The Secret

Macmillan nodded. ‘And the whole world’s against us: there doesn’t seem to be a damned soul we can ask.’

‘True. We’re on our own.’

Macmillan read more into Steven’s comment than a statement of the obvious. ‘And so?’

Steven admitted that he was considering an unauthorised entry into the lab where Dan Hausman worked. Macmillan raised his eyes. ‘Now I wish I hadn’t asked. You’re sure there’s no other way?’

‘I can’t see one. Like you say, we’ve got no friends.’

Macmillan got up to refill their glasses but Steven declined. ‘I’m driving up to Leicester later.’

‘Quite a commute.’

‘Tally has an interview for a job in London coming up.’ Steven told Macmillan about the post at Great Ormond Street.

‘I wish her well.’

As Steven got up to go, Macmillan said, ‘Correct me if I’m wrong but I seem to remember you mentioning a PhD student in the North lab proving helpful when you were investigating what had happened to the blood samples?’

‘Liam Kelly, yes. He was the one who told me what Hausman had really done with them.’

Macmillan posed the question by tilting his head to one side and opening his eyes a little wider.

Steven nodded. ‘It’s a good idea — I’m just not sure about involving him in something like this. He’s only a boy... with a career to think about.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of any active role for him,’ said Macmillan, ‘more a case of an insider being able to offer a few helpful pointers about where things might be found... Have a think about it.’

Steven thought about little else on his way up to Leicester. Liam Kelly would know not only where Hausman worked — that much he knew already — but where his office space was located, which desk was his, his locker, his filing cabinet... but perhaps more important, Kelly would have an access key for the building and the lab. All PhD students in biological subjects needed out-of-hours access to their labs on a regular basis to follow the progress of experiments. It shouldn’t put him at much risk to ‘lose’ it for a few hours. The decision to approach Kelly was made: it was a weight off his mind. That just left the problem of what he was going to say to Tally.

‘Oh my God,’ Tally exclaimed as she hugged Steven and withdrew quickly. ‘I don’t have to ask what’s under your arm; I remember from last time. Oh, Steven...’

‘It’s just a precaution, Tally,’ said Steven, knowing how weak it sounded. ‘Just tell yourself every policeman in Europe carries one...’

‘They do it routinely, you don’t. There has to be a reason, a very good one and one I’m not going to like.’

‘Look, the man I think killed Simone and Aline Lagarde is in London: we don’t know why. As I say, it’s just a precaution.’

Tally looked Steven straight in the eyes for a few silent moments before looking down at the floor and sighing. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m being unreasonable. I was the one who persuaded you to return to Sci-Med and now I’m making things difficult for you. You’ve got enough on your plate without me nagging at you. Forgive me?’

Steven made to take her in his arms but Tally put both hands against his chest. ‘Not till you take that thing off.’

After a late supper they sat together on the couch, heads back, shoes off, feet up on a footstool, their toes flirting.

‘I heard on the news there was another ME protest attack yesterday,’ said Tally. ‘A microbiologist in Edinburgh was sent a dead rat in the post.’

Steven grimaced. ‘Not my problem any more,’ he said. ‘I’ve been taken off that investigation. John thinks I’ve got enough to do with the Afghanistan business. Scott Jamieson has taken over. D’you remember Scott?’

‘We met at some point when John Macmillan was ill. Nice man, pretty wife, they live down in Kent. They invited us down as I remember.’

‘Maybe we’ll take them up on that when you get the job at Great Ormond Street. We’ll wander hand in hand through the hop fields wondering what we’re going to do with all the money you’ll be making.’

‘Let’s not count our chickens.’

‘It’s in the bag.’

‘Thursday,’ said Tally.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The interview. It’s next Thursday. I wasn’t going to tell you because I didn’t want to distract you from the Afghanistan business, as you called it. Afghanistan,’ sighed Tally, snuggling into Steven. ‘What are we doing there? Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. Our young are out of work, our health service is falling to bits and we’re strutting around on the world stage like we owned the place. One of our soldiers gets blown to bits every week and TV newsreaders look sad for five seconds before telling us, the family has been informed. Well, that’s all right then. What’s it all about?’

‘Ssh,’ said Steven, eyes closed, his arm hugging Tally a little tighter. ‘I could come out with some spiel about the war on terror, making our country a safer place, standing up for human rights, introducing democracy to the downtrodden masses, expanding the free world... but I don’t believe any of that rubbish either. Money will be behind it, money and oil. It always is.