Dust to dust

THIRTY-SEVEN

‘So what’s our first move?’ asked Steven.

‘Now that we know what’s behind it all, we use the proof we have that Michael Kelly was infected in St Raphael’s and that his lack of aftercare contributed significantly to his death to call in the Met and force the hospital to reveal the name of Patient X and the names of those responsible for his care — if you can call it that.’

‘We shouldn’t underestimate the strength of the opposition,’ said Steven. ‘They may not be “official” but they’ve shown they have enormous power and influence.’

‘I don’t give a damn,’ said Macmillan. ‘I want them outed, every single last one of them.’

‘If Patient X turns out to be a foreign potentate they may invoke diplomatic immunity or even the Official Secrets Act to neutralise any police inquiry.’

‘My line will be that defence of the realm involves defending its citizens, not maiming and killing them,’ said Macmillan. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Steven. He enjoyed seeing his boss on his high horse. ‘I just think we should both be aware of what we could be up against when things turn really nasty. It’s not just those who’ve been calling in favours who’ll be after our blood, it’ll be those who granted them too. The guys at Rorke’s Drift probably faced better odds than us.’

‘Doing the right thing is never easy, Steven,’ said Macmillan. He let out a long sigh. ‘It’s been a long day. Can I offer you gentlemen a drink at my club?’

‘Make mine a large one,’ said Steven.

‘My mother-in-law is staying with us at the moment,’ said Lukas. Steven and Macmillan looked at him to see what this piece of information would translate into. ‘A drink sounds good.’

The three men left the Home Office and started the ten-minute walk over to Macmillan’s club. ‘Have you heard if Dr Motram’s making any improvement?’ he asked Steven.

‘I phoned his wife a couple of nights ago,’ said Steven. ‘The hospital is being very conservative with its prognosis but Cassie thinks he may have recognised her the last time she visited. The problem is that no one’s certain about the long-term effects of the toxin. It could still prove to be a false dawn. Even if it isn’t, it’s going to be a long process.’

‘Poor woman,’ said Macmillan. ‘One day you’re married to one of the brightest scientists in the country, next you’re wondering how you’re going to teach him to read and write.’

As they entered the park, Steven stepped in front of the other two so that they wouldn’t be walking three abreast and taking up too much room on the path while there were joggers about. Many seemed to be more concerned with looking at some instrument on their wrists than looking where they were going.

‘At least they’re not on bloody bicycles,’ growled Macmillan, who seldom missed an opportunity to have a go at what he saw as a particularly self-righteous section of society, hell-bent on impeding his progress through the city.

One jogger, coming towards them, threw his empty plastic water bottle into the bushes in front of them and let out a great, hacking cough as he passed.

‘Typical,’ snapped Macmillan. ‘Whatever happened to…’

He didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he collapsed to the ground and was unconscious by the time Steven got down on his knees beside him, frantically seeking a pulse. ‘Call an ambulance, Lukas, would you? He must be having a heart attack.’

The ambulance was there within three minutes and two green-clad paramedics took over from Steven, who answered Lukas Neubauer’s question as he got up with a simple, ‘I’m afraid I don’t know. There were no warning signs: he didn’t complain of any chest pain or even feeling unwell. He just seemed to go out like a light. The sooner they get him to hospital the better.’

Macmillan’s unconscious body was loaded gently into the back of the vehicle and the driver held the door while Steven got in. Lukas seemed hesitant and had just started to say that he didn’t think he would come along when the other paramedic jumped down from the vehicle. ‘It may be swine flu, sir,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘You’ll need to come along and be given protection.’ He more or less pushed Lukas inside and slammed the doors shut.

This strange behaviour, followed by the realisation that neither of the paramedics was in the back of the vehicle as it took off from the kerb, filled Steven with alarm. Something was wrong. Other signs came thick and fast. He saw that the front and rear sections of the ambulance had been strengthened with steel tubing and wire mesh: there were no internal door handles. They were effectively being held in a steel cage. The fact that the vehicle was not using its siren also registered when he heard another ambulance in the distance — the one they’d actually called for.

‘It’s a set-up,’ he growled as he started tending to Macmillan — no easy task in the fast-moving vehicle. It was obvious now that the two men in the front had been lying in wait for them, all set to ensure their ‘ambulance’ arrived before the real one. Macmillan’s collapse had been induced by something other than natural causes. Something had happened to him in the park and Steven needed to find out what.

The answer proved to be a small dart. Steven found it in the back of Macmillan’s thigh. He removed it carefully. It wasn’t big like the sort vets used to tranquillise animals; this one was much smaller. He hadn’t seen anyone with a blowpipe in the park so he guessed it had been fired from a small air weapon, maybe a. 177 calibre pistol. The dart had been modified to deliver a small volume of liquid — one millilitre at most, thought Steven. He thought back to the jogger who had distracted them in the park by throwing away a plastic bottle in front of them and then given a loud cough as he passed… it would have covered the sound of an air pistol being discharged. Too late, it was all too obvious, but Steven didn’t have long to contemplate it. A gas canister was leaking its contents into the back of the vehicle.

When Steven came round, he immediately wished he hadn’t: his head felt as if he’d head-butted a train and the state of his throat suggested he’d vacuumed up a small desert with it. Looking on the bright side — not easy in his present state — he reasoned that, if he felt this bad, he must at least be alive. He tried rolling over on to his side but had to postpone the operation for the time being at his head’s insistence.

The last thing he remembered before passing out was thinking that his life was over. There was no way to avoid breathing in the gas that was filling the back of the ambulance and the smell hadn’t given him any clue as to what it was or how dangerous it might be. It had robbed him of his senses but it had been quite a slow process, and now he felt pleased that he had not lost his dignity and given in to beseeching some non-existent deity to save him. How he faced death was important to him. Macmillan had been unconscious throughout and Lukas had used his final conscious moments to bang his fists on the insides of the vehicle demanding release, but he had curled up on the floor to think about Lisa and Jenny and Tally… and the good times.

He opened one eye and tried to focus on what was above him. He was indoors; he could make out a strip light on the ceiling above him. Its diffuse, bright light made him turn his head slightly to one side where he saw… furniture? White furniture? Maybe kitchen cupboards? It didn’t smell like a kitchen though, he thought as he closed his eyes again for a moment, unless they had been using a particularly strong chemical cleaner. A groan came from somewhere in the room and concentrated Steven’s mind. ‘Who’s there?’ He was unpleasantly surprised at the gravelly sound of his voice.

‘Is that you, Steven?’ came the equally throaty reply.

‘Lukas?’

‘Yes. What the hell are we doing here?’

Steven, found that a strange reply. ‘Where’s here?’ he asked, and swallowed, trying to clear his throat.

‘My lab.’

‘Your lab?’ exclaimed Steven. ‘They’ve brought us to your lab?’ He had now managed to roll over on to his side and prop himself up on one elbow. He could see he was lying on the floor between two laboratory benches. ‘Are you tied up?’ he asked, slightly puzzled at his freedom of movement after having been kidnapped.

‘No,’ came the reply from the other side of the bench to his left. ‘You?’

‘No. Is Sir John with you?’

‘Can’t see him. Hang on, I’ll have a look around… on my knees. Jesus, what was that stuff…’

Steven didn’t reply. He was concentrating on pulling himself upright. He found that he still had to keep the palms of both hands on the bench to support his weight when he finally achieved it.

‘He’s up here,’ said Lukas’s voice from the top of the lab. ‘He’s coming round.’

Steven joined them. He suggested that they might all benefit from a drink of water and asked if the supply in the lab was safe to drink.

‘It’s mains,’ replied Lukas. ‘I’ll get some beakers.’ He rose to his feet slowly and supported himself with one hand on the bench while he slid back the glass door of a wall cupboard to take out three small, sterile glass beakers. Steven managed to prop Macmillan up in a sitting position with his back against a floor cupboard, and got up to take one of the filled beakers from Lukas and give it to him before taking one for himself. Water had never tasted so good. He could see that the others agreed.

‘It’s like that scene from Ice Cold in Alex,’ said Macmillan, managing a half smile. ‘Where are we?’

‘The Lundborg labs,’ replied Lukas, his expression a mixture of embarrassment and bemusement.

‘Your labs?’ exclaimed Macmillan. ‘Ye gods, someone’s going to have to fill me in on what’s been happening.’

Steven filled in the blanks for him, ending with, ‘And when we came round, we were here in Lukas’s place.’

‘They brought us here?’ exclaimed Macmillan. ‘How would they get in?’

‘They must have used my electronic key,’ said Lukas. ‘It was in my wallet.’ He searched through his pockets and was surprised to find his wallet there. He pulled out his key and said with amazement, ‘They put it back.’ After another check, he added, ‘But they took my phone.’

‘Mine too,’ said Steven after a similar search.

Macmillan confirmed that his phone had gone too. ‘This is crazy,’ he said. ‘Why bring us here and then just walk away and leave us? They take our phones but nothing else…’

‘Maybe we’ve been mugged for our phones,’ suggested Steven, tongue in cheek. The fact that they were alive and apparently free to go was making all three of them feel a whole lot better about life.

‘Did you see them, whoever they were?’ asked Macmillan.

‘No. We came round just before you,’ said Steven. ‘We saw the two fake paramedies at the park but didn’t pay them too much attention; we thought you were dying at the time. There’s been no sign of anyone since we came round and it’s beginning to spook me out. Monk has to be behind this and he was holding all the aces. With us three out of the way, there’d be no one left to ask awkward questions…’

‘So why just abandon us? Why let us go?’ asked Macmillan.

‘What do you use this particular room for, Lukas?’ asked Steven, who had recovered enough to be taking an interest in his surroundings.

‘This is our biohazard lab,’ replied Lukas. ‘We have three labs but this is the one we’d use for handling dangerous things.’

‘What’s special about it?’

‘It has two isolation chambers,’ said Lukas, pointing to two glass-fronted boxes with stools in front of them. ‘We don’t have to handle many pathogenic organisms, but when we do we use these. The worker is protected by a glass screen and uses the armholes in the side to carry out manipulation of what’s inside the chamber. Apart from that, the whole room is constantly under negative pressure so that air comes in but doesn’t flow out. In addition to that, there’s an airlock system on the door. We also have UV irradiation lamps to sterilise the room when no one’s in it.

‘Are we locked in?’ asked Macmillan.

‘We can’t be,’ said Lukas. ‘They didn’t keep my card. It’s a master key.’ He took it from his wallet and started to go towards the door.

‘Stop!’ yelled Steven.