‘No, Jenny.’
‘Good,’ said Jenny. ‘Aunt Sue says Uncle Richard won’t have to either. She says he’s too old and fat.’
‘So that’s where you get your unkindness from,’ laughed Steven. ‘Let’s hope no one has to go and fight anyone and we can all do something more sensible with our time.’
‘Are you coming up to see me this weekend, Daddy?’
‘That may not be possible, Nutkin,’ said Steven, closing his eyes as he said it. ‘Daddy’s very busy. Maybe next weekend?’
‘All right, Daddy. Bye.’
‘Shit,’ murmured Steven as he heard the line go dead. What was Jenny thinking now, he wondered. That he didn’t care? That he didn’t love her? That she wasn’t important? ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
Steven looked up his notes for the phone number of the hospital lab in Glasgow where Gus Maclean worked, called it, but only to be told that Maclean was not on duty. He had called in sick that morning. Steven asked for a home number but was told that wasn’t possible. He asked to speak to the lab manager. When George Drummond came on the line, Steven explained who he was and asked for his help in contacting Maclean.
‘Gulf War business?’ asked Drummond.
‘You could say,’ agreed Steven.
‘Best I can do is call Gus and ask him if it’s all right to give you his number,’ said Drummond.
‘I’d be grateful,’ said Steven.
Drummond called back within five minutes to give Steven the number. He dialled it.
‘Gus, I’d like to come up there and talk to you again.’
‘What about?’ asked Maclean sounding hoarse.
‘Same as last time. I don’t know if you’ve heard but the journalist that George Sebring talked to is dead.’
‘Jesus, what happened?’
‘Suicide.’
‘And the story?’
‘No trace.’
‘Shit.’
‘Agreed. Can I come?’
‘21, Brandon Street, off Dumbarton Road. Top flat, first.’
‘Tomorrow morning?’ said Steven.
‘I’ll be here.’
Before going to bed, Steven called Jane in Leicester to say that he would be going to Glasgow in the morning.
‘How did you get on with the people from Porton?’ asked Jane.
‘They’re sticking to the official line that George and his colleagues were working on a vaccine against AIDS,’ said Steven. ‘But it emerged that they did supply a component of a vaccines the troops were given. I guess we can call that progress.’
‘It’s something,’ said Jane.
‘Trouble is, they’ve recently destroyed all the old vaccine stocks so we can’t subject them to any new analysis.’
‘One step forward, two steps back,’ said Jane.
‘Was it ever different?’
TWELVE
Steven took a taxi from Glasgow Airport to Brandon Street. It was raining and the cab smelt of dampness and stale tobacco. What was worse; the driver believed himself to be the most sensible person in the world.
‘I see Saddam says he’s no’ gonnae let in they weapons inspectors,’ he said.
‘I hadn’t heard,’ said Steven.
‘It’s no’ exactly a surprise,’ said the driver. ‘Would you want the polis in yer hoose wi’ a back room full o’ dodgy videos? Stands tae reason.’
‘I suppose.’
‘They shouldae marked his card last time while they had the chance but no, that wid hae been too easy. The bleedin’ herts hud their way and noo we’re gonna hiv to dae it all o’er again. Makes me sick, an’ see a’ they asylum seekers…’
Steven grunted at appropriate intervals until the journey was over and he stepped out into the wet at the corner of Brandon Street and Dumbarton Road to walk along the row of red sandstone tenement until he found number 21. He mounted the well-worn stone steps to the top flat where Maclean opened the door in his dressing gown.
‘They told me at the hospital you weren’t well,’ said Steven as he followed Maclean through to a sitting room where he indicated that Steven should sit and then collapsed into an armchair, holding his chest as if he’d just run a marathon.
‘A left over from the Gulf War?’ asked Steven.
Maclean nodded and said, ‘It comes; it goes. What can I do for you?’
‘I remember you told me that you went to see George Sebring to try and get him to tell you what he had been working on at Porton.’
‘That’s right.’
‘The police told me you’d tried contacting other people who had worked there. Did you actually talk to any of them?
‘It was bloody difficult. I only ever managed to get addresses for three of them, Sebring, a bloke named Lowry and another guy, called Michael D’Arcy.’
Steven was pleased to hear an unfamiliar name. ‘Did you speak to either of them?’
‘Both,’ said Maclean. ‘Lowry told me to sling my hook or he’d call the police. He still worked at our noble defence establishment at that time. I don’t know if he still does. He was none too chuffed that I’d managed to track him down but I managed to have a talk with D’Arcy. He seemed a decent enough bloke in an English middle class sort of a way but shit scared of saying anything out of line. He just kept repeating that he was subject to the Official Secrets Act until he sounded like a worn-out record.’
‘Who was D’Arcy exactly?’
‘He was a pal of Sebring’s. They worked together in a section headed by a snooty bastard named Crowe. Never was a bloke more aptly named, cold bastard, would have your right eye out and come back for your left. Didn’t have much to do with us squaddies though. I suppose he thought it was beneath him.’
‘I think I’d like to go see this D’Arcy. Do you have an address for him?’
‘It’s been a while,’ said Maclean. ‘A couple of years at least. He lived down in Kent at that time; worked for a pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, I think. Poacher turned gamekeeper you might say.’
Maclean eased himself slowly out of the chair and shuffled over to a bureau where he supported himself with one hand while he foraged through a small mountain of notebooks and papers with the other.
Steven was appalled at how ill the man looked. He seemed to have aged ten years since the last time he saw him. His cheeks had developed cavernous hollows and the veins on his neck were standing out like cords. ‘Just let me know if I can help with anything,’ he said.
‘Here we are,’ said Maclean, holding up a small notebook and keeping the place with his thumb in it until he had sat down again. ‘Dr Michael D’Arcy, Flat 12, Beach Mansions, Ramsgate. I remember now; he worked in Sandwich at the Pfizer plant but preferred to live in Ramsgate because he had fond childhood memories of the place. Apparently his folks used to take him and his sister there on holiday. I kind of warmed to him when he told me that. I used to feel the same way about a place called Rothesay. I was taken there on an annual basis when I was young. We used to get the steamer at Gourock and sail down the Clyde to Rothesay Bay. We went with the Grant family who stayed next door to us in Govan. My mother and Effy Grant were great pals. You’d have thought it was a Caribbean cruise we were going on if you’d seen what my mother packed for the trip.’
Steven smiled at Maclean’s obvious fondness for the memory.
‘I took my own lassie there when she was a bairn, ‘watched her play in the same sand I’d done thirty years before. But that’s where it’s all ended. She’ll not be taking any kids of her own there. She never got the chance.’
‘I’m sorry,’ murmured Steven. He looked away while Maclean wiped a tear from his cheek with an embarrassed flick of the back of his hand.
Maclean cleared his throat and continued. ‘Like I say, D’Arcy was okay. He had a bit of heart about him. Mind you, that probably marked him out as a loser.’