Steven found it difficult not to react to what he was hearing. It was the script of a nightmare. He could see that Lisa was still upset but was reluctant to stop questioning her. ‘You said your brother and Dr Tolkien teamed up. Eve too. Was anyone else on side?’
Lisa thought for a moment before saying, ‘I think there was, now you come to mention it. Holland, somebody Holland. I think he had something to do with computers at the hospital. ‘
‘Anyone else?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Mrs Hardesty, I’m sorry for disturbing your Sunday and bringing back such painful memories, but you’ve been most helpful.’
‘It’s nice to know someone’s interested in Jim’s death after all these years. No one was at the time.’
‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ said Tally when Steven arrived at her apartment the wrong side of seven thirty.
‘Sorry, I had to go to Newcastle. A quick shower and I’ll be right with you. Where shall we go?’
‘Look, we don’t have to go out,’ said Tally sympathetically. ‘I can rustle up something here and you can relax and get your breath back…’
‘No, we’re going out.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Tally with a smile at Steven’s insistence, ‘but I’ll do the driving. You look as if you could do with a drink.’
They drove to a popular Indian restaurant where they had no trouble getting a table on a Sunday night. The place was about half full, and muted sitar music set the atmosphere as they sat under chandeliers, surrounded by red flock wallpaper.
‘Why did you go to Newcastle?’ asked Tally.
Steven told her about his trip to see James Kincaid’s sister and what she’d been able to tell him.
‘You know, this is shaping up into something really nasty,’ said Tally.
Steven agreed. ‘But at least I can now sort out the good guys from the bad among the dead.’
‘But as to what they were up to…’
‘I’m a way off that yet,’ said Steven. ‘The system was supposed to be foolproof but Kincaid thought they had killed his father by giving him the wrong treatment and Neil Tolkien thought the same about some of his patients.’
‘From what you’ve told me, there didn’t seem to be much margin for error,’ argued Tally. ‘If a doctor prescribed a certain drug, a computer checked that the treatment was appropriate, and only stipulated a cheaper alternative if it had been clinically proved to be as good. Then the automated pharmacy department was instructed to supply it. What could go wrong?’
‘You’d think it would be a safer system than the usual one,’ Steven agreed.
‘Mind you,’ Tally began thoughtfully, ‘I think you once told me that Tolkien was involved with drug addicts…’
‘What’s on your mind?’
‘What did Kincaid’s father die of?’
‘I understand he had long-term chest problems because of his occupation and he’d just developed cancer. They operated but he didn’t live for long afterwards.’
Tally topped up Steven’s glass. ‘I suppose we have no way of knowing that the drug addicts were the patients Neil Tolkien was worried about, but if they were… we could be looking at lost causes here.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘An old man, chronically ill and now with cancer… a number of addicts with associated problems like HIV and AIDS… people who were costing the NHS a lot of money with no real prospect of getting better
…’
‘God, I see what you’re getting at,’ said Steven. ‘Although I wish I didn’t… Kincaid was worried about his daughter too. She was brain-damaged and in long-term residential care. She died of pneumonia a couple of months after her father.’
‘Just a thought,’ said Tally.
‘And a brilliantly awful one too,’ said Steven quietly, his mind reeling with the implications. ‘I’m going to see if I can lay my hands on hospital and GP records at the time, if they still exist. See if I can spot a pattern along those lines. The early deaths of lost causes.’
‘It would be absolutely horrible if it were true…’ said Tally, pausing.
‘But?’
‘Sounds terrible to say it, but it would be… historical. This was all nearly twenty years ago and the perpetrators — if that’s what they were — are all dead.’
Steven looked at her, wondering for a moment whether to just agree or to tell her more. His natural inclination was always to keep things to himself, but this time he decided there had to be one person in his life he had to trust absolutely. ‘Maybe they’re not all dead,’ he said. He told her of his suspicions regarding the identity of the Paris bomber. ‘It could have been some kind of coup,’ he finished. ‘He was one of them.’
‘It could equally be they were planning to set up the same thing again and the bomber decided to put a stop to it.’
‘Maybe, maybe not, but my fear is it could be business as usual under new management.’
‘Okay, now I understand why you must find out everything about what happened twenty years ago,’ said Tally. ‘If we’re on the right lines, we know the crime and we know the motive — to save money. What we don’t know is how they did it.’
‘God, I’m tired.’
‘You look it. Let’s go home.’
Tally had to leave before Steven in the morning. ‘Last night was a landmark,’ she said after she kissed him goodbye.
‘How so?’
‘A landmark in our relationship. It was the first time we ever went to bed without making love.’
‘God, I’m sorry. I don’t know…’
Tally put a finger on his lips. ‘Don’t be. It was nice. You held my hand, told me you loved me and went out like a light. I believed you. I slept like a log.’
FOURTEEN
‘How was your weekend?’ Jean Roberts asked when Steven arrived at the Home Office in the early afternoon.
‘The trip to Newcastle to see Kincaid’s sister was well worth it,’ he said. ‘Kincaid was investigating the Northern Health Scheme along with the GP Neil Tolkien. They both thought people were dying who shouldn’t have been dying. The drugs war story was a cover-up. Lisa Hardesty is convinced that the people running the scheme killed her brother because he figured out what they were up to.’
‘And what were they up to? I thought people were very much in favour of it,’ said Jean.
‘The majority were,’ Steven agreed. ‘But from what Lisa Hardesty told me, her brother suspected there was a downside to the scheme, a lethal one.’
‘I don’t think I understand.’
‘James Kincaid’s father was long-term sick. He developed cancer and died shortly after his operation.’
Jean’s expression indicated that she didn’t think that was too unusual.
‘A number of Neil Tolkien’s patients met a similar fate — died when he hadn’t expected them to. It made him suspicious.’
Jean pursed her lips but still didn’t comment.
‘James Kincaid had a daughter in long-term care because of brain damage. She died of pneumonia.’
‘Are you suggesting they were murdering people?’ asked Jean, looking shocked.
‘Selectively,’ said Steven. ‘There’s a strong possibility they were killing off “lost causes”, as Tally called them.’
‘But how? That sounds like something the Nazis would do.’
‘I don’t know how. I don’t even know if we’ll be able to prove it after all this time.’
‘It’s hard to see where you’d begin.’
‘Medical records. We need to look at the records of people who were treated under the Northern Health Scheme, in particular the people who might have been regarded as lost causes…’
‘As defined by?’
Steven thought for a moment. ‘Likely to be a long-term drain on public resources.’
‘Assuming we can access these records — and that’s a big if after all this time — we’re going to need help. It sounds like a big undertaking.’
Steven nodded. ‘Bring in all the help you need, but check if we can get the records first. Start with the College Hospital records department and then try the local GP practices, beginning with the one Neil Tolkien was a partner in. He was also involved in some drug rehabilitation initiative, but I doubt if that still exists. These places tend to come and go.’