It had been Tally who had suggested the Honda from the cars on offer; it was more of a family car, she’d said, and if he was serious about being a family man… well, look at all that space in the back. My God, he’d thought, he’d be wearing Pringle sweaters and taking up golf next. No, suicide was higher up his list of things to do than golf. The Honda started first time; it always bloody did.
Steven had his own parking bay with a white board on the wall saying Head of Security. It always made him smile. To his way of thinking, the last thing you should be advertising was where the head of security parked his car. But there was no doubting that things were different in the civilian world, so he didn’t say anything. From what he’d seen in the three months he’d been in the job, no one would have any reason to harm him anyway.
His office was on the sixth floor, bright and airy with light wood furniture and an abundance of potted plants. The wide windows had Venetian blinds, necessary in the afternoon when the sun moved round to that side of the building, but it was a dull, grey morning so he opened them fully and looked out over the campus. People in white coats were hard at work in the university labs across the way, as they would be downstairs in his own building, clearly visible in the harsh, white fluorescent lighting that illuminated their domain.
A knock came to his door but before he could say anything it was opened by a short woman in her mid thirties, hair tied back in a severe bun, and dark-framed glasses on her nose. She was Rachel Collins, one of the company’s legal team who specialised in intellectual property. She had the office next door. She smiled and said, ‘I thought I heard you come in. Have you checked your email yet?’
‘No.’
‘There’s a special meeting at ten this morning with the top brass. You and I have been instructed to attend.’
‘Sounds exciting,’ said Steven in a voice that suggested otherwise. ‘Maybe they’ve discovered a cure for cancer downstairs.’
‘I think we would have heard about that,’ said Rachel with a smile. ‘The conga in the corridors would have been a small clue.’
‘How long have you worked for Ultramed, Rachel?’
‘Eleven years. Why d’you ask?’
‘I’m still trying to get a feel for things. Any big discoveries in your time with the company?’
Rachel screwed up her face, seeking an alternative to ‘no’. ‘Can’t honestly say there have been any big discoveries,’ she replied, stretching the word ‘big’. ‘Lots of little things, stuff for indigestion, athlete’s foot treatments, hay fever pills, bread-and-butter stuff, not much better than the remedies they’re replacing, if truth be told, but with a shiny new box and an ad campaign aimed at GPs they bring in a bit. No really big earner.’
‘I guess big earners don’t come along all that often.’
‘And that’s why drugs are so expensive,’ said Rachel. ‘Lots and lots of research that went nowhere has to be paid for. Anyway, see you at the meeting.’ She turned to leave but stopped and turned back as she reached the door. ‘How are you liking it here?’ she asked, her tone suggesting that she really didn’t know the answer.
‘Fine,’ said Steven. ‘Absolutely fine.’
‘Good.’
Steven returned to gazing out of the window, wishing it had been true. He was a very long way from being ‘absolutely fine’. He had known it would be difficult; he had done his best to prepare himself for the feelings he knew were bound to come. The one he had at the moment, that of being trapped, had been odds-on favourite to make an appearance from the outset but he was determined not to give in to it despite the urge he felt right now to run downstairs, go out through the door and keep on going till he dropped.
The first antidote was to think of positives. He thought of Tally and the life they were having and would have together. He thought of Jenny, his little girl who now had a father in an ordinary respectable job rather than one that could result in her becoming an orphan. The second counter-measure was to think of negatives, those that had made him resign from Sci-Med in the first place. The creeping suspicion, built up over the years, that he didn’t work for the good guys after all; that there were no good guys, only various shades of in-between. Our democratic government was a warren of ulterior motives, alternative agendas, horse trading and compromise, connived at by a bunch of greedy self-serving twerps whose egos knew no bounds and whose only duty was to themselves.
He was now away from all of them and their devious machinations but he did miss the intellectual challenge of the job, that of figuring out what the hooks and crooks were up to and then going to war with them. Someone in the SAS had once told him that you don’t know you’re alive until you’re very nearly not, and they were right. Everyone who had experienced danger over a long period of time knew about ‘the feeling’, that heightened sense of awareness which perhaps only drugs could simulate. When it stopped you were relieved, but if it didn’t come back at some point you’d start to miss it, and miss it badly. Formula One drivers, rock climbers, downhill skiers, all knew about ‘the feeling’. Retiral might seem like a good idea at the time but after a year or so, God, you missed it. You just had to go back.
Steven’s game plan was to think of his time with the military and with Sci-Med as a drug addiction from which he was now withdrawing. It wouldn’t be easy but it could be done. He would struggle to keep his twitchiness and bad temper under control while he fought his demons, and in the end he would come through and emerge as a better person: a loving, contented husband to Tally if she’d have him as such and a caring considerate father to Jenny, even if she chose to remain in the north. Enough navel gazing. He turned on his computer and checked his mail for details of the meeting.
TWO
Sci-Med Inspectorate, Home Office, London
‘I have Chief Superintendent Malloy on the line for you, Sir John,’ said the voice of Jean Roberts, his secretary, from the speaker on John Macmillan’s desk.
‘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.’
