Bloodline (20 page)

“I thought—”

“Don’t! I’ve been on the phone apologizing the whole damned morning because of you.”

“I had to find out—”

“Oh, get out of here Hornung!”

“Yes, sir. Is it all right if I attend the funeral? It’s this morning.”

“Yes! Go!”

“Thank you, sir. I—”

“Just go!”

It was thirty minutes before Chief Inspector Schmied was breathing normally again.

The funeral parlor at Sihlfeld was crowded. It was an ornate, old-fashioned building of stone and marble, with preparation rooms and a crematorium. Inside the large chapel two dozen executives and employees of Roffe and Sons occupied the front row of seats. Toward the rear were the friends, the community representatives and the press. Detective Hornung was seated in the last row, thinking that death was illogical. Man reached his prime and then, when he had the most to give, the most to live for, he died. It was inefficient.

The casket was mahogany and covered with flowers. More waste, Detective Hornung thought. The casket had been ordered sealed. Max could understand why. The minister was speaking in a doomsday voice, “…death in the midst of life, born in sin, ashes to ashes.” Max Hornung paid little attention. He was studying those in the chapel.

“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” and people were beginning to stand and head for the exit. The services were over.

Max stood near the door, and as a man and a woman approached him, he stepped in front of the
woman and said, “Miss Elizabeth Roffe? I wonder if I might have a word with you?”

Detective Max Hornung was seated with Elizabeth Roffe and Rhys Williams in a booth at a
Konditorei
across from the funeral parlor. Through the window they could see the coffin being loaded into a gray hearse. Elizabeth looked away. Her eyes were haunted.

“What’s this all about?” Rhys demanded. “Miss Roffe has already given her statement to the police.”

Detective Max Hornung said, “Mr. Williams, isn’t it? There are just a few little details I want to check out.”

“Can’t they wait? Miss Roffe has been through a very trying—”

Elizabeth put her hand on Rhys’s. “It’s all right. If I can be of any help—” She turned to Max. “What would you like to know, Detective Hornung?”

Max stared at Elizabeth, and for the first time in his life he was at loss for words. Women were as foreign to Max as creatures from an alien planet. They were illogical and unpredictable, subject to emotional reactions rather than rational ones. They did not compute. Max had few sexual stirrings, for he was mind-oriented, but he could appreciate the precise logic of sex. It was the mechanical construction of moving parts fitting together into a coordinated, functioning whole that excited him. That, for Max, was the poetry of loving. The sheer dynamics if it. Max felt that the poets had all missed the point. Emotions were imprecise and untidy, a waste of energy that could not move the smallest grain of
sand one inch, while logic could move the world. What was puzzling Max now was that he felt comfortable with Elizabeth. It made him uneasy. No woman had ever affected him that way before. She did not seem to think he was an ugly, ridiculous little man, the way other women did. He forced himself to look away from her eyes so that he could concentrate.

“Were you in the habit of working late at night, Miss Roffe?”

“Very often,” Elizabeth said. “Yes.”

“How late?”

“It varied. Sometimes until ten. Sometimes until midnight, or after.”

“So it was a kind of pattern? That is, people around you would have known about it?”

She was studying him, puzzled. “I suppose so.”

“On the night the elevator crashed, you and Mr. Williams and Kate Erling were all working late?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t leave together?”

Rhys said, “I left early. I had an engagement.”

Max regarded him a moment, then turned back to Elizabeth. “How long after Mr. Williams left did you leave?”

“I think it was about an hour.”

“Did you and Kate Erling leave together?”

“Yes. We got our coats and went out into the hall.” Elizabeth’s voice faltered. “The—the elevator was there, waiting for us.”

The special express elevator.

“What happened then?”

“We both got in. The telephone in the office rang. Kate—Miss Erling—said, ‘I’ll get it,’ and she started
to get out. But I was expecting an overseas call I had placed earlier, so I told her I would answer it.” Elizabeth stopped, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears. “I got out of the elevator. She asked if she should wait, and I said, ‘No, go ahead.’ She pressed the lobby button. I started back to the office, and as I was opening the door, I heard—I heard the screaming, then—” She was unable to go on.

Rhys turned to Max Hornung, his face clouded with anger. “That’s enough. Will you tell us what this is all about?”

It was about murder, Max thought. Someone had tried to kill Elizabeth Roffe. Max sat there concentrating, recalling everything he had learned in the past forty-eight hours about Roffe and Sons. It was a deeply plagued company, forced to pay astronomical damages in lawsuits, swamped by bad publicity, losing customers, owing enormous sums of money to banks that had grown impatient. A company ripe for a change. Its president, Sam Roffe, who had held the controlling vote, had died. An expert mountain climber who had been killed in a climbing accident. The controlling stock had gone to his daughter, Elizabeth, who had almost died in a Jeep accident in Sardinia, and had narrowly missed being killed in an elevator that had passed a recent inspection. Someone was playing deadly games.

Detective Max Hornung should have been a happy man. He had found a loose thread. But now he had met Elizabeth Roffe, and she was no longer simply a name, an equation in a mathematical puzzle. There was something very special about her. Max felt an urge to shield her, to protect her.

Rhys said, “I asked what this—”

Max looked at him and said vaguely, “Er—police procedure, Mr. Williams. Just routine.” He rose. “Excuse me.”

He had some urgent work to do.

Chief Inspector Schmied had had a full morning. There had been a political demonstration in front of Iberia Air Lines, three men detained for questioning. A fire of suspicious origin at a paper factory in Brunau. It was being investigated. A girl had been raped in Platzspitz Park. A smash-and-grab job at Guebelin and another at Grima, next to the Baur-au-Lac. And if that weren’t enough, Detective Max Hornung was back, filled with some kind of nonsensical theory. Chief Inspector Schmied found himself starting to hyperventilate again.

“The elevator cable drum was cracked,” Max was saying. “When it collapsed, all the safety controls went out. Someone—”

“I saw the reports, Hornung. Normal wear and tear.”

“No, Chief Inspector. I examined the specifications for the cable drum. It should have lasted another five or six years.”

Chief Inspector Schmied felt the tic in his cheek. “What are you trying to say?”

“Someone tampered with the elevator.”

Not, I think someone tampered with the elevator, or, In my opinion someone tampered with the elevator.
Oh, no! Someone tampered with the elevator. “Why would they do that?” “That’s what I would like to find out.” “You want to go back to Roffe and Sons?” Detective Max Hornung looked at Inspector

Schmied in genuine surpose. “No, sir. I want to go to Chamonix.”

The town of Chamonix lies forty miles southeast of Geneva, 3,400 feet above sea level in the French department of Haute-Savoie, between the Mont Blanc massif and the Aiguille Rouge range, with one of the most breathtaking vistas in the world.

Detective Max Hornung was completely unaware of the scenery as he debouched from the train at the Chamonix station, carrying a battered cardboard suitcase. He waved a taxi away and headed on foot for the local police station, a small building situated on the main square in the center of town. Max entered, feeling instantly at home, reveling in the warm camaraderie that he shared with the fraternity of policemen all over the world. He was one of
them.

The French sergeant behind the desk looked up and asked,
“On vous pourrait aider?”

“Oui.”
Max beamed. And he started to talk. Max approached all foreign languages in the same fashion: he slashed his way through the impenetrable thicket of irregular verbs and tenses and participles, using his tongue like a machete. As he spoke, the expression on the desk sergeant’s face changed from puzzlement to disbelief. It had taken the French people hundreds of years to develop their tongues and soft palates and larynxes to form the glorious music that was the French language. And now this
man standing before him was somehow managing to turn it into a series of horrible, incomprehensible noises.

The desk sergeant could bear no more. He interrupted. “What—what are you trying to
say?”

Max replied, “What do you mean? I’m speaking French.”

The desk sergeant leaned forward and asked with unabashed curiosity, “Are you speaking it
now?”

The fool doesn’t even speak his own language, Max thought. He pulled out his warrant card and handed it to the sergeant. The sergeant read it through twice, looked up to study Max, and then read it again. It was impossible to believe that the man standing before him was a detective.

Reluctantly he handed the identification back to Max. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m investigating a climbing accident that happened here two months ago. The victim’s name was Sam Roffe.”

The sergeant nodded. “Yes, I remember.”

“I would like to talk to someone who can give me some information about what happened.”

“That would be the mountain-rescue organization. It is called the Société Chamoniarde de Secours en Montagne. You will find it in Place du Mont Blanc. The telephone number is five-three-one-six-eight-nine. Or they might have some information at the clinic. That’s in Route du Valais. The telephone number there is five-three-zero-one-eight-two. Here. I’ll write all this down for you.” He reached for a pen.

“That won’t be necessary,” Max said. “Société Chamoniarde de Secours en Montagne, Place du Mont Blanc, five-three-one-six-eight-nine. Or the
clinic in Route du Valais, five-three-zero-one-eight-two.”

The sergeant was still staring, long after Max had disappeared through the door.

The Société Chamoniarde de Secours was in the charge of a dark, athletic-looking young man seated behind a battered pine desk. He looked up as Max walked in. and his instant thought was that he hoped this odd-looking visitor did not plan to climb a mountain.

“Can I help you?”

“Detective Max Hornung.” He showed his warrant card.

“What can I do for you, Detective Hornung?”

“I am investigating the death of a man named Sam Roffe.” Max said.

The man behind the desk sighed. “Ah, yes. I liked Mr. Roffe very much. It was an unfortunate accident.”

“Did you see it happen?”

A shake of the head. “No. I took my rescue team up as soon as we received their distress signal, but there was nothing we could do. Mr. Roffe’s body had fallen into a crevasse. It will never be found.”

“How did it happen?”

“There were four climbers in the party. The guide and Mr. Roffe were last. As I understand it, they were traversing an icy moraine. Mr. Roffe slipped and fell.”

“Wasn’t he wearing a harness?”

“Of course. His rope broke.”

“Does a thing like that happen often?”

“Only once.” He smiled at his little joke, then saw the detective’s look and added quickly, “Experienced
climbers always check their equipment thoroughly, but accidents still happen.”

Max stood there a moment, thinking. “I’d like to speak to the guide.”

“Mr. Roffe’s regular guide didn’t make the climb that day.”

Max blinked, “Oh? Why not?”

“As I recall, he was ill. Another guide took his place.”

“Do you have his name?”

“If you’ll wait a minute, I can look it up for you.”

The man disappeared into an inner office. In a few minutes he returned with a slip of paper in his hand. “The guide’s name was Hans Bergmann.”

“Where can I find him?”

“He’s not a local.” He consulted the piece of paper. “He comes from a village called Lesgets. It’s about sixty kilometers from here.”

Before Max left Chamonix, he stopped at the desk of the Kleine Scheidegg hotel and talked to the room clerk. “Were you on duty when Mr. Roffe was staying here?”

“Yes,” the clerk said. “The accident was a terrible thing, terrible.”

“Mr. Roffe was alone here?”

The clerk shook his head. “No. He had a friend with him.”

Max stared. “A friend?”

“Yes. Mr. Roffe made the reservation for both of them.”

“Could you give me the name of his friend?”

“Certainly,” the clerk said. He pulled out a large ledger from beneath the desk and began to turn back the pages. He stopped, ran his fingers down a page and said, “Ah, here we are…”

It took almost three hours for Max to drive to Lesgets in a Volkswagen, the cheapest rental car he could find, and he almost passed through it It was not even a village. The place consisted of a few shops, a small Alpine lodge, and a general store with a single gas pump in front of it.

Max parked in front of the lodge and walked in. There were half a dozen men seated in front of an open fireplace, talking. The conversation trailed off as Max entered.

“Excuse me,” he said, “I’m looking for Herr Hans Bergmann.”

“Who?”

“Hans Bergmann. The guide. He comes from this village.”

An eldely man with a face that was a weather map of his years spat into the fireplace and said, “Somebody’s been kidding you, mister. I was born in Lesgets. I never heard of any Hans Bergmann.”

It was the first day that Elizabeth had gone to the office since the death of Kate Erling a week earlier. Elizabeth entered the downstairs lobby with trepidation, responding mechanically to the greetings of the doorman and guards. At the far end of the lobby she saw workmen replacing the smashed elevator car. She thought about Kate Erling, and Elizabeth could visualize the terror she must have felt as she plunged twelve interminable stories to her death. She knew that she could never ride in that elevator again.

When she walked into her office, her mail had already been opened by Henriette, the second secretary, and neatly placed on her desk. Elizabeth went through it quickly, initialing some memos, writing questions on others, or marking them for various department heads. At the bottom of the pile was a large sealed envelope marked “Elizabeth Roffe—Personal.” Elizabeth took a letter opener and slit the envelope across the top. She reached in and took out an 8-by-10 photograph. It was a close-up of a mongoloid child, its bulging eyes staring out of its encephalic head. Attached to the picture was a note printed in crayon: “THIS IS MY BEAUTIFUL
SON JOHN. YOUR DRUGS DID THIS TO HIM. I AM GOING TO KILL YOU.”

Elizabeth dropped the note and the picture, and found that her hands were trembling. Henriette walked in with a handful of papers.

“These are ready to be signed, Miss—” She saw the look on Elizabeth’s face. “Is something wrong?”

Elizabeth said, “Please—ask Mr. Williams to come in here.” Her eyes went back to the picture on her desk.

Roffe and Sons could not be responsible for anything so dreadful.

“It was our fault,” Rhys said. “A shipment of drugs was mislabeled. We managed to recall most of it, but—” He raised his hands expressively.

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Almost four years ago.”

“How many people were affected?”

“About a hundred.” He saw the expression on her face and added quickly, “They received compensation. They weren’t all like this, Liz. Look, we’re damned careful here. We take every safety precaution we can devise, but people are human. Mistakes are sometimes made.”

Elizabeth sat staring at the picture of the child. “It’s horrible.”

“They shouldn’t have shown you the letter.” Rhys ran his fingers through his thick black hair and said, “This is a hell of a time to bring it up, but we have a few other problems more important than this.”

She wondered what could be more important. “Yes?”

“The FDA just gave a decision against us on our
aerosol sprays. There’s going to be a complete ban on aerosols within two years.”

“How will that affect us?”

“It’s going to hurt us badly. It means we’ll have to close down half a dozen factories around the world and lose one of our most profitable divisions.”

Elizabeth thought about Emil Joeppli and the culture he was working on, but she said nothing. “What else?”

“Have you seen the morning papers?”

“No.”

“A government minister’s wife in Belgium, Mme. van den Logh, took some Benexan.”

“That’s one of our drugs?”

“Yes. It’s an antihistamine. It’s contraindicated for anyone with essential hypertension. Our label carries a clear warning. She ignored it.”

Elizabeth felt her body beginning to tense. “What happened to her?”

Rhys said, “She’s in a coma. She may not live. The newspaper stories mention that it’s our product. Cancellations on orders are pouring in from all over the world. The FDA notified us that it’s starting an investigation, but that will take at least a year. Until they finish, we can keep selling the drug.”

Elizabeth said, “I want it taken off the market.”

“There’s no reason to do that. It’s a damned effective drug for—”

“Have any other people been hurt by it?”

“Hundreds of thousands of people have been helped by it.” Rhys tone was cool. “It’s one of our most effective—”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“A few isolated cases, I suppose, yes. But—”

“I want it taken off the market. Now.”

He sat there, fighting his anger, then he said, “Right. Would you like to know what that will cost the company?”

“No,” Elizabeth said.

Rhys nodded. “So far you’ve only heard the good news. The bad news is that the bankers want a meeting with you. Now. They’re calling in their loans.”

Elizabeth sat in her office alone, thinking about the mongoloid child, and about the woman who lay in a coma because of a drug that Roffe and Sons had sold her. Elizabeth was well aware that these kinds of tragedies involved other pharmaceutical firms as well as Roffe and Sons. There were almost daily stories in the newspapers about similar cases, but they had not touched her as this had. She felt responsible. She was determined to have a talk with the department heads who were in charge of safety measures to see if they could not be improved.

This is my beautiful son John.

Mme. van den Logh is in a coma. She may not live.

The bankers want a meeting with you. Now. They’ve decided to call in their loans.

She felt choked, as though everything was beginning to close in on her at once. For the first time Elizabeth wondered if she was going to be able to cope. The burdens were too heavy, and they were piling up too fast. She swung around in her chair, to look up at the portrait of old Samuel hanging on the wall. He looked so competent, so sure. But she knew about his doubts and uncertainties, and his black despairs. Yet he had come through. She would survive somehow, too. She was a Roffe.

She noticed that the portrait was askew. Probably as a result of the elevator crash. Elizabeth got up to straighten it. As she tilted the picture, the hook holding it gave way, and the painting crashed to the floor. Elizabeth did not even look at it. She was staring at the place where the painting had hung. Taped to the wall was a tiny microphone.

It was 4
A.M.
, and Emil Joeppli was working late again. It had become a habit of his recently. Even though Elizabeth Roffe had not given him a specific deadline, Joeppli knew how important this project was to the company and he was pushing to get it finished as quickly as possible. He had heard disturbing rumors about Roffe and Sons lately. He wanted to do everything he could to help the company. It had been good to him. It gave him a handsome salary and complete freedom. He had liked Sam Roffe, and he liked his daughter too. Elizabeth Roffe would never know, but these late hours were Joeppli’s gift to her. He was hunched over his small desk, checking out the results of his last experiment. They were even better than he had anticipated. He sat there, deep in concentration, unaware of the fetid smell of the caged animals in the laboratory or the cloying humidity of the room or the lateness of the hour. The door opened, and the guard on the graveyard shift, Sepp Nolan, walked in. Nolan hated this shift. There was something eerie about the deserted experimental laboratories at night. The smell of the caged animals made him ill. Nolan wondered whether all the animals they had killed here had souls and came back to haunt these corridors. I ought to put in for spook pay, he thought. Everyone in the building had long since gone home. Except for this
fucking mad scientist with his cages full of rabbits and cats and hamsters.

“How long you gonna be, Doc?” Nolan asked.

Joeppli looked up, aware of Nolan for the first time. “What?”

“Ji you’re gonna be here awhile, I can bring you back a sandwich or something. I’m gonna run over to the commissary for a quick bite.”

Joeppli said, “Just coffee, please.” He turned back to his charts.

Nolan said, “I’ll lock the outside door behind me when I leave the building. Be right back.”

Joeppli did not even hear him.

Ten minutes later the door to the laboratory opened, and a voice said, “You’re working late, Emil.”

Joeppli looked up, startled. When he saw who it was, he got to his feet, flustered, and said, “Yes, sir.” He felt flattered that this man had dropped in to see him.

“The Fountain of Youth project, top secret, eh?”

Emil hesitated. Miss Roffe had said no one was supposed to know about it. But, of course, that did not include his visitor. It was this man who had brought him into the company. So Emil Joeppli smiled and said, “Yes, sir. Top secret.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way. How is it going?”

“Wonderfully, sir.”

The visitor wandered over to one of the rabbit cages. Emil Joeppli followed him. “Is there anything I can explain to you?”

The man smiled. “No. I’m pretty familiar with it, Emil.” As the visitor started to turn away, he brushed against an empty feeding dish on the ledge and it fell to the floor. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, sir. I’ll get it.” Emil Joeppli reached down to pick it up and the back of his head seemed to explode in a shower of red, and the last thing he saw was the floor racing up to meet him.

The insistent ringing of the telephone awakened Elizabeth. She sat up in bed, heavy with sleep, and looked at the digital clock on the little table. Five
A.M.
She fumbled the telephone off the hook. A frantic voice said, “Miss Roffe? This is the security guard at the plant. There’s been an explosion at one of the laboratories. It was completely destroyed.”

Instantly she was wide-awake. “Was anybody hurt?”

“Yes, ma’am. One of the scientists was burned to death.”

He did not have to tell Elizabeth the name.