Lost Causes (2 page)

Dr Steven Dunbar opened one eye and took in the time on the bedside alarm clock. It was twenty to seven, five minutes before the radio alarm would trigger and the
Today
programme on Radio Four would start the day.

‘Another day of work and play,’ he sighed, looking up at the ceiling and remembering with something less than enthusiasm that it was Monday.

‘What time is it?’ asked Tally sleepily.

‘Two minutes to lift-off in yet another action-packed day in the life of Steven Dunbar, security consultant extraordinaire.’

‘You go first,’ said Tally. ‘I don’t have to be at the hospital until ten. I was there till eleven last night.’

‘I noticed.’

Tally opened her eyes. ‘What’s up with you this morning?’ she asked. ‘You’re even more ratty than usual.’

‘It’s a gift.’

John Humphrys joined them: he was laying into some hapless politician who seemed determined to avoid his question. ‘Go get him, John boy,’ muttered Steven, swinging his legs over the side and sitting upright. ‘Crooks, the lot of them.’

Tally reached up and put a hand on his bare shoulder. ‘Hey, what’s the matter?’

‘Oh … nothing. You know I’m always grumpy in the morning.’ He turned, leaned back and planted a kiss on her forehead, then paused on the edge of the bed as he heard John Humphrys say, ‘And now a good news story. The BBC has learned that negotiations between a cross-party group of politicians led by Conservative health spokesman Norman Travis and the heads of several international pharmaceutical
companies
have led to an agreement over vaccine production in the UK. Regardless of which party emerges as winner of the upcoming election, the companies will permit mass
production
of their products in facilities approved and licensed by the government of the day, leading to greater availability and ease of distribution in time of need. This will effectively put an end to continual squabbling between government and the
pharmaceutical
industry at a time when the threat of bioterrorist activity is constantly with us. Mr Travis was keen to stress that party politics had played no part in the negotiations and that what had been achieved had been done for the good of the entire nation.’

‘So what are the companies going to get in return?’ murmured Steven.

‘What’s in it for the companies, Mr Travis?’ asked Humphrys.

‘By not having to concentrate on production schedules, they hope to expand their research facilities and to operate in a more … amenable climate. We have to put an end to constant
bickering
over testing and licensing regulations. The pharmaceutical industry is not the enemy; the terrorists are. We are all in this together and a spirit of compromise should prevail.’

Humphrys turned his attention to a Labour health spokesman. ‘The Tories have been doing your job for you, haven’t they?’

‘I think Norman is quite right: we shouldn’t bring party politics into this. It’s much too serious and, as he’s already said, the new scheme will take effect regardless of who wins the upcoming election. It’s the terrorist threat that should occupy our thinking. To that end we are inviting production tenders before the election so that we get vaccines on stream as soon as possible.’ 

‘Does that mean you’ve given in to the companies’ demands too?’

‘We’ve looked at their requests in the light of what’s just been said.’

‘Well, what a day,’ cooed Humphrys. ‘Conservatives and Labour all lovey-dovey with an election coming up. Who’d have thought it? I’d like to explore more but we’ve run out of time. Over to the weather centre …’

Steven switched off the radio and said, ‘About time too. The vaccine situation’s been crazy for years.’

‘People want a hundred per cent safe vaccines,’ said Tally. ‘They see it as their right.’

‘You and I know that isn’t possible,’ said Steven. ‘My fear is that it’s going to take a terrorist attack before the message gets home. If there’s a vaccine available, get it. God, look at the time. No gold star for me at the end of the month.’ He got up and padded through to the bathroom.

Tally – Dr Natalie Simmons – watched him disappear,
admitting
to herself that she’d been expecting something like the undercurrent of frustration Steven was showing. He loved her – she had no doubts about that – but he’d also given up a job he’d loved in order to come and set up home with her in Leicester, and she still wasn’t sure that he believed he’d made the right decision. She wanted to think it had been a considered commitment, made after a great deal of thought, but she knew differently. Steven had been angry and disillusioned at the time of his resignation: it had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, although, to be fair, disillusionment had been threatening for some time before that. On the other hand and on the bright side, he had already rebuffed several requests from London urging him to reconsider and come back.

Since leaving the army, where he’d served with the Parachute Regiment and Special Forces, Steven had been employed as a medical investigator with the Sci-Med Inspectorate, a small unit attached to the Home Office which investigated possible crime and wrongdoing in the high-tech world of science and
medicine
– areas where the police lacked expertise. It was a job he’d been extremely good at but it had taken him into a number of dangerous situations where on more than one occasion his life had been in danger. Tally had met him during one such investigation so she had first-hand experience of the risks. She had been terrified and had no wish to ever find herself in that position again … or even try to form any serious relationship with someone who might be.

Steven had fallen for Tally and had initially hoped that he could convince her that being in danger was the exception rather than the rule, and that it would be perfectly possible for him to combine his Sci-Med career with a normal relationship. Tally, who had her own career to pursue and was currently a senior registrar in paediatric medicine in a Leicester children’s hospital, disagreed and was quite adamant that she couldn’t live in constant fear of the danger her partner might be in. She’d made it clear that that kind of uncertainty was no basis for a relationship and they had ultimately parted over it.

Some time later, when Steven found himself totally
disillusioned
with the outcome of his last assignment when, in the ‘public interest’, the bad guys had got away with it – yet again, as he saw it – he had resigned. He had contacted Tally and told her what had happened. There would be no going back, he assured her. He had never stopped loving her. Would she consider making a life with him if he resigned from Sci-Med? Tally had agreed without hesitation and had suggested that he come and live with her in Leicester while he looked for a new job. At least one of them would be working.

Although himself a qualified doctor and an expert in field medicine – the medicine of the battlefield – Steven had known that it would be difficult if not impossible for him to find his way back into civilian medicine, having never really been involved in it before at any level. He’d joined the army – what he’d really wanted to do all along – almost as soon as he’d completed his hospital registration year after university. He had been one of those students who’d been steered towards
medicine
by ambitious parents and teachers. Unlike many, he’d found the courage to rebel before the die had been irrevocably cast.

Now, largely because he needed to find something that paid a salary, he’d taken a job as a security consultant with a
pharmaceutical
company with research labs located on a science park shared with Leicester University. The security was more concerned with intellectual matters than with the guarding of gates. It was vital that the company’s projects be kept safe from the prying eyes of competitors, so the screening of research and support staff as they came and went was an important factor. Thorough background checks had to be carried out on incoming staff, and privacy agreements in line with contractual
obligations
had to be signed and adhered to by those who were bound for pastures new. All very vital and all very boring.

Steven did his best to shut out such thoughts. After all, the job had enabled him to set up a new life with Tally and would in time allow him to see more of his daughter Jenny and play a bigger role in her life. Steven had been married before, to a nurse he’d met in Glasgow during the course of an early
Sci-Med
assignment, but Lisa had later succumbed to a brain tumour, dying when Jenny was little more than a baby. After her death – perhaps the blackest and most unhappy time of his life – Lisa’s sister Sue and her husband had taken Jenny to live with them in the village of Glenvane in Dumfriesshire, and she had been there ever since, brought up with her two cousins, Peter and Mary. Steven had visited as often as he could, every second weekend when possible.

Sue and her solicitor husband Richard had always assured Steven that they regarded Jenny as one of their own, and that she could stay as long as she was happy with them. They’d even let it be known that giving her up would be traumatic for all of them after so many years – Jenny was settled and happy at the local primary school – but Steven still harboured dreams of family life although he recognised that Jenny herself would have to have the final say. He suspected, however, that his dream might well become unattainable before any such decision had to be made, as Tally had no plans to give up her own career. The demands of the medical ladder would almost certainly involve a geographical move when she began to think about applying for a consultant’s post, and perhaps more than once: not ideal for Jenny.

Steven was aware of Tally giving him sideways looks at the breakfast table. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘Are you beginning to have regrets?’

‘About what?’

‘You know damned well.’

‘Not for a second,’ said Steven softly. ‘I made my decision. It was the right one. I love you.’

Tally remained unconvinced. ‘I know you. I can sense when you’re restless, unsettled, a bit unhappy …’

‘I’m not unhappy. I’m living with the woman I love. I’ve got a good job. The sun’s shining. How could I possibly be unhappy?’

Tally smiled, deciding to believe him but aware that it might be because she wanted to. ‘You’d better get a move on.’

‘Yep, you never know who may be planning to steal the aspirin …’ Steven got up from the table.

Tally looked down at her coffee cup. There it was again, the little aside that hinted at a lack of self-respect in the job he was doing. That could be serious: it could eat away at him unless she could persuade him to see things differently. His job was responsible and important, but how to make him see that was another matter. Most people had little or no trouble convincing themselves – and others – that their job was
meaningful
and worthwhile even if it was only a case of coming up with a fancy title for what they actually did, but Steven was different. He really had lived in a different world. He had lived life on an edge where harsh reality had to be faced and
bullshit
and imagery had no place. He had served with Special Forces all over the world, operating in appalling conditions in jungles and deserts to save the lives of comrades, experiencing the joy of bringing them back from the brink and the anguish of losing them.

Sci-Med investigations had, of course, been less demanding in terms of life and death scenarios but had still brought him into conflict with those who would stop at nothing to achieve their ends. How did you go about convincing a man like that that an office job was important in his scheme of things?

‘I’ll try to get home at a respectable time tonight,’ she said. ‘Maybe we could catch a film or something?’
Anything out of the ordinary
.

‘Good idea,’ said Steven. ‘See you later.’

He picked up his briefcase in the hall and left for work, running down the stairs rather than taking the lift in an effort to keep fit now that he was chained to a desk for much of the time. He walked round to the car park and got into the Honda CRV that had taken the place of his Porsche Boxster – a sacrifice he’d had to make when his government salary cheque had stopped and the spectre of unemployment loomed large. The hiatus had only lasted a month or so but the feeling hadn’t been pleasant.

In truth, he hadn’t sold the Boxster. It had been put into ‘suspended animation’ at the mews garage belonging to his friend Stan Silver in London. Silver, an ex-Regiment soldier himself – although not at the same time as Steven – was the man who had supplied the Porsche in the first place. It had been he who had suggested storing the car for a while to see how things worked out. He had offered to loan Steven a more modest vehicle until he found himself a job, when they could talk again. No decision had as yet been made about the Porsche, although Steven had started paying Stan for the use of the Honda.

It had been Tally who had suggested the Honda from the cars on offer; it was more of a family car, she’d said, and if he was serious about being a family man …
well, look at all that space in the back
. My God, he’d thought, he’d be wearing Pringle sweaters and taking up golf next. No, suicide was higher up his list of things to do than golf. The Honda started first time; it always bloody did.

Steven had his own parking bay with a white board on the wall saying
Head of Security
. It always made him smile. To his way of thinking, the last thing you should be advertising was where the head of security parked his car. But there was no doubting that things were different in the civilian world, so he didn’t say anything. From what he’d seen in the three months he’d been in the job, no one would have any reason to harm him anyway.

His office was on the sixth floor, bright and airy with light wood furniture and an abundance of potted plants. The wide windows had Venetian blinds, necessary in the afternoon when the sun moved round to that side of the building, but it was a dull, grey morning so he opened them fully and looked out over the campus. People in white coats were hard at work in the university labs across the way, as they would be downstairs in his own building, clearly visible in the harsh, white
fluorescent
lighting that illuminated their domain.