The Secret

Macmillan nodded. ‘Perhaps her colleagues will be able to throw some light on things when you see them at the funeral. Mind you, French citizen dying in the Czech Republic with a UK investigator asking questions... Could be the overture to a bureaucratic nightmare if you get too involved.’

Steven acknowledged with a grimace. ‘I’ve also arranged to see the scientist she’d set up a meeting with in London. Maybe he’ll have some idea what she was worried about.’

‘Was he at the Prague meeting?’

‘I’ll find out on Wednesday.’

Steven, wearing a dark blue suit and Parachute Regiment tie told the man in uniform behind the desk whom he’d come to see.

‘And what company shall I say you’re from?’ asked the man, barely disguising a sneer and clearly assuming that anyone found wearing a suit in City College must be a sales rep and therefore worthy of derision.

‘The Home Office,’ replied Steven, placing his ID down in front of him.

The man looked up to find Steven looking through him. It spoke volumes.

‘Right sir, sorry sir. I’ll let them upstairs know you’re here. Perhaps you’d care to take a seat over there?’

A few minutes later a young man wearing jeans and a checked shirt appeared from one of the lifts. He had an engaging if lopsided smile and a shock of curly red hair. When he spoke it was with an Irish accent. ‘Dr Dunbar? I’m Liam Kelly. Tom’s expecting you. I’ll take you up to the lab.’

‘You’re one of Dr North’s people?’

‘PhD student, just about to start my second year.’

‘Working on?’

‘Virus survival strategies.’

‘I’m imagining a dozen virus particles sitting round a table making plans for the future,’ said Steven.

‘I’d like to be a fly on the wall at that meeting,’ Liam laughed as the lift doors opened. ‘It would save me a whole bunch of work.’

He led the way through swing doors into a brightly lit lab with a number of people at work in it. All seemed intent on what they were doing as familiar lab smells from long ago of solvents and Bunsen burner-heated air assaulted Steven’s nostrils. Thomas North’s office was one of two adjoining rooms at the head of the lab. Liam knocked and put his head round the door. ‘Dr Dunbar is here.’

Four

North turned out to be a tall, bearded, gangly man in his late thirties — a typical academic, Steven thought, from the open-necked checked shirt under the horizontally striped jersey to the corduroy trousers and casual boat shoes. His handshake was firm but Steven noticed that his knuckles were showing early signs of arthritis.

‘Good of you to see me,’ said Steven.

‘A pity it’s under such tragic circumstances,’ said North with a sigh. ‘Did you know Simone well?’

‘We’d been friends for some years,’ Steven replied. ‘You?’

‘I met her a few years ago at a polio conference in Geneva. She seemed a very dedicated woman.’

Steven nodded. ‘She was. Did you attend the meeting in Prague?’

‘Yes. I was there with one of my group but she and I didn’t have much time to talk. I think it was for that reason that she asked if she could come and see me in London. Apparently she was coming here anyway to see a couple of pharmaceutical companies about upping their support for the vaccination effort in Afghanistan.’

Steven smiled. ‘Sounds like Simone. Can I be rude and ask what exactly she was coming to see you about?’

‘She didn’t actually say but I suppose she didn’t have to. She’s been working for some time on the eradication of polio programme supported by the World Health Organisation and we’re an international reference lab for polio and vaccine development. It’s quite normal for scientists and workers in the field to meet and exchange information. Sometimes things that work well in the lab don’t translate to the real world, so reports from the field are valuable.’

‘But you’re a British lab.’

‘And she was French,’ said North, seeing it coming. ‘Don’t read too much into that. The outfit Simone worked for, Médecins Sans Frontières, prides itself on being independent and international. Apart from that, labs working on polio are not too thick on the ground these days.’

‘And you are one of the best?’

‘We like to think so,’ North said with a modest smile.

‘Tell me, in the brief time you saw her in Prague, did Simone seem upset at all about anything?’

‘Upset?’ North thought for a moment. ‘More frustrated than upset, I think. She wanted to address the meeting but seemed to think the meeting organisers were avoiding her.’

‘Were they?’

‘I really couldn’t say,’ said North. ‘Meeting organisers are always under a lot of pressure from people wanting to speak, especially when things aren’t going too well and everyone has a theory. They have tough decisions to make.’

‘The Prague meeting was solely about eradicating polio?’

‘It was,’ agreed North. ‘Or more correctly why that hasn’t happened.’