“I—yes,” she muttered. “He knew the pharmaceutical company were screening their test patients very carefully and he was afraid he wouldn’t be selected, so … no, he didn’t tell them he had tried it already.” She met his level gaze and flushed again, but then her chin came up in a kind of defiant appeal that he understand the motives for her duplicity. “He was desperate.”
“It would seem there was a very good reason Jeremy wouldn’t have been selected,” my father said, ignoring her mute plea. “I believe Storax knew that with certain patients there would be catastrophic side effects, a rapid acceleration of the progress of the disease. And I believe they’re doing everything in their power to cover that up.”
“But that’s terrible,” Miranda said, frowning, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it.”
“After Jeremy died,” my mother put in, her voice calm and a little remote, “Storax sent some people over to England to … threaten me, if Richard didn’t admit to things—awful things—designed to ruin his reputation.”
Miranda groped for the back of the nearest chair, stumbled round and sank into it as her knees buckled.
“But they’ve been so kind,” she said, face blank. “I’ve had e-mails from someone in their legal department, offering me advice. They’ve been so helpful, I—”
“Who from in their legal department?” Sean demanded. “And what kind of advice?”
Miranda’s head turned blindly in his direction, but I knew she didn’t see him. “From someone named Terry O’Loughlin,” she said. “We’ve never spoken—just e-mails—advising me to sue.”
I glanced at Sean. “Why would Storax advise Miranda to file a claim if they knew about the side effects?” I said. “I can’t believe this is an isolated case, so surely they’re setting themselves up to lose millions in similar suits?”
“Not if the case against them collapses because Miranda’s expert witness has suddenly lost all his credibility,” Sean said pointedly. “Because he’s a drunken lecher, for example.”
My father folded a little in his chair, unconsciously reminding me of the picture of a sunken Jeremy Lee at his last birthday party.
“The people Storax sent must have known that as soon as it was confirmed Jeremy had already taken the drug, I’d start asking questions,” he murmured, running a hand across his forehead. “He was dying anyway, but they couldn’t afford to wait … and so they finished him.”
“And then sent Blaylock and Kaminski over to the UK to baby-sit Elizabeth,” Sean agreed. “They moved fast to cover this up.”
My father allowed himself a brief dismissive glare. “Jeremy’s records should speak for themselves,” he said stiffly. “I need to see them.”
Sean shook his head at this display of naïveté. “Don’t you think that the first thing Storax would have done after getting you thrown out of the hospital and tying you in knots with that reporter, was to walk off with his records, or alter what they didn’t want known? Without them, you can’t prove a thing.”
“Jeremy kept his own records,” Miranda said suddenly. She looked up and her eyes had cleared, focused. “A journal of his illness. How it progressed, symptoms, treatments. Everything he tried and the effect it had. It’s in the den. Would that help?”
“A journal?” my father said, sounding vaguely offended that secrets had been kept from him. As if the keeping of private notes alongside his own somehow signified a lack of trust. “Yes, yes it would. If you’re sure you don’t mind our reading it now?”
“Of course not. There’s nothing really private in there.” Miranda jumped up and hurried towards the door. “I’ll get it.”
“If we have Jeremy’s own account, that might save us a lot of time and trouble,” my father said when she’d gone, giving us a tight, tired smile. “I wonder why he felt the need to keep it?”
“If he knew he was either taking or being given something that wasn’t aboveboard, he might have wanted his own record. Just as long as it can be relied upon.”
“Jeremy was not only a doctor of some repute,” my mother said, as though that fact alone put him beyond question, “but he was also meticulous as a person.”
Sean’s eyebrow lifted. “Even when he was in constant pain and pumped full of morphine?”
“It’s very reliable.” Miranda’s voice from the doorway was distinctly chilly. “Considering I was the one filling it in for him during his last weeks. Everything they gave him, every time he cried out with the pain, I wrote it down in that damned book.”
“Sorry,” Sean said, not looking particularly contrite even so. “It’s part of my job to play devil’s advocate.”
She nodded. “He stopped taking the Storax treatment as soon as he realized it wasn’t helping, but he never thought for a moment it might actually have been making him worse. He made me swear not to tell you, Richard,” she added, throwing my father another anxious look. “He knew he was dying and he was afraid if it came out that he’d dosed himself, our medical insurance might be void. He was trying to protect me … .”
It was only then that we noticed her hands were empty.
“Miranda,” my father said, rising, “I can assure you that I will not allow confidential medical information about Jeremy fall into anyone’s hands but my own. You needn’t worry about—”
“It’s not that,” she said, looking baffled and not a little afraid. “After his death I put the journal away—I could hardly bear to look at it. It was just a reminder—” She broke off, shook her head as if to clear it. “I put the journal in the top right-hand drawer of his desk, same place as always. But when I went to get it just now, well, it was gone … .”
CHAPTER 19
“Collingwood’s pissed,” Parker said.
“Tell him to take more water with it,” I said recklessly. Even at the other end of a bad mobile phone line, in a moving vehicle, I heard his sigh. Parker was a pretty cosmopolitan guy and he got British humor better than most, but there were days when he simply didn’t find it funny. Plainly, today was one of them.
“Okay—Collingwood’s pissed off,” he amended heavily. “That any clearer?”
“Crystal,” I said, letting my voice drawl. “What’s he got to be so pissed off about?”
“By the sounds of it, he expected you to keep your father closer to New York, so he’d be available to answer questions about Storax.”
“Well, he’s the one who left us dangling for days,” I said, allowing my irritation to flare. “And he’s the one who told us to get out of town for a while.”
“Yeah,” Parker said dryly, “but I think he hoped you’d go to Long Island, someplace like that. Not Boston.”
“And I hoped that when he said he’d keep that blond bitch on a tight leash, he meant it,” I said, as quietly as I could. Even so, I caught an offended clearing of throats from the rear seat. Across to my left, Sean took his eyes off the road for long enough to flash me an amused smile. It was the most animation he’d shown all day.
“Hey—you can’t always control your people as much as you’d like,” Parker said pointedly. “Don’t push it, Charlie. He’s doing you a favor.”
“It was supposed to be a two-way street,” I said. “But so far, the traffic’s been traveling only in one direction. What’s he been doing all this time?”
Another sigh, longer this time. “Government departments move slowly—you should know that.”
“Yeah, well, this guy makes a glacier look positively speedy.”