by Ken McClure
‘No evidence,’ said Dewar. ‘We couldn’t even prove they met Hammadi let alone what they asked him to do.’
‘So why do you think they’re still here?’
‘At worst I have to consider that they might be trying to persuade someone else to help them to get what they want.’
Malloy looked aghast. ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he said in a shocked whisper. ‘No one in their right mind would even dream of it.’
‘I take it, no one’s approached you?’
‘No. They’d get short shrift if they did’
‘How about if they were to offer you half a million pounds to do it?’
‘Half a mil … No, absolutely not.’
‘A million?’
‘I … ‘
‘Two million?’
‘All right, I take your point,’ said Malloy. ‘We’ve started to haggle about the price. But I still hope I would say no. It would be sheer madness to attempt it and how could you live with yourself, knowing you’d resurrected one of the worst killers the world’s ever known? You wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, assuming you survived at all after playing around with something like that.’
‘I sincerely hope everyone feels like that,’ said Dewar. ‘But I have to ask you who at the institute might be put to the test?’
‘You’re serious?’
Dewar nodded. ‘I need you to tell me who has the necessary expertise to do the job without of course, suggesting in any way that they would.’
‘Assuming they were supplied with everything they needed?’
Another nod.
‘There are lots of people with DNA skills but not that many with practical experience of working with high risk micro organisms. Basically it would come down to the people in my lab and those in Gary Cairns’s lab. We work with HIV so we’re used to handling dangerous material.’
‘Point taken.’
‘We could leave out first year grad students. Second year? Possible. Post docs, yes and of course, Gary Cairns and me, I suppose.’
‘Technical staff?’
Malloy thought for a moment. ‘Andrea in Cairns’s lab would be a possibility. She has the right background and she’s been here a while. She might be able to do it at a pinch.’
‘George Ferguson?’
‘No experience of DNA manipulation, technically able and well used to handling dangerous organisms but wrong background for this sort of thing.’
‘So how many are we talking about?’
Malloy brought his shoulders up to his ears and made shaking gestures with both hands. ‘I’d go for eight.’ he said.
‘I need their names,’ said Dewar.
‘This is giving me a bad feeling,’ said Malloy, as he got up. ‘It feels like I’m betraying my colleagues. He fetched pen and paper from his desk.
‘You’re not,’ Dewar assured him. ‘You’re simply appraising their competence and expertise.’
Malloy wrote down the eight names and handed it over. ‘Mind you, I’d bet my life savings against any of these people being involved in anything like this,’ he said.
‘And I wouldn’t dream of betting against you,’ said Dewar. ‘If only our Iraqi friends would get the hell out of the city then we could all stop being so paranoid and rest easy.’ He declined the offer of a second glass of wine and was escorted to the door. ‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone else about our meeting.’
‘It’s hardly something I’m likely to brag about,’ said Malloy.
Dewar drove back to the city, taking his time on the narrow roads in the dark In many places they had acquired a coating of wet leaves, it would be all too easy to come to grief under heavy braking and finish up among the trees whose tall, dark presence blotted out the sky. He felt better when he’d got back on to the main road and had a clear run back into the city.
Once back in his hotel room he phoned Karen to exchange notes about the day and make arrangements for the week end.
‘You won’t think of an excuse not to come down and see my mother will you?’ asked Karen.
‘Of course not,’ Dewar assured her, his spirits falling at the thought of an evening in the company of Karen’s mother. He found her hard to take.
‘Good, so why don’t we say that you’ll be down for supper on Saturday and you’ll stay over till Sunday?’
‘Fine,’ said Dewar. ‘I take it I’ll be on the couch downstairs?’
‘You know how Mother feels about that sort of thing,’ said Karen.
‘I know,’ agreed Dewar.
‘Besides … she goes out to her church social on Sunday afternoon, that’ll give us plenty of time …’
‘Here’s to Sunday afternoon,’ said Dewar.
Dewar entered the names of the eight people Malloy had given him into his laptop as part of his next report for Sci-Med. He looked at them, white letters on a blue screen. He hadn’t been quite honest with Malloy. It wasn’t just a matter of compiling a list of people with the right know-how. Once Barron had the names, all the people on that list would be subject to round the clock surveillance just like the two Iraqis. To imagine anything else would be naive. Steven Malloy and Gary Cairns headed it, Pierre Le Grice and Simone Clary were next then Sandra Macandrew and Kurt Lehman, finally Andrea Bowman and Josh Phelps. He assumed the names he didn’t recognise were people working in the Cairns lab. It might be worth running the names through the police computer. He’d bet on eight zeros coming up but it would be a sensible, routine thing to do and Sci-Med liked him to do sensible routine things from time to time. You never know, he assured himself, one of them might turn out to be a mad axe-killer. He called Grant at police headquarters on the off chance he might be there although it was now after ten. He wasn’t there but the man who answered from Grant’s office — Sergeant Nick Johnstone, said that he was still on duty.
‘There was a nasty hit and run incident over in Marchmont;’ said the sergeant. ‘A lassie got knocked off her bike; I think she was killed. He went over to the hospital about an hour ago. Anything I can help with? The Inspector said if you called at any time we were to play ball, to use his expression.’
‘I was going to ask him to run some names through the computer for me,’ said Dewar.
‘Fire away,’ said Johnstone.
Dewar read out the list and Johnstone wrote them down with Dewar providing spelling where necessary.
‘Wait a minute … ‘ said Johnstone.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Just a minute … ‘
Dewar heard the phone being put down. The wait started to seem endless when Johnstone finally returned and the receiver was fumbled before being picked up successfully.
‘I thought so,’ said Johnstone. ‘The lassie in Marchmont, she’s on your list, if it’s the same one. Sandra Macandrew. Student at the Institute of something or other?’
‘That’s her,’ said Dewar, feeling as if a heavy weight had suddenly descended on his shoulders. ‘You said she was dead?’
‘The report from the attending officers said she was a gonner.’
‘I see,’
When Inspector Grant heard she was a student at the institute he said he was going up to the hospital. That was the last I heard. That was about an hour ago.’
‘Where did they take her?’
‘The Royal Infirmary.’
‘Thanks,’ said Dewar, feeling numb.
‘Do you want me to call you back when the computer’s had a look through your names?’ asked Johnstone.
‘No, I’ll get back to you later. I’m going to see if I can catch Grant at the hospital.’
Dewar felt sick in his stomach. He hadn’t known Sandra Macandrew well but well enough to like her as a person and see that she was a bright student with a promising future. Now she was dead. Hit and run, Johnstone had said, the second person from Malloy’s lab to die in the space of a month. The uneasy feeling he’d been — carrying around with him had just multiplied tenfold.
Mount
ing frustration at the slowness of the traffic was pushed to even higher levels at not being able to find a parking place near the hospital. He tried reminding himself there was no hurry; Sandra was dead, but his instincts overruled his reason. His gut feeling was that somehow Sandra’s death must have had something to do with the smallpox thing and the sooner he got to the hospital and talked to Grant about it the better.
He saw a Ford Fiesta start to vacate a place by the kerb so he braked abruptly to the annoyance of the driver behind. He ignored the angry tooting and waited until the Fiesta had pulled away before putting the Rover in nose first and abandoning it with its tail sticking out untidily.
‘Arsehole!’ shouted the driver who’d been held up. Dewar ignored him and headed for the hospital. He only had eyes for the infirmary which loomed in front of him against the night sky. It was an old fashioned hospital, all towers and turrets on the outside — like a Disney castle, with endless corridors and peeling ceilings on the inside. Light spilled out from the A amp;E entrance, lighting up the ambulance apron where two vehicles stood waiting for fate to play its next card. Dewar entered through the automatic doors and approached the desk.
‘Sandra Macandrew,’ he said to the clerk. ‘Hit and run victim, brought in dead about an hour ago. Are the police still here? I’m looking for Inspector Grant in particular.’
The clerk looked at him over his glasses. ‘And you are?’
Dewar showed him his ID.
‘Are you Ms Macandrew’s own doctor?’ asked the man.
‘No,’ answered Dewar, wondering why the question was asked in the first place and what the politically correct term was these days for mental defective. Differently intelligent, he supposed. Right now he didn’t feel like going to war with obstructive officialdom.
‘Are you a relative?’
‘No,’ replied Dewar, now having difficulty keeping his temper. ‘Is Inspector Grant still here or not?’ he asked again in level tones devoid of social nicety.
‘Ms Macandrew’s not dead,’ said the man, trumping Dewar’s card.
Dewar felt stunned. He felt his mouth drop open. ‘Not dead,’ he repeated in a bewildered voice.
‘She’s in a bad way; she’s in intensive care but she’s not dead. The police are still here. I’m not sure if your Inspector Grant is one of them.’
Dewar asked for directions and followed them quickly without actually running, a memory from his early medical training. Nurses and doctors don’t run inside the hospital. They can walk fast but they don’t run. He found Grant who had just been briefed on Sandra Macandrew’s injuries by a young looking doctor who’d then disappeared into a side room in the Intensive Care Unit.
‘How is she?’
‘How did you know?’ Grant asked him.
Dewar told him about his phone call to headquarters. ‘What happened to her?’ he asked.
‘She was cycling home from work and some drunken bozo ran into her and didn’t stop. The street was well lit. Her bike had serviceable lights and her jacket had fluorescent tape on it so there was no excuse for not seeing her. He must have been pissed out his mind.’
‘I hope you get the bastard,’ said Dewar looking through the glass panel to the room where Sandra was lying. Two nurses were busy with her. With so much bandaging and intubation it could have been anyone lying there, he thought. ‘What did the doctor say?’
‘Fractured skull, multiple fractures to both arms and legs, her collar bone’s smashed and her pelvis is damaged. I think the bottom line is, touch and go, poor lassie. Malloy’s not going have much of a research group left at this rate. I’m beginning to think that place is jinxed.’
‘Were there any witnesses?’ asked Dewar.
‘Nothing useful. A couple of people said they saw the car speeding off after they heard the crash. They couldn’t tell us the make, not even the colour under the street lights. A light one they thought. There were lots of people about but their eyes automatically went to the victim and stayed there. By the time they thought to look for the car it had gone.’
‘But you’ll get paint scrapings from her bike?’
Grant shrugged. ‘For whatever good that’ll do, unless it was a white Rolls Royce or a yellow Ferrari. If it’s from a blue Ford I don’t fancy our chances.’
‘Have you considered it wasn’t an accident?’ asked Dewar, still looking through the glass panel.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Supposing it was attempted murder.’
Grant came over to join Dewar in looking through the glass partition. ‘Have you any reason to believe that?’ he asked.
‘No,’ admitted Dewar. ‘No good reason but gut feeling tells me it was. I think someone deliberately tried to kill her.’
‘Why?’
Dewar decided to trust Grant completely. ‘The Iraqis have been trying to get their hands on smallpox virus,’ he said.
‘Christ! I thought that was a thing of the past.’
‘It involves reconstructing it from fragments of the viral DNA that are used in research but it’s difficult. I think they tried forcing Ali Hammadi to do it for them but he killed himself so they need someone else. I think Sandra Macandrew might have been approached; we suspected they might try something like this. That’s why I’m back here. If they did and Sandra turned them down they might consider she knew too much. If she were to report them to the authorities we’d have the evidence we need to nail them to the wall. We might still get it if and when she regains consciousness. Are your men planning to stay with her?’
‘An officer will be stationed here throughout the night in case she comes round although the medics don’t think that’s too likely.’
No one can ever be sure in a case like this,’ said Dewar. ‘It’s always hard to define or quantify brain damage. I think it would be a good idea if there was more than one officer with her,’ said Dewar. ‘And they should be made aware of a possible further attempt on her life.’
‘Okay,’ said Grant. ‘But I take it there’s no proof of this?’
‘No,’ agreed Dewar. ‘But I’ll take responsibility, and I want to be the first to talk to her when she comes round.’
‘By rights a serious crime has been committed and we should speak to the victim before …’
Dewar interrupted and held up his hand. ‘I understand that,’ he said ‘But millions of lives could depend on what she has to say,’ interrupted Dewar. ‘If the Iraqis asked her to do something, I have to know what exactly what it was so we can find out what stage they’re at in the reconstruction. I know the right questions to ask. You don’t.’
‘I thought the glamour boys were sitting on the Iraqis,’ said Grant, changing the subject.
‘So did I,’ said Dewar, taking Grant’s point. If MI5 and Special Branch were watching the Iraqis’ every move, how come they could mount an attempt on Sandra Macandrew’s life?
ELEVEN
When Dewar opened his eyes in the morning, the first thing he considered was the fact that no one had called him during the night. He threw back the covers, swung his legs round and dialled the hospital, to ask about Sandra Macandrew’s condition.
No change, still critical and deeply unconscious, was the report from the intensive care unit. The policemen outside her room had had an uneventful night too, without any other kind of problem. No one had attempted to visit Sandra.
Dewar was having breakfast in the hotel dining room when he was joined by Simon Barron. Without saying so, Barron gave the impression that he had been up for hours. Probably run ten miles and swam across the Forth to pick up his morning paper, thought Dewar uncharitably.
‘Hoped I might catch you,’ said Barron. ‘Have you got the list?’
‘It’s ready,’ replied Dewar. ‘Coffee?’
‘Never touch the stuff.’
Probably impedes performance, thought Dewar, refilling his own cup. ‘Did any of your lot slip up yesterday?’ he asked.
‘In what way?’
‘Could t
he Iraqis have gotten out to play without you knowing about it?’
‘Which ones? We’re just watching Siddiqui and Abbas,’ replied Barron. The students come and go as they please. Why d’you ask?’
Dewar thought for a moment before replying. He was considering what Barron had said about the students, in particular the possibility that one or more of the students might have been recruited to Siddiqui’s cause.
‘One of the graduate students from the Institute of Molecular Sciences was involved in a hit and run incident last night. She was knocked off her bike as she was cycling home from the lab; she’s critically ill. It could have been an accident — the police thought some drunk might have hit her, but her name’s Sandra Macandrew and she’s on the list.’
After a moment of blankness, realisation dawned on Barron’s face. ‘You think it wasn’t an accident? It had something to do with her being on that list?’
‘If she’s on the list we have to consider that she may have been approached by the Iraqis. For the sake of argument let’s assume she was and she turned them down, probably even threatened to go to the police. What d’you think would happen then?’
‘Point taken,’ agreed Barron. ‘That’s quite a thought. Turning down the Iraqi offer would be like signing your own death warrant.’
‘On the other hand, the Iraqis must know that most scientists would be outraged at being asked to do what they suggest. They can’t be planning to kill them all so they must have some way of deciding what individuals might be amenable to a business arrangement?’
‘They’d have to do their homework,’ said Barron. ‘Make discrete inquiries, find out who’s disgruntled, who has financial problems, who has secrets they’d rather not have made public, that sort of thing.’
‘So what made them think Sandra Macandrew might be a possibility?’ Dewar wondered aloud. ‘When I met her she struck me as a normal graduate student, doing exactly what she wants to do in life. Not many of us can say that. Her thesis work was going well according to Malloy, although the ban on smallpox fragments will cause some interruption. She lives in a flat with other students, she’s vegetarian, a member of Friends of the Earth, cycles to and from the lab, has occasional nights in the pub, Chinese meal at the weekend with her friends, not much money but no money worries either. If you’re looking for Ms Typical Grad Student, Sandra Macandrew gets my vote.’