Resurrection

by Ken McClure

  ‘Or anywhere else apparently,’ replied Macmillan. ‘Large stocks haven’t been kept routinely for some years.’

  Wright shook his head and cursed under his breath. ‘The WHO hold the only substantial stocks of it. It’ll have to come from Geneva. More time wasted. Shit!’

  ‘Do we know what strain of smallpox it is?’ asked Dewar.

  Macmillan looked down at his desk before saying, ‘I understand it’s been typed as Variola major.

  ‘The worst kind,’ said Wright. Fifty percent mortality.’

  ‘So we’ll have to isolate all Kelly’s contacts and establish the link between Kelly and the institute,’ said Dewar ‘Anything else would be an unbelievable coincidence.’

  ‘I’m glad you see it that way,’ said Macmillan. ‘Because that’s what you’re going back up there to establish.’

  FIFTEEN

  ‘Do I work alone?’ asked Dewar. He had a hollow feeling in his stomach. Wright’s presence had brought back to him all the man had said about smallpox.

  ‘You’ll have your usual autonomy in terms of independence of action but you’ll be attached to the major-incident team that’s being set up to handle the problem. The team will be based at a command centre in the Scottish Office building in Leith, the so-called port of Edinburgh. Conveniently it’s in the north of the city and just to the east of Muirhouse where the problem is centred. It’s also quite near to where the Western General Hospital is. The team will comprise medical experts, public health people, police and government representatives. More experts will be co-opted as necessary. It’s very much a hands-on team. Politicians will be taking a back seat. I need hardly add that time is against us in all of this.’

  Dewar turned to Wright and asked, ‘Are you going to be involved?’

  Wright shook his head and looked down at the table in front of him.

  ‘Why not? You are the leading expert on this disease by all accounts and one of the few people who’ve actually worked with it.’

  ‘I haven’t been asked,’ replied Wright flatly, but there was no mistaking the resentment in his body language.

  The DOH man moved uncomfortably in his seat. ‘No slight was intended to Dr Wright, I assure you, but we have what we feel is an excellent team in place.’

  Dewar recognised this as ministry double speak for ‘Wright’s not one of us.’

  He disagreed that any team could be described as excellent when the leading expert in the field had been deliberately excluded. He turned to Macmillan and said, ‘You did say more experts could be co-opted as required?’

  Macmillan, seeing what was coming, shrugged his cautious agreement.

  ‘I’d like to request that Dr Wright be invited to join if he’s agreeable. As a Sci-Med associate if that makes things easier for the paperwork.’

  ‘It’s all right with me,’ said Macmillan.

  ‘I can think of nicer things to happen to me,’ said Wright. ‘But all right, count me in.’

  ‘Any other requests?’ asked Macmillan.

  ‘I’d like to request the attachment of two more people,’ said Dewar.

  ‘Before you even start?’

  ‘You said time was against us. I’d like Dr Steven Malloy’s help in establishing the institute connection. He doesn’t have a lab any more, thanks to me, so he’s got time on his hands and he’s an insider. I’d also like to use the same police contact as before, Inspector Ian Grant. We get on.’

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ said Macmillan. ‘You’re on the first shuttle up to Edinburgh.’

  ‘I’ll have to join you later,’ said Wright. ‘I’ll have to square things with my wife. It’s our anniversary tomorrow.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Eighteen years.’

  Dewar turned to Macmillan. ‘I take it the press haven’t cottoned on to this yet or we would have heard?’

  ‘It’s a case of so far so good,’ replied Macmillan. ‘Kelly leading the life he does, not having a GP or any regular family has made it easier to keep his condition under wraps but let’s face it, sooner or later they’re going to smell a rat. The use of the isolation suite at the hospital begs its own questions.’

  ‘Do we know anything about Kelly’s condition at the moment?’

  ‘It’s grave,’ replied Macmillan. ‘He was pretty ill by the time he was admitted, not that even modern medicine can do anything about the progress of the disease but one of the major problems is that he’s beyond answering questions about his movements before he caught the disease.’

  ‘What about his partner? I’ve forgotten her name.’

  ‘Denise Banyon. She thought he’d fallen ill because of a bad fix as she put it.’

  ‘She thought his condition was a reaction to drugs?’ exclaimed Dewar.

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘That was a bit of luck but what did they tell her when they put her into isolation too?’ asked Dewar.

  ‘No information,’ said Macmillan. He looked to the others who shook their heads. ‘But illness isn’t at all uncommon among drug addicts; it goes with the territory, particularly in Edinburgh, AIDS capital of Europe and all that.’

  ‘Maybe it could be made to work in our favour?’ suggested Dewar. ‘We can probably get away with calling it hepatitis for a while, then there’s the social factor on our side too.’

  Eyebrows were raised.

  ‘Nobody gives a damn what happens to drug addicts anyway,’ Dewar explained. ‘There’s a largely unspoken belief among the general public that they’re getting exactly what they deserve. The paparazzi aren’t liable to be queuing up at the door and the hospital won’t be required to post daily bulletins on the gates.’

  ‘Be that as it may, this is likely to be a very temporary window,’ said Wright. ‘The disease may have started in the drug taking community but it’s unlikely to stay there. Smallpox has no sense of social order; it’s no respector of persons; it’ll kill anybody and everybody.’

  ‘Then let’s do our best to see that it doesn’t get the chance, gentlemen,’ said Macmillan. With that, the meeting ended.

  Dewar lingered for a few minutes outside on the pavement with Hector Wright. ‘What d’you think of the chances of containing it as an isolated case?’ asked Dewar.

  ‘Nil,’ replied Wright without hesitation. ‘In these circumstances, not a snowball’s chance in hell.’

  Dewar drove back slowly to his apartment through drizzly rain. Milk floats were already on the move. There wouldn’t be time to crawl back into bed with Karen and seek a last loving cuddle before the night ended. He wouldn’t be able to accuse her of stealing all the covers in his absence and she wouldn’t get a chance to complain about his cold feet. To his, almost poignant, regret, a new day had already begun.

  He had packed his bag and checked the contents of his pockets for the second time before Karen stirred and realised he was up and dressed.

  She sat up in bed, looking alarmed. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Smallpox has broken out in Edinburgh. Just one case at the moment. I’m going back.’

  ‘God, that’s awful, but why you?’

  ‘They want me to establish the link between the patient and that damned institute.’

  ‘You mean it’s not obvious? It’s not one of the staff?’

  ‘It’s some unemployed junkie who lives on the other side of the city from the institute would you believe.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘I wish.’ Dewar shook his head and told her about Kelly

  ‘What a nightmare,’ said Karen.

  ‘It’s all too easy to draw pictures, isn’t it?’ agreed Dewar.

  ‘Oh my God, you will be careful, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Dewar assured her. ‘I’ve been vaccinated.’

  ‘They can’t vaccinate you against a knife in the ribs, or HIV or Hep “C”. Addicts are bad news.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ Dewar sat down on the edge of the bed and cuddled Karen tightly
, suddenly very conscious of the softness of her hair. ‘I’ll call you later.’

  DAY ONE

  Dewar had to admit he was impressed with the co-ordination centre at the Scottish Office. It had been designed as a command centre for times of national emergency without being specific over what kind was envisaged. Sited in the basement of the building, not only were conference rooms and communications facilities the best he’d come across, living quarters had been prepared on the floor above for those members of the team who wanted to use them. He was going to be one of them; he put Hector Wright down for a room as well.

  He expressed his admiration to the government official who had been showing him around and who was in charge of seeing the team had everything they needed.

  ‘They’re pulling out all the stops on this one,’ confided the official. ‘They see this affair as a huge potential embarrassment. They want it cleared up as quickly as possible. Between you and me that’s why I suspect they’re not putting politicians in charge.’

  Dewar smiled but he could see another reason why politicians were not going to be running the show. They’d be more keen on distancing themselves from it. If and when the public realised that smallpox had returned to stalk the community, the embarrassing question of where it had come from would be raised and the press would not be slow in pointing out that for once, this could not be dismissed as, ‘just one of these things’. Mother Nature would not be conveniently shouldering the blame as she had so often in the past. If smallpox didn’t officially exist any more, it had to have escaped from some laboratory. There would be no way of passing the buck. Britain would be held responsible for reintroducing the disease to the world.

  Dewar was told that there would be a meeting of the team at two-thirty in the afternoon. The medics and public health people were currently out doing their thing, and as it was still only ten fifteen, Dewar got settled into his room and called Steven Malloy.

  ‘I’ve just been talking to a man named, Macmillan,’ said Malloy.

  ‘Then you know what this is all about. I need your help. How about it?’

  ‘In the circumstances I can hardly say no,’ said Malloy. ‘But it sounds positively bizarre.’

  ‘Macmillan told you about Kelly?’

  ‘An unemployed smack-head living in Muirhouse. It’s crazy.’

  ‘Crazy, it might be but I just can’t believe it’s any kind of coincidence. There just has to be a connection with what’s been going on at the institute and your lab in particular. Hammadi and Le Grice are both dead so what’s your best guess?

  ‘There’s still no evidence that anyone at all tried to resurrect smallpox here so how could anyone catch it if it doesn’t exist?’

  ‘But it does exist,’ said Dewar. ‘A man’s dying from it so, for the moment, let’s work on the assumption that it did come from the institute.’

  ‘Assuming for the sake of argument that it did,’ said Malloy. ‘I think the first thing we have to work out is how this guy from Muirhouse got his hands on it.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  Malloy came up with the same sort of suggestions that Dewar had made earlier in London about Kelly’s possible employment in some kind of casual way at the institute, cleaner, porter, messenger.

  ‘It’s going to be difficult to check without being able to ask him personally,’ said Dewar.

  ’I’ll have a look at what records the institute keeps.’

  Dewar told him about the meeting at two thirty. They arranged to meet for lunch first in a pub in Rose Street at Malloy’s suggestion.

  Dewar called Grant at police headquarters. Macmillan had already been in touch with him too.

  ‘I heard last night the shit had hit the fan,’ said Grant. ‘I was half expecting you to call. The division has been put on full alert — ostensibly for possible trouble in the Muirhouse area. For the moment we’re operating a need-to-know policy. Officers selected for duty are being screened discreetly for vaccination history. Only those with recorded smallpox protection are being deployed in the area.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Riding shotgun on the public health people as they go about their business.’

  ‘Tell me about the area. Bad?’

  ‘The pits. Officially we wouldn’t admit it but we’ve settled for the status quo. As long the smack-heads stay put we don’t interfere too much.. Some parts of that estate make Bosnia look like Disneyland. If you folks are thinking of appealing to the druggie denizens’ better nature, don’t. It isn’t an option; they don’t have one. They’re either stoned out their heads or doing whatever’s necessary to get the stuff to get themselves stoned out their heads. Nothing else matters. Take my word for it. Don’t ever get yourself in a position where you have to rely on a junkie, don’t believe them and don’t ever trust them. Leave it to the bleeding hearts; they never seem to learn. Bloody place is crawling with initiatives for this and initiatives for that, Euro money, schemes, projects, co-operatives, support groups. Waste of bloody time as far as I’m concerned. Situation’s getting worse every day.’

  ‘You’re not big on remedial initiatives then?’ said Dewar, tongue in cheek.

  ‘Only if they involve Napalm,’ replied Grant.

  ‘Thanks for the cameo,’ said Dewar.

  ‘Why couldn’t it have been a responsible church elder from Marchmont who got this fucking thing?’ asked Grant from the heart.

  ‘I think getting the answer to that might be down to me,’ replied Dewar.

  ‘Some guys get all the good jobs.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any idea how this man Kelly could have a connection with the Institute of Molecular Science, have you?’ asked Dewar.

  ‘The only way Kelly and his mates could get near a university involves a back window and a crow bar,’ replied Grant.

  ‘That’s a thought,’ said Dewar. ‘I hadn’t considered burglary. That’s a possibility.’

  ‘I was joking.’

  ‘I know but it is a possibility. Kelly is a drug addict and he’s unemployed. He has to get money for drugs from somewhere so presumably stealing’s an option?’

  ‘Option numero uno,’ said Grant sourly. ‘Do you know how much crime is drug related these days?’

  ‘My point exactly,’ said Dewar. ‘So maybe Kelly broke into the institute at some point and contaminated himself in the process?’

  ‘But I thought you told me they didn’t have live virus there?’, protested Grant. ‘Apart from that, what would Kelly have been after? Why cross to the other side of town to break into a place that probably contained nothing he could sell? The only things that go missing from that sort of place are bicycles! They’re pinched from outside. And last but not least, we’ve had no report of any break-in at the institute anyway.’

  Dewar had to admit that Grant had made a pretty good job of shooting him down in flames. ‘Just a thought,’ he said.

  Dewar met Malloy in the Auld Hundred pub in Rose Street at 12 noon. It was still quiet at that time before the offices started to break for lunch.

  ‘I hope you’re going to tell me you’ve thought of the connection,’ said Dewar as he shook Malloy’s hand.

  ‘Unfortunately no,’ replied Malloy. ‘There’s no record of Kelly being employed at any time on the portering, cleaning or maintenance staffs. That still leaves window cleaning as a possibility; we contract that out but I really think this idea of contaminating himself accidentally in the institute labs is a non starter.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Firstly because it implies that there was something there to contaminate himself with and secondly that it was accessible to a casual intruder. If the people from Porton Down failed to find it and they were highly skilled people actively looking for it what chance has a casual intruder? I’m convinced the guy got it somewhere else.’

  ‘For me, coincidences don’t stretch that far,’ said Dewar. ‘There’s an institute connection somewhere along the line but I take your point. Unfortunately I don’t
think we’re going to get the chance to question Kelly; he’s too far gone. We’ll have to talk to his friends and associates. See if something strikes a chord.’

  ‘Sounds fun,’ said Malloy dryly.

  ‘The Public Health people should be able to tell us something about that at the meeting this afternoon.’

  The chair of the Crisis Management Team was a consultant in Infectious Diseases from the Western General Hospital named George Finlay. He was a man in his late forties, grey haired and thinning on top, wearing a suit that seemed too large for him, particularly at the shoulders. This gave him a slightly lop sided appearance when he leaned on the table with one hand which he was prone to do while speaking. He introduced the head of Public Health Services for the city, Dr Mary Martin, a woman about ten years younger than Finlay, slim, well-dressed and with the ‘big’ hair of a much younger woman. She in turn, introduced two junior colleagues before handing back to Finlay to introduce Malcolm Rankin, the senior Scottish Office official, assigned to the team to smooth the administrative way.

  Rankin’s suit fitted perfectly, as did his shirt and tie and everything else about him. He was a man who clearly believed that image was important, thought Dewar as he listened to him assure everyone present that he would be available to help in whatever way he could at any time. He introduced two, equally charming colleagues who would be dealing with communications and public relations issues. A silver haired man wearing the uniform of a police superintendent introduced himself as Cameron Tulloch. Finally Finlay welcomed Dewar and Malloy to the team, telling the others that their particular interest would be in identifying the cause of the outbreak.

  ‘I’ll just bring everyone up to date and then we can say what we have to say,’ said Finlay. ‘Kelly’s condition has deteriorated markedly over the past twenty four hours. His whole body is pustulated and I think we can expect him to die within the next few days. Denise Banyon, his partner is as yet, showing no signs of the disease.’

  ‘It’s early days,’ said Mary Martin.

  ‘In the normal run of things,’ agreed Finlay. ‘But when Kelly was brought in to hospital his rash was already becoming pustular. This suggested that he’d had the disease for well over a week but Banyon who had been with him throughout, insists that he developed the disease quite suddenly and that he’d only been ill for a short time when he was admitted.’