Ken McClure - Lost causes

‘Then of course you must.’

Steven waved down the first taxi he saw on Corstorphine Road and asked to be taken to the airport. He was back in London and heading for the Home Office by two o’clock. On the way, he phoned John Ricksen and suggested they meet as soon as possible.

‘What are you after this time, Dunbar?’

‘I have a present for you… if you adopt a more respectful tone.’

‘What is it?’

‘Anwar Khan’s controller for the Edinburgh attack.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Fair enough. Maybe I should pass him over to Special Branch?’

‘Wait. If you’re serious, dinner’s on me.’

‘Is the right answer.’

Steven arranged to meet Ricksen later and went on to the Home Office, where he was relieved to find John Macmillan at his desk. ‘Looks like you’re back full time.’

‘My wife’s been trying to persuade me to think about taking a cruise to recuperate, as she puts it. I’m out of reach when I’m here.’

‘Maybe she’s right,’ suggested Steven. ‘You’ve been through a rough time.’

‘It’s mental stimulation I need, Steven, not cerebral atrophy.’

‘Right, you’re about to get some. The antibiotic sensitivity of the cholera strain was a ploy to make us think it hadn’t been genetically modified. It has. Lukas found something inserted in its genome, something he called a cassette.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘In this case, he tells me it’s a self-destruct mechanism. The cholera bug is programmed to die out on its own.’

‘God save us,’ murmured Macmillan. ‘So we’re dealing with a group of Islamic fundamentalist extremists whom no one has ever heard of, who appear out of nowhere and attack us with a bio-weapon that is destined to die rather than kill…’

Steven pushed the photograph Mrs McKay had given him across the desk. ‘The man at the window is Waheed Malik, the missing neighbour with the nephew who worked for the water board.’

‘What a bit of luck. What do you plan to do?’

‘I’ll scan some copies and try running him against our own files but I don’t think that’ll get us very far. I’m going to hand him over to John Ricksen, as we discussed. I’m seeing him this evening.’

‘Good show. There must be a good chance Malik knows more than the cannon fodder in Belmarsh.’

‘At the moment, he’s our only hope of finding out what the hell’s going on,’ said Steven.

He went home and took a long shower before wrapping his bathrobe round him and lying flat on his back on his bed to look up at the featureless white ceiling in search of inspiration. Try as he might, he could not figure out a reason for such an operation. The fundamentalists had carried out a near perfect attack using a horrible disease. They had created terror across the entire nation and had then shopped their own when they’d been in a position to deliver a killer blow. Now it seemed they had even planned the failure of their first attack by disabling the organism. It was bizarre, and he phoned Tally to say so.

‘That’s crazy,’ was Tally’s verdict, and not one Steven was going to argue with.

‘Now I think I know how Alice in Wonderland felt,’ he said. He told Tally about the lead he had brought back from Edinburgh.

‘You’ve been to Edinburgh?’

‘A flying visit. Sorry, I didn’t have time to tell you.’

‘It’s like having a relationship with Lord Lucan.’

‘C’mon, I’m much easier to find.’

‘Marginally. Where am I going to find you next? I have a day off tomorrow. I tell you what, give me a clue and we’ll call it an orienteering exercise.’

‘How about your bed in the early hours of the morning?’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Never more so. I’ve got a date tonight and then-’

‘You’ve got what?’

‘With MI5,’ Steven explained. ‘I’m passing over the Edinburgh lead to them. I’m meeting one of their officers and then I could be on my way north to the arms of the woman I love.’

‘Only if I get breakfast in bed tomorrow morning.’

‘’Tis a hard woman ye are, Tally Simmons,’ said Steven in a cod-Irish accent.

‘Take it or leave it, big boy,’ replied Tally, doing Mae West no justice at all.

‘Okay, you get breakfast.’

‘Then we have a deal.’

Steven met John Ricksen in a riverside pub which had recently undergone a facelift and was now styling itself a gastro-pub. He hoped no double entendre was intended. Ricksen appeared to know the owner, and they were given a table with views of the river and dry sherry on the house.

‘My only drink this evening,’ said Steven. ‘I have to drive later.’

Ricksen looked for a moment as if he were about to enquire where, but he didn’t. Instead he asked, ‘So, what have you got for me?’

Steven gave him the photograph.

Ricksen seemed less than impressed. ‘What am I looking at?’

‘The face in the window is one Waheed Malik.’ Steven told Ricksen about the Corstorphine bungalow and the ‘nephew’ in the water board van on the day of the Edinburgh attack.

‘How in hell’s name did you come up with this?’ exclaimed Ricksen.

‘I have my methods, Watson. You know that.’

‘Tell me about them, Sherlock.’

Steven told him about the missing person report.

‘Jammy bugger,’ said Ricksen.

‘Not me, my boss.’

‘Macmillan’s back?’

‘Yup. So tell me, what have 5 come up with?’

Ricksen made a face. ‘Like I said before, we’re not going to get anything out of the eight in Belmarsh. They don’t know anything. They look like terrorists, they have names we expect terrorists to have, but their accents say they’re English, from Leicester and Birmingham. They were looking for a cause because it was probably easier than getting a job, and some character stepped in and showed them the path to righteousness and martyrdom. They were recruited and groomed for a specific attack and then let loose without knowing up from down.’

‘Let’s hope Malik has form.’

‘I’ll drink to that. Pity you can’t.’

As they finished their meal, Steven said, ‘We’ve known each other quite a while.’

Ricksen looked at him, suspicion showing. ‘What’s coming next?’

‘Have you ever heard of an organisation calling themselves the Schiller Group?’

Ricksen stayed quiet for what Steven thought was an unreasonably long time before he said, ‘The answer is yes, I’ve heard of them, but that’s about it.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘Right-wing political movement, obsessively secret, patriotic in a way that longs for the past, warm beer, the sound of willow on leather, a sense of order and decency as they see it, and woe betide anyone who gets on the wrong side of them — or so I’m led to believe.’

‘Who led you to believe?’

Ricksen looked as if he’d rather not say any more but Steven’s unwavering gaze persuaded him.

‘A few years ago, one of our blokes succeeded in penetrating a National Front cell that seemed to be getting very ambitious in its plans to persuade Asians to consider leaving. He reported that it wasn’t self-contained. An outside faction was behind it.’

‘The Schiller Group?’

Ricksen nodded. ‘We fished his body out of the Thames a few weeks later. No charges were ever brought, even though it was one of our own. Why are you asking?’

‘A cold case I was working on before the terrorist attack.’

‘I’d leave it cold.’

It was after one thirty in the morning when Steven opened the door to Tally’s flat as quietly as he could and let himself in. He smiled when he saw the gin bottle and one crystal glass sitting on the table with a note that said, Tonic in the fridge, sandwiches wrapped in cling-film. It was just what he needed to help him wind down after the meeting with Ricksen and the long drive north. Ricksen hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know about the Schiller Group, but the fact that even MI5 might back-pedal when it came to taking them on was more than a bit unsettling.