Ken McClure - Lost causes

The computer was unbiased, which was more than could be said for prescribing physicians who could be influenced by shiny advertising and pharmaceutical company hospitality. When the computer had made its choice, the drug was supplied from a central pharmacy quickly and efficiently, to be either administered in the hospital or collected by the patient. The need for bits of paper floating around the system and people interpreting them had been eliminated at a single stroke, as had the need for queuing at chemists while prescriptions were filled. Doctors in College Hospital and the surrounding GP practices simply punched in details of their patients and their recommended medicines, and the computer did the rest.

Steven found himself admiring the system. Like many good ideas, it had simplicity at its core and, as a bonus, the money saved through streamlining the process was ploughed back into the budget. Unlike the situation in many health authorities, no drugs were off limits in the Newcastle area, even the most expensive anti-cancer ones. If the computer accepted the diagnosis and the doctor’s recommendation, and could find no better alternative, it would supply the drug. Everyone appeared to be thoroughly satisfied with the new scheme, and voices were raised in favour of its being extended across the nation. The only question lingering in Steven’s mind as he got up to make more coffee was why on earth that hadn’t happened.

As he read on, Steven could see that the fate of the Northern Health Scheme was inextricably linked to the fortunes of its designer, John Carlisle. At the height of its success, Carlisle was being mooted as a future Tory leader, and then, without any discernible reason, it all seemed to wither and die. The Northern Health Scheme was wound up — the ‘end of its experimental period’, according to the press releases. Carlisle was switched to another ministry in which he became totally anonymous before being dropped from cabinet altogether, and becoming an equally anonymous backbencher, finally hitting the skids and being exposed in the expenses scandal before taking his own life — the meteoric rise and fall, as John Macmillan had said.

Daylight was fading fast and Steven had nothing to eat in the flat, so he thought he’d eat at a new Thai restaurant he wanted to try. After that, he would call Tally to swap tales of the day, and then spend the rest of the evening going through the files. If he felt up to it, he might wind up by going late-night shopping at an all-night supermarket to stock up with the essentials of life: bacon, eggs, cheese, bread, gin, tonic, beer and lots of frozen ready meals.

It was two a.m. before Steven stopped reading. He put out the light and rested his head on the back of his chair to look up at the clouds drifting across the moon. Although he agreed there was a puzzle in John Carlisle’s sudden change of fortune and in the abrupt ending of an excellent and innovative health scheme, he couldn’t quite understand why John Macmillan was so worried about it. An awful lot of water had passed under the bridge since those far-off times, even if Carlisle’s suicide was more recent.

There was the Paris bomb, of course, and the past involvement of one of the dead in Carlisle’s health scheme — maybe a second if Lady Antonia was in some way implicated — but that didn’t give him a handle on anything to cause alarm.

It was unfortunate that Macmillan hadn’t been able to be any more specific about his fears. It all seemed to be down to gut feeling, but John Macmillan’s gut feelings were not to be taken lightly. If Macmillan smelt a rat it was time to get out the traps. But even extrapolating to the worst possible scenario and considering for a moment that the Paris deaths had been linked to the health scheme, why would anyone want to kill those people twenty years after the event? Steven yawned. He’d had quite enough for one day. It was time to turn in.

A new day started with bacon sandwiches and coffee, something that made Steven glad he’d gone shopping the night before, even though it was something he didn’t enjoy doing. He saw late-night visits to supermarkets as something akin to visiting restaurants at the end of the universe, but at least his fellow travellers had been few and far between and the check-out was quick.

He’d steeled himself to spending the whole morning reading through more of the files, this time concentrating on the other things that had been happening in the north of England at the time of the health scheme, hoping to find a connection, see some link, discover some synapse that might trigger the same feeling in him as the one that had made Macmillan uneasy.

It was impossible not to feel horror at the story of the surgeon, Martin Freeman, dying in the middle of an operation, leaving his junior the nightmare of completing a very far from routine operation. It was easy to understand why it had attracted the attention of the nation’s press at the time, among their number the journalist James Kincaid.

Freeman’s patient, Greta Marsh, had reportedly gone on to make a good recovery and been able to give a press conference — although heavily bandaged — to assure medical observers of the operation who feared that her sight might have been damaged beyond repair that their fears were groundless. But then all hell had appeared to break loose.

Kincaid had been murdered in cold blood along with a nurse who was with him at the time; his killers were thought to be members of a powerful drugs gang. The same gang had been blamed for the death of Neil Tolkien, a local GP involved in a drug rehabilitation scheme in the area — Steven smiled wanly at the name, thinking how different the Shire was from the environs of Newcastle in the early nineties. The gang was blamed again for the death of the head of pharmacy of the Northern Health Scheme, Paul Schreiber, along with two male nurses when they had all been caught up in a raid on the hospital pharmacy.

Steven frowned, not least at the causes of death involved. Kincaid and the nurse, Eve Laing, had been shot, but Tolkien had been injected with bleach. One of the male nurses had been stabbed, and Schreiber and the other male nurse had perished in a lab fire. Kincaid’s editor, a man named Fletcher, had been murdered too but he had been shot in London, supposedly to stop any revelation of Kincaid’s story about the drug barons of the north.

‘What drug barons of the north?’ murmured Steven as he failed to find any report of a successful trial and conviction relating to any of the horrors he’d been reading about. Seven murders and not one arrest? If he had been looking for the reason for John Macmillan’s unease, he felt he’d come some way along that road. Why had no one been brought to justice? Surely there would have been a public outcry

… but apparently not. When the dust settled, the Northern Health Scheme had just faded away, and John Carlisle’s career had followed suit, along with what the papers had been calling the drugs war. Life had seemingly returned to normal for the good folks of the Newcastle Health Trust area in record time.

A new Conservative government was returned in ’92, and a new health secretary was appointed. The Northern Health Scheme ‘experiment’ was declared over, and relative calm prevailed for the next five years before the public voted the Tories out and New Labour came to power. Now, after nearly thirteen years, and with an election looming, it looked like time for change again. And this scenario had coincided with the death of two people, maybe three, who had been involved in a health initiative in the early nineties. Coincidence, or was there more to it?

Steven felt he’d been cooped up in the flat for too long, and sitting in the one position had given him a sore back. The sun was shining so it was easy to give in to the urge to go for a walk by the river. There was a lot to think about, and he hoped the fresh air might clear his head. What he needed was some kind of working hypothesis, but for the moment he felt as if he could have been looking for the unifying theory of the universe; there was always going to be a bit that didn’t quite fit. Macmillan had mooted the idea that John Carlisle might be the key, so he concentrated his thoughts on him.