Death at the Plague Museum

by Lesley Kelly

  ‘She’s not my friend, I only met her as part of the investigation.’ He followed Mona’s gaze. Lucy was shrouded in candlelight again. ‘I don’t know if we can trust her. Given that one of our IT support workers seems to have been an undercover terrorist, I’m struggling with trying to trust anyone.’ Lucy reached up and curled a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She’d never looked prettier. He sighed. ‘But I really hope we can.’

  Mona elbowed him gently. ‘Bernard, is this a date?’

  ‘No!’ He did his best to sound annoyed, before his natural honesty reasserted itself. ‘Well, maybe.’

  ‘Bernard, you . . .’

  ‘If you are about to say the word “badass” I will not be responsible for my actions!’

  ‘OK.’ She smiled. ‘Let’s get to the museum.’

  ‘What are all these plants doing here?’ Mona pushed angrily past the row of tubs in her way.

  ‘They’re . . . oh never mind.’ Bernard suspected that she wouldn’t welcome a full explanation of the medicinal properties of the foliage. Maybe later when she wasn’t looking quite so, what was the word, focused?

  ‘Lucy,’ Mona suddenly spun round to talk to her, making her jump a little bit, ‘once we’re in the building will it be obvious to anyone else that we’re there? I mean, if they were also to come here tonight?’

  ‘Well, I suppose they would know if the alarm wasn’t on. But why would anyone else be here tonight? Do you mean Corinna?’ She turned her key, pushed open the door, then paused with the key still in the lock. ‘Oh, the alarm isn’t on.’

  ‘Does that mean someone is already here?’ asked Bernard.

  ‘I don’t think so. The lights aren’t on. I don’t understand. Maybe Corinna forgot to put it on when she left?’

  ‘Or maybe she’s planning to come back later tonight via another route.’ Bernard explained to Mona about his earlier discussions with Lucy.

  ‘I don’t really understand what’s going on here.’ Lucy was starting to look worried. ‘I don’t want to get into any trouble.’

  ‘You’re assisting with a Health Defaulter enquiry. You can blame us for any actions we’ve requested that you take,’ said Mona.

  She didn’t look convinced by this. Bernard thought she was right to be concerned. He tried another angle. ‘Your assistance tonight might help us find out what actually happened to Nathan McVie.’

  This seemed to do the trick. ‘Poor Nathan.’

  ‘So, Lucy, we think there is going to be a meeting here tonight between Helen Sopel . . .’ said Mona.

  ‘The missing civil servant?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mona, ‘and someone else.’

  ‘Possibly Corinna,’ added Bernard. ‘It seems likely seeing as she’s left the alarm off.’

  ‘I don’t understand where she fits into all this, but yes, possibly.’ Mona looked thoughtful. ‘I suspect someone else as well.’

  ‘Carlotta Carmichael?’

  ‘My money would be on Jonathon.’ She turned her attention back to Lucy. ‘If they are coming in via the roof, which meeting room do you think they would use?’

  ‘If they were wanting to avoid the CCTV, they’d probably stick to the third floor. There’s a meeting room there,’ she pulled a face, ‘although it’s not very comfortable.’

  ‘If I wanted to listen to the conversation in the meeting room, is there somewhere I could hide?’ asked Mona.

  ‘I’m not sure. Shall we go and look?’ She started up the stairs.

  ‘Ehm, hang on just a minute, Lucy.’ He pulled Mona to one side, speaking quietly in the hope that Lucy wouldn’t hear them. ‘What are you doing? All we need to do is find Helen and take her to her Health Check. We don’t need to know about what’s happening at the meeting.’

  ‘You don’t want to know what’s actually going on?’

  ‘Of course I do, but it’s nothing to do with us. It’s the responsibility of . . .well, I don’t know exactly, but it’s not our remit.’

  She had the particular look of irritation on her face that he recognised from previous arguments. It was the expression she always wore when she was very annoyed with him, but didn’t actually have an answer to his question. He could see her thought processes at work, and after a second a look of triumph came over her face. ‘I need to scope the situation out, Bernard. She may not come willingly, and we don’t know how many of them will be at the meeting. It makes sense to check out what we’re dealing with. I can be in there and let you know how many of them there are, and if you need to call for backup.’

  ‘Yes, but–’ He suspected any such call would be made after Mona had satisfied her curiosity about the content of the meeting.

  ‘Bernard, we don’t even know if people at the meeting will be armed.’

  ‘Armed? It’s a meeting between a civil servant and a museum curator. There’s as much chance they’re packing heat as I am!’

  ‘“Packing heat”, Bernard? You watch too many films.’ She started up the stairs.

  ‘Mona, don’t get yourself killed or sacked trying to help the Professor.’

  ‘That’s not what this is about, Bernard.’

  ‘Really? This isn’t about you having misplaced feelings of guilt about his heart attack? And you wanting to finish the work that he started?’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ Her look of irritation was back. ‘Anyway, they can’t sack us. Recruitment being what it is they’d never replace us. Let’s pick up the pace.’

  As instructed, Bernard ran up the stairs behind Mona, taking them two at a time in his haste. As he reached the second floor he realised that Lucy was no longer with them, and peered over the banister. She was walking up quite slowly, her hand on her side as if she had a stitch. He stopped to let her catch up.

  ‘I’m not as fit as you and your colleague are, Bernard. All that food then rushing around – I think I need to sit down for a minute.’

  ‘Come on, we’re nearly there.’ He hesitated for a second then took her arm. ‘You can lean on me.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Mona’s head appeared above them. ‘Come on. We’re running out of time!’

  Lucy groaned, but let Bernard hurry her along. Once they reached the third-floor landing she stopped suddenly. ‘There.’ She pulled away from him and patted something on the wall.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not there,’ she panted.

  She hit the wall again, and he saw that she was actually tapping a metal bracket. It had a couple of curved arms sticking out from it, which looked as if they should be holding something in place.

  ‘There should be a wooden pole there, with a hook on the end of it. We use it to open the skylight if it gets too hot in the entrance hall. If poor Nathan was trying to use that to get out of the building . . .’

  Bernard looked at the skylight. To access it Nathan would have to have hooked it open, then climbed over the banister and somehow levered himself out of the window. It was possible but, he looked down to the ground floor below, a pretty terrifying route to take. What would Nathan have been so worried about that he would have risked his life to escape in this way? ‘It still doesn’t explain why he didn’t go back out the way he came in.’

  Mona joined them. ‘Come on, guys. These discussions will have to wait.’ She looked at the window above them. ‘Please tell me that’s not the way into the building you were thinking about.’

  ‘No.’ Lucy shook her head. ‘There are a couple of skylights in our storage areas, I think. To be honest, I’m not up here all that much.’

  ‘What’s the nearest one to the meeting room?’

  ‘Over there.’

  Bernard walked to the door Lucy was pointing at and opened it. There was a small set of wooden steps just below the skylight. He went in, leaving the light off, and climbed up to the window. He pushed it gently, and found it wasn’t locked. Cautiously, he stuck his head out, and saw that there was a flat roof only a few feet below them. ‘Mona, this looks like their way in.’
/>   She looked into the room. ‘Looks like it. Now can you get Lucy somewhere safe, then give Paterson a ring. See if he can get us any backup.’ She turned to go, then stopped. ‘But just tell him that we think we’ve found Helen Sopel. Don’t mention . . .’ she caught sight of Lucy listening in, ‘the other stuff I told you at the restaurant.’

  He thought about asking why, but decided there wasn’t time. ‘OK. Mona – are you sure about this?’

  She shooed them in the direction of the door. ‘Totally.’

  12

  Lucy was right about the third-floor meeting room. It was not in any way, shape, or form comfortable. The climate control of the Museum obviously didn’t extend this far, unless the climate they were aiming for was polar ice cap. The meeting room had a small adjoining space, a large cupboard, really, which seemed to be used to store paper records back to the day the Museum was founded. Or possibly back to the day paper was invented, judging by the age of some of it. Mona could not have hoped for a more perfect spot for eavesdropping. She crouched in the dark, and hoped that her shivering didn’t give her away.

  How should they to play this? Helen probably wasn’t going to be cooperative. Between Bernard and herself they could strong-arm her into a taxi and to the nearest emergency Health Check. They’d done it a stack of times before, usually with a Health Defaulter under the influence. She’d managed to get Bernard trained to the point where he didn’t take several large steps backwards whenever the punches started flying, and he could usually be relied upon to hold someone’s arms effectively behind their back. And duck at the appropriate moment.

  But that worked when they had a single person to deal with, and who knew how this Corinna woman going to react? Maybe she’d leap to Helen’s defence. Maybe there were other people attending the meeting, who wouldn’t be keen to see Helen carted off to a Health Check. And there was the question of how Helen herself would react. Most of the reluctant Defaulters she hauled in were unwilling to co-operate because they were drunk, or worried about missing their next fix. Judging by Nathan McVie’s willingness to risk his life to get out of the building, Helen was potentially highly motivated to stay out of the reach of the authorities.

  She heard a crash, followed by several bangs. It looked like the party was about to begin. Adrenaline surged through her, and without consciously thinking about it her hands formed into fists. The sound of female voices drifted through to her.

  ‘So, how are you?’

  ‘How am I? How do you think I am? I’m in hiding, my job is on the line and I’m in danger of taking the blame for this whole fiasco. I’m just dandy, I really am.’

  ‘Just trying to keep this civilised, Helen.’

  Helen. Tick.

  ‘Civilised? It’s a bit late for that. Anyway, what time is Jonathon getting here?’

  Jonathon. Tick.

  ‘Soon. Although he’s not happy with that stunt that you pulled passing the bills on to the HET officers with his phone number on it. It put him and Carlotta in a very difficult position.’

  ‘My heart is breaking for them, Corinna.’

  Corinna. Final tick.

  ‘Still, I’m sure Jonathon will have a plan. After all, that’s what he does, isn’t it? Sorts out the messes that his wife has created.’ There was the sound of a chair being scraped back. ‘I really don’t care about Jonathon Carmichael’s problems. All I want is my passport back, then I’m out of his hair.’

  ‘He’s going to want to know what other little self-protection measures you’ve put in place. Who else will be running to the authorities? Your pal got some more information? What about your sister? Or that assistant of yours?’

  Anneka. All the suspects present and correct.

  ‘Leave them out of this,’ Helen said. ‘Nobody will say anything – assuming nothing happens to me. I’m going to take six months’ unpaid leave, somewhere far away from here, until all this heat from Nathan and Jasper’s deaths dies down.’

  ‘And what then? You’re just going to turn up and reclaim your job?’

  ‘Why not? I haven’t done anything wrong. We were participating in a legitimate project.’

  ‘One which Carlotta Carmichael knew nothing about.’

  ‘Knew nothing about? Her husband was . . .oh, never mind. I keep forgetting that the only thing you care about in life is this museum. After all, you got your friend killed because of it.’

  ‘Nathan’s death was nothing to do with me!’ Corinna’s voice rose sharply.

  ‘Really? Let’s just remind ourselves of your role in all this. You provide us with a meeting space here in your lovely museum, at the request of Nathan. Your friend, remember him? In return you get a nice fat bung to organise an exhibition about Ebola and all the other infectious diseases you can get in Africa. And we get a cover story, if anyone asks, about this fantastic inter-continental cooperative show that we are putting on.’

  ‘That’s not how I . . .’

  Helen talked right over her. ‘But nobody does ask, do they? And our little experiment continues on, killing children as it goes, not that anyone is going to miss them, except maybe their pals on the street or in the orphanage . . .’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Nobody notices and nobody cares. And that’s just the way it would have stayed if the research hadn’t started looking just a little bit promising.’

  This was news. In her excitement, Mona brushed against a tower of papers. She bit her lip, but fortunately nothing moved. She concentrated on staying as still as possible.

  ‘Enough progress for the trials to continue, as a legitimate partnership between the Scottish Government, a couple of our research institutes and the University of Liwawe. I hear it’s got Ethics Committee approval and everything. Apparently the anti-virals are looking really promising. Could be big money in it.’

  Mona was beginning to understand Helen’s sudden disappearance. The Government might have been willing to take the heat if the existence of an unsuccessful and morally reprehensible drugs trial had leaked into the public domain. Heads would have had to roll – Carlotta’s probably amongst them. Helen would be facing criminal charges. There would have been some public soul searching about the limits of what should be done to fight the Virus. And in six months the whole scandal would be forgotten. But an actually promising anti-viral drug trial? No one would want to risk a proper study being undermined by its unethical start. Helen Sopel, as the remaining person able to let the cat out of the bag, was in a delicate position.

  ‘So, Friday morning you give us the use of your beautiful building once more, don’t you? So that Carlotta Carmichael can update us with the good news about the future of the project. And, of course, the bad news for any of us people who know the real truth about how the research really got started. We’re immediately dropped from the project, and banned from discussing it, even with each other.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t know, would I?’ Corinna sounded defensive. ‘I wasn’t at the meeting.’

  ‘Yeah, Corinna, but by then your involvement in this had stopped being a favour that you were doing for Nathan. It took me a while, but I figured it out. By the time of that last meeting you were totally in the pocket of that awful man.’

  Mona’s ears pricked up even further.

  ‘Yes, that delightful man. I’d describe him as our minder, but you probably see him more as a benefactor of the arts.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘What did he offer you, Corinna? A fully funded exhibition every year for the next ten years? And all you had to do in return was offer up Nathan.’

  Mona waited for a rebuttal, but there was silence.

  ‘Because Carlotta was nervous, wasn’t she? Could she rely on us all not to run to the press, or even worse, that mad old professor? She was really paranoid about him. So we all get a text message, mine supposedly came from Jasper, although I dare say his supposedly came from me, suggesting a meeting here Friday evening, so we can discuss what happened. Top secret, of course. Enter
via the tradesman’s entrance so that no one knows we’ve been here.’

  ‘You are so full of . . .’

  ‘Except only poor Nathan turned up. You must have known what would happen when you handed him over to that man.’

  ‘I didn’t hand—’

  ‘What were your instructions? Welcome them in, give them a nice cup of that special tea that will make them all nice and sleepy and malleable, and let that man,’ she spat out the words, ‘take care of it.’

  Again silence filled the pause.

  ‘And my guess is that Nathan twigged what was happening. Did he beg you for help, Corinna? Because he must have been pretty bloody desperate to try to climb out of that window.’

  There was a large sniff, followed by the sound of tears, which led Mona to believe that Helen’s version of events had been pretty close to the truth.

  ‘Where is Jonathon?’

  ‘Jonathon’s not coming. He’s not bringing you your passport.’ Corinna’s tears had turned to anger. ‘Did you really think that he wanted it so he could get you a visa for that visit to Africa? Didn’t you wonder why it never quite happened? He’s been sitting on it all this time, just in case things got awkward.’

  There was a banging sound, which Mona recognised as the sound of the window opening.

  ‘I wouldn’t run off if I were you. There’s someone else here to see you.’

  Further thumps followed as the unknown person joined the fray.

  ‘Hello, Helen. What an interesting discussion you ladies have been having. Anyway, I thought it was time for the “awful man” himself to join the conversation.’

  Mona heard the familiar tones of Ian Jacobsen.

  13

  ‘Where should we wait?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘Somewhere out of the way where we can’t be seen, but near enough that I can hear Mona if she shouts for help.’ He looked back at the door behind which his colleague was hidden. He didn’t like this. He’d have been happier if all they were doing was waiting for Helen Sopel to appear through the window, then requesting her immediate appearance at a Health Check. Though he had to admit she had a point that they didn’t actually know who else might be there. He’d be even happier once he’d phoned Paterson and made all this his problem.