The Secret

THIRTEEN

‘Mummy, can Mark come in to play after school today?’ asked seven-year-old David Leeming.

‘If his mummy says it’s all right,’ his mother, Julie, replied.

‘Can Sally come in too?’ piped up David’s younger sister, Joanne.

‘No, Sally was here yesterday. It’s David’s turn to have a friend in. Maybe tomorrow.’

‘That’s not fair,’ complained Joanne, pouting her lower lip.

‘Yes, it is,’ insisted her brother.

‘If you two don’t get a move on, you’re going to keep Daddy waiting and you know he hates being late. He’ll stop your pocket money if he is and serves you right.’

Julie hid a small smile as the bickering stopped and was replaced with slurping sounds as the pair finished their cereal in double quick time.

John Leeming, short, bespectacled and balding came into the kitchen, a briefcase hanging open from one hand as he stuffed papers into it with the other. ‘You guys about ready?’

‘They certainly are,’ replied Julie, exchanging a knowing smile with her children.

The sound of the letterbox opening and closing interrupted them and Julie said, ‘Jo, be a darling and fetch Daddy’s paper.’

Joanne disappeared into the hall and was away for longer than expected.

‘Jo, what are you doing?’

Julie’s question was answered when she looked up to see her five year old standing there with excrement all over her hands and a shocked, puzzled look on her face as she started to sob.

‘Oh, Christ, John, they’ve done it again,’ exclaimed Julie as she rushed her daughter off to the downstairs lavatory. ‘The bastards… the absolute bastards.’

Mark, upset by the goings on and the fact that his mother was behaving so out of character, sat wide-eyed at the table and asked with a quavering voice, ‘Why, Daddy? Why did they do that?’

His father, filled with anger and frustration, snapped, ‘I don’t know, Mark. I really don’t.’

Dr John Leeming was fast approaching his wits’ end. A research virologist with over twenty years’ experience who had been working for the last five years to establish the cause of myalgic encephalomyelitis, couldn’t understand why he and his family had become the target in recent months of fanatics who seemed to have decided that the failure of researchers like him and others to find the cause of the condition had been deliberate. This was the second time the ‘nutters’, as he thought of them, had put excrement through their letterbox. He snatched at the phone, intent on venting his anger at the police and murmuring, ‘They’ll be up on the bloody ring road booking motorists for being two miles an hour over the limit…’

‘It’s damned well happened again…’ he began as he got an answer and Julie returned with their cleaned-up daughter.

‘This can’t go on, John,’ she murmured as her husband ended his call and the children, now blazered and carrying their lunch boxes, preceded them out into the hall.

‘I know, I know. I’ll speak to the prof today. Maybe it’s time we reassessed our research priorities.’

As they opened the front door, John noticed an envelope stuck to the outside with Sellotape. He exchanged a look with Julie before unsticking it and gingerly examining the outside for contamination. He tore it open.

‘Bastards,’ repeated Julie.

Molly Freeman, senior lecturer in microbiology at the University of Birmingham, turned over in bed and stretched out her arm to find an empty space. It was something she wished she could stop doing: it only made her angry and got the day off to a bad start. It had been fully three months since her husband Barry had succumbed to the charms of Marion Philby, one of his PhD students- ‘the tart’ as Molly knew her — and decided that the grass would be greener without Molly on it any more. He and the tart had set up home in a small flat in Edgbaston while she remained in the family home — a detached villa on a housing estate on the edge of the city — with their ten-year-old son Jamie until such time as they could ‘come to an arrangement’ as her husband had put it. She knew Barry was hoping for a ‘civilised’ agreement while her own preferred ‘arrangement’ would involve taking him to the cleaners and nailing him upside down to a tree along with the tart. In fact, she had a meeting planned with her lawyer that afternoon to that end.

‘Jamie, are you up yet?’ she called out as she slid out of bed and found her wrap.

A sleepy reply of ‘Yes’ failed to convince and she put her head round her son’s bedroom door to say to the recumbent form under the covers, ‘If that’s up, the laws of physics will have to be rewritten.’ She didn’t say it unkindly. She was only too aware of how badly Jamie had taken his father’s defection.

‘Five more minutes…’ came the groan.

‘Three.’

‘Deal.’

Later, as they sat having breakfast, Molly tried to maintain light conversation although she did most of the talking while her son would grunt at intervals when pressed.

‘I thought we might catch a film this weekend; what d’you think?’

‘What’s on?’

‘I don’t know, but we can look in the paper later and decide. Okay?’

‘Mmm.’

Do you want a lift or are you taking your bike?’

‘Lift please.’

‘Right, get a move on. I’ve got a research group meeting at nine.’

Molly held the door for her son as he combined putting on his school rucksack with stuffing a last piece of toast into his mouth. ‘You didn’t clean your shoes last night,’ she observed as he passed her, before something more important struck them both.

‘The tyres are flat,’ said Jamie.

‘More than flat,’ said his mother, walking up to her Renault Clio in the drive and seeing that they’d been slashed. A message had been scratched into the bonnet. THE TYRES ARE NOT FLAT. IT’S ALL IN YOUR MIND.

‘Oh, Christ,’ murmured Julie.

‘What does it mean, Mum? Did Dad do that?’

‘No, Jamie,’ said Julie quickly, alarmed that what had passed between Barry and herself could have put such an idea into his head. ‘Someone doesn’t like my research very much.’

‘I’m scared, Mum.’

Julie put her arm round his shoulders. ‘I’m not too chipper myself,’ she murmured. ‘Maybe it’s time for a change…’

Professor Maurice Langley, head of research at the Medical Research Council’s Investigative Microbiology Unit at Hammersmith Hospital, decided his day was done and packed a few papers into his briefcase before putting on his coat and heading for the exit. He said good night to the man on the door — an ex-soldier who always straightened himself to his full height before replying — and crossed the car park to where his new black BMW 5 series sat, front wheels turned at a jaunty angle as if impatient to be driven off into the night by a man who went his own way.

It gave him pleasure to see it there. Like many academics he’d been used to driving a series of second-hand bangers throughout his career — something that went with the image of being too cerebral to care about material things — but at the age of fifty he and his wife had decided that a successful man deserved a bit of respect from Joe Public and the new Beemer fitted the bill perfectly.

Langley got in and sat for a moment enjoying the feeling of being cocooned in a world of silence and leather. He turned on Mozart who had been patiently waiting in the CD player and prepared to set off for home. The only thing to spoil the moment was the knife in the gloved hand that reached over from the back seat. It now nestled against his throat, cold and very threatening.

‘Take a left and drive till I tell you different.’

Langley’s pulse rate was pushing two hundred and he had to fight to control his bladder and bowels. ‘What d’you want?’ he stammered. ‘Is it the car? Look, you can have it; just don’t hurt me. Let me go…’

‘The car?’ snorted the voice in the back. ‘Is this what you deserve for being fuck all use, you wanker? Just drive.’

After twenty minutes, Langley was instructed to pull over and stop. They were passing through a deserted area with woodland on both sides. Seeing woodland brought up images of decomposing bodies in shallow graves for Langley. He thought the worst. ‘Oh my God, no,’ he pleaded, his voice going up an octave.

‘Shut up and move across to the passenger seat.’

Langley did as he was told, his collar being held firmly.

‘Put your hands behind your head.’

Langley felt his wrists being tied to the head restraint pillars. He was then blindfolded and could only listen as his assailant got out and into the driving seat. He was aware of the car turning round and heading back into the city. ‘Where are you taking me?’

His question remained unanswered and he sat in terrified silence for another ten minutes until he heard the wheels of the car crunch on gravel and they came to a halt. He was untied and told to get out. The blindfold stayed on.

‘You got him then?’ asked a new voice.

‘Piece of cake. Got the jag ready?’

‘And the suit,’ came the reply.

Confusion was added to the terror Langley was in. What was that about a Jag? Why were they putting him in a Jaguar? It was only when he felt the sharp needle stab in his buttock that he realised he’d got the meaning of ‘jag’ all wrong. The lights went out.

When Langley came to he was no longer blindfolded and he could move freely. The problem was, he couldn’t see properly. There were bright lights everywhere but he couldn’t focus on anything. He was in a world of rainbow-coloured blurs. There was noise — lots of it: traffic noise and people laughing. He searched for his phone in his pocket but found he had no pockets. These weren’t his clothes. He was wearing some strange kind of outfit or costume.

The people in Leicester Square could see it was a clown costume and it was being worn by a man who was staggering around with a message taped to his back. It said, I’M LOOKING FOR THE CAUSE OF ME.

People were laughing, assuming that it must be part of some stag-night prank… although the age of the clown and his apparent distress perhaps suggested not… but, of course, it was better not to get involved. That was the British way. They body-swerved past the clown on their way to their night out.

Langley was totally disorientated. The swirling bright lights and the feeling of nausea prevented him from making any meaningful contact with the vague figures that flitted in and out of his distorted vision. He reached out and touched someone who smacked his hand away.

‘What’s your game then?’

Langley recoiled from the angry voice and changed direction, only to feel himself stumble as he unwittingly stepped off the pavement… unfortunately, into the path of a bus. The sound of the horn, the screech of brakes, the thud of the impact as the front of the bus hit Langley and the cries of bus passengers thrown from their seats all blended into some hellish cacophony before fading to nothing as stunned onlookers froze and looked down at the broken body of a very dead clown.