Ken McClure - Lost causes

‘Because they didn’t want to be seen here?’ suggested Malloy after a moment’s thought and a long sip of wine.

‘I do believe tonight’s star prize goes to Chief Superintendent Malloy,’ said Macmillan. ‘Do you think I could be kept in the loop on this one, Charlie? For some reason, it’s making me feel uneasy and I’m not sure why.’

‘No problem. Is your Steven Dunbar back with you yet or is he still in a huff?’

Macmillan smiled. ‘I wish it were only a huff, Charlie. I really do.’

‘So what went on there?’

Macmillan adopted a dignified pose. ‘In the interests of the state, I can’t tell you, Charlie. I’m sorry.’

‘Heigh-ho, I’ve been round that block a few times. The bottom line’s always the same. Some high-up bugger’s got away with something.’

Macmillan didn’t argue.

Jean Roberts looked up as Macmillan came in. ‘Nice lunch, sir?’

‘Interesting. Jean, have you had a chance to do anything yet about the information I asked for on Martin Freeman’s last operation?’

Jean brought out a red folder from her desk drawer. It seemed to weigh quite a bit as she struggled to lift it with one hand. ‘There was actually quite a lot going on at the time,’ she explained.

Macmillan accepted the file in amazement. ‘A thorough job as always, Jean,’ he muttered.

He spent the remainder of the afternoon reading through the file recording the events of 1992 when Martin Freeman had died while operating on a severely disfigured patient at College Hospital, Newcastle. Another surgeon, Dr Claire Affric, who had been assisting Freeman at the time, had taken over and completed the operation but press access to the principals at all stages afterwards had been very limited, and there had been rumours that the bandaged figure finally put before the cameras to assure everyone that all was well was not the patient, Greta Marsh, at all. The whole unhappy saga did little to calm Macmillan’s unease. Instead, it triggered off more memories.

A very good investigative journalist had been covering the case at the time, he recalled. He worked for one of the nationals and had been successful in uncovering some NHS funding scandal before he went north to look at the Greta Marsh affair. Kincaid, that was his name, James Kincaid. He’d never returned from that assignment up north. He and a nurse from a local hospital had been found dead. The explanation had been that Kincaid had become interested in another story concerning a drugs racket, and had paid the price for interference along with the nurse, who’d become his girlfriend.

Macmillan read that Kincaid and his girl had not been the only victims of what the papers had called the northern drugs war. Paul Schreiber, a pharmacist who had been involved in setting up a new health initiative at College Hospital, had also died along with two male nurses when thieves had carried out a raid on the hospital pharmacy. Yet another victim of the war had been a local GP named Tolkien, who’d been running a drug rehabilitation clinic in the area.

Macmillan rested his elbows on the desk and cupped his chin in his hands to read on. The violence had not been confined to the north. Kincaid’s editor in London had also been murdered, supposedly in case Kincaid had passed on any of his findings to him.

Something stirring at the back of his mind made Macmillan look back a couple of pages to the piece on Paul Schreiber. It wasn’t the murder that had caught his attention, it was the bit about his being involved in ‘a new health initiative’. He leaned over and pressed the intercom button. ‘Jean, what was the name of that Tory MP who committed suicide the other day?’

‘John Carlisle, sir.’

Ye gods, that was it. Carlisle was the figurehead at the time of… Macmillan willed the name to come to him. The Northern Health Scheme, that was it. John Carlisle had been health secretary back then and had been credited with introducing a revolutionary, computerised new health initiative in the north of England, which by all accounts had been hugely successful.

But then… what? Macmillan found to his embarrassment that he couldn’t remember much more. Carlisle had seemed to fade from popular view although only a few months before he had been touted as a possible future leader of the Conservative Party. The new, computerised health scheme had also disappeared. ‘How very strange,’ he said aloud.

‘What is, Sir John?’ asked Jean Roberts’s voice. Macmillan had left the intercom on. He switched it off without apology. His mind was now on other things, spreading its horizons. It was all a very long time ago and the Tories had been voted out of office in ’97, but the fact that Carlisle’s career had come to such an abrupt end in the preceding parliament, and such a hugely successful health initiative had ground to a halt without explanation now struck him as very odd.

‘Jean, I need all you can get me on something called the Northern Health Scheme, operating around the early nineties in the north of England at a time when John Carlisle was Secretary of State for Health.’

‘How soon, Sir John?’

‘Yesterday.’

He knew that there would be no Sci-Med files on the subject as this was before the inception of the unit, but Jean would use press archives in the first instance and augment them with government information where necessary. He got the first of her results an hour later.

He couldn’t have told anyone what he was looking for as he leafed through the pages; he didn’t know himself, but he knew that he’d recognise it when he found it, and a few minutes later he did, in the list of people responsible for the running of the short-lived Northern Health Scheme introduced in November 1991. Apart from John Carlisle, one Charles French of Deltasoft was there: the Charles French who had just been blown to bits in Paris… along with Antonia Freeman.

‘Hell and damnation,’ whispered Macmillan, tapping his pen on the desk in a gesture of annoyance as something else occurred to him. He looked back at the material on Martin Freeman to make doubly sure. Yes, it was the same hospital: College Hospital, Newcastle.

Macmillan looked into the middle distance for a long time before realising that the dull headache that had been plaguing him for the past few days was getting worse. In fact, it was becoming unbearable. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he held his hands to his temples.

‘Jean, I need some help in here…’

‘You seem down,’ said Steven, watching Tally play more with her food than eat it. It had gone eight o’clock on Tuesday evening and Steven had prepared dinner, although ‘prepared’ was perhaps an exaggeration: he’d opened two M amp;S ready meals and heated them up. Steven didn’t cook, never had. Food had never played a big part in his life and he couldn’t quite understand all the fuss about it, particularly the hours devoted to it on television.

‘Things on my mind.’

‘Am I allowed to ask what?’

Tally gave a slight shake of the head as if reluctant to go further, but then she reconsidered. ‘It’s my mother,’ she said. ‘She’s finding it difficult to cope. Independence in the community with support or whatever they call it is just not working out.’

Steven made a face.

‘A home would kill her. She’s always said so.’

‘Most people do,’ said Steven, aware that his words could be construed as callous but still feeling it needed pointing out. ‘It really doesn’t have to be that bad.’

‘How many of these places have you seen?’ snapped Tally.

‘Not many.’

Tally’s stare demanded more.

‘None.’

‘She’s my mother, Steven. The woman who brought me into the world, comforted me when I was down, encouraged me when I was unsure, cheered for me when I won things, found excuses for when I didn’t. She made me what I am. I wouldn’t be comforting other people’s kids on a daily basis if she hadn’t done that for me. Don’t you understand?’