Pandora's Helix

Eleven

Max Pereira phoned the unit a couple of times during the week to ask about the children on the Gene Therapy trial but did not actually come in until the following Friday morning when he had arranged to meet with Neef and Fielding. David Farro-Jones who had kept up his interest in the trial patients was also invited to attend.

“I just don’t understand it,” said Pereira when they had finished assessing the scans and biochemical tests. “The one I thought might do least well is doing really great while the others aren’t improving at all.”

“Who did you think would do best?” asked Neef.

“Rebecca Daley,” replied Max without hesitation. “I would have bet my ass on the hepatoma getting zapped.”

“The best laid schemes of mice and men, eh Max?” said Farro-Jones, getting a puzzled look from Pereira in reply.

“The question is, how long do we persist with the treatment for the four kids who aren’t getting anything from it... as yet?” said Neef.

“Personally, I don’t think it’s going to work for them,” said Fielding. “I think we might be better off or rather they might be better off if we tried them on Antivulon. John Martin’s still doing well and so are the others. It’s proving much less toxic than conventional therapy so the kids feel better.”

“What do you think, David?” asked Neef.

“I’m flattered to be asked,” replied Farro-Jones. “I have to say, I think Lawrence here might be right. If Gene Therapy had been going to work we should have seen some improvement by now. Sorry Max.”

“You gotta call it like you see it,” said Pereira. “I think I even have to agree with you. I don’t understand it but at least Thomas is getting something out of it.”

“It’s a pity that the failure of the others is tending to detract from that,” said Neef. “Thomas Downy’s progress has been nothing short of remarkable.”

“It’s unfortunate he’s a single case,” said Farro-Jones. “Statistically speaking that is.”

“I don’t think I follow,” said Neef.

“I just meant that, from the point of view of validating the therapy, with only one success it’s impossible to say for sure that Gene Therapy was responsible. The medical community at large might see it as just one of these things. I guess we’re still looking for the break-through, Max.”

“I guess,” said Pereira.

“I don’t think Thomas Downy’s parents are going to be too concerned with statistics,” said Neef. “It’s my guess they’re going to be over the moon with their son’s progress and rightly so. For what it’s worth, Max, no one is going to convince me it was just one of those things. It was Gene Therapy that did the trick. Well done.”

“Thanks Mike. I’d better get back to the lab. I’ve got lots to do.”

“Still after that million, Max?” smiled Farro-Jones.

“I’m prepared to work for it,” said Pereira. He turned to Neef and asked, “Do you mind if I take a look at Thomas Downy on the way out?”

“Of course not,” replied Neef. “It’s thanks to you he’s still there.”

Pereira left the room and Farro-Jones said, “I take it you’ll both be going along to the meeting this evening with the Public Health gurus?”

“We’ll be there,” said Neef. “Do you know if they’ve come up with anything new?”

“I haven’t heard.”

Pereira stopped at the foot of Thomas Downy’s bed and waited till he had the boy’s attention. Thomas was doing a jigsaw puzzle. The lid lying beside him on the bed said that it was of animals drinking at a water hole.

“Who are you?” asked Thomas unsurely when he finally looked up and saw Pereira standing there. Pereira was wearing his usual tee shirt and jeans. His leather jacket was over one arm and his beret squeezed up in his right fist.

“Nobody special, kid. I just wanted to see how you were?”

“Are you a doctor?”

“Not the kind you mean.”

“I’m feeling very well, thank you sir,” said Thomas going back to his jigsaw.

“Good to hear it, kid,” said Pereira, turning to go with a shrug. He found a nurse standing in the doorway. “I guess the Pied Piper can still sleep nights,” he said as he passed her. As he reached the exit he came upon Eve Sayers outside on the stairs. He half smiled in the way that people do when they know each other vaguely by sight and Eve smiled back. “Dr Pereira?” she said.

“Yes.”

“I wonder if you could spare me a few moments?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t seem to...”

“I’m Eve Sayers.”

“Of course,” exclaimed Pereira. “You’re the journalist friend of Michael Neef.”

“How about a cup of coffee?”

Pereira shrugged his shoulders. “Why not.”

The two of them walked along to the hospital coffee shop and sat down. “How’s the trial going?” asked Eve.

“Are you asking as a journalist?”

Eve shook her head. “Mike and I have an agreement. When I’m in his unit everything I hear is confidential.”

“It’s nice you guys can trust each other. One of the kids is doing really well, the others not so good.”

“I can see you’re disappointed.”

“I thought they’d all do well but maybe I was being over-optimistic. It’s a failing of mine.”

“Maybe there’s time enough yet,” said Eve, playing with her teaspoon in its saucer.

Pereira looked at her appraisingly and said, “Are you going to come to the point Miss Sayers?”

Eve conceded with a shrug. “I know I shouldn’t be saying this and Michael would be very angry if he found out but when I saw you back there I just felt I had to ask you personally.”

“Ask me what?”

Eve looked Pereira straight in the eye and blurted out, “Is there absolutely nothing you can do to help Neil Benson?”

“That’s the kid with the melanoma, right?”

Eve nodded.

“Not at the moment,” said Pereira. “We’re working on vectors for that kind of tumour but they’re not ready yet. I’m sorry.”

“I suppose I knew you’d say that,” said Eve. “I just had to ask you face to face, just to make sure that I’d done absolutely everything I could.”

“Neil Benson is really special to you, huh?”

“Yes,” agreed Eve.

“That’s tough but I guess you were warned what to expect at the outset.”

“Oh yes,” agreed Eve. “I was warned.” She started rummaging in her handbag for a handkerchief. “Michael warned me and Sister Morse too but here I am blubbing like a schoolgirl.” She pressed a tissue to her eyes.

“Sister Morse is doing her own share of weeping at the moment,” said Pereira.

“What do you mean?” asked Eve.

“Her husband’s dying,” said Pereira. “Cancer.”

“Michael didn’t mention anything about that,” said Eve looking puzzled. “How strange,” she murmured thoughtfully.

A look of unease appeared in Pereira’s eyes. He had just remembered Michael Neef asking him to say nothing about Charles Morse’s cancer.

Neef hadn’t realised that the Friday evening meeting was going to be so large. There were about twenty people in the lecture theatre when he arrived but there was no sign of Lennon. He nodded to Tim Heaton and Frank MacSween as he made his way through groups of people and was joined by David Farro-Jones as he sat down to wait. Farro-Jones leaned over to say in his ear, “The word is they’ve come up with nothing new. They’re not one inch further forward.”

“Who are all these people?” asked Neef.

“Lots of them are Public Health scientists from out of town. I think the Department of Health is represented as well.”

“That serious,” exclaimed Neef.

“Looks like it. It seems we’re all waiting for the good Doctor Lennon.” He looked at his watch. “He’s fifteen minutes late already. Let’s hope this means he’s come up with something. I’ll speak to you later.” Farro-Jones left Neef and went over to re-join the group of University College physicians he had been with. Neef recognised one of them as Charlie Morse’s doctor, Mark Clelland. He nodded to him. Neef was joined by Frank MacSween who had been talking to Eddie Miller but broke off when someone said, “Lennon’s here.”

A few minutes later, Lennon entered the room, looking harassed. He flung off his coat and asked everyone to take their seats.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he announced. “I was delayed by the Press. The cat’s out the bag. They have the story. Eve Sayers was waiting for me this evening when I returned to my office.”

Neef felt a pang of embarrassment. He wanted to assure everyone in the room that he had had nothing to do with the leak. He could feel Frank MacSween take a suspicious sideways look at him.

“Miss Sayers seemed to know that Charles Morse was the third victim of the carcinogen. I saw no point in trying to deny it. I told her outright that there were actually four victims. She now knows about the baby. I also had to tell her that our efforts in tracing the carcinogen have come to nothing.”

A murmur of disappointment ran round the room.

“It’s true, I’m afraid,” said Lennon. “An entire team of path technicians has failed to find any clue at all as to the nature of the carcinogen. In effect, they confirmed the earlier findings of Dr MacSween’s own lab.”

“Cold comfort,” murmured MacSween.

“The question is where do we go from here?” said Lennon.

“I think we were hoping that you were going to tell us that,” said Tim Heaton. “The bad publicity is going to damage all of us.”

“It was actually the cancer I was thinking about,” said Lennon.

“Of course,” said Heaton, chastened by the comment. “But the public are liable to panic if this damned woman milks the story like these people do. I think our public relations people should be ready to issue reassurance.”

“How can we reassure people when we don’t know what we’re dealing with ourselves?” said Neef. He had been irked by Heaton’s reference to ‘this damned woman’.

“That’s not the point,” said Heaton but he could sense that everyone else in the room thought that it was. He stopped talking.

Lennon said, “I’ve prepared an updated summary of events. If someone could give me a hand with the projector.”

One of Frank MacSween’s technicians moved forward to position the overhead projector and make the necessary electrical connections. Lennon put the first overhead in place with the palm of his hand and picked up a pointer.

“Melanie Simpson was our first case. Thirteen years old and a pupil at Longhill High School. She was admitted to University College Hospital with severe, bilateral pneumonia. The rest you know.”

Lennon changed the acetate, at first putting in the new one upside down then hastily swivelling it round.

“Our second case was Jane Lees, another thirteen year old and a pupil at Forest Green High School. She lived in the Polton Court flats which as you will see...” Lennon changed the acetate to a hand drawn map, “is nowhere near Langholm Crescent where Melanie lived. No common ground as far as we could determine so we were unable to pinpoint an area where both girls might have come across the carcinogen.”

“Our third case is of course, Charles Morse, chief technician in Pathology here at St George’s who, thankfully, is still alive and our fourth, Nigel Barnes, baby grandson of Dr MacSween, pathologist here at St George’s who died last week-end. We’ve been working on the assumption that these last two cases were secondary and caused by traces of the carcinogen still being present in the girls’ lungs when being examined pathologically. An extensive examination of the lungs however, has failed to confirm this. This begs the question, how can you contaminate yourself with a substance that doesn’t exist?”

“Was the search confined to path specimens taken from Jane Lees or have samples been taken from Charlie Morse as well?” asked Neef.

“We’ve had bronchoscopy samples taken from Mr Morse,” replied Lennon.

“Nothing found?”

“Nothing.”

The room fell silent.

“I’ve prepared summary files with all the pathology details for anyone who wants one. He held up a series of files bound in clear plastic. Help yourself later on the way out.”

“So what we are dealing with is an invisible, undetectable cancer causing agent that no one has ever come across before. Is that right?” asked Alan Brooks, Dean of the University Medical School.

“In a word, yes,” replied Lennon. “Unless anyone has a better idea.”

“No but I feel sure there must be one,” said Neef.

“I agree,” said Brooks. “It’s probably staring us in the face; we just can’t see the wood for the trees.”

“If anyone sees the wood, let me know,” said Lennon. It didn’t get much of a laugh.

The meeting broke up with Neef determined to probe how Eve had found out about Charlie Morse. Had she been asking questions around the unit when she had been visiting Neil? Had she been going through his private papers when his back had been turned? Neef rested his elbows on the desk and allowed his head to sink into his hands. His imagination was threatening to run away with him. The truth was that he was still smarting from some of the accusing glances he had seen at the meeting when Lennon announced the involvement of the Press. Eve had made an agreement with him that she would not ‘work’ when she was in the unit. He had no reason to doubt her word. Had he? He still felt he had to ask her. He had to know for sure. He dialled Eve’s home number. He was just about to hang up when it was answered.

“Eve Sayers.”

“Hello Eve, it’s Michael. I was beginning to think you were out.”

“I was in the shower,” said Eve.

“I’ve just been to a meeting with the Public Health people. They said you’d found out about Charlie Morse and planned to run the story.”

“That’s right,” said Eve.

Neef felt his throat tighten as he sensed they were about to fall out again. He heard the edge in Eve’s voice.

“We had an agreement,” said Neef. “You promised that anything you heard in the unit or from unit staff would be confidential.”

“We still have,” said Eve.

“How did you find out?” asked Neef.

“I don’t think I feel inclined to tell you,” said Eve. “It certainly wasn’t from you, was it? You lied to me about Nigel’s death. You knew perfectly well how he had died when I asked you.”

“I was in a difficult position,” said Neef awkwardly. “I didn’t want to put you in one.”

“Well, thanks for nothing.”

“So you won’t tell me?”

There was along pause before Eve sighed, and said, “The truth is, I worked it out for myself. Max Pereira let slip that Charles Morse was dying of cancer and that made me wonder why you hadn’t mentioned it earlier. I put two and two together and tried out my hypothesis on Dr Lennon. I told him I knew that Charles Morse was the third case and he confirmed it. He also admitted there was a fourth, Frank’s grandson, Nigel.”

“Max Pereira told you Charlie had cancer?” exclaimed Neef, “I didn’t know you knew him.”

“We sort of knew each other by sight. I bought him a cup of coffee this afternoon.”

“To get information out of him.”

“No damn it!” exclaimed Eve. “If you must know I wanted to know if he could do anything for Neil. I felt that desperate. I was prepared to get down on my bended knees and beg him, if you must know. It just slipped out somewhere along the way that Kate Morse’s husband had cancer and I suddenly realised why you hadn’t told me about it. You didn’t trust me enough.”

“I didn’t want to put you in a difficult position,” said Neef.

“Have you any idea how pompous you sound?” asked Eve.

“I think what you did was against the spirit of our agreement,” said Neef.

“If you people put as much effort into investigating this thing as you do in trying to hush everything up we might know just what the hell’s going on by now,” said Eve. She put the phone down.

Neef put the telephone slowly back on its rest and leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes and wished he’d never made the call. He tried telling himself that he had every right to be annoyed but there was no satisfaction to be had from that. He even had to consider for a moment that Eve had been right in her assertion about keeping things quiet. Avoiding scrutiny or publicity was a way of life in British society and there was no doubt in his mind that secrecy was often used by the incompetent to protect themselves. At least half the envelopes arriving on his desk had the words ‘In Strict Confidence’ marked on them when there was no need for it. It was a case of the fewer who knew how the Health Service was run the better as far as the top echelons were concerned.

But surely allowing the Public Health Service to carry out their investigations without the full glare of publicity on them was a different case altogether. Wasn’t it? Neef couldn’t come to a firm view on that any more. The fact was that they had got nowhere in their investigations and things didn’t look like improving in the near future. He took the copy of the summary he had picked up at the meeting and put it in his briefcase along with other odds and ends off his desk. He would read it later. He was feeling low. He would go home, tell Dolly his troubles and have a few drinks before having an early night.

Neef’s plan lasted as far as the car then he changed his mind. One thing still niggled him about his conversation with Eve. It was her assertion that she had worked out for herself that Charlie Morse was the third victim. Was that really true or had she been protecting Max Pereira? There was a chance that Pereira would still be at the Menogen labs. He would drive over there and have it out with him before going home. He opened up his briefcase on the passenger seat and looked through his papers until he found something with a Menogen letterhead on it. Menogen Research was at 14, Langholm Road.

Neef parked the car in a side street off Langholm Road about two hundred yards from where the Menogen building was located. It was a modern low-rise building protected by a chain link fence with nothing much in the way of signing outside it apart from a green board that said, Menogen Research. This was repeated on a brass plate on the wall next to an entry phone system. Neef could see that there were lights on inside the building. He pressed the bell-push on the plate and waited. He had to do this a second time before the unmistakable sound of Pereira’s voice said, “Yeah?”

“Max, it’s Michael Neef.”

“Yeah.”

“Can I come in?”

The door lock was released electronically and Neef stepped forward into an inner vestibule where he was confronted with another locked door. Pereira’s voice, coming from a speaker in the ceiling, instructed him to step forward on to a tray charged with disinfectant to disinfect his shoes. He did this and the door in front of him opened to admit him into a small changing room.

“Change into gown and boots, Mike,” said Pereira. “These are the rules. I’m in lab 5.”

Neef left his shoes and top coat in the changing room and walked along the corridor to Lab 5 in green gown and white Wellingtons. He knocked once and entered. Pereira was seated on a stool in front of a laminar airflow cabinet. He was in the process of injecting a pink-coloured liquid into a cell culture bottle.

“Be with you in a moment,” he said from behind the surgical mask he wore.

Neef looked around him at the shelves laden with bottles and tubes. It looked just like any other lab as far as he was concerned, but very modern and tidy.

Pereira dropped the syringe he’d been using into a CINBIN container and stripped off his gloves. He opened a pedal bin with his right foot and let them fall in with an air of contrived drama.

“What can I do for you Mike?” he asked, pulling down his face mask.

“The Press have got hold of the fact there has been a third cancer case caused by the mystery carcinogen and that Charlie Morse is the patient concerned. Eve Sayers is running the story.

“Oh,” said Pereira, looking down at his feet.

Neef took this as an admission of guilt. “I particularly asked you not to talk about that when I told you,” said Neef.

“I’m sorry, Mike,” said Pereira. “I met Eve this afternoon and I let slip that Charlie Morse had cancer. I didn’t think. That’s as far as it went, honest. She must have worked out the rest from there. She said something about it being odd that you hadn’t mentioned anything about it. She seemed to suggest you two had some kind of agreement about being straight with each other?”

Neef smiled wryly at Pereira’s barbed comment. He sighed, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

“Shakespeare. Right?”

“Walter Scott.”

“I’m sorry if I’m responsible for this,” said Pereira. “It was unintentional.”

“Not your fault,” sighed Neef. “If I had told her in the first place she probably wouldn’t have used it under the terms of our agreement. There have actually been four cases. The Public Health people came clean with her.”

“Four!” exclaimed Pereira. “Are these guys no nearer finding out where this stuff is coming from?”

Neef shook his head and said, “It’s invisible and undetectable.”

“I don’t think I believe that,” said Pereira.

“I don’t think I do either,” said Neef with a shrug.

“There must be some linking factor in four cases for Christ’s sake,” said Pereira.

Neef who was carrying his briefcase rather than leave it on the seat of his car, opened it up and took out the summary that Lennon had prepared. “See if you can spot it,” he said.

Pereira removed the half frame spectacles that were hooked over the neck-band of his tee shirt and put them on. He rested his bare elbows on the bench as he read the summary.

“Jesus,” said Pereira when he’d finished. “And you guys are looking for a chemical?”

“Why do you say it like that?” asked Neef.

“Because, you’re looking for the wrong thing.”

“What do you mean?” asked Neef. He could see that Pereira was alarmed by what he’d read.

“It’s as plain as day. It’s a virus,” said Pereira. “It’s a fucking virus you should be looking for!”

Neef felt unsettled by the notion. He tried to remain rational and not be swept along by Pereira’s assertion. “Viruses don’t give you cancer. You can’t catch cancer. It’s not a transmissible disease,” said Neef.

“It is now,” said Pereira. “You are looking for a virus that gave these folks their cancer. It’s all there, man. It’s been staring you in the face. MacSween’s finding of bilateral pneumonia in both cases he autopsied...”

“I think that was an immune response to the cancer,” said Neef.

“I think you’re wrong, Mike. It was a bit of both.”

Neef looked at Pereira. He was thinking about Frank MacSween’s unwillingness to abandon his pneumonia finding, maintaining that his findings were consistent with both pneumonia and cancer. “But there is no such virus,” he said.

“No known virus,” Pereira corrected. “You’ve got a new one.”

“A virus that gives you lung cancer,” said Neef slowly as if the words pained him. “You must be wrong,” he whispered. “You have to be wrong.”

“Look on the bright side,” said Pereira. It’s not highly infectious or you would have had more cases. It’s my guess you need to inhale a fair few virus particles to develop the disease and maybe there’s also a degree of natural immunity around.”

“But the virus lab did tests on Melanie Simpson and Jane Lees before and after death. They didn’t find any new virus.”

“They weren’t looking for a new virus,” retorted Pereira. “They’d be looking for antibodies stimulated by known viruses. That’s how diagnostic virology works.”

“But you’d think...”

“Not necessarily,” interrupted Pereira. “People, even trained scientists, are reluctant to see new things, even when they’re staring them in the face. Diseases can be around for anything up to a few years before labs start talking to each other and one of them admits they got some results they couldn’t explain, then another says the same and it goes on from there.”

“But where could a new virus have come from?” said Neef.

“New viruses are evolving all the time, Mike. You know that. AIDS, Llassa Fever, Marburg Disease, Ebola. They keep cropping up all the time.”

“I thought the theory was that they weren’t new; they had been there all the time and it’s just with jungle areas of Africa being opened up and modern transport being so easy that they get carried into the community and trigger off an outbreak?”

“That’s one of the theories,” said Pereira meaningfully. “There are others. One thing’s for sure.”

“What?”

“Old Africa isn’t going to get the blame for this one.”

“I’ll have to think about this, Max. I can’t simply voice your theory at a routine meeting. If we were worried about panic before. This could make it a thousand times worse.

“I guess it’s still just a theory,” said Pereira but it’s where my money would go. It would be worth putting Charles Morse in isolation.”

“That’s been done,” said Neef. “Albeit not for this reason. Would you be willing to join the team, so to speak?” asked Neef. “I think Public Health could use some help.”

Pereira shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t think I’d be too welcome but I’m here for you if you want to ask anything.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Let’s just say, previous experience with the British medical establishment has not been too... positive. My face doesn’t fit.”

“That must have made life difficult,” said Neef.

“You could say,” agreed Pereira. “Let’s just say, nobody does us any favours here at Menogen. Everything we do has to be done by the book, double checked, registered, licensed, recorded, you name it. There are plenty of people out there who would like to see us fall flat on our faces. We have one secretary working full time on making sure all our paperwork is in order. We get more inspections in a year than one of your university labs would get in a decade and God help us if we fall down on any of the safety procedures.”

Neef nodded.

“Yet with the possible exception of Birmingham where the horse bolted some years ago, you and I both know that I could walk into just about any virus lab in the country and help myself.”

“So you feel you get a raw deal,” said Neef.

“On the contrary, said Pereira. “We get the right deal but it should be applied to the academic institutes as well. These jokers do what they damn well like and nobody says boo. Any mention of rules and regulations and they start throwing their hands in the air and screaming, infringement of academic freedom. Infringement my ass, but it always works.”

“Am I allowed to ask what you’re working on?” asked Neef.

“A new vector. I think it should work on melanomas. I’m also trying to figure out what went wrong with ones used on the four kids in the trial. I still don’t understand it.”

Neef picked up on the word, melanoma. “Do you reckon this new vector of yours could help Neil Benson?”

“That’s what Eve wanted to know when she stopped me this afternoon,” smiled Pereira. I’m just developing it. It isn’t licensed.”

“But would it work?”

“I reckon it’s got a good chance,” replied Pereira.

“Neil’s going to die within a month,” said Neef.

“I hope you’re not asking what I think you are,” said Pereira. “After what I just told you?”

“I suppose not,” said Neef. “It just seems like such a shame... How far along the way are you to getting it licensed?”

“It’s brand new,” said Pereira.

“So there’s no chance of rushing it through the licensing procedure?”

“Rushing it through? You have got to be kidding. This is Menogen, remember? A nasty commercial affair. The establishment puts up hurdles specially for us, it doesn’t take them down.”

“God, it’s so galling to know that there’s something that might help Neil and we can’t do anything.” said Neef.

“It might not work, Mike,” said Pereira kindly. “I would have put money on that other kid’s hepatoma responding but it didn’t.”

“Thanks, Max,” said Neef with a sigh. “I’d better go and let you get on.”

“I’ll see you to the door.”

Neef looked back at the Menogen building when he had crossed the street. He caught sight of Max Pereira through the lab window. He was gowning up to continue work.

Even after two gin and tonics, Neef was still on edge. He found it difficult to dismiss Pereira’s virus idea. In fact, it seemed to gain increasing credence the more he thought about it. He considered telephoning Lennon if he could get his home number from somewhere. But what good would that do? Charles Morse was in isolation already and he was the only living patient. There were no other steps they could take except look for the virus itself. He would contact the hospital lab in the morning and ask about the reports on Melanie Simpson and Jane Lees. He’d ask if they had noticed anything out of the ordinary. He remembered that Frank MacSween had said at one point that he had seen a virology report on Melanie Simpson. He also remembered that there had not been anything remarkable in it but he would take a look at it in the morning if it was still available.

First thing in the morning, Neef went down to Pathology to seek out Frank MacSween. He found him preparing for the first post-mortem of the day.

“Hello Michael, what can I do for you?”

Neef could not help but notice the change that had come over MacSween since the death of his grandson. It was as if he had no great interest in anything any more. He was going through the motions of life without having any heart for it.

“I was wondering if you still had a copy of the virology report on Melanie Simpson?” said Neef. “I’d like to take another look at it.”

“Should do,” said MacSween. He walked through to his office and opened a filing cabinet. He pulled out a pink cardboard file and flipped it open. He extracted a single sheet and handed it over to Neef.

“Okay if I hang on to this for a little while?” asked Neef.

“Feel free,” replied MacSween. He didn’t enquire why Neef wanted it. Neef didn’t bother volunteering the reason. He wanted to say something to Frank as a friend but he had difficulty in knowing where to begin. “Frank...”

“Uh huh.”

Neef saw that MacSween’s eyes were dull and his look was distant. “Oh nothing... I’ll catch you later.”

Neef returned to his office and read through the virology report on Melanie Simpson. Three types of virus had been found in her lungs. Adenovirus, Rhinovirus, and para-Adenovirus. None had been reported present in any great number which would have signified infection. They were just reported as being present. There was no mention of any unidentified virus being found. There was no need for Neef to look up a virus text book. Adenoviruses and Rhinoviruses were very common. They caused cold and flu like disease but lots of people carried them without any ill effects. There was nothing in the report at all to support Max Pereira’s notion of a new virus but it still worried Neef. He decided to call David Farro-Jones; he was an expert on the subject. He should have thought of that sooner.

“David? It’s Michael Neef. I was wondering if I might come over and have a chat with you?”

“Of course. Can it wait till about eleven?”

“Fine, see you then.”