The Gulf Conspiracy

SIX

Steven left early next morning for Leicester. He wanted to find out if Sebring’s wife could elaborate on what she had referred to as her husband’s ‘troubled state of mind’. He also wanted to find out if she could remember any more about the Scotsman who had called on him and upset him. Although Jane Sebring had told the authorities that her husband had never spoken about his work at Porton, Steven reckoned that there was a possibility that she would have said that anyway — almost as an automatic response to the question. Like most partners of people whose work was secret she would almost certainly have picked up more over the years than she was letting on.

Before he questioned anyone about anything however, he would make himself known to the Leicester police who were dealing with the enquiry. He knew from past experience just how sensitive police forces could be when they felt an outsider was intruding on their patch. If he didn’t get off on the right foot he might well find himself tip toeing through a minefield of fragile egos for the foreseeable future should Sci-Med’s interest in the case continue.

If push came to shove, he had every right to expect — even demand — police cooperation but he preferred not to go down that road. Until he was sure that there really was a reason for Sci-Med to be involved in the case, he would present himself as little more than a Home Office observer, willing to give any help and advice he could. He saw from the road signs that he was entering the outskirts of Leicester and the car radio had just told him it was 10am. He made directly for police headquarters.

Detective Chief Inspector Glyn Norris, the officer in charge of the Sebring murder investigation, gave Steven a world-weary nod when he was shown into his office.

‘Take a pew,’ said Norris, handing back Steven’s ID, which had been brought through to him by way of introduction. ‘A little bird told me at the weekend that you lot were taking an interest in the case. She just omitted to say why.’

‘It’s no big secret,’ said Steven. ‘Sebring once worked at Porton Down. If his death should turn out to have anything to do with that fact we’d like to know about it and for the same reason you might just find your investigation a little hard going.’

‘You mean, no bugger would tell us anything,’ said Norris.

‘More or less,’ agreed Steven.

‘So you’re here to help,’ said Norris as if he didn’t believe a word of it.

‘In a way,’ said Steven.

Norris settled an owl-like stare on Steven. ‘What makes you think that Sebring’s work at Porton Down had anything to do with his death?’ he asked.

‘Nothing apart from the visit from a mysterious Scotsman that you must know about,’ said Steven. ‘His wife got the distinct impression that they had met at Porton Down and as he seemed to be the only suspect on the horizon…’

‘He’s no longer a suspect,’ said Norris.

‘You’ve traced him?’

‘Didn’t take long,’ said Norris. ‘He’s known to the police. He’s been a Gulf War activist for a long time. He’s pulled several stunts over the years to draw attention to what he sees as his cause. Ex-army sergeant, lives in Glasgow, works as a lab technician in one of the hospitals.’

‘But not a suspect?’

‘He was in Glasgow at the time of the murder; he could prove it beyond doubt.’

Steven nodded. ‘Did you ask him why he went to see Sebring?’

‘He thinks the boffins at Porton know more about Gulf War Syndrome than they’ve ever let on. His latest tack has been trying to call on them individually, hoping they’ll admit as much.’

‘How did he manage to find out who they were?’ asked Steven. ‘I shouldn’t think it’s something they go out of their way to advertise.’

‘He claims he was a member of something called the 1st Field Laboratory Unit during his Gulf War service and that he and the others had actually been trained at Porton Down. He claims he knew several of the scientific staff from his time there.’

‘Did it check out?’ asked Steven.

Norris shook his head. ‘Ministry of Defence say they’ve never heard of Maclean or the 1^st Field Laboratory Unit.’

‘So Maclean’s lying?’

‘One of them is,’ replied Norris. ‘And Maclean is no doubt as to who the “lying bastards”, as he put it, are in this instance.’

‘You sound as if you believe him,’ said Steven.

‘He was very convincing. He rhymed off names, times, dates, places, says there were forty of them, split into teams of five, all medics and technicians who were trained to detect evidence of chemical and biological attack in the Gulf War. ’

‘So why would the MOD deny it?’ said Steven.

‘I think it’s something to do with the ruling classes,’ said Norris, pushing the loud pedal on a working class accent as emotion got the better of him. ‘They’re taught at public school to deny everything. It’s their way of preventing others finding out what a bunch of screwed-up, anally retentive fuck-wits they actually are.’

‘It’s obviously not working too well in your case,’ said Steven. ‘You seem to have found them out.’

Norris seemed to wonder for a moment or two how he should take Steven’s comment then he said, ‘My brother-in-law fought in the Gulf. Tank commander, he was. He was invalided out the army within six months of coming home.’

‘I’m sorry. What happened?’

‘Absolutely nothing, according to the MOD. There’s no good reason at all for my sister now being the only breadwinner in that family. The fact that her husband now weighs four stone less than he did when he went to war and can’t walk the length of himself without falling down exhausted is all in his mind according to them.’

‘I’ve come across a more than a few stories like that in the past few days,’ said Steven.

‘Well, whatever,’ said Norris. ‘Maclean’s no longer in the frame for George Sebring’s murder. He was on duty in a hospital in Glasgow at the time. Staff and patients testified to that.’

‘So where does your inquiry go from here?’ asked Steven.

‘Unless we can come up with a secret double-life for Sebring — and between you and I, I don’t think we’re going to — it’s going to hit the wall,’ said Norris. ‘It’s the worst possible scenario for an investigating force; murder by a stranger without motive.’

Steven nodded sympathetically and got up to go. ‘Well, I won’t take up any more of your time,’ he said. ‘Best of luck.’

‘Back to London?’ asked Norris, coming out from behind his desk to see him to the door.

‘I’ll have a word with Sebring’s wife first.’

‘She’s busy,’ said Norris.

Steven looked at him questioningly.

Norris looked at his watch and said, ‘She’s burying George at noon.’

‘Damn, I should have thought,’ said Steven. ‘It’s not been that long since the death.’

Out in the car park, Steven looked up the location of the cemetery in the map of Leicester he’d picked up at a service station on the way in. It was less that two mile away and it was five minutes to twelve. He was still thinking in terms of speaking to Jane Sebring today if he could, but first he thought he would drive to the cemetery and get a feel for the situation. If it looked as if the widow might be too distressed, he would put things off until another day and go back to London.

It wasn’t until he had parked the car and walked over to the cemetery gates with the sun warm on his face that Steven realised what a nice day it was. The early cloud had cleared away and the birds were singing as he approached an internal road junction in what appeared to be a large but well-kept municipal cemetery. He looked left and then right to see if he could spot the Sebring cortege.

At this time in the year, the trees were in full foliage and it was difficult to get a clear view in either direction so he left the path and climbed a grassy knoll some twenty metres away, which he thought would afford him a better angle of vision. He caught sight of a funeral group about two hundred metres to the left and quickly returned to the path to hurry towards it. He didn’t want to disturb the proceedings so he veered on to the grass again and circled round behind a clump of yew trees where he could see that his final approach would be masked by a number of large granite monuments from another — probably Victorian — age.

From his vantage point Steven saw that some fifty people had assembled at the graveside where a clergyman in white robes set off by a purple stole was reading the burial service. He couldn’t help but feel that this was the way to take your leave of life. England was doing George Sebring proud. The blue of the summer sky, the lush green of the newly-mown grass, the black worn by the mourners, the weeping willows; all combined to paint the perfect farewell scene. He could imagine it hanging on the wall of some gallery. Steven could remember so many funerals where foul weather had stolen centre-stage, where the earth had turned to mud underfoot and the valediction had been snatched away by the wind. This was better: this was how it should be.

It was easy for him to pick out Jane Sebring because she had presence. Although slight in stature and lace-veiled under a broad-brimmed black hat, she seemed to stand out from the others. She was flanked — presumably by relatives — but none touched her or supported her in any way as if such a gesture might not have been welcome. Instead she stood alone and erect, hands clasped together in front of her, head slightly bowed. When her husband’s coffin was lowered into the ground she accepted a single yellow rose from a man at her side and after a slight pause, threw it down lightly on to the lid. She exchanged a few words with the vicar then turned to walk without falter towards the waiting cars. The other mourners followed suit.

Steven decided that he would try to speak to Jane Sebring. He would follow the official cars to see where the journey took him and then make plans accordingly. He had just come out through the cemetery gates — the last to do so — when he felt a hand on his shoulder and a rough voice told him to ‘stop right there’. He turned to find a thickset man wearing a light grey suit with a yellow shirt and a black tie that looked more suited to being worn by a young boy: it seemed so short and narrow. He was fumbling for something in his inside pocket and Steven noticed he smelt of sweat.

‘Who are you?’ he asked Steven.

‘I might ask the same of you,’ replied Steven.

‘Police. Just answer the question,’ said the man finally finding his warrant card and holding it up in front of Steven.

Steven took out his own ID and flipped it open.

His questioner’s demeanour changed in an instant. ‘Sorry sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve been on the lookout for strangers turning up at Sebring’s funeral. The boss thought his murderer might put in an appearance. Apparently it’s not uncommon.’

Steven nodded but thought otherwise. It might have been at one time, he acknowledged, but since TV detectives had started pointing this out every other week you’d have to be some kind of mental defective as well as a murderer to turn up at your victim’s funeral these days. He left the policeman and ran to his car, having noted that the cars had turned left at the end of the road and hoping he wasn’t going to lose them.

The road seemed quiet so Steven gunned his MGF down past the cemetery gates and up to the end of the road where his tyres squealed as he threw it into a tight left hand turn. There was nothing up ahead. ‘Damnation,’ he muttered as he accelerated again up to the first junction where he was just in time to see the back end of a dark blue Mazda make a right turn off the road to his left. He remembered such a car belonging to one of the mourners. Another brief sprint and he was sure it was the same one. The official limousines were a few cars up ahead.

When the convoy finally turned into a pleasant crescent of large, 1930s detached houses with bay windows and Virginia creeper much in evidence, Steven deduced that they were headed for Jane Sebring’s home rather than one of the local hotels, which ‘catered respectfully’ for the funeral trade. This would make it more difficult for him to mingle with the mourners. He had a decision to make. Should he gate-crash the wake or should he go away and come back later?

Steven gambled on attaching himself to the mourners, a decision encouraged by the fact that nearly everyone who had been at the cemetery seemed to have come back to the house so he shouldn’t stand out like too much of a sore thumb unless of course, they all knew each other intimately. He noted as he walked up the path behind a black-clad group of four that the house was called ‘Vermont’.

Now that she was no longer wearing her veil, Steven could see that Jane Sebring was a very good-looking woman, somewhere in her mid-thirties, he reckoned, with fair hair, blue intelligent eyes that gave nothing away and such poise and self-control that he could not help but imagine what she might be like if she ever let her guard down. Although she did have an air of sadness about her, she was clearly not the kind of person to parade her grief in public and busied herself enquiring after the health of ageing family members and generally thanking people for coming as well as making sure they had enough to eat and drink.

‘You know, I reckon old George was a spy,’ said one of the men in the group Steven had loosely attached himself to. He’d gathered that the man was one of Sebring’s colleagues at the university and had already pigeonholed him as belonging to the ‘all brains and no sense’ branch of academia.

‘It’s always the quiet ones that have a past,’ continued the man. ‘George never spoke much about what he did before joining us, a sure sign if you ask me.’

‘He’s right,’ said another. ‘He was very cagey about that. So you reckon it was the KGB that did for George then?’

‘Or some such outfit. There was that chap who fell foul of the Bulgarians, if you remember; they got him with a poisoned umbrella tip.’

‘Didn’t strike me as the James Bond type,’ said another man. ‘I mean, he was a member of the university choir for God’s sake.’

Steven detached himself from the group and joined an elderly lady who was looking out of the window at the garden. ‘Everything’s looking nice,’ he said.

‘George hated gardening,’ said the woman, without looking at him. ‘Jane does it all. She’s good at it but then she’s good at most things. Were you one of George’s colleagues, Mr…?’

‘Dunbar, Steven Dunbar, a long time ago,’ lied Steven. ‘And you?’

‘I’m his mother.’

‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise,’ said Steven, feeling embarrassed and even a little ashamed of the circumstances. ‘It’s a tragedy,’ he said. ‘No mother should live to see her son buried. It must be an especially cruel kind of grief.’

The woman turned and looked at him for the first time. Steven was aware of her giving him an appraising look before she said, ‘It is. Pardon me for saying this but you sound as if you’ve had more than a passing acquaintance with grief yourself?’

‘My wife,’ said Steven. ‘Cancer. We’d only been married two years.’

‘Another special kind of grief.’

Steven didn’t say anything. It had been the worst time of his life.

Up until he’d started to speak to Sebring’s mother, Steven had kept watch on where Jane Sebring was in the room. He wanted to avoid making contact with her until the others started to leave. His lapse in concentration was brought home to him when a pleasant voice at his elbow said, ‘Can I get you two anything?’

Steven turned to look directly at Jane, feeling immediately that she could see right through him with her deep blue eyes. ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he said. He had been nursing the same glass of sherry since he came in.

‘I don’t think we’ve…’ began Jane.

‘Mr Dunbar was a colleague of George’s once upon a time,’ said Sebring’s mother before Steven could say anything.

‘It was nice of you to come, Mr Dunbar,’ said Jane. ‘Where would that have been?’

‘Porton Down,’ said Steven.

‘Ah, someone else from those days,’ said Jane, starting alarm bells in Steven’s head. ‘You must know Donald Crowe over there then?’

Steven followed Jane’s line of sight to a tall, gaunt, cadaverous-looking man who seemed to be preoccupied with examining book titles on the shelves along the back wall of the room. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, having to think quickly. ‘Our times mustn’t have overlapped.’

‘I see,’ said Jane Sebring. ‘So you’re not here to help him make sure George didn’t leave any secrets behind. That’s why he’s really here.’

Jane moved off before Steven could respond: her comment had come out of the blue. Sebring’s mother beside him said, ‘Jane’s a remarkable woman. It would be a silly man who thought he could fool her.’

‘Quite so,’ said Steven. He didn’t dare look at her.

‘Why don’t we walk in the garden? It seems such a shame to be indoors on such a glorious day,’ suggested Sebring’s mother.

‘If you’re sure Jane wouldn’t mind?’ said Steven.

‘She won’t.’

Steven sensed that Maud Sebring — as he now knew her — needed to talk about her dead son so he was happy to let her. Apart from anything else, it kept him away from potentially embarrassing situations and, from the garden, through the French windows, he could see what was going on inside. He was interested in when people were going to start leaving.

Maud was telling him about a family picnic of long ago when he saw a large group inside begin to move towards the front door. Jane was accompanying them. She paused by the side of the door and was kissed on the cheek by each in turn. Steven could see the herd instinct take over among the remaining mourners and they all started to file out, uttering last condolences as they did so.

‘So this is where you’ve got to, Mother,’ said Jane when she finally came out into the garden. She was smiling.

‘We couldn’t resist the sun, dear,’ replied Maud. ‘I was just telling Mr Dunbar here about the time George decided he was going to live up a tree like Tarzan and then got stuck.’

‘The stuff of family legend, Mr Dunbar,’ said Jane, then, turning to her mother-in-law, she said, ‘Mother, Jimmy says he’ll give you a lift home now if you’re ready to go. It’ll save you getting a taxi later on.’

‘How very kind,’ said Maud Sebring. She disappeared indoors to find her coat, leaving Steven and Jane alone in the garden.

Jane Sebring turned to Steven and said, ‘You didn’t know my husband at all, did you Mr Dunbar?’

‘How did you know?’ asked Steven.

‘Donald Crowe was my husband’s boss at Porton; he still works there. You couldn’t have failed to have come across him had you been there yourself at any time when George was.’

‘Well spotted,’ said Steven. ‘I apologise for the deception.’

‘Who are you?’

Steven showed Jane his ID.

‘So, it’s Doctor Dunbar,’ said Jane. ‘From another government organisation full of spies and secrets that must never be revealed, no doubt.’

‘Not really,’ said Steven. ‘We’re usually quite open about things. We just tend to help out when the police might be out of their depth.’

‘And why should they be that in George’s case?’

‘It did seem possible that his death might have had something to do with his time at Porton Down, Mrs Sebring. The visit you had from the Scotsman, Maclean, seemed to suggest that, although the police no longer think that’s the case.’

‘They found Maclean?’

‘Apparently he’s a well-known Gulf War activist. He was at home in Glasgow when your husband died.’

‘The war was all such a long time ago,’ sighed Jane. ‘But Mr Maclean seemed so angry about everything — as if it happened yesterday.’

‘Did you get the impression that your husband knew him when he turned up on your doorstep?’ asked Steven.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Jane. ‘They’d clearly met before.’

‘They argued?’

Jane nodded. ‘From what I overheard, Mr Maclean seemed to think that my husband had been involved in something untoward during his time at Porton. He kept insisting that he should come clean. George insisted that he was imagining things but Mr Maclean accused him of lying.’

‘Did your husband say anything afterwards?’ asked Steven.

‘Nothing. He refused to discuss it.’

‘I take it you personally have no idea what George worked on at Porton.’

‘As I told Donald Crowe earlier, none at all.’

‘What made you think Crowe was here to check up on things?’ asked Steven.

Jane gave an involuntary laugh. ‘He told me to my face,’ she said. ‘He asked if he could go through George’s papers to make sure there was nothing there of a ‘sensitive nature’ as he so delicately put it.’

‘You don’t like Crowe,’ said Steven.

‘He gives me the creeps. You’d find more humanity in a bar of soap.’

‘Did he find anything?’

Jane shrugged and said, ‘I’ve no idea. I just told him to help himself.’

‘You told the police that there was a change in your husband after Maclean’s visit. He seemed worried? Angry?’

Jane smiled wanly and said, ‘George wasn’t really a man who ever got angry. He was very… even-tempered.’

Steven sensed that there was much more lying behind Jane’s choice of words but — although he was interested — it was not the right time to ask. ‘Worried then?’

‘Alarmed would be a better word,’ said Jane. ‘He had trouble sleeping after Maclean’s visit. I was worried about him but he wouldn’t open up to me. That was George.’

Jane looked at Steven in what he found a very strange way. He imagined there was some kind of debate going on inside her head. Eventually she said simply, ‘He called a newspaper, The Guardian. I know because I listened in. He asked to speak to a journalist who had done a number of stories on the Gulf War over the years. His name’s Martin Hendry.’

‘I know the name,’ said Steven.

‘He wasn’t there but George left word saying that he had a major story for him and that he should give him a call back. Hendry did call back, about two hours later. I answered the phone. I heard George make arrangements to meet him the following day.’

‘George didn’t tell you face to face?’ asked Steven.

Jane shook here head. ‘No,’ she said.

Steven saw the hurt in her eyes. He said, ‘As you say, he was very upset at the time.’