The Secret (Dr Steven Dunbar 10) (8 page)

Steven recognised that he was about to ask the first question, the one Macmillan had highlighted as having inevitable repercussions, but he couldn’t see any way round it: he had to know where the samples had been sent and what the lab had found. The only thing he had to decide was whom to ask. A moment’s thought pointed him at Guy Monfils at
Médecins Sans Frontières
in Paris: he would know exactly where his teams would send lab samples and maybe, as a bonus, he wouldn’t have to tell anyone he’d been asked . . .

‘Guy? It’s Steven Dunbar in
London.’

It only took Steven a few moments to conclude that
Monfils had swallowed the official line about Aline’s involvement with drug traffickers. ‘A tremendous shock,’ he called it. ‘She must have succumbed to temptation, poor girl.’ If he believed that, thought Steven, he would almost certainly be happy with Simone’s death's being recorded as an accident and had probably accepted the CIA’s apology for their tactics along with the other major aid agencies. There would be no point in even attempting to recruit Monfils as an ally. It wasn’t that he was uncaring or a fool; he was just used to seeing the best in people and placing his trust in authority.

‘I have a question, Guy.’

Steven asked about lab facilities for aid workers in the field. ‘It must be really difficult?’

‘It can be a nightmare, Steven. Ev
en keeping the vaccines cool is a major headache.’

‘So what do you do about actual lab work in the field . . . blood grouping, biochemistry, microb
iology, that sort of thing?’

‘We have techn
icians out there who perform basic tests, but for major things the teams have to send samples back to Europe.’

‘To
France?’

‘Or
London.’

C’mon, c’mon
, thought Steven, just a bit more . . .

‘The teams working on polio eradication would use Dr North’s lab in
London. Virology is not something you can do in the field.’

‘Of course not,’ said Steven
, as if he hadn't just received a crucial piece of information when in reality he felt like a lottery winner.

‘May I ask why you want to know this?’

Steven had anticipated the question and had given his answer some thought. He said, ‘I’m giving a talk to medical students about the practice of medicine under testing conditions. I'm aware of course, from my own experience how the military go about things, but it struck me that your people must face similar problems every day. I thought I’d check with someone who knew and I’m very much obliged to you. You’ve been a great help.’

‘Don’t mention it. I hope it goes well for you . . . Maybe you could point some of your students in our direction? We’re always on the lookout for committed young people.’

‘I’ll certainly mention it.’

Steven wondered for a few
moments if he’d got away without arousing suspicion. He thought there was a fair chance he had, but questioning Tom North about blood samples from Afghanistan might turn out to be a whole new ball game – but one that would have to wait until tomorrow. First, he wanted to follow a hunch. He opened his wallet and took out the card the French policeman, Le Grice, had given him when they had discussed the sharing of information. Philippe Le Grice had impressed him as being bright – perhaps too bright to succeed in a profession where kissing the right arses and doing things by the book tended to pave the way to the higher echelons. It would be interesting to hear his take on developments in the Aline Lagarde case.

Le Grice wasn’t available
when Steven called but he rang back thirty minutes later just as Steven was thinking of leaving for the day.

‘So,
Aline Lagarde was a big bad drug dealer,’ said Steven, not bothering to remove the scepticism from his voice.

‘Apparently so.’

‘Your people must have come up with some pretty convincing evidence?’

‘Not my people,’ said Le Gri
ce. ‘Apparently our drugs squad have had their eye on her for some time . . . although strangely my friend in Drugs didn’t seem to know anything about it.’

‘But let me guess, your intelligence people did?’

‘They came up with so much information . . . in such a short space of time . . . We are truly blessed to have such talent at our disposal.’

Steven judged the time right to make his appeal. ‘
Philippe, an experienced detective like you must know that something wasn’t quite right?’

‘The smell was overpowering.’

‘But?’

‘Madame Le Grice has plans for my pension.’

‘So the case is closed?’

‘Oh no, not until Dr
Lagarde’s killer is brought to justice. The investigation will continue . . . with all the vigour you might expect where a drug dealer and a gangland killing is involved.’

‘Her parents will be very pleased,’ said Steven flatly.

There was a long pause before Le Grice said, ‘Of course, if you should happen to uncover something that contradicts the official version of events . . .’

‘I’ll let you know.’

‘Have a care, Steven. I think you have a saying . . . discretion is the better part of valour?’

‘Point taken.’

Steven drove north to Leicester: he was in the flat when Tally got home at ten thirty and gave him a peck on the cheek before plumping herself down beside him.

‘Well, honey, how was your day?’ Steven mimicked in US sitcom style.

‘There aren’t enough expletives in the world to describe my day,’ Tally replied. ‘Do you think these people who go to church on Sundays and prattle on about all things bright and beautiful ever think about the microbial world and what bacteria and viruses do to people?’

‘I think the deal is, God
only gets credit, not blame.’

‘Just like the bloody government.’

‘Exactly. Only previous governments get blame.’

‘I’ve got an interview at
Great Ormond Street.’

‘That’s wonderful.’

‘Let’s not count our chickens. It’s one of the best children’s hospitals in the world, remember. Competition will be fierce.’

‘The best should employ the best. You’ll walk it.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Tally, getting up. ‘How about you? What was the mystery meeting about?’

Steven told her and Tally’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. ‘Fake aid teams? They were pretending
to vaccinate children and leaving them unprotected in a polio endemic area? Is there nothing those bastards won’t stoop to? How many kids have they left paralysed so they could bring in the man who shot their "paw"?’

‘T
here’s more,’ said Steven thoughtfully. ‘They’re covering up something else, something big enough for MI6, the CIA and possibly French intelligence to be involved in. I’m convinced Simone and Aline were murdered because they stumbled into it.’

Tally’s anger was being replaced by alarm. She pursed her lips. ‘Steven, I know this is all awful but . . . you can’t bring them back . . . and if the
Foreign Secretary and MI6 are involved . . . they’re on our side, aren’t they? Wouldn’t you be going up against . . . your own?’

‘Sometimes a man
's gotta do what a man's gotta do . . .’

‘Don’t you
start! This is not a joking matter. You don’t have to do this at all.’

Steven stared at the floor for what Tally thought was an eternity
before he looked up and said apologetically, ‘I think I do.’

Tally felt a hollow appear in her stomach. She nodde
d slowly. ‘I suppose you do. Drink?’

‘Please.’

Steven called Tom North in the morning and asked about the samples Simone and Aline had taken from the sick people in the village they’d come across, resigned to the fact that by lunchtime Whitehall would know about the inquiry.

‘I don’t think I dealt with them personally but I can certainly find out for you if it’s important?’ North replied.

‘I’d just like to know why so many people
, including children, had fallen ill,’ said Steven. ‘As I understand it, the fake aid teams the Americans put in would account for the kids not being vaccinated properly against polio . . . but that wouldn’t make anyone sick, would it?’

‘Certainly not,’ agreed North. ‘Unless
, of course, it was actually an outbreak of polio.’

‘Which Simone
and Aline would have recognised,’ said Steven. ‘In which case, there probably would have been no need to send samples for investigation. Maybe that’s what Simone wanted to talk to you about when she came to London?’

‘Could be. Look, why don’t I look into this
? Maybe you could pop into the lab and I’ll fill you in on what I come up with?’

Steven arranged to meet
North at ten the following morning.

EDINBURGH

‘Mummy, can Mark come in to play after school today?’ asked seven-year-old David Leeming.

‘If his mummy says it’s all right,’ his mother, Julie, replied.

‘Can Sally come in too?’ piped up David’s younger sister, Joanne.

‘No, Sally was here yesterday. It’s David’s turn to have a friend in. Maybe tomorrow.’

‘That’s not fair,’ complained Joanne, pouting her lower lip.

‘Yes, it is,’ insisted her brother.

‘If you two don’t get a move on, you’re going to keep Daddy waiting and you know he hates being late. He’ll stop your pocket money if he is and serves you right.’

Julie hid a small smile as the bickering stopped and was replaced with slurping sounds as the pair finished their cereal in double quick time.

John Leeming, short, bespectacled and balding came into the kitchen, a briefcase hanging open from one hand as he stuffed papers into it with the other. ‘You guys about ready?’

‘They certainly are,’ replied Julie, exchanging a knowing smile with her children.

The sound of the letterbox opening and closing interrupted them and Julie said, ‘Jo, be a darling and fetch Daddy’s paper.’

Joanne disappeared into the hall and was away for longer than expected.

‘Jo, what are you doing?’

Julie’s question was answered when she looked up to see her five year old standing there with excrement all over her hands and a shocked, puzzled look on her face as she started to sob.

‘Oh, Christ, John, they’ve done it again,’ exclaimed Julie as she rushed her daughter off to the downstairs lavatory. ‘The bastards . . . the absolute bastards.’

Mark, upset by the goings on and the fact
that his mother was behaving so out of character, sat wide-eyed at the table and asked with a quavering voice, ‘Why, Daddy? Why did they do that?’

His father, filled with anger and frustration, snapped, ‘I don’t know, Mark. I really don’t.’

Dr John Leeming was fast approaching his wits’ end. A research virologist with over twenty years’ experience who had been working for the last five years to establish the cause of myalgic encephalomyelitis, couldn’t understand why he and his family had become the target in recent months of fanatics who seemed to have decided that the failure of researchers like him and others to find the cause of the condition had been deliberate. This was the second time the ‘nutters’, as he thought of them, had put excrement through their letterbox. He snatched at the phone, intent on venting his anger at the police and murmuring, ‘They’ll be up on the bloody ring road booking motorists for being two miles an hour over the limit . . .’

‘It’s damned well happened again . . .’ he began as he got an answe
r and Julie returned with their cleaned-up daughter.

‘This can’t go on, John,’
she murmured as her husband ended his call and the children, now blazered and carrying their lunch boxes, preceded them out into the hall.

‘I know, I know. I’ll speak to the
prof today. Maybe it’s time we reassessed our research priorities.’

As they opened the front door, John noticed an envelope stuck to the outside with
Sellotape. He exchanged a look with Julie before unsticking it and gingerly examining the outside for contamination. He tore it open.

IT’S NOT SHIT ON TH
E FLOOR, IT’S ALL IN YOUR MIND.

‘Bastards,’ repeated Julie.

BIRMINGHAM

Molly Freeman, senior lecturer in microbiology at the
University of Birmingham, turned over in bed and stretched out her arm to find an empty space. It was something she wished she could stop doing: it only made her angry and got the day off to a bad start. It had been fully three months since her husband Barry had succumbed to the charms of Marion Philby, one of his PhD students- ‘the tart’ as Molly knew her - and decided that the grass would be greener without Molly on it any more. He and the tart had set up home in a small flat in Edgbaston while she remained in the family home – a detached villa on a housing estate on the edge of the city – with their ten-year-old son Jamie until such time as they could ‘come to an arrangement’ as her husband had put it. She knew Barry was hoping for a ‘civilised’ agreement while her own preferred ‘arrangement’ would involve taking him to the cleaners and nailing him upside down to a tree along with the tart. In fact, she had a meeting planned with her lawyer that afternoon to that end.

‘Jamie, are you up yet?’ she called out as she slid out of bed and found her wrap.

A sleepy reply of ‘Yes’ failed to convince and she put her head round her son’s bedroom door to say to the recumbent form under the covers, ‘If that’s up, the laws of physics will have to be rewritten.’ She didn’t say it unkindly. She was only too aware of how badly Jamie had taken his father’s defection.

‘Five more minutes . . .’ came the groan.

‘Three.’

‘Deal.’

Later, as they sat having breakfast, Molly tried to maintain light conversation although she did most of the talking while her son would grunt at intervals when pressed.

‘I thought we might catch a film this weekend; what
d’you think?’

‘What’s on?’

‘I don’t know, but we can look in the paper later and decide. Okay?’

‘
Mmm.’

Do you want a lift or are you taking your bike?’

‘Lift please.’

‘Right, get a move on. I’ve got a research group meeting at nine.’

Molly held the door for her son as he combined putting on his school rucksack with stuffing a last piece of toast into his mouth. ‘You didn’t clean your shoes last night,’ she observed as he passed her, before something more important struck them both.

‘The tyres are flat,’ said Jamie.

‘More than flat,’ said his mother, walking up to her Renault Clio in the drive and seeing that they’d been slashed. A message had been scratched into the bonnet. THE TYRES ARE NOT FLAT. IT’S ALL IN YOUR MIND.

‘Oh
, Christ,’ murmured Julie.

‘What does it mean, Mum? Did Dad do that?’

‘No, Jamie,’ said Julie quickly, alarmed that what had passed between Barry and herself could have put such an idea into his head. ‘Someone doesn’t like my research very much.’

‘I’m scared, Mum.’

Julie put her arm round his shoulders. ‘I’m not too chipper myself,’ she murmured. ‘Maybe it’s time for a change . . .’

LONDON

Professor Maurice Langley, head of research at the Medical Research Council’s Investigative Microbiology Unit at Hammersmith Hospital, decided his day was done and packed a few papers into his briefcase before putting on his coat and heading for the exit. He said good night to the man on the door – an ex-soldier who always straightened himself to his full height before replying – and crossed the car park to where his new black BMW 5 series sat, front wheels turned at a jaunty angle as if impatient to be driven off into the night by a man who went his own way.

It gave him pleasure to see it there. Like many academics he’d been used to driving a series of second-hand bangers throughout his career – something that went with the image of being too cerebral to care about material things
– but at the age of fifty he and his wife had decided that a successful man deserved a bit of respect from Joe Public and the new Beemer fitted the bill perfectly.

Langley got in and sat for a moment enjoying the feeling of being cocooned
in a world of silence and leather. He turned on Mozart who had been patiently waiting in the CD player and prepared to set off for home. The only thing to spoil the moment was the knife in the gloved hand that reached over from the back seat. It now nestled against his throat, cold and very threatening.

‘Take a left and drive till I tell you different.’

Langley’s pulse rate was pushing two hundred and he had to fight to control his bladder and bowels. ‘What d’you want?’ he stammered. ‘Is it the car? Look, you can have it; just don’t hurt me. Let me go . . .’

‘The car?’ snorted the voice in the back. ‘Is this what you deserve for being fuck all use, you
wanker? Just drive.’

After twenty minutes,
Langley was instructed to pull over and stop. They were passing through a deserted area with woodland on both sides. Seeing woodland brought up images of decomposing bodies in shallow graves for Langley. He thought the worst. ‘Oh my God, no,’ he pleaded, his voice going up an octave.

‘Shut up and move across to the passenger seat.’

Langley did as he was told, his collar being held firmly.

‘Put your hands behind your head.’

Langley felt his wrists being tied to the head restraint pillars. He was then blindfolded and could only listen as his assailant got out and into the driving seat. He was aware of the car turning round and heading back into the city. ‘Where are you taking me?’

His question remained unanswered and he sat in terrified silence for another ten minutes until he heard the wheels of the car crunch on gravel and they came to a halt. He was untied and told to get out. The blindfold stayed on.

‘You got him then?’ asked a new voice.

‘Piece of cake. Got the jag ready?’

‘And the suit,’ came the reply.

Confusion was added to the terror
Langley was in. What was that about a Jag? Why were they putting him in a Jaguar? It was only when he felt the sharp needle stab in his buttock that he realised he’d got the meaning of ‘jag’ all wrong. The lights went out.

When
Langley came to he was no longer blindfolded and he could move freely. The problem was, he couldn’t see properly. There were bright lights everywhere but he couldn’t focus on anything. He was in a world of rainbow-coloured blurs. There was noise – lots of it: traffic noise and people laughing. He searched for his phone in his pocket but found he had no pockets. These weren’t his clothes. He was wearing some strange kind of outfit or costume.

The people in
Leicester Square could see it was a clown costume and it was being worn by a man who was staggering around with a message taped to his back. It said, I’M LOOKING FOR THE CAUSE OF ME.

People were laughing, assuming that it must be part of some stag-night prank . . . although the age of the clown and his apparent distress perhaps suggested not . . . but, of course, it was better not to get involved.
That was the British way. They body-swerved past the clown on their way to their night out.

Langley was totally disorientated. The swirling bright ligh
ts and the feeling of nausea prevented him from making any meaningful contact with the vague figures that flitted in and out of his distorted vision. He reached out and touched someone who smacked his hand away.

‘What’s your game then?’

Langley recoiled from the angry voice and changed direction, only to feel himself stumble as he unwittingly stepped off the pavement . . . unfortunately, into the path of a bus. The sound of the horn, the screech of brakes, the thud of the impact as the front of the bus hit Langley and the cries of bus passengers thrown from their seats all blended into some hellish cacophony before fading to nothing as stunned onlookers froze and looked down at the broken body of a very dead clown.