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‘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.’

‘Aren’t we missing the point here? Sci-Med are going to find out exactly what was going on in the north in the early nineties.’

‘They may suspect something was going on but they won’t know what,’ said Black. ‘People died, but that’s what people do, especially sick ones.’

‘I still don’t like it,’ said Soames. ‘They’re not stupid. They just might figure it out.’

‘Even if they do, they’re not going to be able to prove anything after all this time, and even if they could, they’re hardly going to let the press in on it, are they? A coalition government hanging on by its fingertips would be swept away in the resulting storm of indignation, leaving us with the prospect of anarchy. It’s little more than an academic exercise for Sci-Med. They’ll pat each other on the back for working it out and then move on to more relevant matters like the threat that’s hanging over our nation.’

‘Aren’t you overlooking the Paris meeting?’ said Langton.

All eyes turned to him.

‘If Sci-Med are bright enough to work out what the Northern Health Scheme was all about, they might figure out what the purpose of the Paris meeting was too — all the people from the Northern Health Scheme getting together again? They’re bound to suspect that the whole business was about to be repeated.’

‘Let them,’ said Black. ‘If French and co. had had their way, they’d be quite right, but they all died and so did the Northern Health Scheme. Although…’

The others found the pregnant pause unbearable. ‘Although what?’ prompted Langton.

‘I’ve taken steps to provide some “proof” for Sci-Med if they’re clever enough to find it.’

‘Proof of what?’ asked Rupert Coutts.

‘Proof that Charles French and his colleagues were indeed planning a repeat of the Northern Health Scheme. They’ll be well pleased with that.’

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Mark?’ said Constance with an air of disapproval. ‘It’s not a game. The future of our country depends on our success.’

‘And it’s in good hands,’ said Black. ‘But you’re right. I do enjoy an intellectual challenge.’

‘Frankly, I’d feel happier with Dunbar and his cronies out of the way,’ said Constance.

‘Me too,’ said Soames.

‘Dunbar and Sci-Med are no threat to us,’ insisted Black. ‘Sci-Med are on the verge of clearing up a twenty-year-old puzzle, with all those involved now dead. End of story. If we sanction any kind of action against them, it might signal that either we’re not all dead, or we have something to hide and we think Sci-Med are getting too close. We can do without that kind of attention. Our project is on track and everything is going to plan. All we need do is keep our nerve. All right?’

One by one the others nodded their agreement.

‘Good,’ said Black. ‘I’m told that Sci-Med were present at the COBRA meeting yesterday. I should think events of long ago are the last thing on their minds right now.’

Maxine French smiled as Steven was ushered into a stunning room with glass walls on three sides, all of them affording access to a magnificent roof terrace and breathtaking views beyond. Steven felt as if he had seen that smile before. It was the one that ladies of a certain class and political inclination used to put lesser mortals at their ease.