Dust to dust

TWENTY-EIGHT

‘Are you all right, doctor?’ asked McCready. Steven seemed to have been preoccupied for a long time.

He nodded and gave a resigned smile. ‘What a tangled web we weave, colonel.’

McCready gave a slight, bemused smile. ‘The ambulance crew that brought Marine Kelly in,’ Steven went on. ‘Can you tell me anything about them?’

McCready frowned and shook his head. ‘We tend to be more concerned with the casualties than the soldiers bringing them in.’

‘But they were soldiers?’

This time McCready appeared irritated. ‘I didn’t see them personally but I assume they were. If they’d been chartered accountants, I’m sure someone would have said.’

‘Sorry,’ said Steven. ‘So no one did mention anything unusual about them?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have lab cultures of the organism that Marine Kelly died from?’

‘Of course,’ said McCready. ‘As I said, we have excellent facilities here. Why d’you ask?’

‘I’d like to take one back to the UK with me.’

McCready suddenly seemed suspicious. ‘Is there some problem here?’ he asked, all at once sounding more Scottish. ‘Are we under some kind of scrutiny for our handling of Marine Kelly?’

‘No, you’re not. Is there some problem about giving me a culture of the organism that killed Michael Kelly?’

McCready shrugged. ‘I suppose not. I’ll have the lab grow one up for you: it’ll be ready in the morning. Anything else?’

‘Accommodation for the night would be good,’ said Steven. ‘I didn’t have time to arrange anything.’

McCready looked appraisingly at Steven, as if he were seeing an enigma. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Tell me… where exactly does the Sci-Med Inspectorate fit in with the military?’

‘It doesn’t,’ Steven replied, matter-of-factly.

McCready remained impassive until a slight smile broke out on his lips and he said, ‘Something tells me if I ask any more questions, I won’t like the answers and this could all end up in a mass of paperwork.’

‘Seems to me cold beer would be a better option,’ Steven suggested.

A moment’s hesitation, then a slight nod was the prelude to a very pleasant evening in the officers’ mess, a good night’s sleep and success the following morning in hitching a lift back to the UK on an RAF flight returning to Brize Norton. In Steven’s pack, surrounded by absorbent packing material, was a small glass vial containing a culture of the micro-organism that had killed Michael Kelly.

‘How was the graveyard of empires?’ asked Sir John Macmillan when Steven turned up in his office.

‘As inhospitable as ever,’ Steven replied. ‘But worth going: I made progress.’

Macmillan looked at the sun streaming in the window and said, ‘I think the least I can do is offer you lunch. Let’s walk over to my club; we can go through the park.’

On the way, Steven told Macmillan what he’d discovered.

‘So the military weren’t involved in any shenanigans?’

‘No,’ said Steven. ‘They all did what they could when Kelly turned up on their doorstep, but none of them thought to question how he’d come to be there.’

‘But the military must have been involved in selecting Kelly as the donor for this damned transplant in the first place,’ mused Macmillan.

‘Or if not them officially… someone who had access to military medical records,’ said Steven.

‘What was wrong with civilian ones, I wonder?’

Steven mulled this over for a moment before suggesting, ‘Maybe they weren’t comprehensive enough… maybe the patient had a very rare blood or tissue type and Michael Kelly was the only one who fitted the bill?’

‘Plausible. Did Motram’s wife mention anything about that?’

‘No, she didn’t,’ Steven conceded. ‘In fact she mentioned at one point that her husband thought it was a really routine job — money for old rope, to use his expression. He didn’t understand why they wanted such a comprehensive report.’

Macmillan nodded and said, ‘You know what worries me most? This someone who had access to military medical records would also have needed the clout to put the knowledge to practical use. He or she wasn’t some filing clerk.’

‘Good point,’ said Steven. ‘And a worry. Maybe one of your people in high places who doesn’t like me rooting around?’

‘Well, like it or not, it’s what we’ll be continuing to do.’

Steven smiled at Macmillan’s resolution. ‘Have you had any more thoughts about who the opposition might be?’ he asked.

‘I still can’t get a handle on it,’ Macmillan replied. ‘I’m convinced it’s not the usual suspects. It’s not MOD despite the military factor we’ve just been talking about, and I’m sure I’d recognise the hand of our colleagues in the Home Office if it were them. The Department of Health I’m not so sure about, but that would still leave lots of things that didn’t fit.’

‘MI5?’ suggested Steven, thinking of Ricksen’s appearance on site at Dryburgh.

‘All wrong for them,’ said Macmillan. ‘Doesn’t have their mark on it at all, although I suspect they know more than they’re letting on. Still, the more opposition we encounter, the more they’ll give themselves away.’

‘A comfort,’ said Steven, tongue in cheek. Macmillan smiled his acknowledgement that it would be Steven who bore the brunt of any future ‘opposition’.

They didn’t discuss the investigation over lunch, preferring instead to talk about other things ranging from climate change to rumours of a scandal brewing over MPs’ allowances, but when they got to the coffee and brandy stage it was time to get back to business.

‘The way I see it,’ said Steven, ‘returning Michael Kelly to Afghanistan with a full-blown MRSA infection was tantamount to murder. He might well have survived had he been treated here.’

Macmillan nodded his agreement. ‘It was a ridiculous thing to do.’

‘But maybe he wasn’t the only one to contract MRSA at St Raphael’s,’ said Steven, suddenly seeing a new line of inquiry opening up. ‘If there were other cases, we could get the lab to do a comparison of the local MRSA and the strain I brought back from Afghanistan. If a DNA comparison showed them to be identical, it would prove Michael Kelly contracted the infection at St Raphael’s and possibly turn his death into a murder inquiry. The hospital would then have to release details of the operation.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Macmillan. ‘The only problem I can see on the horizon is that St Raphael’s aren’t going to admit to any MRSA problem.’

‘Mmm.’

A club server appeared with a silver coffee pot and caused a hiatus while he refilled their cups.

When the man withdrew, Macmillan said thoughtfully but with a glint in his eye, ‘Tell me, what d’you think a private hospital does when it encounters an MRSA problem in their patients?’

A smile broke out on Steven’s lips. ‘Transfer the patients,’ he said. ‘Transfer the patients to the nearest NHS hospital.’

‘I’ll put out discreet feelers to surrounding hospitals,’ said Macmillan.

‘I still think we need to find out what made Michael Kelly so special,’ said Steven. ‘But we’re not going to get that from St Raphael’s or Sir Laurence Samson.’

‘We could request more details from the military,’ suggested Macmillan. ‘But if we do that…’

‘We’d be alerting the opposition to what we’re up to.’

‘An alternative would be better.’

‘John Motram’s wife told me that her husband carried out some tests on the donor samples in his own lab up north… If we could get our hands on them, we could see what our labs could come up with.’

‘Well worth a try.’