Chapter 4
Jamie couldn’t get through to his sister.
This was it. This was their chance to make a new life away from the corporate rat race, away from their past, away from the incessant clashes between people pulling them away from their dreams.
He’d vowed to take care of her but recently it had been the other way around.
He’d left her at the hotel and told her not to leave her phone and now he was cut off from her.
He went through all the scenarios in his head regarding what could have gone wrong.
Low charge. That was it. Her phone was on low battery, so she’d plugged it in somewhere and forgotten about it.
Or she could have gone to the toilet, she could be in the shower, she might have nipped downstairs at the guesthouse to order food, or she might have been exposed.
What was it that Sandy had said to him? ‘She’s in love, Jamie. A woman in love is a woman distracted.’ Had she been too distracted to see danger? He hoped not.
Only one of the explanations made any sense to him, and a creeping feeling of regret and fear settled in his gut, and he couldn’t shake it.
He tried her number again.
Nothing.
The conference was going well. Today was Tuesday, only the second day of the convention, so why did he feel sick to his stomach?
All he had to do was see it through. He was lead chair of the annual innovation convention of Hampton-Dent Pharmaceuticals.
This year, the setting had been suggested by him.
As a relatively junior CEO of one of their premier health enterprises, FairGro, touting everything from green juices to supplements for the gym, he was a rising star and they listened to him.
The old guard at the centre of the empire was on its way out and Jamie was their new blood.
He’d chosen the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Lake District, and it was a masterstroke.
It was remote, familiar and suitably impressive.
The conference was about wellbeing after all, and gurus, bloggers, podcasters and scientists from all over the world had been invited to take part in the four-day event at the exclusive Heron Hall Hotel on the shores of Rydal Water.
It sounded idyllic.
He tried his sister’s number again.
‘You look as though you’re calling the police to report a dead body,’ a voice said behind him.
He swivelled around and saw Paul, his partner, standing in the hall outside the main conference room.
Compared to Jamie’s beguiling charm, which he’d honed from years of grafting in sales, Paul looked more comfortable at the bar sporting a pint of lager and a pork pie.
Jamie was the embodiment of the firm’s ethos, smart and stylish; Paul was the sturdy foundation, hard-wearing and brawny.
‘No, I just can’t get hold of Angie,’ he said.
Paul frowned. Jamie knew that his long-standing partner had a thing for his sister, and had done since they were starting out, in the bedsit they’d rented in London after working on the chemical components of a compound they believed could transform the health industry.
Paul’s concern was touching but Jamie suspected it was more to do with the eight million dollars they each stood to make from their headline product.
If everything went to plan. If Angie picked up her goddamn phone.
They were what was commonly referred to as flying. They were living their best lives. They were on the up.
And shouldn’t you always quit when you’re ahead?
‘You worry too much,’ Paul said, right on cue, suddenly confident again. He was the level head to Jamie’s nervous energy.
Jamie smiled, but it wasn’t one of his light-up-the-room usuals; it was reserved and hesitant. Paul slapped him on the back and Jamie flashed a wide, veneer-enhanced grin.
‘I spoke to the lab this morning,’ Paul said, as if that would help.
Jamie raised his eyebrows.
‘The results are in, and the new batch is completely safe.’
Jamie stopped and stared at Paul. They were both in their late twenties, with the world at their feet. They were intelligent, financially wealthy, and their product sought after, but Paul couldn’t half be a stupid fucker.
‘Mate, “safe” and “FairGro” shouldn’t be said in the same sentence,’ Jamie said.
‘Shut up! Jesus, here of all places. Christ, keep your voice down,’ Paul warned.
Jamie laughed. ‘Since when were you scared of them? You know what’s going on at Dow Bank House, as well as I do, and Angie knows it too.’
Paul glared at him.
‘And once this thing gets out, it’s all over.
Boom.’ Jamie threw his hands apart as if simulating a nuclear explosion of biblical proportions.
Paul looked terrified, but Jamie was losing patience with him, with Sandy, with the lot of them.
They’d sold their souls for money and it was starting to show.
They stood in the doorway of a small side room off the main conference suite and Paul closed the door. The large windows allowed shafts of light to flash across the floor. They could see the tiny lake from here.
‘Come on, Sandy is speaking in ten minutes. Angie will call back,’ Paul assured him. ‘And nobody misses Sandy’s presentations.’
Sandy Cooper was a fifty-year-old woman who wore her history on her face. Both men were scared of her. Like all good scientists, Sandy didn’t practise what she preached but she added legitimacy to their product. Sandy’s word meant something in the industry.
After all, the guarantee of efficacy was more important than delivery. People just had to believe it.
Sponsorship was flying in and the main shareholders in the holdings of Hampton-Dent Corporation would be getting very good news indeed come next Monday when the value of the deal was realised by the markets in New York.
Everybody was happy.
Except Jamie.
He was at saturation point and Sandy Cooper knew it.
The true numbers of litigation cases against Hampton-Dent for personal injury and even death simply disappeared, and Sandy smoothed the way.
The supplement business was as dirty as the arms trade.
Product was brokered, sold, and then signed off.
Fallout was considered collateral damage.
The promise of profit was everything. Competitors clamoured over one another to sell their chemicals to hide inside the colourful packets of powders, potions and sachets of poison they convinced health freaks to consume, and billionaires like the owners of Hampton-Dent got richer. Paul left.
Jamie bit his lip.
Something was wrong; he could smell it. He thought about driving to the guesthouse but it was a good half hour away along winding roads. That had been the whole point; she was hidden.
He went over in his mind who knew Angie was here in the Lakes. He’d taken her to a remote hotel, one with a bone-chilling legend that made Angie laugh. Jamie didn’t believe a word of it, but Angie said she wanted to paint the pretty bridge there.
His sister was a fine artist, and her talent blew his mind.
He’d paid off the guesthouse owner, triple locked the door, left her with strict contact instructions, hidden the suitcase and given her a secure phone. They’d been to the caves, and she’d showed him a watertight hiding place for the file.
He’d thought of everything.
He left the hotel and wandered down to the lake on his own.
A few media types hovered around him but soon got the message that he was trying to make an important phone call and disappeared. He had the lakeside to himself. Sandy’s keynote speech would be starting soon and sycophants took their places early.
The hotel was set in stunning surroundings.
Which was the whole point. Nobody would suspect that deep in the heart of the Lake District National Park, a salesman was plotting the downfall of one of the most lucrative and successful Big Pharma global corporations which turned over more than fifty billion a year.
He had enough to bring them to their knees.
He wasn’t a hero. And he wasn’t a stoic. He hadn’t suffered a crisis of conscience after suddenly discovering that the shit they sold was killing people. He didn’t suffer from guilt. Nor did he seek revenge.
He saw Sandy come out of the hotel and saunter confidently down to the lake. She liked to cut things fine and wouldn’t have made notes.
He heard frolics from across the water and saw people in the distance enjoying their summer. The days when he’d been carefree like that were long gone now. He couldn’t imagine enjoying himself like that ever again.
Sandy was the type of woman who gave somebody one chance to speak and if they bored her then she switched off and turned away. Losing Sandy Cooper’s attention could cost a career. Gaining it could cost a life. Jamie smiled broadly and flirted with his eyes. Sandy reciprocated and lit a cigarette.
‘They’ll kill you one day. You should know better,’ he said.
‘Fuck off, Jamie. Don’t lecture me. We of all people know that everything we get told is bad for us is actually the opposite. I’m never giving up my nicotine. It cures cancer.’ She winked and he laughed.
It was their favourite pastime, to discuss conspiracy theories and how with their insider knowledge they could probably prove 99 per cent of them true.
Cancer was just one example. Jamie believed he could prove that Big Pharma had been sitting on the cure for sixty years but to admit it would lose them money, and what business wanted that?
Same with diabetes, atherosclerosis and Alzheimer’s.
The cures were simple. The ancients knew it.
The scientists knew it. Spiritualists knew it. Big money knew it.
Hampton-Dent wanted customers not cures.
Jamie threw his arm around Sandy’s shoulders. He could perform when necessary. All good salesmen did.
‘It’s going well,’ he said.
It wasn’t an invite to agree, more a holding testimony. He was buying time.
Now they had YouthBlast and the chemical compound called Neurohydroxy-14 that made it unique, his days were numbered. He was expendable, and so was Angie.
And that’s why he’d hidden his money and was ready to run.
But only if Angie was safe.
‘You seem jumpy,’ Sandy said, catching him off guard.
‘I can’t get hold of Angie,’ he told her.
‘Ach, she’ll be busy painting, no doubt, or finding out more local legends of ghosts and witches.’ Sandy winked.
And that’s when he knew.
They knew.