Paul perched on the edge of the armchair, holding a glass of flat Coke that Watton had given him and trying to ignore the cat rubbing round his ankles. Outside, the night throbbed with the sound of crickets.
After Rosie had dropped him off, Paul had gone up to his room intending to lie down for a moment while he thought over the questions he wanted to ask Watton. The next thing he knew he was waking up with a furry mouth and it was dark outside. He’d raced downstairs and got the front desk to call him a cab.
The older man adjusted his glasses. ‘I didn’t want to tell you this while Rosie was around because she’s such a sweetheart … I don’t want to upset her.’
Paul leaned forward, eager to hear more but mindful that he needed to let Watton tell the tale in his own
time.
‘I understand.’
‘OK, so … A while before Medi-Lab got shut down, I volunteered for something …’ He started coughing and Paul gritted his teeth. But then the cat jumped on to Watton’s lap and he scratched it behind the ears. This seemed to calm him, and he continued:
‘A memo went round asking for volunteers who wanted to earn a little extra. They wanted healthy men and women who were willing to give up some of their spare time. I was always up for earning more, especially with sales being slow. So I put my name down.’
Paul waited for him to continue.
‘It seemed like easy money. Heck, it was easy money. And damn good money, too. All we had to do was go to the lab a few times, let them prod and poke us and take a blood sample. Then they gave us a cold.’
‘A cold?’
‘Yep. A mild dose of flu. They gave us that, we got sick – but nothing too bad, just the usual, you know? Blocked nose, sore throat, high temperature … Actually, I did feel pretty rough for a couple of days and they said that it was fine to take the time off work, stay in bed. I was worried I’d lose the extra money, but they told me it was all good. Then Dr Diaz came round and gave me another shot. He said it would make me feel better. And it did.’
‘Who was Dr Diaz?’
‘Oh, he was the head of research at Medi-Lab. Dr Camilo Diaz.’
‘He came to your house? The head of research?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘Was he alone?’
‘Yep. Which was unusual, ’cos you hardly ever saw him outside of his lab. He was Mangold’s right-hand man. Real clever guy, though he had a bit of a rep as a ladies’ man. Always had a younger woman on the go.’
‘Did Diaz tell you what was in the shot he gave you?’
‘He just said it was some kind of new vitamin shot they were testing.’
Paul mulled over what Watton had told him so far. He wasn’t sure why the old man hadn’t wanted Rosie to hear this. Unless … ‘Let me guess, Rosie’s dad was one of the other volunteers.’
‘You guessed it. And he had the same experience as me.’ Watton leaned forward. ‘A few months later, all that business with the virus happened and we got shut down. We were unemployed. I suddenly had a lot of spare time. And I spent a lot of that time thinking on what had happened.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well … before we did the trials, Dr. Diaz got us to sign a whole sheaf of legal papers saying in a very long-winded way that we accepted full responsibility, understood the risks, yada yada yada. That if anything happened to us as a result of the trials, the company could not be held responsible. He tried to rush us into signing it, saying it was just a formality, but I read through the whole thing. By the time I got to the end, I was about ready to back out.’
‘Because you realised it was dangerous.’
‘Uh-huh. Well, risky at any rate. I talked about it with Owen – Rosie’s dad. I said to him that I didn’t think he should do it. I was a single guy, and I really needed the money. I had some pretty big credit card debts, you see. But Owen had a family. He had Rosie.’
‘But he needed the money too?’
‘I reckon I wasn’t the only one with debts. You see now why I didn’t want to talk about this in front of Rosie. He must have needed the money bad, ’cos it was like he didn’t give a shit about the risk. I don’t think he even read through the waiver.’ Watton sighed. ‘So, anyway – that’s what I wanted you to know. Mangold was testing something potentially dangerous on his employees. If you’re writing a book about the son of a bitch, maybe that oughta go in it. It wasn’t right that Diaz took all the blame for what went down. Wound up in jail while Mangold walked away a free man.’
‘Diaz was put on trial?’
‘Yeah.’ He coughed, wincing and rubbing his chest. ‘He got twenty-five years.’
‘That’s a hell of a long sentence.’
‘They threw the book at the poor bastard.’
‘Diaz – D-I-A-Z?’ Paul asked, getting out his phone so he could type it in to his Notes app.
‘Yup. Camilo Diaz.’
‘Do you know anything else? Like what prison he got sent to? Or whether he’s still in? He might have got out for good behaviour by now.’
Watton laughed, the laughter quickly turning into a wheeze and then a coughing jag. When he’d recovered, he shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you have the internet here?’
Watton just laughed again.
Paul stared at his phone screen. He could turn on data roaming to access the internet, but it would immediately make his phone traceable. Still, he had already used it once, to phone Kate back. Sod it. He slid a switch on the screen and waited while the phone connected to a 3G network. Then he ran a search for ‘Camilo Diaz Medi-Lab prison’.
The results included a news article about the doctor dated a couple of years ago. It described how he had continued his work even in prison, publishing papers and helping to educate some of the other prisoners, teaching classes in biology and science. A model prisoner, by all accounts. Most importantly, it included the information that Diaz was in Glencarson Prison.
Unfortunately for Paul, Glencarson Prison was in Los Angeles.