Thanks again, she thought, offering her prayer up to the goddess Diana, she with her fingers on the purse strings. She felt her shoulders relax as she walked in and took her bag from Yohan.
‘Do you need me this evening, Miss Rachel?’
‘I’m not sure yet. Give me your cell phone number and I’ll call you.’
She checked in and was shown to her room. It was cool and spacious – white linen and wood – and she fell backwards on to the bed, sighing, but she knew that if she stayed there, she would never get up again. And if she stopped moving, the emotions of the afternoon – of the last month – might overtake her. So she levered herself up and ran into the bathroom and showered, washing her hair through twice until she felt really clean. Walking back into the room, towelling her hair, her eye fell on the minibar. Usually she called ahead and requested that her room be cleared of alcohol; that was what they told you in AA – don’t put temptation in your way – but she wasn’t sure she would get through this without something. Moving quickly, before she could change her mind, she sat down and poured the contents of two small whisky bottles into a tumbler. She could call room service for ice, but she just wanted to feel the liquid burn down her throat; her mouth was literally watering at the prospect.
The tumbler had just touched her lips when she heard knocking at the door.
‘Shit,’ she whispered. She had always wondered what it would be like to have a bodyguard at your beck and call. But right now, all she wanted was to be left alone.
She pulled the door open. But it wasn’t Yohan standing there.
‘Liam?’ she said, her voice tumbling into staccato laughter. For a moment she couldn’t quite understand what she was seeing. Was this some cruel trick of the booze? But she hadn’t even had a sip.
‘It’s me. The Ghost of Christmas Past,’ he said, smiling.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said, throwing her arms around him. For a moment she forgot the awkwardness of their last couple of days in Thailand. She just stood there holding him, enjoying his shape, his smell, the sensation of his arms folded around her body.
‘I think you’d better put me down now,’ he whispered.
Rachel took a step back, just to check that what she had felt was real.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ she said, for one minute feeling inordinately glad that she had washed her hair.
‘Your sister called me. Thought you might need a friendly face.’
‘She did that?’
Liam was trying to make light of it, breaking the tension in the room, but the fact remained that he had flown thousands of miles to be with her. Now what did that mean exactly? She turned to look at him, but he avoided her gaze. Now what did that mean?
‘It was a military bloody operation,’ he said, laughing nervously. ‘Diana phoned me in the middle of the night and said I had to be in Bangkok by nine o’clock. There was a speedboat waiting for me at Sairee Beach, which took me to Samui for the first flight, then at Bangkok I was escorted through the fast lane to the private jet terminal.’
‘I bet you felt like James Bond.’
‘But better-looking, obviously.’
‘Well don’t start getting ideas above your station,’ said Rachel. ‘When we get back to Ko Tao, it’s straight back on the scooters.’
They both started laughing, but Rachel felt like she might burst into tears.
Liam put his small holdall on the bed and walked outside to the balcony. She followed him out into the balmy night, feeling as though she was part of a dream, as if they were back in Thailand, in some beautiful villa by the sea, living together, loving each other.
‘I’m glad you came,’ she said finally.
Liam nodded and turned to face her. ‘What’s happening, Rach? I’m worried about you.’
‘The potted version?’ she said, knowing that she had to tell somebody everything. ‘It’s a story about a billionaire, a pretty college student and a diet drug called Rheladrex . . .’
33
The view was so perfect that it made her forget everything. As the town car slid across the George Washington Bridge, Diana pushed her face up against the glass, smiling to herself as the glittering palace of Manhattan appeared to rise from the blue-green river. To her, New York had always looked like the Emerald City and had the same magical possibilities. As a girl, sitting in that cramped bedroom hiding from her parents’ screaming matches, she had read everything she could about the Big Apple, imagining what it would be like to actually visit the place, to see those flashing ‘walk/don’t walk’ signs, to feel the whoosh of the air coming out of the subway, to walk up to a hot-dog stand and order a chili dog ‘with everything on it’.
As they jostled their way cross-town and turned on to Amsterdam, Diana craned her neck to peer up at those boxy red-brick buildings like a tourist. Whenever she had visited New York with Julian, she had been dismayed to see him sitting in the back of the car reading the paper or flicking through messages on his phone, as though the exotic scene outside their little bubble barely registered. But of course, that was the truth. For a wealthy cosmopolitan like Julian Denver, a visit to New York was like the bus journey to work, and he had long since stopped seeing the bright red fire hydrants and the yellow taxis as anything other than street furniture. But Diana didn’t think she would ever lose her wonder at this city, however often she visited. To her, it was the most exciting place in the world, a place where anything could happen.
They turned off Madison and drew up outside The Mark, the doorman offering Diana a hand as she stepped out. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She couldn’t deny that she enjoyed this part of being wealthy, the part where people made a huge fuss over her, but she still felt slightly detached from it, almost as if someone was going to pop up any minute and say, ‘Ah-ha! Caught you! This isn’t your life, Diana Miller. There’s been an almighty cock-up and you’ve actually got to go back to Sheffield.’
But no one did. They smiled and took her credit card and handed her a key and showed her up to a wonderful suite, tastefully decorated, with tiny fragrant soaps waiting for her by the vast bathtub. It was like some sort of conjuring trick.
But as the bellhop closed the door with a discreet click and left Diana standing facing the perfectly smooth double bed, she suddenly felt terribly alone. No Julian, no Rachel, no Mum. What the hell am I doing here? she thought, sinking on to the mattress.
Rachel had been distraught when she had heard the news about her friend Ross. It had made perfect sense for her to fly out to Jamaica to see him, and Diana had been glad she could make the appropriate arrangements. But when Rachel had asked Diana to fly to New York and speak to the head of Denver Chemicals, she had been reluctant. She was not a detective or a reporter. In fact she didn’t really like meeting people she didn’t know very well, let alone asking them difficult questions. When Rachel had told her about this Rheladrex drug, though, about Julian and Madison’s connection to it, she could not help but be intrigued.
She showered and changed into a fitted black dress. It was smart, respectable, professional. She was due to meet Simon Michaels at Le Cirque – a restaurant she had been to once before and remembered as a place full of power-brokers. She wanted to be taken seriously. Her mobile phone buzzed with a text message. Picking up her clutch bag, she took the lift to the ground floor.
Her eyes scanned the lobby before she recognised the back of his head, his broad shoulders trapped in a suit, his hand thrust casually in his pocket as he killed time.
He turned and saw her. His usual greeting of a smile had been replaced by something more cautious.
‘What’s all this about, Di?’ he asked as he kissed her lightly on the cheek.
The previous day, Diana had phoned Adam to see if he had yet made contact with Simon Michaels as Rachel had asked him to. Adam was in New York, a detail that hadn’t e
xactly surprised her – as global head of the hotels division, it was where he had been based until Julian’s death had brought him back to London. It had also felt quite fortuitous, as if the gods were finally smiling on her, as it meant she did not have to meet Simon Michaels alone.
‘I thought Rachel had discussed it with you. She needs to know about the new Denver diet pill, Rheladrex.’
They walked out of the hotel on to Madison Avenue and its wall of heat and noise.
‘Yes, she asked me about it. I didn’t know it was urgent, though. What’s so important that you’ve flown to New York to speak to Simon?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe that’s what we’ll find out when we meet him.’
They took a taxi to the Bloomberg building in midtown, where Le Cirque occupied a cavernous space on the ground floor. Adam knew the maître d’, and they were shown to one of the best tables in the house, where he ordered two aperitifs as they waited for Simon Michaels.
Although she had met him before, Diana didn’t recognise Michaels as he approached the table. It was only when he shook hands with Adam and sat down that she realised this was the CEO of Denver Chemicals.
‘Thanks for meeting us at such short notice,’ said Adam, turning on the charm.
‘We were devastated about Julian,’ said Simon, peering through his round wire-framed glasses. ‘I couldn’t be at the funeral, but Dave Donnelly, our VP, said it was very moving.’
They ordered food and made small talk. Simon had come from the Denver Chemicals headquarters, twenty miles away in New Jersey. Business was apparently good. Elizabeth Denver had called him a week earlier to say that a new CEO would be appointed soon and that uncertainty within the company would be kept to a minimum.
Diana had never liked Simon Michaels. He seemed oily and somehow disingenuous, even in the social situations in which she’d encountered him. Maybe it was his eyes, which always seemed to be jumping around, looking for more important people to speak to, or perhaps searching for an escape route.
‘Diana. How are you?’ he said finally. ‘I was worried about you when you called. You sounded terribly serious.’ He tilted his head, which was a trick Diana had seen many senior managers at Denver Group adopt. It implied concern, and yet a slight superiority. She wondered if it was something they taught you at business school.
‘Life isn’t a bed of roses at the moment,’ she said, which made him instantly squirm. She reminded herself that she had a role to play here: the grieving widow, scatty and a bit overwhelmed, which didn’t feel too far from the truth. She wasn’t going to get anything out of him by being combative. ‘I was in town for a charity thing and I thought I’d pop by.’ She smiled warmly. ‘You’ll be aware that Julian left us an interest in the company. I felt I should get up to speed with what it does and who works for us.’
Her message was clear. Julian had put the shares in trust for Charlie, but until he was of age, the voting rights and administration of those shares would fall to Diana. That made her powerful. Theoretically, she could have Simon Michaels fired – and he would know that.
Michaels looked on edge as he gave her a condensed version of what the company was up to.
‘I heard about a new drug that looks promising. Rheladrex,’ she said, sinking her fork into a fillet of monkfish.
Simon nodded. ‘It’s exciting.’
‘Is it safe? We’re not going to have another Fen-Phen on our hands?’
‘Of course not,’ said Simon, looking surprised that she had some knowledge of the business. ‘It’s taken twenty years of testing to get it to market. It’s as safe as any drug can be, and nothing short of a miracle. I believe that Rheladrex can transform the fortunes of the company. I know that Julian was perhaps losing faith in the pharmaceuticals division, but I think Rheladrex will prove otherwise.’
‘I always thought the pharma division was a licence to print money.’
‘We get a bad press,’ he said stiffly. ‘People criticise us for the so-called inflated prices of drugs under patent. But do they realise how much research and development costs? How many drugs don’t make it to market, so they have to be supported by the ones that do? What a small window we have, whilst the drug is still under patent, to make back those costs?’
He twirled the stem of his wine glass between his fingers.
‘I know Julian wanted to sell the division, but with luck, Rheladrex can renew the faith.’ He looked at Adam, trying to win him round to his way of thinking.
‘He wanted to sell the division?’ said Adam, as if he didn’t believe a word of it.
‘You don’t know?’ That small superior tilt of the head again. ‘The pharmaceutical industry, as you may or may not be aware, is going through a period of consolidation. Denver is not a major player. Julian felt that we were better merging with one of the giants.’
‘So you were for sale,’ said Diana.
‘Julian was looking for a strategic alliance.’ Michaels lowered his voice, knowing that there would be people in this restaurant who would relish that piece of information. ‘But I told him he was unwise to start off-loading the company now. If he sat tight, let Rheladrex shift the volume, the valuation, our bonuses, would go stellar.’
After saying goodbye to Simon, Diana and Adam walked on to the street.
‘So was that worth coming all the way to Manhattan for?’ Adam asked, looking around for a taxi.
‘We should have asked him about Madison Kopek,’ she said, feeling unsatisfied. ‘Rachel said that Madison had registered her brother’s death with the FDA. Perhaps she had complained to the drug company too.’
‘Simon is the CEO,’ said Adam patiently. ‘He’s not going to get involved with the detail of every complaint, and even if Madison did complain, what on earth does it prove?’
‘Complaint? This isn’t someone taking a leaky kettle back to customer services. Someone died, Adam.’
He looked apologetic, but didn’t respond.
‘You heard about Rachel’s friend? The investigator who was helping her with Julian.’
‘What happened?’
‘He’s in a coma. He got mugged.’
‘You think this is all linked to Rheladrex?’ said Adam sceptically.
‘Julian and Madison went to Jamaica together. Rachel thought it was because Rheladrex had some clinical trials done out there.’
‘Or perhaps they just went to Jamaica together.’ He put his hand up immediately and apologised. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.’
‘Just email Simon and ask him if he’s heard of Madison and Billy Kopek. Please.’
Adam sighed audibly and got out his phone. He stood on the sidewalk, composing his email. When he had finished, he put the phone back in his pocket.
‘I know why you’re doing this.’
‘What?’
‘Looking for another reason.’
Diana pressed her lips together. He was right. Rheladrex represented her way out. Julian’s will proved that he had still loved his wife and child. And if Julian and Madison were simply working together to expose Rheladrex, it exonerated her husband in other ways too.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ she said softly.
‘It’s too nice an evening to get morbid,’ he said finally.
‘Got any better suggestions?’ she said, feeling her mood slip. Adam was right. She had to catch herself before she slipped into melancholy.
‘How about you try and forget everything, just for a few hours? Lose yourself in a night on the town?’
She smiled and nodded. It was getting dark, and New York was becoming even more magical.
‘It’s your city, cowboy. Show me around.’
‘The beauty of New York is that it’s lots of different cities,’ said Adam as they started to walk away from Le Cirque. ‘We’ve got Chinatown, downtown,
uptown, fashion New York, the art scene, the hipster scene . . . You could live in the city a decade and go to a different place every night, be a different person.’
‘Give me your New York.’
‘You mean the late-night bars and the strip joints?’ he said, his dark green eyes flashing mischievously.
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘I’m joking. You know I live over the river now. Brooklyn Heights. I am officially a bridge-and-tunnel guy.’
‘So let’s go there. Show me your manor.’
Diana had seen many of New York’s different personalities. She had sat in the tents in Bryant Park during New York Fashion Week, drunk cocktails in the bar at the Gramercy hotel. She’d been to fancy art gallery openings in SoHo, eaten quail in the Upper East Side restaurants. But Brooklyn was not on her radar. Never had been.
They got a cab across the bridge and were dropped off by the famous waterfront promenade. They bought hot dogs and supersize milkshakes from a vendor and ate and drank as they strolled down the sidewalk. There were skateboarders in the street, chic, contented blondes pushing all-terrain buggies, couples flirting in the shade of a tree. If a city could transform you into anyone you wanted to be, then Brooklyn was doing a good job of taking her away from being Diana Denver.
Her conversation with Adam flowed quickly, easily. It was as if they wanted to compact everything they should have said over the seven years they had known one another into one evening. Listening to his stories, Diana was shocked by how superficial their acquaintance had been before now. How you could know someone so well, but know absolutely nothing about them at all. She had no idea that he had sailed the Atlantic. She had known about his rather playboy love of polo but was surprised to learn he was a five-goal player. He could play the saxophone, had produced a short film that had been shown at Sundance. He wanted to own a dog but was worried that he travelled too much. He collected Ernest Hemingway first editions and Northern Soul vinyl. In another life he wanted to be a war photographer; in this life he wanted to expand his hotel group from a 250-property portfolio into something to rival the Starwood chain.
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