The Secret

‘Certainly not,’ agreed North. ‘Unless, of course, it was actually an outbreak of polio.’

‘Which Simone and Aline would have recognised,’ said Steven. ‘In which case, there probably would have been no need to send samples for investigation. Maybe that’s what Simone wanted to talk to you about when she came to London?’

‘Could be. Look, why don’t I look into this? Maybe you could pop into the lab and I’ll fill you in on what I come up with?’

Steven arranged to meet North at ten the following morning.

Thirteen

EDINBURGH

‘Mummy, can Mark come in to play after school today?’ asked seven-year-old David Leeming.

‘If his mummy says it’s all right,’ his mother, Julie, replied.

‘Can Sally come in too?’ piped up David’s younger sister, Joanne.

‘No, Sally was here yesterday. It’s David’s turn to have a friend in. Maybe tomorrow.’

‘That’s not fair,’ complained Joanne, pouting her lower lip.

‘Yes, it is,’ insisted her brother.

‘If you two don’t get a move on, you’re going to keep Daddy waiting and you know he hates being late. He’ll stop your pocket money if he is and serves you right.’

Julie hid a small smile as the bickering stopped and was replaced with slurping sounds as the pair finished their cereal in double quick time.

John Leeming, short, bespectacled and balding came into the kitchen, a briefcase hanging open from one hand as he stuffed papers into it with the other. ‘You guys about ready?’

‘They certainly are,’ replied Julie, exchanging a knowing smile with her children.

The sound of the letterbox opening and closing interrupted them and Julie said, ‘Jo, be a darling and fetch Daddy’s paper.’

Joanne disappeared into the hall and was away for longer than expected.

‘Jo, what are you doing?’

Julie’s question was answered when she looked up to see her five year old standing there with excrement all over her hands and a shocked, puzzled look on her face as she started to sob.

‘Oh, Christ, John, they’ve done it again,’ exclaimed Julie as she rushed her daughter off to the downstairs lavatory. ‘The bastards... the absolute bastards.’

Mark, upset by the goings on and the fact that his mother was behaving so out of character, sat wide-eyed at the table and asked with a quavering voice, ‘Why, Daddy? Why did they do that?’

His father, filled with anger and frustration, snapped, ‘I don’t know, Mark. I really don’t.’

Dr John Leeming was fast approaching his wits’ end. A research virologist with over twenty years’ experience who had been working for the last five years to establish the cause of myalgic encephalomyelitis, couldn’t understand why he and his family had become the target in recent months of fanatics who seemed to have decided that the failure of researchers like him and others to find the cause of the condition had been deliberate. This was the second time the ‘nutters’, as he thought of them, had put excrement through their letterbox. He snatched at the phone, intent on venting his anger at the police and murmuring, ‘They’ll be up on the bloody ring road booking motorists for being two miles an hour over the limit...’

‘It’s damned well happened again...’ he began as he got an answer and Julie returned with their cleaned-up daughter.

‘This can’t go on, John,’ she murmured as her husband ended his call and the children, now blazered and carrying their lunch boxes, preceded them out into the hall.

‘I know, I know. I’ll speak to the prof today. Maybe it’s time we reassessed our research priorities.’

As they opened the front door, John noticed an envelope stuck to the outside with Sellotape. He exchanged a look with Julie before unsticking it and gingerly examining the outside for contamination. He tore it open.

IT’S NOT SHIT ON THE FLOOR, IT’S ALL IN YOUR MIND.

‘Bastards,’ repeated Julie.

BIRMINGHAM

Molly Freeman, senior lecturer in microbiology at the University of Birmingham, turned over in bed and stretched out her arm to find an empty space. It was something she wished she could stop doing: it only made her angry and got the day off to a bad start. It had been fully three months since her husband Barry had succumbed to the charms of Marion Philby, one of his PhD students- ‘the tart’ as Molly knew her — and decided that the grass would be greener without Molly on it any more. He and the tart had set up home in a small flat in Edgbaston while she remained in the family home — a detached villa on a housing estate on the edge of the city — with their ten-year-old son Jamie until such time as they could ‘come to an arrangement’ as her husband had put it. She knew Barry was hoping for a ‘civilised’ agreement while her own preferred ‘arrangement’ would involve taking him to the cleaners and nailing him upside down to a tree along with the tart. In fact, she had a meeting planned with her lawyer that afternoon to that end.

‘Jamie, are you up yet?’ she called out as she slid out of bed and found her wrap.