Death at the Plague Museum Read online

  ‘I’d have to say I agree, Mona. But every time we get a phone call, we have to go through this. How often do you think they’re going to pull this trick? We’re never going to get any work done at this rate.’ He sighed, all his earlier good mood vanishing. ‘At least there’s nothing left for them to steal.’

  Bernard hurried after him. ‘Who do you think is making the calls, Mr Paterson?’

  ‘Well, I had this down as part of a conspiracy to interfere with our evidence. Our visitor from yesterday swears blind it was nothing to do with him, although I have to say I’m not entirely sure I believe him.’

  ‘Who visited yesterday?’ asked Mona.

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  Bernard caught her eye and got the message loud and clear that she’d have that piece of information out of him as well. People really should stop involving him in secrets.

  ‘I remain open-minded about whether yesterday’s hoax was a deliberate attempt to get us out of the building so that the box could take a walk, or whether we were all being evacuated, and someone saw their chance and took it. And if you are about to say “who”, don’t bother, because I have no idea.’

  ‘And today’s call?’

  ‘No idea, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s linked to that lot.’ Paterson jerked a thumb in the direction of the straggly band of protestors who had returned to the park. None of them looked to Bernard as if they were the type to phone in a bomb threat. One of them saw him staring and made a rude gesture in his direction, further confirming his view that they were all about direct action. Spray-painting the building, brick through the window, yes. Complex plots involving bomb threats as a cover for stealing evidence in a health defaulter case, not so much.

  Paterson continued with his theory. ‘Either they did them both, or saw yesterday’s palaver and thought it looked like a good wheeze. And I’ll tell you something else. That Barry Gifford had a good point this morning. We should have the same level of security on that building as you’d have on a police station.’

  ‘Although it’s not like you can just walk in off the street, Guv. You need to go through the Green Card barrier, then reception.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Paterson said, ‘but what background checks do they do on the people who work in the building? How much do we know about who’s working in the other offices?’

  ‘True, Guv.’ She turned to Bernard, and he knew her mind was going back to their earlier conversation about bugs.

  ‘You’d better let Ian Jacobsen know that there’s no point in rushing over here.’

  Mona pulled a face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was a pain in the arse when I told him about the previous bomb threat. I can do without another set of smart alec comments.’

  ‘Why don’t you text him?’ said Bernard.

  Her face brightened and she immediately began tapping on her phone. ‘Cheers, Bernard.’

  ‘Where are Carole and the idiot boy?’ Paterson eyed up the crowd of office workers milling around.

  ‘I don’t think either Carole or Maitland has shown up yet.’ Mona checked her watch. ‘Although it is only a quarter past nine.’

  Paterson snorted. ‘Which is a quarter past when they’re supposed to be here.’

  Bernard looked round for any sign of his errant colleagues, but saw only a young man in a slightly scruffy grey suit walking straight toward them. Bernard didn’t recognise him, but the man seemed to know Mona. He tapped her on the shoulder, and she spun round, her face registering surprise.

  The young man spoke. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  2

  Simon, Mona’s civil servant contact, piled two lumps of sugar into his tea, stirred it vigorously, then sat gently tapping the spoon against the red vinyl tablecloth.

  ‘Nice caf, Guv. I’ve never been in this one.’ Mona regarded their surroundings. They weren’t what you would describe as fine dining, in fact they were definitely on the greasy spoon side of things, but, in her opinion, none the worse for that.

  ‘They do a great bacon roll.’ Paterson’s eyes flicked in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Maybe later.’

  ‘Anyway, Simon, you had something to tell us?’ Simon’s arrival had intrigued her, but she was trying not to get her hopes up. Their investigation seemed to have stalled, but in her experience the more you hoped for a breakthrough to land in your lap, the less likely it was to actually happen.

  ‘Yeah.’ He fiddled with his spoon some more. ‘I mean, I don’t want to keep you if you need to get back to . . .whatever that was?’

  ‘It was a bomb hoax, and we’ve got it covered.’ Bernard had been left in place, with strict instructions to come and get them if required. He’d made some protest about not having had breakfast yet, which had been swiftly overruled by Paterson, on the operational grounds that someone had to keep watch and it wasn’t going to be him. Maybe she’d take him back a fried egg roll. ‘Say what you need to say.’

  ‘Anneka is being a nightmare.’

  ‘She is your boss. She’s allowed to be a nightmare.’ She smiled. ‘Making their staff miserable is a boss’s job.’

  Paterson raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I know, I know. And it’s not like she wasn’t a pain in the arse before all this kicked off, but now it’s like she’s morphing into Helen. She’s doing all the same kind of secretive stuff.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Phone calls. Ones which she doesn’t want to take in the office.’

  ‘Could be lots of reasons for that. Boyfriend, hospital test results . . .’

  ‘In theory, yes, but I know there’s more to it.’ He played nervously with the spoon again, and Mona had to resist the temptation to rip it out of his hand. ‘I may have done something stupid.’ He dug into his coat pocket and pulled out a mobile phone, which he placed next to his teacup.

  Paterson and Mona eyed it. ‘Is that Anneka’s?’

  ‘Yes.’ He pushed it toward them.

  She was itching to pick it up but forced herself to keep her hands on her lap. ‘Technically, that’s theft.’

  ‘I see myself more as a whistle-blower than a thief.’

  ‘Whistle-blower? Is there something of public interest on it, son?’ Paterson’s fingers were inching toward it.

  ‘I think so. In fact I’m pretty certain that there’s stuff on there that’s relevant to your investigation.’

  ‘Isn’t it password-protected?’ Mona was now actively sitting on her hands.

  ‘It is, but I guessed it. The pin code is Helen’s birthday.’ He looked pained. ‘Which I find kind of creepy.’

  ‘It is a little.’ She didn’t even know Paterson’s exact age, never mind his date of birth. ‘So, what did you find?’

  ‘She’s got a whole lot of calls and text messages from this one number over the past couple of days. It doesn’t say who the number is but I can guess from the context.’

  ‘Helen Sopel?’

  ‘Yup.’

  Paterson’s hands were either side of the phone. ‘Does it say where she is?’

  ‘I haven’t looked at them in detail...’

  Mona wasn’t sure she believed this.

  ‘There are lots of texts about picking up food and supplies, but I didn’t see anything like an address. But I thought you’d have IT specialists and if I handed it over to you, you might be able to figure it out.’

  ‘What do you think, Guv? Can we take it?’

  Paterson’s hands were edging closer to either side of the phone, like an army of fingers performing a pincer movement. ‘I think we can make a public interest defence for our accepting it.’

  Mona reached out and pocketed it before he changed his mind.

  ‘So,’ asked Simon, warily, ‘I’m not under arrest or anything for taking it?’

  ‘No, but please talk to us before pinching anything else,’ said Paterson, his stern expression not quite masking his excitement at getting the phone.

  ‘Will Anneke be under arrest if i
t turns out she is hiding Helen?’ Simon asked, with a cadence to his voice that was distinctly hopeful.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Mona.

  Bernard’s face appeared at the window. He gave her a thumbs up, then pushed open the door and headed swiftly in the direction of the counter.

  ‘Looks like we can go back, Guv.’

  ‘I’ll be off then.’ Simon stood up.

  ‘Thanks for your help.’ Mona stuck out a hand. He shook it, bobbed his head at Paterson, then slunk furtively out of the café.

  ‘Have we had the all-clear, Bernard?’ asked Paterson.

  ‘Yeah. Egg roll, please.’ He put his order in to the bored-looking woman sitting behind the Formica tabletop.

  ‘To go,’ shouted Paterson to the kitchen. ‘What’s the story?’

  ‘Barry Gifford interrogated poor Marguerite about the call. She’d filled the call sheet in faithfully, noted that the caller was a young girl and everything, but there wasn’t a box that asked if she could hear all the caller’s pals giggling away in the background.’

  ‘So it was just teenagers mucking around?’

  ‘Looks like it. Ooh, thank you.’ He bit into his roll with delight. ‘This tastes so good. Anyway, Barry Gifford was furious with Marguerite, which in my opinion is a little bit unfair, because she was doing her best. I think you got him all riled up this morning, Mr Paterson.’

  ‘Good! He needs to get all this nonsense knocked on the head. I’m not getting kicked out of my office every time some bored teen wants a bit of a laugh. Anyway, Marge will be getting tea and sympathy from the rest of the admin team. She’ll be fine.’

  Mona eyed Bernard’s sandwich. ‘Couple of bacon rolls for the road, Guv?’

  ‘Why not?’

  The office was already occupied when they returned. She couldn’t see what was on Maitland’s computer screen, but Carole’s browser was open at Facebook. She didn’t rush to close the page, and if Paterson saw it he opted not to comment.

  ‘Colleagues, glad you could join us. Eventually.’ Paterson pointed in the direction of the metal cupboard. ‘Anything else go walkabout while we were out of the building?’

  ‘Nothing left for them to take, Guv.’ Maitland yawned, a wide-open affair that afforded everyone a fine view of half a dozen fillings and a set of tonsils.

  ‘Late night?’ asked Paterson.

  ‘Yup.’ He sat up straight. ‘Interesting story, Guv. I was out with Kate last night . . .’

  Mona sensed where this was going. She sat down at her desk, bracing herself for the full wrath of her colleagues when they found out the story about Cassandra Doom and her unlikely drinking buddy.

  ‘Thanks for sharing, Maitland, now step to it.’

  ‘No, Guv, you need to hear this. It relates to these leaks we’ve been having. I think I might just have found the source.’

  Paterson stopped in the doorway to his room.

  ‘So, I caught up with Kate about ten o’clock last night. She’d been at some Christian nonsense or other with her leftie mate Lyndsey, who does my head in, so I told Kate to give me a call when Lyndsey went home. We had a great night in the pub, but once we get back to my flat, Kate starts talking about seeing my colleague Mona out on a date. With a woman.’

  ‘Good for you!’ said Bernard. ‘That’s not news, Maitland, that’s Mona’s private life.’

  ‘Bernard’s right. That’s absolutely none of our business.’ Paterson finally went into his room.

  Mona wondered whether to make a break for it. Maitland could spill the beans, she’d give them time to digest the news, and then she could come back all guns blazing in an hour or so. It was totally up to her who she dated. Or in this case didn’t date.

  Maitland raised his voice so that Paterson could still hear him, whether he wanted to or not. ‘And Kate said that Lyndsey had been all upset because the woman Mona was with was some right-wing nutjob commentator. Of course, Kate couldn’t actually remember the name of the woman, but after a long, long, Internet search I find out that my colleague is dating none other than Cassandra Doom.’

  The room was silent. Mona spun round on her seat and stared Maitland out. He glared back.

  ‘That can’t be right,’ said Bernard, his tone wavering between confusion and hope. ‘Mona?’

  The silence stretched on excruciatingly, until she gave in. ‘I’ve seen her twice.’

  Paterson went into his office, slamming the door of his office shut behind him. Almost immediately he reappeared. ‘Give me the phone.’ He beckoned to her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Give me Anneka’s phone.’ He stretched out his hand. ‘Now.’

  She slowly reached into her pocket for it and handed it to him. ‘Why?’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned you’re a security risk.’

  ‘Damn right,’ muttered Maitland.

  She felt a wave of fury rising up from her feet. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘I’m deadly serious, I can assure you. Bernard, check out the contents of this phone. See if it says anything relevant to Helen Sopel’s whereabouts. Report anything you find directly to me.’ He pointed at Mona. ‘And not to her.’

  She looked round at her colleagues. Maitland and Paterson were still glaring at her like she was Public Enemy Number One. Carole and Bernard were avoiding catching her eye. She stood up. ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘Good.’

  As she walked down the corridor she could hear Bernard’s voice.

  ‘Ehm, whose phone is this, Mr Paterson?’

  3

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘No, Maitland, I mean, really, really awful.’

  His colleagues were huddled round Maitland’s computer. Bernard didn’t know what they were up to, but he’d put money on it not relating in any way, shape, or form to the search for Helen Sopel. He wondered if he should point out to them that Paterson was in an extremely bad mood at the moment, not likely to be improved by coming out of his office and finding them messing about.

  ‘Bernard, you have to see this,’ said Carole.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cassandra Doom’s columns.’ Maitland joined in. ‘They’re appalling. I was up until 3am reading them. I just couldn’t stop, Bern. Each one was worse than the one before.’

  ‘I’ll look at them later, once I’ve got some work done.’

  ‘Why are we spending millions trying to keep our prisons free of the Virus? We should be encouraging it. If it wipes out a few free-loading criminals, that’s a saving to the public purse . . .’ Maitland read aloud from the screen.

  ‘It doesn’t really say that, does it?’

  ‘It does.’ Maitland yawned. ‘And that’s one of the more liberal headlines.’

  Bernard was sorely tempted. Paterson was bunkered down in his office. Before retreating he’d barked some instructions about the phone, which Bernard hadn’t really understood. He had thought he would be able to work out who the phone belonged to and what he was supposed to be doing with it once he turned it on, but fell at the first hurdle when he discovered he needed a pin number. He’d have to risk Paterson’s wrath and ask some follow-up questions before he could do anything useful with it, but thought he’d give him ten minutes to calm down before braving his lair. He might as well have a look at the articles. He turned round, but he’d spent too long thinking about it, and Maitland and Carole were now giggling about something else.

  Suddenly Maitland got up and headed out. Bernard saw that his jacket was still there, hanging on the back of his chair. Carole, on the other hand, was putting her coat on.

  ‘You’re going out?’ he asked.

  ‘Good guess, Bernard.’

  ‘What do I say if Paterson asks where you are?’

  ‘Don’t say anything. Or tell him a complete lie, I really don’t care.’ She smiled, giving him a wave as she left.

  As the door shut behind her, the office felt unnaturally quiet. After a second’s adjustment, he decid
ed he was quite happy with the peace, so he could process what he’d just learned. Mona, the colleague whom he highly respected, if not actually entirely liked, was dating one of the people that he most despised on the planet. With a quick eye to Paterson’s office to make sure he wasn’t about to appear, he typed Cassandra Doom into a search engine and watched as a string of articles popped up.

  It’s called the NATIONAL health service – time to clamp down on Virus tourism

  Enough is Enough – we need to cut back on the so-called ‘refugee orphans’ claiming that their parents are Virus victims

  The articles went on and on. There was no aspect of Virus policy that Cassandra appeared to think was immune to abuse by benefits claimants, foreigners, or left-wing, Britain-hating politicians. Carlotta Carmichael was a ‘sock puppet of righteousness, committed to protecting the citizens of Scotland from the idiocies of her own policies’.

  ‘Ouch,’ he muttered to himself.

  Cameron Stuttle was ‘an over-promoted plod, who shouldn’t be in charge of a country hospital, never mind a national health emergency’.

  ‘Oh dear.’

  He could see why Maitland had spent so long surfing the articles. They were quite addictive. As well as her feelings about the HET, she was quite consistently vitriolic across a wide range of topics, with a particular emphasis on the shaming of people who were overweight or under-white.

  He took a deep breath and entered Cassandra Doom HET in the search engine.

  Big Brother Health Police Planned – a new agency is being created to police people’s health behaviour. Under the pretext of the Virus . . .

  What a cock-up! The Keystone Cops staffing the Health Enforcement Teams messed up big time today . . .

  He cast a further eye in the direction of his boss’s office and typed: Cassandra Doom John Paterson.

  It only returned one response, relating to a particularly rough time that his boss had had at the Parliamentary Virus committee. He read the article from beginning to end, and sincerely hoped that Paterson wasn’t making the same Internet searches as him. The many derogatory comments about his boss’s intelligence, competence and commitment in the article would no doubt annoy him, but Bernard reckoned it was the several references to his weight that would really have him spitting tacks.