited and openly delighted with the brave new world she’d found her way into.

  ‘I can’t believe you preferred coffee to this,’ she said, slipping off to sleep against his side, face pressed happily into his arm.

  Next morning at work, when Cameron shyly and quietly told Meg the outcome of her evening’s adventure, Meg squawked so loud that doctors halted, patients stared, phone conversations fell silent. ‘Yo, Cammie! You purple-arsed man-bandit!’

  Like everyone else, Bryn heard the shriek. He was pleased for her. His medical director was no longer hot on him. Their relations had seemed tense recently, and perhaps they would now be able to relax with each other again, drift back towards normal. He shook his head and went back to work.

  3

  Getting the samples from his dad had been a nightmare. Mervyn Hughes had been locked in his ‘I don’t hold with doctors and that, we’ve all got a time to go’ philosophy, and resisted all interference. It was only when Gwyneth arranged a dinner for Derek Williams, the vet, and the three of them – the vet, Gwyneth and Bryn – surrounded the stubborn old man that he relented.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ he complained in his usual bellow. ‘I’ve never seen you making this much fuss over one of my sheep.’

  Derek Williams unsheathed a needle. ‘I could go to prison for this. Unless I can persuade them that you’re an animal. Not a sheep, mind. Bloody ass, more like.’

  ‘At least give me some more whisky, Bryn lad. If they’re going to have my blood, I want it to smell nice.’ A tumbler of whisky, taken with so little water it was a wonder he bothered, disappeared in a trice. ‘Knowing that bloody man Williams, he’ll stick that damn thing in the wrong place and I’ll end up bleeding to death.’

  ‘Hold still, or I’ll get Rhys to put you in the bloody sheep pen.’

  Rhys, who’d been sleeping, but only the way that an alert collie ever sleeps, leaped up and barked his approval of the scheme.

  Derek Williams looked at the bulging veins on the old man’s arms and inserted his needle, calm and accurate as you please. Although his was a large animal practice, he was happy to treat the domestic animals of his farming clients, and once you’ve inserted pins into the thighs of six-week-old kittens or dealt with a blockage in the oesophagus of a four-week-old pup, finding a vein on a human arm isn’t too much of a toughie. Four tubes of blood followed. ‘Bleeding me dry, as always.’ Mervyn bellowed with laughter at his own joke, stopping abruptly once Williams produced his next two containers.

  Mervyn looked highly dubious. ‘When did you ever get my sheep to piss into a bottle? And if you think I’m going to –’

  ‘Now, dear,’ said Gwyneth sharply. ‘Mr Williams’ – she still, after thirty years, called him that – ‘Mr Williams is only trying to do what’s best for you, so go now –’

  But Mervyn had surrendered, and when Bryn turned back for London the following night, six tubes clicked in his overnight bag: four red, one earth, one straw; the colours of life; secret keys to the ultimate riddle.

  4

  Meg, of course, demanded a detailed account of Cameron’s newest conquest.

  ‘Give me a blow-by-blow account, love. Not a detail missed.’

  They were upstairs in Cameron’s tower office, windows open in every direction, blazing sunshine outside, a light breeze stirring the chaos of paper. Meg fanned herself with photocopied extracts from The Clinician’s Handbook of Environmental Medicine, and Tallulah sat on the window sill facing the river, cleaning her wing and every now and then expressing opinions as they
came to her.

  Cameron, shyly at first, but later with genuine enthusiasm, began to relate every detail, under Meg’s interrogation: clothes, hair, flirting, Allen’s appearance, his pluses, his minuses, his flat, the dinner, the kissing, the sex.

  ‘And?’ said Meg.

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Do you still think sex isn’t what it’s cracked up to be?’

  Cameron laughed, reddening. ‘I never said –’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Alright, well, anyway …’ She laughed again. ‘It was nice. Maybe I’ll do it again sometime.’ In her lap, Cameron held one of those plastic models of chemical molecules, built out of coloured balls and black plastic joining-rods. She fiddled busily with it in embarrassment, before her face changed.

  ‘You know, Meg. There is something I didn’t know about Allen … I don’t think there’s a problem, but I just wanted to get your reaction.’

  Meg’s face grew serious too. ‘He’s got a compulsive S & M habit, and he needs you to –’

  ‘No, seriously … Look, he trained in respiratory disease, which is what he truly loves, but then got made redundant and ended up working for this specialist chemo outfit.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that was a problem.’

  ‘No, but he’s thinking of moving on again, back into respiratory. The thing is, he’s thinking of applying to Corinth.’

  Meg’s jaw dropped. ‘Corinth?’

  On the window sill, Tallulah perked up from her lethargy shrieking, ‘Uncha gossa,’ and flapped her wings vigorously as though to prove she still knew how to use them.

  ‘Yes. I mean, he hasn’t yet applied. I told him I had serious reservations about the company, but, as far as I know Corinth’s respiratory wing is about the only part of it which produces drugs fit for human consumption. It’s not like there’s any good medical reason why he shouldn’t go there.’

  ‘Yes.’ Meg’s voice was deeply uncertain.

  ‘He said to me … Hell, he said all the right things. How he’d never let loyalty to a company override loyalty to a – well, to a lover, I guess.’ Cameron hesitated before realising that the word ‘lover’ applied to herself now. ‘He said, if I had a big problem, he wouldn’t do anything right away, let me think it over.’