by Louise Welsh
Iqbal nodded at an empty coat rack. ‘You can hang your jacket there.’
Stevie started to unzip her tracksuit top but remembered that she was only wearing a thin vest and sports bra underneath.
‘It’s okay, I’ll keep it on.’
Iqbal made a helpless gesture with his hands, as if he were the minion of a giant corporation, charged with a regrettable duty.
‘I’d prefer it if you took it off, please.’
Instinct told Stevie that he wasn’t trying to get a better look at her breasts, but she asked, ‘Why?’
Iqbal gave an apologetic smile.
‘To avoid infection.’
Stevie shrugged off her jacket and put it on one of the pegs. Iqbal handed her a bottle of antibacterial gel. A blush was spreading across his cheeks, but Stevie guessed that he was tenacious, the kind of person who would follow through, even when it made him squirm inside. She washed her hands and made to give the bottle back, but he stepped away from her, neat as a ballroom dancer.
‘Can you wash up to your elbows, please?’ The nervous smile flashed across his face again. ‘It’s what hospitals tell visitors to do.’
Stevie did as he asked. The gel was cold, its chemical scent harsh in her nose and the back of her throat, as if it was also disinfecting the inside of her head.
‘I’ve already had it.’
‘The sweats?’
‘Yes.’
She passed him the gel and this time he took it from her.
‘Maybe you’re immune, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a carrier.’
The thought had not occurred to her. She asked, ‘Does it make it more likely?’
Iqbal frowned. ‘I don’t know.’
He walked into the apartment and she followed him. The place reminded her of a magazine feature on compact, open-plan living. The sleek kitchen was tucked neatly into a corner, a dining table sat in front of it and beyond that, a large couch faced on to a picture window. The flat was decorated in a muted, natural palette of bamboos and stone greys. Books, CDs and DVDs were ranked neatly on a bank of shelves, adding a flash of mismatched colour. A floating staircase led up to a mezzanine where Iqbal’s sleeping area presumably lay. The only glimpse of chaos was a workstation cleverly positioned beneath the stairs, its surface crammed with a confusion of computers, wires and printouts.
A flat-screen TV hung to the right of the couch, somehow suggesting that viewing was a solitary activity, to be undertaken lying down, with your head propped against the armrest. The television was on, flashing images from a hospital ward somewhere in India, which were quickly replaced by similar scenes from somewhere in Europe and then Africa. The TV’s volume was down and subtitles stabbed across the bottom of its screen.
V5N6 IS NO RESPECTER OF AGE OR SOCIAL CLASS
The picture shifted to stock film of an anonymous scientist delicately inserting a pipette into a test tube.
SCIENTISTS ACROSS THE WORLD ARE TAKING PART IN AN UNPRECEDENTED COLLABORATION
The image made Stevie think of her defection from the lab in St Thomas’s and of Joanie, lying helpless in a nest of tubes.
Iqbal went to the kitchen area, took a packet of frozen peas from the freezer and handed it to her.
‘Hold this to your face. It’ll help the swelling.’
‘Does it look that bad?’
‘Not if you’ve just gone a few rounds with Amir Kahn.’ His eyes met Stevie’s and glanced away. ‘You have a laptop you want me to look at?’
‘Yes, it belonged to my boyfriend …’
‘Can I see it, please?’
It felt odd to be surrendering the computer to a stranger and Stevie hesitated.
Iqbal said, ‘You did bring it with you?’
‘Yes.’
Stevie pulled the laptop from her bag and handed it to him.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Iqbal slid it from its slipcase.
‘Get past the password, if you can.’
Iqbal took the machine to his workstation. He rearranged the laptops, tablets and PCs on the desk, clearing space for Simon’s.
‘Is that all?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve no idea what’s in it.’
‘Okay.’ Iqbal put the laptop on the desk and switched it on. He settled himself on a desk chair and pulled out its neighbour, indicating that she should sit too. ‘This won’t take a nanosecond.’
Stevie perched on the edge of her swivel chair. A headline screamed from the open screen of the PC in front of her.
CIA PLOT TO DISABLE CHINA
She asked, ‘Do you believe that?’
Iqbal looked up, his face gleaming in the glow of Simon’s laptop.
‘What?’
‘About the CIA.’
‘I don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose. There are all sorts of rumours flying around on the Net. That’s one of the more sensible ones. Some people believe the sweats was sent by aliens, a kind of cosmic chemical warfare.’ He reached beneath the desk and pulled out a plastic carton. ‘It’s not called the World Wide Web for nothing. You can get sucked in and trapped there. CIA, FBI, MI5, the Jews, the Mormons, the Christian Scientists, God, Muhammad, Jehovah, blacks, homosexuals, the Chinese, the North Koreans, it seems like everyone wants to blame someone. I was almost relieved when PC Caniparoli called. I needed to be kicked offline for a while.’
Iqbal turned the laptop upside down, looking for something amongst the bar-codes and serial numbers stickered on its base. Stevie tried to think of information that might help him work out the password.
‘Simon was a doctor. He worked with sick children at St Thomas’s Hospital. His second name was Sharkey and he has a cousin called Julia who’s also a doctor.’ She glanced at Iqbal to see if the information she had offered was useful, but he was occupied in unpacking a bewildering tangle of leads and devices from the carton. She said, ‘I’m not sure what else I can tell you.’
Iqbal looked up from his task.
‘Don’t worry. It’s none of my business who your boyfriend was, or why you want to access his computer. I’m doing this as a favour to PC Caniparoli.’
‘I thought it might help you come up with the password if you knew a bit about Simon.’
‘Is that how you think computer passwords are broken?’ Iqbal looked amused. ‘Someone guesses until they hit on the right word?’
‘I don’t know.’ She was floundering. ‘What do you do?’
‘This.’ He took a small silver box, which reminded Stevie of the card reader she used to transfer her holiday photographs on to her Mac, and plugged it into the side of the laptop. A window appeared on the start-up page and Iqbal’s fingers moved, light and fast, against the keyboard. ‘Here we go.’ The familiar jingle sounded and icons glowed into life on the desktop. ‘Voilà!’
Iqbal swivelled round, triumphant.
Stevie got to her feet. Now that the computer was unlocked, she was unsure whether she wanted to know what Simon had hidden there.
Iqbal’s brow creased. ‘Do you want me to leave you alone for a moment?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell you what.’ He pushed his chair back from the desk. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea. Give you a bit of privacy.’
‘Thanks.’
It was an automatic response. Stevie felt detached, as if she too was a computer, a robot girl waiting to be programmed with her next task. She could hear Iqbal running the tap, filling the kettle, moving crockery around. The sounds belonged to another world. Stevie stroked the computer keyboard. Would this be her Rubicon? No, she had crossed that when the stranger had attacked her in the car park, or maybe even earlier, when she had found Simon. Perhaps there had been no going back after that.
She clicked on Recent Places and opened the first document listed: an Excel file headed CP Study 001. A bewildering register of numbers and percentages appeared on the screen and she let out a groan.
‘What is it?’
Iqbal was cradling a teapot in his hand, ro
lling a splash of hot water around its belly, warming the china.
Stevie shook her head. ‘I’ll never be able to decipher this.’
‘Let me take a look.’ Iqbal emptied the water down the sink, tipped three teaspoonfuls of tea into the pot and poured boiling water over it. He put the teapot on a tray beside two mugs and a metal tea strainer. ‘Do you take milk?’
Stevie wanted to tell him to forget the tea, but she said, ‘Yes.’
Iqbal took a milk carton from the fridge, added some to both of the mugs and carried the tray over to the desk. He looked over Stevie’s shoulder at the open document.
‘Minimise it and open the next one on the list.’ CP Study 002 was another Excel document, another screed of incomprehensible data. Iqbal lifted the lid of the pot, stirred its contents and strained tea into the two mugs. ‘And the next one.’ He handed Stevie a mug. ‘And the ones after that.’
CP Study 003 and 004 were more of the same, but the documents that followed were of a different stamp: patients’ notes, written in technical language that was difficult to follow. They scrolled through them, unsure of what they were searching for until Iqbal said, ‘Let’s have a look at his downloads.’
Iqbal lingered on an article headlined The Breakthrough That Could Transform the Treatment of Cerebral Palsy, which had been published three years ago in Archives of Disease in Childhood. Scans of a series of contracts followed. The first was with a pharmaceutical company, TelioGlaxin©; the rest were a series of franchises licensing various organisations to carry out the treatment developed.
Iqbal scooted his chair closer. He leant in, put his finger on the touchpad and moved the cursor down until he reached the bit about money. He let out a low whistle and returned to the three names at the top.
‘You know these guys?’
Simon’s name was written above John Ahumibe’s and Alexander Buchanan’s.
‘This is Simon Sharkey’s laptop. He was my boyfriend. I’ve met the other two men once, recently. They were colleagues of Simon’s.’
‘Did he do this to you?’ Iqbal stretched a hand towards her bruised face, but didn’t touch it. ‘Your boyfriend?’
‘No, that was someone else.’
He nodded to show he believed her.
‘They had a lot of money coming in.’
‘Enough to incite murder?’
Iqbal raised his eyebrows. ‘How much is enough? Six months ago, a schoolkid was stabbed to death for twenty quid, outside the shops at the end of my road. It can happen to the best of us.’ Iqbal looked at her. ‘But yes, these guys were making the kind of big money some people would kill for.’ He came to the end of Simon’s downloads. ‘Okay, I think we may have exhausted this particular seam.’ He closed the computer window and scrolled the cursor down the start-up menu. ‘Last, but most certainly not least, let’s have a look at the picture library.’ Iqbal clicked and Simon’s gallery sprang on to the screen. There was one, solitary image saved there.
Stevie had forgotten the photograph’s existence, but as soon as she saw it she remembered the afternoon it was taken.
It had been one of their few daytime excursions. They had shared a boozy lunch at the Charlotte Street Hotel and then walked to Russell Square. Neither of them had been dressed for lazing around on the grass. Simon had been at meetings that morning and was still in his suit, and Stevie had been wearing a dress more appropriate for fine dining than picnics, but they had sat together on the lawn amongst tourists with time to kill, and office workers grabbing a quick lunch.
Stevie remembered how Simon had suddenly leapt to his feet and accosted a passing couple. How he had handed the woman his phone, explained how to operate the camera function and then sat nimbly back down on the grass and reached an arm around Stevie, drawing her close. It was a good photo. They were both laughing, trees dappling the sunlight behind them.
Iqbal asked, ‘Is that him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is he now? In prison?’
‘He’s dead.’
It was harder to say with Simon’s face in front of her, his smile wide and reckless.
‘The sweats?’
‘No, I think he was murdered because of something to do with all of this.’ She closed the computer window, banishing the photograph to the archives. ‘Why did you ask if Simon was in prison?’
‘That kind of money? It’s too good to be true and in my experience, too good to be true can be a short cut to a long stay in the big white hotel. I learnt that the hard way.’
‘You went to jail?’
‘No, but I could have. That’s the reason I do the odd favour for PC Caniparoli.’
‘He bribes you?’
Iqbal’s expression had turned serious at the mention of murder, but he favoured her with a smile.
‘Derek’s a decent guy. He gave me a break. I owe him big time.’
‘That’s what I need, a break.’ Stevie gestured at the documents stacked together on the desktop. ‘I thought that if I could get into Simon’s computer I’d know why he was killed and what to do about it. But all I’ve ended up with is a bunch of hospital notes I’ll never be able to understand and an incomprehensible jumble of numbers.’ She got to her feet and closed the laptop’s lid. ‘I’m more confused than when I arrived.’
‘No, you’re not.’ Iqbal took a sip of his tea. It was cold. He made a face and set the mug back on its coaster. ‘You know your boyfriend was part of a major medical breakthrough. You also know there’s big money involved and who the other two people included in the contract are. I’d say that’s quite a lot of information to go on. As for the rest of the stuff.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You seem like an intelligent woman. Maybe you wouldn’t get the finer points of the scientific argument, but I bet if you read the articles and patient notes, you’d understand the gist of it.’
‘Maybe, but there’s no way I can get to grips with the CP files, whatever they are. They’re just a mass of numbers. I wouldn’t know where to start.’
‘When you said all you wanted was to get past the password I guessed it would just be the beginning.’ Iqbal raised the laptop’s lid and the files sprang back on to the screen. ‘My first degree’s in maths, but I took a postgrad in statistics. Raw data is a language I speak.’
‘You’ll help me?’
‘PC Caniparoli asked me to sort you out and like I said, I owe PC Caniparoli. It might take a while though.’
‘How long?’
‘I don’t know, an hour or six, maybe more.’ Iqbal stuck a memory stick into the computer, saved the Archives of Disease in Childhood article and patient reports to it and then inserted the stick into his own computer and pressed print. A printer at the other end of the desk hummed into life and started to scroll forth pages. ‘Why don’t you settle yourself on the couch and read through these while I spread out over here and do my best to make sense of all this?’ He grinned at her. ‘You can put the kettle on and make us another pot of tea if you like. I’ve been preparing for a siege. There should be enough tea bags and biscuits to last us through Armageddon and into the beyond.’
Twenty-Two
Stevie woke unsure of where she was, and then she saw the lights of the city shimmering in the darkness beyond the large picture windows and remembered. She pushed herself upright on Iqbal’s couch.
‘How long was I out for?’
‘Hours. I reckoned you needed it.’
She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it away from her face.
‘I feel awful.’
Iqbal went behind the breakfast bar, took the packet of frozen peas from the freezer and tossed them to her.
‘I stuck them back in when I saw you’d fallen asleep.’
‘Thanks.’ Stevie held the pack to her face. The coldness hurt. ‘Do I look awful?’
‘Better than when you arrived. You hardly remind me of Joseph Merrick at all.’
‘Cheers.’
She lifted one of the cushions from the couch.
‘Looking for these?’ Iqbal held up the notes he had printed earlier. ‘How much did you manage to get through before you dropped off?’
‘Not much.’
She had passed out almost as soon as she had sat on the couch.
‘It makes interesting reading. Put it together with some of the other stuff I’ve found and it becomes fascinating. Come and take a look.’
Stevie gave the city lights a last glance. There was something different about them. Something she couldn’t put her finger on. She turned her back on the lights and joined Iqbal at his desk. He swivelled round in his chair to face her.
‘Okay, did you read the article about the breakthrough your boyfriend and his colleagues made?’
‘A bit of it.’ Stevie was ashamed to admit she hadn’t got beyond the first paragraph before sleep had ambushed her. ‘I’m not sure I absorbed it all.’
‘I think it could be one of the keys to the whole thing.’ Iqbal’s eyes were bright with the triumph of discovery. ‘Put simply, Simon and his team, Buchanan and Ahumibe, had an idea that if they could work out a way to deliver anti-epileptic medication directly into the spinal tissue of children with cerebral palsy, it could be more effective than existing treatments. They looked at methods of delivering medication for other conditions and Buchanan, the chemist in the crew, developed a form of anti-epileptic medicine which could be administered through a pump implanted in children’s abdomens.’
‘It sounds like the cure might be worse than the disease.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ Iqbal was as enthusiastic as a new convert. ‘Cerebral palsy is a horrible disease and these are sophisticated devices. The pumps deliver minute trickles of medication through a tiny tube implanted in the spinal cord. We’re talking microsurgery.’
‘So, did it work?’
‘According to the studies Simon and his team set up it worked very well indeed, much better than they’d anticipated. There was only one problem.’
Iqbal paused and Stevie realised that he was waiting for her to ask what the problem was.
‘What?’
‘The treatment was expensive. It would cost around five thousand pounds to insert the pump, another two thousand two hundred pounds every three months to fund the drug, plus another eight hundred pounds every three months to top up the pump. It could go on for as long as the child lived, into adulthood, into old age. People say you can’t put a cost on a life, but these funding bodies in the National Health Service do exactly that. They have to or there’d be no money left for anything else. They ruled that the treatment was too expensive for the NHS to license. But the team had got their teeth into the project.’