The Secret

FOURTEEN

Steven arrived at City College just before ten and, as before, was asked to wait until someone from the North group came down to escort him to the lab. It was the Irish PhD student he’d met last time, Liam Kelly.

‘I’m afraid Tom’s not in yet,’ said Liam. ‘Most unlike him, but he shouldn’t be long. Must have been held up in traffic.’

Steven was shown into North’s office and invited to sit. Liam handed him the current copy of Nature. ‘Maybe you’d like to have a look while you wait?’

Steven thanked him and started to flick through the magazine. Ten minutes later as he was reading about the continuing search for the Higgs boson particle, he heard a female voice out in the lab say, ‘Liam, Tom’s car’s in the car park. ’

Steven looked up to see Liam Kelly join the girl he remembered as Jenny Davis, the student who was working on herpes simplex. They were both looking out the window.

‘Stupid — it’s just dawned on me. It’s been there for a while. He must be in the building somewhere.’

‘It’s not like him to forget he had a meeting,’ said Kelly. ‘I’ll get them to page him.’

Another five minutes went by with still no sign of North. Liam apologised profusely to Steven and said he would go look for his supervisor. In the meantime, Steven chatted to Jenny about her work but stopped in mid-sentence when, over her shoulder, he saw Liam Kelly down in the car park cross over to North’s car and look in the window. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up when he saw Liam recoil at something he’d discovered. The boy turned away from the car and threw up on the ground before supporting himself on a neighbouring car with both hands.

‘Something’s wrong,’ Steven blurted out to Jenny who had her back to the window. He rushed out of the lab and ran down the stairs rather than wait for a lift. Ignoring Liam’s predicament, he ran straight to North’s car and looked in the driver’s window to see North slumped over the wheel. It was clear he had been shot through the back of the head.

There was no possibility of his still being alive so Steven did not disturb the body. North was facing away from him with his right cheek on the steering wheel so he walked round to the other side of the car and saw the dead face of Tom North with the bullet's exit wound in the middle of his forehead. Something else caught his attention and caused him to shudder. Half the index finger on North’s left hand had been cut off: it was lying on the floor of the car. He’d been tortured before he’d been shot. Steven called the police and remained by the car until they arrived, making sure that no one interfered with the scene of the crime.

Liam had now been joined by the others from the lab, Dan Hausman, Jenny and two of the technicians, as well as people from elsewhere in the building. Steven ushered the curious away from the car, leaving it to Liam to tell them what had happened. The police arrived within minutes, led by an inspector from the Metropolitan Police who barked instructions to his officers.

After the initial hustle and bustle and taping-off of the crime scene, Steven was surprised to see them suddenly resort to doing virtually nothing. He showed the inspector his ID and asked what the problem was.

‘I’ve been instructed to wait.’

‘For what?’

‘Good question.’

The question was answered minutes later when a chief superintendent from Special Branch arrived accompanied by another man in plain clothes who didn’t introduce himself. He didn’t need to as far as Steven was concerned: he knew him. It was John Ricksen, an MI5 officer.

Ricksen did a double take when he saw Steven and came over. The two men shook hands but felt uneasy about each other’s presence. They had crossed paths before on assignment, and although not friends had a civilised relationship and had done each other small favours in the past. MI5 didn’t care much for Sci-Med, seeing them as a loose cannon, while Sci-Med people tended to believe that MI5 weren’t overly blessed with imagination.

‘What brings you to City College?’ Ricksen asked.

‘I had an appointment to speak to the deceased.’

‘Not much chance of that now. Dare I ask what about?’

‘Polio in Afghanistan.’

‘Right…’ replied Ricksen slowly as if wondering if this were a wind-up. ‘Not exactly Sci-Med territory.’

Knowing that his presence here and his continuing interest in the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan would be all over Whitehall in a couple of hours, Steven said, ‘North was collaborating with a friend of mine, Simone Ricard. She died in an “accident”. Looks like North had one too.’

‘Hardly an accident… Oh, I see. You don’t think that…’

Steven shrugged. ‘Well, I’ve told you what I’m doing here. What’s your interest?

‘North was on our list.’

‘Of what?’

‘Possible terrorist targets.’

Steven raised a questioning eyebrow.

‘I take it you know about the fake aid teams the Yanks used in their hunt for Bin Laden?’

Steven nodded. ‘I know.’

‘It caused quite a lot of bad feeling in the region. The extremists saw their chance to tar everyone with the same brush and have been doing their best to have everyone believe that the genuine polio eradication people were complicit in the whole sorry business.’

‘Were they?’

‘Good God, no. It was purely a CIA operation. Looks like North has just become collateral damage, as our colleagues across the pond are wont to call it.’

Steven said, ‘Look at his left hand.’

Ricksen did so and returned with a frown on his face. ‘Not quite straightforward revenge then. Someone wanted something from the good doctor. I wonder what.’

As they waited for the medical examiner to attend they were joined by the Special Branch man, who’d been in conversation with the Met inspector. Ricksen introduced him to Steven and drew his attention to what was lying on the floor of the car.

The Special Branch man picked up the severed finger with tweezers he took from his inside pocket and examined it from several angles before dropping it into a plastic bag and saying, ‘Well, bang goes the obvious explanation, and it probably wasn’t a terrorist attack either. They prefer blowing things to kingdom come: a single shot just ain’t their style. That just leaves us the little matter of figuring out who did it and why… starting with no bloody idea.’

Steven sought out Liam Kelly, who was sitting with some colleagues, still clearly upset as was Jenny who dabbed at her eyes with a scrunched-up tissue. ‘Could I have a word?’ Steven asked softly.

Liam detached himself and Steven said, ‘I’m sorry, this is obviously not the time, but I need to speak to someone about blood samples sent to Tom's lab from one of the polio teams in Afghanistan.’

‘Dan’s your man,’ said Liam. ‘We all do bits and pieces when required but Dan is in charge of who does what unless there’s some specific problem and then Tom decides… decided what happens to them.’

‘I can’t see Dan around at the moment,’ said Steven. ‘Maybe you could tell him when you see him that I’ll call by the lab tomorrow morning about eleven?’

‘Of course.’

Steven called Tally to tell her about Tom North’s murder and say that he would be staying at the London flat for the time being, but the call went straight to voicemail, restricting him to minimum detail. He then called John Macmillan to say he was on his way to the Home Office.

‘What kind of a mood is he in?’ he asked Jean Roberts when he arrived.

‘Foul. I’d wear a flak jacket if I were you,’ she replied.

Steven raised his eyes heavenwards as the intercom sparked into life. ‘Is he here yet?’

‘Yes, Sir John, just arrived. I’ll send him in.’

Macmillan didn’t turn to acknowledge Steven’s entry. Instead, he continued to stare at the window across the room, drumming his fingers rapidly but lightly on his desk. Steven stood in silence until a slight turn of the head and a nod indicated that he should sit.

‘I’ve just had the Foreign Secretary on the phone.’

‘Really? Is he well?’

Macmillan’s look would have curdled milk. ‘This is not the time, Steven. I’m not in the mood.’

Steven believed him.

‘He was spitting tacks. He thought we’d accepted that Dr Ricard’s death was an accident but now he knows differently. He insists that your continued poking around is only going to result in an increasing press interest in what went on before Bin Laden was found and that is really going to piss off our American cousins. He’s asked me to rein you in.’

‘And you said?’

‘I told him that doubts over Dr Ricard’s death were yours and yours alone, not the basis of an official Sci-Med investigation. If I were to order you to desist, you’d probably resign and continue anyway.’

Steven’s silence confirmed it.

'The foreign secretary pointed out that, as employees of HMG, we should be paying more attention to things at home rather than interfering in things that don’t concern us, in particular the activities of ME protesters whose actions have now claimed a life with the murder of Professor Langley. I could hardly argue. It’s an escalating situation and it’s getting out of hand.’

‘Well, yes,’ Steven conceded reluctantly, ‘but murder investigation is a police matter not something for Sci-Med. There again…’

He paused, and Macmillan prompted him to continue.

‘There’s something not quite right about the whole thing. I had a look through the file… I can understand the ME people and their families getting upset about being dismissed as a bunch of neurotics who need psychiatric help. I can understand their frustration translating into paint daubing and tyre slashing — minor acts of vandalism — but pushing people under buses? That just doesn’t ring true. I smell a rat.’

Macmillan sighed but nodded his agreement. ‘I thought so too. I’ve been asking around about the chap knocked down by the bus. He wasn’t pushed under the wheels as the tabloids suggested; it was an accident. The post-mortem showed that he’d been drugged; he wouldn’t have been able to see properly or think clearly. I think it fair to assume that his captors deposited him in a crowded London area to draw attention to their cause. They didn’t anticipate his stumbling into the path of a bus. The gutter press, however, saw their chance to whip up a storm of bad feeling.’

‘Now that makes much more sense,’ Steven agreed. ‘It strikes me that Tom North’s death, however, is very much something that Sci-Med should be concerned with. He knew or possessed something that someone prepared to use a knife and a gun wanted badly. Maybe we should be concerning ourselves with finding out what that was?’

Macmillan took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before saying, ‘I wish I could argue but you do have a point.’

‘Both Special Branch and Five turned up at the scene,’ Steven continued. ‘The official line was that North was a potential target because of his connection with the polio eradication initiative. The Taleban were pretty pissed off with what the CIA did and were prepared to have a go at all aid workers. I’m not sure I buy that.’