Sweet Talking Money. Harry Bingham

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СКАЧАТЬ out in med school that standard drug treatment actually makes the illness worse.’

      ‘Exactly. My granddad, too. Good example,’ Bryn encouraged her.

      ‘Best-practice treatment of arthritis,’ said Cameron, ‘would be diet, plus allergy interventions, plus maybe some natural cartilage-builders.’

      ‘Right.’

      ‘But no drugs.’

      ‘Nope.’

      ‘So no profits from drugs.’

      Silence.

      ‘Anti-depressants,’ said Kati sadly, after a while. ‘The best ones are all non-pharmaceutical, but no one uses them.’

      Bryn nodded in agreement. ‘No one.’

      ‘No money in them, right?’

      ‘None at all.’

      Silence.

      Cameron looked out at the snow. As they had been speaking, a soft blanket had fallen, muffling the city. People and cars, when they appeared at all, moved slowly, treading cautiously, slowing right down at the bends. Then she brought her gaze back into the room, first down at her hands, then up, sadly, very sadly, to Bryn’s face. The white tabletop reflected chilly light on to the underside of her face, as though she too was wandering outside, lost in the moonlight and the snow.

      ‘Well, I guess this has been my night of lost illusions.’

      ‘It must be hard.’

      ‘You always do this when you invite a girl out to dinner?’

      He smiled. ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘So tell me again. What you want us to do.’

      Bryn repeated his ideas, going slowly, making sure he brought Cameron along with him this time. ‘I’ll set up a company which will help you to develop your research, and then market it when it’s ready. You say you hate the way Corinth does business. OK. So put them out of business. Not by publishing research papers. Who’s ever heard of a corporation going under because of some damn research paper? Hit ’em where it hurts: their bottom line. We’ll pitch our salesmen against their salesmen, our results against theirs.’ He put his hand on Cameron’s arm and said very gently, ‘It sounds mad, I know, but the stockmarket is your friend. You fight them in the laboratory, and I’ll fight them in the marketplace. If we get it right, the whole world will be reprogramming its immune system and nobody, but nobody, is going to be popping Corinth’s little poison pills.’

      The scientist paused. ‘Why are you doing this? You want to save the world? Or do you just want to make your million?’

      ‘Make a million?’ Bryn smiled sympathetically. ‘No. I’d like to get rich, seriously rich, a hundred million rich. If I do a little good along the way, then that’s great. But I don’t pretend that I’m doing this for the good of my soul.’

      ‘Uh. Well, that’s clear enough, anyway.’

      The world fell silent as Cameron thought. This was the biggest decision of her life, the hardest, the most painful. But also, as she thought about it, the easiest. Her reputation was gone, her funding, her hopes of scientific acclaim. Her only hope was sitting in front of her, a battered-looking steamroller of a man, someone she scarcely knew.

      ‘OK,’ she said. ‘You win. I give up. Let’s do it.’

      4

      The U-Haul depot opened at dawn and Bryn was first in line. He was about to sign out a mini-van, but Cameron shook her head. ‘Too small,’ she said. So Bryn hired a truck and bought a hundred and twenty orange crates at five bucks each.

      ‘You an experienced driver?’ asked the boiler-suited rental guy. ‘Them streets outside are an inch of snow laying atop of an inch of ice.’

      ‘Finalist in the Welsh all-terrain truck-drivers’ championship,’ said Bryn. ‘Would’ve won ’cept some bastard shunted me.’

      ‘You don’t say?’ The rental guy took a different set of keys from the board behind him. ‘Here, take the Toyota. Transmission on the Volvo is shot to shreds. Same price. Don’t mention it. Finalist, huh?’

      It was a good job the rental guy chose to stay reading his Off-Road Biker inside his oppressively warm glass booth, else he’d have seen Bryn slide twice coming out on to the road and only miss a negligence suit by the fewest of inches as an outraged motorist swerved angrily away from the outcoming truck.

      ‘You even know how to drive?’ said Cameron.

      ‘I’m a quick learner.’

      Once in Cameron’s office, they worked fast, with Cameron’s spirits rising rapidly as her sense of adventure took hold.

      ‘Kati?’ she said.

      ‘Uh-huh?’ Kati shifted a stack of paper into a crate and stood up, flexing her back.

      ‘Our new colleague, Bryn. Part crazy, wouldn’t you say?’

      ‘You’ve found a part that’s sane?’

      ‘Paranoiac, for sure, and what do you think? A little hypomanic, could be?’

      ‘Uh, I guess. Mental health. Not my field.’

      Bryn said nothing, just worked to clear the office as fast as he could. He’d filled sixteen crates and already his back was beginning to sing out warnings.

      ‘Bryn?’ said Cameron.

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘There are some pretty good drugs these days. I could put you on something.’

      ‘Lithium,’ said Kati. ‘Have you thought about lithium?’ ‘Yeah, good, start you on lithium, maybe? Or you want me to refer you to a specialist?’

      Bryn dropped the crate that he was holding.

      ‘Your ethics committee.’ he said. ‘The one that was going to investigate you. Have you ever heard of it in your life before?’

      ‘I’ve never been framed in my life before,’

      ‘They wanted you to collect up all your research data, protocols, everything.’

      ‘Just like a committee, wouldn’t you say?’

      ‘Then hand it to them.’

      ‘Not much point collecting it otherwise.’

      ‘Corinth. Not an ethics committee. Corinth. Fantastic idea. They just ask you to collect everything significant from your last five years of research and hand it over to them. Perfect. That’s why we need to clear out tonight. Make bloody sure that they get nothing, nothing at all.’

      Cameron СКАЧАТЬ