Final Venture

'No, I'm sure she'll be fine,' I said. 'I'll be glad to come.'

Lisa arrived home at half past nine, by which time my anger at what she had done had subsided a little, and my concern about how she was behaving had grown. She looked terrible, lines of fatigue and misery ravaging her face.

'Lisa, I'd like to talk to you about the take-over.' She dumped her bag on a chair. 'There really isn't any point, Simon.'

'But Lisa…'

'There's no point. Have you had dinner?'

'Not yet.'

Lisa ordered some Chinese to be delivered, and picked up her book. I turned on the TV. When the food came we ate in silence. I made a couple of half-hearted attempts to start a conversation, but with little success. I was still angry, so I soon gave up.

I had developed a headache myself. I rummaged around in the bathroom cabinet for Lisa's Tylenol. I had to remove a paper bag to get at it. Inside were two bottles of pills, unlabelled. I opened them, and poured out a couple of the tablets. They were unmarked. I forgot the Tylenol, and took the bottles into the living room.

'Lisa. What are these?'

She looked up. 'BP 56,' she said. She looked me in the eye, defying me to say anything.

'BP 56! But that hasn't been tested on humans yet.'

'It has now.'

'Lisa! Can't you wait for those volunteers to take it? It might be dangerous.'

'Of course it isn't dangerous, Simon. It's been thoroughly tested on animals. And how could I allow volunteers to take a drug I wasn't prepared to take myself?'

'Oh, Lisa.'

'Simon, if there are any problems with the drug, I need to know now so we can do something about them. We can't afford to wait until we've gone through all the paperwork with the FDA.'

'But is it allowed?'

'Technically, no,' said Lisa. And if you told anyone at work, I could get into big trouble. But this kind of thing has been done plenty of times. Jonas Salk injected his whole family with polio to prove his vaccine worked. I'm not doing anything as dangerous as that.'

'I don't think it's a good idea, Lisa. Why didn't you tell me?'

She sighed. 'Because I knew you wouldn't like it. But I have to do it, Simon.'

I put the pills back in the bathroom. It seemed to me foolhardy for Lisa to take this untried drug, especially in the state she was in, but I knew there was no chance of me persuading her.

The phone rang. I picked it up.

'Hello?'

'Can I speak to Lisa?'

I recognized Eddie's voice. No 'hello', no 'how are you?'

'Hold on.' I looked up. 'It's Eddie.'

'I'll take it in the bedroom,' Lisa said.

She emerged twenty minutes later.

'How is he?' I asked.

'I'd say he's quite upset,' Lisa replied icily.

'Did you discuss any more of his theories?'

'If Eddie wants to talk about Dad, I'll listen to him,' Lisa said, picking up her book again.

It angered me that Eddie and Lisa were talking about me as a murder suspect behind my back. But I bit my tongue. There was one thing I had to tell Lisa, though. I waited for a good moment, but once again there wasn't one. So I told her just as we were getting into bed.

'I'm going to Cincinnati with Diane next Monday. I'll be out one night.'

Lisa looked at me sharply. 'Next Monday?'

'Yes. We've been through this before. I have to go.'

'OK,' she said, climbing into bed.

'Come on, Lisa. I can't refuse to go.'

'You do what you have to do,' she said, rolling over.

'I will,' I muttered.

12

As Art had promised, BioOne made a public announcement the following morning about its intentions for Boston Peptides. Back at my desk, I called up the news service on my computer and looked at the press release there. The text was pretty bland, apart from one killer sentence.

'Daniel!' I called across to him.

'Yeah?'

'Have you seen the BioOne announcement?'

'Yes.'

'What's this about "substantial cost savings at Boston Peptides"?'

'BioOne thinks it can cut out some duplicated costs. It can move Boston Peptides into its building in Kendall Square. And other things.'

'Like firing people?'

Daniel shrugged. 'That's what happens in take-overs. You heard Enever.'

'But there was no need to announce it to the whole world, was there?'

'Why not?' Daniel smiled. 'Hey! The stock's up four to forty-nine.'

'Well, that's wonderful, then.' I put my head in my hands. Lisa was going to love this.

Sure enough, the announcement had caused uproar at Boston Peptides, with rumours flying. But at least Lisa was willing to talk that evening.

'People are really upset,' she said. 'They're talking about resigning.'

'Is Enever really that bad?' I asked.

'Oh, yes. You know what they call him at BioOne?'

'What?'

'Enema.'

'Sounds attractive.' It was a good name. I remembered his pained, irritated demeanour.

'It turns out he didn't even discover neuroxil-5.'

'He must have the patent, surely?'

'Yes, he does. Or at least BioOne does. Most of the work was done at the institute he worked at in Australia. He was just one of a team. He took the idea with him to America and patented it here.'

'How did he get away with that?'

Apparently, the Australians didn't know, or if they did, they didn't care. One of the other members of the team came to the US and tried to kick up a fuss. I don't think he got anywhere. Once a patent has been granted, it's very hard to prove prior art. Enema employs pretty fearsome patent lawyers. They argued that neuroxil-5 was slightly different from the drug the Australians had developed.'

'Sounds like a great guy'

'"Yeah. Also, there are rumours that some of BioOne's early research results were manipulated.'

'Jesus. Why the hell did we back him?'

Lisa sighed. 'He sounds convincing. The stock market loves him. I'm worried he'll muscle his way into running things at Boston Peptides, and hog all the credit for anything we produce.'

From what I had seen, that prospect looked quite likely. I hadn't yet told Lisa about Enever's little presentation. Somehow, it never seemed like quite the right time. 'I hope he leaves you alone,' I said.

Lisa gave me a withering look. 'I think that's highly unlikely.' She switched on the TV. 'Weren't you going out with Kieran tonight?'

'No, that's OK. He won't miss me. I'll stay here with you.'

'Don't worry about me,' said Lisa neutrally. 'You go, Simon.'

'I can stay-'

'Go.'

So I went.

The Red Hat was a frequent haunt of ours when Kieran and I were at business school. It was a dark basement bar only a few minutes' walk from our apartment.

Kieran was already there, with half a dozen others from our business school days who had found jobs around Boston. Daniel wasn't present. He had tended to avoid the group occasions at business school, and certainly avoided them now. Pitchers of beer were bought and drunk. There was some tedious talk at first of 'B-school', 'I-banks', 'VCs' and pay cheques, but then the conversation regressed a couple of years to women, drink and sport. I forgot Frank's death, Sergeant Mahoney and Lisa's problems, and my brain went pleasantly fuzzy.

I left early and arrived home at about half past ten, ready to tumble into bed. I didn't make it.

Lisa was sitting on the sofa. She was wearing her running clothes. She was crying.

'Lisa!' I moved over to sit by her on the sofa.

'Get away from me!' she cried.

I stopped in mid stride. 'OK,' I said. 'What's wrong?'

She opened her mouth to say something, then her bottom lip shook, and she bit it. Tears rolled down her face. I moved towards her again.

'I said, get away from me!'

I held up my hands in a calming gesture. 'OK, OK,' I said, and backed off to sit in the armchair.

I waited.

Lisa sobbed, and sniffed, and took a deep breath. 'I found it, Simon.'

'Found what?'

'What do you think?'

'I don't know. Tell me.'