The Secret

Steven was already at the flat in Leicester by the time Tally got home. He hugged her and thought how tired she looked but didn’t say so. She slumped down in the sofa and swung her feet up on a footstool.

‘Would gin and tonic help?’ asked Steven.

‘You bet,’ sighed Tally, reaching behind her to release her hair, which was always tied back for work.

‘Coming right up, my lady.’

‘That sounds like guilt to me. What did you and the French dolly get up to last night?’

‘She didn’t turn up,’ replied Steven from the kitchen as he got ice from the freezer. ‘Are we out of lemons?’

‘Haven’t been to the supermarket,’ Tally replied. ‘What d’you mean she didn’t turn up?’

‘Stood me up. No message. No apology.’

‘Must have been the pins I was sticking in that little doll last night,’ murmured Tally, eyes closed, her head back as if to survey the ceiling.

Steven smiled as he returned with the drinks. ‘Did you ask about time off?’

Tally opened her eyes, made a face and looked guilty.

‘You didn’t,’ Steven accused.

‘I just can’t see how they could manage right now.’

‘Tally, you need a break, and if you wait any longer...’

‘Yes, I know, there just never seems to be a good time. We seem to have an ever growing population in the city who’ve never had proper medical care in their lives.’

‘And now polio’s joining in the fun. How’s that situation developing?’

‘Public Health are hopeful they can contain it. There’s no treatment of course; it’s a case of vaccinating all around the epicentre. The British kids have all been vaccinated already of course, but the immigrants... well, that’s a different story. Some have, some haven’t and in many cases, they don’t know. But if everyone stays calm and vaccination is carried out in a systematic and methodical way, we should be all right. What we don’t need is any sort of panic. Any kind of story breaking about a killer stalking the streets and we’re in real trouble. We need people to stay where they are, not start running all over the place.’

Steven sat down beside Tally and put his head back on the couch beside hers. ‘You know, what you said just now — there’s no treatment, of course — you’d think there would be by now.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, we’ve known about viruses and studied them for over a hundred years but we still can’t treat them. From the common cold to smallpox or polio, we’re no more able to cure them than Florence Nightingale was in her day.’

‘But we have vaccination.’

‘Yes, we can stop people getting the disease but if they do get it... there’s zilch we can do about it. When you think about it, antibiotics came along quite quickly for treating bacterial disease: you’d think anti-viral drugs might have progressed much faster than they have. Don’t you think?’

‘There’s Tamiflu.’

‘Which is more successful at making money for shareholders than it is for anything else.’

Steven’s phone rang before Tally could reply. It was John Macmillan.

‘Steven, do you know a Dr Aline Lagarde?’

‘Yes, I met her in Paris. She worked with Simone. Why?’

‘You’re wanted in connection with her murder.’

Steven’s exclamation brought Tally to full, sudden wakefulness. She saw him pale as he stammered, ‘Her murder?’

‘Dr Lagarde was found dead in her hotel room this morning. She’d been strangled. The Paris police have established that she was meeting you last night but you were nowhere to be found.’

‘What do they mean nowhere to be found? I’m here where I belong. This is crazy. I was due to have dinner with Aline last night at a restaurant called the Monsonnier but she didn’t turn up.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I went to a bar, had a couple of drinks and a sandwich, went back to my hotel and had an early night.’

‘The French police say they have witnesses who saw you outside Dr Lagarde’s hotel.’

Steven rubbed his forehead in frustration. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘My first thought when I left the restaurant was to go along there to see if she was okay but when I got there I changed my mind.’

‘Why?’

‘God, I don’t know. It’s not as if we were friends. Somewhere along the way it occurred to me that she might think I was annoyed about her not showing up when in reality I just wanted to know if she was all right... so I didn’t actually go into the hotel. I just turned away. You do believe me?’

‘Of course,’ replied Macmillan. ‘But I think you’d better get yourself back to Paris of your own accord before any official requests start coming in.’

‘First thing in the morning.’

‘Good. I’ll tell the French to expect you.’

Steven took down details of where he should report to and ended the call. He turned to face Tally. ‘I take it you got the gist of that?’

‘Your date last night was murdered. The French police are hunting you down. Do they still use the guillotine in France?’

‘Jesus Christ, what a mess. Poor Aline. What kind of a sick bastard would do something like that?’

‘I hate to say it, but maybe the same kind as killed Simone Ricard?’ suggested Tally tentatively.