Alchemist Read online

  She drove into the vast parking lot and headed, through the ranks of immaculate-looking cars, towards the visitors’ bay against the far perimeter.

  ‘Doesn’t anyone ever drive these cars?’ her father murmured. ‘They’re all bloody spotless.’

  He was right; the cars looked as if they’d been driven straight from the showrooms; it was only the registration letters that gave away the fact that they weren’t all new.

  ‘Maybe someone’ll clean this for us while we’re inside,’ Monty said, staring at the grime on the white bonnet. She had bought the MG second-hand ten years ago and still loved it dearly. But pressure of work during the past year, and the strain of always juggling their resources, had left her with not even enough free time to give the car the thorough clean and polish it deserved.

  The Bendix Building, as it was called, looked as if it had been hewn from a single block of electric blue steel. It rose steeply into the sky, a sleek complexity of razor-sharp lines and dark recesses that gave it, from some angles, the hint of a medieval fortress. Walking across the lot towards the main entrance, Monty could not decide whether she liked the architecture or not, and recalled the controversy when the building had first gone up.

  It had its own white sound acoustics equalizers, an artificial daylight system combined with ionizers, which the architects claimed gave a better feelgood factor than any natural sunlight environment, and which had been proven to increase productivity. And there had been the sinister rumours. Why, people had asked, had Bendix Schere felt the need for a headquarters without windows? What did they want to hide? Was it simply a design statement? An experiment in futuristic architecture? Or were they performing macabre animal experiments behind those sculpted walls?

  It was a mild autumn morning, and neither Monty nor her father wore a coat. She had been debating for several days how to dress for this meeting. In the end she had settled for her black velvet jacket, a white silk blouse, with a jungle-print Cornelia James woollen shawl, a black short skirt and shoes with a medium heel to give her a little more height. She had been described in a newspaper, several years back, as her father’s ‘petite’ daughter. She had tended to avoid flat shoes ever since.

  At five feet four inches, there were many times when she wished she was taller, but she had no actual quarrel with her legs. She had been blessed in that department and knew it. It was her hair that was the least predictable part of her appearance: a mass of tangled blonde tresses that buried her shoulders, and which was naturally frizzy. There were some days when it looked great, dynamite even, but there were others when it acted like someone had sprayed it with weed killer.

  Monty had inherited almost all her features from her Norwegian mother and after even the lightest exertion her complexion became a picture of Scandinavian health and vitality. But she knew only too well that after months of a long wet winter it could look horribly sallow and pasty.

  She was aware of so much she had inherited from her mother, not just in looks but in tastes also. Most was welcome, but one thing was not: ever since the diagnosis of her mother’s illness, Monty had carried at the back of her mind the knowledge that one particularly unwelcome gene might have come with the bundle handed down to herself. But she rarely dwelt on it, allaying her fears with the hope that advances in genetic science might find a way of dealing with it before anything happened.

  Almost everyone who met Monty enjoyed her company. An intensely positive person, she carried an air of expectancy in her stance, and a sparkle of humour in her face that seemed to touch a chord in people’s better natures.

  As father and daughter walked up a row of white marble steps, electronic doors slid open and they entered an atrium the height of a cathedral. The white marble theme was continued throughout, giving a subdued neoclassical air. The only colour came from some tubs of evergreen plants.

  The far side of the lobby was cordoned off by a line of electronic turnstiles flanked by a long security counter and a battery of monitoring equipment, behind which three uniformed men sat. As they walked over to the counter, one of the men looked up and smiled politely.

  He was black, but his face was drained of any depth of colour by some ailment that was clearly affecting him badly. He looked as if he had once been strong and quite tall, but had now lost both height and weight. ‘May I help you, please?’ His voice had the nasal sound of someone with a cold.

  ‘Yes, we have an appointment at a quarter to one with Sir Neil Rorke.’

  ‘May I have your names, please?’

  Monty gave him both their names, which he entered on a keyboard. A printer whined and a moment later he handed them two computerized lapel badges. Monty and her father looked down at the green badges they had been given outside and had already clipped to their breast pockets, then added the new passes. The guard studied the keyboard again, selected another key, and watched the computer screen. Then he smiled at them a second time.

  ‘I’ll take you up there.’

  He waved them through the turnstile, then led them to the atrium’s twin banks of lifts. When he pushed a card into a slot, the nearest doors opened immediately and in almost complete silence. Monty found the absence of noise slightly disconcerting as she stepped into the plushly carpeted and mirrored interior. She noticed, with some surprise, that there was no panel of buttons.

  The guard waited courteously for her father, then followed them in, looked up and gave a single nod. The doors began to slide silently shut. Monty followed the direction of his gaze up to a tiny glass sensor above the doors; except it wasn’t a sensor, she realized, it was a lens.

  Moments later she and her father found themselves delivered by the guard into a palatial anteroom. There were pilasters along the walls and a colour scheme of shades of grey; it gave Monty the sense of having walked on to the set for the closing scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  An elegant brunette in her early thirties seated behind an island desk in the centre of the room took over from the departing security guard and said pleasantly, but slightly robotically: ‘Good afternoon, please have a seat. Sir Neil will be with you in a moment.’

  What a place! Monty thought. Gazing around from a grey leather sofa, she noticed that there were several large abstract paintings on the walls, by artists she felt she ought to recognize. Not her taste at all, although no doubt a wise corporate investment, she acknowledged. She compared this palace to their own premises. Bannerman Genetics didn’t even have a waiting room; visitors had to stand awkwardly between the desks of the accounts department, shoehorned into a space barely larger than a broom closet.

  God, the money here! She eyed her father, wondering what was going through his mind. Give it a chance, Daddy, she thought. Please.

  She had butterflies in her stomach; she wasn’t nervous of meeting Sir Neil Rorke, she was frightened of her unpredictable father expressing his disgust at the ostentation of this place and storming out. He was already looking around with a frown on his face.

  ‘Have you noticed – there’s nothing here that says anything about the company at all? If I had this kind of space, I’d damned well use it to show off some of my products.’

  He sounded in positive humour. Stay that way, she thought fervently. At least just long enough to get a proposal from them!

  She glanced at the brunette who was typing on a keyboard. Monty wondered if the monitor in front of her showed the inside of the lift, and if it was she who controlled it. Then a door opened at the far end of the room and the unmistakable figure of Sir Neil Rorke appeared.

  ‘Dr Bannerman! Miss Bannerman! How very good to meet you!’

  The greeting was cheery and friendly, and his voice had the warm, baritone delivery of a seasoned after-dinner speaker. He was dressed in an amply cut chalk-striped suit and his head of thick wavy hair was left flamboyantly long. His face was mapped with broken veins, carrying in its fleshy creases the aura of panelled dining halls, fine wines and the owners’ enclosures at race courses. He had about him a
n air of avuncular cuddliness. In those first moments, it took an effort of concentration for Monty to remember that she was in the presence of one of the world’s greatest captains of industry.

  He held out a hand that was large and pink. Monty shook it, and was a little taken aback by the power of his grip: it was hard as steel. And at the same time, she felt a spark of something as she met the twinkle in his deep, hazelnut eyes. Not a sexual frisson, or anything of that nature, it was more a sense that he understood her, that he knew exactly why she had come here and the problems she faced with her father, and that he wanted to communicate the message to her that he was on her side, that he was in the conspiracy with her and she could trust him.

  As he released her hand and turned to her father, she was left with the feeling, from that one fleeting moment, that she had known him all her life. She began to understand now why it was that people warmed to him: in just a few seconds he had become her favourite uncle, they were going to share a special treat together, he was going to take her to the pier and buy her candy floss and a huge ice cream with a chocolate flake sticking out of it.

  She glanced surreptitiously at her father, but his face gave nothing away.

  ‘Come through to my office and have a drink. Dr Crowe, our Chief Executive, will be joining us for lunch in a few minutes.’ Rorke led the way and Monty walked into a long, plush corridor lined on both sides with more bizarre canvases.

  ‘You once wanted to be a painter, didn’t you, Miss Bannerman?’ he said, walking beside them, hands behind his back.

  Monty frowned, wondering how he knew that. ‘Yes – a long time ago.’

  ‘But you’re a traditionalist.’ He parted his hands and gestured at the abstracts. ‘I don’t think these are your scene at all.’

  She looked back at him, unsure what to reply, surprised and puzzled. ‘I – I never got as far as studying abstract art,’ she replied, not wanting to be rude.

  Rorke smiled benignly, and his voice became melancholic. ‘Ah well, you see, life for all of us is full of unmade journeys.’ He turned to her father and said pointedly: ‘I am sure you would agree, Dr Bannerman?’

  I like this man, Monty thought. I really like this man.

  6

  Barnet, North London. 1940

  The bedclothes were ripped away and it seemed that the electric light came on simultaneously. The small boy in striped pyjamas, hands folded across his navel, blinked, startled awake from a deep sleep.

  ‘May the Lord forgive you, Daniel Judd.’

  His mother’s voice. A bony palm struck his cheek, the blow knocking his head sideways, cricking his neck. The cold night air chilled his thin body as his mother glowered down at him, her face framed by grey hair pulled straight and flat into a tight bun, the muscles of her bare neck tense with rage and protruding from her woollen dressing gown.

  As the second blow struck he saw his father, also in dressing gown and slippers, glaring at him from the door. Reedy tall, his face leathery, cadaverously thin, tightened further with anger.

  ‘Lord forgive our boy,’ his father said, ‘for he knows not what he doeth.’

  The boy stared up at his parents, blinking against the harsh glare of the bulb. His mother’s hand, hard as iron, gripped his wrists, forcing his hands violently apart. ‘We’ve told you!’ she said, her voice quavering. ‘How many more times do we have to say it?’

  He tried desperately to mouth a question, to ask her what she meant, but his throat – constricted with fear – allowed no sound to escape. Another blow struck his face.

  ‘Eternal damnation,’ his father’s voice intoned. ‘That’s what you are courting, you evil boy. The Lord our Father in Heaven sees all our sins. To be carnally minded is death; we have to save you from yourself, from the wrath of the Lord.’

  ‘You filthy, disobedient, evil sinner,’ his mother’s voice raised to a shriek and the boy flinched in fear. And confusion.

  ‘Don’t you remember the words of our Lord, boy?’ his father said. ‘Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles?’

  The boy stared, bewildered. No, he did not remember. He was six years old.

  ‘Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised. Amen.’

  The boy stared in silence.

  ‘Amen!’ his father said again, more loudly. ‘Amen, boy!’

  Daniel Judd warded off another blow from his mother by meekly mouthing, ‘Amen.’

  There was a brief lull. He lay, terrified, hands by his sides, beneath the seething fury of his parents. Then his mother spoke, her eyes half closed, as if she were in a trance and receiving her instructions from a frequency into which she had just tuned. Her face softened from anger into a serene smile.

  ‘Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. Because the sinful mind is hostile to God, it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.’

  ‘You understand that, Daniel, don’t you?’ his father said, his voice gentle now, pleading.

  The boy nodded meekly as his mother continued without pausing for breath. ‘You are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.’

  ‘Does the Spirit of God live in you, Daniel?’ his father asked.

  The boy was silent for a moment then nodded.

  ‘Are you sure, boy?’

  ‘I’m sure, Father.’ It came out as a frightened squeak.

  ‘You want to please God, boy?’

  ‘Yes, Father, I want to please God.’

  ‘If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ,’ his mother said. ‘But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.’

  ‘Do you understand that, boy?’ His father’s voice had lost its gentleness.

  The boy did not understand, the logic was beyond him. Yet he knew the answers that were expected, knew the only way to get peace, to avoid another slap, to avoid being thrashed or locked in the unheated shed in the garden all night. He nodded, and gave a weakly mouthed ‘Yes’.

  ‘You want the Spirit to be living in you, boy, or do you want eternal damnation?’ his father said.

  ‘Spirit,’ the boy mouthed.

  ‘Speak up, Daniel, I can’t hear you and your mother can’t hear you, and if we can’t hear you the Lord our Father cannot hear you.’

  ‘Spirit,’ the boy said again, more loudly, choking on the tears that guttered down his cheeks.

  ‘For if you live according to the sinful nature,’ his mother continued, ‘you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.’

  The father pressed his face close to his son’s. So close the son could feel the warmth of human breath, could see chin stubble.

  ‘You do not want to commit any misdeeds of the body do you, boy? Assure your mother and I and, above all, assure our Lord.’

  ‘No mm-mm-middeeds,’ the boy said in terror.

  ‘For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.’

  ‘And you want to be one of God’s children, don’t you, boy? Not one of Satan’s?’

  ‘God’s children,’ the boy mouthed.

  ‘Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs
of God. Like Christ. And if we share in His sufferings it is in order that we may also share in His glory.’

  His parents fell silent. Daniel watched their faces in turn; cold eyes raked him. He had let them down again, even in his sleep, in some way he did not comprehend.

  ‘Do you want us to save you from the Lord’s wrath, boy?’

  Daniel stared at his father and nodded meekly. He saw his mother slip out of the room.

  His father asked again. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather enjoin with Satan? Suffer the eternal fires of damnation in Hell?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘Shall we say the Lord’s Prayer together, boy?’

  Daniel nodded.

  ‘Our Father which art in Heaven,’ his father began.

  ‘Our Father which art in Heaven,’ the boy repeated as his mother returned to the room with two long leather straps. As they continued to recite the Lord’s Prayer, she bound his left arm tightly by the wrist, then tugged it down the outside of the bed, looped the strap tightly around the outside of the metal frame and secured it. Then she did the same with his right arm so that he was lying on his back with his arms pinioned down the outside of the bed.

  ‘It’s for your own good,’ his father said more gently when his mother had finished. ‘To save you from yourself in the eyes of the Lord. To save you from being tempted to touch your forbidden parts.’

  ‘To save us all from the Lord’s wrath,’ his mother added in her sour, loveless voice. ‘To save us from your sins.’

  Then they turned the light off and closed the door.

  7

  London. October, 1993

  The Directors’ dining room on the forty-ninth floor of the Bendix Building felt so light and airy it seemed to Monty almost impossible to believe that it had no hidden windows with natural daylight streaming in.

  The décor was the same Regency grey and white colour scheme as the anteroom; it was furnished with a traditional oval mahogany dining table and matching chairs, and the walls were hung with Impressionist paintings, which was the school she loved most. There was a Degas still life on the wall behind her father, and she found herself unable to stop looking at it. An original Degas. Not a print or a copy. She was eating her lunch in front of a real Degas! She had never seen one outside a gallery before.