by Matt Lynn
Tara replaced the volume on the shelves, and reached for the next one. A copy of Who Was Who. After all, she told herself, he might well be dead. She knew nothing about him. Quickly, she turned the pages, leafing through the alphabet. She started at the back, and soon found it: 'Dr Josef Zmitt (1908--1979)'. Her eyes devoured. the page: 'Dr Josef Zmitt. b. Prague 1908. Educ: University of St Charles, Prague. Moscow Academy of Natural Sciences, D.Phil, Chemistry. 1946-49. Lecturer, University of Bratislava, 1950-1962. Reader in Molecular Chemistry, University of Birmingham, 1964-1973. d.1979.'
Tara held the book in her hands, reading the short entry twice, then three times. She needed to be absolutely clear of the facts. The implications were immediately clear to her. If Zmitt had died in 1979, then the papers of Scott's she had seen the previous evening were clearly older than that. The first recorded case of Ator did not appear until the early eighties. It was not recognised as a new virus until the late eighties. And yet Kizog scientists had clearly been working closely on the structure of molecules very close to the virus several years before that. Before the virus was even known about.
She slammed the book shut and replaced it on the shelf. Her mind still bristling, she walked across to the computer terminals lined up in a row towards the back of the second floor of the library. Most of the data in the building had by now been computerised. She sat down and tapped Zmitt's name into the machine. Several seconds later the computer flashed up a list of publications. Tara scrolled downwards. About fifty were listed; relatively few for a long academic career.
Tara sighed. It looked like being a long day. Into her notebook she made a careful note of the first twenty titles. They were all published in pharmacological and chemical journals, some dating back as far as the fifties. Some were in English and some were in German; none of them appeared to be in Czech, although that was the country where he had spent the early part of his career. Carrying her notebook, she gathered the journals, some withering with age, and began to read. And as she did so, she made brief notes in the pad beside her.
The reading was slow and tedious. Many of the papers were just academic time-wasting, the sort of papers that had to be pumped out from time to time to maintain respectability within the university. They contained nothing that was either particularly new or particularly interesting. A few struck Tara as possibly novel for their day, but by now hopelessly dated. She was finding herself bored with Dr Zmitt. He appeared an undistinguished middle-ranking chemist at an undistinguished middle-ranking university.
The first paper to engage her interest was dated 1967. It was written by Zmitt, but acknowledged the research work of Dr Peter Scott, described in a footnote as a student working towards his doctorate at Oxford. So the two men knew each other back in the sixties. The article was a study of the susceptibility of the nervous system to viral attack. Tara found it intriguing. It was advanced for a piece of research that was now three decades old. How advanced? Tara racked her mind, but could not come up with an answer. The history of pharmacology had never been a subject that interested her very much.
Carefully, she reread it. The angle puzzled her. It was abstruse. Almost pointless. It went into incredible detail about the vulnerability of the nervous system to viral attack. But it said nothing about the purpose of this research. It gave away no clues as to why it might have been done, nor what its authors were searching for. And as she searched the footnotes, another strange angle became apparent; though there was clearly a lot of laboratory work leading up to this paper, there was no acknowledgement of any funding. No respectful thanks for grants or use of equipment. Nothing. Complete silence.
Tara photocopied the paper, and went back to her desk. A girl sitting opposite, also Oriental, smiled at her, and Tara smiled back. She found herself glad to be back in an academic institution. It was warmer, and more open, than the closed, commercial world of the Kizog laboratories. But she had none of the time to stop and chat she might have had as an undergraduate herself. There was too much to be done.
It was evening before she had finished looking through all the papers. Most of them could just be flicked through. More academic filler. More work on vulnerabilities within the nervous system. Nothing that struck her of any great importance. By 1971 Dr Zmitt had stopped publishing entirely. By 1974 he had retired. Five years later he was dead.
She collected her notes and her photocopies and headed outside. The evening air was cool and around her commuters were still drifting into the station. Tara found her car and began driving north. Her body was drained and her mind exhausted by the day. She felt tired. Nothing about her researches had calmed her. Perhaps I am being paranoid, she told herself. Hysterical. Perhaps, she wondered. But somehow she was unconvinced.
Jack vomited into the toilet, heaving up the bowl of cereal he had forced himself to eat that morning. He dabbed his eyes, and struggled out to the basin, rubbing his face in water, and swilling out his mouth. Christ, he murmured to himself, walking out of the gents and back towards his office.
'Bad night?'
Jack glanced up. It was Layla, looking radiant in a sharp, cream two-piece suit and pearls, her face covered in a smirking grin.
'Something like that,' he muttered darkly. Layla may have looked good, but he was too busy to pay her much attention this morning.
'Out with the brilliant Oriental scientist, perhaps?' joked Layla. 'I hear you two are very close.'
'Who says that?' Jack snapped.
'A tender subject?' said Layla, backing away slightly. 'Don't worry. It's just gossip.'
Jack rubbed his brow, wondering if Layla had any aspirin, and whether he should ask for some. His mind was shot, and his stomach was still churning. He needed something to help him concentrate. 'I'm having a bad time,' he said lamely.
'OK,' replied Layla softly. She placed a binder down on his desk. 'Kizog: the Case Against' it said.
'The defence document?' asked Jack, struggling to focus on the words. 'What does it say?'
'Try reading it,' said Layla. 'There is a council of war at ten sharp. Questions will be asked.'
'Give me a break,' said Jack.
Layla moved closer, sitting on the edge of the desk. 'They say we don't make any money. Dodgy accounting. They argue that we don't have anything like the sales we claim. The numbers are massaged upwards.'
'So what?' said Jack wearily. 'Everyone does that. It helps make the profit figures look less outrageous.'
'I know. And they don't provide very much evidence. But they do say there is more to come.' She opened the slim document. 'Here: "Kizog is an edifice built on fictitious accounting. Its apparent profitability is a mystery waiting to be unravelled." '
Interesting, thought Jack. 'The Chairman won't like that,' he said flatly.
'He won't like it if we are late, either,' answered Layla breezily. 'Move.'
Jack struggled to his feet and followed her towards the lift. His limbs were still tired from last night. It must have been three or four by the time he went to bed. He had returned to his flat in a state of numbed shock; his nerves felt like they had died of fright. Sitting alone in the dark, his limbs shivered as he downed three drinks in quick succession. He drifted into the shower, and, as he stood beneath the hot jets of water, felt tears trickle down his face. For the girl or for me? he wondered.
The night wore on, but Jack could barely sleep. The pictures kept re-emerging in his mind, each with a vivid stillness, like some kind of freakish slide show. The girl on the street. Beneath him, half-naked and humiliated. Beside Shane. With the knife on her throat. The blood dripping down to the floor. And through it all one question hammered away at his dulled senses; what could I have done?
Nothing, he tried to reassure himself. Nothing at all. Talk to the Chairman, he told himself. Talk to him right away. Tell him everything ... he promised me protection.
The meeting was held inside the boardroom. The Chairman was already sitting at one end of the table, next to Ralph Finer. To their left was Davi
d Knowlton, the head of corporate finance at Goldreich, and Simon Morrison from Whateleys, the two investment banks. Both were working on the Kizog team. With them were Anthony Donaldson, from Lansing Benham, the brokers on the deal. Each adviser had two assistants sitting next to him. Jack and Layla walked towards them and sat down. The Chairman nodded in their direction.
Sam Taylor bustled into the room looking flummoxed and slightly perplexed. His face was redder than usual, and his manner less breezy. One of life's number twos, thought Jack. 'Vicious piece of work,' Taylor said, to nobody in particular, whilst laying his own copy of the defence document down on the boardroom table.
The Chairman rapped his knuckles, bringing everybody to attention. 'May we begin,' he said. All the eyes in the room turned to face him. 'I believe we expected a vigorous response from our friends at Ocher. This is perhaps more vigorous than we expected. Simon?'
Morrison shifted uneasily in his seat. 'Sir,' he began. Jack looked across the table, struck by the slightness of the man. Morrison might be earning upwards of £1 million a year, before bonus, he thought, but he still had to quiver before the Chairman and call him 'sir'. Just like the rest of us. 'An attack on our accounting methods was to be expected. It is part of the standard bid defence. The question is whether this is just yah-boo-sucks stuff, or whether they can actually stack it up. They don't stack it up here. But if they could that would be very damaging.'
'Do you believe it?' asked the Chairman quietly.
'I would never question the integrity of a client, sir,' answered Morrison, without hesitation.
Delivered with a face of granite, noticed Jack. The man earned his money.
The Chairman looked at David Knowlton. 'And you?'
'I never believe anything written by Zurich Financial. Those Swiss have the ethics of rattlesnakes. I tell you what we do. We come out and attack their accounts. Say the whole thing is totally fictitious. Say they haven't sold as much as a packet of aspirin for the last five years.' Knowlton was leaning forward now, building up steam behind his argument. But it evaporated at the end of his sentence, leaving him hanging in a silence. His eyes twitched slightly, and he slumped back in his chair, waiting for a reaction. 'We could set some of our people working on their figures,' he said eventually.
'Perhaps,' responded the Chairman quietly. 'Ralph, tell these gentlemen how seriously we should take these allegations.'
Finer was doodling on a pad on the desk. 'There may be some front-end loading,' he began. 'I would not be too surprised if some of the divisions were booking a lot of forward sales close to the year-end. Actually I know they do. That is a fairly predictable result of a bonus system. As for the rest I believe there is nothing to fear from these allegations.'
'My guess is that it's just hot air,' said Morrison. 'They can spin this out until the bid lapses. This is a defence, remember. All they have to do is create a reasonable doubt in the minds of the shareholders and they will escape.'
'Quite correct,' whispered the Chairman. 'But we must not allow any doubts in the minds of the shareholders. We need this victory and we need it quickly. Time will not be generous towards us.' His eyes peeled around the room, surveying each person in turn before resting on Taylor. The chief executive was sweating slightly more now, thought Jack. He looked nervous. 'Speed,' he said. 'That is the essence of the thing.'
Shall I talk to the Chairman? wondered Jack, his mind drifting away from the conversation. Or shall I talk to the police?
'We must be more than quick,' said the Chairman. 'We must be deadly.'
'Our people are making good progress with the shareholders' register,' said Knowlton. 'We are talking to people around the clock. And I think we are making some progress.'
The Chairman waved a hand. Dismissively. 'Perhaps we should raise the offer.'
There was a silence. 'Most unusual, sir,' said Morrison.
The Chairman fixed a glare upon him. 'But of course,' he whispered. 'A deadly manoeuvre is always unusual.'
There was a momentary draining of colour from the faces of the bankers. Their lips tightened, and their eyes were cast down. Nobody spoke.
If I go to the police, Jack told himself, then Shane will try to implicate me in the murder. I need the company and the Forum to prove what I was doing there.
The Chairman smiled suddenly and there was a sparkle in his eyes. 'Just a suggestion,' he said. 'We need some creative thinking around here.'
'As I said,' Morrison continued. 'Raising an offer before the first one has even lapsed would be very risky. People might assume we were desperate.'
The Chairman's fingers were sliding across the table. 'Perhaps we are.'
'But better not to let people know,' said Morrison. 'How much more were you thinking of?'
'Another £1.5 billion,' said the Chairman. 'In cash. Not in paper.'
'We have that kind of money available, sir?' asked Morrison quizzically.
'You are the bankers,' said the Chairman. 'Find the money.'
Morrison and Knowlton both nodded. In unison, Jack noticed. Neither of them looked as if he had the faintest idea where he would find the money. And they were already worrying about the kind of trouble they would get into if they did not come up with a solution. Jack sympathised. Big trouble on the horizon was always a fearful sight. The Chairman waved a hand. Taylor and Finer and the bankers and brokers all took this as their cue to leave the room, shuffling quietly towards the door. Jack and Layla were about to follow them, when they saw a long, bony finger beckoning them closer towards the head of the table. 'Stay a moment,' whispered the Chairman.
Jack's heart fluttered. Layla leapt to attention, walking purposefully towards the Chairman, pulling out the chair next to him, and placing it at a right angle to his before she sat down. She crossed her legs, allowing her skirt to ride up her legs slightly, exposing the inside of her thighs. Does the Chairman notice this? thought Jack. It was hard to believe he didn't. The girl paraded herself in front of him like a thirty-something secretary desperate to nail down a rich husband before her looks finally collapsed. Was he interested? Hard to know. Although the Chairman had harassed people in hundreds of different ways, seducing and terrorising them at the same time, and although no cruelty was too small, nor any humiliation too insignificant, there had never been any hint of sexual dalliances. As far as Jack knew he was happily married to a wife he hardly ever saw. And yet, he reflected, whether there was any interest or not hardly mattered. The mere fact that Layla could make it so clear she was happy to have her skinny young body invaded by this leathery old crocodile was enough. The Chairman would be pleased enough by the abjectness of her desire to accommodate his whims. He had already humiliated her, and that was enough. Why fuck her body, thought Jack, when he had already fucked her mind?
'Is there anything I can do for you, Chairman?' said Layla.
Speak to him now, thought Jack.
'Investigate,' the Chairman replied. 'Get close to the Zurich Financial people. I am sure you have friends there. Or you can make friends. Find out what they are thinking. And report back to me.'
'Of course, I think I know a couple of people there...'
'Good.' The Chairman waved his hand, cutting off her sentence. 'I'll listen to what you have to say with interest. After the weekend...'
His voice trailed off, and a silence hung over the room, still and ugly, as she departed. Jack stood rooted to the spot.
'Sit,' the Chairman commanded imperiously.
Jack took the chair Layla had vacated. The Chairman leant back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest, and for a moment he closed his eyes as if he was about to take a nap. He sighed, opening his eyes again, and looked around the room. 'These are busy times,' he said quietly.
Jack decided to dump his natural sense of reserve. He needed to talk seriously, not waste time with obtuse chatter. 'I witnessed a murder last night, sir,' he said.
The Chairman's interest was captured now. He leant forward, leaning his elbows on the tab
le and resting his face in his hands. 'You know that's something I've never done. Not in real life.'
'A woman. Her throat was cut.'
'It must have been awful.'
'It was a kind of initiation, I think. The racketeer I met, the one I was supposed to collect evidence on. He wanted to be sure he could trust me. He filmed me with her and then killed her. He says he has the whole thing on tape.'
'We are dealing with dangerous people,' said the Chairman quietly.
Jack could feel himself starting to get angry. 'At the moment it appears to be just me who is dealing with them,' he said sharply.
The Chairman cast him an inquisitive look. 'Quite so,' he answered softly.
'I thought I should go straight to the police,' Jack persisted. 'I am, after all, only a witness. But if I remain silent I become an accessory.'
The Chairman shook his head. He reached out and tapped a finger on the top of Jack's hand. 'Don't do that,' he whispered.
'Wait a short while. Everything will be clear soon.'
'How long?' Jack demanded.
The Chairman stood up and patted Jack on the shoulder. 'Talk to the lady from the Forum, and follow her instructions. And don't worry. The company will look after you.'
TEN
It had been a terrible day. Truly awful. And Jack was in no mood for sitting in traffic. He had skipped the office early, ducking out before six, careful to take a winding route through the corridors, anxious to make sure no one saw him. Pathetic, he told himself. I could be on murder charges and I am worried about whether I can leave the office early. Useless behaviour. And a reminder that whatever game I am involved in, it is not one I am naturally cut out for. No stomach for it. No stomach at all.