The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (48 page)

"Has anyone analysed what Helena got out from the fire?"

He hesitated. "I'm told that it does seem to be some form of freeze-dried viral material," he admitted. "Whatever that means."

"And Dr Eisenmenger's statement?"

He snorted. "Eisenmenger agrees broadly with what you say. For what that's worth."

She waited. Lambert was so rigid you could have run a flag up him, but she knew that he had one redeeming quality — he was honest, even to himself.

"We'll never prove anything, The few remains from the fire are beyond identification. There are no other witnesses."

She had already guessed as much. "So they get away with it."

He grimaced. "I accept that something happened on that island — there were two machine pistols, as you said, and the opinion of the fire people does not contradict your statement — but there is nothing — I repeat nothing — to link Pel-Ebstein Pharmaceuticals to any of this."

She wondered where the endpoint was. Congratulations or condemnations.

He lowered his voice, almost in anguish, as he said, "I'm coming under … pressure."

Not, she judged, a statement made to elicit sympathy. "To do what?"

"Bury it."

"And me?"

He paused. "It all depends. If your statement were to be amended … "

She had never seen him look so ill. She had always thought that she would enjoy to see him in such a state, yet strangely she understood. "I would like a transfer," she pointed out. "I think that we would both want me to have a transfer, wouldn't we?"

He nodded, looking at her. She enquired, "Out of interest, what would happen if I told them to fuck off?"

But they were both pragmatists, squeezed into that box by their occupation, and he knew that it was not a question that required a response. He stood up and went to the door. "I've been given what I am led to understand are all the existing copies of your original statement. They will be shredded. Someone will call to take a new one."

She had remained sitting and he let himself out. Before he closed the door he said, "There's no need to hurry back."

*

When Helena had first come round, his relief had been too much for him and, embarrassed, he had left at once, before she saw him. When he returned an hour or so later, she was asleep. It hadn't been until the next day that they actually spoke.

"You really are a silly bitch."

She smiled. "Thanks." Her voice, like Beverley's, was croaky and somehow enticing.

"I mean it. You shouldn't have gone back in."

"You were going to."

"I knew what I was looking for."

"You were peppered with buckshot and looked as if the acne fairy had singled you out for the special treatment. I doubt you would have made it to the front door, let alone to the laboratory."

They lapsed into uncommunicativeness.

"Well, anyway," he conceded after a while, "It could have been the end of you."

She sighed and when she responded it was in a reflective tone. "Yes, it could." More intrusion from the staccato sparseness of sounds that were an ever-present part of the Intensive Care experience. "Where is she?"

He perhaps ought to have tried guessing the subject of the question, but he didn't. "Already discharged."

She said nothing to that for a while and he thought it wiser to examine one of the strange bleeping boxes that always accompanied ITU patients, like mechanoid guardian angels.

"She went in after me." This in a tone that was almost wondrous.

"She said it was her job."

He was forced into more consideration of the wonders of modern medicine. Then Helena pointed out, "She didn't have to, did she? She could have left me to burn. There was no one to know, was there?"

And he took a deep breath and admitted that no, she needn't have done that.

Then a nurse came to do nursely things, and the subject was lost.

*

It was ten days later that Helena came out of hospital and was driven home by Eisenmenger. Her lungs were still badly affected by the amount of smoke she had inhaled, and there were burns on her back that had required skin grafting; she had to sit with soft cushions and even these were scant comfort. Her hands, at least, were healing well, and her leg, although still in a cast, had stopped hurting.

Her mood, though, was thunderous and, in a strange coincidence of Gaia and girl, so was the sky.

"The bitch."

It was familiar stuff, somehow comforting, he thought.

"She did save your life," he pointed out.

"I know that," she replied, snatching at the words to get past them "But that doesn't excuse what she's done."

Eisenmenger had expected his news to be taken badly. "I don't know, but I would guess that there was some form of political pressure put on her."

They were just passing into England, through the sweeping valleys of Cumbria.

"Are you making excuses for her?"

Bloody
hell
,
she's
recovering
fast
.

"No. I'm suggesting that she is perhaps less the idealist, more the pragmatist."

"More sensible than me?"

She was firing replies at him with enough enthusiasm to pull a muscle. He tried to remain calm. She was still far from well. "Helena, all I'm saying is, that she's the kind of person who would prefer to save herself the trouble of a hopeless battle."

She opened her mouth to argue, but Eisenmenger arrived first. "After all, we've come out of this knowing the truth but unable to prove it. Those involved have all died, and any connections between what remains and Pel-Ebstein have been destroyed."

At once she said, "So we just give up? We just accept that a multinational company thought it commercially advantageous and morally acceptable to attempt to manufacture a virus that causes uncontrollable cancer? That it used murder and blackmail and extortion to try to cover it up? That we both nearly died; that we were both nearly murdered?"

He appeared to be concentrating on his driving, but the road was straight and there were no other drivers. After a few minutes of listening to the road surface he said, "Yes, I'm afraid we do."

*

Raymond Sweet sat again in Helena's office, seeming as displaced as ever. He sat in the chair, neither expectant nor uninterested, appearing rocklike enough to have understudied St Peter.

He listened to what Helena said, his face unmoving, much as Buddha presumably stared at the sins of the world. When she finished, he asked, "So this thing, Proteus, killed her?"

"We think so."

"And she didn't know what she was working on?"

"Almost certainly not."

"But it was an accident?"

"Well, yes … "

"Are they liable for the accident? I mean, was it negligence?"

Helena looked pained. She didn't seem to be making the right connections with Mr Sweet. Eisenmenger looked on, amused but invisibly so.

"No," she admitted. "But that's not the point. Millie was duped into working on something that was highly amoral, illegal even."

He was thinking hard; thinking to Raymond Sweet was an all-consuming occupation, something to be done in isolation, while the rest of the world ceased to breathe, stood and looked on. "What about the police? What are they saying?"

Eisenmenger admired Helena then. She took the question much as a seasoned pro took uppercuts and sneaky blows below the belt.

"They see no reason to proceed. Some of the evidence is … conflicting, and none of it is particularly strong."

He said nothing, looking at his hands and, Eisenmenger had to admit they were remarkable things, with their rough, diffuse scarring and nails bitten to tattiness. Helena said tentatively, "We would be willing to carry on." Eisenmenger heard the plural pronoun with some surprise. Since he had not been consulted, he assumed that she was talking in an imperial, figurative sense, perhaps assuming some sort of righteous partnership with her God. He would have made comment but she continued talking. "We could see what we could uncover. I'm sure that we would have some success in establishing something … "

Sweet was shaking his head and it continued a slow, methodical oscillation as he looked up at her, the smile on his mouth wide, the tears in his eyes bright. "No."

He said nothing more; he didn't need to. He stood, picked up his coat and courteously shook first Helena's, then Eisenmenger's hand. Before he left he said only, "Thanks for what you did. I knew that there was more to it than they said."

Openly crying, he departed.

Helena sighed and looked across at Eisenmenger. Before she could complain, he said, "You did enough, Helena. He's able to grieve now."

But she couldn't see that. "But it's so unjust! Is no one interested in finding out the truth?"

He leaned forward, reaching for her hand. "We know the truth, remember?"

"Fat lot of good, that is."

"Maybe not. But the funny thing about the truth is that it doesn't always pay to know it. Sometimes ignorance is best."

"What does that mean?"

"Raymond Sweet had questions, we answered them. If he goes on, there's the danger of never being able to come to terms with his daughter's death. I think that there's a part of him that wants to move on. After all, as far as Millie's death was concerned, it was an accident."

She didn't look happy, but she nodded doubtfully.

"I'd better be off," he said. "I expect you've got work to do." She did, but that was the least of her concerns. As he stood she took his hand.

"I think it's about time you forgot a few of your daemons."

"Easier said than done."

She put her hand around the back of his neck to pull his face towards hers. Then she suggested, "Try harder." Her tone was stern, her lips full and red and ghosting a smile. For a few seconds he just looked at her, then he whispered, "Yes, ma'am."

They kissed, and then she let him go and he felt a peculiar emotion that only later did he place; it was happiness At the door he asked, "How about dinner tonight? Maybe go to the theatre?"

She had returned to her desk. She seemed suddenly distracted and it was nearly a minute before she replied. "Yes, lovely."

"I'll pick you up at seven."

She hesitated. "Half past." When he raised his eyebrows she explained, "I've got to see someone after work."

*

Helena had arranged to meet in the same wine bar, territory that neither could claim as her own. Helena was there first, Beverley arriving a few minutes late. Helena had already bought herself a glass of Merlot; Beverley neither asked nor was offered a drink, buying her own glass of Chablis as she came in.

"You had something to say?" Beverley's tone suggested that, though she had thought long, hard and deeply, she had been unable to unearth any reason why they might want to talk.

"I wanted to thank you."

Beverley smiled as a victor smiles. "For what? Saving you?"

"That's right."

Beverley toyed with the stem of the glass. "Thanks," she said.

They each drank some wine, their eyes everywhere but on each other.

Perhaps the lack of gratitude for the gratitude grated, for Helena said then, "It doesn't change anything."

Beverley's eyebrows, thin as her lips at that moment, rose and curved quite gracefully. "Really?"

Helena was staring intently at her. "You risked your life for me, I acknowledge that … "

"Thanks." This a murmur, barely struggling above the background noise.

" … but that doesn't cancel what you did to me, to my family."

"Your parents were murdered. You're not blaming me for that, are you?"

Helena said flatly, "You murdered Jeremy."

"No, Helena. Your stepbrother committed suicide in prison."

"You framed him."

Beverley shook her head. "That's your invention. There is no proof of anything like that."

"There's no proof that PEP were responsible for Proteus and all the deaths that followed, but we know they did it." Helena smiled, then added after the briefest of pauses, "Don't we?"

Beverley took a moment to consider her response, as if she had a huge choice of options before her. "You know, the difference between you and me, Hel, is that I stop when I see a fucking big elephant in the road, but you carrv on, shouting at the thing because it shouldn't be there."

"So Jeremy died because of … what?"

"Stepbrother Jeremy died because he decided to hang himself. I had a tip-off that he was involved. It turned out to be accurate. Accept it."

"You planted the evidence."

Beverley raised eyes to heaven. "Fantastic, Hel. Watch me while I weep."

"I will get you. Believe it, Beverley."

Beverley's glass was drained. As it hit the genuine oak of the table between them, she said, "Believe what you want, Hel. Believe what you want."