V. The Unfaithful Dead - Part 2 of 4

The lab is pretty much like any other, desks and computers and work
benches and the odd huge bit of mysterious machinery. 'What's that?' I
asked the effete little high pitched American project manager who was
showing me around.

'A para-magnetic de-urinator.' He said, or something like that. 'This
is Alexander's desk, and miss Lombard's is adjacent.'

'Cosy.' I said. They were two desks together in a partitioned cubicle,
they were both strewn haphazard with pieces of paper, notebooks,
textbooks, printouts and post-it notes, all covered in formulas and
diagrams and other things I did not understand. I looked at the desks
and looked for something obvious, I did not know what it would be but I
knew it would be obvious. A cop would scour the desk, would subdivide
it into manageable chunks and go through each in turn archiving and
noting everything however unimportant it might seem. In five minutes a
cop would have found everything on the desk and would either know an
awful lot about whatever they were working on or, more likely, be a
very confused cop. I was not a cop and I just glanced at the desk,
waiting for something to catch my eye. On the top of the pile, on a
print out of some sort of 3D graph, someone had written a phone number
and the name 'Hal'. I picked up the phone and rang it.

'Hal Pear.' Said a voice, it was a good voice, old but firm. I decided
the second I heard it to play it straight.

'Mr Pear.' I said. 'My name is Michael, I work for the Van-Heer company
and I am looking for a Mr Alexander Hodder and Miss Eowen Lombard. I
was hoping you could help me.'

He paused and then said. 'Who exactly do you work for?'

'I work directly for William Gassner sir.'

'Then we'd better talk.'

*****

Hal Pear lived in a very large house in Wimbledon, he buzzed me through
an iron gate and walked out into the driveway to greet me. He was a
small man about eighty but apparently still quite mobile, he watched
the electric gate close and lock safely before turning back and leading
me in. We sat in the living room with the patio doors open, his wife
tended the rose border in a huge garden. Hal waved to her as we sat
down and she waved back, I wondered if there was any specific message
being communicated but suspected not.

'Your name is Michael Prince.' He said. 'You've worked for the Van-Heer
company less than a year where you "solve problems" for William Gassner
and "do not quite see eye to eye" with his son James which endears you
to me more than you might expect. Before Van-Heer you were at Scotland
Yard where information about you seems notably scarce. You are now
looking for two missing Van-Heer employees and an "item" in their
possession. Right?'

The old man had done his homework, and quickly too. 'Pretty much.' I
said.

'Do you know who I am?'

Fortunately I had asked one of the girls in HR who had given me a
rundown. 'Hal Pear.' I said. 'Spelled P E A R like the fruit, on the
board of Van-Heer till you resigned about three years ago, generally
reckoned to be a nice guy. That is all I know.'

'It is as good a description as any I suppose, and flattering too. What
can I do for you Michael?'

'You talked to Alexander Hodder recently?'

'Two days ago.' He said. 'With Miss Lombard, in this very room.'

'Do you know where they are?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'How do you know Alexander?'

'I recruited him.'

'You were his boss?'

'No. I just recruited him. Dr Tsukimura, may he rest in peace, knew
Alex from the conference circuit and chose him personally, it was my
job to make sure he took our offer.'

'Was it a good offer?'

'We would have offered more if he'd have held out but yes, it was
pretty good.'

'So he should be okay for money then.'

Hal Pear laughed. 'Are you looking for a motive.'

'I had assumed?'

'Not Alex, at least not for money.' He said. 'The girl on the other
hand might be a different matter.'

I had assumed Alex and Eowen had acted out of pure greed. It was the
obvious reason but it was lazy thinking, it was cop thinking. My girl
on HR would have told me both their salaries but it had never even
crossed my mind to ask. 'What about her?' I asked.

'I don't know her salary, and she is his junior, that is all.'

'What did you talk about?'

'They wanted to know about Stan Arkin.'

'Ahha.' I said. 'I am keen to learn about Mr Arkin myself.'

'Then I shall tell you what I told them. Stan Arkin was a very senior,
if not the most senior, member of the Van-Heer board. He'd been there
nearly as long as Gassner and was reckoned by most to be the obvious
successor. Then Gassner brought in his son. James was fresh out of some
American management school and young and brilliant and hungry and did
not care whose fingers he trod on. Nepotism and favouritism are taken
for granted in this world, it's all about who you know you
understand.'

'I'd suspected.'

'Suspected generally or specifically about James?'

'Both.'

He laughed again. 'Say all you like about that boy, the less you think
of him the more respect I have for your judgement. He manoeuvred me out
of my own position you know.'

'He manoeuvred you?' I asked.

'Made it wiser for me to resign the little rat. Oh I do all right for
myself,' He gestured to the house and the garden, 'but sometimes I am
rather bored.'

He shrugged with a weary smile but beneath it you could see the hurt, I
don't think it was boredom though, I think he actually missed the
company like he might miss a loved one.

'Anyway. I was talking about Stan Arkin.'

'You were.'

'Stan didn't like the son but then few did, Stan however felt
threatened, he saw Gassner was grooming James for his successor which,
of course, was what he was after. He bided his time for a couple of
years, I assume he was waiting to see if the boy messed up by himself,
but in the end he acted and forced a vote of no confidence at the AGM.
It was an attempted coup by any other name. He nearly won as well,
Arkin had been at the championing new technologies in the company
against the protests of Gassner and others, these businesses had
recently started bringing in revenue and were a powerful weapon. In the
end he got about a third of the vote.' He paused. 'Would you like a
beer Michael.'

I said I would and he disappeared into the house. I watched his wife
select undesirable weeds from amongst desirable plants and thought
about the cutthroat world of big business. I imagined Hal Pear helping
run a company all his life and then having it taken from him, I
imagined Stan Arkin deciding he had to take it from old man Gassner to
keep his own place and old man Gassner fighting tooth and nail to keep
it from being taken because he wanted it for his son. I was used to
small people doing small things to each other, I was used to violence
and victims and murderers and motives, this all seemed a long way away
from what I was used to.

Hal Pear returned with two bottles of lager and continued talking the
moment he entered the room. 'The real cruel thing, the final insult,
was that Gassner, whose foot soldiers had fought tooth and nail for him
in the trenches, canvassing votes and calling in favours, gave the
glory to James who had sat the whole thing out. Stan Arkin had to go of
course, everybody understood that, his resignation was already in. But
Gassner gave the vacancy to James as if he were the conquering hero.
The final insult.'

'What did Arkin do afterwards.' I asked.

'He founded his own company, Morning Star Technologies. Something to do
with mobile phones I think and apparently doing rather well. They have
an office in Chertsey.'

I sucked on my beer and mulled it over in my head. 'Would Arkin be very
interested in what Dr Tsukimura was doing?'

'You don't know what Tsukimura was doing?'

'Its this big secret.' I said rolling my eyes.

'He was making batteries.' He said.

'Batteries?'

'Very small, very cheap, very lightweight, very powerful, very
long-life, rechargeable batteries. They are going to solve the biggest
problem in the mobile devices industry and make Van-Heer a mint. Do
they give you stock options in your job?'

'No.'

'Too bad.'

I sucked on my beer again. The sunlight was streaming in from the
garden with the birdsong and I looked out at the deliciously green lawn
and the tall trees hiding away the rest of London and I imagined myself
growing old in a similar house, with a wife tending the rose beds and
bottles of cold beer and old stories to tell and younger men to tell
them to and advise about stock options. It was a good fantasy.

*****

As I walked back to the tube station the son drove past in a very large
Mercedes. He stopped sharply with an ABS shudder and damn near leaped
from the door.

'What the fuck are you doing here?' He shouted.

'My job.' I said.

He marched right over to me leaving his car idling in the middle of the
road and jabbed a finger at my face. 'Have you been talking to Hal
Pear?' He demanded. 'What did he tell you?'

I looked left and right to see the street was empty, snatched the
accusing finger from the air, twisted it around behind his back,
crossed my foot over his ankle and pushed him over onto the pavement. I
squatted beside him, pressed his face down against the concrete with
one hand and twisted his arm back with the other.

'You knew they'd do it.' I said. 'Nothing went missing, you had no
reason to suspect them till you saw Arkin at the funeral. You watched
the tape and knew they'd do it.'

He tried to speak but I pressed his mouth down into the pavement and
continued. 'You could have talked to them, you could have allayed their
suspicions, seen them alright. You could have prevented it but you
didn't. Because Arkin was right, you were always going to screw them
over, and even when he told them you tried to use that against them.
You tried to catch them red handed stealing your precious formula. That
would have been a real triumph for you wouldn't it, then you could sack
them right there and have all the glory yourself. Only you screwed up,
they weren't as bent as you thought and they hadn't decided what to do.
So they didn't go straight home that night but went to talk to a
friend.' He would guess it was Hal but I still didn't want to be the
one to tell him. 'My guess, they'd never have done it, not really, but
they came back to find someone had searched their homes and that was
when they decided. It was you. You gave them no option but to steal you
little turd.'

I let go and he sat up against a parked car and rubbed his arm. 'Your
point being?' He said with forced dignity.

'You're an arsehole.' I said. 'Is all.'

'You're finished.' He said and picked himself up and walked back to his
car. I turned away and headed again for the tube, feeling good.

*****

Back at my office in the Van-Heer building I didn't feel good, I am not
generally a violent man but there is just something about James Gassner
that pulls my trigger, that and Hal Pear's story and the lack of
witnesses caused me to forget myself for a moment. I decided I ought to
at least try and cover my back and wrote an e-mail to the old man
explaining how his son had attempted to force me to reveal the content
of a private conversation and I had overreacted, then I wrote a rather
terse apology to the son and CC'd it to the old man, then I got a cup
of coffee from the canteen and went back to my desk to make some phone
calls.

I phoned Morning Star Technologies and asked where I could find Mr
Arkin, they wouldn't tell me so I told them it was a legal matter of
some importance and said I'd need to speak to his lawyer, they gave me
his name and number. I phoned the lawyers office, they told me he was
in so I hung up. I looked his address up in the phone book and phoned a
private detective agency I knew and employed them to tail the lawyer
for five days and report back anywhere he went apart from his office
and home. Finally I phoned a friend at Scotland Yard and told him I
wanted to know where Alexander Hodder and Eowen Lombard were, he said
he'd let me know if anything came up but couldn't really do anything to
help, which was all I expected.

I walked back down to human resources and got Alex and Eowen's
addresses from my friend there. I told her about the incident with the
son and asked her advice, she told me to do it again, harder, and this
time sell tickets.

I closed up the office and took the tube to Eowen's flat in Highbury
because it was on my way home but it was far too public, so I travelled
way back west to Whitton and found Alex's flat, it was a little more
secluded but still not that good. I bought myself a paper and found a
pub to wait in till it got dark, they were serving food so I ordered
scampi and chips and watched football on the television, never reading
a word of the paper.

Under the cover of darkness I entered Alex's flat, the lock had already
been forced, no doubt by the son and whoever he acted with, but the
door was shut. I closed the curtains lest the neighbours should know I
wasn't him, and looked around. The place was a mess, I have seen crack
addicts do less damage robbing a house, absolutely everything had been
knocked over and strewn on the floor, every other step I took found the
sharp crack of broken glass. It was good, it would hide my own
tracks.

Everybody everywhere has a draw they keep all their important documents
in, I found it and its contents strewn across the floor, I searched
through for Alex's birth certificate and a credit card bill. On the
birth certificate I found his mothers maiden name, then I phoned the
number on the bill and reported the card stolen.

*****

I finally got home close to midnight, I pulled a beer from the fridge,
collapsed onto the sofa and turned the television on and then
immediately turned it off again. I lent my head back and I think I must
have fallen asleep for a second but was immediately woken by my mobile
ringing.

'Michael.' Said the voice, it was Frank, the detective I'd employed to
follow the lawyer.

'Yeah.'

'Your man just split, he's heading north on the M1.'

'Oh shit. Are you following him?'

'That's what I'm paid for.'

'Keep me posted.' I said. 'I'm on my way.'

I put the unopened beer back in the fridge, threw a change of clothes
into a bag, threw some water on my face, took my car from the garage
and drove north.

*****

A couple of phone calls and a couple hundred miles later I drove slowly
down a small street in a small town just south of Leeds, I saw Frank
sitting in his small white van parked across from a small hotel. I
pulled up nearby, walked down to him and got in the passenger door. The
night up north was colder, quieter, and darker than the night in
London.

'How you doin'?' He asked.

'Exhausted.'

'You look like shit.'

'Cheers. What's happening?'

'He took a room and is, I imagine, in bed sleeping soundly.'

I looked across at the hotel and yawned.

'Long day was it?'

'Kind of.' I said and looked at my watch, it was past three
o-clock.

'Too late to get a room here.' He said. 'Maybe in Leeds.'

'I can't afford to loose him.'

Frank swore under his breath. 'There's a mattress and a blanket in the
back if you want.'

'You sure?' I said. 'We can do shifts if you like.'

'Naw. I'll just bill you double.'

'Not my money mate.' I said and climbed over the seat into the back of
the van.