Ken McClure - The Secret

‘God, I don’t know. It’s not as if we were friends. Somewhere along the way it occurred to me that she might think I was annoyed about her not showing up when in reality I just wanted to know if she was all right... so I didn’t actually go into the hotel. I just turned away. You do believe me?’

‘Of course,’ replied Macmillan. ‘But I think you’d better get yourself back to Paris of your own accord before any official requests start coming in.’

‘First thing in the morning.’

‘Good. I’ll tell the French to expect you.’

Steven took down details of where he should report to and ended the call. He turned to face Tally. ‘I take it you got the gist of that?’

‘Your date last night was murdered. The French police are hunting you down. Do they still use the guillotine in France?’

‘Jesus Christ, what a mess. Poor Aline. What kind of a sick bastard would do something like that?’

‘I hate to say it, but maybe the same kind as killed Simone Ricard?’ suggested Tally tentatively.

Steven stared at her unseeingly for a few moments before reluctantly conceding reluctantly possibility. ‘Not just a mess, more a complete can of worms.’

‘You never said why you were having dinner with her in the first place,’ said Tally.

‘She suggested it; I agreed. We were both friends of Simone; that was the reason we were in Paris. I was coming back to the UK in the morning, Aline was returning to Pakistan... actually she wasn’t. At least not right away.’ Steven had remembered that she was going to speak to her bosses at Médecins Sans Frontières .

‘What about?’ asked Tally.

‘She wasn’t sure if Simone had a chance to speak formally to anyone from Med Sans before her death. Apparently Simone and her team had come across a remote village with lots of sick people in it and kids who hadn’t had their second dose of polio vaccine when they should have. When Simone contacted the agency officially covering that area, she was told to push off and mind her own business.’

Tally frowned in puzzlement.

‘I gather it was a demarcation thing,’ said Steven. ‘The village wasn’t in her designated area.’

‘Sounds like they have NHS managers in Pakistan. Mind you, they would have noticed an unticked box in the vaccination schedules... For what it’s worth, Steven, that doesn’t sound like such a big deal to me. I mean oversights are bound to happen in that sort of environment. We’re talking Rudyard Kipling country here. The Khyber Pass and all that.’

Steven nodded. ‘You don’t have to convince me of that, but Aline told me that Simone felt embarrassed that polio was still endemic there. She took it personally so I guess she’d be hypersensitive about any shortcomings she came across. She always gave a hundred per cent and expected others to do the same.’

‘Even so...’

‘There may have been something else,’ said Steven.

‘Like what?’

‘Aline was going to tell me that at dinner.’

Tally raised her eyes heavenwards. ‘And now you’re going to be hell-bent on finding out what it was?’

‘I would like to know.’

‘Well,’ said Tally. ‘It would appear that, yet again, I am to be denied the presence of my man because the fight for truth and justice must go on. You really must start wearing your underpants on the outside, Steven.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Steven, knowing how weak it sounded. He took Tally in his arms. ‘I love you, Dr Simmons. I love you very much.’

‘And I you,’ murmured Tally. ‘Take care. Come back to me.’

Steven sensed that the French police were enjoying his discomfort. He was being interviewed by three officers in a bare room that smelt vaguely of sweat and tobacco.

‘You come with impeccable references,’ said the senior detective who had introduced himself as Philippe Le Grice, in charge of the inquiry into the death of Aline Lagarde. ‘The British Home Office apparently thinks highly of you.’

Steven acknowledged with a slightly awkward nod.

‘Such pleas on your behalf, of course, mean little when affairs of the heart are concerned where desire can turn to anger in the blink of an eye and with disastrous consequences for all concerned.’

‘There was no affair of the heart,’ Steven said coldly. ‘I’d never met the lady before. We were both attending the funeral of our friend.’

‘Ah, yes, Dr Ricard... a fatal fall, an unfortunate accident I understand. So here you were in Paris, the city of love... on your own... staying overnight... and you meet Dr Lagarde... an extremely attractive woman by all accounts...’

‘It was nothing like that,’ Steven insisted. ‘We talked at the funeral and arranged to have a meal together later before I returned to London and she travelled back to Afghanistan. That’s all there was to it, and then Aline didn’t turn up.’

‘Where did you intend having this meal together?’

‘The Monsonnier.’

Le Grice looked to his right where a younger man nodded. ‘So she didn’t turn up; your evening was ruined; you went to her hotel to demand an explanation...’

‘You were angry,’ interjected the man who had verified the Monsonnier booking.

‘No, I wasn’t.’

‘But you did go to her hotel...’

‘Well, yes, but only to see if she was all right.’

‘And was she?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t go in,’ said Steven, conscious of how implausible it sounded in the circumstances.

‘Pathetic,’ snorted the one remaining officer who had sat throughout with a sneer on his face. He got to his feet and leaned across the table, his face close enough for Steven to smell the tobacco on his breath. ‘Of course you went in and when Dr Lagarde rejected your advances, you had your way with her anyway. Then you strangled her and left her like a piece of trash you’d finished with.’

Steven kept calm but he was struggling. ‘Are you telling me that Aline Lagarde was raped?’ he asked.

‘Are you pretending she wasn’t?’ retorted Le Grice.

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Steven angrily. ‘This the first time I’ve heard it mentioned.’

‘You’re angry, doctor.’

‘Damn right I’m angry. I didn’t know Aline Lagarde well but from what I saw I liked and respected her. She, like my friend Dr Ricard, was doing an incredibly difficult job — one that I couldn’t do — for very little in the way of thanks or reward and she ends up being raped and strangled in the heart of the “civilised” world and the best you and your bozos can do is question me about it.’

Le Grice turned to his colleagues. ‘Leave us.’

This was something Steven hadn’t expected.

Le Grice offered Steven a cigarette which Steven declined, then lit one himself, drawing on it deeply before exhaling and making sure the smoke went upwards by protruding his lower lip. At least we’ve avoided that little cliché, thought Steven.

‘Dr Lagarde wasn’t raped,’ Le Grice said matter-of-factly.

‘Then what the hell was that all about?’

‘She wasn’t robbed... and she wasn’t strangled.’

Steven’s eyes opened wide. ‘Are you telling me that she’s still alive?’ he exclaimed.

‘Unfortunately not. She’s dead, shot through the back of the head with a nine millimetre pistol. Her money and her passport were still in the room and there were no signs of sexual assault.’

‘A professional hit?’

‘All the signs,’ agreed Le Grice.

Steven took a few moments to come to terms with the information before asking, ‘Why all the play-acting?’

‘We couldn’t imagine Dr Lagarde coming across too many hit men in her line of work but, by some strange coincidence, she was about to have dinner with a man who might conceivably fit the bill...’