Lost Causes (13 page)

James Black was last to arrive for the meeting he’d called of the Redwood Park competitions committee – he’d been caught in a traffic jam for twenty minutes.

‘We were beginning to think you’d decided to up sticks and disappear,’ said Toby Langton.

‘Now why would I want to do that?’ replied Black with a forced smile that contrasted with the worried expressions of the others.

‘For God’s sake, Sci-Med have the files from College Hospital. They’re going through them as we speak,’ said Elliot Soames.

‘So much for taking Dunbar out of the game,’ said Rupert Coutts.

‘It wasn’t a serious attempt,’ said Constance Carradine. ‘More of a spur of the moment thing when we heard he was going to search the cellars. An opportunity too good to miss. Anyway, a junkie got the blame. No harm done.’

‘Aren’t we missing the point here? Sci-Med are going to find out exactly what was going on in the north in the early nineties.’

‘They may suspect something was going on but they won’t know what,’ said Black. ‘People died, but that’s what people do, especially sick ones.’

‘I still don’t like it,’ said Soames. ‘They’re not stupid. They just might figure it out.’

‘Even if they do, they’re not going to be able to prove anything after all this time, and even if they could, they’re hardly going to let the press in on it, are they? A coalition government hanging on by its fingertips would be swept away in the resulting storm of indignation, leaving us with the prospect of anarchy. It’s little more than an academic exercise for Sci-Med. They’ll pat each other on the back for working it out and then move on to more relevant matters like the threat that’s hanging over our nation.’

‘Aren’t you overlooking the Paris meeting?’ said Langton.

All eyes turned to him.

‘If Sci-Med are bright enough to work out what the Northern Health Scheme was all about, they might figure out what the purpose of the Paris meeting was too – all the people from the Northern Health Scheme getting together again? They’re bound to suspect that the whole business was about to be repeated.’

‘Let them,’ said Black. ‘If French and co. had had their way, they’d be quite right, but they all died and so did the Northern Health Scheme. Although …’

The others found the pregnant pause unbearable. ‘Although what?’ prompted Langton.

‘I’ve taken steps to provide some “proof” for Sci-Med if they’re clever enough to find it.’

‘Proof of what?’ asked Rupert Coutts.

‘Proof that Charles French and his colleagues were indeed planning a repeat of the Northern Health Scheme. They’ll be well pleased with that.’

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Mark?’ said Constance with an air of disapproval. ‘It’s not a game. The future of our country depends on our success.’

‘And it’s in good hands,’ said Black. ‘But you’re right. I do enjoy an intellectual challenge.’

‘Frankly, I’d feel happier with Dunbar and his cronies out of the way,’ said Constance.

‘Me too,’ said Soames.

‘Dunbar and Sci-Med are no threat to us,’ insisted Black. ‘Sci-Med are on the verge of clearing up a twenty-year-old puzzle, with all those involved now dead. End of story. If we sanction any kind of action against them, it might signal that either we’re not all dead, or we have something to hide and we think
Sci-Med
are getting too close. We can do without that kind of attention. Our project is on track and everything is going to plan. All we need do is keep our nerve. All right?’

One by one the others nodded their agreement.

‘Good,’ said Black. ‘I’m told that Sci-Med were present at the COBRA meeting yesterday. I should think events of long ago are the last thing on their minds right now.’

Maxine French smiled as Steven was ushered into a stunning room with glass walls on three sides, all of them affording access to a magnificent roof terrace and breathtaking views beyond. Steven felt as if he had seen that smile before. It was the one that ladies of a certain class and political inclination used to put lesser mortals at their ease.

‘Good of you to see me, Mrs French, and at such short notice. Your tireless charity work is well documented.’

‘One does what one can,’ said Maxine with a self-deprecating smile. ‘But I am intrigued, doctor. What exactly does the
Sci-Med
Inspectorate do?’

Steven told her briefly.

‘Science and medicine progresses at such a rate these days; I’m sure you must be kept very busy,’ she said. ‘But how exactly can I help?’

Steven was aware of his pulse rate increasing as he prepared to take his gamble. ‘Your husband wasn’t just a brilliant scientist, Mrs French … he also served his country in another capacity …’

‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Maxine with an expression that would have served a lottery winner. ‘Charles was such a patriot. No one ever loved his country more than my husband. That’s why he was in Paris, wasn’t it? He was on secret business on behalf of the nation?’ 

Steven couldn’t believe his luck. His gambit had worked so well he feared that Maxine was about to break into the national anthem. ‘Yes indeed, Mrs French, Charles was working for the government.’

‘I knew it … I knew it. It all makes sense now.’

‘The thing is … Charles was holding some material that must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. His untimely death means that we aren’t quite sure … where it is. I suppose I was hoping that you might be able to help.’

Maxine walked over to where a painting of an English
landscape
hung over a rectangular marble fireplace set into the wall and housing living flames over a bed of cobbles. She swung the painting back like a door to reveal a safe, causing Steven to reflect on people’s lack of originality, and to reckon that it would have taken a burglar all of thirty seconds to find and maybe another thirty seconds of threats before Maxine revealed the combination. Not very secure at all.

Maxine, however, was to prove him wrong. For a moment he thought the safe was empty when she opened it, but she removed something small and signalled that Steven should follow her outside to the terrace. He saw that she had a plastic card in her hand as she led the way to a small alcove among the plant pots. There she swung open a small trellis that was
apparently
on hinges and inserted the card in a hidden slot in the wall. It was swallowed like a bank card and a small screen appeared as a dummy brick facing slid back.

‘Don’t touch it!’ warned Maxine as Steven leaned forward to take a look. Steven recoiled at the panic in her voice. ‘It’s a biometric panel,’ she said, putting her own fingertips on it and holding them there for a few seconds. The panel slid back to reveal the contents of a small safe set into one of the
apartment’s
concrete support pillars. Maxine retrieved a number of disks in plastic cases and handed them over to Steven. ‘I think these are what you’re looking for.’ 

‘Thank you, Mrs French,’ said Steven, trying to appear calm. He couldn’t resist asking, ‘What would have happened if I’d touched the screen?’

‘It would have blown your face off, doctor.’

Steven silently reconsidered his earlier critical thoughts about the security arrangements. Even if someone had tortured Maxine to reveal the whereabouts of the disks she could simply have handed over the card, shown her attacker where the safe was and stood well clear.

He left the penthouse, thinking that he must have used up a year’s luck all in one morning. He’d got exactly what he wanted without the need for police raids on Deltasoft or French’s home. No damage would be done to public confidence through speculative press stories and Maxine could even return to her tireless charity work, secure in the knowledge that her husband’s secret work on behalf of the nation would go on. Not.

‘You look like the cat who got the cream,’ Jean Roberts told him when he appeared in her office.

‘A better than average morning, Jean. Could you get these over to the lab as quickly as possible?’

‘Will do. I think the DOH people upstairs are just about finished.’

‘I’ll go and see them.’

Steven found the people from the Department of Health packing up and ready to move out. Sophie Thornton came over to speak to him.

‘All done. We’ve arranged the suspect files alphabetically,’ she said, indicating a bench by the window. ‘Nothing new to report, just more of the same: people dying when perhaps they shouldn’t have but with no sinister causes according to the PM reports.’

Steven thanked her and the rest of her team, and stood with them as they waited for the lift on the landing outside to say last farewells – a trait he recognised he had inherited from his mother, who had always made sure that no one left the Dunbar household without at least three versions of goodbye and usually a final wave from the window. Then he returned to the room and rested his hands on top of one of the folder piles.

Sophie’s saying that they were in alphabetical order
encouraged
him to look for James Kincaid’s father’s notes. He found them without difficulty – a coal-miner who had retired with breathing difficulties due to his long years underground. A man who had finally contracted lung cancer and had died within three weeks of having an operation at College Hospital. Kincaid had been right to be suspicious. If death had been that imminent, surgeons at the hospital wouldn’t have considered operating. The fact that they had, suggested a belief that, with the right therapy, life expectancy should have been a great deal longer than three weeks. Instead, French and his pals … or should he be calling them the Schiller Group after what the Home Secretary had said? … had decided that he was nothing more than a drain on resources. Expendable. Those to the right live, those to the left die.

Steven got his answer to the Schiller question in the morning when Jean Roberts announced, ‘I’ve remembered why the name Schiller seemed familiar: it’s what Charles French called his breakaway group at university when he left the Conservative club. The Schiller Group.’

‘You’re a star,’ said Steven.

‘I’m beginning to like working for you. Sir John never called me things like that.’

‘He’ll be back soon enough.’

With nothing back from the lab, Steven went for a walk while he thought about French and his student pals. Why had French chosen the name Schiller Group? Had it been
coincidence
or had it been devilment? Had he known about the real Schiller Group and been trying for some kind of recognition or inclusion, or had it just been chance? Either way it had been something that had attracted the attention of Lady Antonia Freeman’s father, the judge who had uncharacteristically treated French with such leniency when he came before him on serious assault charges. That certainly suggested that French had gained membership of the big boys’ club over it.

Later that evening, when Steven phoned Tally, he discovered that she had managed to get the following day off. ‘We should do something,’ he repeated.

‘Any suggestions?’

‘How well do you know North Wales?’

‘Not at all.’ 

‘Good, then I’ll show you.’

‘Isn’t that an awfully long way?’

‘I’ve got a …’

‘Porsche,’ supplied Tally. ‘Oh, God … what am I letting myself in for?’

‘I’ll make an early start and pick you up at ten.’

The sun shone next day, making the drive along the North Wales coast a joy. Even Tally – no lover of cars or speed – seemed seduced by the wind in her hair and the throaty sound of the Boxster’s engine. ‘How come you know North Wales?’ she asked above the noise as they slowed at the turn-off to Conwy.

‘I trained here,’ said Steven. ‘Up and down these …
mountains
.’ He deleted the expletive. ‘I fell in love with it. It’s a beautiful place … when it’s not January, when you’re not carrying a full pack and a weapon and the wind isn’t driving horizontal rain into your face.’

‘Like today,’ said Tally.

‘Like today,’ agreed Steven, glancing up at blue skies. ‘We’ll have coffee and take a walk round the castle ramparts. You get great views.’

With Tally suitably impressed as they completed their circle of the castle walls, something she indicated with a smile and a squeeze of the hand, they returned to the car. ‘Where to now?’

‘Bodnant Garden, one of the most beautiful places in the world.’

‘Not much to live up to then …’

There came a point in their slow amble through the trails of the beautiful gardens when Tally turned to Steven while they were crossing a little bridge over a tumbling stream. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘This is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Thank you for bringing me.’

‘Where else would I bring such a beautiful woman?’

‘You old smoothie,’ Tally chuckled.

Steven grew serious. ‘We’re all right, aren’t we, Tally? I mean, you and me?’

Tally paused as if a thousand thoughts were running through her head, before saying quietly, ‘Yes, Steven, we’re fine.’

‘I love you.’

‘I know.’

They drove on, ending up in Caernarfon, where they sat watching the yachts bobbing beneath the walls of another castle.

‘You’ve gone very quiet,’ said Steven.

‘I was wondering when you were going to tell me why you could suddenly take another day off … not that I’m complaining. You’ve not hit the wall again?’

‘Far from it,’ he said with a smile. ‘The investigation’s all over bar the shouting.’ He told her about the conclusion he and John Macmillan had reached regarding the withholding of
treatment
from people who were seen as a burden on the state. ‘They pretended to treat them by giving them pills that looked like the real thing but contained nothing of any medical value at all. I’m just waiting for the confirmation to come back from the lab and then I think that will be that … just in time for all hell to break loose.’

‘Can you tell me?’

Steven only paused for a moment. ‘Intelligence believes the UK is in imminent danger of a biological attack from Islamic terrorists.’

‘Oh my God,’ murmured Tally. ‘You’ve always said it was on the cards. How sure are they?’

‘Very, but the key thing is they don’t know what they’re going to use.’

‘So we can’t prepare?’

‘You got it.’

‘Doesn’t that make it even more odd that you’re taking the day off? Or are we here to kiss each other’s arse goodbye?’ 

Steven smiled. ‘There’s nothing I can do until it happens. MI5 and Special Branch are working their socks off trying to come up with more information from their sources, but until they do …’

‘Life goes on as normal,’ said Tally, thinking it was the stupidest thing she could come out with in the circumstances.

‘Assuming we’re given the time, there’s one more thing I’d like to do to round off the investigation – assuming the lab comes up with the proof.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’d like to go up to Newcastle to visit the graves of the people who worked out what the Northern Health Scheme was all about all those years ago but didn’t live long enough to get the credit. They deserve some kind of recognition. If it hadn’t been for them, thousands more might have met an early death.’

‘We should do that,’ agreed Tally.

Steven drove back to London on Monday morning. He found the computer analyst from the Sci-Med contract lab waiting for him at the Home Office.

‘Wanted to see you personally,’ whispered Jean Roberts.

‘Thought you’d better hear this from the horse’s mouth,’ said the man as Steven showed him through to John Macmillan’s office and invited him to sit. ‘It’s quite straightforward really; it’s software for controlling and directing the day to day
workings
of a large hospital pharmacy. Patients’ details go in at one end along with a doctor’s prescription. This is checked and assessed by the software, and the pharmacy is instructed to supply the relevant drugs at the other – either the prescribed medicine or an alternative if it’s cheaper and just as good.’

‘That’s what we thought,’ said Steven.

‘There’s a little more to it, however. I didn’t see it at first but the software uses two pharmacies acting in tandem – let’s call them A and B. A number of factors determine whether you will get your drugs from A or B.’ 

‘Do you know what the factors are?’

The man nodded. ‘There’s a long list of medical conditions and other factors which will put you on the B list. I’ve printed them out for you. Not sure what it all means, but age is a factor. Maybe they need higher doses?’

Or none at all, thought Steven. ‘Maybe.’

‘There’s also a disk containing a list of the hospitals and
practices
where the software is going to be introduced in the autumn.’

Steven couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Did you say
going to be
introduced?’

‘Yes, September 2010 onwards, fifteen areas across England and Wales.’

So they
were
going to reintroduce the scheme, thought Steven. Macmillan’s gut instinct had been right from the beginning. The thought gave him a hollow feeling. So what had the
explosion
in Paris been all about? He had to rethink his theory that the killings had been some kind of Schiller Group coup. It didn’t look so feasible now. If the assassin had been one of the Schiller Group and lost his nerve over the reintroduction of the scheme, he would hardly have been likely to summon up the courage to murder six of his colleagues to stop it happening. There had to be more to it.

‘Thank you very much,’ he said to the computer man, who was getting up to leave. His mind was still elsewhere.

Steven left the office and went over to see John Macmillan. Macmillan’s wife showed him in and told him John was on the telephone. ‘He just won’t do as he’s told,’ she complained. ‘The doctors say he must rest, but … well, you know him.’

Steven nodded sympathetically as the sound of Macmillan’s raised voice reached them. ‘Ye gods, you must have some idea by now,’ he was saying.

Steven deduced that Macmillan was complaining about the lack of progress being made by the security services. His last words before putting down the phone were, ‘But every life in the country depends on it, man. Someone must know
something
. Get it out of them. We’ll worry about their human rights later.’

‘Well, you sound back on form,’ said Steven, entering the room. ‘I take it there’s been no progress?’

Macmillan accompanied a shake of the head with an
exasperated
sigh. ‘An attack like this needs infrastructure and planning; that means people – lots of them. It’s not like a hit with explosives where a small cell can keep everything in-house. So why have our people drawn a complete blank? Not a whisper.’

‘I agree; it is odd, particularly as they know they’re
home-grown
.’

‘Exactly. They must have people planted in all the relevant communities and yet they come up with nothing. Why?’

Steven took a deep breath. ‘Best-case scenario, it’s a false alarm. Worst-case scenario, they’re wrong about them being home-grown. The hit’s going to come from abroad.’

Macmillan took a moment to digest this before saying, ‘I sometimes wonder where mankind would be if we’d never felt the need for religion. It’s my guess we would have colonised the planets by now.’

‘Pie in the sky has a lot to answer for.’

‘I think it’s the different fillings in the pie that are the problem,’ said Macmillan. ‘How are things?’

‘Done and dusted,’ said Steven. ‘The disks confirm it
was
an attempt to cull the population back in the early nineties. A rough estimate says they ended the lives of about four hundred people between those being treated at College Hospital and in the surrounding practices.’

‘I think I prefer “murdered”,’ said Macmillan.

‘James Kincaid and his friends almost succeeded in exposing them but died in the attempt. The Schiller mob had to lie low for a while, and then, of course, the Tories lost the election and Labour came to power and stayed there for thirteen years. Now with another change of government they obviously felt it safe to have another go. They were planning to set the whole thing up again in a number of hospitals across the country,
beginning
in September.’

‘But fate took a hand and blew them all to kingdom come,’ mused Macmillan. ‘Any more thoughts on that?’

‘I just wish it had been fate,’ said Steven. ‘It’s a loose end …’

‘And I know how much you hate those,’ said Macmillan. ‘But maybe, in our current circumstances, we shouldn’t look a gift horse too closely in the mouth.’

‘You’re right,’ agreed Steven. ‘In fact, I think they should make your gut instinct a national treasure. You were right in just about everything.’