Lethal Factor

by Gabrielle Lord

  The day dragged on and I started to feel very hungry. I tried chewing some of the chicken pellets and found it hard going. They were fishy and chalky, but at least I wouldn’t starve. The smell from the hens’ droppings was building and I was grateful it wasn’t high summer. Even so, my eyes felt weird from the rising ammonia levels in the enclosed area. I paced again, like a caged animal, becoming more and more desperate as the ammonia smell built up and a headache started behind my eyes.

  I forced down another handful of pellets with some increasingly cloudy water from the hopper. Outside, another day was drawing to a close. I had been stuck in the henhouse for nearly twenty-two hours. I checked the medicine cabinet for the umpteenth time, and still the same vaccines, vitamins and vet supplies stood in tidy rows behind the glass. I sat down again. If I was stuck here, I might as well use my brain for something else. Here was a place free of all distractions.

  I pulled out my notebook and started making notes about the BA contaminations, starting with Tony Bonning’s death. Looking up from my notes, and staring at the wall opposite, I saw that by looking at a certain streaking of the render, I could make out the figure of a woman with her upper body bending backwards. Looked at another way, the rough lines could be seen as an elaborate bow tie. I thought of the clever drawing hanging above Vic Agnew’s desk, the perception puzzle. I jotted down a few notes about Livvy’s death, the link between Tony Bonning and Digby, by virtue of their names on the Delmonte certifications. I thought of Livvy and her brilliant research, now just a pile of folders in a sports bag. I was feeling really sick by now and I stretched my arms out behind me, thinking I’d need to stay low now that the ammonia was building up. My fingers encountered something half covered by seed husks. Whatever it was had been buried but the puffballs must have gradually unearthed it. I drew it out and stared at it.

  Then I looked at the wall and the cement streaks, seeing them one way, then the other. ‘Once you’ve got it,’ Vic Agnew had said, ‘you can’t imagine how you didn’t see it before.’

  I continued to sit there, stunned. I wasn’t sitting in a henhouse at all. This place might serve as a henhouse, but it could serve equally well as something else entirely. It had always been there, but I just hadn’t seen it. Now I couldn’t see anything else. As I looked around my prison, and then back at the small object in my hand, the whole damn thing came together. Now I understood why things had been the way they were. I understood why the killer had gone the extra, dangerous step to develop spores, rather than use the vegetative form of the bacteria. I understood why Tony Bonning had died from ingestion anthrax and Livvy Worthington from the inhalational form of the disease. And I understood why the killer had acted in the last few weeks rather than at another time. I knew where ‘Lab 13’ was located, and what had happened there. I understood why grounding strips had been laid on the flooring. I understood why Digby had had the terrible reaction to vaccination against BA and I was sure now what had made the odd, square-shaped bruise on Henry Dupont’s gums and upper lip . . . And why Henry, in spite of the receipt from Bioport in his lab, for vaccination against BA, had still succumbed to the disease. I finally understood the injuries to his fingertips. Then, the flash of exhilarating comprehension faded, and something else took its place. Fear. Would they find the same injuries on my fingers when they discovered me? Or would someone reach me in time? The likelihood was passing with every second that ticked away.

  I was sweating, my heart racing as I understood at last the awful danger I was in. I felt panic rise and then subside. Remain a man of science, a still, small voice told me. Write up your case notes. Move only from what is to what is. And so I did, bringing my terror under control, mindful of the Russian scientist, contaminated by his own weaponised pathogen, who wrote up his own disease progress, the final papers stained with his own haemorrhage. I wrote furiously, sitting in front of the medicine cabinet, that was no longer a medicine cabinet, using the carton of stacked research notes as an ad hoc desk.

  When I’d filled my notebook, I used some of Livvy’s spare paper. It was not much comfort. If no one came in the next few hours, I faced a horrible death. But at least now the perpetrator of the anthrax murders would be brought to justice.

  I re-read my case notes. I thought of my daughter and my son whom I might never see again. And the idea of justice was no comfort to me. I thought of Marty Cash, of Gavrilovic, I thought of Iona Seymour. I felt a tickle in my throat and wondered if this was the first effect of the spores hatching in my system. In the warm and humid atmosphere of my airways, in the tiny fissures of the alveoli in my lungs, the spores would be carried into the bloodstream, to hatch and grow. In spite of all this, I must have dozed again.

  Then, I jolted awake. Outside the house, a car was pulling up.

  My first instinct was to jump up yelling. ‘Help! I’m locked in the fucking chookhouse! Get me out of here.’

  And then I stopped yelling as I heard footsteps approaching the henhouse. Whoever it was I could not in all conscience allow them to come in here. The symptoms I was feeling were nothing to do with the clouds of ammonia now rising invisibly from the fowls’ bedding and flooring and it was possibly already too late for me. I imagined the spores travelling through my medium airways, hatching, putting out the probes to pierce my cells, boarding them, producing oedema factor and lethal factor.

  ‘Don’t come in here!’ I yelled.

  But it was too late. Someone was bashing at the door. I watched as it opened.

  ‘Don’t come in!’ I yelled again. ‘This place is contaminated with anthrax. Call HAZCHEM. Don’t come in here!’

  In the gloomy light, announced by a sudden blast of freezing fresh air, appeared the massive bulk of someone blocking the doorway. I stopped yelling in shock.

  Marty Cash had tracked me down. ‘You can’t hide from me you bastard!’ he roared.

  ‘Stop!’ I yelled again. ‘Stay outside. This place is a bio-hazard!’

  ‘In a pig’s arse!’ he bellowed, advancing his eighteen stone at me. ‘Where’s my fucking money?’

  There was no point in trying to convince him. Instead, I did what I could to keep him from hurting me too badly. With what strength I had left Cash and I struggled together, the puffballs shrieking and flying around us, trying to get out of the way. As we locked together, I found an extra strength that must have come from my complete desperation. Cash was slowed by his massive bulk and I was driven by instinctual survival surges and that gave me some edge. At least at the beginning. I did what I could to avoid the rain of blows. Fist-fighting is not like it is on television, or in the movies, all crisp and choreographed. One heavy punch to the side of my head had my head ringing with shock and pain. I was down, curled around, trying to protect my body from the kicking. Puffballs squawked, exploding around us and I lunged out at his shins, whacking them with a hard-edged folder that I’d somehow snatched up from the box of research notes. Cash toppled like a demolished wall, teetering with a crash to the floor.

  ‘Marty!’ I screamed as he scrabbled to get up, putting the boot into me again. ‘We’ve both been exposed to anthrax! We’ve got to get out of here or we’re both dead!’

  He’d got to his feet again.

  ‘There’s a warrant out for my arrest,’ he roared. ‘You and Bob Edwards and that little prick Reeves.’

  ‘Marty,’ I was able to squeeze out, ‘arrest is one thing. Death from anthrax is much worse.’ I rolled away.

  ‘I’m going to kill you, you cunt!’ he roared. He came at me with all his might, both arms raised, ready to pick me up and crash me against the wall. I could see the crazy rage in his eyes. He was past reason and I had no more strength left. Driven by instinct, I plunged my hands into the bran, scooped up a huge handful and hurled it at Cash’s face just before he crashed into me. We both hit the ground, Cash cursing and choking, blinded by the bran, his hands fumbling to get me. I kne
ed him as hard as I could in the goolies and rolled towards the door, his choking shrieks lending me speed. I scrambled to my feet, coughing, praying it was just the effects of bran and the winding I’d taken, and not the explosively replicating pathogen in my system depriving me of air.

  Somehow, I staggered out into the freezing blackness, got inside the house, locked the door and grabbed my phone. I rang Heronvale Police. It took me a while to make them understand me. They said they’d be out quick.

  Twenty-five

  Jacinta came to see me in hospital and I was sitting up, with a half-closed red-black eye, still feeling very bruised and fragile. She fussed and cooed over my splinted digits and arranged the white jonquils she’d brought with her. Their heady scent almost eclipsed the hospital odours.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ I asked.

  ‘Guess?’ she teased.

  I shook my head. Jacinta had a network of friends and allies I knew nothing about.

  ‘With your friend Iona,’ she said. ‘She contacted me through Bob and asked me if I’d consider using a room at her place. I went and had a look at it. It’s got French windows opening out onto this gorgeous courtyard and it’s got a fountain and everything. So that’s where I am.’

  ‘Iona?’ I was a bit stunned at this.

  ‘I intended to stay at Seven Oaks but I couldn’t because it’s all taped off, so I went back into town and she’d tracked me down.’

  ‘What about Andy?’ I asked.

  Jacinta looked down at her fingernails. ‘We’re having a bit of space from each other. He’s too bossy.’ She paused. ‘Speaking of bossy, there’s someone who wants to see you.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked, alerted by her manner.

  ‘Mum,’ said my daughter.

  I lay back, feeling sicker. ‘Oh Jesus,’ I said. ‘Not her. I couldn’t face her just now.’

  ‘No, Dad,’ said my daughter. ‘It’s all right. She’s—well—maybe you should just have a word with her.’

  Genevieve appeared and as soon as I saw her I knew something was different. It wasn’t just that she’d lost weight and looked older—somehow, my ex-wife had managed to stay frozen at about thirty-seven. But today she was looking her age. And that was different. She stood near the doorway, unsure, and that, too, struck me as new.

  ‘Jack,’ she said. ‘I’m here to apologise.’

  I thought I must be hallucinating. ‘What did you say?’ I asked her.

  ‘You heard,’ she snapped. Her new humility had lasted point-eight of a second. ‘I talked with the police—’

  ‘They talked to you, Mum,’ said Jacinta. ‘They said you didn’t have enough evidence to support your allegations. Especially after what I told them.’ I wondered what Jacinta had said. I didn’t have to wonder very long.

  ‘I told them that you never laid a hand on me, Dad. Never. That was the problem. You were always so distant. I couldn’t remember any time you’d cuddled me. And then you’d come in drunk and sentimental and I’d hate you. That’s why Mum found me crying with you on the floor. I hated it when you were drunk.’

  Genevieve was almost preening her tail feathers at this, but Jacinta was letting both of us have it—with both barrels. ‘And I hated you, Mum, because you just went on and on at him. Why couldn’t you have just shut up and got on with things?’

  All preening stopped and there was a charged silence. Genevieve and I glared at each other until my ex-wife walked forward in the neat June Dally-Watkins way she’d learned years ago. Pity she hadn’t learned anything else, I thought.

  ‘I’ll say goodbye then,’ she said in a cold, tight voice.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll say the same.’

  And that was it. One of the shortest hospital visits of all time, I thought. I hoped it was the end of the whole sorry business.

  •

  I stayed in hospital for three days. I had a split over my left eyebrow, a black eye, two broken fingers, a bruised throat and I spent most of the first two days feeling as crook as Rookwood from the combined effects of a second BA vaccination shot and three varieties of antibiotics, additional to the course I was already taking. I had a foul taste in my mouth, and I still couldn’t tell if the lousy way I felt was because of galloping BA infection, antibiotics or the bashing and kicking I’d taken from Marty Cash. So I felt a lot better when my blood tests came back negative for BA.

  Charlie threatened to come down and visit but I told him not to bother, that I’d be seeing him soon enough and there was nothing he could do. When I regaled him with what had happened in the chookhouse and what I’d discovered earlier, he whistled.

  ‘Dad actually suggested something like that when I rang him. He said that French thing about cherchez la femme.’

  ‘How is he?’ I asked.

  ‘He actually let the community nurse visit him and said she was an intelligent girl.’

  ‘She probably got his number. Those women know how to deal with men like him,’ I said, but I was relieved just the same.

  •

  Bob visited on the last evening. ‘How are you?’ he asked, comfortable in his usual sprawl in a chair beside the bed, completely at home wherever he sat.

  ‘Low as sharkshit,’ I said.

  ‘You look shithouse,’ he agreed in his pleasant way.

  ‘I could have looked a lot worse,’ I said, thinking of Henry Dupont black and stinking in his home lab. ‘Any word on Cash?’

  ‘He’s gone to ground,’ said Bob.

  ‘Watch this space,’ I said, indicating the ward I was in. ‘Or another hospital like it. He’ll have to turn up soon.’

  ‘Once he starts feeling really crook—’ Bob started to say.

  ‘—It’ll be too late,’ I finished for him. ‘If he’s been exposed to enough spores.’ I thought about that and could find not an ounce of pity for the bastard.

  ‘I read your chookhouse notes,’ said Bob. ‘Your writing’s lousy.’

  ‘Some chookhouse,’ I said.

  ‘Some notes,’ said Bob. ‘I’ve had copies made, and I’ve brought you a set,’ he said, handing them to me. I put them in the drawer beside the bed.

  ‘After it had been decontaminated,’ Bob continued, ‘we found everything you mentioned and I sent the weapon you found away to the Analytic Laboratory.’

  ‘And?’ I asked.

  ‘Just as you suspected. The analyst got a positive result.’

  ‘It was a horrible thing to do,’ I said. ‘To kill someone using one of those.’

  ‘Any way’s a horrible way, as far as I’m concerned,’ said Bob, ‘with anthrax.’

  ‘So what’s being done about the killer?’ I asked. It was difficult for me to have been out of action during this critical time.

  ‘We’re keeping a very discreet eye on everyone in Forensic Services,’ said Bob. ‘So don’t you worry. Everyone’s very curious about what happened to you but we’re just saying that you had a run-in with Marty Cash. The techno kids are finding all sorts of interesting things on the killer’s hard disc.’

  I was very interested in this and he continued. ‘Like the original order with Bioport in Henry Dupont’s name. As to the arrest—’ He paused to answer his mobile, spoke briefly and then put it away, ‘—everything’s under control.’

  ‘What about Seven Oaks?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s still sealed up,’ said Bob.

  ‘Digby won’t mind,’ I said. ‘He wasn’t planning to stay there again anyway for some time.’

  ‘Right now he’s in Sydney with his sister and the Yankee scientist taking in the sights. They’ll be back for that Wesley lecture thing on Friday night,’ Bob said. ‘It’s turning into your boss’s farewell. Everyone’s going.’

  With everything else, I’d forgotten that damn dinner. Now, there was no way I cou
ld avoid it.

  Twenty-six

  Iona offered me a room at her place before I came out of hospital, but it didn’t feel like a comfortable arrangement to me, what with Jacinta already there, so I moved back into University House.

  Jacinta spent most of her time studying in the library with Iona, or so she told me. It was odd, I thought, the way things had turned out between them. I wasn’t sure if it made things easier or harder for me. I felt a pressure to sort things out with Iona that I hadn’t felt before the developing friendship with my daughter. If things didn’t work out between us, and I had no reason really to think that they would, it could be another loss for Jacinta.

  The afternoon of the Wesley Morton memorial dinner found me in Digby’s office, desperately trying to contain the mountain of paperwork that had appeared over the five days I’d been away. I concentrated on writing up my case notes on the three BA deaths, using my own laptop. It took a couple of hours to tidy up.

  Gavin Wales, the NSW detective in charge of the Tony Bonning case, rang just as I was finishing to say he now had the necessary paperwork for the extradition of the killer. ‘I’m about to leave Sydney,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there at six-thirty.’

  ‘That’s just before we all go in for dinner,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you to the target.’