Ken McClure - Lost causes

‘Put him through.’

‘John? I don’t think I’m going to make lunch today. Something’s just come up.’

‘A pity, Charlie. I was looking forward to seeing you again. It’s been ages.’

‘It has,’ agreed Malloy, ‘but the French authorities have been in touch. I don’t know if you heard anything about a gas explosion in Paris?’

‘I read something in the papers.’

‘Turns out it wasn’t gas; it was a bomb and it looks like at least some of the victims may have been British. Fragments of British passports were found in the clean-up.’

‘Ah,’ said Macmillan. ‘So someone else’s mess has just become yours. Any idea what’s behind it?’

‘Not right now, but the gendarmerie has ascertained that the flat was let to an Englishman named Charles French on a short-term agreement. Apparently it wasn’t the first time, according to the letting agency. He’d used the place on a number of occasions when he was in Paris on business.’

‘What kind of business would that be?’

‘The agency had no reason to know that and didn’t ask, but we matched the name up with a missing person report. If it’s the same chap, he’s Charles French, CEO of Deltasoft Computing, a Cambridge graduate and pillar of the community, by all accounts.’

‘Did the passport fragments yield anything?’

‘We’ve managed to identify one holder so far. There was enough of the name left for us to match it up with a Lady Antonia Freeman who has been absent from her holiday home in the south of France near Saint-Raphael where she likes to spend the winter months. Her housekeeper reported her missing; apparently she’d no idea her ladyship had gone up to Paris.’

‘Strange. What was that name again?’

‘Antonia Freeman.’

‘Rings a vague bell…’

‘Let me know if anything comes to you,’ said Malloy. ‘I think our best bet is to match up what we’ve got with passport control and missing person reports.

Anyway, sorry about lunch. How are you fixed for next week?’

‘That should be fine,’ said Macmillan. ‘I look forward to hearing more.’

Macmillan pressed the intercom button. ‘Jean, I’ve rescheduled my lunch with DCS Malloy for the same day and time next week.’

‘I’ll put it in the diary, Sir John. All right if I go to lunch?’

‘Of course.’

‘Don’t forget you have a recruitment meeting at two thirty.’

‘Ah, yes. Thanks, Jean.’

Macmillan got up and walked over to the window to look out at the rain while he thought about the meeting Jean had reminded him of. He’d been avoiding considering a replacement for Steven Dunbar until it was absolutely certain that he wouldn’t be returning, but sadly it seemed that that moment had come. Steven had twice turned down his overtures and still appeared adamant about not coming back. Macmillan knew why, of course, and understood Steven’s frustration at watching the guilty walk free so often — he hated it himself — but surely, through his anger, he must be able to see why no charges could have been brought at the end of his last investigation. It was just not in the national interest. He’d felt sure that Steven would come round eventually, as he’d always done in the past, but apparently not this time. He was now working as some kind of security consultant, living in Leicester. God, what a waste.

Sci-Med was Macmillan’s baby. He’d seen the need for a different sort of investigator in a high-tech world. True, the police had special squads, such as those that dealt with fraud and crime in the art world, but when it came to science and medicine they lacked expertise. It had taken him several years to persuade the government of the day to agree with him that such a unit was necessary, and that it should be independent, but in the end he had succeeded. It had now been operational for fifteen years.

There was no doubt it had been a success, as several governments had been forced to admit, although perhaps they would have liked Sci-Med to have been a little less independent on occasions where success had also brought embarrassment when the great and the good had been exposed as being rather less then either. As this embarrassment had not been confined to any one party, history had worked in Sci-Med’s favour, ensuring that any attempt by the rulers of the day to clip the unit’s wings would be vigorously opposed by Her Majesty’s Opposition, whoever happened to be in power. Macmillan had often pointed out that it was the opposition who kept Sci-Med in business, not the government.

Steven had been Macmillan’s top investigator, a doctor and a soldier with a proven record of being good at both, and he wouldn’t be easy to replace. Sir John had asked two of his other investigators, Scott Jamieson and Adam Dewar, to come in and help him assess possible candidates but he would be doing it with a heavy heart. Another course of action open to him would, of course, be… retirement. After all, he had the knighthood and had passed the sixty milestone where most senior career civil servants went off to grow roses and write their memoirs, but he couldn’t quite bear the thought of giving up the reins of Sci-Med just yet. It meant so much to him… if not his wife, it had to be said. She would be delighted to see him walk away from it all to spend more time with her. Given half a chance, she’d have him on some round-the-world cruise, dancing bloody rumbas with her blue-rinsed pals and listening to their bloody boring banker husbands telling him how they saw the crash coming all along. Jesus, he wasn’t dead yet.

The rain had stopped and the sky was brightening. He’d lost his appetite for lunch but he’d walk over to the club anyway if only to smell the wet grass in the park. Apart from that, something Charlie had said was niggling away at him. He’d mentioned that the dead woman was Lady Antonia Freeman. Macmillan felt that the name should mean something to him, but for the moment he couldn’t think why.

The meeting with Scott Jamieson and Adam Dewar was a relaxed affair, during which they narrowed down the list of potential candidates for Steven Dunbar’s replacement to three: two were medics, one a science graduate, all in their mid thirties. It was Macmillan’s practice never to recruit people who hadn’t yet proved themselves in other jobs, so new graduates were not considered. Both medics had served in Afghanistan with distinction. One was an A amp;E specialist, the other an orthopaedic surgeon. Both had been called into action through their association with the Territorial Army. Once derided as weekend soldiering, membership of the TA now meant almost certain active service overseas. The science graduate, with a first in biological sciences from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, had seen service in Iraq with the Military Police, where he had shown himself to be a more than competent investigator in uncovering a medical supplies scam.

‘Are you sure Steven won’t be coming back?’ Scott Jamieson asked.

‘I think his mind is made up.’

Dewar seemed almost embarrassed about saying what was on his mind. ‘You know, I’m not at all clear… why he left.’

‘Come to that, me neither,’ added Jamieson.

‘And I’m afraid I can’t tell you,’ said Macmillan. ‘Don’t take that personally. I would trust the pair of you with my life, but there are some things that the fewer people know about them the better, and Steven’s last assignment was most decidedly one of them.’

‘But as no court case was forthcoming at the end of it, we might guess that that was the reason?’ said Jamieson.

‘Let’s move on.’

‘Yes, boss.’ Jamieson smiled.

‘Check your diaries: let me know any dates that aren’t suitable and then I’ll ask Jean to send out invitations for interview. No hurry: sometime in the next few days.’