were planning to reintroduce the scheme, the software must be around, probably in the Deltasoft offices.’
‘A raid?’
‘A raid,’ agreed Steven.
‘You’ll have to clear it with the Home Secretary. French was a powerful man, a stalwart of the community and a big donor to the party.’
‘You don’t think…’ began Steven hesitantly.
‘Perish the thought,’ said Macmillan. ‘She’s the Home Secretary.’
Steven resisted the temptation to point out that John Carlisle had been the health secretary, but Macmillan noticed he was biting his tongue. ‘Charlie Malloy is coming to see me tomorrow. I’ll ask him to have everything ready to go the minute you get approval from on high.’
Steven nodded his thanks. ‘Good to have you back, John.’
‘Thank you.’
Steven had anticipated a difficult interview with the Home Secretary. He wasn’t disappointed. The fact that he had been more than forthright at the COBRA meeting didn’t help.
‘If your reputation for success didn’t precede you, Dr Dunbar, I would be tempted to turn down your request and dismiss what you’ve just suggested as being too ridiculous for words. Are you seriously telling me that the government of the day was party to such an outrage?’
‘No, Home Secretary, I’m not. I think the health department back then was infiltrated by others — I’m sorry I can’t be more specific — but John Carlisle, the then secretary of state, was certainly part of the conspiracy, knowingly or otherwise.’
The Home Secretary diverted her gaze for a moment before saying quietly, ‘I think it was “otherwise”.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Carlisle called me before he died. His wife and I were friends when we were younger.’
Steven was aware of the pulse in his neck as a long silence ensued.
‘I thought he was just trying to save his own miserable skin — and he was — but he came out with some ridiculous story about having his career ruined by other people when he was health secretary back in the early nineties. Claimed he was stabbed in the back by people he referred to as the Schiller mob, who were pursuing their own agenda.’
‘But he didn’t know what they were up to?’
‘If he did, he didn’t say — and that would have been the time to say it. If ever there was a time to show the strength of your hand… But I thought he was making the whole thing up, so I didn’t probe. Mind you…’
Steven’s eyes opened wide, encouraging the minister to say more.
‘I have heard rumours from time to time about… some faction calling themselves the Schiller Group. But you know what Westminster’s like. Rumours abound.’
‘The Northern Health Scheme wasn’t just the project of a few,’ said Steven. ‘It had powerful backing, not least from those who got John Carlisle elected in the first place and oversaw his rise through the ranks.’
‘Well, it was all a very long time ago — not that that excuses any of it in any way if what you say is true — but I just wonder if this is the right time to be destroying confidence in the government?’
‘Is there ever a right time?’
‘Point taken,’ conceded the Home Secretary with the merest hint of a smile. ‘I will sanction your raid, but I must ask that you be discreet. Our country is by all accounts about to face one of the biggest crises in its history. The population must have trust in their leaders if we’re to get through this.’
‘Understood, Home Secretary.’
Steven returned to the Sci-Med offices and sat thinking for a moment, his hand resting on the telephone. It had been his intention to call Charlie Malloy and give him the go-ahead for a police raid on Deltasoft, but the Home Secretary’s request for discretion was playing on his mind. She was right: this was not the time to unearth a huge scandal involving a past government minister.
A raid on Deltasoft would not in itself do so, but it would certainly attract the attention of the national press who would then see it as their business to find out what it was all about. He took his hand off the telephone while he asked himself a few questions. Would French have kept such sensitive software in the company offices and labs where others might stumble across it? Deltasoft had grown into a major player, successful and well respected. It was unthinkable that the entire staff would be complicit in some right-wing conspiracy.
French had been a very clever man; he would have worked out that keeping details of his illicit activities in a building full of computer experts in their own right might not be such a good idea. Maybe he kept it under lock and key, or whatever the computerised version of that was these days, but it might be even safer to keep it somewhere else. At home, perhaps?
Steven knew nothing about French’s widow other than that she, like the other relatives of the dead, had not known anything about the Paris meeting. This suggested that she had not been part of the conspiracy. She could, of course, have been lying, but according to the police report she had been utterly shocked when informed about her husband’s death, not only by the death but by the location — she had kept asking what he had been doing there, seemingly fearing that he might have been having an affair. She still could have been acting, thought Steven, but if not, it gave him an idea.
‘All set to go?’ asked Jean when he emerged.
‘Change of plan. I need all you have on Charles French’s wife, and I need the address of the family home.’
‘Right,’ said Jean, taken a little by surprise. Steven had told her of the Home Secretary’s approval for a raid before he’d changed his mind. ‘I have her on the database.’
She brought up the relevant information on her monitor. ‘Here we are. Maxine French, aged forty-seven, parents both GPs in Surrey, a Cambridge graduate like her husband, only in French and Italian, worked as a translator in the early years of their marriage but gave that up to become a lady of leisure when Deltasoft took off.’
‘Did she have anything to do with Deltasoft at any point?’
‘Not that I can see,’ said Jean, checking her screen. ‘She appears to have filled her time with charity work, served on several committees, chair of two of them, a pillar of the community just like her husband. She had a particular interest in underprivileged children. They both had.’
Steven held back a comment about the great and good and their charities. ‘Address?’
‘Clifford Mansions in Kensington. They have the penthouse.’
‘Set up a meeting, will you?’ Almost as an afterthought, Steven asked, ‘Does the name Schiller Group mean anything to you?’
Jean narrowed her eyes. ‘You know, I think it does. I’m sure I came across something recently to do with that but for the life of me I can’t remember what.’
‘Let me know if it comes back to you.’
TWENTY
James Black was last to arrive for the meeting he’d called of the Redwood Park competitions committee — he’d been caught in a traffic jam for twenty minutes.
‘We were beginning to think you’d decided to up sticks and disappear,’ said Toby Langton.
‘Now why would I want to do that?’ replied Black with a forced smile that contrasted with the worried expressions of the others.
‘For God’s sake, Sci-Med have the files from College Hospital. They’re going through them as we speak,’ said Elliot Soames.
‘So much for taking Dunbar out of the game,’ said Rupert Coutts.
‘It wasn’t a serious attempt,’ said Constance Carradine. ‘More of a spur of the moment thing when we heard he was going to search the cellars. An opportunity too good to miss. Anyway, a junkie got the blame. No harm done.’
