Dead End

by Brian Freemantle

‘Did you speak about the flight number in Ms Lang’s purse, which is the reason for FBI involvement?’

  There was another frown. ‘There was some mention, I think. I can’t remember precisely what the context was.’

  ‘His thumb print was on it,’ said Benton. ‘He’d earlier told us he didn’t know anything about a number or why it should have been in Ms Lang’s bag.’

  ‘Really?’ remarked Grant. And stopped.

  ‘Did you and Harry Johnson specifically discuss the flight number?’ asked Benton.

  ‘We might have done, after it emerged in court. I really can’t remember.’

  ‘We’re surprised at the direct communication between you and your security chief,’ declared Dingley.

  ‘Why?’ demanded the man.

  ‘You’re the head of an international conglomerate. Harry Johnson is head of security at McLean,’ said Dingley. ‘That seems quite a divide.’

  ‘You a snob, Mr Dingley?’

  ‘I don’t believe myself to be, sir,’ said the FBI man.

  ‘Sounds like it to me,’ said Grant. ‘I run a different sort of organization than a lot of people – than perhaps the FBI. I want my chief executives and division heads to talk to me. That way problems get solved before they become problems.’

  ‘So, it’s not unusual for you and Harry to speak?’ persisted Dingley.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘How often would you say?’

  ‘Whenever it’s necessary,’ shrugged Grant.

  ‘How? He come up here to report to you direct? When you’re in Washington? Telephone?’

  ‘Whichever’s convenient,’ shrugged the president, again. ‘I always make a point of speaking to every division head in Dubette whenever I’m down there. And there’s the telephone.’

  ‘Did you know Harry Johnson before he joined Dubette from Metro DC police department?’ asked Benton.

  ‘Before?’

  ‘That was my question, sir.’

  ‘How could I have known him before?’

  ‘We thought you might have done,’ said Dingley.

  ‘What reason do you have for thinking that?’ came in Baldwin.

  ‘Just an impression,’ said Benton.

  ‘I thought the FBI worked on the basis of evidence and facts,’ said Grant. ‘I did not know Harry Johnson before he joined Dubette.’

  ‘How did that come about, his joining Dubette?’ asked Dingley.

  ‘The previous security chief was retiring. Recommended Harry. He seemed to fit the bill.’

  ‘Who employed him? You personally? Or your personnel division?’ pressed Benton.

  ‘It would have been personnel, obviously,’ said Grant.

  ‘Eighty thousand dollars a year is a substantial salary.’

  ‘He heads what is considered an important division. Dubette is noted throughout the industry as a substantial payer.’

  ‘You seem well informed about how Harry Johnson came to be employed,’ said Benton.

  ‘I’m well informed about every senior employee at Dubette,’ said Grant. ‘Perhaps security more than most. Security is very important for a company like mine.’

  ‘Because of stealing and commercial theft and piracy,’ anticipated Benton.

  ‘Precisely,’ agreed Grant.

  ‘You suffer a lot of it?’

  ‘We take every precaution to ensure that we don’t.’

  ‘When was the last time?’ asked Dingley, building up to what he and his partner hoped to be the puncturing question.

  There was the now familiar shrug. ‘There was some warehouse pilfering about three months ago.’

  ‘Did you get the guys?’ asked Benton.

  ‘It was a delivery driver, supplying pills to kids. He drew a year. I’d have liked it to have been more. I know the danger of drugs as well as their benefits.’

  ‘What about commercially?’ said Dingley.

  ‘Last attempt was three years ago. A competitor got an informant into McLean. Harry got him before there was any serious damage.’

  ‘I can’t imagine Richard Parnell would steal pills from a Dubette warehouse,’ said Benton.

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Grant, astonished.

  ‘We can’t imagine Richard Parnell stealing pills from a warehouse,’ echoed Dingley. ‘Why was he under surveillance, Mr Grant?’

  Grant looked first to Baldwin, then to the huge desk with its orderly bank of variously coloured telephones.

  Baldwin said: ‘We’d like an explanation for that question.’

  ‘We’d like an answer to it,’ said Dingley. ‘We know of Richard Parnell being under surveillance. And of Harry Johnson being aware of it. It’s extremely relevant to our terrorism and murder enquiries and we need to know why.’

  ‘Are you bugging my telephones?’ demanded Grant, looking back to his desk.

  ‘No,’ replied Benton, honestly.

  ‘So, it’s Harry’s,’ said Grant, answering his own question.

  ‘For which I hope you have a court order,’ said Baldwin.

  ‘Of course we do,’ said Dingley, impatiently.

  ‘Harry Johnson has explained to you how his thumb print came to be on the flight number,’ said the lawyer.

  ‘Which you’ve doubtless told Mr Grant in detail,’ anticipated Benton. ‘What no one’s explained to us yet is why Parnell was under surveillance, with Harry Johnson’s knowledge. And yours, Mr Grant.’

  ‘I would have thought that would have been obvious,’ said the man.

  ‘Not to us it isn’t,’ said Dingley.

  Grant sighed, all the condescending affability gone. ‘A valued member of my company was murdered. An elaborate effort was made to frame a senior executive for that murder, for which, as I understand it, you have no suspects. I believed that Parnell might remain in danger. I felt it justified the setting up of some protective security – having photographs taken, even, to see if Parnell might be being watched by a person or a group of people. It’s been pointless …’ The man paused, looking to the telephone bank again. ‘And, as you obviously know, I’ve spoken to Harry about it – told him to lift everything.’

  ‘So, you no longer fear Richard Parnell is in danger?’ said Dingley.

  ‘I think it would have happened, some attempt would have been made, by now,’ said the Dubette president. ‘I was being overprotective.’

  ‘Having Parnell under surveillance wouldn’t have actually prevented anything happening to him, would it?’ said Benton.

  ‘It would if it had established he was being stalked.’

  ‘These photographs,’ said Benton, ‘who’s been taking them?’

  ‘A private detective agency,’ said Grant.

  ‘We’d like its name,’ said Dingley.

  ‘Get it from Harry,’ snapped Grant. ‘I don’t know it.’

  ‘I’m surprised that you don’t, as closely as you and Harry liaise,’ said Dingley.

  Grant sighed again but didn’t speak, looking pointedly at the lawyer.

  Baldwin said: ‘Is there anything else with which we can help you?’

  ‘During your conversation with Harry Johnson, you asked, and I quote, “What about the other two?” What other two would that be, Mr Grant?’ said Benton.

  ‘The two suspended Metro DC police officers, obviously,’ said the man.

  ‘Why were you curious about them?’ pressed Benton.

  ‘The suggestion is that they mistreated … wrongly arrested … a senior Dubette executive, isn’t it?’

  ‘And part of Johnson’s reply to your question, and again I quote, is, “He …” – he being Clarkson, Harry Johnson’s lawyer – “… says they’re standing up fine.” What did you understand from that reply, Mr Grant?’

  ‘I’m not sure that I understood anything from it.’

  ‘You asked about them, Johnson gives you a reply you don’t understand, and you don’t ask him to explain it?’ pressed Dingley.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Grant.

  ‘Do you still
find it difficult to understand, now that we’re talking about it? Now that you’ve had time to think about it?’ said Benton.

  ‘Yes,’ said Grant.

  ‘Before Johnson says that the two Metro DC officers are standing up well, he says, and again I quote, “Clarkson won’t let me speak to them direct,”’ persisted Benton. ‘We’ve got two police officers who are alleged to have mistreated – wrongly arrested – a senior member of Dubette’s staff, and Harry Johnson wants to talk to them. But then tells you they’re standing up fine. You know how that looks, to my partner and I, Mr Grant? It looks like there was collusion between the three. Wouldn’t you say that’s an interpretation?’

  ‘I don’t think Mr Grant can usefully speculate, as you are speculating,’ said the lawyer. ‘What I do think is that there is an obvious inference that, if it is pursued, could result in consideration of the sort of court action in which a quite separate claim has already been mounted, which could seriously embarrass you two gentlemen personally, and your already seriously embarrassed, ineffective employer, the FBI, to a far greater degree.’

  ‘The question was put to Mr Grant, who has not answered,’ said the unintimidated Benton.

  ‘I think Mr Baldwin has already adequately answered on my behalf,’ refused Grant. ‘What I would say is that I think it is very fortunate for you both that I did not bother to include criminal lawyers in this interview.’

  ‘Which is concluded at this time,’ declared Baldwin. ‘If the Federal Bureau of Investigation seeks to resume it, it will be conducted in the different sort of circumstances that Mr Grant has indicated.’

  Outside the Dubette building, on Wall Street, Dingley said: ‘You fancy calling in on the guys? Broadway’s only just up the road.’

  ‘Why don’t we just get on back?’ said Benton.

  ‘Yeah, why don’t we?’ agreed Dingley.

  Beverley Jackson was the only one in the pharmacogenomics division to know of Parnell’s visit to New York, and then not in detail, because he maintained his decision not to involve her – or anyone else – any further in the French near-disaster. And there was in any case something far more immediate when he arrived back at McLean.

  ‘Why are they dying again so quickly when they’re vaccinated by lesser-strength preparations?’ Parnell rhetorically asked Sean Sato. ‘It doesn’t make sense!’ The disappointment was palpable throughout the laboratory.

  ‘I said the six we kept alive could have been a fluke,’ reminded Sato. ‘I’ve gone back to the twenty per cent ratio.’

  ‘What about blood from those that survived longer?’ demanded Parnell. ‘Any specific molecular assault?’

  ‘None,’ said Lapidus. ‘We can’t attempt to colour match the new tests, because we don’t have a suspect DNA host.’

  ‘What about those that died subsequently?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Deke Pulbrow.

  ‘What about the brief survivors?’ persisted Parnell. ‘Anything different about them from the others who subsequently died? Anything about their strain, breed suppliers, diet, anything at all like that?’ He was conscious of the anxiety in his own voice.

  ‘Everything checked, even their comparable weights and ages,’ said Beverley. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘We started yet, with the twenty per cent ratio?’

  Sato shook his head. ‘We waited, to talk it through with you.’

  ‘Let’s follow blood,’ suggested Parnell. ‘Isolate the mice, individually. No urine or faeces contamination between any. Strictly measured and itemized food. Blood tests from all, before infecting with SARS. And daily – no, half-daily – sampling after infecting, for DNA comparison between those treated and those untreated.’

  ‘Which assumes there will be a survival over a period of days,’ commented Lapidus.

  ‘We’ll have an additional test,’ Parnell pointed out. ‘We’ve got the blood of the first survival group. If we don’t get a DNA profile somewhere out of that, life’s not fair.’

  ‘My mother always told me that it wasn’t,’ said Pulbrow. ‘And my mother was always right.’

  It was not until two nights later, when they were eating once more at Beverley’s favourite midtown restaurant, that Parnell told her of Dwight Newton’s breakdown and Edward Grant’s offer.

  ‘Poor Dwight,’ was Beverley’s first reaction. ‘I hardly knew him, and what I did know I didn’t particularly like, but to be too ill to work again is a rough call.’

  ‘It’s not going to be announced until after the stockholders’ meeting,’ warned Parnell.

  ‘I’m not likely to tell anyone,’ promised the woman. ‘What about you? You going to take it?’

  ‘I haven’t decided, not yet.’

  ‘Vice president responsible for research and development in just under a year!’ she said, with faint mockery. ‘The upward rise of Richard Parnell continues!’

  ‘If I take it.’

  ‘Of course you’ll take it!’

  ‘We’ll see. You coming back tonight?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask! I was beginning to wonder if it was all over.’

  When they entered Parnell’s apartment, Beverley went at once to the lidded laptop on the bureau and said: ‘Hey, what’s this! Dubette’s new vice president has got himself a new toy!’

  ‘It’s convenient,’ said Parnell. ‘I can access anything I want at McLean and download it here if I want. I should have thought of it before.’

  ‘You know what they say about all work and no play.’

  ‘It’s turned off, isn’t it?’ said Parnell, uncomfortably reminded yet again of Rebecca’s similar remark.

  ‘If it wasn’t, I’d turn it off,’ said Beverley. ‘I want to play.’

  ‘So, it’s a no-no?’ demanded Dingley, when Ed Pullinger finished telling them the legal opinion.

  ‘On what you’ve got so far,’ confirmed the lawyer. ‘After the shit we got following nine–eleven we’re not going to move on anything we can’t come out of with haloes and marching music. Everything here would be challenged, discredited or ruled inadmissible, and we’d lose. Lose, that is, if the Attorney General would even consider a Grand Jury, let alone any court hearing. You know what you’ve got here? You’ve got a hell of a lot that could help Barry Jackson in his civil action, diddly squat for a criminal prosecution. And that’s disappointing everyone at the J. Edgar Hoover building, because this is high-profile and all we’re getting is more shit.’

  ‘You thought of talking to Barry Jackson? Parnell maybe?’ asked Benton.

  ‘And risk my pension?’ smiled the lawyer.

  ‘Who would ever know?’ asked Dingley.

  Barry Jackson called Parnell at McLean just before lunch the following day. The lawyer said: ‘Just got a call from the FBI. Might be an idea for you to come along.’

  Thirty-Five

  ‘So, what have you got?’ demanded Barry Jackson, exasperated, when the FBI lawyer finally stopped talking. They had been, for more than thirty minutes, in Barry Jackson’s office, all the calls held. Neither Jackson nor Parnell had spoken throughout, until now.

  ‘A conspiracy, of some sort,’ said Ed Pullinger. ‘It’s what sort – to achieve what result – that we don’t know. And don’t at the moment think we can find out.’

  ‘Are you saying that Johnson, the two police officers, and Edward Grant conspired to kill Rebecca?’ demanded Parnell, as incredulous as his lawyer.

  ‘No,’ denied Pullinger, at once. ‘I’ve just told you we don’t know … haven’t got sufficient to prove anything against anyone. But there’s something there to prove … very definitely something that isn’t right.’

  ‘The fingerprint, on the flight number,’ seized Jackson. ‘Johnson says he’d given it to Rebecca but forgotten about it, some time ago. Forensically it’s possible to distinguish between old and new fingerprints.’

  ‘We know that. We also know that it’s new, not something given to Rebecca weeks ago …’

  ‘So, he’s lying!’ broke i
n Parnell.

  ‘Yes, he’s lying,’ agreed the FBI attorney. ‘But why? A consignment scheduled on that flight did go missing: Charles de Gaulle airport confirm it and Dulles airport confirm it and Paris customs admit it was their fault.’

  ‘There was a foul-up over a shipment,’ remembered Parnell, dull-voiced. ‘Rebecca used it as an excuse to call Paris direct, to try to find out what the mystery was.’

  ‘And it got found,’ said Pullinger. ‘If we had a case to bring – if there’d been a fibre match from the flick knife or if the paint in Johnson’s locker had matched your car – the lie about the flight number being old would be something to introduce. As it is, it’s nothing except another question we can’t answer.’

  ‘Rebecca never dealt with Johnson, as far as I know. The only shipments he worried about were those addressed to the box number.’

  ‘As far as you know,’ echoed Pullinger. ‘A lost consignment is the sort of thing a security man would get involved in.’

  ‘A security man,’ Parnell echoed back. ‘Not the head of security.’

  ‘Not according to Grant,’ refused Pullinger. ‘He told our guys security is one of the most important divisions in a business like Dubette’s. It would be an easy argument to make, that Johnson was involved without Rebecca’s knowledge.’

  ‘How’d Johnson get over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in his account?’ demanded Jackson.

  ‘He gets eighty thousand a year and says he’s a lucky gambler. He’s quoted us winning horses and Las Vegas visits when we’ve challenged him on substantial cash deposits. The horses did win. And hotel reservations match the dates against the name Harry Johnson. As well as the credit-card charges with his provable signature.’

  ‘So Johnson never loses?’ said Parnell in desperate cynicism.

  ‘And it doesn’t look as if he’s going to this time,’ said Pullinger.

  ‘Grant’s explanation about surveillance is total bullshit,’ decided the other lawyer. ‘What did the detective agency say?’

  ‘They didn’t know they were being engaged by Dubette. They identified Johnson from a photograph Dingley and Benton showed them …’ Pullinger looked directly at Parnell. ‘Their brief was to watch your apartment and photograph anyone you left or entered with. If anyone entered, they had to time their departure, discover who the person was and where they lived.’