‘Divide and conquer.’
‘I can’t see us doing much conquering,’ countered Macmillan. ‘But a bit of a rift might be a start.’
‘How will you do it?’ asked Steven.
Macmillan glanced at his watch. ‘I’m having lunch with the director of MI5 today. I’ll ask openly about Hausman and Reeman Losch. No doubt he’ll… mention our interest.’
‘Light blue touch paper and retire immediately,’ said Steven, remembering the old firework warning.
‘In the meantime,’ said Macmillan, looking thoughtful, ‘I’m going to take you off the ME thing and pass it over to one of your colleagues. If what you’ve worked out about this two-tier cover-up business proves correct, you’ve got enough on your plate. All right with you?’
‘Absolutely. Who’s the lucky boy?’
‘I think I’ll give it to Scott Jamieson. He’s done a good job in uncovering the hospital supplies scam up in Manchester. It’s time to hand that one over to the police. He’ll welcome a new challenge.’
‘He’s a good bloke,’ said Steven.
‘All right to brief him with your thoughts on the subject?’
‘Of course.’
Steven returned to his office, pausing to thank Jean Roberts for the excellent work she’d done on screening the people at the Prague meeting.
‘You look tired,’ she said. ‘Can I get you some coffee?’
Steven was sipping his coffee and thinking about Tally when his phone went. It was Philippe Le Grice in Paris.
‘I have some news for you.’
‘Anything interesting?’
‘Very. You were right in your suspicions. Dr Khan did not return to Pakistan immediately after the Prague meeting. He was a passenger on board a flight from Prague to Paris the day before Simone Ricard’s funeral.’
‘So he was in Paris when Aline was killed?’
‘There’s no doubt about it. He left France the morning after Aline Lagarde’s murder.’
‘He’s your man, Philippe.’
‘Thank you, Steven. I only hope we can prove it and restore Dr Lagarde’s reputation, but I suspect it won’t be that easy. A DNA match might do it, but as you might expect from a hotel room, we have DNA profiles for a number of unidentified individuals. I just hope we get the chance to compare them with Khan’s.’
‘It might be a good idea to make sure the samples you have are kept in a secure place considering third party involvement in the case,’ suggested Steven.
‘Quite so.’
Steven thanked Le Grice for his valuable help. Now that he had proof that Andrews had been lying about Khan, not only about knowing him but about his movements after the Prague meeting, he was certain in his own mind that Andrews and Khan were responsible for the murders of Simone and Aline Lagarde. Or should that be the CIA and Pakistani intelligence?
‘There’s one more thing,’ said Le Grice. ‘When Khan left France he didn’t fly to Pakistan.’
‘No?’
‘He boarded a flight to London.’
EIGHTEEN
Steven hadn’t seen that coming. When he could think clearly again his initial thought was to put Khan at the top of the suspect list for the death of Tom North, but he reined in his imagination. It just wasn’t possible to believe that the combined intelligence services of the UK, the US, France and Pakistan had colluded in the murders of two French medics and a prominent English scientist. That’s what it looked like, but there had to be another explanation. Please God there was.
Steven pondered his next move with heightened feelings of apprehension. He’d been sure he’d identified the bad guys and was making progress, but Khan's coming to London after leaving Paris and the possibility — which still remained — of his having murdered Tom North was throwing him. He understood only too well that the less you knew or understood about your enemy the more vulnerable you became. It was an uncomfortable feeling. One thing was for sure, Khan’s presence in London was enough to make him call a code red. He went back through to see Macmillan, who acceded to the request without question after hearing what Steven had learned from Le Grice.
The code red status entitled him not only to be armed but to have on call a range of other operational back-up services ranging from credit cards to forensic laboratory expertise. A number of consultants in a wide range of specialties under Home Office retainers could be called upon to give opinions. There would be a dedicated duty officer at the end of a phone twenty-four hours a day ready to deal with his every request without question and, not least, he would have Home Office authority to call on police assistance whenever and wherever he felt the need. Under normal conditions a request could be made for police assistance; under code red UK police forces were obliged to comply. As always, Steven hoped that he would not have to use or call on any of these things but it was a comfort to know they were there.
He paid a visit to the armourer and left with a Glock 23 pistol nestling in a shoulder holster under his left arm and a supply of .40 ammunition in his briefcase. He did so with a heavy heart. Walking the streets of London knowing he was armed always seemed like a betrayal of everything he believed in. He took great pride in living in a country where the police didn’t carry guns; it suggested a degree of civilisation that set the UK apart.
There was also the question of how Tally would see it. His assertions about the largely routine nature of his investigations now seemed more like lies than the reassurances they were meant to be. He decided not to go back to the Home Office, returning instead to Marlborough Court where he got out the relevant files again and started looking for inspiration.
He took a sheet of A4 paper from the paper tray of his printer in the corner of the room and laid it on the table next to the files. ‘Tabula rasa,’ he murmured. ‘A clean sheet… a new beginning.’ He wrote the word Afghanistan at the top and dropped a vertical line to where he added Prague.
He put Simone and Aline at the head of the list: they had set the ball rolling. Simone felt something had gone badly wrong with the vaccination effort against polio in north west Pakistan and wanted to make her fears public. She’d been denied the chance in Prague by, among others, her own bosses, who knew about the presence of fake aid teams but had conspired to keep quiet because of the CIA’s apology and a promise to put much more in the way of aid into the region.
All this, however, was politicaclass="underline" it wasn’t a reason for anyone to murder Simone and Aline, so there was something else, something to do with people falling sick in a remote Afghan village and blood samples that ended up in Porton Down.
A number of big players in the world of science and medicine had met in the Czech Republic to discuss their failure to wipe out polio in Pakistan’s north-west frontier region. He wrote the names of these players next to Prague. Their involvement in the proceedings ended here. They had all agreed to keep quiet about the CIA’s action in the belief that they were preventing a backlash against aid teams in general. It was understandable. These people had to live in the real world and act with pragmatism. To them, Simone would have been seen as a nuisance but nothing more. To others, she must have constituted a real threat.
Steven drew a short line down from Prague and pencilled in Bill Andrews and Ranjit Khan, adding in brackets after their names CIA and Pakistani intelligence respectively. They had a different reason for wanting to keep Simone quiet. She either knew something… or possessed something that they wanted? This was a new thought and one inspired by what had happened to Tom North. Had he been killed because Andrews and Khan had failed to get what they were looking for from Simone or Aline?