Dead End (48 page)

‘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

‘S
o, 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 in 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.'

‘Who'd the photographs go to?'

‘They had a cellphone number, listed under a phoney name. They called it and Johnson came immediately to pick up what they had.'

‘You got copies?' asked Jackson.

Pullinger looked at Parnell again. ‘Yes.'

‘What – who – do they show?'

‘It's a little …' started Pullinger, awkwardly.

‘Beverley,' anticipated Parnell. ‘There would have been some photographs of Beverley.'

‘It's not a secret, Ed,' dismissed Jackson. ‘What about others?'

‘There aren't any others,' said Pullinger. ‘And surveillance has been pulled off.'

‘They were supposed to be looking for people stalking Richard, not Richard himself. Or who went into his apartment,' said Jackson. ‘Grant lied, like Johnson lied.'

‘Yes,' agreed Pullinger, as immediately as before. ‘But about what? Lying to the FBI isn't a crime in itself. If it was, the entire state of Texas would be concreted over, for one great big federal penitentiary.'

‘I can't believe this!' protested Parnell. ‘I can't believe you can do nothing, about all that's happened … a murder, for Christ's sake! Barry only saved me by … by …'

‘A good memory, not a fluke,' completed the lawyer, unoffended. To Pullinger he said: ‘If you've got to accept Johnson's explanation about the flight number, there's no cause any more for FBI involvement.'

‘No, not unless there's any evidence of conspiracy across State borders.'

‘Which you haven't got,' said Jackson. ‘Who takes over the murder enquiry? It can't be Metro DC. I'm suing the two arresting officers. The entire department could come under investigation again, just like in 1996.'