Lost causes

NINE

Steven called Tally to talk over the day’s events.

‘I got your text,’ said Tally. ‘It’s good news about the tumour, and that they managed to get all of it.’

Steven agreed. ‘Now it’s a case of waiting to see how much trauma was caused to the surrounding brain tissue.’

‘I take it they’re not hazarding a guess?’

‘You know surgeons.’

‘Mmm.’

He told her what he’d come up with during the day.

‘Sounds like you’re making progress.’

‘Placing Carlisle and French at Cambridge at the same time was a plus,’ he agreed, ‘as was establishing their common interest in right-of-centre politics. Antonia Freeman’s father popping up as the judge who let French off on a GBH charge was a bit of a showstopper, though. I didn’t see that coming.’

‘So, what was going on there, d’you think?’

‘Difficult to say. I’m inclined to think there must have been some good reason for it… something I’ve yet to establish. Something else I’ve yet to establish,’ Steven added.

‘And then French and the judge’s daughter end up being blown to bits in Paris together some twenty years later,’ said Tally. ‘Just where do you go with that?’

‘First, I want a word with Carlisle’s wife. I’m going to see her tomorrow.’

‘His widow,’ Tally corrected. ‘What do you think she can tell you?’

‘If French was really the brains behind her husband. Suppositions are like thin ice; it would be nice to have something solid under my feet.’

‘Good luck,’ said Tally, her tone reflecting the doubt she felt.

‘I know it’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try. How did your meeting go?’

‘It was just a case of filling in the details of what the new scheme would mean, and asking for our views. The government’s in the process of putting the manufacturing contract out to tender. After that, they’ll commission a whole range of vaccines — a sort of central supply — the idea being that once it’s up and running we shouldn’t have last-minute rushes like the one with swine flu, and the public will be less exposed to the risk of epidemics.’

‘Was I right about the MOD having first call on what vaccines should be produced?’

‘Yes, and surprise surprise, it’s a secret. ‘

‘I guess they made the difficult decisions, took the tough choices

…’

‘That sort of thing.’

‘Well, as long as they don’t start arguing over details and get it up and running soon,’ said Steven.

‘We can agree on that.’

‘And on that happy note…’

‘Do you think you’ll manage to get up at the weekend?’

‘I certainly plan to, unless fate gets in the way.’

‘Don’t fall for the grieving widow tomorrow.’

Steven returned to thinking about his investigation. He was accumulating pieces of a puzzle but assembly was being hindered by having no notion of the picture on the box. He needed a sense of order. He got out a notepad and started to write down what he knew.

John Carlisle, Cambridge-educated but no great intellect — interested in politics — good-looking front man for brighter folk — made it to cabinet rank with a little help from his friends, and given credit for designing the Northern Health Scheme but probably didn’t. Faded into obscurity, and took his own life after being exposed as an expenses cheat.

Charles French, Cambridge-educated, brilliant — a double first — very interested in politics, involved in an unsavoury incident leading to criminal charges but got off thanks to an exceedingly lenient judge, set up Deltasoft, a software company which was involved in the Northern Health Scheme, went on to become a big player in the computer world and a pillar of the community, according to Charlie Malloy. Murdered in Paris.

Antonia Freeman, wife of surgeon, Sir Martin Freeman, operating at the same hospital where the Northern Health Scheme was trialled and at the same time but, perhaps more important, daughter of the judge who let Charles French off on a charge of GBH. Murdered in Paris.

Steven doodled with his pen at the corner of the page while he went over what he’d written. French hadn’t been completely ‘let off’, he reminded himself: he had been fined. No big deal as a punishment perhaps, but enough to give him a criminal record for a particularly nasty offence, something that would almost certainly have come back to haunt him had he tried to pursue a political career of his own. On the other hand, there was nothing to stop him operating as a backroom boy, out of the public eye and away from press interest.

Everything pointed to French’s being the brains behind Carlisle. They were at university together, had both been in the Conservative club, and, later, French’s company had supplied the sophisticated software for the innovative health scheme up in Newcastle.

Steven found that this conclusion raised more questions than it answered. However bright French had been as a student, and subsequently as a software designer, he had not been in any position to arrange a safe seat for Carlisle or smooth his progress through the parliamentary ranks. Others had been involved… person or persons unknown. It wasn’t the Northern Health Scheme that was the link connecting these people; there was something else, something bigger, some group or association that included a high court judge and people in positions of real power. The Northern Health Scheme was something they had been involved in but it wasn’t the be all and end all.

Steven relished the intellectual freedom this conclusion gave him. He could now widen his thinking to include the others who’d died in Paris and see what it all added up to. He shuffled his way through the bits of paper he’d been accumulating and found what Charlie Malloy had told Macmillan about the Paris dead. Apart from Antonia Freeman and Charles French, they comprised three big names from the world of business and a senior civil servant. He didn’t have names to hand but Charlie had also mentioned large donations to the Conservative Party. He had enough to go on to form a working hypothesis. What these people had in common was right-wing politics, perhaps even extreme right-wing politics.

The obvious common ground for them would be the Conservative Party but the way the John Carlisle story was shaping up suggested not. Everything pointed to their working outside the mainstream of the party. Twenty years ago they had used John Carlisle as a front for their association, presumably to promote their aims, which were what exactly? A toughie, thought Steven. All he had to go on was the success they’d made of the Northern Health Scheme. He smiled as he found himself looking at an extreme right-wing faction that had greatly improved the National Health Service in the north of England at a time when everyone believed the Tories were very much for getting rid of it. Maybe they all lived in Sherwood Forest as well, he thought, as he threw down his pen.

There were, of course, the deaths in the north at the time to consider, the victims of the ‘drugs war’, which now looked even more fanciful. There had been another reason for all these deaths, and the fact that no prosecutions had been brought… Steven felt a chill run up his spine as he wondered just how much power these people were capable of wielding. His desire to find out what had made John Macmillan so uneasy had now been granted in spades. He didn’t understand what had really been behind the Northern Health Scheme but, whatever it was, it was a fair bet it had had nothing to do with care and concern.

Steven saw he was following in the footsteps of James Kincaid, the journalist who’d been murdered along with his nurse girlfriend. It wasn’t the drug barons he’d fallen foul of: it was ‘them’. He must have come too close to what had been going on and paid the price with his life, as had his editor.

Steven wondered if this had been true for all who’d died back then. But there was a possibility they hadn’t all been on the same side — the old hostage-situation dilemma where outside rescuers had no way of telling the good guys from the bad when they stormed the building. Steven’s train of thought slowed and finally hit the buffers when he was forced to recognise that the people who’d been behind the operation twenty years ago — Carlisle, French and the others in the Paris flat — were in no position to reprise whatever it was they’d been up to. They were all dead.

An act of vengeance? Had someone carried a grudge for all these years and taken retribution on a cold winter’s day in Paris, or had it been down to something else? Could the Paris killings have been the result of internecine strife? If so, had the group or organisation or whatever it was been wiped out or had it just been reborn?

Steven revisited Antonia Freeman’s father’s leniency towards Charles French. It made sense now. Antonia’s father had been by all accounts as far right as it was possible to get. He must have recognised a kindred spirit in French, possibly even recruited him and his right-wing breakaway group to a bigger, more organised body, one that did have the wherewithal to get John Carlisle into a position of influence and power.

Steven suddenly saw how he could eliminate the possibility of an act of vengeance in Paris. Charlie Malloy had highlighted the secret nature of the meeting. The individuals concerned had gone to great lengths to leave no trail of their movements or indeed inform anyone where they were going — not even close family. But the person who had set the bomb must have known in advance where the meeting was being held, and prepared accordingly. The bomber had been one of those who’d been invited to the meeting. He or she had been one of ‘them’. The chances were it had not been revenge; it had been a coup.

‘Shit,’ said Steven under his breath as he saw the magnitude of his task grow. He didn’t know who ‘they’ were; he didn’t know how big the organisation was and he didn’t know what they were planning. He decided his only option was to learn from the past. He might be dealing with a case of history repeating itself if there was to be some kind of revival of the Northern Health Scheme, so he’d have to try to find out what Carlisle and his colleagues had been up to back in the early nineties. ‘A stroll down memory lane,’ he murmured as he called it a night.

Markham House looked impressive, Steven thought, as he got out of the car to use the phone at the side of the gates. He only managed a brief look, however, before turning away from a bitter wind which was whipping sleet into his face. ‘C’mon, c’mon,’ he complained, as no one up at the house seemed keen to answer the buzzer. He pressed twice more before an upper-class female voice said, ‘Yes, who is it?’

‘Steven Dunbar, Sci-Med Inspectorate.’

‘You’d better come in.’

‘Yes, I’d better,’ murmured Steven, shrugging his shoulders in discomfort as rain-water found a way inside his collar to trickle down his back. The iron gates swung open and Steven drove up to the house.