by Ken McClure
‘Then maybe you’re jumping the gun here. Maybe it really was an accident,’ suggested Barron.
Dewar shrugged, unconvinced. Both men fell silent for a while then Dewar said, ‘There’s another possibility.’
Barron raised his eyebrows.
‘Sandra wasn’t approached by the Iraqis… but she knows who was.’
‘And they tried to kill her to keep her quiet? Yes, that’s a starter, agreed Barron.’
‘It would also imply that the one they approached has actually agreed to do it,’ said Dewar. ‘Otherwise the Iraqis would be more interested in killing the one who’d turned them down than Sandra.’
‘It’s hard to believe they’d use students as hit men,’ said Barron. ‘And my people are good at their job. Their report for yesterday says that Siddiqui and Abbas left the student centre in the afternoon, accompanied by two of the students but they just went round the corner to the Bookstop Cafe in Teviot Place. They stayed there for about forty minutes, talking, then returned to the centre. Neither went out again.’
‘So we’re either looking for a hit man we know nothing at all about …. or maybe the police were right and it was some drunk.’
‘I take it you told the police about your suspicions?’
Dewar nodded. ‘I wanted them to mount a guard on her last night.’
‘Her being alive really is the trump card in this game. It could make all this speculation academic if she pulls through. Her evidence could be absolutely crucial.’
‘I’ve asked that I be the first to speak to her when she comes round. Right now, finding out what she knows about the smallpox business is more important than finding out who did this to her.’
‘Right,’ agreed Barron. ‘If you give me that list, the sooner we start keeping tabs on the others the safer it might be for them.’
Dewar suddenly didn’t feel so bad about not warning Steven Malloy that he would be put under surveillance. It didn’t seem so bad if it was for his own good. He went upstairs to his room and returned with the list.
‘No addresses,’ said Barron.
‘I asked my informant for the names of people who were competent to do this sort of thing. He wasn’t happy about it, ‘felt like he was letting down his colleagues. If I’d gone on to ask for their addresses he would have seen there was more to it and clammed up altogether. I’m sure Her Majesty’s Secret Service can take it from here?’
‘Fair enough,’ said Barron. ‘You’ll let me know if there’s any change on the injured girl?’
‘I would if I had some way of contacting you,’ said Dewar flatly. ‘You didn’t give me a number.’
Barron brought out a pen from his inside pocket and wrote down a phone number on the card Dewar handed him.
‘Out of interest, why didn’t you?’
‘Never on a first date,’ said Barron.
Ye gods, the man has a sense of humour, thought Dewar, but he kept looking at Barron as if waiting for a proper answer.
‘I showed you my ID at the airport,’ said Barron. ‘You didn’t show me yours. Simple as that.’
My God, different world,’ thought Dewar as Barron left. He must have run checks on me to make sure I was Adam Dewar and not an impostor. He supposed this level of suspicion and security consciousness was a comfort. It just left him feeling bemused.
It occurred to him that Steven Malloy might not yet actually know about Sandra Macandrew. He checked his watch; it was just after eight thirty. He’d probably still be at home.
Malloy sounded as if his mouth were full. ‘Sorry, I’m just finishing my breakfast,’ he apologised.
Dewar pictured toast crumbs on the receiver and imagined the incongruous smell of coffee in church. He told him about Sandra.
‘God, that’s awful,’ exclaimed Malloy, sounding distressed. ‘How is she? Can I see her? Is there something I can do?’
‘I’m afraid she’s critical,’ said Dewar. ‘She’s in Intensive Care at the Royal Infirmary. She has multiple injuries and nobody’s committing themselves about her chances.’
‘Have her parents been told?’
‘I’m sure the police will have done that.’
‘This is an absolute tragedy,’ said Malloy. ‘I must go there. I’ll go into the lab first and tell the others then I’ll come straight to the hospital.’
Dewar was about to warn him about the police guard but he stopped himself; he didn’t want to explain why. He would do it the other way around. He would warn the police to expect Malloy. ‘I’ll probably see you there,’ he said.
Grant was there by the time Dewar arrived at Intensive Care. He was talking to two uniformed policeman stationed at the doors.
‘Any improvement?’ asked Dewar as he joined them.
‘They say nothing much has changed,’ replied Grant. ‘Her parents are sitting with her. They’ve come down from Elgin.’
The two uniformed men sat down again on their chairs on either side of the door as Grant and Dewar entered the unit and looked in through the glass panel. They saw a scene played out every day in hospitals across the country as Sandra’s mother, tears running down her face, sat holding her daughter’s hand. Her father, equally stricken but barred from emotion by male custom sat on the other side of the bed with granite features. Only his eyes showed the pain he felt.
Sandra slept on, her broken body ventilated and monitored by machinery. Green lights, gentle bleeps and clicking relays said that it was doing its job. It would continue until Sandra’s brain was ready to take over from it or until such times as a decision was made that said it never would and a switch would be turned off.
Malloy arrived in an agitated state. ‘How is she? Has there been any improvement?’ he asked as the policemen on the door let him through.
Dewar put a finger to his lips and said quietly, ‘Her parents are with her.’
Malloy nodded and spoke in a whisper. ‘Oh God, this is awful. You didn’t say when it happened.’
‘Just after eight last night. She was cycling home,’ said Grant.
Malloy shook his head. ‘It could only have been about twenty minutes after I spoke to her.’
Dewar and Grant looked at each other. ‘You spoke to her?’ exclaimed Dewar.
‘She phoned me about half past seven.’
‘Why?’
‘She said she’d discovered something we should talk about.’
‘What?’ asked Dewar, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’ exclaimed Grant.
Malloy seemed puzzled at the effect what he was saying was having on Dewar and Grant. ‘No, I suggested it could wait till morning. I was going out last night.’
The accusing stares he was getting prompted Malloy to continue. ‘Graduate students are always making “discoveries”. It’s a fact of life. They nearly always turn out to be red herrings or some kind of artefact in the experimental system. I saw no reason to drive into the lab at that time.’
‘So you assumed that Sandra’s discovery had something to do with her research work,’ said Dewar, suddenly understanding Malloy’s attitude.
‘Of course,’ replied Malloy, looking surprised. ‘What else?’
Grant and Dewar ignored the question. ‘Did she seem upset at all when you said it could wait till morning?’ asked Grant.
‘Upset? No, I don’t think so, although … ‘
‘Go on.’
‘She did sound a little … ‘
‘Yes?’
‘It’s hard to say. She sounded a bit reserved, if you know what I mean. That’s the wrong word but I don’t know the right one. Inhibited maybe.’
‘Could that have been because she wasn’t alone?’
‘I suppose,’ agreed Malloy with a shrug. I just thought she was a bit disappointed I wasn’t going to come in straight away.‘
A commotion outside the door interrupted them. Grant went to investigate. The words ‘Why won’t you let me speak
to someone?’ spoken with a French accent announced the arrival of Pierre Le Grice. The policemen on the door had turned him away. Grant calmed things down and brought Le Grice back in with him.
‘The others told me at the lab when I got in,’ Le Grice explained to Malloy. ‘I came straight here. How is she?’
‘Not good, I’m afraid,’ said Malloy.
‘And you. Why are you here?’ Le Grice asked Dewar.
‘I was concerned, just like you,’ Dewar replied, avoiding the real question.
Le Grice looked through the glass. ‘God, I hope you get the bastard who did this to her,’ he exclaimed.
‘We’ll do our best,’ said Grant not best impressed by the fiery Frenchman.
Sandra’s parents came out with their arms wrapped around each other in a search for comfort in their pain. Her mother kept a handkerchief pressed to her face as a nurse guided them gently through the door.
Malloy approached them saying, ‘Mr and Mrs Macandrew, I’m Sandra’s research supervisor. I think we met once before when Sandra came for interview.’ The conversation trailed off as Malloy went outside with the couple to offer his sympathy. Dewar and Grant moved to a corner to discuss the implications of Sandra’s phone call to Malloy before she was run down. Le Grice, finding himself alone, took the opportunity to go through and sit beside Sandra. He held her hand gently and spoke to her as if she were conscious and awake. The nurse with her smiled her approval. and busied herself elsewhere in the room.
On the other side of the glass partition Grant said, ‘So all we have to do now is find out who was with her in the institute last night when she phoned Malloy and we have our man.’
‘Or woman,’ agreed Dewar, recalling that there were two women on the list apart from Sandra. ‘That’s about the size of it.’
The two men lapsed to silence as they considered different things. Grant was thinking about arresting Sandra’s attacker. Dewar was considering the implications of someone having agreed to work for the Iraqis and wondering how far had they got.
‘A doctor wearing surgical greens came into the room and said rather angrily, ‘Look, I’ve been very patient. I know you all have good reasons for being here but if I see another official ID I’m going to throw up. This is my unit and I want you all out of here. You’re getting in the way of my staff. You’ll have to wait somewhere else. We’ll let you know if there’s any change.’
‘You’re quite right, we’re sorry,’ said Dewar. ‘It’s just that she’s a very important young lady at the moment.’
Predictably, thought Dewar, the doctor replied that all his patients were important.
Grant said, ‘Sorry Doc, but my men outside will have to stay.’
‘I accept that, but we must have room to move in here.’
Le Grice was called back from Sandra’s bedside and everyone was ushered out of the unit. Malloy rejoined them as Sandra’s parents went off with a nurse for tea and sympathy. ‘They’re in an awful state,’ said Malloy. ‘She’s their only child.’
As they moved away from the entrance to IC they heard the sound of an electronic alarm come from inside.
‘What’s that?’ said Malloy.
Dewar didn’t wait to discuss the possibilities, he rushed back into the unit to see feverish activity around Sandra’s bed.
‘What’s happened?’ he demanded, knowing that if he sounded officious enough someone would tell him.’
‘Ventilation’s failed,’ said a nurse bustling past him.
‘Hurry up with that other unit, demanded the doctor who’d asked them all to leave a few minutes earlier.’
Dewar moved round to where the ventilation unit that had been breathing for Sandra, had been moved back out of the way. The doctor in charge was now administering mouth to mouth through the plastic airway tube already inserted in her throat.
Dewar idly examined the detached flexible tubing leading from the unit, not knowing what he was looking for or even what exactly the fault had been. The machine seemed to have been running normally before he’d left the unit. He distinctly remembered seeing the bellows moving up and down and hearing the unit’s distinctive clicking noise when Le Grice opened the door to come out of Sandra’s room.
Something caught his eye where the tube attached to the metal outlet pipe on the side of the machine. His blood ran cold as he examined it more closely. The plastic tube had been cut cleanly at two places on its circumference. There was no danger of it falling apart or even of appearing abnormal but at least half the air being pumped out the machine would escape to the atmosphere rather than go into Sandra’s lungs. Someone had tried to kill her right under their noses and that someone had to be the Frenchman, Pierre Le Grice. He was the last person to have been with Sandra.
Dewar took a moment to calm himself. Le Grice was standing outside in the corridor with the others. If he had the arrogance to do what he’d done in the circumstances he probably had the nerve to gamble that no one would work out what had gone wrong just yet. And when they did there would be a good chance that it would be construed simply as a leaking hose. None of the medical or nursing staff would be looking for deliberate sabotage
The absolute priority now was to arrest Le Grice quietly and efficiently without any fuss or dramatics in a hospital. He stood back out of the way for a moment as a new respiratory unit was wheeled into place and connected to the electricity supply.
‘We’re losing her,’ came a voice from the ordered scrum round Sandra. ‘Please hurry.’
For a moment Dewar found himself mesmerised by the scene. He was seemingly invisible to the others in the room as they concentrated on the job. He could feel Sandra Macandrew’s life hanging in the balance and he was filled with anger and frustration as he had the awful feeling he was about to witness the moment of her death. The background bleeps became a monotone, the oscilloscope spikes became a featureless plane but the team kept working on.
A single bleep, a single spike on the scope, then nothing. Two beeps. A surge of optimism, a few more irregular bleeps then rhythmic harmony.
‘We’ve got her back. Thank you everyone.’
Never had electronic sound seemed so sweet, thought Dewar as the bleeps from the heart monitor became even and regular again, the hiss and click of the ventilator, music to his ears.
Dewar joined the others outside. ‘Touch and go for a moment there,’ he said. ‘But she’s okay again.’
‘Thank God,’ said Malloy. This was echoed by the others.
Dewar caught Le Grice’s eye and in that one moment the game was lost. Dewar’s own eyes gave him away. The two men held eye contact for a moment then Le Grice turned on his heel and started running along the corridor.
‘Quick! After him!’ shouted Dewar, all hope of a quiet civilised arrest gone to be replaced by the urgency of the situation. ‘He tried to kill Sandra!’
The two uniformed men from the door took off after Le Grice. Grant barked into his radio that back-up was required urgently at the hospital. He gave a description of Le Grice and ordered that the exits should be covered first.
Dewar took Malloy aside and said, ‘You’ve got to get back to the institute and close down your lab, Quarantine all Le Grice’s stuff. Above all else make the place secure even if it means shutting the whole institute down.’
Malloy seemed stunned. ‘I just can’t believe this is all happening,’ he complained.
‘Just do it!’ insisted Dewar. He turned to Grant and said, ‘Maybe it would be an idea to get some men to the institute just in case Le Grice gets away and tries to go back there. He’s blown it; he’s got nothing to lose now.’
Grant nodded his agreement and radioed for a patrol get to the institute and guard the doors. ‘I’d better let hospital security know what’s going on,’ he said, going off in search of an internal phone.
Dewar stood, looking down from a corridor window to the busy streets below. ‘Would Le Grice have made it to the outside in time? he wondered. And if he had, what then? The p
olice already had details of his car obtained from Malloy and relayed by Grant, his description would be circulating faster than a rumour. He was trapped in the middle of the city, surely he couldn’t get far before they picked him up.
All the exits were now covered, Grant reported. There had been no sightings of Le Grice in the vicinity of any of them. ‘I think maybe we were too late,’ he said. ‘But he won’t get far.’
Dewar nodded at the confirmation of what he’d just been thinking but didn’t reply. He was thinking ahead; he knew that Le Grice couldn’t get far; Grant knew he couldn’t get far but Le Grice was a clever man. He’d probably worked that out too. So what would a clever man do in the circumstances? he asked himself. Stay put, was the answer.
‘What’s on your mind?’ asked Grant.
‘I think he’s still in the hospital,’ replied Dewar.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘He’s clever and he’s got nerve. Coming here today and doing what he did shows that. It’s my guess he’s found somewhere to lie low. He’s going to tough it out until the rest of us start believing he’s got clean away. then getting out will be a whole lot easier.’
‘I don’t fancy trying to search the whole hospital,’ said Grant. ‘This place probably has rooms the staff don’t even know about.’
Dewar nodded and agreed, ‘It’s not feasible. But if you keep men on all the exits we’ll at least pen him inside until he’s forced to do something rash.’
‘Like take a patient hostage,’ said Grant.
‘I wish you hadn’t said that,’ said Dewar. ‘He hadn’t considered the possibility.
‘Like you said, he’s got nothing left to lose. His career’s over and he’s looking at life if the girl dies. Not much less if she doesn’t.’
‘I think that situation might arise if you send in teams of uniforms to scour the place,’ said Dewar. ‘If we leave him alone he’s going to be happy biding his time. That gives us a window of a few hours while he thinks his plan is working.’