First Horseman, The (10 page)

‘You mean you’ll be able to tell your body to be twenty-five again?’

‘That is the ultimate goal and I am close to it, very close indeed.’ He pulled up a plan on his screen. ‘I will build a new lab and in it I will build a plant to synthesise TRT, step by step, molecule by molecule, like a child builds a castle with toy bricks. Never has such a complex compound been made from base chemistry. It will be a giant step forward in technology. It will be for medicine as the technology behind the silicon chip was for electronics. It will be the beginning of a whole new paradigm.’ He flipped through blueprints, as if Jim was meant to understand them.

‘How many people will you be able to treat with the output of this plant?’

‘Tens of thousands,’ said Cardini. ‘Perhaps hundreds of thousands.’ He brought up a picture of what looked like a large dusty root. ‘Once upon a time progesterone was the most valuable medicine known to man. It is the hormone vital to female reproduction. It was the only infertility treatment available in the mid-years of the last century and had to be extracted from the ovaries of pigs.’ He looked at Jim. ‘You can appreciate the analogue with our vastly more complex problem. In any event, enterprising scientists discovered it could be extracted from wild yams and set off to South America to bring one back. They extracted from one single tuber enough hormone to sell for three million dollars. They then considered that the hormone might be more effective with a little amendment and found a compound a thousand times more powerful, so powerful, in fact, that the drug made a woman’s body believe it was pregnant. Thus the world was changed by a chemist and a potato.’

He sighed. ‘If only our situation was as simple, yet breakthroughs at the molecular level can be as spectacular for medicine as they are for computing. Outcomes, as with the human population, can multiply exponentially.’

With a smile, Kate texted Jim, ‘Safe trip.’

There was a buzz at her door, which made her start. Nobody ever came to call. Someone must have pressed the button by accident. It was probably a leaflet delivery person, trying to get in to push junk into everyone’s mailboxes. She hoped no one would open the front door. The world didn’t need more landfill leaflets.

The buzzer sounded again. She leaned forwards and peered out of the side of her bay window. Through the net curtains she could see Bob Renton. ‘Hello,’ she said, into the intercom.

‘It’s Bob.’

‘Hold on a minute.’

The front door clunked and he pushed it open. She stood up and went to her door, which she opened. Renton smiled at her as he stepped into the hallway. ‘I was just passing,’ he said. ‘The professor was wondering if you could drop in tomorrow. He wants me to complete a formality or two.’

‘Formality?’ she wondered.

‘Exit paperwork – they like me to get it in person to make sure there aren’t any loose ends. It’s funding stuff, stupid bureaucracy, but we get into trouble if we don’t get it done. I can also work on a letter of reference with you, so it can be just as you want it. It’s so much easier to do that kind of thing in person than via email.’

She hadn’t thought about getting a reference from the professor. What would he say? ‘Silly woman left the course almost immediately, but otherwise a sound person’? ‘OK,’ she said. ‘What time?’

‘Would around five be all right? That’s a quiet time for me. It shouldn’t take long.’

‘Five is fine,’ she said.

‘Great,’ he said, hopping onto the balls of his feet. ‘I’ll be on my way, then.’ He nodded. ‘See you tomorrow,’ he said, his eyes widening in what looked like keen anticipation.

Kate blinked. ‘See you.’ She stepped back and closed the door. She felt she had been a bit short with him. She wandered over to her couch and looked at the TV she never watched. She felt like switching it on to distract her from the strange impression Renton’s wide-eyed grimace had left.

Had she heard the main door close? She got up and looked out of the window. There was no sign of Renton walking off. He couldn’t still be standing in the hallway, could he? She went to the door and listened. She couldn’t hear a thing. But how could she? The door was a solid piece of wood.

She definitely hadn’t heard the front door clank shut, as she always did when one of the other students went out and let it slam behind them. She peered into the peep-hole but, as usual, couldn’t make out anything on the other side. What would Renton be doing standing outside her door anyway? Waiting for her to say goodbye properly? That would be ridiculous, but even so she couldn’t just sit there and imagine him not gone. Yet if he hadn’t gone, she certainly didn’t want to open the door to find him standing there.

She was being silly and mad and compulsive – but she needed to know and know for sure. Sometimes the problem was, had she closed the door? Turned off the iron? If she’d left it on, would the ironing board catch fire? She had to make sure it was turned off. Et cetera. Once the nagging question had lodged in her head, she had to go back and check whatever it was, and then, as she walked away, go back and check it again. When that kind of doubt entered her head, she was filled with a crippling uncertainty that undermined her whole world.

Renton was surely not in the hall, but was the door open for just anyone to come in? That was all she wanted to know: it wasn’t about Renton waiting there, it was about the door not being closed.

She had to look.

She opened her door a little way. There was a flash of movement, the blur of a figure passing with a clump and a bang. She squealed in shock and slammed the door. As it closed, she realised it was the guy from the floor above, bounding towards the exit in his normal galumphing manner. She snatched the door open again and peered out. He was standing by the front door, looking back. ‘You all right, girl?’ he said, almost laughing.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You startled me.’

‘Sorry,’ he said sheepishly. ‘Happens all the time.’ He left the building, the door banging loudly behind him.

How embarrassing, she thought. She checked the hallway again and tried to force into her memory a mental note that the front door was shut and the hallway was empty. In the circumstances it wouldn’t be difficult.

Stafford was standing in the small departures area of Cambridge airport. Unlike Heathrow, or any other major airport, Cambridge was little more than a collection of large sheds set to one side of a giant field with a strip of tarmac running down the middle. There was a Citation X outside, which Jim guessed was to take them Stateside. It needed a pretty big private jet to make the Atlantic jump and the Citation had the range. It was junior to his Gulfstream by a long way but the fight for luxury air supremacy was not of much interest to him.

Davas, his mentor, had his own Airbus, with concert hall, garage and 3D cinema, but that seemed silly to Jim. He didn’t want a flying palace, just the right recipient for his philanthropy, so that giving such a lot of money away wouldn’t cause chaos for all concerned.

Davas had laughed at him. ‘Spend it,’ he said. ‘Let the market distribute it. The market is fighting twenty-four seven, three sixty-five, to allocate resources in the most efficient way possible. Don’t worry about saving people. They’ll save themselves.’

Yet Jim had seen so many people unable to save themselves, and he had seen bad people do bad things and flourish. In the end they’d got their just desserts, but the process seemed to take far too long. Money was raw energy and it could speed a bullet as cheaply as it could save a child from death by dehydration. Davas was right: the market worked 24/7 and 365, but there were good people and bad, and they all fought for and struggled to keep the resources that money encapsulated. The market might be nearly perfectly efficient but it was most certainly not nearly perfectly benign.

He glanced at the plane. He would happily have swapped the luxurious flight for a long chat with a pretty backpacker in a cramped seat at the rear of an old jumbo.

Stafford had brought a Louis Vuitton holdall with him. ‘Here are enough essentials for three days,’ he said, handing it to Jim.

It was heavy. ‘What’s in here?’ said Jim.

‘A notebook, of course, and some incidentals,’ said Stafford.

‘Thanks,’ said Jim. ‘Brilliant.’

Cardini was standing back from them, apparently lost in thought, a member of the small cabin crew carrying his bag away to clear it through security for him.

‘See you in a day or two,’ said Jim, taking his passport from Stafford’s outstretched hand.

‘Have a safe journey,’ said Stafford.

Jim imagined his butler at thirty-five. He’d probably been quite a good-looking guy then, rather than the heavy, owlish old bloke who peered at him now from beneath bushy eyebrows. ‘Take care,’ he said, turning away. ‘OK, Professor, I’m all sorted.’

A pretty stewardess in uniform asked him for his passport and they walked towards the door as she checked the paperwork on her clipboard. ‘Thank you,’ she said, as they stepped outside.

Jim looked back through the glass of the door. Stafford was watching them go, a blurred oval of black and grey.

He turned and followed Cardini over the concrete apron and up the steps. Cardini ducked his head as he entered and the plane seemed a little too small for his great frame.

Jim thought his Gulfstream would have been more comfortable. Yet it was nice that he didn’t have to spend the fifty thousand pounds the flight would have cost, even though that was small change to him, these days. He sat down across a table from Cardini and automatically buckled himself in.

‘So, Jim,’ said Cardini, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask but I’ve hesitated.’ He leant forwards interlacing his fingers, which seemed to Jim unnaturally long. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking you a personal question.’

‘Sure.’

‘What is the source of your immense wealth?’

‘Drugs and guns,’ said Jim. Cardini didn’t flinch. Jim laughed nervously. ‘That’s my favourite joke,’ he said apologetically.

‘One never knows about these things.’ Cardini shrugged.

‘I made my money in the markets,’ said Jim.

‘Made? Have you stopped?’

‘Yes,’ said Jim, ‘mostly. How much can a bloke want?’

‘More, is normally the answer to that question,’ said Cardini.

The stewardess was coming towards them. ‘What can I get you, gentlemen?’

Jim noted the door was already closed. ‘I’ll have a beer,’ he said.

‘Virgin Mary,’ said Cardini.

The plane was moving.

‘I’ll bring them to you, gentlemen, as soon as we get up to altitude.’

‘No vodka in your drink,’ Jim commented. ‘Is alcohol a no-no with TRT?’

‘Indeed not,’ said Cardini. ‘I just resist the temptation to put toxins into my system.’

‘So, no booze?’

‘None,’ said Cardini, in a haughty tone.

‘Well,’ said Jim, ‘not only will you live for ever, it’ll feel like eternity too.’ He tried to detect a hint of amusement in Cardini’s raised eyebrows but failed.

As the jet headed for the main runway, it suddenly occurred to Jim that it was going to be a long, boring trip. He got out his phone and texted Kate. ‘Taking off.’

Kate looked away from the picture on the wall. She had forgotten to set her alarm and she needed it to remind her of her appointment with Bob Renton. She didn’t want to upset anyone enjoying the calm of the lovely Fitzwilliam Museum but … Fitz meant ‘bastard’, she mused, as she switched on the ringer. Fitzwilliam meant ‘bastard of William’. She wondered whether the William was one of the old kings and, if so, which of the four. William II had been gay, she seemed to recall, which would seem to disqualify him.

So 1700 minus thirty minutes would give her half an hour to get there on time. She tapped back thirty minutes as she looked at the painting. So, the man who had founded the museum had been the illegitimate son or grandson of a king or a duke. The guy behind this amazing place would have been an outcast if his father, or grandfather, whoever, hadn’t been royalty. Instead of being a pariah he’d got to be a big cheese. What hypocrisy, she thought.

She set the alarm with a jab of her thumb and put her phone back into her handbag. She felt uncomfortable but didn’t know why. It was probably that the Victorians, the biggest humbugs of them all, would probably have refused even to acknowledge that there was one morality for the rich and another, meaner one, for the poor.

She sighed. She should let the pictures chill her out. Yet the woman on the ship heading across the sea, red scarf flying in the wind, didn’t fill Kate with calm: it filled her with dread, as if there was a storm ahead. She thought about studying some Turners, or maybe Constable, and headed off to find just the right picture to contemplate.

She wondered where Jim was and what he was doing. She wanted to tug at a strand of hair but stopped herself. The temptation would pass.

Cardini looked as if he was falling asleep, which was more than a little annoying to Jim, who was waiting for him to make his next move in their game of chess. It didn’t seem right to give him a shake but after several games, in which Jim had been crushed like a bug, he at last felt he was about to deliver Cardini a nasty surprise. A draw by default seemed a frustrating result. You couldn’t say you’d beaten someone at chess because they’d passed out.

Cardini’s eyes batted open and he grunted. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, moving his black knight back and across.

Jim studied the move. He was in trouble again: what he had thought was a strong position had been split deftly in two. ‘Bugger,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Cardini. ‘Buggered, I believe, would be more accurate.’ He took a little bottle from his inside pocket, unscrewed the cap and had a sip. He watched Jim watching him take his medicine. ‘This will be a trying few days,’ he said, ‘cause for a little support, I fear.’ He held out the bottle to Jim. ‘Would you like to sample the effect?’

Jim looked at the little vial. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘but you know how it is. Just say, “No” – right?’

‘It’s a mild tincture,’ said Cardini. ‘No more than a tonic, really, in comparison to a treatment. I would recommend it.’ Cardini’s hand was most of the way across the table, holding the vial out to him.