Sweet Talking Money

by Harry Bingham

Chancery Lane – a pretty name for an ugly street.

  At nine o’clock, congestion has loosened its grip, but the melting of the jams has left an ugly, ill-tempered residue. Private cars speed by, late for work, all accelerator, brake and hair-trigger horn. Taxis jerk forwards, brakes squealing like a sackful of cats. And then there are the motorcyclists, screeching around in the short but happy interval between the wave goodbye at rehab and the welcome home at accident and emergency.

  Chancery Lane is home to the British Patent Office, and at nine o’clock on the dot Meg was there, Degsy was there, Kati was there, Mungo was there. Kati held a packet of documents. The documents were a monument (one of the many) to Cameron’s genius, but this set bore the fingerprints of another set of people too: the patent lawyers, that breed which profits from other people’s inventiveness. It was an important packet. That was why Meg and Degsy insisted on coming too. That was why Mungo was blinking in the unaccustomed light of a London morning. That was why Meg, thrilled to be in something a tiny bit like a spy movie, was shooting glances up and down the street, as though an ambush was in any way expected.

  The others were teasing her for her suspiciousness, when she shot out a finger.

  ‘There!’ she cried, Other side of the road, black Mercedes.’

  Everyone followed the line of her finger.

  Mungo’s face emptied of blood. He looked as pale as if he’d been shot. ‘Oh shite, shite, shite,’ he said, old fears erupting. ‘It’s freako, it’s Janssen, the Darth Vader himself.’

  Kati’s heart stopped, staring in shock at the frozen-faced man, leather-gloved at the wheel. Arctic blue eyes stared back at her, colder than snow. Something like a smile carved a short-lived channel in the icefield of his face and disappeared. Involuntarily, Kati shuddered.

  Janssen. Why was he here? How on earth did he know? Kati’s brain raced as she began feverishly to assess the damage. Somehow – God only knows how – Corinth must have got wind of Bryn’s plan. Janssen was here, presumably, to check if those suspicions were true, and then – what? There was only one answer.

  Oh, bugger,’ cried Meg, ‘now they’ll up the ante! They’ll just bribe the bastard till he can’t help but accept.’

  ‘What?’ said Mungo. ‘What’s going on?’

  Kati explained. ‘Corinth has already offered one bribe to Altmeyer. We don’t know how much, but enough to get him to invest in the clinic and make the loan. Now, if they think there’s any chance that the bribe isn’t enough, they’ll increase it. They’ll just increase and increase it, till he has to say yes, until he signs the clinic over to Corinth.’

  Oh widdle.’

  Mungo’s exclamation was heartfelt, but Degsy meanwhile had been using his head. As Kati and Mungo had been speaking, he’d been dialling on a mobile phone, without success. He snapped it shut and said, ‘Not necessarily. I’m not getting through to the boat by phone. And by now they should’ve cut the wires. It looks like all communications have been cut off. Janssen can know all he likes. Doesn’t matter if he can’t get a message through.’

  They all stared back at the car, now noticing its long aerial, the boxes of dark metal communications equipment crowding the passenger seat. They studied Janssen. By rights, he ought to be on the radio now, sending a warning, an offer, a new bribe through to Altmeyer. But Janssen was motionless, his radio equipment untouched and silent.

  ‘Ha!’ screamed Meg. ‘You’re stuffed, matey.’ She began a victory dance, with Degsy joining in. A big truck, belching its way down the road, snorted diesel fumes in their faces and momentarily blocked their view.

  As the truck drew away, Meg’s joy evaporated. Janssen was turning the key in his ignition. The big black car began to nose out into the traffic. Oh, piss,’ said Meg. ‘He’s going to go out there.’

  A black cab emptied a passenger on to the street, and Meg leapt into the now-vacant cab, followed breathlessly by all the others, except Kati, who still had to take the documents to the Patent Office.

  ‘Follow that car!’ screamed Meg, pointing at Janssen’s Mercedes, which was already beginning to glide away. If Janssen got to Altmeyer in time, he’d ruin everything.

  They had to stop him. Had to.

  5

  ‘Champagne?’ The ice-bucket was silver, clasped at waist height by a gilt statuette of a naked nymph. ‘You can remove the bucket, you know,’ Altmeyer demonstrated, chortling. He handed Bryn the Notice of Loan Conversion – a death warrant with a fancy name. I’ve kept it simple. You give me the shares. I get the clinic.’

  ‘Simple enough,’ said Bryn.

  ‘Shall we?’

  Altmeyer produced his rolled-gold fountain pen and adorned the document with his signature. Bryn picked up his own pen, as usual a cheap biro.

  ‘You’re sure you want to do this, Max?’

  ‘Pretty sure, yes, I’d say I was pretty sure.’

  ‘How much is Corinth paying you for this?’

  ‘They’re paying me plenty, thank you. You’ve got a lovely little company, Bryn. So sorry I won’t be able to keep it.’

  ‘I hope you think it’s worth it.’

  ‘Worth it? They’re giving me three times my money, Bryn, I’d say that was –’

  ‘Before deductions, Max. Three times, before deductions.’

  ‘What d’you mean? There aren’t any.’

  ‘Oh, there’ll be deductions alright. Cameron?’

  Cameron smiled thinly, drawing a super-thin laptop from her bag. She booted up and, as the computer sorted itself out, she began to speak. ‘Damn right there’ll be deductions. First up, though, I want to tell you about some work we’ve been doing.’

  ‘Certainly, my dear.’

  ‘It’s on respiratory disease. Should be right up your street, huh?’

  Altmeyer’s head jerked up. ‘What do you know about respiratory disease?’

  ‘Sit back. I’m about to tell you.’

  And she did. She spoke about the background of respiratory disease, the chemical assaults on the modern lung, the nicotine, the pollution, the traffic fumes. She spoke about recent research, the major new routes being explored – then began to discuss the very specific treatment being investigated by Altmeyer’s people, the treatment he thought was his and his alone. Outside, rain still pattered down on the grey water and the pale yacht, but Altmeyer was in another world, a world of sudden alarm, a world of startled calculation.

  ‘Where did you get this information?’

  Cameron smiled angelically. Her grey eyes were as intelligent as usual, but right now they were calm, even relaxed. ‘Just brainstorming, really. Tossing ideas around.’

  Altmeyer swallowed nervously. He attempted to put on a front of confidence, but he had his fingers in his mouth and was biting at his nails in his anxiety.

  Cameron continued. She named the very chemicals that Altmeyer’s team had been researching. She summarised the research bulletins that his very own scientists had compiled for him. She even discussed some of the problems that his staff had run into.

  Altmeyer tore another nail. ‘How did you get this? No one has been researching the area. No one except us.’

  ‘Well now, that’s a very curious statement,’ said Cameron. ‘You see, if no one had researched this area except you, then I couldn’t possibly know all about it, could I? And I do.’ She smiled.

  Altmeyer sucked his finger. ‘You’ve bribed one of my scientists. You’ve nicked a couple of ideas and pretend to know everything. I’m not fooled.’

  ‘Have it your way.’ Cameron shrugged. ‘I just wanted to let you know what we’ve been working on.’

  ‘And anyway, who cares how much you know? Without patents, it’s all worthless. Why should I care?’

  ‘Very true,’ said Cameron. ‘You need a patent to make money.’

  ‘Like this one,’ said Bryn, tossing down a patent application.

  ‘Or this one,’ said Cameron, laying down another. Or these.’ She laid down a whole sheaf of them. Ten patent
applications they’d made altogether, covering every base they could think of. ‘Kati Larousse, my research deputy, handed these applications in this morning. They’re intended to be fairly broad. We wanted to cover all the bases. I’d be very happy to run you through the specifics if you wanted.’

  Altmeyer tweaked nervously at the patent applications, reading the description of contents. Failure was beginning to stare him in the face. His research project hadn’t just run into a cul-de-sac, it had ridden into a nightmare of dead ends and failed effort – the jackpot scooped from under his nose. Before he’d even finished looking, his hand flew back to his mouth, which began to gnaw another finger.

  ‘I can’t say …’ he croaked. ‘I’d need my scientists to evaluate this …’

  ‘Sure, I can see that,’ said Cameron equably.

  Gathering conviction, Altmeyer said, ‘And these products aren’t ready to be patented. There are loose ends, issues to be resolved … These patents probably don’t even hold water.’

  Cameron considered the proposition calmly. ‘You may be right. We did some work of our own to tidy up the loose ends, naturally. But of course, if you challenge the applications and they collapse, then no one owns them. Not us, not you, not no one.’

  ‘I’ll need to review things. I don’t have my scientists. I don’t –’

  ‘Trouble is,’ said Bryn, ‘you don’t have time. We won’t give it to you.’

  Hand in mouth, Altmeyer’s gaze drifted to the phone, and the empty corridor outside.

  ‘No phones,’ said Bryn. ‘No calling your buddies at Corinth to bail you out. It’s your call, Max. You take our company, we trash yours.’

  ‘I’ll challenge you in the courts. I’ll say you stole our research. In fact, you did steal our research. It wasn’t those bloody animal huggers, it was you. You could go to jail. You –’

  Bryn smiled. ‘Max, Max, Max. You say we stole your research. I say we didn’t. Can you prove it?’

  Altmeyer’s mouth opened and closed, but made no answer.

  ‘Plus,’ said Cameron sweetly, ‘I don’t really give a damn about these patents. Unless you give us back our company, we’re going to license these patents out free of charge to anyone who wants them. Anyone in the world.’

  ‘So then,’ said Bryn, ‘you wouldn’t just have to sue us, you’d have to sue everyone in the world.’ He smiled brightly. ‘Everyone in the whole wide world.’

  6

  Dense traffic, thinning out.

  Janssen’s Mercedes was darting ahead of them down the fast lane, coming within a metre of the bumper of the car ahead, then flashing and honking to get its way. For a while Meg and the others followed in their cab, matching Janssen, turn for turn, honk for honk, swearword for swearword.

  But as the traffic began to thin, their cab driver refused to bump his speed up any further. Eighty miles an hour was his limit, while Janssen hit a hundred and ten where the road allowed.

  ‘A3, M3,’ said Degsy. ‘Must be Portsmouth. He knows where he’s going.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Meg, watching the Mercedes disappear, knowing there was nothing more they could do. She tried the phone again. No signal. That was good news in one way. If Bryn had no signal, then nor did Altmeyer. But Bryn’s plan had never reckoned on Janssen, tearing towards the yacht, a speed demon on a mission. With Corinth’s billions at his command, Janssen could ruin everything, ruin it for ever.

  But there was nothing to be done.

  Meg dropped her phone in an admission of defeat. The cabbie, meter still burning, turned and headed back into London.

  7

  Exhibit number two: a bundle of dog-eared papers, yellowing and brittle with age. The bundle was a careful selection from the fire hazard heap that Bryn had rescued from the bottom of Altmeyer’s stationery cupboard on the night of the raid.

  ‘Recognise these?’ he asked. ‘Memory Lane.’

  Altmeyer poked through the papers. He shrugged. ‘Marketing stuff on Rogulaine, Keraplek, a few other dumbass products. Ancient history. Ten years old, some of it.’

  ‘That’s true. Some of it – this one here – is eleven years old.’ Bryn shoved one of the documents under Altmeyer’s nose, who inspected it half-heartedly.

  ‘Good stuff, eh? Those marketing puffs got me my first million.’

  ‘Good stuff,’ said Bryn. ‘Tremendous, awesome, incredible, and false.’

  Altmeyer chuckled. ‘Some of it was true. “Fastest growing drug in its category”. That was true by the time I’d finished.’

  Bryn chuckled with him. Then: ‘And what about the stuff that was never true? The scientists you bribed with fifty-pound notes and brand-new cars to produce falsehoods for you to peddle? The fake studies, the pretend endorsements, the made-up case histories?’ Bryn pulled out a couple of sheets of paper – his homework of the last three weeks – which documented every single lie, every single deception involved. It was a long list, typed small. ‘How do you think the authorities would feel about this? Marketing drugs on the basis of out-and-out lies?’

  ‘Everyone does it.’

  ‘Absolutely, everyone does it, but nothing as wild as this. You know damn well the authorities will kick your arse to kingdom come.’

  ‘A rebuke, maybe. A fine.’

  ‘A big fine, Max. A big rebuke. And they’ll certainly suspend your licence, even if they don’t revoke it altogether. That piece of your business is dead, Max. Time to wave it bye-bye.’

  Altmeyer’s mouth chewed dryly on the air. The core of his business was his precious respiratory research company. Cameron’s patents had blown the heart out of that – but now the second leg of his business, the original drug marketing side, looked like being history too.

  ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘The drug marketing side is a sideline now, anyway.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Bryn contentedly. ‘Your research company was the most important part of the business. I say was, because we own the patents now, remember?’ As he spoke, he drew an unmarked black video cassette from his briefcase and laid it on the table.

  Altmeyer swallowed, his eyes nervously following Bryn’s every movement. Then a thought struck him. ‘Just a sec,’ he gasped, and walked – almost stumbled – from the stateroom. He walked down the corridor to the tiny communications room, and with rough hands grabbed the radio. He searched it briefly for what he was looking for, then found it: the tiny red light, winking on and off, a distress signal calling for help on a frequency that only Corinth was monitoring.

  Altmeyer straightened up. A long, juddering sigh of relief swept through him. He was safe after all. The cavalry were on their way.

  He composed his face and walked back to the stateroom.

  8

  Selsey Bill, Portsmouth.

  Janssen ran clattering down on to the shore, damp pebbles skipping away under his leather-soled feet. A little way out, well within hailing distance, the boatman was there, still thinkering with his nets.

  ‘Hi, there. You! Come in, please.’

  The boatman, a heavy man, slow in movement, turned his head. Over the grey sea, the light rain still pattered down.

  ‘Please! Can you come in, please. I need a lift to the yacht out there. I’ll pay you.’

  The boatman said nothing, just stared at the smartly dressed new arrival. On the horizon, Altmeyer’s yacht still rocked at anchor, white sides greyed out by the falling rain. As though speaking to a foreigner or an idiot, Janssen tried again. He pulled out his wallet, withdrew a whole wad of notes. He waved them aloft, where the crisp notes began to gather the damp.

  ‘I’ll give you a lot of money. I want to go out to the yacht.’

  The boatman looked at the money and responded with a shrug which could have been a nod. He hauled slowly at his anchor and began to free his boat.

  As he waited, Janssen stole a glance inside his coat. Carefully holstered in the lining, there was a knife, black-handled, long-bladed, deadly sharp. Janssen tested its position, checked he
could reach it easily, then, satisfied, he closed the flap of his coat and waited, as the boatman brought his boat gliding slowly, slowly to the shore.

  9

  ‘What’s this, Bryn?’ said Altmeyer as he walked back into the stateroom. ‘You’ve brought a video? How thoughtful. Shall I order some popcorn? I’m sure we –’

  ‘Let’s just watch it.’

  A huge-screen TV filled one corner of the stateroom, with a VCR in a mahogany cupboard to the side. Bryn pushed the eject button, and a video popped out. Bryn raised his eyebrows at the title: ‘Matron Spanker and the Ten Naughty Boys, Max? That would be an art movie, would it?’

  ‘Give me that.’

  Altmeyer leaped into life, snatched the video, and watched as Bryn inserted his own video into the machine. He hit play.

  Animals. Animals in cages, animals piled on top of themselves, animals with fur patchy and skin torn. Animals cowering in fear, animals huddling in misery. Twenty minutes of tape. The same thing non-stop.

  Nobody spoke. Bryn looked grim. Cameron watched the first half-minute, then left the room, and they could hear her pacing about on the rainswept deck. The tape ran to an end, the screen filled with black. Nobody moved. Bryn turned the TV off.

  There was a long silence.

  Cameron came back into the room. Bryn took a sheet of paper from his case, passed it to Altmeyer. ‘A list of names,’ he said. ‘We’ve got fifty copies of this video all ready to mail. They go to the police, the RSPCA, the animal rights crowd, your customers, the telly, the papers. You’ll have a media outcry, protesters at your gates every day, security costs through the roof. And, of course, your customers will piss off. For ever.’

  ‘We can make it legal,’ said Altmeyer faintly. ‘Improve conditions.’

  Bryn didn’t bother to answer. Altmeyer knew as well as anyone that it was far too late in the day for that.

  ‘Think about it, Max. You wreck our business, we’ll wreck yours. We’ll wreck yours so badly you can’t get restarted. Not now, not ever. We’ll blow your three legs off, one by one. If you sell us to Corinth, it’s the last deal you ever do.’