Sweet Talking Money. Harry Bingham
‘So what does that leave you?’
Bryn laughed. ‘I don’t know. My trousers? Here. I’ve got a contract.’ He handed it over.
Before she took it, she held his gaze a little longer. ‘Don’t drive yourself too hard,’ she said. ‘You need to look after yourself.’
‘Don’t worry, I will. I am.’
She dropped her eyes and peered at the agreement. ‘I thought I already signed a contract.’
‘An employment contract, yes. This is an assignment of intellectual property rights. It transfers your research to the company. It’s required for insurance purposes. Doesn’t mean anything.’
‘If it doesn’t mean anything, why do it?’
‘Because it’s required for insurance purposes.’
‘I hand over everything I’ve worked on for the last five years, because some damn insurance company wants me to?’
‘Cameron, there’s no problem in signing this. I won’t stop you doing what you want with your research, absolutely anything that’s reasonable.’
‘I can still publish what I like?’
‘If you want to tell Corinth what’s going on, you can.’
‘But in principle. If I wanted, I could publish?’
Bryn shrugged. ‘If Corinth weren’t a factor, then as far as I’m concerned you could publish whatever the hell you wanted.’
Cameron peered again at the contract, hoping it would say something in plain English so she could understand it. It didn’t. Bryn had taken care to draft it that way. She shrugged and signed.
That was a mistake.
Bryn had lied.
The insurance company cared a lot about a lot of things. It cared about fire extinguisher maintenance records and whether there was going to be non-slip matting in the bathroom. The insurance company didn’t give a twopenny damn about Cameron’s research, but Bryn did. Since he had staked everything on Cameron’s genius, he’d decided he’d better make sure of her. An employment contract wouldn’t keep her from walking. Holding on to her research would.
It seemed like a minor deception. Bryn felt bad about it, but not too bad. How was he to know that everything, but everything; would one day be set at risk?
1
Five weeks later.
The boathouse now more than a third of the way towards total renovation, Dai and his men working dawn to dusk, foul timber all stripped and burned, new walls flying up, a smell of wood primer and sawdust, gathering excitement, and huge views out over the river filling their new world with light. So far, so good.
The medical side had been attended to as well. Cameron and Kati drew up a wish-list of lab equipment, expecting Bryn to argue every single item, as their old employers always had. But not a bit of it. ‘Sure this is all?’ he’d said, waving a chequebook, and now, every day, vans arrived at the boatyard, asking repeatedly if this was really the right place, and unloading crate after crate of beautiful new equipment: blood spectrometers from Germany, medical glassware from Sweden, computers from California, centrifuges from Canada, clean air filtration systems from France and Britain, and clinking bottles of chemicals from Italy, Japan, Switzerland and America. The boathouse had an old observation tower – formerly the spot from which the jolly old Fulham rowers watched the jolly old boat race – and Cameron had seized upon it as her office, and was already nine tenths of the way towards filling it with junk. So far, so good.
By now, several venture capitalists had been introduced to the emerging technology under conditions of the strictest secrecy, enforced by the fiercest confidentiality agreement Bryn had ever drawn up. Two of the finance houses were still thinking, the third – Malcolm Milne’s – had come back with a strong positive response and an offer of funding on excellent terms. So far, so excellent.
Buoyed up by the signs of success, Bryn had incorporated the company, drawn up articles of association, registered for VAT, opened accounts and done all of the hundred other things that a young company needs. They were now officially Fulham Research Ltd, described in official documents as a company ‘involved in research and development in the area of human biology’. The vaguer the better, as far as Bryn was concerned, anxious to hide from Corinth as long as he was able. But of Corinth, there was no sign at all. So far, so good.
Romantically, Bryn had been making the most of his brother’s hint and had done what he could to woo Kati. Kati liked him well enough, that much was clear, but she’d just been dumped virtually at the altar by a cheating fiancé, and she was in no hurry to get started with anyone else, least of all her boss. Bryn was disappointed, but didn’t lose hope. He took care over his appearance (as far as was possible when he had half a dozen Welsh builders sharing his bathroom) and went out of his way to be charming. He liked Kati, and wasn’t in a rush. So far, so satisfactory.
Adding to his workforce already, he brought across Meg Tillery, his former secretary, from Berger Scholes. To Bryn’s delight, Meg had taken only about half a minute to listen to his proposal before saying yes, and only about half an hour from saying yes to Leaving Berger Scholes with her personal belongings tucked into the traditional black bin-liner. So far, so good.
Of Corinth’s henchmen, there was no sign. Cameron and Kati had cautiously sounded out their parents and it had transpired that, just as Bryn had predicted, there had been a stranger snooping round their home neighbourhoods, asking for information. Since Kati and Cameron had been vague and unspecific, Corinth would have learned nothing of value. Bryn felt sure Huizinga would keep an ear to the ground, but without knowing where Cameron was, there was little more he could do. So far, so good.
But all was not well. In fact things had grown so bad, Bryn was beginning to wonder if he’d committed the worst mistake of his entire life.
2
‘Let me get this straight,’ said Bryn, clamping down hard on his voice so he didn’t actually yell. ‘I’ve found twenty million pounds’ worth of funding, and you’re telling me you don’t want it?’
‘Right.’
Muscles fought in Bryn’s jaw as he composed a reply. ‘Cameron, you do understand that we need this money? That the company relies on obtaining this money?’
‘Wrong. We need money. Not twenty million pounds, maybe only a quarter of that. But whatever the amount, we don’t need this money. Not from Milner.’
‘Milne.’
‘Whatever.’
It was late at night in the boathouse, the only time it was usable, when Dai and his lads had downed tools and were doing their worst in London’s nightspots. A couple of the smaller downstairs rooms were all but finished and Cameron had been setting them up the way she wanted: bloodwork facility, microscope workshop, computer pods, library. She was dressed in her working outfit: jeans and a T-shirt, with a labcoat flung on top, hanging from her skinny shoulders as from a broomstick scarecrow. A thick rubber band of the sort dropped on the pavement by postmen twisted her hair away out of sight. Once, as Bryn had watched, an end of hair escaped its grip once too often, and she reached for a pair of surgical scissors and snipped it off at the root. ‘Damn hair,’ she muttered.
Now, ignoring Bryn, she pulled over an unpacked shipment of dyes and solvents and began to rip away the brown packaging tape. Bryn reached for the box and tugged it from her grasp.
‘Please stop that,’ he said. ‘We need to talk.’
She