by Ken McClure
‘I suppose it might even influence me,’ said Tally. ‘How about you?’
‘I won’t be voting.’
Tally could see by Steven’s expression that he meant it, and they’d been down this road before. ‘Well, I won’t give you a lecture on what people have suffered in the past so that we can have the right to vote,’ she said. ‘I know you have your reasons.’
‘Correct. I detest the lot of them.’
Tally gave a little smile. ‘I won’t even argue that there must be some good ones. I will simply drop the subject and move on.’
‘Good.’
‘What do you think about the company’s plan?’
Steven thought for a moment. ‘They want to do the opposite from the big guys. They want to change the emphasis from research to production. Less risk equals more happy shareholders. The contract will have to go to tender but they sounded like they really want it; they were talking about coming up with a very competitive bid, cutting every last cent to win it.’
Tally paused while Steven refilled her glass. ‘Where does the head of security fit into all this?’ she asked.
‘We’re not going to be the only company hoping to land the contract. Knowing what the other guys are bidding could be a huge advantage. It’ll be my job to ensure that our figure stays a secret.’
Tally nodded. ‘And if your company lands the contract and the emphasis shifts away from research… where would that leave you?’
Steven smiled as he filled his own glass. ‘I suppose I could be out of a job if the research element of the company disappears completely, but maybe they’ll find something else for me to do, cleaning the lavatories or something.’
‘Pathetic, Dunbar.’
‘It was, wasn’t it? I’ll have to work on my self-pity. What do you say to another bottle?’
‘Grazie mille, signore.’
FOUR
Lark Pharmaceuticals, Canterbury, Kent
Dr Mark Mosely parked his dark green Jaguar in his designated parking spot, and pulled his collar up against a biting east wind as he crossed to the glass front doors, which slid open on instructions from the infrared detector above them.
‘Morning, serfs,’ he said as he made his way past the potted palms of Reception to the lifts.
The two receptionists smiled dutifully at the daily joke and chanted their ‘Good morning, sir’ like primary school children.
Mosely was in a good mood. The announcement about the vaccines agreement was good news for everyone in the industry and heralded a new era in operating conditions for companies like his. It should do much to reduce the mountain of regulations that had built up over the last ten years.
The clock showed nine thirty; it was time to carry out his weekly inspection of the manufacturing floors.
The line managers would be waiting for him on Level 3 as usual to conduct him round their domains. After that he would have his weekly meeting with the quality controllers and then lunch in the canteen with the workers to listen to any minor grievances they might have… just as he’d done for the past two decades. In the afternoon he would inspect the loading bays and talk to the transport manager about delivery schedules. There was also the ongoing discussion about additional fleet vehicles to deal with. He knew the transport manager favoured Mercedes vans but he himself would prefer vehicles that were at least assembled in the UK.
The main event of the day was to be a meeting with representatives from Oxfam and three other major charities at three p.m. to discuss the quantities and distribution of vaccine supplies for Third World countries, and to appraise the latest reports from the World Health Organisation, especially projections for future needs.
Lark Pharmaceuticals was a private, non-profit-making concern set up by a charitable trust some twenty years before. It made a profit from one half of its business — the manufacture of diagnostic kits, antiseptic creams and antihistamine compounds — and this was used to fund the other half, which manufactured vaccines for Third World countries at rock-bottom prices, something that attracted much favourable publicity for the company in a world that was deeply suspicious of the motives driving drug companies. The walls of its reception area were adorned with the many awards it had received from humanitarian organisations.
Mosely was going through his mail when the phone rang. He could see the call was coming from level B2.
‘Everything is ready. We need to talk.’
‘This evening. Seven p.m.’
Sci-Med Inspectorate, Home Office, London
John Macmillan left the office and walked across the park to keep his postponed lunch date with Charlie Malloy. He saw a few snowdrops on the way but they failed to convince him that winter was anywhere near ending. A ‘barbecue summer’ that wasn’t had been followed by a ‘warm, wet winter’ that had turned out to be the coldest in many years, leaving him feeling nothing but frustration with weather forecasters.
Leonard, the club’s doorman of many years, welcomed him into the warmth and took his coat. ‘Chief Superintendent Malloy is already here, Sir John,’ he said. ‘I’ve put him in the lounge.’
It was John Macmillan’s custom to invite contacts in government and administration to have lunch with him on a rotational basis — not people at ministerial level but fairly high-level players who knew what was going on. It was his way of getting a feel for things, hearing the latest rumours and often putting two and two together. Sci-Med investigated what they saw fit, and were therefore very dependent on information gathering. Much of it was done by computers using programs developed over the years to seek out reports of unusual happenings in science and medicine, but the human touch was also very important.
‘Good to see you, Charlie,’ said Macmillan, entering the lounge and shaking hands. ‘How are things?’
‘A bit calmer this week, although we’ve been left with a bit of a headache. You remember the supposed gas explosion that turned out to be a bomb?’
‘And you had identified two of the dead as British?’
‘That’s right. Turns out all six of them were.’
‘What was it? Some kind of club or business meeting?’
Malloy shook his head. ‘They didn’t travel together. In fact, they seemed to come from all over the place to meet their death in Paris on a cold afternoon in February.’
‘The woman you mentioned last week, I remembered why her name struck a chord. Her husband was Sir Martin Freeman, a groundbreaking surgeon in his day who went out on a bit of a low. He collapsed and died in the middle of an operation.’
‘Good God, the stuff of nightmares,’ murmured Malloy, his expression mirroring his words.
‘So what was she? A doctor like hubby or a nurse who got lucky?’
‘Actually neither. In fact I think it was a case of Martin getting lucky. Antonia came from a very well-to-do family whereas Martin got his shoulder tapped for being good at his trade. Story was she and her family didn’t let him forget it either. Not the nicest of people, by all accounts.’
‘That would fit with her not having many friends, then,’ said Malloy. ‘I can’t say my chaps have been finding her sorely missed. Thanks for your input.’
‘How about the others?’
‘Actually, identification wasn’t too difficult.’
Macmillan frowned. ‘How so?’
‘The rest of the dead were all big hitters and quickly reported missing. One was chairman of a merchant bank, another was a top-level civil servant, and the other two were captains of industry. The strange thing was that none of their families knew they were in Paris.’
Macmillan let out a low whistle. ‘So why go there?’
‘Because they didn’t want to be seen here?’ suggested Malloy after a moment’s thought and a long sip of wine.
‘I do believe tonight’s star prize goes to Chief Superintendent Malloy,’ said Macmillan. ‘Do you think I could be kept in the loop on this one, Charlie? For some reason, it’s making me feel uneasy and I’m not sure why.’
‘No problem. Is your Steven Dunbar back with you yet or is he still in a huff?’
Macmillan smiled. ‘I wish it were only a huff, Charlie. I really do.’
‘So what went on there?’
Macmillan adopted a dignified pose. ‘In the interests of the state, I can’t tell you, Charlie. I’m sorry.’
‘Heigh-ho, I’ve been round that block a few times. The bottom line’s always the same. Some high-up bugger’s got away with something.’
Macmillan didn’t argue.
Jean Roberts looked up as Macmillan came in. ‘Nice lunch, sir?’
‘Interesting. Jean, have you had a chance to do anything yet about the information I asked for on Martin Freeman’s last operation?’
Jean brought out a red folder from her desk drawer. It seemed to weigh quite a bit as she struggled to lift it with one hand. ‘There was actually quite a lot going on at the time,’ she explained.
Macmillan accepted the file in amazement. ‘A thorough job as always, Jean,’ he muttered.
He spent the remainder of the afternoon reading through the file recording the events of 1992 when Martin Freeman had died while operating on a severely disfigured patient at College Hospital, Newcastle. Another surgeon, Dr Claire Affric, who had been assisting Freeman at the time, had taken over and completed the operation but press access to the principals at all stages afterwards had been very limited, and there had been rumours that the bandaged figure finally put before the cameras to assure everyone that all was well was not the patient, Greta Marsh, at all. The whole unhappy saga did little to calm Macmillan’s unease. Instead, it triggered off more memories.
A very good investigative journalist had been covering the case at the time, he recalled. He worked for one of the nationals and had been successful in uncovering some NHS funding scandal before he went north to look at the Greta Marsh affair. Kincaid, that was his name, James Kincaid. He’d never returned from that assignment up north. He and a nurse from a local hospital had been found dead. The explanation had been that Kincaid had become interested in another story concerning a drugs racket, and had paid the price for interference along with the nurse, who’d become his girlfriend.
Macmillan read that Kincaid and his girl had not been the only victims of what the papers had called the northern drugs war. Paul Schreiber, a pharmacist who had been involved in setting up a new health initiative at College Hospital, had also died along with two male nurses when thieves had carried out a raid on the hospital pharmacy. Yet another victim of the war had been a local GP named Tolkien, who’d been running a drug rehabilitation clinic in the area.
Macmillan rested his elbows on the desk and cupped his chin in his hands to read on. The violence had not been confined to the north. Kincaid’s editor in London had also been murdered, supposedly in case Kincaid had passed on any of his findings to him.
Something stirring at the back of his mind made Macmillan look back a couple of pages to the piece on Paul Schreiber. It wasn’t the murder that had caught his attention, it was the bit about his being involved in ‘a new health initiative’. He leaned over and pressed the intercom button. ‘Jean, what was the name of that Tory MP who committed suicide the other day?’
‘John Carlisle, sir.’
Ye gods, that was it. Carlisle was the figurehead at the time of… Macmillan willed the name to come to him. The Northern Health Scheme, that was it. John Carlisle had been health secretary back then and had been credited with introducing a revolutionary, computerised new health initiative in the north of England, which by all accounts had been hugely successful.
But then… what? Macmillan found to his embarrassment that he couldn’t remember much more. Carlisle had seemed to fade from popular view although only a few months before he had been touted as a possible future leader of the Conservative Party. The new, computerised health scheme had also disappeared. ‘How very strange,’ he said aloud.
‘What is, Sir John?’ asked Jean Roberts’s voice. Macmillan had left the intercom on. He switched it off without apology. His mind was now on other things, spreading its horizons. It was all a very long time ago and the Tories had been voted out of office in ’97, but the fact that Carlisle’s career had come to such an abrupt end in the preceding parliament, and such a hugely successful health initiative had ground to a halt without explanation now struck him as very odd.
‘Jean, I need all you can get me on something called the Northern Health Scheme, operating around the early nineties in the north of England at a time when John Carlisle was Secretary of State for Health.’
‘How soon, Sir John?’
‘Yesterday.’
He knew that there would be no Sci-Med files on the subject as this was before the inception of the unit, but Jean would use press archives in the first instance and augment them with government information where necessary. He got the first of her results an hour later.
He couldn’t have told anyone what he was looking for as he leafed through the pages; he didn’t know himself, but he knew that he’d recognise it when he found it, and a few minutes later he did, in the list of people responsible for the running of the short-lived Northern Health Scheme introduced in November 1991. Apart from John Carlisle, one Charles French of Deltasoft was there: the Charles French who had just been blown to bits in Paris… along with Antonia Freeman.
‘Hell and damnation,’ whispered Macmillan, tapping his pen on the desk in a gesture of annoyance as something else occurred to him. He looked back at the material on Martin Freeman to make doubly sure. Yes, it was the same hospital: College Hospital, Newcastle.
Macmillan looked into the middle distance for a long time before realising that the dull headache that had been plaguing him for the past few days was getting worse. In fact, it was becoming unbearable. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he held his hands to his temples.
‘Jean, I need some help in here…’
FIVE
‘You seem down,’ said Steven, watching Tally play more with her food than eat it. It had gone eight o’clock on Tuesday evening and Steven had prepared dinner, although ‘prepared’ was perhaps an exaggeration: he’d opened two M amp;S ready meals and heated them up. Steven didn’t cook, never had. Food had never played a big part in his life and he couldn’t quite understand all the fuss about it, particularly the hours devoted to it on television.
‘Things on my mind.’
‘Am I allowed to ask what?’
Tally gave a slight shake of the head as if reluctant to go further, but then she reconsidered. ‘It’s my mother,’ she said. ‘She’s finding it difficult to cope. Independence in the community with support or whatever they call it is just not working out.’
Steven made a face.
‘A home would kill her. She’s always said so.’
‘Most people do,’ said Steven, aware that his words could be construed as callous but still feeling it needed pointing out. ‘It really doesn’t have to be that bad.’
‘How many of these places have you seen?’ snapped Tally.
‘Not many.’
Tally’s stare demanded more.
‘None.’
‘She’s my mother, Steven. The woman who brought me into the world, comforted me when I was down, encouraged me when I was unsure, cheered for me when I won things, found excuses for when I didn’t. She made me what I am. I wouldn’t be comforting other people’s kids on a daily basis if she hadn’t done that for me. Don’t you understand?’
‘Yup, I had one just like her,’ said Steven.
Tally digested the comment for a moment, acknowledging the truth of what Steven was saying but unwilling to give ground. She rested her head in her hands, considering other ways to get her point across. ‘I just cannot bear the thought of putting my mother into one of these places where she’ll end up watching daytime fucking television until she dies. No one deserves that.’
‘Which brings us to the alternatives.’
Tally leaned forward a
nd let her fingers slip through her hair to the back of her head. ‘And there aren’t any… Right?’
‘My work situation is not good enough for you to give up your job to look after your mother,’ said Steven.
‘I know, I know… but thanks for the thought. Look, I don’t want to discuss it any more tonight. My sister Jackie’s coming up from Dorset at the weekend. We’ll talk about it then.’
‘I think you once mentioned having two sisters,’ said Steven. ‘But you never got round to telling me their names.’
Tally smiled. ‘I suppose there’s still quite a lot we don’t know about each other.
‘Then we shouldn’t get bored.’
‘If you say so,’ said Tally, relaxing a little. ‘You’ll like Jackie. She’s fun.’
‘Anything else on your mind?’
‘Yes, the constant struggle to get medication approved for our cancer kids. I know health budgets are not bottomless pits but come on, children are our future. We should be doing our best for them, not making endless assessments as to the likely outcome of therapy before loosening the purse strings. There are too many people pursuing too many agendas.’
‘Maybe an election will clear the air and make things easier.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘No, I just thought I’d try to cheer you up.’
‘You’re impossible.’
‘It’s a gift.’
‘Another one?’
‘You’re right. I do seem to have more than my fair share. Still, what can one do?’
Tally made to throw a cushion at him, but was interrupted by the phone ringing. She read the caller display and paused before picking up. ‘It’s John Macmillan,’ she said.
‘I’m out,’ said Steven.
Tally answered while Steven started clearing away the dinner things. ‘I’m sorry, Lady Macmillan, he’s just stepped out for a moment,’ she said as Steven left the room on his way to the kitchen. ‘Can I help?’
Steven returned from his chores to hear Tally saying, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Of course I will. He’ll be back shortly. I’ll get him to call you… Yes… Goodbye.’