The filing cabinet was exactly as described and this time the key they’d been given worked straight off. The file wasn’t thick but the papers it contained were close-typed and filled with the long names of complex compounds. Maggie divided the pile roughly into two, pulled the slim black document copier out of her shoulder bag, plugged it in and they set to work. Two of the compounds featured frequently in Johnny’s pile though he could make no sense of the context and didn’t waste time trying to. He copied six A4 pages. There was just one more document, a short handwritten letter.
Dear Matthew,
I really hope you’re wrong. I’m not going to agree to meet until I’ve had some time to think about what you’ve said but I promise this. If I find any evidence here that your suggestion has any basis in fact, I will certainly help you with your investigation. I don’t think anything we are doing here has the sort of application you describe but hope to find out more about the parallel Chempropa team at Westrop.
I’d love to be able to say that GKC International doesn’t do that sort of thing but you would think that simplistic. Don’t contact me again. I will get in touch if I find grounds to take this further.
He read it, then read it again, his mind suddenly racing. There wasn’t time now for all the questions it raised so he pushed them aside for consideration later and copied it. He waited while Maggie copied two more pages then they carefully put them all back exactly as they had found them and moved on to the lab.
It was there that the entire operation nearly came unravelled and it was caused by such a basic little hitch. There were four buttons on the front of the cabinet, not two as on the version they had been shown in the photo. There was a blue button, certainly, but the other three were yellow, red and green. Of an orange button, there was no sign. They argued in whispers.
‘Yellow’s pretty much like orange,’ Maggie urged.
Johnny objected. ‘So’s red. Anyway you might as well say green’s pretty much like blue.’
They spent a precious two or three minutes looking over it, peering in through a small gap in the side, trying to follow the tangle of wiring from the switches to the monitor, which was quietly tracing its inked line on to the slowly revolving paper roll.
‘I think we should try it. See if we can switch it on and off without opening it. That way, it won’t show if we screw it up,’ Johnny suggested.
‘Which colours?’
‘I’ll pick the first one. You pick the second.’
His finger wavered between orange and red. Orange for caution or red for stop? He settled on red, pushed it firmly and a buzzer filled the lab with startling sound. Thinking quickly, he stabbed green and the buzzer stopped but at that same moment they heard footsteps in the corridor, footsteps that halted and retraced their path. A key rattled in the lock and Maggie was suddenly on him, leaping up, wrapping her arms round his neck and her legs around his waist, rocking hard against him so that he staggered off balance. As the door opened behind Johnny, she broke into unstoppable rising moans. There was a startled mutter from the doorway and it banged abruptly shut again. She kept up the moans until they heard the footsteps retreating, then she stopped abruptly and disentangled herself leaving Johnny in a state of unexpected arousal, with only the memory of her pelvis pounding against his.
She turned to the cabinet, pressed the yellow button and the monitor roll stopped.
‘Eighty-three point six,’ she said, looking up at the dial. ‘Mark that.’
They went smoothly through the procedure for the swap. The blue button did its job and they left much more cautiously than they had arrived. Outside it was hand in hand again, which despite Johnny’s attempt at professionalism, brought back disturbing memories of what had just happened.
‘That was very quick thinking in there,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t believe the way you moved.’
The double entendre wasn’t intentional but she squashed it fast. ‘All in the line of business,’ she said, considering him. ‘Anyway, just in case you were thinking of following up, I should probably tell you now to save you the trouble, I swing the other way.’
‘Oh… fine.’
They parted when they were safely outside. She was taking the documents and samples back to a rendezvous with the bearded man. Johnny wasn’t invited, but he didn’t mind that. He needed to spend a little time by himself, to speculate on why this routine job for an anonymous client had suddenly become personal and he wasn’t thinking of Maggie’s simulated sex. He was wondering why Jean Davies’ letter should refer to GKC International. Greville Kay Chemicals International, his stepfather’s company.
Chapter Four
‘You were the natural choice, Johnny,’ said Sibley, undisturbed at his challenge. ‘We’ve had a lot to do with Sir Greville and your mother. If it doesn’t bother us that they’re the client, I don’t see why it need bother you.’
Johnny had spent an uneasy night and decided in the end to confront Sibley as soon as he could. He wasn’t sure he’d get very far, but ‘need to know’ rules didn’t seem to apply so strictly here. Sibley confessed readily that GKC was indeed behind the previous day’s operation.
‘I would have told you anyway,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a meeting here in an hour and a half. I need you in on it. Sir Greville’s coming.’
The schoolboy feeling. An hour and a half to do nothing much in a largely empty office, where the studied business of the few other inhabitants simply made his inactivity more acutely noticeable – and Sir Greville at the end of it. He felt uneasy, as if at any moment someone might call to say he was late for First XV rugger practice or that the Latin master wanted to see him about his grammar test. When a call did come on the intercom summoning him, he took the lift to the basement trying to feel grown-up, professional, expert. Walking into a room containing his stepfather ensured the attempt would end in failure.
The meeting was held in the safe room, which Johnny suspected was as much a product of Sibley’s marketing skills as a solution to a real eavesdropping risk. It was ostentatiously being swept for bugs as he came in through the electrically operated double doors. The low hum of an electronic disrupter moved up and down in a narrow range of frequencies as they began to talk. Sibley, Maggie and a man Johnny recognized but couldn’t name from past years in the office were standing talking to two visitors. One was the bearded man from the previous day’s briefing, who was nodding with little lip movements of impatient petulance at something Maggie was saying to him. The other was Sir Greville. Sibley was standing too close to him, talking animatedly, and he was leaning away from the contact, aloof as ever, his top lip lifted slightly in that look of mild disdain which was his habitual expression. One eyelid drooped slightly, a recent affliction which added to the effect, and the suit was country tweed, very, very expensive. Johnny, trying to fix his mind on neutral ground to avoid his step-father smelling his fear, guessed the afternoon was earmarked for one of his mother’s rural bloodlettings, involving some combination of guns, hounds and horses.