Death at the Plague Museum

by Lesley Kelly

  His thinking was interrupted by the sound of his ringtone. He dug out his phone, and saw Paterson’s name on the screen. His hand lingered reluctantly over the small green telephone icon. Someone needed to update Paterson on everything that had happened since he’d summoned him earlier, but he really hoped that Mona had already done it. She hadn’t updated him on what the official version of events was.

  ‘Bernard, have you heard from Mona? I’m trying to ring her but she’s not answering.’

  Damn. ‘She’s fine. There’s really nothing to worry about.’ That might not be entirely true.

  ‘Thank God. Last time I saw her Ian Jacobsen was holding her over a banister. And Jacobsen was in a terrible state. His face was all smashed in and I think he had a broken arm. Someone had given him a right doing, but I couldn’t get any sense out of him or Bob Ellis.’

  ‘Oh yes, actually that was me.’

  ‘What was you?’

  ‘The, ehm, “doing”.’

  ‘That was you? What the— Why did—’ The ramblings at the other end of the phone were getting increasingly incoherent. ‘What the hell is going on here, Bernard? Why are my colleagues suddenly trying to kill each other?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Right. I’m coming over. Where are you?’

  Bernard started to panic. He didn’t know what was going on, he couldn’t explain it, he’d broken probably every rule in the HET handbook (and possibly some criminal laws as well), and worst of all he was still at Lucy’s parents’ house. His potential relationship stood no chance of blossoming if Lucy watched him being savaged by Paterson.

  ‘Actually, Mr Paterson, I’m not at work any longer I am now on my, ehm, own time.’

  ‘Your own time?’ Paterson’s voice was probably audible in Glasgow. He held the mobile a little further away from his ear. ‘Do you not think that this is exactly the wrong time to be clocking off?’

  Bernard didn’t have an answer for this, so did the only thing that he could do and hung up. He turned the phone to silent; there would be consequences but he’d deal with them later, when he was far, far away from Lucy. And given the amount of trouble he was in, he decided he might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.

  ‘Let’s call a taxi, Lucy. The HET office will pay.’

  ‘Oh, if you’re sure . . .’ She started gathering up her possessions.

  ‘And—’ It was now or never. ‘Would it be all right if I gave you a ring tomorrow, just to, you know, check if you are OK?’

  She smiled. ‘That’s so thoughtful. Yes, of course.’

  Lying in bed that night, Bernard smiled to himself. Despite the horrors of the day, he felt a certain sense of achievement. Although he had done nothing that Maitland could describe as a ‘move’, Lucy certainly hadn’t discouraged him from getting in touch. And she had commented on his bravery. And she’d touched his hand in the taxi. He could definitely be in a worse position.

  He rolled over, wrapping himself up in the duvet in an attempt to get warm. His eyes were closing when the thought occurred to him that in the morning not only was he going to have to explain himself to Paterson, he was also going to have to deal with Ian Jacobsen. And Stuttle. And possibly Police Scotland if they wanted to charge him for assaulting a policeman.

  He rolled over on to his back. In spite of his tiredness, he suspected this was going to be a sleepless night.

  18

  The streets were deserted. She’d given up trying to find a cab and had set off on foot from Elaine’s office back to her mother’s house. Her feet were weary, but she was glad of the opportunity to think over the evening’s events. She’d need all her thoughts in order before she went into work tomorrow. If she had to face the music she wanted it to be with a conductor’s baton. Stifling a yawn, she had a quick look over her shoulder to check that the streets remained deserted. She half-expected to see Bob Ellis standing behind her, ready to finish what Ian had started.

  Stopping at the end of her mother’s street she had a final look around. To her dismay, there was a car parked across the driveway of her mother’s house. She reviewed her choices. Turn tail and flee? But then she would be leaving her mother to the mercy of whoever the visitor was. Not an option. Call for backup? Difficult to think who exactly would come to the rescue. She sidled closer to the house, and as she did the passenger door was flung open.

  ‘Get in.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Get in, Mona. I’m fed up of being messed about.’

  ‘Sorry, Guv.’ She got into the car, pulling the door shut gently behind her. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Credit me with some detecting ability, Mona, seeing as you credit me with nothing else. Any chance of you telling me what the hell is actually going on?’

  Turning away from him toward the window, she noticed that the hall light was still on in her mother’s house. ‘I’m not sure I know what’s going on, Guv, but I can certainly tell you what happened this evening.’

  She went through the events of the evening as quickly as she could, trying to keep any emotion out of her voice. If she stopped to think about what had happened she wasn’t sure she could control herself. Paterson listened in silence.

  ‘Bernard faced down a man with a gun?’

  ‘He did indeed. He’s actually pretty good under pressure, just really bad when he has time to think about things.’

  ‘Pretty high-risk strategy hitting a man with a gun in his hand.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘He could have ended up getting one of you killed.’

  ‘I know, I told him that, and I’ll have a chat with him about gun safety when all this is over. But it wasn’t entirely irrational, Guv. He thought Jacobsen was shepherding us all into the room so he could kill us. He’d already threatened to shoot me if Bernard didn’t appear.’

  ‘Well, he’s got more balls than I credited him with, I’ll say that.’

  ‘And the thing is, Guv, I don’t know if he was right or wrong about it. Maybe Jacobsen was going to shoot us. What do you reckon his game is? Whose side is he on?’

  ‘No idea. And I can’t believe I’m going to say this but do you need to lie low for a while? Just until we can figure out what the story is?’

  She shook her head. ‘Oh no, I’ll be at work tomorrow. I‘ve done nothing wrong. We were looking for a Health Defaulter and we found her. Every single thing that Bernard and I did tonight was a legitimate reaction to the situation we found ourselves in.’

  ‘Do you think Stuttle will see it that way?’

  ‘It’s not Stuttle I’m worried about. Unfortunately, I don’t know who it is that I should be worried about.’

  ‘Anything you need, Mona, anything at all, you just have to ask. And bloody Bernard – what a star, eh?’ In spite of himself, Paterson cracked a small smile.

  She smiled back. ‘Good night, Guv.’

  The key scraped the metal as she put it into the lock. She winced, and edged the door open as quietly as she could.

  ‘You’re back late.’

  Her mother materialised in the hallway, her dressing gown on.

  ‘Mum! It’s,’ she looked at her watch, ‘two in the morning!’

  ‘I was worried, Mona. You didn’t say you were going to be late. What have you been doing?’

  What had she been doing? Her job, obviously, and on paper the result was a good one. A difficult to find Health Defaulter had been tracked down and delivered to a Health Check. There was a big tick for that. But the other stuff? She wasn’t entirely sure what exactly she’d been thinking. Bravely doing her public-spirited duty to highlight wrongdoing? Or foolhardy meddling in something that was none of her business?

  She opted for the one word that was definitely true. ‘Working.’

  ‘I’ll make you a cocoa.’

  ‘You don’t need to bother, Mum . . .’ but she was gone.

  She stumbled through to the living room, and sat on the sofa. And Bernard, God bless him, had shown levels of bravery and
ingenuity she would not have known he had in him. And she’d left him to make sure his new friend was OK. She was glad he had a girlfriend. He deserved it. A yawn swallowed her.

  Tomorrow was another day. Whatever the fallout was, she’d deal with it.

  She closed her eyes. By the time her mother came back into the room she was snoring.

  FRIDAY

  MAKING

  THE

  PAPERS

  1

  For the third time that week Bernard was in early. After a fairly sleepless night he’d decided the best thing was to get up, head to the office and find out if he was either sacked or under arrest. The week’s events had left him well aware that the HET was a difficult organisation to leave voluntarily, so he assumed that they wouldn’t be in any hurry to sack him if they could avoid it. However, breaking the arm of a co-worker, whatever the circumstances, might be pushing organisational tolerance to its limits. So here he was, bright and early, ready to learn his fate. Except, to his surprise, he was the only person there. He’d been sure Mona would have shared his ‘let’s get this over with’ mentality.

  Unless something had happened to her? He pulled out his phone to make contact, and quickly shoved it back into his pocket when Paterson flung the door open. His head moved swiftly back and forth as he surveyed the room. ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bernard. ‘Ehm, have you spoken to Mona?’

  ‘Yes, you can relax. Your designated spokeswoman has brought me up to speed on what’s been happening. And when all this is over, you and I are going to have a serious conversation about who you answer to. I’m your line manager, not Mona Whyte, whatever she may think. You need to keep me informed.’

  ‘When will this be?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Our serious conversation?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Does it matter?’

  ‘If you are going to be shouting at me, Mr Paterson, I’d just like a timeframe for when it’s likely to be.’

  ‘Bernard, you’re an idiot.’

  He wondered if that was the extent of the ‘serious conversation’ that they were going to have. He thought about attempting to clarify the situation, but his boss’s expression didn’t really invite follow-up questions.

  ‘Anyway,’ began Paterson, then stopped, catching sight of something over Bernard’s shoulder. Bernard turned to see Carole hovering in the doorway.

  Paterson flung his arms up in the air. ‘Fantastic. As if I don’t already have enough to contend with, now you’ve decided to show up. Well, whatever attitude you’ve brought to work today you can stuff it. I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘No attitude,’ said Carole, holding her hands up in a gesture that resembled a POW surrendering. She pulled the door closed behind her, sat on the nearest chair and started taking her coat off.

  ‘Oh?’ Paterson eyed her suspiciously.

  ‘Really.’ She nodded. ‘I feel terrible about what happened to Maitland. It was the worst moment of my life thinking that something had happened to him and that I was partly to blame.’

  ‘So, you’re back at work and planning to behave yourself?’

  ‘If by that you mean am I willing to work hard, and not cause trouble, yes.’

  ‘Are you dropping the lawsuit then?’ asked Bernard.

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m afraid not. I don’t want to work at the HET any more, but I am going to try and do a good job until my lawyers get me out of here.’

  ‘Well, what a fabulously motivated team I have.’ Paterson grunted. ‘And I’d keep the hell out of Stuttle’s way, if I were you.’

  There was a gentle tap at the door.

  ‘That’ll be Maitland, saying he’s willing to come back to work but his lawyers say he needs forty minutes’ siesta every afternoon.’ Paterson pulled open the door. ‘Marcus!’

  Marcus was a vision of despair. His hair was half-hanging out of its ponytail, and his T-shirt showed all the signs of being slept in. There was a large stain on the leg of his jeans, which Bernard hoped was spilt coffee. And judging by the bags under his eyes, Bernard wasn’t the only one who’d had a sleepless night.

  ‘You were the last person I expected to see today,’ said Paterson. ‘Are you OK?’ He pulled out a chair, and Marcus half-sat, half-fell into it.

  ‘It was awful,’ said Marcus. For a horrible minute Bernard thought his friend was about to cry. He looked over at Paterson, who shot him a slightly helpless look in return. Fortunately, Carole stepped up to the plate. She moved into the chair next to Marcus, slid her arms round him and gave him a hearty, maternal hug. He rested his head on her shoulder and sniffed loudly.

  ‘Have you had any breakfast?’ she asked. ‘Would you like me to fetch you something?’

  ‘A cup of tea would be nice.’ He sat back upright, and wiped his eyes. ‘Milk, no sugar.’

  ‘Milk, no sugar,’ she repeated and headed out the door.

  ‘But they let you go?’ said Paterson.

  ‘Yes, Mr Paterson,’ said Marcus. ‘I’ve spent the night in a meeting room on the second floor. They were going to transfer me to a station with cells but decided against it. The police officer’s exact words were “consider yourself lucky that you are a friend of Ian Jacobsen”, which is strange because I don’t think I’ve said more than two sentences to him in my life.’

  Bernard looked over at Paterson, who was staring thoughtfully into space.

  ‘Anyway,’ Marcus continued, ‘about midnight last night they worked out that I was in the middle of a very long phone call to a HET officer in West Lothian who had accidentally deleted a registry file when the bomb hoax call was made.’

  ‘At midnight? Why didn’t they let you go then?’

  ‘They said I was free to go, but the PC who locked me in the interview room took away my belt, my money and my shoes. By the time they released me she’d gone home and nobody knew what she’d done with them. I still haven’t had them back.’

  Bernard looked down at Marcus’s feet, which were clad only in a pair of bright blue socks with an S for Superman logo on them. It struck him that no one had ever looked less like a superhero than Marcus did at the moment.

  ‘Well, that explains what the fragrant smell in here is,’ said Paterson. ‘Bernard, nip down to the front desk and see if you can reunite the man with his shoes, so we can all breathe easily again.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Marcus. ‘If I’d known the turn that events were going to take yesterday, I’d have worn clean socks. And underwear.’

  Bernard sincerely hoped that he meant clean underwear. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  It took three phone calls, and trips to two different offices to finally locate all of Marcus’s belongings. Bernard hurried back toward his temporary office, with the plastic bag of goods tucked under his arm. En route he caught sight of a newspaper stand and was reminded about Helen Sopel’s interview. He grabbed a Daily Citizen and paid his money at the Kiosk. He was keen to read the article before drawing Paterson’s attention to its existence; Mona’s debrief may not have included updating Paterson about the interview between Helen Sopel and her girlfriend. Or whatever Cassandra Doom actually was to Mona.

  He spread the paper out on a table but before he had time to locate the Cassandra Doom column, he heard his name being called. He turned in the direction of the voice and saw an apparition that was probably Ian Jacobsen. He wasn’t instantly recognisable under the facial bandages, purple bruising and the sling, although the dressings did correlate to where he’d hit him last night. If Marcus had looked bad, Ian looked a million times worse. And the most awful thing about his appearance was the expression with which he was regarding Bernard. If looks could kill he was going to be very, very, dead indeed.

  ‘Bernard,’ he snarled.

  ‘Wh . . .wh . . .what are you doing here?’ He scrunched up the newspaper and started looking round for a way out.

  ‘I work here. I’m a police officer, remember.’

  The ki
nd of police officer that tries to shoot unarmed civilians, he remembered that much only too well. Bernard wondered if he should say something. Should he shout, tell the other officers at Fettes that there was an armed criminal in the building? He decided his safest option was to get back to the meeting room where his colleagues were and try to tell Paterson what he thought was going on. He would know what to do. Unfortunately, Jacobsen was in between him and the safety of his line manager.

  ‘You don’t look well, Ian,’ he tried.

  ‘Are you taking the piss? It’s not surprising I look like shit, given what you did to me last night.’

  ‘But I . . .’

  ‘Six to eight weeks, Bernard, and this thing comes off.’ With his good hand, he pointed at his sling. ‘Six to eight weeks, then you better start watching out for yourself. You better start looking over your shoulder.’

  ‘OK.’ Bernard was happy to accept Ian’s suggestion. He was very much planning to keep looking over both shoulders for the foreseeable future.

  Ian’s only visible eye stared at him. ‘Is Mona in yet?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, as soon as she gets here, tell her she’s wanted at Stuttle’s office.’

  His stomach lurched. Was this the beginning of the process of sacking/jailing/possible executions? ‘Just Mona?’

  ‘For now. But I can find you anytime I need to.’ For emphasis, he poked Bernard with his remaining good hand. Bernard noted that it still packed quite a punch. He side-stepped around Ian and hurried back to their temporary office.

  ‘Mr Paterson, Ian Jacobsen is downstairs and I think he wants to kill me.’

  ‘From what I heard he’s got reason to.’ Paterson looked up from the laptop. ‘Ignore him. He’s not going to come anywhere near you under the circumstances.’

  Bernard did not feel particularly comforted by this. ‘But maybe I’ll have an accident some dark night in a few months’ time.’

  ‘Morning all.’ Maitland appeared in the office, followed by Carole, holding a plastic cup.