Steven said that he did and Lawrence told the two uniformed men they were on their way to 21, Paxton Avenue. ‘He told them to stay put until the flat had been made secure.
Steven and Lawrence presented their IDs to the man working in the front garden of the neat bungalow in Paxton Avenue. He looked like everyone’s idea of a bank manager — short, plump, bald and bespectacled — so they were taken aback by his immediately aggressive response.
‘Hasn’t my daughter been through enough from you insensitive bastards?’ the man demanded. ‘She doesn’t know anything about what Martin was doing or why he took his own life. Isn’t that enough for her to cope with, for Christ’s sake?’
‘I’m sorry your daughter has been upset, Mr Holland,’ said Steven. ‘But we really do have to speak to her. It won’t take long and we’ll be gentle, I promise.’
Holland muttered something about dogs chasing their own tails as he tugged off his Wellington boots before going indoors in his diamond-patterned socks to go upstairs.
‘Who is it, Sam?’ inquired a woman’s voice.
‘The bloody police again for our Lesley,’ replied Holland. ‘No wonder they never catch any burglars.’
When Holland returned he was accompanied by a small fair-skinned girl with a bank of freckles across the bridge of her nose and upper cheeks and whose blond hair was tied back with a pink ribbon. She looked as if she hadn’t slept for some time. There was an expression in her eyes that was easy to read — fear.
‘Miss Holland? I’m Dr Steven Dunbar,’ said Steven gently. ‘This is DI Lawrence. Is there somewhere we can talk?’
A look of blank resignation crossed Lesley Holland’s face as she indicated that the men should follow her inside.
‘I don’t know what Martin was writing about. I’ve told you people over and over again. I don’t know,’ said Lesley Holland as she sat perched on the edge of an armchair, hands clasped between her knees. ‘You can threaten me all you want to but I can’t tell you what I don’t know.’
‘Who threatened you, Miss Holland?’ asked Steven.
‘The two men from Special Branch, they said they knew perfectly well what Martin had been up to and that he must have told me all about it. They said I would be charged and go to prison for up to fourteen years if I didn’t tell them everything. But I couldn’t tell them. I didn’t know anything. Martin was just doing what Martin did, working on a story. He didn’t tell me anything about it but they wouldn’t believe me. They just went on and on…’
‘Did you give them the keys to your flat?’ asked Steven.
Lesley nodded. ‘They forced me to. I’ve been back staying with Mum and Dad since Martin died. They said they were going to search the flat and when they found what they were looking for they would be back to charge me formally. I wasn’t to go anywhere.’
‘But they never came back?’
Lesley shook her head. ‘No. I thought maybe that’s why you were here.’ She looked at Steven pleadingly and said, ‘I don’t know anything. I didn’t do anything.’
‘I know Miss Holland and I’m very sorry you’ve been put through all this. There is no question of you being charged with anything and I apologise for the behaviour of my colleagues. They’ve left your flat in a bit of a mess I’m afraid but they won’t be back. I’m deeply sorry about the loss of your partner. We’ll leave you in peace now.’
As Steven and Lawrence walked back to the car Lawrence said, ‘So does that make the Gas Board men Special Branch, d’you reckon?’
‘You won’t believe me but I’m not at all sure,’ said Steven. ‘I take it you’ve had no official word of Special Branch being on your patch?’
‘Not a whisper. You’re still not going to tell me what all this is about?’ asked Lawrence.
‘Afraid not.’
Steven left Manchester feeling as if his visit had been a waste of time. Martin Hendry’s killers had obviously had the same idea about a possible copy of the story being at his flat and had beaten him to it. But at least they hadn’t murdered Lesley Holland, presumably because she clearly knew nothing about what Hendry had been working on but she’d been badly scared. It had been his intention to drive on up to Glasgow if nothing came of his trip to Manchester but thoughts of Jane had altered that. He called her and asked if he could come back to her place for the night.
‘Why?’ asked Jane.
‘Because I want to.’
‘Sounds like an excellent reason,’ said Jane. ‘I actually meant why are you coming back to Leicester when you said you’d be going on up to Glasgow?’
‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ said Steven.
ELEVEN
Cecil Mowbray handed his coat to the hovering waiter without making eye contact with the man and sat down. ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked.
Donald Crowe waited until the waiter had moved out of earshot before leaning over and saying, ‘Sci-Med has started asking questions about Gulf War vaccines. They’ve requested a meeting with the powers that be at Porton. Dunbar’s behind it. He must know something.’
‘Relax,’ said Mowbray. ‘All the old vaccine stocks have been destroyed in response to the outcry from the veterans’ associations. You can’t investigate what doesn’t exist any more. Can you?’
Crowe’s silence conceded the point.
‘But you’re right about one thing; this is down to Dunbar,’ said Mowbray. ‘He does know more than we’ve been giving him credit for. He knows that Sebring was in touch with the journalist, Martin Hendry before he died.’
‘How?’
‘He went to back to talk to Sebring’s wife a few days after the funeral. It must have been her who told him.’
‘But I spoke to her at length before the funeral,’ said Crowe. ‘She didn’t tell me anything about that.’
‘She must have found Dunbar more persuasive. In fact, she seems to have formed… an association with Dunbar.’
‘Good God, her husband’s only been dead a matter of weeks. What’s the world coming to? Cheap tart.’
‘Not for us to judge,’ said Mowbray.
‘God Almighty man, this means she could have been lying all along when she told me Sebring never talked about his past! Maybe he told her everything and now Dunbar knows too!’ said Crowe.
‘Possible but I think not,’ replied Mowbray calmly. ‘Dunbar turned up at Hendry’s flat in Manchester looking for information. He talked to Hendry’s girlfriend too but only after my people had made sure nothing incriminating had been left lying around and that she couldn’t tell him anything anyway. He wouldn’t have done that if he already knew all there was to know, would he?’
‘I suppose not,’ agreed Crowe. ‘But I worry about what he’s going to do next.’
‘He’s going to Glasgow to talk to a Gulf War veteran named Angus Maclean,’ said Mowbray.
‘How on earth do you know that?’
‘We still have the tap on Sebring’s phone.’
‘Well, thank God for that,’ said Crowe. ‘At least it gives us a slight edge. What can this man Maclean tell him?’
Mowbray shrugged and said, ‘Absolutely nothing. He’s a well-known Gulf War activist, a trouble-maker; full of wild theories but with nothing of any substance to back it up. Think Don Quixote and you won’t be far wrong.’
‘The name’s vaguely familiar,’ said Crowe.
‘Maclean was trained at Porton. He was one of our Secret Team in the Gulf War,’ said Mowbray. ‘Maybe you came across him at the time.’