The Secret

A strong build and a natural athletic ability honed on the mountains of his native Cumbria had ensured rapid progress in the military, serving with the Parachute Regiment and then with Special Forces in operations all over the world. The army of course, did not ignore his medical qualifications and had put them to good use in training him up to become an expert in field medicine, the medicine of the battlefield where initiative and the ability to improvise were often as important as professional knowledge. It was these qualities that would later lead to his recruitment to the Sci-Med Inspectorate when the time came for him to leave the service in his mid-thirties.

The Sci-Med Inspectorate comprised a small investigative unit based in the UK’s Home Office under the direction of Sir John Macmillan. It was their job to investigate possible crime or wrong-doing in the hi-tech areas of science and medicine — areas where the police lacked expertise. The investigators were all qualified medics or scientists who had done well in other jobs before coming to Sci-Med. Macmillan did not employ new graduates: his people had to have proved themselves under stressful, demanding conditions in real life. Turning out for the local rugby club or indulging in executive team-building games at the weekend did not count for much to his way of thinking. He knew the most unlikely people could crack when reality came to call.

Steven had proved himself to be a first class investigator and was regarded as such by Macmillan although they had not always seen eye to eye, Steven often feeling frustrated when highly placed wrong-doers were too frequently in his eyes allowed to get away with their crimes in the so-called ‘national interest’. A couple of years before, things had come to a head after a particularly difficult assignment and Steven had resigned from the Inspectorate to begin a new life with Tally — Dr Natalie Simmons — a paediatrician working in a children’s hospital in Leicester whom he had met in the course of a previous investigation.

Tally had never really come to terms with what Steven did for a living, having witnessed at first hand some of the dangerous situations he found himself in. It had proved such a stumbling block to their relationship that they had parted over it, with Tally declaring that she couldn’t face a life of continual worries over whether her man was going to come home or not. Things had changed when Steven resigned from Sci-Med and got back in touch to tell her so, assuring her that he had no intention of returning. Would she now consider spending her life with him? To his relief, Tally’s feelings hadn’t changed. She had welcomed him back with open arms.

Steven had found a job with a large pharmaceutical company in Leicester as head of security — more concerned with the guarding of intellectual property and the vetting of staff than the patrolling of premises — and they had set up home together in Tally’s flat. Despite loathing his job and finding himself in the rat race he’d always managed to avoid, Steven declined all attempts by John Macmillan to lure him back to Sci-Med, believing that, in time, he would grow to feel better about his new career and consoling himself with the thought that at least he had Tally.

An unexpected wildcard had been thrown into the mix when Macmillan had fallen ill with a brain tumour and had asked to see Steven before undergoing major surgery with what doctors had warned him was a less than certain outcome. At Tally’s insistence, Steven had travelled to London to be at Macmillan’s bedside, only to find himself immediately under pressure when Macmillan asked that he seriously consider taking over from him as head of Sci-Med should he fail to pull through. Steven, faced with the awful choice between reneging on his promise to Tally and turning down a possible last request from the man he respected more than anyone else had in fact declined. He had apologised to Macmillan, hoping that he’d understand how much Tally had come to mean to him and that he couldn’t risk losing her.

There was to be another twist, however, when Tally, sensing how unhappy Steven was in his new job — although he’d never openly admitted it — and how badly he fitted in to the system of corporate hierarchy, decided that she couldn’t be party to such a situation any longer. She’d insisted that Steven return to Sci-Med: she would support him and they’d work something out.