by Ken McClure
Steven had fallen for Tally and had initially hoped that he could convince her that being in danger was the exception rather than the rule, and that it would be perfectly possible for him to combine his Sci-Med career with a normal relationship. Tally, who had her own career to pursue and was currently a senior registrar in paediatric medicine in a Leicester children’s hospital, disagreed and was quite adamant that she couldn’t live in constant fear of the danger her partner might be in. She’d made it clear that that kind of uncertainty was no basis for a relationship and they had ultimately parted over it.
Some time later, when Steven found himself totally disillusioned with the outcome of his last assignment when, in the ‘public interest’, the bad guys had got away with it — yet again, as he saw it — he had resigned. He had contacted Tally and told her what had happened. There would be no going back, he assured her. He had never stopped loving her. Would she consider making a life with him if he resigned from Sci-Med? Tally had agreed without hesitation and had suggested that he come and live with her in Leicester while he looked for a new job. At least one of them would be working.
Although himself a qualified doctor and an expert in field medicine — the medicine of the battlefield — Steven had known that it would be difficult if not impossible for him to find his way back into civilian medicine, having never really been involved in it before at any level. He’d joined the army — what he’d really wanted to do all along — almost as soon as he’d completed his hospital registration year after university. He had been one of those students who’d been steered towards medicine by ambitious parents and teachers. Unlike many, he’d found the courage to rebel before the die had been irrevocably cast.
Now, largely because he needed to find something that paid a salary, he’d taken a job as a security consultant with a pharmaceutical company with research labs located on a science park shared with Leicester University. The security was more concerned with intellectual matters than with the guarding of gates. It was vital that the company’s projects be kept safe from the prying eyes of competitors, so the screening of research and support staff as they came and went was an important factor. Thorough background checks had to be carried out on incoming staff, and privacy agreements in line with contractual obligations had to be signed and adhered to by those who were bound for pastures new. All very vital and all very boring.
Steven did his best to shut out such thoughts. After all, the job had enabled him to set up a new life with Tally and would in time allow him to see more of his daughter Jenny and play a bigger role in her life. Steven had been married before, to a nurse he’d met in Glasgow during the course of an early Sci-Med assignment, but Lisa had later succumbed to a brain tumour, dying when Jenny was little more than a baby. After her death — perhaps the blackest and most unhappy time of his life — Lisa’s sister Sue and her husband had taken Jenny to live with them in the village of Glenvane in Dumfriesshire, and she had been there ever since, brought up with her two cousins, Peter and Mary. Steven had visited as often as he could, every second weekend when possible.
Sue and her solicitor husband Richard had always assured Steven that they regarded Jenny as one of their own, and that she could stay as long as she was happy with them. They’d even let it be known that giving her up would be traumatic for all of them after so many years — Jenny was settled and happy at the local primary school — but Steven still harboured dreams of family life although he recognised that Jenny herself would have to have the final say. He suspected, however, that his dream might well become unattainable before any such decision had to be made, as Tally had no plans to give up her own career. The demands of the medical ladder would almost certainly involve a geographical move when she began to think about applying for a consultant’s post, and perhaps more than once: not ideal for Jenny.
Steven was aware of Tally giving him sideways looks at the breakfast table. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘Are you beginning to have regrets?’
‘About what?’
‘You know damned well.’
‘Not for a second,’ said Steven softly. ‘I made my decision. It was the right one. I love you.’
Tally remained unconvinced. ‘I know you. I can sense when you’re restless, unsettled, a bit unhappy…’
‘I’m not unhappy. I’m living with the woman I love. I’ve got a good job. The sun’s shining. How could I possibly be unhappy?’
Tally smiled, deciding to believe him but aware that it might be because she wanted to. ‘You’d better get a move on.’
‘Yep, you never know who may be planning to steal the aspirin…’ Steven got up from the table.
Tally looked down at her coffee cup. There it was again, the little aside that hinted at a lack of self-respect in the job he was doing. That could be serious: it could eat away at him unless she could persuade him to see things differently. His job was responsible and important, but how to make him see that was another matter. Most people had little or no trouble convincing themselves — and others — that their job was meaningful and worthwhile even if it was only a case of coming up with a fancy title for what they actually did, but Steven was different. He really had lived in a different world. He had lived life on an edge where harsh reality had to be faced and bullshit and imagery had no place. He had served with Special Forces all over the world, operating in appalling conditions in jungles and deserts to save the lives of comrades, experiencing the joy of bringing them back from the brink and the anguish of losing them.
Sci-Med investigations had, of course, been less demanding in terms of life and death scenarios but had still brought him into conflict with those who would stop at nothing to achieve their ends. How did you go about convincing a man like that that an office job was important in his scheme of things?
‘I’ll try to get home at a respectable time tonight,’ she said. ‘Maybe we could catch a film or something?’ Anything out of the ordinary.
‘Good idea,’ said Steven. ‘See you later.’
He picked up his briefcase in the hall and left for work, running down the stairs rather than taking the lift in an effort to keep fit now that he was chained to a desk for much of the time. He walked round to the car park and got into the Honda CRV that had taken the place of his Porsche Boxster — a sacrifice he’d had to make when his government salary cheque had stopped and the spectre of unemployment loomed large. The hiatus had only lasted a month or so but the feeling hadn’t been pleasant.
In truth, he hadn’t sold the Boxster. It had been put into ‘suspended animation’ at the mews garage belonging to his friend Stan Silver in London. Silver, an ex-Regiment soldier himself — although not at the same time as Steven — was the man who had supplied the Porsche in the first place. It had been he who had suggested storing the car for a while to see how things worked out. He had offered to loan Steven a more modest vehicle until he found himself a job, when they could talk again. No decision had as yet been made about the Porsche, although Steven had started paying Stan for the use of the Honda.
It had been Tally who had suggested the Honda from the cars on offer; it was more of a family car, she’d said, and if he was serious about being a family man… well, look at all that space in the back. My God, he’d thought, he’d be wearing Pringle sweaters and taking up golf next. No, suicide was higher up his list of things to do than golf. The Honda started first time; it always bloody did.
Steven had his own parking bay with a white board on the wall saying Head of Security. It always made him smile. To his way of thinking, the last thing you should be advertising was where the head of security parked his car. But there was no doubting that things were different in the civilian world, so he didn’t say anything. From what he’d seen in the three months he’d been in the job, no one would have any reason to harm him anyway.
His office was on the sixth floor, bright and airy with light wood furniture and an abundance of potted plants. The wide windows had Venetian blinds, necessary in th
e afternoon when the sun moved round to that side of the building, but it was a dull, grey morning so he opened them fully and looked out over the campus. People in white coats were hard at work in the university labs across the way, as they would be downstairs in his own building, clearly visible in the harsh, white fluorescent lighting that illuminated their domain.
A knock came to his door but before he could say anything it was opened by a short woman in her mid thirties, hair tied back in a severe bun, and dark-framed glasses on her nose. She was Rachel Collins, one of the company’s legal team who specialised in intellectual property. She had the office next door. She smiled and said, ‘I thought I heard you come in. Have you checked your email yet?’
‘No.’
‘There’s a special meeting at ten this morning with the top brass. You and I have been instructed to attend.’
‘Sounds exciting,’ said Steven in a voice that suggested otherwise. ‘Maybe they’ve discovered a cure for cancer downstairs.’
‘I think we would have heard about that,’ said Rachel with a smile. ‘The conga in the corridors would have been a small clue.’
‘How long have you worked for Ultramed, Rachel?’
‘Eleven years. Why d’you ask?’
‘I’m still trying to get a feel for things. Any big discoveries in your time with the company?’
Rachel screwed up her face, seeking an alternative to ‘no’. ‘Can’t honestly say there have been any big discoveries,’ she replied, stretching the word ‘big’. ‘Lots of little things, stuff for indigestion, athlete’s foot treatments, hay fever pills, bread-and-butter stuff, not much better than the remedies they’re replacing, if truth be told, but with a shiny new box and an ad campaign aimed at GPs they bring in a bit. No really big earner.’
‘I guess big earners don’t come along all that often.’
‘And that’s why drugs are so expensive,’ said Rachel. ‘Lots and lots of research that went nowhere has to be paid for. Anyway, see you at the meeting.’ She turned to leave but stopped and turned back as she reached the door. ‘How are you liking it here?’ she asked, her tone suggesting that she really didn’t know the answer.
‘Fine,’ said Steven. ‘Absolutely fine.’
‘Good.’
Steven returned to gazing out of the window, wishing it had been true. He was a very long way from being ‘absolutely fine’. He had known it would be difficult; he had done his best to prepare himself for the feelings he knew were bound to come. The one he had at the moment, that of being trapped, had been odds-on favourite to make an appearance from the outset but he was determined not to give in to it despite the urge he felt right now to run downstairs, go out through the door and keep on going till he dropped.
The first antidote was to think of positives. He thought of Tally and the life they were having and would have together. He thought of Jenny, his little girl who now had a father in an ordinary respectable job rather than one that could result in her becoming an orphan. The second counter-measure was to think of negatives, those that had made him resign from Sci-Med in the first place. The creeping suspicion, built up over the years, that he didn’t work for the good guys after all; that there were no good guys, only various shades of in-between. Our democratic government was a warren of ulterior motives, alternative agendas, horse trading and compromise, connived at by a bunch of greedy self-serving twerps whose egos knew no bounds and whose only duty was to themselves.
He was now away from all of them and their devious machinations but he did miss the intellectual challenge of the job, that of figuring out what the hooks and crooks were up to and then going to war with them. Someone in the SAS had once told him that you don’t know you’re alive until you’re very nearly not, and they were right. Everyone who had experienced danger over a long period of time knew about ‘the feeling’, that heightened sense of awareness which perhaps only drugs could simulate. When it stopped you were relieved, but if it didn’t come back at some point you’d start to miss it, and miss it badly. Formula One drivers, rock climbers, downhill skiers, all knew about ‘the feeling’. Retiral might seem like a good idea at the time but after a year or so, God, you missed it. You just had to go back.
Steven’s game plan was to think of his time with the military and with Sci-Med as a drug addiction from which he was now withdrawing. It wouldn’t be easy but it could be done. He would struggle to keep his twitchiness and bad temper under control while he fought his demons, and in the end he would come through and emerge as a better person: a loving, contented husband to Tally if she’d have him as such and a caring considerate father to Jenny, even if she chose to remain in the north. Enough navel gazing. He turned on his computer and checked his mail for details of the meeting.
TWO
Sci-Med Inspectorate, Home Office, London
‘I have Chief Superintendent Malloy on the line for you, Sir John,’ said the voice of Jean Roberts, his secretary, from the speaker on John Macmillan’s desk.
‘Put him through.’
‘John? I don’t think I’m going to make lunch today. Something’s just come up.’
‘A pity, Charlie. I was looking forward to seeing you again. It’s been ages.’
‘It has,’ agreed Malloy, ‘but the French authorities have been in touch. I don’t know if you heard anything about a gas explosion in Paris?’
‘I read something in the papers.’
‘Turns out it wasn’t gas; it was a bomb and it looks like at least some of the victims may have been British. Fragments of British passports were found in the clean-up.’
‘Ah,’ said Macmillan. ‘So someone else’s mess has just become yours. Any idea what’s behind it?’
‘Not right now, but the gendarmerie has ascertained that the flat was let to an Englishman named Charles French on a short-term agreement. Apparently it wasn’t the first time, according to the letting agency. He’d used the place on a number of occasions when he was in Paris on business.’
‘What kind of business would that be?’
‘The agency had no reason to know that and didn’t ask, but we matched the name up with a missing person report. If it’s the same chap, he’s Charles French, CEO of Deltasoft Computing, a Cambridge graduate and pillar of the community, by all accounts.’
‘Did the passport fragments yield anything?’
‘We’ve managed to identify one holder so far. There was enough of the name left for us to match it up with a Lady Antonia Freeman who has been absent from her holiday home in the south of France near Saint-Raphael where she likes to spend the winter months. Her housekeeper reported her missing; apparently she’d no idea her ladyship had gone up to Paris.’
‘Strange. What was that name again?’
‘Antonia Freeman.’
‘Rings a vague bell…’
‘Let me know if anything comes to you,’ said Malloy. ‘I think our best bet is to match up what we’ve got with passport control and missing person reports.
Anyway, sorry about lunch. How are you fixed for next week?’
‘That should be fine,’ said Macmillan. ‘I look forward to hearing more.’
Macmillan pressed the intercom button. ‘Jean, I’ve rescheduled my lunch with DCS Malloy for the same day and time next week.’
‘I’ll put it in the diary, Sir John. All right if I go to lunch?’
‘Of course.’
‘Don’t forget you have a recruitment meeting at two thirty.’
‘Ah, yes. Thanks, Jean.’
Macmillan got up and walked over to the window to look out at the rain while he thought about the meeting Jean had reminded him of. He’d been avoiding considering a replacement for Steven Dunbar until it was absolutely certain that he wouldn’t be returning, but sadly it seemed that that moment had come. Steven had twice turned down his overtures and still appeared adamant about not coming back. Macmillan knew why, of course, and understood Steven’s frustration at watching the guilty walk free so often — he hated it him
self — but surely, through his anger, he must be able to see why no charges could have been brought at the end of his last investigation. It was just not in the national interest. He’d felt sure that Steven would come round eventually, as he’d always done in the past, but apparently not this time. He was now working as some kind of security consultant, living in Leicester. God, what a waste.
Sci-Med was Macmillan’s baby. He’d seen the need for a different sort of investigator in a high-tech world. True, the police had special squads, such as those that dealt with fraud and crime in the art world, but when it came to science and medicine they lacked expertise. It had taken him several years to persuade the government of the day to agree with him that such a unit was necessary, and that it should be independent, but in the end he had succeeded. It had now been operational for fifteen years.
There was no doubt it had been a success, as several governments had been forced to admit, although perhaps they would have liked Sci-Med to have been a little less independent on occasions where success had also brought embarrassment when the great and the good had been exposed as being rather less then either. As this embarrassment had not been confined to any one party, history had worked in Sci-Med’s favour, ensuring that any attempt by the rulers of the day to clip the unit’s wings would be vigorously opposed by Her Majesty’s Opposition, whoever happened to be in power. Macmillan had often pointed out that it was the opposition who kept Sci-Med in business, not the government.
Steven had been Macmillan’s top investigator, a doctor and a soldier with a proven record of being good at both, and he wouldn’t be easy to replace. Sir John had asked two of his other investigators, Scott Jamieson and Adam Dewar, to come in and help him assess possible candidates but he would be doing it with a heavy heart. Another course of action open to him would, of course, be… retirement. After all, he had the knighthood and had passed the sixty milestone where most senior career civil servants went off to grow roses and write their memoirs, but he couldn’t quite bear the thought of giving up the reins of Sci-Med just yet. It meant so much to him… if not his wife, it had to be said. She would be delighted to see him walk away from it all to spend more time with her. Given half a chance, she’d have him on some round-the-world cruise, dancing bloody rumbas with her blue-rinsed pals and listening to their bloody boring banker husbands telling him how they saw the crash coming all along. Jesus, he wasn’t dead yet.
