The Secret

‘Aren’t you one of them?’ asked Tally. ‘The establishment, I mean?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think I love you. I’m so glad I found you. I think I stopped feeling lonely the day I met you.’

Steven was taken aback at Tally’s impromptu declaration but felt very pleased. He planted a kiss on her forehead and asked, ‘Who’s going to fetch the drinks?’

‘You are.’

Steven returned with two gin and tonics and Tally smiled sleepily. Thinking about their conversation over supper, she asked, ‘When you said Khan and Andrews were going to be in London... Do you have enough evidence to arrest them for Simone’s murder?’

‘No.’

‘Promise me you’re not considering taking matters into your own hands.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘Steven?’

‘There’s a good chance the French police will come up with a DNA match to convict Khan and he’ll probably shop Andrews to minimise his sentence.’

Tally looked at him accusingly. ‘They’re intelligence community people, not naughty schoolboys who stole sweeties from a corner shop.’

‘They’re not beyond the law.’

‘It’s whose law they’re subject to I’m worried about.’

Twenty

Jean Roberts looked surprised when she found Steven sitting in her office at ten minutes to nine on Monday morning. ‘Don’t tell me, you had a fight with Tally and you’ve been here all night?’

‘No. Well not yet, anyway,’ Steven replied. ‘I’d like you to get some information for me as soon as you can. I need to know what the City College authorities have decided about Tom North’s group. Is it still functioning as a research group or has it been broken up? I’m particularly interested in Dr Dan Hausman and a PhD student named Liam Kelly. I need you to do it as discreetly as possible: I don’t want to advertise our interest, particularly not to Hausman.’

Jean looked up from the pad she’d been noting things down on. ‘I’ll make an approach through their administration. I’ll pretend I’m from one of the grant-funding bodies making a routine check.’

‘Perfect,’ said Steven. ‘I also need to make contact with Liam Kelly but I don’t want to turn up at the lab. An address for him would be good.’

‘What year is he?’ asked Jean.

‘First year PhD, just about to start his second.’

‘If I were a first year PhD student who’d just lost my supervisor, I think I would be spending a lot of time in the library boning up on things that might make me attractive to other potential supervisors.’

‘Jean, you’re a genius.’

Jean demurred with a modest little smile. ‘I’ll still get you the information. Coffee?’

Steven got to City College library just before noon. He showed his Sci-Med ID to the librarian and told her he needed to check some things in an early edition of the Journal of General Virology which his usual library didn’t have. The implication of bibliographic superiority seemed to please the woman, who directed him across the room with the end of her pen.

Steven extracted one of the heavy, bound volumes, placed it on a nearby table and opened it, taking care to give the impression he was looking for a specific article before sitting down and taking out a notebook from his briefcase.

When people in the vicinity stopped taking a casual interest in the newcomer Steven started taking an interest in them but found no familiar faces among the students and staff he could see from where he was sitting. Periodically he would get up and return to the sliding bookshelf area where he would remove a volume and pretend to search through the pages while really looking through the gaps on the shelves at other areas of the library. After his second such sortie, he spotted Liam Kelly sitting at a study carrel with his back to him.

Still carrying one of the volumes, Steven walked over and tapped Liam on the shoulder, saying in a low voice, ‘I thought it was you. How are you doing?’

Liam turned and looked up. ‘Oh, hi. I’m okay. What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you, actually,’ Steven confessed. ‘Do you think we could have a word?’

Liam looked vaguely uncertain. ‘Maybe this isn’t the best place for a conversation?’

The look being given to them by a serious-looking young girl in the neighbouring carrel added weight to this assertion. Steven offered up an apologetic smile and said to Liam, ‘C’mon, I’ll buy you lunch.’

Once out into the noise of the traffic, he asked if Liam knew a good pub in the area.

‘The Talisman’s okay.’

‘Lead on.’

It was early; they had no trouble finding a corner table where sunlight played on a painting up on the wall of Nelson’s ship at Trafalgar. Steven sipped a Czech lager and asked, ‘Any word about your future?’