After Effects by Catherine Aird Read Free Book Online Page A

fools.’
    â€˜If that’s all they were,’ remarked Dexter, ‘then you haven’t anything to worry about, have you?’
    â€˜The Health and Safety Executive for starters and the insurance people …’ began Mike Itchen, who was a worrier.
    â€˜I mean,’ explained Dexter, ‘that if it was only the monkeys they were after, you don’t have problems, do you?’
    Gledhill looked up sharply. ‘You think they might have been real burglars?’
    â€˜It’s what I would have been worried about,’ said Al Dexter. He didn’t have the look of a man who worried about anything. ‘Good cover for getting in—animal rights—if you were looking for something, don’t you think?’
    Gledhill and Itchen carefully avoided looking at each other.
    â€˜In my experience,’ Dexter added authoritatively, ‘people are prepared to believe anything about animal rights activists.’
    â€˜We’ll look into it,’ said Itchen in the neutral tones he favoured these days. He had an expression that was similarly blank.
    â€˜You’re still working on Naomite surely,’ said Dexter, ‘aren’t you?’
    Gledhill looked round quickly as if someone else might have been listening. ‘It’s only in the embryo stage, Al,’ he said. ‘Nothing doing there at all yet.’
    â€˜Sure,’ said Dexter comfortably, ‘but they don’t know that, do they?’
    â€˜And nothing doing at the Ethics Committee at Region this morning either,’ added Itchen gloomily. ‘We only had one submission and it got the chop.’
    A different sort of ethic prevailed as Al Dexter studiously avoided enquiring about the form of Gilroy’s new submission. He was here with other fish to fry and if the two chemists wanted to tell him about their firm’s newest compound then they would tell him fast enough. And if they didn’t, then he, All Dexter, didn’t really want to know.
    â€˜Just like Byville’s last effort,’ said the Chief Chemist regretfully. ‘He’s a trier, though, I’ll give the man that.’
    Dexter raised an enquiring eyebrow.
    â€˜They wouldn’t wear our APX 125 trials, Al.’ George Gledhill shook his head. ‘A great pity, especially as Byville was so keen to test the refined compound. Said he’s nearly there with some really good “effect-size” figures.’
    â€˜Byville’s no good with committees,’ pronounced Itchen weightily. ‘Puts their backs up as soon as he opens his mouth.’
    â€˜He’s really into spleens, though,’ said Gledhill. ‘Been making quite a speciality of treating them lately. We might have something for you there one day, Al.’
    â€˜But he’s no good with people,’ insisted Mike Itchen, still brooding about the committee meeting. ‘Doesn’t see that he’s got to convince the Safety of Drugs Committee before he gets anywhere,’—he sniffed—‘for all that he wants to examine everyone in Calleshire without a spleen. And,’ he added mordantly, ‘some with.’
    â€˜If you can corner the market,’ said Al Dexter simply, ‘then you should.’ It was the spirit that made millionaires.
    â€˜It’s all right for you,’ said Mike Itchen.
    Dexter Palindome (Luston) plc weren’t research chemists, but manufacturing ones. They didn’t have to waste their substance on research-and-development programmes which got through money like water. They merely processed what the boffins thought worth making, leaving the risk business to others. Their highest-paid employees weren’t research chemists at all but production engineers and marketing men.
    â€˜I don’t think anyone’s aiming to corner the market,’ said George Gledhill piously. He didn’t add that with patents and licences this was hardly necessary these days.