Sweet Talking Money

by Harry Bingham

  Meg burst his bubble. ‘When I get in there, what should I take?’

  Mungo came sharply back to earth, fear once again emptying out expression from his face. ‘He’s got a filing cabinet. Keys in the desk drawer … Oh, shite, Meg.’

  Faced with the hideous reality of what he was about to do, Mungo’s nerve began to fail again, but it was too late for second thoughts. Meg was motoring.

  ‘Fire escape. Second-floor window. Keys in the desk drawer. Got it.’

  Mungo swallowed. He knew what Janssen was like, and he was terrified. Meg knew nothing, and was desperate for adventure. Mungo tried to make her safe.

  ‘And you got an hour, right? Like, an hour max. And don’t take anything, just copy it. There’s a copier right there. And, Meg, please, for God’s sake, don’t what’s-it-called, don’t linger. In and out. OK?’

  Experience spoke to innocence and innocence nodded her head. Experience always spoke like that. Experience was a fool. Meg finished her tea.

  ‘Let’s rock.’

  4

  Over the Brecon Beacons, a long-threatened November storm broke in curtains of rain and the bellow of thunder. Lightning crackled over the mountain tops and Rhys, in his kennel, barked his disapproval. Up at the Quarry End, the sheep would be huddled into the shelter that Mervyn Hughes had built for them, frightened but safe. Once, he’d have gone up there to check. There wouldn’t likely be any problems, but you could never be sure. Mountain streams filled so fast that an animal which was drinking one moment could be half-drowned the next. Gwyneth stood in the hall, looking into the living room where the telly flickered.

  ‘You’ll be needing your long coat if you go out now. I’ve put it out for you.’

  ‘That’s alright. Sheep’ll be fine. No use going out in this.’

  ‘Are you feeling OK?’

  ‘Honestly, woman! It’s not long since you’d have been telling me not to go out. There’s no pleasing you.’

  She came to sit on the arm of his chair, hand on his shoulder, worrying. Her husband was listless, brain-fogged. The TV programme, whatever it was, paused and the ads came on. There was a McDonald’s ad, which constructed some hard-to-fathom connection between skimpily dressed women on a beach and McDonald’s milkshakes. Mervyn watched the thick liquid snaking its way into a waxed paper cup.

  ‘By God,’ he said, ‘that doesn’t look too bad now, does it?’

  The ad changed. Cosmetics, cars, washing powder, shampoo. In the world outside, rain beat down on the stone courtyard, the mountains above lost in cloud. Inside, in the bright and happy world of daytime TV, the programme restarted. Gwyneth squeezed her husband’s shoulder and walked back through into the kitchen. Fifteen minutes later she returned holding a beer glass filled with viscous pink liquid.

  ‘No straws, I’m afraid, sorry.’

  ‘What’s this, then?’

  ‘Strawberry milkshake, strawberry jam milkshake, anyway. I think it’s alright.’

  She set it down like a grand cru vintage before a wine expert. Mervyn Hughes sipped it, swigged it, drained the glass.

  ‘Not bad, at that. What’s come over you, then, giving me milkshakes?’

  She shrugged. ‘You said you liked them.’ She walked back into the kitchen, wiped up. Jam back in the cupboard. Milk in the fridge. Mental note to get more ice cream. Pills. Cameron’s note had included complex instructions on dosage, times of day, whether to take them with food or away from food. Gwyneth couldn’t be doing with that. She threw the note away. She’d given Mervyn two of everything, capsules emptied out into the creamy pink gunge. If he stayed keen on milkshakes, he’d have two more of everything the next day. And the next and the next and the next, until the pills were finished. She put the pills back into the cupboard and washed the glass. She liked a tidy kitchen, did Gwyneth Hughes.

  5

  ‘Bryn, m’darling, tell me I’m a genius.’

  ‘You’re a genius, Meg. What’s it this time?’

  ‘Evidence.’ She dropped a huge cardboard box loaded with papers on to the floor. ‘Tons of it. My arms are killing me.’

  She began to rub her arms, but her face was sparkling with joy and excitement. Bryn picked a sheet of paper from the top of the stack: a memo from someone he didn’t know to someone he didn’t know concerning a company he’d never heard of.

  ‘This is just great, Meg.’

  ‘No, go on, get stuck in.’

  Kneeling on the floor, they began to unpack the box. Most of it concerned other companies or other individuals, but as Bryn began to read, a theme became evident. Every company or individual had a product which directly rivalled one of Corinth’s. Though there was no direct mention of Corinth’s response, there were newspaper cuttings mentioning mysterious fires, rogue scientists under investigation, promising young companies dying for no well-explained reason. A few times a bundle was tied in string, with a cover note saying simply ‘closed’. The case was closed, presumably, but so too, Bryn noticed, were the companies.

  ‘Where the hell did you get this?’

  ‘Go on, sweetheart. The best stuff’s at the bottom.’

  ‘Well, Jesus. This stuff is pretty potent. I can think of a couple of journalists who’d love to get their teeth into it.’

  ‘Stop faffing, will you? Look at this.’

  Meg hauled out a bundle with the clinic’s name prominently marked.

  ‘Staffing diagrams. Financial stuff. Progress reports on Cammie’s research.’

  Bryn grabbed the papers from her hands. ‘Bloody hell, Meg. How did they get this? How did you get hold of it, if it comes to that?’

  So Meg told him. Her suspicions of Mungo. The pursuit. Mungo’s confession. His suggestion that they burgle Janssen, see what he had. Her waiting downstairs to check when Mungo came out. Her first sight of Janssen: white-faced, motionless, terrifying. Then the burglary itself, Meg’s personal triumph.

  ‘He told me to copy stuff, but there was way more than I could copy, so I just went down the fire escape again, got the greengrocer round the corner to give me a box. Took the whole lot, even if my arms have grown by about a foot.’

  ‘You’re serious? Mungo sold us out?’

  ‘I always told you. Never trust a weirdo.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’ Bryn was absolutely rocked by the news. He’d become very attached to Mungo, in a father – son, generation-gappy sort of way, and he was angry, hurt and – perhaps most of all – confused by the idea that Mungo had been the mole. ‘Mungo … I mean, Mungo, of all people. I can’t believe it. Jesus!’

  ‘He didn’t want to. Janssen was threatening Jojo with jail, with all that would imply for Dar. Mungo was only trying to protect them. He is really upset about it, even if I wanted to kill him for the first half-hour.’

  ‘I swore I’d murder whoever it was, if I ever caught them, but Mungo.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’ He twitched one of the cash flows towards him, eyes narrowing as he scrutinised it. ‘He was trying to protect us too, Meg. This cash flow is complete bollocks.’

  ‘Yeah. He said he messed around with things as much as he could’. But he did some really bad stuff too.’

  Bryn raised his eyebrows, his face locked and hard. Meg told him about the banks, and about Janssen’s claim that Corinth would provide Bryn with a millionaire.

  ‘Oh, hell. You mean, Altmeyer might be in on this?’

  It all made a miserable sort of sense. Mungo would have told Janssen about their escapade at Berger Scholes. Janssen had clearly planted the story in the Herald as soon as possible afterwards, using cash flow data supplied by Mungo for the financial part of the story. And then … what? Either Altmeyer was genuinely interested in buying a piece of the business, and had nothing whatever to do with Janssen or Huizinga or Corinth … Or Altmeyer was thrown into action by Janssen, who panicked at the thought that Hass’s rousing endorsement of the clinic might actually bring genuine investors scuttling out of the woodwork. At the time, Altmeyer’s offer
had seemed wonderful. Right now, it looked darkly sinister.

  ‘What are you going to do about Mungo?’ said Meg.

  ‘I don’t know, Meg. I’d like to murder him, but at the same time I feel sorry for the poor little bugger. It must have taken balls to lie to Janssen as much as he did.’

  ‘He lied to us too.’

  ‘Yes. He certainly did.’ Bryn looked at some more of the papers, his head still spinning with the shocking news. ‘Where is he now? He should be back, shouldn’t he?’

  ‘Don’t know. Maybe still out with Janssen.’

  ‘Janssen. If that’s really his name.’

  ‘Must be. I found a credit card slip that called him Elijah Janssen. You’d have to be a total dork to call yourself that if it wasn’t your real name.’

  Bryn stared down at the pile of traitor’s gold on the floor. He felt unspeakable fury at the betrayal, yet the guy was just a young kid trying to do right by his sisters, while shielding the clinic as best he could. In Bryn’s heart, anger and pity clashed for supremacy.

  ‘Did Mungo say when he expected to be back?’

  ‘About an hour ago. But he’s probably buggered off home. I would if I were him.’

  ‘Mmm … But call him, will you? We ought to know.’

  Bryn went back to the stacks of paper as Meg dialled.

  ‘No answer. I’ll leave a message, tell him to call.’

  Bryn was lost again. Mungo’s handiwork lay spread across the floor, and Bryn and Meg bent over it, sorting it into piles, separating the stuff which Mungo had scrambled from the stuff he’d been forced to hand over just as it was. It was obvious from the process that Mungo had fought hard to protect his employer. It was equally clear that he hadn’t always succeeded, Janssen’s threats and violence extorting real secrets from his mole. After a long afternoon, Meg straightened up.

  ‘I’ll call Mungo again,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah … what’s the time now?’

  ‘Six o’clock. He should have phoned in by now.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Meg dialled again, as Bryn stood gazing down at the spoils of Meg’s raid.

  ‘No reply. I’ve left messages.’

  Bryn listened slowly to her answer, his brain travelling back from a distant world. He nodded his head in decision. ‘OK. Where’s janssen’s hang-out? It’s time I paid a visit.’

  6

  Head down, jaw set, Bryn torpedoed through the crowded waiting room, bursting open the big wooden doors at the end and hurtling out into the tarmac yard, past the wharves, through the residential streets towards Fulham Palace Road. Meg scurried along in his wake.

  Bryn was boiling with suppressed energy. If you’re a healthy thirty-something, built like a brick outhouse and working in a mostly sedentary job, then there’s more strength and energy running through your veins than you can find a use for most days. Then, finally, when your adrenal gland starts to signal the approach of action, there’s not a nerve cell which isn’t humming, not a muscle fibre which isn’t rich with blood and ready to go.

  Reaching the main road, Bryn whirled round, silently demanding directions from his companion. Silent now, and scared, she pointed to the paint-spattered stairway next to the travel agent. Invulnerable to cars, Bryn barged across the street. Dodging and darting after him, Meg collected the insults that he’d provoked.

  ‘Round the back. Fire escape,’ said Meg, but Bryn was already pushing through the tatty grey front door, heading upstairs three at a time. He reached the second-floor landing.

  ‘Here?’ he asked.

  Meg nodded. Bryn knocked once, waited about a second for an answer, then crashed against the wooden door. It groaned unhappily, but stayed in place. Bryn collected himself, brain, nerves and muscles all now in sync, then crashed against it, all his weight, all his strength, all his energy. The door flew away like a thing of tissue and balsa wood. Bryn smacked the lights on and found what he was looking for. Mungo.

  Mungo in a pool of blood. Mungo with his face smashed, body crumpled, blood flowing from ear, eye, lip. Blood darkening his baggy khaki trousers, collecting in the folds at elbow, knee and belly.

  7

  The hospital was as grim as hospitals always are: white-painted scrapyards for the human machine. If ever you need encouragement to quit smoking, or take up jogging, or eat more greens, then take a stroll round your nearest hospital. Look at the beds. Look at the faces. Abandon hope, you who enter here.

  Cameron arrived late. Squelching around in her handbag was a plastic bag full of fluid. Pulling the curtains round Mungo’s bed, she unhooked the drip that stood there and hooked her own up instead. ‘I happened to have a blood sample from him in the fridge. I’ve made up his very own trauma support solution.’

  Bryn smiled. ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Any breaks?’ she asked. ‘Internal damage?’

  Bryn shook his head. ‘The vicious sod who did this knew what he was doing. If I ever get my hands on him, I’ll kill him.’

  Cameron nodded. She pulled the sheets down off Mungo’s body as far as his waist and looked aghast at the marks of violence. She pulled the sheets up, very gently, and settled them round his skinny frame. ‘He’s young. He’ll be absolutely fine, I guess.’

  ‘Some scarring. The doctors here thought that would be all. Poor kid.’

  ‘His sisters? Meg said Mungo’s sisters were in some kind of trouble?’

  ‘Yeah. Trouble with their foster parents. and one of them can’t stop herself shoplifting. I’ve phoned them to let them know about this, and they’ll be along …’ Bryn took a deep breath. ‘I promised to take them in, if they get any hassle from their foster parents. I’ll be buggered if I let Corinth hurt them or Mungo ever again.’

  ‘Sure, right, or me,’ said Cameron. ‘I’m sure that Allen …’ She trailed off. Allen, she knew, would run a mile rather than have a pair of teenage shoplifters ruining his flat, but she wasn’t going to admit his limitations in front of Bryn. She put her hand on Mungo’s forehead, stroked for a while, and then just sat, hand outstretched.

  ‘Just one thing still puzzles me,’ said Bryn, after a while. ‘According to Mungo, Janssen made him apply to us for a job. That means that Corinth knew about us even before Kessler. It also means one of the people I thought was guaranteed to be safe, wasn’t. That’s how come I let Mungo have all the access he did.’

  Cameron raised her eyebrows without much interest. A cut below Mungo’s eye had begun to bleed under its dressing and she rinsed a piece of cotton wool in water and dabbed away the blood. As she worked a thought struck her.

  ‘I think it must have been me,’ she said, with a sudden jolt. ‘I mailed a birthday gift to my dad, those Lewis Carroll books. The package had a return address on. Dad never received it.’

  ‘Ah, sod it.’ Bryn sighed as the last jigsaw piece slotted home. ‘I wish you’d told me.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He shook his head, pardoning her.

  ‘I was a bit more defensive back then, didn’t want to goof up in front of you. I was … Well, I guess I was concerned about your good opinion.’

  This was as close as she’d ever come to admitting her former feelings to Bryn. ‘Silly,’ he said. ‘You always had my good opinion. Always will.’

  ‘That’s nice. You’re nice to say that.’ Mungo’s face began to bleed some more, and she wiped it clean again. For a senior doctor, she was astonishingly gentle, completely absorbed in the humble act of cleaning a wound as carefully and painlessly as possible. She finished her job and threw away the cotton wool with one hand, leaving the other resting on Mungo’s forehead. ‘One reason I always knew I’d go into research,’ she said. ‘I could never take all this kind of thing. Casualty’s bad, the cancer wards are worse, the geriatric stuff’s just unthinkable. You either have to cut off from the fact that they’re people, or else you go crazy. It’s a risk I wasn’t going to take. Neither the cutting off, nor the going crazy.’

  Bryn nodded dumbly. It was absur
d, he knew, but he ached with jealousy at the sight of Cameron’s hand on Mungo’s head. Bryn would have beaten himself into a pulp on the spot, if only that would grant him the same delicious touch. Idiot. He kicked himself. It wasn’t Mungo that lay between them, it was Allen Green. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

  8

  Back on the barge, the lights burned late.

  Alone with a bottle of wine, the flickering candles and the dark silences of life afloat, Bryn sat with the stolen material. In the corner, his Swedish stove burned fiercely to ward off the surrounding chills. Despite Mungo’s bravest efforts, Janssen had obtained access to a rich seam of information. Nevertheless – and thanks entirely to Mungo’s heroism – nothing actually fatal appeared to have been transmitted …

  Nothing fatal, that is, unless Altmeyer was in on Corinth’s plans. Nothing fatal, unless there was more going on here than met the eye – and if so, what? What could it be? The clinic was bursting with health, the research side never healthier, and Altmeyer himself had actually been extremely helpful since joining the company as shareholder, notably by securing the clinic’s property leases in double-quick time …