Resurrection

FIVE

It was raining in Manchester when Dewar got off the train but he’d expected it would be. That was the thing about reputations, once acquired, justified or not, they tended to stick. The thought led him to think of one head of a university department he’d known, now retired, who was not remembered for any of the work he’d done in his professional life but solely for the fact that he’d used other people’s used tea bags in the common room rather than contribute a few pence a week to the fund himself. Dewar was convinced that Manchester would not get the Olympic Games it craved, not for any locational or logistical reason, nor for any lack of facilities but because people had an image of runners splashing through rain water.

The taxi driver asked if he’d seen ‘the game’ last night on television. Replying that he hadn’t ensured that he got a ball by ball account until they reached the university some ten minutes later. Standing out in the rain was suddenly a welcome experience.

‘I’ve an appointment to see Professor Kelman,’ he said to man behind the reception desk after shaking the rain from his hair.

‘Third floor.’

With apparently no more information on offer, Dewar took the lift to the third floor and found what he needed to know on a board facing him when he got out. It even had personnel photographs on it. He was now looking for a bald man in room 317/18.

‘Can I help?’ asked the woman who occupied the outer office (317) and whose severe features suggested that helping anyone was the last thing on her mind.

‘I’ve an appointment with Professor Kelman.’

‘And your name?’

‘Dr Dewar.’

‘Ah yes. from …’ She slipped her spectacles down to the end of her nose and tilted her head back slightly to ease reading from the diary in front of her. ‘The Sci-Med Inspectorate.’

Dewar was shown into a well appointed room by university standards and greeted by Kelman, a tall, angular man with sloping shoulders and a university tie drawing his shirt collar a little too tight. He had very large hands and feet and wore fawn coloured twill trousers that ended a couple of inches short of where they should have. This, in turn, exposed chequered socks that Dewar assumed could only have been a Christmas present from a close but colour-blind relative.

‘I understand we have been naughty boys,’ said Kelman.

Kelman’s seeking to diminish the crime at the outset did not endear him to Dewar. Apart from anything else it cast him in the role of petty official come to annoy an important man with better things to do.

‘You do appear to be in contravention of a WHO/UN ruling endorsed by HM Government, Professor,’ he replied, pushing the stakes right back up again.’

‘Oh dear,’ replied Kelman, now unsure which facial expression to adopt. It was too late to play the contrite card and trivialising the infringement clearly hadn’t worked. ‘What exactly is it that we’re supposed to have done?’

Best you could do in the circumstances, thought Dewar. Ignorance of the crime. Not acceptable in law but always a good first step in moving yourself sideways away from blame.

‘You are licensed to hold two fewer fragments of the smallpox virus than you admitted to in your recent audit submission. This actually brings you above the twenty percent of the genome limit that the WHO has recommended.’

‘Recommended?’ said Kelman, thinking he’d found an linguistic loophole.

‘Enforceable by law in this country,’ added Dewar, closing it off.

‘I see,’ sighed Kelman, ‘Well, this appears to be more serious than I thought and it’s Dr Davidson’s territory, I fear.’

‘It was bound to be someone else’s,’ thought Dewar. No matter, the buck stopped with the head of department, as far as he or anyone else in authority was concerned. It was now just a question of how many others Kelman was going to take down with him.

‘Perhaps I could have a word with Dr Davidson?’

‘Of course. Would you like me to be present?’

‘As the responsibility is finally yours Professor, I’ll leave that up to you,’ replied Dewar.

Kelman’s grin lacked conviction.

A small, thin man wearing Levi jeans and a crushed, grey Tee shirt came in through the door. Dewar thought he knew the type. They were common enough in academia, undersized, spectacle wearing, Mummy’s boys, bad at games, lousy at PT, unattractive to the opposite sex, guys with more hang-ups than a washing line, guys who’d finally found a safe, secure environment in the institutionalised world of academia where they could relax and call themselves, Mike or Steve, where on the outside they’d always been Michael or Steven. They could now wear jeans and be ‘team leaders’ where before they’d always been the type nobody wanted on their team in any capacity let alone as leader. For them an academic appointment was, get-your-own-back time.

Alison tells me there’s some bureaucratic problem,’ snapped Davidson, pointedly looking at his watch. Dewar noted it was a double Y-chromosome man’s watch, one that could probably tell you the time, in Tokyo at two hundred feet under the Baltic Sea. It looked like a soup plate on Davidson’s scrawny wrist.

‘There’s a problem with your audit return for the smallpox virus fragments you’ve been using, Mike,’ said Kelman.

‘Jesus,’ exclaimed Davidson. ‘Why don’t we all stop doing research and just fill in forms. That’s what it’s coming to.’

If he expected an apologetic response from Dewar, he was badly disappointed. ‘If you don’t come up with good explanation for the discrepancy in your return that’s exactly what you’re going to be doing anyway, Dr Davidson,’ said Dewar, matter of factly.

Davidson looked shell shocked. ‘Who is this … What the … Can he do this?’ he appealed to Kelman.

Kelman shrugged his shoulders. ‘I understand the Sci-Med Inspectorate do have considerable powers should they choose to use them.’

‘Look, it was obviously just a clerical error,’ said Davidson, starting to back-pedal

You’ll have to do better than that, thought Dewar.

‘Perhaps we could go through the audit statement and you could point out just where the error occurred, Doctor?’

‘I suppose I could try.’

And you’ll have to do a lot better than that.

Davidson’s lab was on the floor below. He led the way as if every step were an intrusion on his day and he wanted Dewar to know it. When they finally reached ‘The Davidson Lab’ as it was posted on the outside of the door, they were met by a tall blonde man who was just exiting with a rack of tubes in his hand.

‘Eric, I need the list of the smallpox fragments you made up for me,’ snapped Davidson.

‘Okay, just give me a moment.’

‘Now, Eric!’

The big Swede, towering over Davidson gave an embarrassed shrug and retreated back into the lab. He put down his rack and went off to get the list. When he came back, Dewar gave him a smile of reassurance and it was returned. ‘There is a problem?’

‘We seem to have more fragments than the regulations allow.’ Davidson endowed the word with distaste. This gentleman has come to check up on us.’

Dewar held out his hand and said, ‘Adam Dewar, Sci-Med Inspectorate.’

‘Eric Larsen. I’m a post doc here.’

The two tall men stood with Davidson in between them like the meat in an under-filled sandwich.

‘You must have screwed up the paperwork, Eric,’ said Davidson petulantly.

‘I don’t think so,’ replied the Swede. ‘I think you checked it yourself when I was finished.’

‘I didn’t check it, I signed it. God, do I have to do every little thing myself in this place.’

Larsen moved uncomfortably from one foot to the another. Dewar sympathised with the big man but decided to keep a stony countenance. It was always unwise to get involved in the politics of such a situation. He opened his brief case and brought out his copy of the official fragment list for the department. ‘Maybe you could read from yours and we can identify and agree the extra pieces.

‘Sure,’ said Larsen. He started through the list.

Half way through, Dewar said, ‘No, I don’t have that one.’

Larsen read out the number again.

‘No, definitely not.’

Davidson snatched the paper from Larsen and asked, ‘Are you absolutely sure about this fragment?’

‘Sure I’m sure. I went through the fridge, just like you asked. This one was there. I couldn’t have made the number up,’ said Larsen, letting his anger show just a little.

Dewar suddenly sensed in Davidson the stirring of a memory that he would rather not have recalled. It was something to do with his eyes that gave him away. There was a slight pause while Dewar presumed Davidson was searching for some way out of his predicament. Eventually he just said, ‘Oh dear.’

Humble pie time, thought Dewar.

‘I remember now,’ Davidson announced, clearing his throat to cover embarrassment, ‘Six months ago, I was talking to a French scientist; I met at the Birmingham virus meeting, you remember, Eric?’

Larsen nodded. He was enjoying Davidson’s discomfiture as much as Dewar was.

‘He was working as a post doc in Malloy’s lab in Edinburgh. Maybe he still is. He was working on much the same thing as us and he’d obtained DNA for a couple of smallpox fragments that I thought would be useful to us too. He agreed to send some to me to save me going through the usual bureaucratic channels. I quite forgot about that.’

‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have declared them on your audit,’ said Dewar.

Davidson remained silent.

‘As it is, you delegated the job to someone else who came up with the truth and declared it.’

‘What happens now?’ asked Davidson, coming as near to contrition as someone like him could.

‘Six months ago, this sort of thing was little more than a paperwork offence,’ said Dewar. ‘But things have changed. There is an absolute ban on the movement of these fragments, official or unofficial and the twenty percent rule is being rigidly enforced. Decide what fragments you no longer need and I’ll take them away with me to bring you under the twenty percent mark. On this occasion this will be the last you hear of it. You will of course be subject to unannounced auditing from time to time in the future. I’ll also have to ask you the name of the French scientist you mentioned.’

‘Is that really necessary. He did it as a personal favour to me.’

‘He knew the rules too.’

‘Pierre Le Grice. He works at the Institute for Molecular Sciences in Edinburgh.’

As Dewar headed south again he looked around at his fellow passengers in First Class and wondered if any of them were carrying anything as bizarre as two fragments of smallpox virus DNA in their briefcases. It seemed unlikely but there again, making predictions about human behaviour was something you could never do with absolute confidence.

Looking back on what had happened in Manchester did not bode well for his current assignment. One institution had been caught out simply because someone had told the truth. How many others were holding illegal stocks and falsifying their returns so that officialdom would see what they wanted to see? From previous experience he knew that researchers were a competitive, self-centred breed. Rules were there for other people to obey unless it either suited or caused no inconvenience. Nothing would be allowed to get in the way of their pet projects if they could help it. There wasn’t much he could do about that. Swimming against the tide of human nature was not an option for the intelligent. He had to be pragmatic in the circumstances. If he couldn’t change the way things were in the scientific establishment he could at least be firm about stressing the consequences of not complying with the WHO/UN ruling. The prospect of having their labs closed down and their careers damaged should do the trick. If there was one thing researchers cared more about than their research it was their careers. Any good that came out of research was almost invariably a by-product of the competitive struggle for career advancement and personal glory.

He felt tired when he got into the flat. He kicked off his shoes and took a cold Stella Artois from the fridge, rejoicing in the first ice-cold swallow. After a second, he ‘woke up’ his IBM Aptiva computer and checked the message centre. There was one from Sci-Med and one from Karen. He played that one first.

‘Adam, I’m going to be tied up at the lab all evening. There’s been a Salmonella outbreak centred on Kensington. We’re trying to find the source. Give me a call when you get back. Love you.’

Dewar permitted himself a small smile at the idea of Salmonella in Kensington. He played back the Sci-Med message. The voice said, ‘Fax for you on code 9.’

Dewar frowned and sat down to bring up the Fax Centre on the machine and then prompt the unscrambling code with his password. The printer whirred into a life and spawned a single page message. It was an update on the institutions complying with the audit request. All had now reported and all had declared having only what they were supposed to have. There was however one addendum — the reason for the message coding. The Sci-Med computer had come up with a piece of information that it had correlated as being relevant to his current assignment. A PhD student, working at the Institute of Molecular Sciences in Edinburgh, had recently committed suicide. He was Iraqi.

Dewar stared at the name, Ali Hammadi. ‘Now, what were you working on, Ali, I wonder,’ he muttered out loud.

He looked at his watch and called Karen at the lab before it got any later. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Like a fairground. We’ve had seventeen confirmed cases over the last twenty-four hours and we’ve got another nine suspected ones to check out.’

‘No idea where it’s coming from?’

‘Eight cases ate at the same Greek restaurant, the others didn’t so it must be something coming from a common supplier. It’s just a question of which one and what product. How was Manchester?’

‘Shit.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t mention that word at the moment.’

‘Sorry. Are you going to come round later?’

‘I think I may just go back to the flat. It’s going to be late when I get away and I’m whacked.’

‘Call you tomorrow?’

‘You know where I’ll be.’ sighed Karen.

Dewar put down the phone and smiled affectionately. He and Karen, a down to earth Scottish girl from the East Lothian fishing village of North Berwick, had been together for nearly two years now. They had actually attended the same medical school but hadn’t really got to know each other until they met up again some four years after graduating when Karen had already been with the Public Health Service for three years and Dewar had just joined Sci-Med after deciding a career in research was not for him. He’d had an unhappy attempt at post graduate research and finally decided he’d had enough of pretending to be a team player when he clearly wasn’t. He was a loner by nature and wouldn’t pretend any more. The fact the earth went round the sun had not been discovered by ‘a team’ led by Copernicus. At Sci-Med he’d found a job where he could do things his way.

He and Karen still had their own flats, an expensive arrangement but both were reluctant to risk damaging their relationship through fall-out from their jobs. Both had stressful, demanding occupations, even life-threatening on occasion in Dewar’s case.

Dewar sat down by an open window where he could see the river. His flat wasn’t actually on the waterside — he couldn’t afford that — but was one street back on the first floor of a converted warehouse. It was very small but if he sat to the left of the main window he could see the river through a gap in the buildings across the street. He read through the FAX from Sci-Med again. If Hammadi was Iraqi he’d better find out as much as possible about him, starting with the police file on the incident and then of course, there was his research project. What exactly had he been studying? Although he’d been a student at the same institute where they had access to smallpox DNA fragments, it was, by all accounts, a very large institute. He could have been working on something completely different.

As a foreign student, Hammadi would have been on several official registers. The funding for his degree would presumably have come from abroad but the actual university registration would be British unless of course, he had been on some short-term exchange deal. Dewar opened up his dial-in connection to the Sci-Med computer facility and used it to connect him to the Internet. He then used the Joint Academic Network (JANET) route to get to the computerised information services of the Institute of Molecular Sciences in Edinburgh. He accessed ‘current research interests’ from their home page and found seventeen research groups listed. Two were working on HIV virus and vaccine development. One of them, a group headed by Dr Steven Malloy, had Ali Hammadi listed as a postgraduate student.

‘Shit,’ said Dewar under his breath. ‘Hammadi had been working in a group with a possible reason to use smallpox fragments. He swore again as he continued reading down the list of names. ‘Pierre Le Grice was listed in the same group. He was the one who’d sent the fragments to Davidson at Manchester.

Dewar drank the remainder of his beer and threw the empty can into the bucket that sat beside the fireplace. It went in cleanly, keeping his average for this activity above eighty percent but tonight he could take little satisfaction from it. His ‘paperwork assignment’ did not seem so routine any more. In fact, he felt a distinct feeling of unease. Two research groups not playing by the rules and a dead Iraqi PhD student who’d had access to smallpox DNA meant he was going to be on a flight to Edinburgh in the morning. He left a message for Sci-Med saying where he was going and asking them to inform the Edinburgh institute officially of his impending visit. He would also need the name of a police contact in the city.