Death at the Plague Museum

by Lesley Kelly

  ‘Of course.’ He suddenly realised that Mona was leaving. ‘Where did you say you were going? Will you be long?’

  He looked round but she’d vanished.

  ‘What’s taking them so long?’ Carole sniffed. ‘They know exactly where to look for him.’

  ‘They might need to put out the fire before they can get to him, which will be causing a lot of smoke in the stairwell. And we only know where he was when the explosion took place. He could have tried to get out, hit the smoke, got disorientated . . .’ He stopped, sensing that he wasn’t being as reassuring as Carole would like.

  ‘Oh God, the smoke could kill him before they get to him.’

  ‘If he’s any sense he’ll barricade himself in somewhere and wait for help to arrive. I’m sure Maitland has well-refined self-preservation skills. He probably trained for all this at Police College.’

  Carole clutched his arm, her eyes big and wet with tears. ‘What if the smoke killed him before he even woke up? Paterson was right. It is my fault, all of it. I’ve been egging Maitland on these past few days, encouraging him to mess about. It was my idea that he should skive off to the conference room. I said I’d cover for him and then I went and left the building without telling him.’ She buried her head in his shoulder. ‘I feel terrible.’

  ‘There was an almighty explosion, Carole. They probably heard it all the way to the Scottish Parliament. Even Maitland wouldn’t sleep through that.’

  A tall thin figure appeared in the doorway to the building, supported on either side by a firefighter.

  ‘Is that him? Yes, it is, it’s him all right. He’s here, Carole, and he looks OK. He’s upright at least.’

  ‘Oh, thank God.’ She removed her face from his shoulder. ‘Do you think he’ll hate me for this?’

  ‘Maitland is a grown-up. The only person responsible for him being in that building was him.’

  ‘He might not see it like that.’

  ‘Well, shall we go and find out? I think they’re taking him over to a medic.’ If Maitland gave Carole any grief about this, Bernard was going to have his say.

  They made their way through the crowd, most of whom were still staring at the smoke in shock. A couple of policemen were trying ineffectually to persuade the gawkers that they might want to move slightly further away from the building, in case there were any more explosions, but the lure of social media pics was just too great. Bernard took Carole’s arm and shepherded her through the sea of camera phones to the ambulance where Maitland was being treated. He was sitting on the back step of it, wrapped in a blanket and with an oxygen mask on.

  ‘Oh, Maitland.’ Carole threw her arms round him.

  The paramedic gently removed her. ‘We’re still running a few tests. Give him some space.’

  ‘What the fuck happened there?’ Maitland pulled his mask off, then started to cough.

  ‘A bomb hoax that wasn’t a hoax, I’m guessing,’ said Bernard.

  ‘Keep the mask on, pal. Your lungs have taken a bit of a hammering.’

  Maitland waited until the paramedic’s back was turned and took it off again. ‘Please say you didn’t tell Paterson I was asleep in the conference room.’

  ‘I had to.’ Carole dabbed at her eyes. ‘We didn’t know if you were OK. You could have been dead.’

  ‘I was fine! I shut myself in the third-floor toilet, with a damp towel along the door. I knew you’d tell them to come and get me.’

  Carole let out a small sob.

  ‘Which is exactly what Carole did,’ said Bernard, ‘the first moment she could.’

  Her head returned to his shoulder and he patted the top of it.

  ‘Couldn’t you have lied and said I was working up there for some peace and quiet?’ asked Maitland.

  ‘I couldn’t think that fast.’ Her voice was muffled. ‘We were worried. And I thought they might not look under the table if I didn’t say that’s where you were.’

  ‘You said I was under the table? Oh God. I am so screwed.’

  He wasn’t wrong. Maitland’s powers of self-preservation might have been well enough developed to save him from deadly smoke, but they were going to have to work overtime to get him out of a meeting with his line manager unscathed.

  ‘Paterson would never have bought you disappearing off there for “peace and quiet” anyway.’ Now that Maitland was safe and well, Bernard felt happy to resume hostilities. ‘He knows you’re bone idle.’

  ‘Bernard, I’m going to . . .’ He started coughing, and the paramedic reappeared and pointedly snapped his breathing apparatus back into place.

  ‘Oh, crap,’ muttered Maitland, underneath his mask.

  Bernard followed his sightline and saw Paterson and Stuttle hove into view. He took an involuntary step backwards. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

  ‘You.’ Paterson pointed at Carole. ‘Get out of my sight.’

  After a final anguished look at Maitland, she hurried off.

  ‘Give us a minute, will you?’ Stuttle said to the paramedic.

  He placed his hands on his hips and let out an exasperated sigh. ‘I’m not sure he’s fit to talk.’

  ‘He’ll be fine. I’ll take full responsibility.’

  The paramedic debated for a second whether to pursue this, then seeing the expression on Stuttle’s face, decided not to. ‘Keep it short. I want to get him to the hospital.’

  Stuttle leaned in toward Maitland, and gestured Paterson and Bernard to join him. He spoke very quietly. ‘This will be all over the Internet by now. I already have a press conference set up to discuss the two hoaxes in less than an hour’s time, and now this . . .’ he struggled for a word, ‘fiasco. People will want answers from me and I don’t know what’s going on. Tell me what’s happening here.’

  ‘What makes you think we know anything?’ Paterson put as much grievance as he could into his tone while still whispering. ‘It wasn’t even our offices that were blown up. Are you certain it was aimed at us?’

  ‘There’s nothing else going on in the building that is remotely controversial, as you well know, John. Unless there’s someone out there with a grudge against NHS statisticians, or the staff of the national breastfeeding campaign . . .’

  ‘Actually, people do object to . . .’

  ‘Shut up, Bernard!’ whispered Stuttle and Paterson as one, in both timing and level of irritation.

  ‘OK, sorry.’

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Stuttle, ‘the fire was in the room housing the server, which a pretty restricted number of people have access to . . .’

  Like IT staff, thought Bernard. But surely Marcus couldn’t be behind this. It wouldn’t make sense. Selling information about the Virus or the HET might be lucrative, but what was to be earned by blowing up the server? And although it looked like the explosion wasn’t aimed at hurting anyone, there was so much potential for it going wrong. Marcus wouldn’t be so cavalier with the health and well-being of his colleagues and friends. He just wouldn’t.

  ‘ . . .but they have successfully banjaxed the entire computer system for the building, which may not be unrelated to whatever they are trying to achieve.’

  Paterson gave Bernard a punch on the shoulder, which he probably intended to be gentle. ‘Seeing as we can’t get back into the building, why don’t you go and chat to your daft prick mates over at IT and double-check they haven’t blown them up as well.’

  ‘OK.’ He was going to give Marcus a good grilling about all this. A thought occurred to him. ‘Will we be able to retrieve anything from the building?’

  ‘Depends what it is. I think you need to assume that any personal effects you left behind are trapped in there for the moment.’

  ‘Helen Sopel’s phone is in there.’

  Stuttle raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Secured in the metal, bombproof cupboard, I trust? With the key to said cupboard stored somewhere else?’

  ‘I didn’t quite have time for that, but it is secure.’ He could feel himself blush as he lied.

&nbs
p; ‘We’re going to have a proper talk about the storage of evidence when this is over.’ He pointed at the building. ‘Talk to the head fireman. Say I authorised it. And John, you’re coming with me.’

  ‘To the press conference? Since when was I an asset at those?’

  ‘You’re not an asset. I just want someone to blame when it goes tits up.’

  6

  Mona hailed the first taxi she saw.

  ‘Quite a commotion back there, love.’ The driver grinned at her in his mirror.

  ‘Yeah.’ She suspected some conversational misdirection was going to be called for. The last thing she wanted was to have information about the blast spread across Edinburgh through the ever-effective cab driver gossip network.

  ‘I heard it was an explosion on the first floor of the Cathcart House. Must be some nutter with a grudge against that Health Check team.’

  Her skills of evasion obviously weren’t going to be required. This guy possibly knew more about what had happened than she did.

  ‘I mean, I’m not a fan of the Health Checks myself, love, but folk are just doing their job, you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yeah, agree, totally. Ehm, how did you hear about the explosion?’

  ‘Heard the kaboom sound.’ He took both his hands off the wheel to illustrate his comments with a mime of an explosion. ‘So I had the radio on to see what the story was. BBC Scotland is all over it.’

  ‘Really? News travels fast.’ She wondered what the journalists’ take on it would be. Cameron Stuttle was probably busy telling anyone from the press who’d listen about a gas leak, or an overheated server. Twitter, on the other hand, would have a full range of opinions tending to the view that the explosion was a top-level conspiracy. Somewhere in between, the truth was lurking.

  ‘Certainly does these days. It’s the Internet, isn’t it? People will have had pictures of the explosion on the Facebook as soon as it happened.’

  Given that there was a park full of protestors opposite the bomb site, that was pretty much an inevitability. She’d have to get Bernard to give her the rundown on who Twitter were holding responsible for the attack. The thought of how she’d deserted him sent a dart of guilt through her. She scrabbled in her bag to find her work mobile. As soon as she turned it back on, two text messages arrived from Bernard.

  Maitland walking wounded

  But still being very annoying

  She smiled. Maitland’s ego appeared to have survived intact – at least until Paterson dealt with the whole issue of him nipping off for a kip in the middle of the working day. She breathed a huge sigh of relief. She’d be the first to admit that Maitland was annoying, and she wasn’t done with him over the whole Cassandra Doom thing, but still she’d have hated to see any of her colleagues hurt.

  She checked her phone for other messages, and was surprised to see that she had multiple missed calls from a number she didn’t recognise, all of which had arrived in the last hour. Someone must have heard about the explosion and was concerned about her well-being.

  ‘All right if I cut through the park? It’s the quickest way at this time of day.’

  ‘Yes, whatever you think.’

  She puzzled over the number. She hadn’t given Elaine her work number, although, as a journalist she was sure she could get it, but, then, why bother when she had other ways to contact her. With a burst of conscience she wondered if they could be from her mother, who she really should have phoned to tell her she was OK. Not that her mother possessed a mobile, or actually understood how they worked. Perhaps she’d heard about the explosion when she was out and about, and had persuaded some random stranger to phone on her behalf.

  She hit her mother’s name in the address book. After several rings her mother picked up the call. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mum? It’s Mona, I’m fine.’

  ‘Of course you are.’ Her mother’s voice was a mixture of surprise and irritation. ‘Why are you phoning just to tell me that?’

  The taxi slowed down. Scanning the rows of stone-built terraces, she searched for a street name, and realised she’d reached her destination.

  ‘Watch a news bulletin, Mum. See you later.’

  She pressed long and hard on the doorbell, and in response a chime sounded somewhere inside the building. This was followed by rapidly approaching footsteps, and a second later the door was yanked opened.

  ‘Hello, Professor.’

  His face showed no surprise at all at her arriving unannounced on his doorstep. ‘Mona, thank God.’ He stepped forward and enveloped her in a bearhug. ‘You’re not hurt.’

  Over his shoulder she saw Theresa in the hall.

  ‘I thought you hadn’t seen him in months?’

  ‘People lie, Mona. A person of your age and intelligence should have figured that out.’

  Theresa pushed the Professor to one side and gave her a hug, albeit a much more restrained one than Bircham-Fowler’s. ‘I’m very pleased to see you. We’ve been phoning you but you weren’t answering. We heard about the explosion at the HET offices, and this silly old fool thought he’d got you killed by involving you in things that he really shouldn’t.’

  ‘What things? Do you mean Hilda Milwood?’

  The Professor answered by closing the door behind them. ‘Come through to the kitchen. I’ll make some tea.’

  ‘Was anyone hurt in the explosion, Mona?’ asked Theresa.

  ‘One colleague was still in the building, but not badly hurt. I don’t think the bomb was aimed at loss of life though. It seems to have been located in the room that houses the server.’

  ‘To disrupt your IT?’ asked the Professor.

  ‘Well, that would be pointless, Sandy.’ Theresa gave him a look. ‘These things are all backed up off-site. Like it was at the university.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Mona. ‘We wouldn’t have lost more than a few hours of work.’

  ‘So why blow it up?’

  ‘The important thing, Sandy,’ said Theresa, impatiently taking over the tea making duties, ‘is that it wasn’t targeted at people. So, despite your unfortunate comments to Mona, she wasn’t in any danger from the blast.’

  ‘But you do think the explosion was connected to Mrs Milwood?’ she persisted.

  The Professor and Theresa looked at each other. The Professor appeared to be silently asking her permission for something which, from the look on Theresa’s face, was being firmly denied.

  ‘At least tell me what the phrase means!’ Mona was completely losing patience. ‘When you heard about the explosion, you thought that it might have been targeted at me because you told me something you shouldn’t have, but even now you won’t even tell me who Hilda Milwood is – how do you know that you’re not putting me in more danger through my ignorance?’

  ‘Oh, Sandy, why did you start all this?’ Theresa slammed the lid onto the teapot.

  ‘If I’d delivered my speech, if I hadn’t taken ill . . .’

  ‘Ill? Ha!’

  He sighed. ‘All right. If I hadn’t been stopped from making my speech, either by nature or by human intervention, everyone would have known about it. Milwood would have been on the front page of every paper, and on all of these Internet sites. When we parted, Mona, I didn’t realise that I was putting you in a difficult position.’ His eyes, surprisingly blue and clear, gazed into hers. ‘But if you want to know, I will tell you.’

  ‘Sandy—’

  ‘Shush, Theresa. I’m not the man I was, we both know that. Whatever brought it on, I did have a heart attack. And I have responsibilities and commitments that I didn’t have when I was going to make my stand. I’m not going to go public with what I know, not while Maria is pregnant, and these people,’ he spat out the words, ‘could do her harm.’

  Theresa slammed two cups down in front of them but didn’t try to stop him speaking.

  ‘I will tell you what I know, and what you choose to do with it is up to you.’ He paused, as if expecting her to speak.

  ‘Thank you.�
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  ‘So . . .the most important thing that you need to know about Hilda Milwood is that she doesn’t exist, at least not in real life. But over the years she has become a kind of shorthand, a motif if you like for—’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Sandy, get on with it!’ Teresa sighed irritably. ‘If you must tell her all this nonsense, at least start with the film.’

  ‘I was about to tell her about the film!’ He gestured over his shoulder toward the kitchen. ‘That woman is impossible. Anyway, back in the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its height, there was a suite of public information films about the situation, of which Protect and Survive is the most well known. If you were a very senior civil servant you would have watched a training film called Thrive and Prosper, which examines some of the eventualities that might arise if a nuclear attack was launched on Britain.’

  ‘You can watch that kind of thing on the Internet.’

  ‘I guarantee you that this particular film is not on general release. No, you had to be someone pretty high up to have seen this one. The main thrust of it was that the great and the good might not make it to the shelters on time, and some hoi polloi might actually survive, because of geographical isolation, or because of some genetic quirk that made them resistant to radiation. Crazy idea, of course, but it was a long time ago. So, Thrive and Prosper dealt with the scenario that when the world was being rebuilt the people in charge may not be of the same,’ he paused for a moment, ‘calibre as the existing top brass. The film was to prepare them for a world that might be run by whoever was left. Like Hilda Milwood.’

  ‘A woman, Mona.’ Theresa’s voice came from the depth of the kitchen. ‘Imagine how terrifying that thought must have been for them.’

  The Professor grinned. ‘Mrs Milwood was a housewife with two young children, acted no doubt by some fine young RADA actress with received pronunciation. But all of that is but a footnote on history, important for one reason only. “Mrs Milwood” became a kind of in-joke for the members of the upper echelons of the Establishment. This developed into the concept of Milwood Orders, when, for whatever reason, decisions were taken by people much more junior than would normally be making them.’