Sweet Talking Money

by Harry Bingham

  ‘That’s good,’ said Meg. ‘To be honest, I can’t see that it’s a good idea.’

  ‘Look, you need to remember that Corinth has around twenty-five thousand employees. It’s not like they’re all bent on our destruction. In fact, probably only about five of them even give a damn about us. And Allen, hell, he’s a bench scientist, a researcher. Corinth’s share price matters about as much to him as it does to me.’

  ‘Mmm, but still you might not see a problem, and I might not see a problem, but we both know one paranoid Welshman who’d see a big problem.’

  A gust of wind caused Cameron’s Post-it notes to rustle, fluttering and multi-coloured like the plumage of a giant parrot. Tallulah looked round suspiciously, before getting back to her under-wing hygiene programme.

  ‘Look, for now it isn’t even an issue. Allen doesn’t work for Corinth, and isn’t applying to them. But in the end, Meg, this is about more than just Bryn’s paranoias. I’m not having him tell me who I can and can’t date.’ Cameron spoke defiantly, feeling guilty as she did so, but also too embarrassed to face raising the matter with Bryn.

  ‘Quite right, we all know what taste he’s got.’ Meg cackled with laughter. ‘But seriously, don’t you think you ought to tell him at least?’

  ‘Sure. If he ever asks me, sure.’

  ‘That’s not exactly a resounding yes, now, is it?’

  ‘He’s been kind of weird with me lately. Kind of stiff, irritable, I don’t know. It’s like I bug him a lot at the moment, even when I’m not doing anything. At least I used to know why I annoyed him.’

  ‘Men,’ said Meg, solving the emotional mystery at a stroke, and summoning Tallulah with an outstretched hand. ‘Testosterone addles the brain. Well-known fact. Big chap like Bryn, big goolies, little brain. Fact is, it’s a miracle he even talks.’

  5

  And one day, at last, Mungo came to Kati, saying, ‘Think it’s alright to go.’

  She came up into the dark secrecy of Pod Mungo, its clutter everywhere, its three magic windows on to a world as vast and mysterious as anything Kati had ever explored. It was a warm day outside and the sun blazed down on the boathouse roof right above Mungo’s head. Meantime, everything in his stacked-up electrical empire was all on, all hot, and a stupid little white fan pushed the boiling air round in circles as though that was a solution to anything.

  Mungo gestured at his middle screen. ‘Corinth PABX shows no outies from her phone. So either she’s gone stumm, or more likely she’s away.’

  ‘No outgoing calls, huh?’ Kati swallowed.

  ‘’S right. And she’s a big phone yakker, like my sister, Dar. Give Dar a big red phone and a bag full of pennies and she’s a happy camper till the pennies run out.’

  ‘So you think Anita Morris is away? Is everything else ready?’

  ‘Done and dusted. All ready for Canadian Kate.’

  Kati was shockingly nervous. This was stage fright mixed with fear of capture; what you’d get if you planned a hold-up in the middle of performing Hamlet. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Ready, I guess.’

  ‘Remember to switch voices,’ said Mungo.

  Kati nodded.

  ‘And you’ve got your handsets sorted?’

  Kati nodded again.

  ‘Want a drink first? Don’t want you doin’ a dead man’s croak in the middle of everything.’ He offered her some Tango cherry drink, in a can that had been opened yesterday and had been simmering gently in the dust on top of Mungo’s banked PCs ever since.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘OK then.’

  Taking the phone to the left of his computer, the only one that was simply a phone and was not also plugged into a computer, Mungo dialled a number and handed the receiver, ringing, to Kati. The scientist took it as though it was a ticking bomb. The rings stopped. An American voice said, ‘IT Help Desk, Mike speaking, how can I help?’

  Speaking with brisk authority, and an accent from the north-east seaboard, Kati replied, ‘Anita Morris here. I’ve forgotten my password. Can you remind me what it is, please?’

  ‘We can’t read your password. What we have to do is issue you with a new one.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I’ll send someone to your workstation right away.’

  Kati glanced at Mungo. He’d told her the help desk would say that. ‘’S like security one-oh-one.’

  But she was prepared. ‘That’s not possible,’ she said. ‘I’m out of the office. I need access right away.’ Kati remembered her brief: she was Anita Morris, a top banana, impatient and authoritative. She still felt nervous, but her nerves weren’t affecting her performance.

  Mike the IT guy put Kati on hold as he spoke with his supervisor. ‘I’ll need to run through some security questions. Let’s see …’

  ‘Look,’ snapped Kati. ‘Just dial my extension, 4812. My assistant Pat can transfer your call to my cellphone. That way, you know it’s me.’

  ‘Oh, sure, OK. Let me just check the directory … 4812, Anita Morris. Right, OK.’ Mike liked the suggestion. Kati replaced the handset.

  ‘Wicked,’ said Mungo, eyes glued to the monitor. For just a couple of minutes he had placed a line-divert instruction in the Corinth PABX. If all went well, the handset connected to his phone would ring, and Mike the IT guy would believe he’d come through on a regular in-house extension.

  It rang.

  Kati reached for it instantly, but Mungo knocked her hand away. ‘Leave it a coupla rings. Patsy Duke, remember.’

  She let the phone ring a couple of times then picked up.

  ‘This is Anita Morris’s office, Patsy Duke speaking.’ Kati’s voice was now soft and unhurried, with hints of the south. Over the last few days, Kati had called Duke on different pretexts simply to hear and study her voice. There wasn’t a big chance that Mike the IT guy would know Duke, but Mungo’s strategy was to eliminate the possibility of error.

  ‘Uh, hi. This is Mike from the help desk. I got a call from Anita Morris. She’s forgotten her password, apparently …’

  ‘Oh, right, absolutely. She’s out of the office and she’s been getting real frustrated.’ Kati’s voice was loaded with sympathy, and the desire to talk about it. During her telephone reconnaissance, Duke had been willing to chat with a wrong-number dialler, so an IT guy would definitely get the full treatment. ‘Are you going to be able to help?’

  ‘Sure. If you can just transfer me.’

  ‘Oh … That’s all you need? Sure.’ Kati nodded to Mungo, who put the IT guy on hold for a few moments, then released the hold button and nodded back at Kati. ‘Morris,’ she snapped.

  ‘Hi, Mike from the help desk. That’s fine, I just needed confirmation of ID. Your new password is …’ He read some numbers and digits from the screen in front of him. ‘You shouldn’t have any more trouble.’

  And he was right, they didn’t.

  6

  In the meantime, Cameron’s plan was creeping to fruition. As June turned into July, and July tipped over into August, the computers were busy at St Thomas’ Medical School. Professor Hass – one of the most distinguished medical statisticians of the last thirty years – led a small team through a forest of numbers.

  Statistics is a strange subject. Piles of data, sorted and categorised this way, that way, computed, reshuffled and recomputed. ‘Lies, damned lies, and statistics’? – that’s not fair, really; at least, it’s not fair to men like Hass, men who have spent their entire professional lives in search of truth and only truth. He’s receiving thirty grand for this work, but the money won’t sway him one iota. When he comes to report, he’ll speak the truth as he finds it, speak it clearly, speak it straight.

  TWENTY

  1

  Cables everywhere set traps for the feet. The unnecessary brilliance of TV lamps crowded the room with heat and light. The room filled with lightmen, soundmen, cameramen, photographers, journalists. Shorthand notebooks were open, crammed with the news of the week before, blank pages ready for the days to come:
murders, scandals, health scares, earthquake, tragedy, and death. Mobile phones chirruped, adding their own microwave toxins to the room’s thick electromagnetic stew. Conversation buzzed with the cynicism of the trade.

  ‘Were you there for the Macavity verdict?’

  ‘No. Madonna-hunting in Knightsbridge. Scottie from the Sun caught up with her, swearing like fury because he’d caught his foot in the door. She thought he was swearing at her, gave as good as she got, made a face, snap, snap, snap, thank you sweetheart, picture of the year. Bastard’s not syndicating, though.’

  ‘Bastard …’

  Up on the podium, Meg fussed around. She’d spent half an hour rebuilding Cameron’s make-up to cope with the lights and a further half-hour begging Bryn to let her put some powder on him. He’d refused completely, but now things were held up as two journalists were stuck in traffic, and he was sweating like a donkey in jacket and tie. ‘It’ll only take a moment,’ badgered Meg. ‘No one’ll notice.’

  ‘No way. I’d kill for some water, though.’

  ‘Only if I can sit at the podium. I’ve never been on telly.’

  ‘Jesus, Meg, OK.’

  Meg, already dolled up to the nines, produced a jug of iced water and a fourth seat at the podium. She grinned at the cameras, as though rehearsing for a hot date, then leaned behind Bryn and poked Cameron, who was wearing a smart blue dress for the occasion.

  ‘Looking good, Cammie.’

  Cameron looked up distractedly from her conversation with the professor. ‘Uh, thanks Meg, oh, water, great.’ She and Professor Hass were getting on splendidly. ‘A most impressive achievement, my dear,’ he’d kept saying. ‘Most impressive indeed, and such a young girl too.’

  For her part, she’d developed an immediate respect for him. ‘Very careful work,’ she said. ‘Real thorough for an old guy.’

  Cameron and the professor resumed their conversation. Bryn sat silent, still sweating; Meg perched, unruffled, wondering whether she’d make it into the camera’s view and thanking heaven for widescreen TV. Eventually, the missing journalists turned up, Bryn began to speak, a couple of microphones screeched with feedback, and the room fell silent.

  ‘On behalf of the Fulham Clinic,’ said Bryn, ‘I’d like to welcome you all. As you know there has been substantial controversy recently over the medical effectiveness of the treatments we offer.’ That was an understatement. Since the original Herald article, there had been a surge of knocking copy from the national press. The Fulham Clinic was in danger of becoming a byword for quackery in medicine, and Bryn’s hopes of finding an investor had fallen to less than zero. ‘Since our effectiveness has been called into question, we believed it was only fair to invite the strictest possible test of, our techniques and to release the results of that test to the public. So to that end, we contacted Professor Hass of St Thomas’ Medical School in London …’

  Bryn introduced the professor and outlined the tests he had been invited to perform. The assembled journalists all had a copy of Hass’s resumé, which was deeply impressive. A former president of the Royal Statistical Society and author of more than forty papers in the medical literature, there was probably no better man in Britain to undertake the tests in question. ‘Perhaps, Professor, you would like to announce your results?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ The professor blinked in the glare of the lamps and the unmerciful gaze of the assembled reporters. A battery of flashes signalled the first salvo of photo-taking. The professor removed his glasses, put them on again, and took them off. ‘All this terrible light,’ he said. ‘Is it really necessary? I wonder if we could have it off, perhaps.’

  ‘You want to have it off, Professor?’ called a hack from the back of the room, to laughter.

  Bryn leaned across. ‘I’m afraid they need the lights for the TV. Perhaps if you could manage … I know it’s bright.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the television, I do see. I’m surprised, I’ve never known them to be interested in this type of thing. Still …’ He began a meticulous report of his results, reading from a prepared script, not once looking up into the besieging cameras. ‘So in conclusion, I would state that for eight of the fourteen disease groups analysed, there is extremely strong evidence to support the hypothesis of an outstanding clinical performance as compared with conventional standards. For the remaining six subgroups, the data support the hypothesis of a superior clinical performance.’

  The professor removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, frowning down at the notes which had dissolved into a dazzling blur. Alone with his computers, Professor Hass had felt a sense of gathering excitement. He wasn’t a fan of Immune Reprogramming as such. He knew nothing of it, was too old to learn. But he was absolutely fair-minded – the first and overriding qualification for a statistician. And being fair-minded, his conclusions had been unavoidable. For the first time in modern medical history, a revolutionary model of patient treatment reaching right across the spectrum of disease had been tested with the most rigorous tools known to science – and the revolution had been triumphantly endorsed. The professor was a humble man, but felt a duty to share the excitement of his discovery with the world at large. He rubbed his nose and blinked again, brain addled by the glare.

  ‘On a personal note, I wish to add that I have never in all my years as a scientist seen such a comprehensive … such an overwhelming … validation of a new technology. It is quite remarkable … astounding. The two young people here, Mr Hughes and Dr Wilde – such a nice pair, actually – have a most extraordinary achievement to their credit. Yes, indeed. Quite remarkable. Er … Thank you all very much.’

  His last word barely made it beyond his tonsils before the journalists trampled in with their questions, as though worried that Hass was about to make a run for it.

  ‘Professor, Professor …’

  ‘Are you claiming that traditional pharmaceutical approaches are ineffective?’

  ‘Can you offer any comment on Cheryl Kessler’s cure?’

  ‘D’you have any health tips for our readers?’

  ‘May I ask …’

  There was a frenzy of snapping. Flash lights. Sound booms lowered as the cameras moved in. Swearing sotto voce at the back of the room as a power cord snagged. Silent swearing from the sound crew who didn’t want to snarl up their tape. Howls of feedback as rival electrical teams fought to get their equipment in closer.

  ‘… Take vitamin pills?’

  ‘… how old …’

  ‘… what form of exercise, if any …’

  ‘… married …’

  ‘… do you recommend?’

  ‘… your opposition to the drugs industry?’

  ‘Please,’ begged the professor, ‘please,’ as Bryn tried to regain command over the room. ‘Please,’ he murmured once again, as the barrage of questions continued to fly, one at a time now, but still overwhelming. The press conference ended half an hour later. Bryn, on a tide of triumph, wrapped up the session.

  ‘Professor Hass has been very generous, but my colleague, Dr Wilde, and myself are still not satisfied. In an earlier generation of animal experiments, Dr Wilde was able to provide a complete cure for viral disease in rats. Despite the huge advances in treatment that Professor Hass has described, we are still a long way from that goal in human beings. In order to get there, we are currently looking for some outside investment. It is our firm belief that a relatively modest further investment will allow us to provide a permanent and complete cure for an enormous range of human disease. Thank you.’

  There was a swift tak-tak-tak of further questions. Then, looking around the room for Luke Hancock, author of the original nasty article in the Herald, Bryn said, ‘Time for one last question. Maybe Luke Hancock? Is he here?’ There was some laughter and joshing, words Bryn was unable to catch. ‘Is he here anywhere? Anyone from the Herald?’

  Tell him, George, tell him.’ A scarlet-faced man raised a nicotine-painted hand.

  ‘Greg Wilson from the Herald,’ he said,
introducing himself. ‘Luke was unable to be here.’

  He wasn’t allowed to leave it there. From round the room, voices continued to call, ‘Why, Greg, tell him why.’

  The man from the Herald coughed and admitted what the others all knew.

  ‘Yeah, Luke, his liver collapsed. He’s in hospital right now. Intensive care.’

  The conference broke up. A few journalists stayed on to chat, but most were already yanking plugs from sockets, shouting their stories down the phone lines to waiting copyists, taking instructions for the next story to run to. Cameron stood with Hass, her face ablaze with unconcealed delight. For her, this wasn’t simply good news for the clinic, this was the scientific vindication she’d been missing ever since her paper on rats had been so hurtfully rejected. Bryn bore down on the pair of scientists, and gave Cameron a bear-hug of congratulation which lifted her feet from the ground. ‘Bloody genius, woman!’ he cried, his Welsh accent re-emerging in his excitement.

  The clinic had defeated the Herald. The money would come. Bryn was too experienced to believe that this was a decisive victory. In capitalism, as in the jungle, victory is a passing thing: a fight won, a belly filled, a day survived. Bryn knew this. Often enough, he’d seen businesses beat off one attack to fall victim to another. He didn’t care. Right now, the fight was running his way and he was happy.

  2

  The mood lasted all of a minute or two. As Bryn and Cameron raced upstairs to bring Kati the good news of how it had gone, they met her coming down, in tears.

  ‘Kati, what …? It went great. Are you OK?’

  Wordlessly, Kati took them into the researchers’ computer room. Rick the Beard was in there, working on another PC, but Bryn quickly shooed him away. Tallulah was also there, perched on a rafter, scratching the paint off and causing a little shower of white flakes to fall like confetti. She worked busily, and looked disapproving.