Lost Causes (7 page)

‘Try me. I was always good at jigsaws.’ 

Steven told Tally what he’d been doing and about his meeting with Bleasdale.

‘You know, this reminds me of a film I once saw,’ said Tally. ‘
The Manchurian Candidate
, all about a Communist plot to get their man to the presidency of the USA.’

‘I remember,’ said Steven. ‘Frank Sinatra was in it. I don’t think John Carlisle was brainwashed though, just dumb.’

‘A handsome front man of no discernible substance,’ said Tally. ‘Not that unusual in politics, when you come to think of it.’

‘No,’ conceded Steven. ‘But the people behind Carlisle were so good that no one in the party made a fuss, and as their secret agenda seemed to be modernising and improving the National Health Service out of all sight, why would they? And then something went wrong and it all disappeared in a mess of
unexplained
deaths.’

‘I thought you said a drugs war broke out?’

‘That was the official story.’

‘You don’t believe it?’

‘There were never any arrests.’

‘I have a suggestion,’ said Tally after some thought.

‘Mmm?’

‘Let’s go to bed.’

‘I didn’t ask about your mother,’ said Steven, suddenly feeling guilty as the thought came to him at breakfast. ‘Did your sister come up at the weekend?’

Tally nodded. ‘Don’t worry. You had a lot on your mind with what was happening to John and other things. We’ve agreed to look at homes. I’m going to see one this evening.’

Steven nodded, not knowing how to respond. He wanted to say it was probably for the best but could see how much Tally was hurting at the idea. ‘I hope it’s the right one.’

Tally got up to start clearing away the dishes. ‘John’s big day,’ she said.

‘The operation’s scheduled for eleven.’

‘Let me know when you hear something, but it’ll have to be a message on my mobile.’

Steven said he would. ‘Just leave those,’ he said as Tally started to wash up. ‘I’m in no hurry. I’ll do them before I go.’

‘There’s a meeting of senior medical staff this afternoon,’ she said, drying her hands. ‘I think it may have something to do with that new vaccines agreement with the pharmaceutical companies we were talking about.’

‘Why should that affect you?’

‘I think we’re going to be asked to suggest priorities,’ said Tally, putting on her jacket and coming over to kiss him goodbye.

‘I suspect the defence of the realm people will have first bite of that particular cherry,’ he said.

‘No harm in letting our views be known. We’re not all pessimists when it comes to bio-attack. Let’s not forget weapons of mass destruction. Are they still looking?’

Steven smiled. ‘Love you.’

‘Love you too.’

Steven drove back to London, wondering what his next move should be, but thoughts of John Macmillan and the two possible outcomes of the operation kept interfering with his train of thought. If John died, would he really consider taking over? Come to that, would he get the chance? He might be John Macmillan’s preferred successor, but if Macmillan wasn’t around to have the final say, Government, new or old, might see an opportunity to interfere, and he had put up a few backs over the years. In fact, more than a few if he were honest.

But if John should pull through and take up the reins again, would he go or would he stay? Tally had insisted he return to Sci-Med but rightly or wrongly she’d been feeling guilty at the time, and that could change when she found herself under the stress and strain of ‘not knowing’ – the feeling she’d always feared. There was also his reason for having resigned in the first place – a matter of principle which didn’t seem so clear-cut now that he had experienced life in that bloody awful job at Ultramed.

‘Shit, I don’t know,’ he exclaimed out loud as he entered the outskirts of the capital. There were just too many variables … as was the case with his current investigation. He decided to dump the car at his apartment and head over to the Home Office to wait out the operation with Jean Roberts.

Jean broke into a big smile when he appeared. ‘I’m so glad I’m not here on my own this morning,’ she said. ‘How did you get on up north?’

‘Bleasdale was very helpful. Thanks for setting the meeting up. Turns out Carlisle was a man of straw.’

‘Most men are,’ said Jean. ‘Present company excepted,’ she added quickly.

Steven smiled. He knew Jean had never married and wondered if her comment had been born of past bitterness. He decided not to pursue the matter as he saw the hands of the clock reach eleven o’clock. ‘Good luck, John,’ he said.

‘Amen to that,’ said Jean.

Steven found himself imagining the smell of burning bone in the theatre as the surgeon’s trephine removed a segment of John Macmillan’s skull to allow access to the brain. He tried to dismiss the image and asked, ‘Jean, how did John know that the Charles French murdered in the Paris explosion was the one involved in the Northern Health Scheme?’

Jean looked thoughtful. ‘The name, I suppose.’

‘You think he remembered that a man named Charles French was part of the Northern Health Scheme all these years ago?’

‘No, I don’t think it happened that way … Let me see, DCS Malloy told him about Charles French renting the Paris flat and being one of the victims … Antonia Freeman was also
identified
, and Sir John remembered who she was … then John Carlisle took his own life and I was asked to come up with information on the health scheme. He would have seen the name in the stuff I gave him about that.’

‘Right,’ said Steven. ‘That makes sense. What do we know about French?’

‘Largely what DCSMalloy told Sir John. He was a Cambridge graduate, chief executive of Deltasoft Computing and a pillar of the community.’

‘Carlisle was at Cambridge,’ said Steven, thinking out loud.

‘You think they might have known each other when they were students?’

‘Worth finding out.’

‘Right. Actually, I’ve just remembered something else. It wasn’t just Charles French’s name John would have seen in the old info, it was the company name as well. French was running Deltasoft at the time of the health scheme.’ 

‘You’re absolutely right. I should have picked up on that. Well done, Jean. So his contribution presumably would have been in the provision of software to run the operation.’

‘Seems logical.’

‘Quite a contribution when computers weren’t what they are today … Maybe our man of substance behind the man of straw.’

‘What would you like me to do first?’ Jean asked.

‘See if Charles French and John Carlisle were at Cambridge at the same time. We’ll take it from there.’

‘Will do,’ said Jean. She looked up at the clock. ‘Too soon to phone?’ she asked.

‘I think so. Brain surgery takes time.’

Steven phoned at one thirty and was told that Macmillan was still in theatre. He suggested that Jean go to lunch and waited until she returned before checking again. The operation was over: the surgeons were optimistic that they had managed to remove all the tumour, which had proved to be benign, but only time would tell the extent of collateral damage caused by its excision. For the moment, he was stable and sleeping peacefully.

‘So far so good,’ said Jean, but both were considering what ‘collateral damage’ might mean, without actually mentioning the subject.

Steven went out to get a sandwich and some fresh air while Jean started to make enquiries about Carlisle and French’s
university
days. She had an answer when he returned.

‘They were at Cambridge at the same time, but at different colleges.’

‘Same course?’

‘No. Carlisle left with a lower second in history; French took a double first in maths and physics.’

‘So they might not have known each other,’ mused Steven.

‘I’m working on that. My source says she’ll call me back in a couple of hours.’ 

‘Okay. I think I’ll go over to the hospital and see if I can have a word with John’s wife.’

‘She could probably do with a bit of moral support.’

Steven didn’t stay long at the hospital because there was nothing to be done except wait, and that was best left to family. Once he had assured John’s wife that the thoughts of the people at Sci-Med were with her, and had enthused about the fact that the tumour was benign and the surgeons had got all of it out, he left and went back to the flat in Marlborough Court.

Jean phoned as he was making coffee. ‘They did know each other,’ she said. ‘Both were members of the Conservative club throughout their time at Cambridge.’

‘Well done, you. Now we’re getting somewhere.’

‘There’s more. French had a falling out with other members of the club at the start of his final year and left to set up a breakaway faction, taking quite a few of the others with him. My source also seems to think there was some trouble involving the police at a later stage and French appeared in court, but she doesn’t have details. Would you like me to run with it?’

Steven thought for a moment before saying, ‘No, I think I’ll ask Charlie Malloy about that. I wanted to talk to him anyway about the others who died in Paris. Jean, I’ve been thinking. Maybe I would like to have a word with John Carlisle’s wife after all. Do you think you could set that up?’

‘Will do.’

Steven called DCS Malloy.

‘I heard you were back,’ said Malloy. ‘Unfortunate
circumstances
, though. How is he?’

Steven brought Malloy up to speed on John Macmillan’s condition.

‘Good bloke, your governor.’

‘He is,’ agreed Steven. ‘Charlie, that bloke Charles French who died in Paris, did he have a record?’ 

‘A record? Well, he was a victim, not a suspect. I’m not even sure if we ran a check once we’d identified him. We probably had no reason to once we’d established he was the millionaire boss of a computing company and a pillar of his local community.’

‘I think he might have got into some trouble when he was a student in Cambridge.’

‘That wasn’t yesterday,’ said Malloy.

‘No, it was a very long time ago,’ agreed Steven. ‘And maybe you could run record checks on the others killed in the blast too?’

‘If you think it necessary …’

‘I’d be obliged, Charlie. I’m clutching at straws here, I admit, but this is John’s thing and if he thought it worth pursuing …’

‘Fair enough. I’ll be in touch.’

The phone rang almost as soon as he put it down. It was Jean asking him if he could meet Melissa Carlisle at her home, Markham House in Kent, at eleven the following morning. ‘She’s going abroad the day after and doesn’t know when she’ll be back,’ Jean explained.

‘Absolutely fine.’

At seven p.m., just as he was beginning to think that it would be the following day before he heard back from CS Malloy, Steven got a call.

‘You were right. French picked up form back in 1975. Apparently he was heavily into politics at university, but fell out with the Conservatives and went on to set up a rival group that went from strength to strength under his leadership. It was their practice to invite various right-wing speakers to their meetings, something that annoyed their fellow students no end. When French and his pals asked along a South African politician not noted for his liberal views on race, the lefties set up a protest rally and succeeded in stopping the meeting. French lost the plot and went after one of the protesters. He laid into him like a man possessed, according to witnesses. The chap ended up losing an eye and French was charged with causing grievous bodily harm.’

‘Not the best start in life for either of them,’ said Steven.

‘French got off with a fine,’ said Malloy.

‘
What?
’

‘The judge was minded to see what happened as the passions of youth getting a bit out of hand. He saw no good reason to destroy the future career of a brilliant student.’

‘Who was the judge?’ Steven wrote down the name. ‘Anything on the others in Paris?’

‘Pure as the driven snow, unless you count giving large sums of money to the Conservative Party as criminal.’

‘I’m much obliged to you, Charlie.’

Ending the call, Steven looked at the judge’s name on the pad in front of him, the phrase
passions of youth
running through his head. ‘Seems a bit lenient for the loss of an eye, m’lud,’ he murmured as he turned on his laptop and set up a Google search for his lordship. This revealed that the good judge had not enjoyed a reputation for leniency during his career. On the contrary, he had been renowned for the harshness of his sentencing. One observer had noted that the frustration of not having hanging and flogging among his options had left him with a grudge that he took out on everyone unfortunate enough to be tried before him and found guilty.

‘Then why go easy on French?’ muttered Steven, giving birth to the cynical thought that perhaps his lordship was a Cambridge man himself … No, that wasn’t the case, Steven learned as he looked through his personal details. The judge had died back in 1988, leaving behind him a wife, Matilda, and a daughter, Antonia, who was married to a surgeon, Sir Martin Freeman. There were no grandchildren.

Steven stared at the screen. The judge who’d let Charles French off with a fine had been Antonia Freeman’s father?

Steven called Tally to talk over the day’s events.

‘I got your text,’ said Tally. ‘It’s good news about the tumour, and that they managed to get all of it.’

Steven agreed. ‘Now it’s a case of waiting to see how much trauma was caused to the surrounding brain tissue.’

‘I take it they’re not hazarding a guess?’

‘You know surgeons.’

‘Mmm.’

He told her what he’d come up with during the day.

‘Sounds like you’re making progress.’

‘Placing Carlisle and French at Cambridge at the same time was a plus,’ he agreed, ‘as was establishing their common interest in right-of-centre politics. Antonia Freeman’s father popping up as the judge who let French off on a GBH charge was a bit of a showstopper, though. I didn’t see that coming.’

‘So, what was going on there, d’you think?’

‘Difficult to say. I’m inclined to think there must have been some good reason for it … something I’ve yet to establish. Something
else
I’ve yet to establish,’ Steven added.

‘And then French and the judge’s daughter end up being blown to bits in Paris together some twenty years later,’ said Tally. ‘Just where do you go with that?’

‘First, I want a word with Carlisle’s wife. I’m going to see her tomorrow.’

‘His widow,’ Tally corrected. ‘What do you think she can tell you?’ 

‘If French was really the brains behind her husband. Suppositions are like thin ice; it would be nice to have
something
solid under my feet.’

‘Good luck,’ said Tally, her tone reflecting the doubt she felt.

‘I know it’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try. How did your meeting go?’

‘It was just a case of filling in the details of what the new scheme would mean, and asking for our views. The government’s in the process of putting the manufacturing contract out to tender. After that, they’ll commission a whole range of vaccines – a sort of central supply – the idea being that once it’s up and running we shouldn’t have last-minute rushes like the one with swine flu, and the public will be less exposed to the risk of epidemics.’

‘Was I right about the MOD having first call on what vaccines should be produced?’

‘Yes, and surprise surprise, it’s a secret. ‘

‘I guess they made the difficult decisions, took the tough choices …’

‘That sort of thing.’

‘Well, as long as they don’t start arguing over details and get it up and running soon,’ said Steven.

‘We can agree on that.’

‘And on that happy note …’

‘Do you think you’ll manage to get up at the weekend?’

‘I certainly plan to, unless fate gets in the way.’

‘Don’t fall for the grieving widow tomorrow.’

Steven returned to thinking about his investigation. He was accumulating pieces of a puzzle but assembly was being hindered by having no notion of the picture on the box. He needed a sense of order. He got out a notepad and started to write down what he knew.

John Carlisle, Cambridge-educated but no great intellect – interested in politics – good-looking front man for brighter folk – made it to cabinet rank with a little help from his friends, and given credit for designing the Northern Health Scheme but probably didn’t. Faded into obscurity, and took his own life after being exposed as an expenses cheat.

Charles French, Cambridge-educated, brilliant – a double first – very interested in politics, involved in an unsavoury incident leading to criminal charges but got off thanks to an exceedingly lenient judge, set up Deltasoft, a software company which was involved in the Northern Health Scheme, went on to become a big player in the computer world and a pillar of the community, according to Charlie Malloy. Murdered in Paris.

Antonia Freeman, wife of surgeon, Sir Martin Freeman,
operating
at the same hospital where the Northern Health Scheme was trialled and at the same time but, perhaps more important, daughter of the judge who let Charles French off on a charge of GBH. Murdered in Paris.

Steven doodled with his pen at the corner of the page while he went over what he’d written. French hadn’t been completely ‘let off’, he reminded himself: he had been fined. No big deal as a punishment perhaps, but enough to give him a criminal record for a particularly nasty offence, something that would almost certainly have come back to haunt him had he tried to pursue a political career of his own. On the other hand, there was nothing to stop him operating as a backroom boy, out of the public eye and away from press interest.

Everything pointed to French’s being the brains behind Carlisle. They were at university together, had both been in the Conservative club, and, later, French’s company had supplied the sophisticated software for the innovative health scheme up in Newcastle.

Steven found that this conclusion raised more questions than it answered. However bright French had been as a student, and subsequently as a software designer, he had not been in any
position
to arrange a safe seat for Carlisle or smooth his progress through the parliamentary ranks. Others had been involved … person or persons unknown. It wasn’t the Northern Health Scheme that was the link connecting these people; there was something else, something bigger, some group or association that included a high court judge and people in positions of real power. The Northern Health Scheme was something they had been involved in but it wasn’t the be all and end all.

Steven relished the intellectual freedom this conclusion gave him. He could now widen his thinking to include the others who’d died in Paris and see what it all added up to. He
shuffled
his way through the bits of paper he’d been accumulating and found what Charlie Malloy had told Macmillan about the Paris dead. Apart from Antonia Freeman and Charles French, they comprised three big names from the world of business and a senior civil servant. He didn’t have names to hand but Charlie had also mentioned large donations to the Conservative Party. He had enough to go on to form a working hypothesis. What these people had in common was right-wing politics, perhaps even extreme right-wing politics.

The obvious common ground for them would be the Conservative Party but the way the John Carlisle story was shaping up suggested not. Everything pointed to their working outside the mainstream of the party. Twenty years ago they had used John Carlisle as a front for their association, presumably to promote their aims, which were what exactly? A toughie, thought Steven. All he had to go on was the success they’d made of the Northern Health Scheme. He smiled as he found himself looking at an extreme right-wing faction that had greatly improved the National Health Service in the north of England at a time when everyone believed the Tories were very much for getting rid of it. Maybe they all lived in Sherwood Forest as well, he thought, as he threw down his pen.

There were, of course, the deaths in the north at the time to consider, the victims of the ‘drugs war’, which now looked even more fanciful. There had been another reason for all these deaths, and the fact that no prosecutions had been brought … Steven felt a chill run up his spine as he wondered just how much power these people were capable of wielding. His desire to find out what had made John Macmillan so uneasy had now been granted in spades. He didn’t understand what had really been behind the Northern Health Scheme but, whatever it was, it was a fair bet it had had nothing to do with care and concern.

Steven saw he was following in the footsteps of James Kincaid, the journalist who’d been murdered along with his nurse
girlfriend
. It wasn’t the drug barons he’d fallen foul of: it was ‘them’. He must have come too close to what had been going on and paid the price with his life, as had his editor.

Steven wondered if this had been true for all who’d died back then. But there was a possibility they hadn’t all been on the same side – the old hostage-situation dilemma where outside rescuers had no way of telling the good guys from the bad when they stormed the building. Steven’s train of thought slowed and finally hit the buffers when he was forced to recognise that the people who’d been behind the operation twenty years ago – Carlisle, French and the others in the Paris flat – were in no position to reprise whatever it was they’d been up to. They were all dead.

An act of vengeance? Had someone carried a grudge for all these years and taken retribution on a cold winter’s day in Paris, or had it been down to something else? Could the Paris killings have been the result of internecine strife? If so, had the group or organisation or whatever it was been wiped out or had it just been reborn?

Steven revisited Antonia Freeman’s father’s leniency towards Charles French. It made sense now. Antonia’s father had been by all accounts as far right as it was possible to get. He must have recognised a kindred spirit in French, possibly even recruited him and his right-wing breakaway group to a bigger, more organised body, one that did have the wherewithal to get John Carlisle into a position of influence and power. 

Steven suddenly saw how he could eliminate the possibility of an act of vengeance in Paris. Charlie Malloy had highlighted the secret nature of the meeting. The individuals concerned had gone to great lengths to leave no trail of their movements or indeed inform anyone where they were going – not even close family. But the person who had set the bomb must have known in advance where the meeting was being held, and prepared accordingly. The bomber had been one of those who’d been invited to the meeting. He or she had been one of ‘them’. The chances were it had not been revenge; it had been a coup.

‘Shit,’ said Steven under his breath as he saw the magnitude of his task grow. He didn’t know who ‘they’ were; he didn’t know how big the organisation was and he didn’t know what they were planning. He decided his only option was to learn from the past. He might be dealing with a case of history repeating itself if there was to be some kind of revival of the Northern Health Scheme, so he’d have to try to find out what Carlisle and his colleagues had been up to back in the early nineties. ‘A stroll down memory lane,’ he murmured as he called it a night.

Markham House looked impressive, Steven thought, as he got out of the car to use the phone at the side of the gates. He only managed a brief look, however, before turning away from a bitter wind which was whipping sleet into his face. ‘C’mon, c’mon,’ he complained, as no one up at the house seemed keen to answer the buzzer. He pressed twice more before an
upper-class
female voice said, ‘Yes, who is it?’

‘Steven Dunbar, Sci-Med Inspectorate.’

‘You’d better come in.’

‘Yes, I’d better,’ murmured Steven, shrugging his shoulders in discomfort as rain-water found a way inside his collar to trickle down his back. The iron gates swung open and Steven drove up to the house.