Death at the Plague Museum

by Lesley Kelly

  ‘Oh, OK.’

  She waited until Lucy left, then closed the door and turned to them both. ‘You had questions.’

  ‘We do,’ said Bernard. ‘We want to talk to you about a series of meeting that were held here at the Museum, particularly one on Friday 4 September.’

  ‘I’m not sure how much help I can be.’

  ‘Why were the civil servants meeting here? They have a number of buildings of their own that surely they could have used.’

  She shrugged. ‘I understand there was a certain amount of pressure on their meeting rooms.’

  ‘But Lucy said the meetings were mainly in the evening. I can’t imagine that the Scottish Government would be short of meeting rooms out of hours.’

  Maitland’s phone pinged. ‘Excuse me, I need to take this.’

  Bernard felt a sense of alarm. He was mildly perturbed at the thought of carrying on with the interview solo, and deeply disturbed at the thought that Maitland was roaming around the building with an imminent risk of him bumping into Lucy. He tried to focus.

  ‘So, they were fully booked for evening meetings?’

  ‘I don’t know if it was a capacity issue, or if it was more difficult to get someone to open and close the building after hours. You’d really have to talk to the Scottish Government directly.’

  ‘I’d like to, Ms McFarlane, but as you are probably aware, two of the people who attended those meetings are now dead, and Helen Sopel is missing.’

  Her hand went to her mouth. ‘Helen is missing?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? She missed her Health Check, hence our involvement.’

  ‘I didn’t realise, I thought you wanted to talk to me because . . .never mind. I can’t believe Helen missed her Health Check.’

  ‘Yes, a career-ending move. Not something she would have done if she could possibly help it, therefore as you can imagine we’re very worried about her. So, if you have any information about these meetings it would really help.’

  This was met with silence. He decided to nudge her.

  ‘We’re meeting Carlotta Carmichael to discuss her involvement in the meetings.’

  This provoked a furious hiss. Ms Carmichael seemed to cause that response in a lot of people. ‘That woman won’t be able to help. She only attended the last meeting before . . .’ She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. ‘You know Nat was a good friend of mine?’

  ‘Lucy said. Do you think his death was suicide?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She nodded. ‘That’s what the police are saying, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Do you have any idea what might have driven him to that?’

  She sighed. ‘I don’t suppose any of this can hurt him now. I’ll tell you what I know, which, frankly, isn’t much. I know that Nat had been really unhappy for the past few months.’

  ‘Unhappy at work?’

  ‘I’m just not sure he was cut out for all the pressures involved in dealing with the Virus.’

  ‘How well did he get on with his colleagues?’

  ‘Fine, I think.’

  ‘And Mrs Carmichael?’

  ‘I really wouldn’t know about that.’ She pushed her chair back, and stood up. ‘Why don’t you ask her when you meet her?’

  Maitland was sitting on the front steps of the Museum, a cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘Does Kate know you’re still smoking?’

  ‘No,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘And if you tell her, I’ll kill you. Anyway, you owe me one.’

  He felt a cold, icy hand grasp his heart. ‘Oh, God, what did you do?’

  He grinned. ‘First of all, I played the old make your phone ring trick, to get out of that extremely tedious interview. Then I wandered down to see your future girlfriend, and had a very cosy chat about the Museum’s accounts.’

  ‘Accounts?’

  ‘Yup, I was thinking about her comments the other day. So she tells me that Corinna keeps all that stuff very close to her chest, password-protected files on the computer etc. But she did reiterate her comments about what good shape the Museum is in financially. Is that unusual? I thought these places all survived from one government handout to the next?’

  ‘It’s not a “government handout”, it’s a government investment in culture and heritage. But yes, they do tend to have quite precarious funding arrangements.’ He thought for a moment. ‘It’s all useful information but I don’t see how it constitutes me “owing you one”.’

  Maitland held out a scrap of paper. ‘I told her that my colleague was keen to ask her out but he’d never have the nerve, left to his own devices.’

  Bernard looked at the paper. ‘That’s her phone number.’

  ‘Yup, her home number. And she said she’d love to hear from you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yup. And I told her your herpes was back under control since that last set of tablets from the doctor.’

  Bernard blinked. ‘That’s a joke, right? You didn’t say that?’

  He laughed. ‘Relax. All I actually said was that my colleague Bernard might need to speak to her again, and could I have her number.’

  Bernard looked at the paper and smiled. A thought struck him. ‘This is unusually nice of you, Maitland. What are you up to?’

  ‘I’m thinking of our investigation. That Museum boss is well dodgy. And considering how much I got out of Lucy in a five-minute conversation, I reckon a posh restaurant and a couple of drinks inside her, she’ll have told you everything there is to know.’

  ‘That’s another joke, right?’

  He shook his head, solemnly. ‘Phone her and get that date set up. Time to take one for the team, Bernie.’

  5

  ‘Is this the best you could do in the way of meeting rooms? We’re practically sitting on each other’s knees.’ Paterson shifted awkwardly on his seat. They appeared to be in the most compact meeting room that Police HQ at Fettes had to offer.

  ‘This is all I could find at short notice,’ said Ian, mildly. ‘And maybe you lot could stop antagonising people so much that they want to blow you up, and then we could use your meeting space?’

  ‘I’m not even going to rise to that one. They’re only targeting us because SHEP are so mollycoddled they’ve got police crawling all over their building and the slack-arsed protestors aren’t up that kind of challenge. Anyway, they’ve got until three o’clock to certify that our building is clear of bombs, otherwise we’re going to have to relocate the meeting with the Carmichaels to a hopefully slightly larger meeting room here.’

  ‘No problem. Worst comes to the worst one of the senior brass will relocate and offer up his office. There’s nothing we won’t do make our MSPs comfortable.’ Ian turned to Mona. ‘You’re very quiet.’

  She glared at him, her arms folded.

  ‘What did I do now?’

  ‘You know perfectly . . .’

  ‘Mona,’ said Paterson, firmly. ‘Let’s move on. Let’s focus on the task in hand – the Carmichaels.’

  ‘At the risk of sounding like Bernard, Guv, I have some questions.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘First of all, what does Jonathon Carmichael actually do for a living?’

  ‘He runs his own marketing consultancy,’ said Ian.

  ‘I’m not sure that makes it an awful lot clearer.’

  Ian laughed. ‘If you check out his website, you’ll see that he specialises in branding, project management, helping organisations develop strategies, that kind of thing. Still not clear?’

  ‘Not desperately, no.’

  ‘To put it another way, he does a lot of behind-the-scenes fixing for his wife and her cronies. You want something sorted out quickly and discreetly, he’s your man. He’s very well connected. And he knows where all the bodies are buried.’

  ‘Which leads me neatly to my second question. I don’t understand why we’re being allowed to deal with this. I thought Stuttle would lead on this, or someone senior from Police Scotland.’

  Both Paterson
and Ian laughed.

  ‘Stuttle’s not going anywhere near this. Whatever we say to them, Mr and Mrs Carmichael are going to want to complain to someone more senior about the appalling way they’ve been treated etc. etc. If Stuttle’s here, the only person more senior is a Scottish Minister, and nobody wants to be involving them in this. So, we do as full an investigation as we can, they complain, and Stuttle mollifies them, says he’ll have us disciplined, retrained, hung, drawn and quartered or whatever else she’s asking for. The Carmichaels are happy, Stuttle’s happy and we just keep our mouths shut.’

  ‘All right.’ That did make sense, although she wasn’t delighted at her role in the scenario. ‘But why are we interviewing them together? Isn’t it all a bit, you know, delicate, Guv?’

  ‘I know, it’s weird. But it was their suggestion, not ours.’

  ‘They actually want to be interviewed together? Do they know what it’s about?’

  ‘I don’t know. SHEP contacted both their offices separately. They must have spoken to each other, because Carlotta’s PA phoned back and said they’d both see us at the North Edinburgh HET office at four.’

  ‘That’s going to be fun, isn’t it?’ said Ian. ‘Asking Jonathon Carmichael about his girlfriend with Carlotta sitting there. I mean, he must know there’s a possibility that we’ve found out?’

  ‘Probably planning to brazen it out. Let’s just hope that he’s updated Mrs Carmichael that he’s been playing away from home before we broach the subject. Anyway, I suggest we start with me welcoming them, Ian asking about what went on at the meeting, then Mona going in for the kill regarding Mr Carmichael’s love life.’

  ‘Thanks, Guv.’

  ‘It’ll be better coming from a woman.’

  ‘I’m really not sure that it w—’

  She was cut off by the sound of Paterson’s phone ringing. She sat impatiently while he took the call, his side of the conversation consisting mostly of yes, right and OK. When he finished he stood up. ‘That’s Facilities Management to say we got the all-clear to go back. Marguerite’s been given a script to memorise in case we get any other nutters phoning up. The Facilities Manager wants to meet with me tomorrow morning, and from the tone of his voice I’d say he was holding me personally responsible for today’s events.’

  6

  ‘Please stop glaring at me.’

  ‘I don’t see why I should,’ said Maitland, scowling harder than ever. ‘If you hadn’t insisted on checking your emails, we could both be sitting on a bus right now heading home. But, oh no, you had to log on.’

  ‘Paterson would have our guts for garters if we just clocked off now, seeing as we can safely return to the office,’ said Bernard. He stopped to let Maitland catch up. He was taking dawdling to a whole new level.

  ‘No, he wouldn’t. He doesn’t know that we got the message to go back.’

  ‘Even the Guv is aware that we can check our email when we’re out of the office.’

  ‘We could just say that we couldn’t find secure Wi-Fi to log in. The Guv never challenges anything to do with technology. You could tell him anything so long as you mention some technical term – doesn’t even have to be a real one. I once got an afternoon off because I told him the optical thread in my home-to-work connection needed to be reworked. He just nodded like this,’ Maitland stroked his chin thoughtfully, ‘as if he knew what I was talking about.’

  ‘If you put half as much energy in to actually working as you did into skiving you’d be running your own HET team by now.’

  ‘Perish the thought.’

  ‘Anyway, you need to watch yourself.’ Bernard stopped again and gestured at his colleague to hurry up. ‘Carole’s getting away with murder right now, but Mr Paterson’s not going to take the same nonsense from you.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  They turned into the street that housed the HET’s offices.

  ‘They’re still here,’ said Maitland, pointing to a small group of protestors who were hanging around the park.

  ‘Are they the same ones as earlier?’

  ‘Dunno. Hard to tell when they’ve got their faces covered.’ Maitland looked round. ‘Looks like they’ve stood down the police protection.’

  ‘No, that’s the Thin Blue Line over there.’ He pointed in the direction of a solitary policeman who was standing in the entrance to the building.

  ‘I don’t think you can call one person a line, Bern. He’s more of a Thin Blue Dot. Hey!’ He waved to the cop, who looked slightly nervous as he headed in his direction. ‘We’re HET officers. I believe it’s all clear to go back into the building?’

  They both held up their HET ID cards, which the PC looked at in turn. ‘Yep, you’re good to go in.’

  ‘What do you make of this lot?’ asked Maitland, gesturing a thumb in the direction of the park. ‘I thought you moved them all on?’

  ‘We’re keeping an eye on it. They’ve been drifting back in ones and twos for the past hour. If I had my way, I’d have their arses kicked right into touch, but you know what it’s like at the moment for manpower. There’s just me, another guy round the back and the promise of a Rapid Response Team if it all kicks off again.’ He paused and watched one of the protestors leave the park and head off down the road. ‘And, to be honest, I’m not sure that the promised response will be either rapid, or much of a team. You two ex-cops?’

  ‘I am, he’s not,’ said Maitland.

  ‘Well, keep an eye on that lot, and get yourself down here at the first sign of trouble. If it all kicks off again, I’m going to need all the help I can get.’

  ‘Well, that was reassuring,’ said Bernard, returning to his desk. He was almost wishing that he’d followed Maitland’s advice and not checked his email.

  His colleague had resumed his earlier position at the window. ‘I reckon there’s an even dozen of them out there. One cop’s not going to be able to stop them if they decide to rush the building.’

  ‘You think that’s what they’re planning?’

  ‘Don’t know. But they’ve got to be hanging around there for some reason. The plod downstairs was right – we might be needed to help out.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yeah. If the building’s under threat we’re all going to have to step in. What do you say, Bernie? If it all gets a bit physical out there, can we rely on your backup?’ He clenched both his fists and started shadow-boxing.

  Bernard’s phone started to ring. Saved by the bell. ‘I’d better get that.’

  ‘Bernard.’ He heard the bark of his boss at the other end of the line. ‘We’re all on our way back to meet with the Carmichaels. Cameron Stuttle is meeting us at the office, so he can have another look at the box of tricks that Helen Sopel’s pal left with you before Mona and I go into the meeting. Can you get them set out for us? We’ll be there in ten minutes.’

  He hung up without waiting for Bernard to agree or disagree with his proposal.

  ‘Mr Paterson and Mr Stuttle are on their way.’ He spoke to Maitland’s back, but he was busy staring out of the window. ‘Stuttle wants to see the paperwork Martine Galloway left.’

  ‘It’s locked in the cupboard,’ said Maitland, without turning round. ‘Key’s in my top drawer.’

  ‘I know.’

  Maitland didn’t move.

  ‘I’ll get it then, shall I? Don’t you bother lifting a finger.’

  ‘I’m doing important work here. I don’t want the Guv and Stuttle walking into some kind of ambush.’

  Bernard headed over to Maitland’s desk. He opened the top drawer and rooted around in the sweet wrappers until he found the key. The lock on the metal cupboard was stiff, so he jiggled it up and down until it turned. When the door swung open, he had to step back to avoid being hit. He looked at the shelves one by one.

  ‘It’s not there.’

  ‘What?’ Maitland made it to his side in one long bound. ‘It must be.’ He did the same top to bottom sweep that Bernard had made. ‘Would somebody have moved it? Has Ma
rguerite tidied up?’

  ‘Unlikely that she’d do it without being asked. She’s not generally that keen.’

  ‘The Guv could have taken it for some reason . . .although I suppose he would have mentioned he’d moved it on the phone.’

  Bernard grunted. If this had been down to Paterson or Stuttle the box would have vanished early this morning, rather than just being returned to the wrong shelf. ‘There is one other possibility. We did have a bomb hoax that meant this building was completely empty.’

  ‘You think someone has stolen it?’

  ‘Well, it hasn’t just vanished. And I reckon we’ve got about seven minutes to come up with an explanation for where it is, before Mr Stuttle rips our heads off.’

  7

  In the months that she’d worked for the North Edinburgh HET, Mona had witnessed Stuttle in a state of absolute fury several times. In fact, she had provoked this response on at least one occasion herself. Similarly, she witnessed her immediate line manager moved to anger on at least a daily basis. She’d observed on these instances that when incensed Paterson’s face would move through a range of pantones on the red spectrum, before ending on a rage-induced crimson. Stuttle, on the other hand, grew paler and paler the angrier he became.

  She’d seen them individually enraged often, and from time to time, in a state of fury with each other. But until now, she’d never seen them murderously angry in unison. With Paterson puce of face, and Stuttle spectral-white, it was as if a bar of coconut ice had become sentient, and decided it was one deeply pissed off piece of confectionary.

  ‘What do you mean it’s not there? They’re supposed to be confronting the Carmichaels with the evidence in . . .’ Stuttle stopped to look at his watch, ‘less than fifteen minutes and you’re telling me you don’t have it?’

  ‘We think someone took it,’ said Bernard, apologetically.

  ‘Yes, well, we gathered that, Bernard. But how did they manage to take it?’