Death at the Plague Museum

by Lesley Kelly

  ‘Oh, look who it is. We were about to start looking underneath desks to see if you were asleep somewhere.’

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that, Guv.’

  ‘Stuttle wants to see you when you’re feeling better.’

  ‘OK.’ He grinned.

  ‘Why are you looking so cheerful? Stuttle’s not inviting you round for tea and cake, you know.’

  ‘I get that, but I’ve just escaped a near death experience, so of course I’m cheerful. And having just cheated death makes you think about things. So, as soon as I got out of hospital I decided to seize the day. Long and short of it is, I’ve, ehm, asked Kate to marry me, and I’m delighted to say she said yes.’

  ‘That is wonderful news,’ said Carole. She leapt up to hug him.

  Maitland was still beaming from ear to ear. ‘She wants to finish her degree and everything first but I think we’re looking at a summer wedding next year.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Paterson. ‘Have you been thinking about this for a while?’

  ‘Yes,’ muttered Bernard. ‘Ever since he found out she wouldn’t sleep with him until they were married.’

  Maitland winked at him. ‘It’s going to be the best wedding night ever.’

  Bernard wondered if there was any way at all he could talk Kate out of making the biggest mistake of her life.

  Paterson slapped a £20 note on the table. ‘In light of the happy event, it’s bacon rolls all round and I’m buying. You two,’ he pointed at Maitland and Carole, ‘shift your arses down to the canteen.’

  Bernard waited until they left, then turned to Paterson. ‘Mona has to go and see Mr Stuttle.’

  ‘I know. Stuttle phoned here as well. She’s on her way.’

  ‘What do you think Mr Stuttle’s going to say to her?’ he asked.

  ‘I have no idea, Bernard, nobody ever tells me anything.’ Paterson sighed. ‘I suspect it’s not a tea and cake invite for her either, but if it’s an out-and-out bollocking about yesterday’s fiasco I would have thought you’d be in the firing line too. Hopefully she will come back to us with some answers to whatever the hell has been going on. But until someone tells us otherwise I suggest we get on with doing the day job. Has anyone tried to see if the computer systems are working yet?’

  ‘I’ll have a look,’ said Marcus. ‘Does anyone have a laptop?’

  ‘Here, take mine,’ said Paterson.

  ‘I bought a newspaper,’ said Bernard. ‘I think there’s going to be an interview with Helen Sopel in it today.’

  ‘In the Citizen? Why’s she talking to that pile of . . .?’ Realisation hit him. ‘It’s Cassandra Doom, isn’t it?’

  ‘Actually, yes, Mr Paterson, I’m afraid so. Ms Sopel wanted everything out in the open, you know, she wanted everyone to know what the Carmichaels had been up to.’

  ‘Is this Mona’s doing?’

  ‘Ehm . . .’

  Paterson snatched the paper out of his hand, and swept through the pages, muttering as he went. He found the column, smoothed out the by now rather battered page and started reading.

  ‘Hamfisted HET officers do it again.’

  ‘That’s an odd headline,’ said Bernard. He moved to the other side of the table so he could read it for himself. ‘Mona saved Helen Sopel’s life – I thought this would be a positive article about us.’

  ‘It gets better. The Stormtroopers of the HET have really surpassed themselves this time. Not content to stick to harassing the general public, they have now endangered a brand new multi-million pound Virus research partnership with the University of Liwawe by holding the civil servant leading on it hostage until she participated in one of their pointless Health Checks.

  Helen Sopel said, “This really was ridiculous. I missed my flight and some crucial meetings. We are fully supportive of the Health Check regime, but I am needed urgently in Democratic Republic of Africa to begin the research project. I had to call on Carlotta Carmichael to resolve the situation. She will be having a very serious conversation with the Scottish Health Enforcement Partnership about the HET’s heavy-handed approach.”

  Another triumph of jackboots over common sense for the HET.’

  Paterson screwed the paper up into a ball, and flung it at the wall.

  ‘I don’t understand – none of that is true,’ said Bernard. ‘In fact, it’s the exact opposite of the truth! And why is she suddenly best friends with Carlotta Carmichael?’

  ‘Because she’s struck a deal, Bernard. She’s obviously made one last call to Carlotta and they’ve agreed some arrangement where Sopel keeps her mouth shut about what’s been happening, and by the sounds of things, gets the job as project director of this new research project. She’s probably on a plane to Africa even as we speak.’

  ‘But why would Cassandra Doom change the story?’

  ‘Because she’s a dirty, low-life, sell her own mother for a story, gutter journalist, Bernard. And, in case we forget, Mona’s girlfriend.’

  Marcus’s clattering on the laptop keyboard stopped. ‘She’s what?’

  ‘Friend who happens to be a girl,’ said Bernard, quickly. Finding out about Mona’s sexuality at this precise moment might just tip Marcus over the edge. He’d work up to telling him, maybe in two to three months’ time.

  ‘Whatever.’ Paterson continued. ‘The journalist will have had some kind of bribe as well. Then everyone who knows anything about the previous research trials will have been bought off or silenced. On the one hand we’ve got a Museum Director with the best funded small museum in Scotland, and on the other, a Professor who’s too scared to open his mouth in case his family get hurt. Mona is probably being offered her bribe over at SHEP HQ even as we speak. And the only other people who know anything are right here in this room. I’m not particularly happy with that thought.’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure that I know what’s going on, Mr Paterson,’ said Marcus.

  ‘So, what do we do?’ asked Bernard.

  ‘I don’t know, Bernard, I really don’t. We hope for the best, and keep doing the day job.’

  ‘That might not be that easy,’ said Marcus. ‘There’s something very, very, strange happening with the computer systems. I’ve tried logging in as myself, then as the administrator. I’ve tried to get into the North Edinburgh HET site, then the other Lothian ones, then I tried Aberdeen just for a change, and the same thing keeps happening.’

  ‘Cut to the chase, Marcus. What thing keeps happening?’

  ‘This.’ He spun the laptop round to show them a completely black screen.

  ‘Is it dead?’ asked Paterson.

  ‘Give it a minute.’

  White words started flashing up on the screen.

  WATCH

  THIS

  SPACE

  Paterson flung his hands up. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  Marcus and Bernard looked at each other and shrugged.

  ‘I’m phoning Stuttle.’ Paterson starting pressing buttons on his mobile. ‘This is ridiculous.’

  Bernard reached down to his feet for the balled-up newspaper, and started unfurling it. ‘I wonder if Mona has seen this yet?’

  2

  Mona was not furious.

  She spread the newspaper out across her knees and read the article for the second time, confirming to herself that she was definitely, absolutely, not furious. Because fury did not begin to describe the level of rage she was currently feeling. There would have to be a whole new word invented and inserted into the dictionary to adequately describe how she felt at the moment. There just wasn’t a pre-existing term to describe the emotion that had resulted from being betrayed both personally and professionally by someone she had misguidedly allowed herself to trust. Someone that she had been considering allowing into her life.

  She pressed Elaine’s number on her mobile. ‘It’s Mona.’

  There was a brief silence. ‘You’ve seen the paper then, darling.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen the bloody paper! What the hell�
�s going on?’

  Elaine sighed. ‘I was played. She told me half the story, then disappeared off to the bathroom. While she was there I’m guessing she made one last desperate phone call to the Carmichaels, because ten minutes later Jonathon and a couple of heavies arrived and told me and my editor that there’s no story.’

  ‘You’re a journalist! You’re not supposed to cave in to that kind of pressure!’

  ‘Really, darling? You’re a bit of a late convert to freedom of the press. Sometimes you just have to roll with these things.’

  ‘But it was a story you would have killed to get.’

  ‘There are better stories.’

  The penny dropped. ‘And you’ve been offered one.’

  ‘Several, actually.’

  ‘Well, fuck you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mona. This is the world I live in. I didn’t want things to work out like this, because I really do like you and if you want to take a bit of time to calm down, maybe we can see each other again, well away from work?’

  ‘That’s so not going to be happening.’

  ‘Well, that’s a shame. But whatever happens, Mona, promise me that you will be careful. We might have got the promise of a couple of good stories, but it was underpinned by a lot of threats. If we’d insisted on publishing I think things would have got pretty nasty.’

  She ended the call, and hurried the last few yards to SHEP’s offices. Before she turned into the courtyard in front of the building she stopped.

  Theresa.

  Paterson.

  Elaine.

  In the last twenty-four hours, the three of them had all urged her to be careful. All trying to be helpful, of course, and all of them probably right to worry about her. But the one thing that no one had been able to tell her, the crucial missing piece of information, was who exactly it was that she was in danger from. She looked at the magnificent wooden door in front of her. Until the beginning of this week, she’d have regarded the people at SHEP as on her side, but now she wasn’t so sure. What if the people in this meeting were the very people she should be careful around? There was a possibility she wouldn’t come back out of this meeting a free woman.

  She looked back out onto the High Street, indecision staying her feet. She could skip this meeting, but sooner or later they’d catch up with her. At least this way Paterson knew where she was. Before she could change her mind, she strode across the quad and into the building.

  The conversation stopped when Mona walked into Stuttle’s office. There were three people in the room: Stuttle, Ian Jacobsen and Bob Ellis.

  ‘What are they doing here?’ said Mona.

  ‘We need to talk to you,’ said Ian, his mouth moving awkwardly in his battered face. He’d been patched up pretty well since yesterday but there was no doctor in the land who would have signed him fit for work. But considering the rules, regulations and criminal laws that Ian had broken the previous night, he probably wasn’t too worried about the niceties of HR processes. Again, a new word was called for to describe the emotion relating to seeing someone who was so obviously in pain but had totally brought it on himself. The mixed emotion of feeling sympathy toward someone brought so low, and a very real anxiety that despite all that he could still do her harm. This was not a safe place to be.

  ‘I’m not interested in anything that someone who pointed a gun at me last night has to say.’ She turned to leave, only to find the sturdy form of Bob Ellis between her and the door. ‘Could you get out of my way, please?’ She folded her arms and tried to project a confidence she didn’t feel. Bob was a big man, with bulging muscles in all the right places. And one bulge that suggested, as Bernard would have it, that he was packing heat. Bob just smiled and showed no intention of moving.

  ‘Mona, sit down, for God’s sake.’ Stuttle gestured toward a seat. ‘We want to talk to you about Milwood Orders.’

  There was no way she was getting out of the room, so she decided to pretend her interest had been piqued by this. ‘Milwood Orders? What are they?’

  He regarded her for a moment, then laughed. ‘You are better at bluffing than your boss, I’ll say that much for you, Mona. I’m going to assume from your close personal friendship with Professor Bircham-Fowler that you’re well aware of what I’m talking about.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Ian and Bob have both been involved in supporting and protecting the participants in some of our Milwood projects.’

  ‘Minding them, you mean. Checking no one stepped out of line.’

  ‘I prefer my wording. Now, the exceptional nature of a Milwood project requires an exceptional approach to policing, perhaps a little bit more robust than would usually be the case . . .’

  ‘Like threatening to shoot unarmed civilians, for example?’

  ‘I was doing my job!’ Even under the bruising, Mona could see irritability written across Ian’s face. ‘I’m not sure you lot shouldn’t be up on some kind of charge for interfering with the investigation. And Bernard should be charged with assault for what he did to me.’

  ‘Now now, Ian,’ said Stuttle. ‘This comes with the territory. Mona was right – they didn’t know what was happening. Everyone was taken by surprise, and, unfortunately, this is where it ended up. All we can do now is try to limit the damage.’

  ‘Bernard won’t be charged, will he?’ asked Mona.

  ‘That rather depends on you. And Bernard. And, in fact, Marcus.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  There was a long and, she thought, slightly wistful sigh from Stuttle. ‘One of our other Milwood operatives has gone rogue. We believe you and your colleagues are in a position to help us track him down.’

  ‘Who?’ She racked her brains to think who she could possibly assist with. The realisation hit her. ‘Bryce? Bryce was part of Milwood?’

  Stuttle gave a small, slow nod.

  ‘What a total cock-up! One of yours was it, Ian?’ She grinned at him, and he returned a look of utter hatred in her direction. It was a look filled not just with contempt, but also rage. She’d seen that look before, when he had been pushing her backwards over the banister at the Museum. It was a look that screamed lack of self-control, and she wondered for the second time about Ian’s stability. Nathan McVie had fallen to his death rather than meet with him. Helen Sopel had been terrified when he turned up at the Museum. She’d better stop baiting him. And warn Bernard to watch his back.

  She looked at Stuttle to see if he’d seen the look, but his head was down over his papers. She looked toward Bob, who was staring thoughtfully at Ian. He’d seen it too. She caught his eye and he quickly looked away.

  ‘Bryce has been embedded with the HET for some months now, keeping an eye out for us on the communications made by staff, to make sure that no one is up to anything that’s going to interfere with police enquiries. Usually that interference occurs due to incompetence by the HETs rather that the sterling work of your team. Anyway, he was feeding us a lot of misinformation about Marcus which we think was meant as a distraction,’ said Stuttle. ‘We think he’s begun to identify a bit too much with some of the groups that he has been following.’

  ‘On Milwood Orders?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes. We have a Milwood operative out there gone rogue, and we need to get him back. We think your skills would be useful in doing that, Mona. What do you think about joining us? Obviously, we would get you Milwood clearance. Marcus and Bernard know Bryce better than anyone else but may be reluctant to assist us without some guidance from you.’

  ‘Do Bernard and Marcus get an apology for how they have been treated?’

  ‘Don’t push it, Mona.’

  She folded her arms and glared at him.

  He stared back. ‘There may be a personal interest in this for you, Mona. It was Bryce’s shenanigans that led to you almost getting shot.’ He smiled, confident that he had her interest.

  Dammit. He did. A definitive answer to what had actually been going on the night that she and the Professor ha
d been ambushed was just about the only thing that would persuade her to go anywhere near Ian Jacobsen ever again.

  ‘Can I think about it?’

  ‘Not for long. Sleep on it – give me an answer tomorrow.’

  Sensing she was free to go she stood up. Ian followed suit, and Bob held the door open.

  ‘Bob – a word before you go.’ Stuttle gestured him back in.

  He nodded to Mona and closed the door, leaving her alone with Ian in the deserted office usually occupied by Stuttle’s long-suffering secretary.

  ‘Well, that was interesting,’ she said. Ian ignored her, staring fixedly at the door. It stuck in her craw to even be civil to him, but she realised it might be best not to antagonise him further. She wanted in on this Milwood stuff, and if that meant working with him, she’d just have to swallow it, even if his recent behaviour suggested he was verging on the unhinged.

  ‘Look, Ian, about what I said back there, I didn’t mean anything by it.’

  He didn’t respond, but walked past her out to the magnificent stairway that led back to the main entrance.

  She hurried after him. ‘OK, I’m sorry. We could end up working together on this Bryce thing, so we might as well be civil.’ With any luck Stuttle would get him signed off for a good long break.

  Again Ian said nothing. He was stock still, his eyes on the floor. There was a blankness to his expression, as if all the emotion in him had been emptied out. He looked like a man who had been pushed too far, and that couldn’t be good for any of them. She wondered again about Ian and Bob’s actual affiliations. She’d guess they both had a military background, but who they were actually working for now she still wasn’t sure. Not the kind of person to take kindly to the humiliation he’d suffered yesterday. Cursing herself for winding him up, she gave up on her apologies, and started walking down the stairs.

  ‘I think you need some time off, Ian, to get over this. Give me a ring when—’

  A hand hit her hard between her shoulder blades, pushing her up and off the stairs. Shock gave way to fear as she lost her footing and rolled over and over down the stairwell. She flung out an arm to try to grab at something, anything, that could slow her down. The wall loomed up ahead of her, and an image of her mother, frail and alone in her home, came into Mona’s mind for the briefest of seconds, before she felt the back of her head connect with the plaster.