Authors: Ian Rankin
“You want to set up for yourself?”
Dulwater shook his head. “I want a promotion.”
“Well, if you take me back to Allerdyce, I’m sure you’d be well placed…”
“No, that’s not the way Allerdyce works. He’d only want more. Besides, what are you to him? You’re a one-night irritant, like a mild allergic reaction. You’re not the prize.”
“Kosigin?”
Dulwater nodded. “I get the feeling if I stick close to you, I’ll get Kosigin.”
“And then you hand Kosigin to Allerdyce?”
“But not all at once. He wouldn’t be grateful if I just handed that bastard over. One little piece at a time.”
Reeve shook his head. Everybody wanted something: Duhart wanted something on Allerdyce; Dulwater wanted something over Allerdyce; Allerdyce wanted Kosigin; Kosigin and Jay wanted Reeve.
And what did Gordon Reeve want? He thought of Nietzsche again: the will to power. Power was what most of these games were all about, the desire for power, the fear of loss of power. Reeve wasn’t a part of the game. He was on another board with different pieces. He wanted revenge.
“You know,” he said, “I’m not even sure I should be talking to someone who broke into my damned house.”
Dulwater shrugged. “I wasn’t the first. Alliance didn’t plant those bugs, Kosigin’s men did. Besides, what have you to lose by cooperating? You surely don’t think you can do anything to harm Kosigin on your own.”
“I’m not on my own.”
“You’ve got help?” Dulwater thought for the merest second. “Cantona?” Reeve’s face failed to disguise his surprise. “Cantona’s a deadbeat. You think you can put him up against Kosigin?”
“How do you know about Cantona?”
“You forget, Kosigin hired Alliance to compile a dossier on your brother. We’re very thorough, Gordon. We not only did a full background check, including family, we watched him for a couple of weeks. We watched him get to know Cantona.”
“Then you handed the lot over to Kosigin and he had my brother killed.”
“There’s no evidence—”
“Everybody keeps telling me that!”
Dulwater still hadn’t touched his drink. He ran his thumb around the rim of the frosted glass. “A good argument for letting me help you. The courts aren’t going to be any use. You’re never going to have enough evidence to go to court with. The best you can hope for is that someone else makes Kosigin’s life hell. Kosigin lives for power, Gordon. If someone else gains power over him it’s the worst torture he could ever imagine, and it will last the rest of his life.” He sat back, argument over.
Reeve sighed. “Maybe you’re right,” he lied. “Okay, what exactly do you propose?”
Dulwater stared at him, measuring his sincerity. Reeve concentrated on the beer. “Why did you come back here?” Dulwater asked.
“I wanted to speak to a few people. I intend speaking to one of them tonight. You can help.”
“How?”
“Two things: one, I need a video camera, a good one, plus a couple of recorders, more if you can get them. I want to make copies of a videotape.”
“You need these tonight?”
Reeve nodded.
“Okay, I don’t foresee a problem. What’s the other thing?”
“I need you to keep lookout for me.”
“Where?”
“In La Jolla.” Reeve paused. “About two miles away from where I’ll actually be.”
“I think you’ve lost me.”
“I’ll explain later. You’re sure you can get the equipment?”
“Pretty sure. It may take a few phone calls. It may have to be brought down from L.A. Are you in a hotel here?”
“Same one I stayed in last time, the Radisson.”
“I’m in the Marriott,” Dulwater informed him. Reeve’s face was a mask. “It’s more central. We’ll set the gear up in my room if that’s all right with you.”
“Fine,” Reeve said dryly.
At last Dulwater took a sip of his beer. He pretended to savor it as he framed another question. “What is it you’re going to video exactly?”
“A confession,” Reeve said. “One man unburdening his soul.”
“Film at eleven,” Dulwater said with a smile.
NINETEEN
REEVE PARKED THE DART a couple of streets away from where he wanted to be.
There was a pizza delivery van parked curbside, a little boxy three-wheeler which looked like it might use an electric motor. He hadn’t seen anyone inside it as he’d driven past, and he didn’t see anyone in it now. He gave it another couple of minutes—maybe the delivery boy was having trouble making change. But he knew there was no delivery boy really. What there was was an undercover cop, keeping watch on the bungalow, except he’d been called to another job just a couple of miles away. The electric motor wouldn’t take him there, so his buddies had come and picked him up.
Reeve checked his watch. It was quarter to midnight. He didn’t have much time. Having already noted the delivery van, he hadn’t bothered bringing the video camera with him. It was still locked in the Dart’s trunk. He walked down the street then back up the other side. There was no one about, no neighborhood patrol or crime watch. Reeve stopped for a moment beside the delivery van. It boasted a radio with handset attached. He saw now why they’d used a delivery van: there was nothing particularly odd about such a van having a radio. It might have been so the driver could keep in touch with base.
Indeed, that was just what it was for.
Lights were burning in the bungalow, but not brightly. A reading lamp maybe. The curtains were closed, the light seeping out from around the edges of the window. Reeve opened the slatted wooden gate, hearing bells jangle from a string attached to the back of it. He walked up to the bungalow and rang the bell. He was hoping there would be someone home. With the journalist dead, he was betting they’d have let the scientist come home. He heard a chain rattle. A security chain. The door opened a couple of inches, and Reeve stepped back to give it the meat of his shoe heel. It took two blows till the door burst open.
He had wanted the elderly man shocked, surprised, scared. He was getting all three.
“Dr. Killin?” he said to the figure cowering in the short hallway, holding a book over his head. The title of the book was something to do with molecular biology.
The old man looked up, blinking spaniel eyes. Reeve hit him just hard enough to send him to sleep.
He left the body where it lay and went back outside. There was still no one about. The houses were separated by high hedges. Somebody might have seen him from the house across the way but it was in darkness, and besides, the pizza van hid Dr. Killin’s doorway from general view. Reeve jumped the gate rather than bothering to open it, and jogged back to his car. He brought it around to Dr. Killin’s house, parking next to the pizza van. The old man didn’t weigh much and was easy to carry out to the car. Reeve dropped him onto the backseat, then went back to the house, switched off the lamp beside Killin’s chair, and pulled the front door closed. In the shadow of the covered porch, you could hardly notice the splintered wood of the surround. From out on the pavement, you couldn’t see it at all.
Reeve got into the Dart and drove north on a local road that seemed to parallel I-5 but kept closer to the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Just south of Del Mar, he pulled the car into a rest area sheltered from the road but with a view of the ocean. Not that you could see anything much, but with the window rolled down Reeve could hear the waves. He got out of the car and opened the trunk, bringing out the video camera and the replacement for Lucky 13. Back in the driver’s seat, he swiveled so he was facing Killin. Then he switched on the car’s interior lights. Dulwater and he had discussed lighting, but this camera had a good low-light facility and even a spot beam of its own—though using it would drain the batteries fast. Reeve switched the camera to ready, removed the lens cap, and put his eye to the viewfinder. He watched the old man stirring. The needle on the viewfinder told him the lighting was poor, but not unusable. Reeve put the camera down again and picked up the dagger. It was the first thing Dr. Killin saw when he woke up.
He sat upright, looking terrified. Reeve wondered for a moment if the knife would be enough to slice the truth from the man.
“What’s going on?” the doctor asked shakily. “Where am I? Who are you?”
“This knife,” Reeve said quietly, “could bisect you from skull to scrotum and still have an edge on it.”
The doctor swallowed and licked his lips.
“I have some questions,” Reeve said. “I want answers to them. You’re being watched, round-the-clock protection. Why?”
“That’s absurd. Why would anyone watch me?”
Reeve smiled without a trace of humor. “You worked for Co-World Chemicals, didn’t you? Did you ever meet Dr. Owen Preece?”
“I’m sorry, I want to help you, but I don’t know that name.”
Reeve angled the dagger so light glinted off the blade, causing Killin to squint. The doctor licked his dry lips again.
“Fear can do that,” Reeve told him. “It stops the saliva getting to your mouth. Here.” He reached into his left-hand jacket pocket and handed Killin a small plastic bottle of mineral water. Killin took the bottle and stared at it. “Can’t answer questions with a dry mouth,” Reeve said. He drew out an identical bottle from his right-hand pocket. “Can’t ask them either.” He broke the seal and unscrewed the top. Killin was still staring at him. “You don’t want it?” Reeve said. “Want mine instead?”
Killin thought about it then shook his head, broke the bottle’s seal, and unscrewed the top. He sipped at the water, tasting it, then gulping a mouthful. Reeve put his own bottle on the passenger seat and lifted the video camera. To do so meant putting down the dagger.
“Now,” he said, “I hope you’ve noticed this car has no back doors. Your only exit is past me, and I don’t think you want to try that.”
“Look, I’ll answer your questions if I can, but I want to know what’s going on.”
Killin was growing either testier or more confident—confident that Reeve wasn’t the type to kill him.
“I’ll tell you,” Reeve said. “I want to know about Co-World Chemicals. I want to know about Dr. Owen Preece and the work he did for CWC. I want to know about a man called Kosigin who set the whole thing in motion. I want to know about pesticides, Doctor. I want to know what you know.”
Killin took his time answering. “It’s true,” he said, nursing the bottle, “that I worked for CWC. I headed the R & D team for four years, but I’d worked for the company for fifteen years before that. You are correct that a man called Kosigin also works for CWC, though in what capacity I’m not sure. He may not still be there; I don’t keep in touch with CWC, and I believe executives in most companies flit about from competitive salary to competitive salary. And that,” he said, “is all I do know.”
“Did a man called Reeve ever come to see you?”
“I don’t recollect.” Killin sounded impatient.
“A British journalist? He came to your house wanting to ask questions.”
“If he did, I didn’t let him in.” He tapped his forehead. “My memory’s not what it…” His fingers stayed on his forehead, rubbing at beads of sweat which were appearing there. He blinked hard, as though trying to focus. “I don’t feel well,” he said. “You should know that my heart has been giving me trouble. There are some pills back at my home…”
“You’re all right, Doctor. You’re just drugged.” Reeve hadn’t started the tape running yet, but he had his eye to the viewfinder. Even in color, Killin’s face looked gray, like he was acting in a black-and-white movie. “You don’t need to break the seal to inject something into a plastic bottle. You just need a dot of glue to seal the bottle up again.”
“What?” The doctor lost the faculty of speech for a moment. Reeve took the doped bottle from him and replaced it with his own.
“Here, drink this, it’ll help.”
“I don’t feel well.”
“You’ll feel a lot better when you clear your conscience. The birdy will help with that. Now, where were we? Yes, Co-World Chemicals.” Reeve started the tape running. “You were telling me, Dr. Killin, that you worked for CWC—what was it—nineteen years?”
“Nineteen years,” Killin agreed, his voice dull and metallic.
“The last four of those heading the company’s R & D?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you know a man called Owen Preece?”
“Dr. Preece, yes, he was a psychiatrist.”
“Well respected?”
“They might have invented the word eminent with him in mind.”
“Did he do any work for CWC?”
“Yes, he headed a research team looking into pesticides.”
“Specifically?”
“Specifically side effects.”
“And these pesticides were…”
“Organophosphorus.”
“So he was looking at PrPs?”
“Well the team examined all aspects of a great many pesticides. Its conclusions were published in several journals.”
“And those conclusions were accurate?”
“No, they were faked.” The doctor stared out of the car’s back window. “Is that the ocean out there? Doesn’t it sound angry?”
“Yes, it does,” Reeve said.
“It should be angry. We dump so much dangerous trash into it. Our rivers trickle mercury and other poisons into it. You wouldn’t think you could kill an ocean, would you? But we’ll do it one day. That’s how negligent we are.”
“Is CWC negligent?”
“Monstrously so.”
“Why haven’t you spoken out about it?”
“To protect my career, for one thing. I discovered early in my professional life that I was a coward, a moral coward. I might seethe inside, but I’d do nothing to upset the status quo. Later, after I’d retired, I could have done something, but that would have meant admitting my silence, too. You see, I’m just as culpable as anyone. Preece was a psychiatrist, not a scientist; it was easy for him to believe that the cause of certain diseases might lie in the mind itself. Even today there are people who refuse to acknowledge the existence of ME as a valid disease. They say it’s psychosomatic. But Preece’s group, the scientists—we had proof that pesticides and certain neurological diseases were causally linked.”
“You had proof?”
“And we let them cover it up.”
“Who’s them?”
“CWC.” He paused, gathering himself. “Kosigin primarily. I’ve never been sure whether those above him knew about it at the time, or are any wiser now. He operates within his own sphere. Those above him allow him this leeway… Perhaps they have an inkling of what he’s like, and want to distance themselves from him.”