37
‘Can I get you a drink?’
David Lambert-Chide regarded him from under his heavy, waxen lids, but Gareth merely scowled in reply. There were burly, black-suited men stood on either side of him, faces impassive, eyes unblinking, like grotesque bookends. Randall Tremain stood against a wall, one arm behind his back, another clutching what looked like a large leather-bound book. Gareth’s arms still throbbed from the mauling he’d received as they’d dragged him out of the car, through doors, down corridors, and finally into this room where they sat him down on a hard wooden chair. The room was a dreary, stone-walled affair, plaster peeling away, a solitary bare light bulb in the ceiling’s centre, not a single window. There were two ancient-looking oak doors, one behind him, another in front. Three chairs, put there for the occasion as far as Gareth could tell, were the only pieces of furniture. The room looked like an old scullery, laid with worn stone flags, and he could see old lead pipes snaking out of the floor near the wall and going nowhere; holes in the plaster where fixtures and fittings had once been set.
‘You can’t get away with any of this,’ Gareth growled.
Lambert-Chide waved away the two security guards and they backed off, going to stand a distance behind Gareth. He could sense their mica-cold presence at his back.
Lambert-Chide held up a glass, the amber liquid inside catching the cold light of the bulb. ‘Are you sure you won’t have one? This will be your last chance.’ He put it to his lips, never once taking his eyes off Gareth, took a gulp. ‘And I do mean your last chance. Pretty soon you’ll be on your way to the States. Not first class, I’m afraid. Sadly it will have to be by crate, but you won’t notice as you’ll be asleep the entire way.’ He raised a brow. ‘No? Your choice.’ He took his time walking over to one of the chairs, his aged, thin figure sitting carefully down, and his hand toyed with the silver head of the cane he carried. He scrutinized Gareth. ‘The likeness is the giveaway, of course,’ he said, half to himself. ‘Don’t you agree?’ he asked of Tremain who came to stand on Lambert-Chide’s right. There wasn’t a glimmer of response from Tremain.
‘Where am I?’ asked Gareth.
‘Back at Gattenby House, though that matters little to you,’ said Lambert-Chide. ‘The oldest part of the building, as it happens, and never used.’ He flicked a bony finger and Caroline came from behind Gareth, her hands stuffed inside her leather jacket pockets and her mouth still chewing on gum. ‘Well done, Caroline,’ he said. ‘Very well done.’
‘Bitch!’ said Gareth under his breath, swiveling his head round to stare at her. She stared back, unconcerned. He could not believe he fell for her lies.
‘And Muller?’ asked Lambert-Chide of no one in particular.
It was Tremain that replied. ‘Taken care of,’ he said.
‘You can’t trust anyone these days,’ Lambert-Chide noted, swigging the glass empty and holding it out for one of the guards to take away. ‘I never really trusted Muller,’ he admitted. ‘Fortunately we were informed of his intended duplicity by Caroline here. We must thank Muller, though, for getting you away from Camael alive, Gareth.’
‘This is kidnapping,’ said Gareth. ‘You can’t hope to get away with it. What’s more I’m no use to any of you. This is madness!’
The old man leant forward, both hands resting on the head of his cane. He gave a dry chuckle. ‘Get away with it? Look around you — I already have! Nobody will miss you. Nobody’s looking for you, not even the police. And believe what I say when I tell you that your value to me is immeasurable. Immense. You, Mr. Davies, are the future. My future, their future, everyone’s future,’ he gestured with his thin arm around the room. ‘And as a consequence one of the most valuable assets I shall ever possess. I say one, as there is one other.’
Lambert-Chide checked himself and ran a thoughtful tongue over his non-existent lips. Gareth noticed how the man’s head fell foul of a slight tremor, as if it were too heavy for his slender neck to support. He waved abruptly for the guards to leave the room, then to Caroline to do the same. Tremain remained where he was. The room fell silent till the door closed behind the last security guard to leave.
‘When I get my chance, I’m going to wring that scrawny chicken neck of yours!’ said Gareth. ‘This is all fucking madness! You have me mixed up with someone else!’
Lambert-Chide smiled thinly, giving his hollow-cheeked face even more of a skull-like appearance. ‘Bring her in for me,’ he ordered Tremain, his semblance of a smile melting like ice in hot water.
‘Are you certain?’ Tremain asked.
Lambert-Chide’s eyes narrowed. ‘As I say, Randall.’
Tremain passed Gareth a fleeting, mysterious glance, handed Lambert-Chide the book, which he rested on his lap, then went out of the room leaving the two men alone. But Gareth knew that was a fallacy; they weren’t truly alone. The men outside could respond to alarm in a second or two. He searched the room, wondering how he could escape. But what was he escaping from?
‘It’s useless to think about it,’ Lambert-Chide said, as if he’d read his thoughts. But Gareth figured his face must be a dead giveaway. ‘Let me fill you in on a few things,’ he said. ‘I suppose you have that right at least.’
‘You’ve trampled over most others,’ Gareth observed.
‘You can’t but notice we live in hard economic times,’ said Lambert-Chide. ‘It is true that my own company has been hard-hit. We are not alone amongst others in the pharmaceutical industry to find that we have a raft of patents on various drugs and treatment that will soon expire, open to the free market, our monopoly on them at an end. The problem is we have very few new patents coming through to replace them. Why? Simple: a lack of investment in research and development of new products. It can take anything up to ten years to bring a new drug to market, and we live in times when we have not been able to invest either the time or the money, unable to shoulder those kinds of investments or timescales. We have been sucking the pot dry and soon it will be a time of reckoning for us. For the entire industry.’
‘My heart bleeds,’ said Gareth.
Lambert-Chide regarded him as if he were an ignorant, errant child. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand the harsh economic realities, so let me approach this in a different way. Take a look at me. What do you see?’
‘I’m not playing any pathetic little game to satisfy you.’
‘I’ll tell you what you see. You see a man of ninety-odd years. Frail, eaten by age, fast approaching the end of his days, a fraction of the man that once was, soon to become nothing more than a shadow. Our lives are all shadows, aren’t they, Gareth. We are here but a brief time and we pass all too quickly, staring out as nothing, ending up as nothing. Shadows. Life is God’s rigid impermanence.’
‘You’ve spouted all this before,’ said Gareth. ‘I’m getting bored of it. Damn you! You can’t keep me here against my will!’
‘I can do as I please.’
‘You think that having money gives you the right,’ Gareth fired angrily, ‘to simply do as you please?’
Lambert-Chide’s eyebrow lifted a fraction, and he pretended to give the comment serious thought. ‘I’m not the one in your position, and you’re not the one in mine. Work it out for yourself. As I was saying before your rude interruption, I may be old but I am not ready to die. Not yet. I have too much to do, too much life to live.’
‘Tough. We all have to die sometime. Get used to the idea.’
‘Ah, but that’s where you are wrong, Gareth. Death is not an inevitability. Did you know there are organisms that can potentially live forever? There are certain types of jellyfish, for instance, and many bacteria, that simply do not grow old and die.’
‘Lucky jellyfish.’