Ken McClure: Lost causes

The information contained on the disks recovered from the Lark laboratory led to the Schiller Group’s becoming a proscribed organisation in the UK and a wave of arrests and sudden resignations, many at quite senior level. Norman Travis was one of those arrested.

Steven and Tally made their trip to Newcastle to seek out the graves of the people who’d died in the nineties in the abortive attempt to expose the Northern Health Scheme for what it really was. Macmillan had promised that they would be given national recognition, but for the moment flowers would suffice.

After visiting the burial place of Dr Neil Tolkien they arrived at the cemetery where James Kincaid, the journalist who’d started the original investigation, and Eve Laing, the nurse who’d fallen in love with him, lay side by side. Steven felt a lump come to his throat as he watched Tally arrange the flowers. When she stood up, Steven expected to see sadness in her eyes but found something else that he couldn’t quite fathom.

‘Steven… my mother was two days away from receiving that vaccine.’ She looked at the ground before saying, ‘Your country needs you, Dr Dunbar… even more than I do, damn it.’

And then Tally reached up and gave Steven the kind of kiss not normally thought appropriate in cemeteries.