But what if Lisa's hunch was right? What if neuroxil-5 caused occasional strokes in rats? What would that mean?
It could mean the drug was killing some of the people it was supposed to be curing. That would be a disaster. For the Alzheimer patients who were taking it, for BioOne, and for Revere.
I wasn't sure what Frank and John had to do with this potential catastrophe. Frank had little involvement with BioOne, Art had always seen to that. But there was Art's cryptic comment that Frank had been asking questions about BioOne just before he died. And of course there was the message John had left, saying he had discovered something about BioOne that I would find interesting. Could that have been that neuroxil-5 was dangerous?
At the moment it was a big if. What I needed to do was find proof one way or another. I polished off my beer and took the 'T' home.
The New England Journal of Medicine was on the Internet. I quickly found an abstract of the article Kelly had mentioned. I had to call the journal directly to have the full article faxed to me. The title was A Controlled Trial of Neuroxil-5 as a Treatment for Alzheimer's Disease'. There was a formidable list of authors, but the first name on the list was none other than Thomas E. Enever. It described the Phase Two clinical trial on eighty-four patients with Alzheimer's. The sample was too small to draw definitive conclusions, but the paper seemed to suggest that the results were encouraging. There were no statistically significant differences in the 'adverse-event categories' between the group that had taken neuroxil-5, and the group that had taken the placebo. At the end of an article was a list of six centres participating in the study, together with the clinicians responsible. Kelly had suggested that it was likely that most of these would also be involved in the larger Phase Three trial.
It took an hour of fiddling about on the Internet before I had the names and addresses of these six centres. Four of them were in New England, one was in Illinois, and one in Florida, no doubt a prime Alzheimer's location. It was five o'clock. I resolved to see the four New England centres the next morning.
I made myself a cup of tea, and picked up the pile of junk mail that had arrived that morning. There was one letter with an address in handwriting I knew very well.
Lisa's.
I sat on the sofa and opened the letter carefully, hardly daring to read it. It wouldn't be about BioOne: it must have been sent before Lisa's mother had passed on my message to her. It just might be something about how she was sorry, how she missed me, how she wanted to come back.
Or it might not.
It wasn't.
Dear Simon,
I have some news for you. I went to the drug store yesterday, and my family
doctor today, and there is no doubt about it. I'm pregnant.
I felt you had a right to know as soon as I did. But you should also know that it doesn't change my decision to stay away from you in California. I want to put Boston, you and Dad's death as far away as possible from me. There are issues I can't face right now – whether you were involved in Dad's death, and whether I can ever trust you again.
Both our parents messed up in bringing us up. I don't want to do that with our baby. I hope that here in California I can start out again, create a new life for myself and for the baby inside me. I have felt so horrible recently, but at least now I have something to live for.
I know you've been calling Mom. Please don't try to contact me. I need to be away from you right now. I hope that I will get to the stage where I can see you again and talk to you again, but I'm not there yet.
Lisa.
I read the letter over again, just to make sure I had got it right. A turmoil of emotions bubbled inside me. There was a primal joy that I was going to be a father. That soon an individual human being would be born that I had a part in creating, that was part me.
If I ever saw it.
We hadn't planned it. We hadn't even really talked about children. We had both assumed they were something for the distant future. A potential conflict between us that we wanted to put off.
For each of us the union of different nationalities and religions hadn't been a problem. In fact it had been liberating, freeing us from the different traditions in which we had grown up. But for our future children? I felt a tugging desire to bring up our children with English accents, a public school education and an occasional acquaintance with the Church of England. This wasn't for my own benefit but rather out of a sense of duty to my family. My title, which I had neglected, should be passed on, and with it some of the traditions I had been brought up with. The trouble was, I suspected Lisa had similar, but opposite feelings. Judaism passes through the female line.
Anyway, that was all academic now. Lisa was pregnant. She was going to lay total claim to the baby and keep it in California with her. The irony hurt. I realized that I really was following in my family's traditions, fathering and then abandoning children around the world. Not for the first time, I wondered if I had any brothers or sisters my father hadn't told me about. How could I be so pompous as to get myself hung up on the stupid title? I was a fucked-up Englishman in danger of begetting more fucked-up Englishmen. The kid was lucky to escape me.
Oh, sod it. I didn't care whether my children were English, American, Jewish or Hindi. What I really wanted to do was have a child with Lisa. I knew I would be a good father, and she would be a good mother. I could imagine us all laughing together, the three of us, the baby an as yet unformed blur. We could build a strong happy family together, we really could.
If Lisa ever gave us the chance.
I wanted to spend as little time out on the street as possible, so I ordered a pizza and sat down to write Lisa a letter, care of her mother. I wrote several, tearing each one up, until I was interrupted by the door-buzzer. It was Martinez. I let him in.
'Want some?' I asked him, pointing to the pizza.
He shook his head. 'I stay away from junk food.'
'I'd have thought that was impossible in your job.'
'It's a challenge.'
I glanced at his physique. He did look lean and fit. 'Have a seat. I'm sorry I haven't invited you in before, but I thought you were happier on the street.'
'Yeah. That's what I wanted to talk to you about.'
'Oh, yes?'
'Sergeant Mahoney has called us off. He thinks he can't justify tailing you any more.'
I suddenly felt cold. I hadn't realized how comforting my semi-visible companions had become.
'But doesn't he know someone's trying to kill me?'
'Remember, technically we were putting you under surveillance, not protecting you.'
'Jesus,' I said.
'I shouldn't really be here,' Martinez smiled. 'It's not standard police procedure to inform a suspect that his tail is disappearing.'
'No, I can see that. Thank you. Doesn't Sergeant Mahoney care if I get shot?'
Martinez shrugged.
'He doesn't like me much, does he?'
Martinez shrugged again.
'What about you?'
'I'm just a dumb cop who does what he's told.' Martinez got to his feet. 'But I don't like seeing innocent people getting killed. So, if you get worried about something, give me a call.' He pulled a card out of his wallet and handed it to me. 'And be careful.'
'Thanks,' I said, taking the card. 'I will.'
It was very hard to get to sleep. Whoever had tried to kill me would try again. They were bound to. With my police escort, I had some hope of protection. Now I had none.