Ken McClure - White death

‘No.’

‘Would you care to have dinner with me?’ asked Steven, surprising even himself.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘No, I’m sorry. I asked if you’d have dinner with me without thinking. You’ve probably got a husband and children waiting for you at home.’

‘No… I haven’t as it happens,’ said Natalie.

‘Then the offer still stands.’

‘I thought you were anxious to get back to London.’

‘No, you thought I was anxious to get back to London,’ said Steven. ‘I’ve contacted Sci-Med about the confusion. There’s little point in me going anywhere until I hear back from them and that’ll probably be tomorrow — Whitehall goes home at five o’clock.’

‘I see, well, in that case I’d be delighted to have dinner with you.’

Steven booked himself into a small hotel, had a shower and changed, using the ‘just in case’ travel bag he kept in the back of the car. He met Natalie at the restaurant she had suggested, arriving five minutes before she did.

‘This is an unexpected surprise,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember the last time I spent an evening alone with a complete stranger.’

‘Just means there’s so much more to talk about,’ said Steven. And there was.

During the course of the next two hours, Steven learned that Natalie — ‘Tally’ to her friends — had been born and brought up in Bromley, in Kent. She was thirty-five years old and had studied medicine in Sheffield. She’d got married at twenty-seven to Rupert Giles, now an orthopaedic surgeon in London, but they divorced three years later when it was discovered that she couldn’t have children. ‘That wasn’t the only reason,’ said Tally. ‘But it was quite a big factor. Let’s say, it undermined what little foundations we had.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Steven.

‘Don’t be,’ said Tally. ‘Now I have more children in my life than I can handle. Your turn.’

Steven told her about his army background, his marriage to Lisa and her subsequent death. He told her about his daughter Jenny and her life in Scotland. ‘I’m very much a weekend dad — in fact, an every-second-weekend dad if truth be told.’

‘It must be difficult being so far apart.’

‘It doesn’t help,’ agreed Steven.

‘You couldn’t get a transfer?’

‘Sci-Med is a very small unit. We don’t have northern outposts,’ said Steven with a smile.

‘Tell me about Sci-Med.’

Steven told Tally about Sci-Med and the sort of investigations it carried out as the waiter replenished their coffee cups for the third time.

‘Sounds exciting,’ said Tally. ‘Very James Bond.’

‘Not really,’ said Steven. ‘Much of the work is just routine investigation work — like clearing up a misunderstanding about the location of a child patient…’

Tally smiled. ‘I suspect it has its moments.’

‘Once in a while perhaps.’

‘You didn’t tell me why you wanted to see this boy,’ said Tally. Then, seeing the indecision on Steven’s face, she added, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. This is none of my business. I wasn’t thinking.’

‘No, Sci-Med isn’t the secret service,’ said Steven. ‘Although we do like to operate discreetly. Anwar Mubarak having TB was the reason given by sources in the Department of Health for giving BCG vaccine to over a hundred children at a school camp. One of these children is now dead and another is seriously ill because of an infection which the labs are having great trouble in identifying. Several other children in that group have reported ill. I need to be sure that it is TB the boy Mubarak is suffering from and not something else.’

Tally’s eyes opened wide. ‘Like what?’ she said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘But surely if a government source says it’s TB…’

Steven smiled. ‘It must be TB?’

‘Well, yes. I mean, they wouldn’t lie about something like that… would they?’

‘Not without considering they had good reason to,’ said Steven.

‘What does that mean?’

‘There is a long tradition in government of not telling the public what they don’t want them to know. They imagine they’re doing it to avoid causing fear and alarm among the population or out of security concerns — another favourite of theirs — but it’s not true. They do it because it’s second nature to them. Their automatic response to any unusual problem arising is to pretend there isn’t a problem at all: No cause for fear or alarm.’

‘But you work for them.’

‘Sci-Med’s attached to the Home Office but we have a mandate to operate independently of any government department.’

‘Doesn’t that lead to conflict?’

‘From time to time.’

‘What’s to stop the government getting rid of you if you start biting the hand that feeds you?’ asked Tally.

‘Her Majesty’s Opposition would start asking awkward questions if they did.’

‘Well, well,’ smiled Tally. ‘Who would have thought…’

‘Sorry, I’m boring you.’

‘Far from it!’ exclaimed Tally. ‘It’s been fascinating. The trouble with working in a hospital is that all your friends tend to do the same. You become isolated in an enclosed community without even realising it so it’s good to meet people outside the circle — even if you happen to be a doctor yourself.’

‘It’s been a while,’ said Steven.

‘But you were a doctor in the army?’

‘Field medicine.’

‘Medicine under fire? Gosh, you have led an exciting life.’

‘That was yesterday,’ said Steven. ‘Now I ask questions for a living.’

‘I’d like to hear the answer to these questions — about the boy, I mean,’ said Tally. ‘Or is that not possible?’

‘I’d like to see you again so let’s make it possible,’ said Steven. ‘How about lunch tomorrow. I should have heard back from London by then.’

Tally laughed at the suggestion. ‘You’ve obviously not worked in the NHS for a long time,’ she said. ‘Lunch is a sandwich grabbed at my desk if I get the chance.’

‘Well, maybe I’ll call you anyway?’

‘That would be nice… and thank you for a lovely evening.’

Steven paid and left a big tip for the staff in deference to the fact that they were the last two to leave the restaurant, something he’d only just noticed. He’d only had eyes for Tally.

There was a taxi rank across the road with two cabs waiting. ‘Obviously isn’t London,’ said Steven as he beckoned one.

‘Obviously isn’t raining either,’ said Tally.

Steven saw her to the door of her apartment building where she thanked him again for a nice evening. Steven kissed her on the cheek and took the cab back to his hotel.

Macmillan rang while Steven was having breakfast. ‘Can you talk?’

‘One moment.’ Steven left the small hotel breakfast room via French doors leading out into the back garden and followed the winding path down through an arch of forsythia to the fake wishing well at the end, where a garden gnome fished off its edge. Steven sat down beside it. ‘Go ahead.’

‘I’m now told there was a last-minute change of plan and the Mubarak boy was not admitted to the children’s hospital in Leicester after all. My contact at DOH apologises for the confusion. They took the view that that might be too public and arranged for the boy to be treated at a private clinic instead.’

Steven took out the notebook he always carried in his pocket and pulled the pen from its spine with his teeth. ‘Do you have the address?’

‘Actually… it’s in Sweden.’

‘Sweden,’ repeated Steven as if challenging what he’d just heard.

‘I’m just as perplexed as you,’ said Macmillan.

‘They took a kid with TB to Sweden just to avoid publicity?’ exclaimed Steven.