by Andy Maslen
“This is crazy!” I said. It was like talking to a child. Her logic was impeccable even if the world it described was clearly a delusion. I wondered if she’d discharged herself from a mental hospital. There were a couple within a few miles of our house.
“No. Not crazy. True!” she shouted. Then she spotted my crossword. I do them to relax. “You like anagrams?” she said.
“They’re easy. I always do them first.”
“OK, so. An anagram. Peta Velds.”
I grabbed my pencil and a legal pad from my case and arranged the letters of her name in a circle. I found a couple straight away: Past Delve and Saved Pelt. I showed them to her.
“No. Look.”
She took the pencil from me and wrote down a name.
VLAD ȚEPEŞ
“Does that name mean anything to you, Caroline?”
“Vlad Tepes? Honestly? No.”
“Not ‘Teeps’, you say it ‘Shepeth’. It was a soubriquet – a nickname, you would say, though a rather unpleasant one. It means, ‘Impaler’. You have heard of Vlad the Impaler, I trust?”
I had to admit that I had. It’s one of the gruesome stories you pick up in a history lesson and never forget.
“So. You know something at least. Imagine a field studded with 20,000 corpses, men, women and children, impaled on sharpened wooden stakes driven into the ground, some still alive, screaming as they slide slowly down over the tips of the oiled spikes. A man dines alone, in the centre of that carnage, at a table set with fine linen and silver, dabbing his lips and picking his teeth. That man was an ancestor of Peta Velds.”
I’d had enough. I asked her to leave and, reluctantly, she complied. But before she left, she turned to me and looked me intently in the eye.
“This business is not over, Caroline. We will meet again. Soon.”
3
Caroline Murray’s Journal, 26th August 2010
It isn’t usual for me to be home before David. I’m a barrister and long days in court or chambers mean it’s frequently nine or later before I dump my case in our hallway and kick my shoes off. Neither of us is much of a cook, and of the two of us, David is better with the microwave, so I ordered some Chinese and sloshed red wine into a glass and went through to the sitting room. I was pondering a difficult clue when David literally burst through the front door. I know, I’m a lawyer, words are my stock in trade. So, he didn’t literally ‘burst’ through the front door, but he came in fast and loud and he had a wild-eyed look that usually makes me think he needs to up his meds. He is somewhat prone to mood swings and takes a little purple capsule before bed that ensures he doesn’t take off, no matter how excited he gets about this new idea or that new formula.
“Caro,” he shouted. “You’ll never guess what happened today.”
I said had he been given the Nobel Prize. My deadpan humour fell on deaf ears.
“No, nitwit. A job.”
“You have a job,” I said.
“No. A new job. A better job. An incredible job!”
I told him to slow down. I needed a decent night’s sleep. I had a big case the next day and I didn’t fancy talking him down off the ceiling at three o’clock.
“OK, calm down and tell me. What job?”
He took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out through flapping lips, making him sound like a horse.
“Have you heard of Velds Industries?” he said. My heart sank. Of course I had. From Ariane Van Helsing if nobody else. “Well, they’re starting to look at the link between solar radiation and cell mutation. Skin cancer!”
Ariane had said he’d been offered a job. And she was right. But I still thought, as she’d predicted, that she was the mad one. I should explain. David is a brilliant man. We met when we were both at Cambridge. He took a double starred first in physics and computational biology while I had to be content with a 2.1 in law. Oh, and he did a PhD in a year and a half while I was doing my training. It won the Harcourt Medal. He works for one of the big medical charities researching treatments for skin cancer. It’s all very technical but it’s something to do with UV radiation and gene therapy. Or something. Anyway, he’s a genius. With all that that entails.
“Let me guess. You saw an ad in New Scientist and they hired you.”
“No. Yes. I mean, it’s better than that. Peta Velds called me. The Peta Velds. She called me, Caro. Personally. She’s spoken to our CEO and told him she’d give him a huge great big grant if he’d let her have me and a couple of people on my team to work directly for her.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Peta Velds, the CEO of Velds industries, gets on the phone and personally offers you a new job?”
“Crazy, right?”
“Someone’s crazy, darling, but I’m not sure its Peta Velds. She’s worth billions. I don’t think she’d go around doing her own recruitment, do you? Her HR director’s secretary probably has a secretary. Are you sure it wasn’t someone winding you up?”
“No! Look, I know it sounds a little, weird. And before you ask, I’m not off my meds. I went to see her. Today. She rang me at around nine and when I looked out of the window there was a big black car on the kerb waiting for me. I went down and the chauffeur guy took me across town to the City. Up in the lift to the 25th floor of their building.”
“Oh, yes, The Point. Stupid bloody name for a building. Why can’t they just called it Velds Tower and have done with it?”
“I don’t know, maybe she likes cones, maybe it’s the pencil point she used to write her first business plan. It’s not important. She said she’d been following my career. Since Cambridge. She was in the audience when I won The Harcourt. She showed me a file with all my articles and research papers. She had them all.”
“OK. So she’s a skin cancer groupie with a thing for borderline bipolar research scientists with brains the size of planets. Then what?”
“Then she laid it out for me. She wants me to work on a related field. It’s still cell mutation, but something to do with light sensitivity. I think she’s onto something, Caro. She’s done a ton of research. Ran me through this PowerPoint presentation, had about a hundred slides in it. There’s a definite link between melanoma, UV and this condition she’s been working on. They’ve got a whole division just focusing on it called Velds Solar Solutions.”
He grabbed me by the arms at this point. His eyes were shining and there were little webs of froth collecting in the corners of his mouth: all the signs he was about to go into orbit.
“Look, darling,” I said. “Just wait one second. Have a slurp of this.”
I put my wine glass to his lips and pushed it up so he had to drink or get it all down his front. He emptied it impatiently.
“OK, I’m sorry. Let’s sit down. I know I’m hyper but this is just incredible. Imagine if the Lord Chief Justice just rang you one day and said, ‘Oh, hi, Caroline, this is Freddie Laing, I want you to sit on the High Court’. Well, it’s like that for me.”
I had to laugh. David’s a brilliant man, but his level of knowledge of the law or how my job really works is touchingly tiny.
“So, you get to stay in your same old lab in London but now you’re working for Velds Industries?”
His eyes fell at this point and the smile, which had been widening to the point I thought his head might split in half, disappeared altogether.
“Here’s the thing, Caro. She’s moving the lab.”
“Moving it? Where to?”
“Norfolk.”
“Norfolk?”
I think I may actually have screamed that last word. I’m afraid it was a bit too much for me. I love David dearly but he just forgets that other people have careers and dreams of their own. Mine never included working in the flatlands of the many-fingered.
“I know it’s a long way from London but I’ve thought about it. We discussed it, me and Peta. There are people with legal problems up there too. They steal from each other and get murdered from time to time. I’ve Googled it. There are courts. There’s even a Crown Court in No
rwich.”
“Oh, you and Peta have it all mapped out, do you?” I admit to snapping at him. “Well, newsflash, David. I can’t move to Norwich. And even if I could, I wouldn’t. Our chambers are on the rise. We’re getting some major criminal cases now and our chief clerk seems to have an in with the Director of Public Prosecutions. I could be taking silk next year and after that, who knows? But I’m not going to achieve anything stuck out there. You must see that, darling, surely?”
I knew my voice had taken on a petulant tone. I suppress it in court but it just leaks out at home sometimes.
Now it was David’s turn to act the child. He folded his arms and actually glared at me.
“I’ve taken the job,” he said flatly. “She’s tripled my salary, Caro, and given me an open-ended research budget. Do you know how often these sorts of chances come along?”
“No, I don’t. But what about us? How often does something as good as this come along, David? I thought you loved me.”
“I do love you, you know that. But I, I just can’t let this one go by. If I read that some other scientist had snagged the job, I’d kill myself. I’ve already got close a couple of times to finding the way UV and gamma radiation cause these cell mutations, but with Peta’s money I could do it in five years. Maybe less.”
“Peta? You call her Peta now? Jesus, David, you only met her this morning and now you’re calling one of the richest women in the world by her Christian name.”
“She insisted. And what else am I supposed to call her, Miss Velds?”
“But what about me?” I said. Now I really sounded like a spoilt child. But I was at a loss. We’d only been engaged for a couple of months and I thought we’d be planning our wedding. Now my fiancé was announcing he was moving to Norwich.
“Well, to be honest, how much do we really see each other in the week as it is? You come home late, we snatch a bite together and then you’re in your study till God knows when, two or three in the morning, reading briefs. We barely see each other as it is. I can’t remember the last time we had sex.”
“Oh, yes, and it all comes back to that doesn’t it? Sex. So if I shagged you a bit more often you’re saying you’d stay in London with me, is that it?”
“No! Look, I’m sorry. I just meant, I don’t know, would it be so bad if we lived apart during the week and stayed together at weekends? Peta said a house would come with the job as a signing-on bonus. A house, Caro! A signing-on bonus. I’m not a footballer for God’s sake. Normally you get your own mug in the kitchen and a free mousemat with some pharmaceutical company’s logo on it.”
“Wait. She’s giving you a house?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. Whatever I like. Said money doesn’t matter to her. She just wants me and my planet-sized brain to come and work with her on curing skin cancer.”
“Hold on a second, David,” I finally said, as the details began to sink in. “This woman, this mega-rich CEO, Peta Velds, who runs one of the biggest and most profitable companies in the world, comes to you and offers you triple money, all the shiny toys a science geek could possibly want, and a house. To cure skin cancer. Where’s the profit? What’s in it for her?”
“I knew you’d ask that. I did, too. Asked her, I mean. She says she has money coming in from her other divisions so fast her main problem is shielding it from the taxman. This is all done through the Velds Foundation. It’s charitable. Tax-deductible. Plus I think she wouldn’t mind, you know, some public recognition.”
I had nowhere left to attack from. Maybe with more time I could have exposed some hole in his plan. But right now, I was tired. The wine wasn’t helping. So after the doorbell rang, mercifully interrupting what threatened to turn into a full-blown row, we ate the food and then went to bed. We had sex: I thought it was worth a shot. But even that wasn’t much good and we turned the lights off and went to sleep. It took me ages but for once, David was sound asleep within a couple of minutes, dreaming no doubt of Peta-bloody-Velds.
The next couple of weeks passed in a rush. I had a couple of cases that kept me in chambers, court or my upstairs study almost round the clock: a rape-murder and a conspiracy to defraud. David was right: we didn’t see much of each other during the week. Or even at the weekend, sometimes, if I’m brutally honest. Then, one day, he was gone.
He packed his stuff into a couple of suitcases. Although his brain is big, his need for material possessions, especially clothes, is small. And he caught the train up to Norwich. Just like that. Most of his books are – were – at his lab. I assume Velds arranged to have them shipped out to Norwich too. I came home that evening and the flat was empty. I turned on some music – Vivaldi – just to fill the silence but it just made it feel lonelier than ever. We’d agreed to keep our weekday communications to text or email. David hates using the phone and I couldn’t face those disjointed conversations you have on the phone with someone who doesn’t like talking that way. You could be the most in love people since Romeo and Juliet but all you can talk about is the weather or how you spilled tea on your suit.
4
Emails from David Harker to Caroline Murray, 17th September - 9th October 2010
From: David
To: Caroline
Subject: Hey you
Date: 17 September 2010
Hi Caro,
I’ve settled in OK. I haven’t had a chance to look at houses and anyway, there’s too much to do at the lab. Peta (I know you hate me using her Christian name, but as I said, what else can I call her?) works ridiculous hours and expects us all to keep pace with her. She pulls all-nighters all the time and I end up discussing gene therapy and cell mutation till dawn!
She wasn’t entirely honest about the lab, either. I mean I still have an open-ended research budget and all the toys I want but she’d already had it designed and built when I got here. It’s not a problem though cos it’s state of the art. Vacuum extraction using turbo molecular pumps for example. Did you know they can create vacuums that have fewer particles in them than outer space? How cool is that!
I miss you and I’m sorry I won’t be able to come down to London for a few weeks — but Peta says once we have some initial results I can take some time off.
I love you.
David xxx
From: David
To: Caroline
Subject: Something is off here
Date: 24 September 2010
Hi Caro,
I had a very odd experience last night at work.
Peta was away on business and I was more or less alone here. I think there’s a security guy somewhere but mostly it’s just me and the radio in my private office after the others have gone home. Anyway, I had a batch of data running on the computer so there was nothing to do for a couple of hours. I went for a wander around the building and I found myself down in the basement. Don’t ask me why, I just saw the door beside the lifts and went down the stairs on a whim. Boredom, maybe?
The point is, there’s a whole floor down there with lighting and storerooms and some kind of massive power source. There was a bright-blue light coming from under one of the doors. I could hear voices. It sounded like Peta and there were two men. They were arguing about me. One of the men said that he thought they should, well it sounded like feed on me but it can’t have been. Pay heed maybe? Then Peta shouted at him and said what would be the point of that and she hadn’t picked me out to solve and then she used some weird language I’ve never heard before. Sort of East European-sounding but not. It sounded like Na-dash-via-tame. Then the other man said they’d lived with it for thousands of years and maybe they should just carry on that way. She went ballistic and started screaming in this weird fucked up language. Jesus, Caro, it sounded like the worst ever curse you could imagine. Then they all went quiet and I thought maybe they’d heard me. I just got round the corner before the door opened. I ran up the stairs and was in my lab for maybe 20 seconds before she came in.
She said her business trip had been cut short and then she jus
t sent me away. Told me she wouldn’t be needing me the next day.
Here’s the thing, Caro. I said I fancied going into Norwich to get a bite to eat. You see I’ve been living here — at the facility. There’s a bedroom for me here just like a hotel. And this woman brings me my meals so I don’t have to cook. I mean it’s great because I can just focus on my work but anyway, I said I fancied eating out and she just told me she couldn’t permit it.
She said what if I was in an accident or got mugged? She would never forgive herself and I owed it to humanity to solve the cancer link. So I stayed. But it was weird. That argument. I’m going to have a little prod around tomorrow — she’s never around in the daytime so I’m pretty sure I can find out what’s going on.
Love you.
David xxx
From: David
To: Caroline
Subject: Get me out
Date: 2 October 2010
Hi Caro,
This is bad. You have to come and get me. Everything’s gone really bad. I tried to leave the facility yesterday and all the doors were locked. I’m basically a prisoner here. I even tried tweeting for help but they’ve got this firewall here that blocks all the social media sites. She can’t suppress mobile service though so I’m sending you this in the hopes it gets to you.
Peta was here last night with these three girls — well, women but you know, young. And pretty. Really pretty. Long hair like models and these incredible red lips. They were all giggling about something and speaking in that weird language. But the worst thing is, they had this bag with them – one of those really expensive ones they sell in airports with the gold letters all over it. The bag was moving, Caro, and oh God there was a sound coming out of it. Like a baby crying. It must have been a toy or some kind of app or something, but it was just horrible.
I wasn’t supposed to be there but I was in the basement again – that’s when I saw them. They took the bag into the room with the blue light. Then I listened at the door and there was this really disgusting sound. Like someone sucking up soup. I had to go. I just ran back to my room. That’s where I am now.