Death at the Plague Museum

by Lesley Kelly

  ‘The bomb hoax,’ said Paterson, slapping his head. ‘Empty building, someone could have been in and out.’

  ‘Not that easy,’ said Ian. ‘You wouldn’t be able to get past the Green Card machine. It wouldn’t be difficult to trace anyone who’d accessed the building.’

  ‘Although currently the Emergency Exit isn’t alarmed,’ said Bernard.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ said Maitland.

  ‘Yeah, but you’d have to know that . . .’ Stuttle stopped, a look of realisation passed across his face. Mona guessed he’d found his culprit.

  The Guv seemed to know who he was thinking of. ‘And you’d have to know we had it, and there’s not many people who knew that. Also, it was under lock and key, wasn’t it? And there are only two keys. I’ve got one and the team have got the other.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So they broke in?’ Stuttle pushed the door of the cabinet shut. ‘I don’t see any sign of forced entry.’

  ‘Actually,’ Maitland’s voice was unusually subdued, ‘we think they took the key out of, ehm, a desk drawer.’

  Mona’s money was on the drawer in question belonging to Maitland.

  Stuttle’s face paled even further. He looked like he should be on life support. ‘You keep the key to your evidence cupboard in the same room as the cupboard? Jesus Christ, it’s like having a bloody bunch of chimps in charge! I would sack the lot of you if there was any chance at all that I’d be able to replace you. Right, well, we’ll deal with this stupidity later. Our immediate problem is what do you say to the Carmichaels, who I suspect may well know of our predicament.’

  He exchanged a glance with both Paterson and Bernard. What did Bernard know about all this, Mona wondered? She’d get it out of him later.

  ‘OK, let’s recap – what was in that box?’ asked Stuttle.

  Bernard nervously held out a piece of paper. ‘Here’s the inventory.’

  ‘Monthly telephone bills for Helen Sopel’s mobile,’ he read aloud. ‘April to August. Right, well, we all know what that one was all about. One folk mask, possibly Native American. One black-and-white photocopy of a photograph picturing a woman in 1950s dress . . .what is this stuff? Does any of it make sense to you?’

  ‘No, Mr Stuttle. But it must have been significant to Helen Sopel.’

  The phone rang. Mona picked it up. ‘They’re here. According to Marguerite, there’s only two of them.’

  ‘No lawyer then. Let’s be thankful for small mercies.’ Stuttle shook his head. ‘Well, you better not keep them waiting.’

  Paterson didn’t move. ‘What exactly are we going to say to them?’

  ‘Well, you’ve got things you want to ask Carlotta about that meeting, and when it comes to Mr Carmichael you’ll just have to improvise.’

  ‘Improvise?’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t mention the box unless they bring it up.’

  ‘And if they do?’

  Stuttle ducked the question. ‘I’ve every faith in you guys. You can do this.’

  ‘Oh God. Let’s get it over with.’

  The Member of the Scottish Parliament for Upper Lithdale and her husband had been installed in one of the larger meeting rooms on the ground floor. Marguerite was fussing around with a flask of coffee. The good chocolate biscuits – the ones with shiny foil wrappers – had also made an appearance. Mona was grateful for Marguerite’s efforts, but it was going to take more than quality snacks to get through this meeting.

  She’d only ever seen the Carmichaels in the Scottish Parliament before. Carlotta was an attractive woman in her forties, with immaculately coiffured red hair. She seemed smaller than she did when she was commanding the attention of everyone at the Scottish Parliamentary Virus Committee. Her husband was slightly older, tanned, with receding grey hair, and oversized glasses with tortoiseshell frames. Both of them seemed intent on watching Marguerite fluttering around, rather than making eye contact with the HET officers.

  Paterson swung into action. ‘John Paterson, Team Leader here at North Edinburgh HET. We’ve met before.’

  Jonathon Carmichael’s face registered a brief look of annoyance. One of the previous times the two of them had met was when the then Police Sergeant Paterson had arrested Mr Carmichael for speeding. Neither man had a great regard for the other.

  ‘This is Mona Whyte from my team, and Ian Jacobsen from Police Scotland.’

  ‘Police Scotland?’ Carlotta raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s your interest in this interview?’

  ‘Potential links to a couple of our ongoing cases, Minister,’ said Ian, without batting an eyelid. Mona felt a grudging admiration. He appeared to be a good deal more practised in dealing with politicians that she was.

  Paterson began the proceedings. ‘So, Mrs Carmichael, the HET is looking for a senior civil servant who has missed her Health Check, a woman called Helen Sopel.’

  Carlotta looked surprised. ‘I’ve worked closely with Helen for the past couple of years. Has something happened to her?’

  ‘We don’t know yet, I’m afraid. As you are well aware, under the terms of the Health Defaulters (Scotland) Act . . .’

  She waved a hand to stop him, her irritation palpable. ‘I understand the confidentiality aspect, Mr Paterson. I helped to draft the legislation.’

  ‘Of course. And I’m sure in your role as Chair of the Parliamentary Virus Committee you’ll also be aware of the deaths of both Nathan McVie and Jasper Connington?’

  Both sets of Carmichael eyes strayed in the direction of Ian Jacobsen. Mona guessed they were wondering if these were the criminal cases he had alluded to.

  ‘You wouldn’t have to be head of a Parliamentary Committee to be aware of that, Mr Paterson, the deaths have been all over the news. Both suicides, I have been led to believe?’ Her eyes rested on Ian again, who refused to be drawn.

  ‘Were you aware that Ms Sopel was missing?’

  She inclined her head. ‘I had a meeting yesterday with the Permanent Secretary to discuss staffing issues. As you can imagine, we’re suffering a severe leadership crisis in Virus policy at the moment. We also discussed the continuing leak of information about those staffing issues to Twitter.’ She shot Paterson a glance.

  ‘None of which is coming from this office, I can assure you, Mrs Carmichael.’

  She looked away in a manner that managed to convey disbelief.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued. Mona could sense that any nerves he had had about the interview were rapidly being replaced by irritation. ‘Mrs Carmichael, on the day Mr McVie died, he was in a meeting with Helen Sopel, Jasper Connington and yourself. Two of those people are now dead, and one is missing. You can see, therefore, Mrs Carmichael, that it is very important that we know what was discussed at that meeting, and you are the only person who can tell us.’

  ‘I believe you also wanted to speak to me about something?’ asked Jonathon Carmichael.

  Annoyance flashed across Paterson’s face. ‘Yes, Mr Carmichael, but I’d like an answer to my question to your wife first.’

  Carmichael held up a hand to stop him, which Mona could see was enraging Paterson further. ‘You’ll have an answer in due course, but I think you need to talk to me first.’

  He thought about this for a second. ‘OK, OK, if you insist.’ He turned to her. ‘Mona . . .’

  Thanks, Guv. ‘We wanted to ask you about Helen Sopel, Mr Carmichael. How well were you acquainted with her?’

  He nodded in a manner that suggested he had been anticipating this question, then looked at his wife. She sighed. To Mona’s surprise, Jonathon took Carlotta’s hand in his. ‘I met Helen through my wife’s work. We collaborated quite closely on a couple of projects I was working on and, ehm, unfortunately I did not maintain the level of professional distance that I should have done.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here, Mr Carmichael.’

  ‘Helen and I had an affair. A short-lived one. I soon realised my mistake. But Helen, unfortunately . . .’

  There was
a pause. Mona wondered if he was waiting for someone to help him out. After a second or two, when no help was forthcoming, he continued.

  ‘Helen was very angry with me for ending our relationship and made a number of accusations about me to close colleagues.’

  Carlotta pulled her hand out from under her husband’s. ‘Hence the meeting at the Museum. It wasn’t about work, as such, more about Ms Sopel and her colleagues making some rather veiled threats about my husband.’

  ‘Threats?’

  ‘They were requesting his removal from any future Virus work.’

  ‘What did you say to that?’

  ‘I said I would have to think it over.’ Carlotta had not made eye contact with her throughout the interview. Her eyes now flicked briefly in Mona’s direction. ‘But I haven’t been able to give anyone an answer as, obviously, we’ve been overtaken by events.’

  Mona wondered what to say next. In her head she’d prepared lots of gently probing questions, lots of ways in which she could slowly reel in an uncooperative Jonathon Carmichael. She’d been prepared to give him enough space to ramble on, in the hope that he would trip himself up. She’d been prepared to ask him outright about his marriage and had thought of a few tactics to leverage the advantage of his wife actually being in the room. The one eventuality she hadn’t prepared for was a full and frank admission of adultery. Jonathon Carmichael had completely taken the wind from her sails. No further questions, Your Honour.

  Ian stepped into the breach. ‘Well, thank you to you both for coming in. I appreciate this can’t have been an easy afternoon.’

  They both looked a little surprised that they were being released.

  ‘Obviously we’d like a little discretion on this issue.’ Jonathon Carmichael got to his feet. ‘Can we assume that it won’t be all over Twitter by tomorrow?’

  ‘Absolutely, you have my word.’ Ian said. ‘I’ll just show you back to reception.’

  The Carmichaels both followed his lead, and left the room without any further eye contact or attempts at farewells.

  Mona pulled the door shut tight behind him. ‘I wasn’t actually done there, Guv. I had a few more questions for them,’ she lied. ‘But Ian got them out the door pretty damn quick.’

  ‘Yes, but I think we got everything that we needed from them.’

  ‘Did we?’ asked Mona, doubtfully.

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ He nodded, solemnly. ‘Now I can believe that Carmichael was shagging around. I’d heard rumours in the past that he had a bit of a roving eye. I could also believe that Helen Sopel was annoyed with him for ending things. I could equally believe it was the other way round, and that she dumped him, and he was making a nuisance of himself. But I struggle to imagine a Minister being summoned to a meeting by a group of civil servants, however senior, so that they can tell her off about her man’s behaviour.’

  ‘Well, we should have dug a bit deeper.’

  ‘They’re not going to tell us, Mona. But you explain this to me. Why is Carlotta ’fessing up all this to dogsbodies like us? I mean, why is she not insisting on a discreet meeting with Stuttle? Or sitting there with her lawyer threatening us with all sorts? Why would the pair of them be so open about the affair with an organisation that they suspect of being responsible for a number of recent leaks?’

  ‘They want this story out in the public domain.’ Mona thought for a second. ‘But that must be completely humiliating for Carlotta.’

  ‘Yup. I also don’t believe a word of this affair. I think he’s being meeting Helen Sopel about something, and suspects we have evidence. But I don’t think it was an affair. And now the box has done a vanishing act I think that we can assume that the phone numbers were the least incriminating thing in it. We need to work out what that mask is all about, and who that woman is.’

  ‘I agree.’ She thought for a moment. ‘But what could they have been meeting about that is so embarrassing that you’d rather pretend publicly that it was an affair?’

  Paterson leaned back, his hands behind his head. ‘I don’t know. But I’m looking forward to finding out.’

  8

  Bernard was pacing. There were only ten steps between the door of his ‘open-plan’ living space and hitting the sink and cooker on the other wall. He’d added in further walking potential by detouring into the bedroom, but that floor space could be covered in six large strides.

  Pacing helped him think. He was revisiting a conundrum that he hadn’t thought about since he’d been twenty-one. The age-old dilemma – what to say to a girl when you phoned up to ask her out.

  He’d not had a huge amount of practice. He could remember doing it only twice during his high school years (once asking Maria McDonald out to a film, and one high-stakes phone call to Catriona Henderson to try to score himself a date to the end of term dance. It was some small consolation that he had been successful on both occasions, although he did seem to remember that at the time he’d sworn never again due to the levels of stress it had caused him.) The only other time he could remember was a call to Carrie, which had led several years later to their marriage. So he was well aware that phone calls could lead to great things. But you still had to get up the nerve to pick up the phone.

  He paced from the front door to the far side of the bed and back. How to play this? Was he phoning Lucy to take up her offer of a tour of the Museum, or should he go straight to a less ambiguous invitation out to dinner? He repeated the thirty-two strides. Did he actually want a date with her? His marriage was only just over, maybe not even broken beyond repair. And what if he’d misunderstood the situation and Lucy already had a boyfriend?

  He made the trek from door to bed twice more, then decided he was ready. A woman who liked museums as much as he did was just too good a proposition for him not to at least attempt to secure a date. Standing next to the cooker, he could feel the cold of the tiles rising up through his socks, he dialled the number, the card with her number on it propped up against the washing rack. As soon as he’d made the call he’d go and dig out his slippers.

  She answered after a couple of rings.

  ‘Lucy?’ he said, just as disaster struck. He’d underestimated how slippery his palms had become as he’d paced and fretted round the apartment. The phone slipped straight through them. He made a grab for it, and in his haste knocked the ceramic pencil holder off the work top. It broke into pieces, and in the middle of the fragments Bernard saw something small and silver.

  He picked it up and rolled it round between his finger and his thumb. He assumed it was a bug, although he’d never seen one before. Though why anyone would bug his home was beyond him. Anything of interest he had to say about the Virus would generally be done on the work phone or mobile.

  Which, of course, were also probably bugged, or hacked, or whatever it was you did.

  Why he was being bugged might remain a mystery, but the ‘how’ was simple. He assumed that the bug had already been present when he’d been given a super thoughtful gift by a friend. A friend who had some financial difficulties.

  What had Marcus got himself into?

  9

  Mona drank her tea, trying not to scowl. Since leaving work, she’d been home, loaded up a bag with enough clothes to last a few days, and headed round to her mother’s. Her mother’s twisted ankle appeared to have had a variable impact on her ability to do household chores. She’d happily cooked them a meal consisting of chicken in white wine sauce, followed by rice pudding, but had then claimed to be ‘absolutely worn out’. Mona had put the bins out, stuck a load of washing on and was sulking in the living room while her mother watched Coronation Street.

  Her phone bleeped, and a text message flashed on the screen. Elaine. She quickly turned her phone off, glancing guiltily at her mother, who remained engrossed in her soap opera. After a second’s reflection she realised she was being stupid and turned the phone on again. Her mother would be delighted to know that Mona was dating. Of all the many people who would be annoyed about Mona’s current lov
e life, her mother really wasn’t one.

  She swiped back to her text messages. It was the second time today that Elaine had texted. The first one had been a message to say how much she’d enjoyed their date. Mona assumed that this was good Internet dating etiquette but hadn’t replied. The lack of response didn’t appear to have put Elaine off, as the more recent message was short and to the point. Drink later?

  The text provoked a range of emotions in Mona, the uppermost one being fear. She knew she’d messed up. Some vague memories of the evening were coming back, and she was pretty sure she’d made all kinds of indiscreet comments about the HET office to Cassandra Doom. Loose lips sink ships, and her career was in serious danger of beaching on a set of rocks of her own making. Her only hope was that her comments had been lacking in detail, that she’d just voiced the usual drunken complaints everyone makes about their boss and colleagues with a bottle of red inside them. Or maybe she’d spilled chapter and verse about the Sopel investigation, and Elaine only wanted to meet her to pressure her into going on record about some of them.

  Underneath the worries that she’d compromised her professional integrity, there was another deeper fear. She’d enjoyed getting to know Elaine, both over the Internet, and then in their date, right up until the point when she’d ripped off the mask to reveal the right-wing pundit she really was. Mona had been invested in the relationship. She’d been hoping to see her again and take things further. That, too, was scary.

  She looked up to see her mother watching her.

  ‘If you have to go out to work, Mona, just go. I’ll be fine here.’

  There was a slight accusation in the tone. You can’t even make it through one evening in my company, Mona. Always running off to work, just like your father.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure, Mum. I really won’t be long.’

  She started typing.

  Pear Tree, half an hour?

  The Pear Tree pub was an Edinburgh institution, located bang in the middle of student-land. The pub occupied a mansion house that had been built in the eighteenth century, and had moved through various occupancies and near-dereliction until it re-opened in 1982 as a public house and beer garden. What the ghosts made of the behaviour of the modern-day students was anyone’s guess.