The Lazarus Strain

FIVE

Cleary led the way to the staff common room where makeshift attempts had been made to clean up the place and an electric kettle had been pressed into service as a substitute for the coffee machine which had been destroyed during the mayhem.

‘Only instant I’m afraid,’ said Cleary.

Steven smiled and took the mug of instant coffee and was introduced to the staff members in turn. He had expected them to display the usual range of human emotions in the circumstances but the degree of violence used against Devon was subduing them so there were no angry tirades against the animal rights movement or pompous assertions about the value of animal experiments in saving human lives. He could sense that people were evaluating their own position in the scheme of things and a more popular theme was the need for better security in the future.

‘It’s crazy they could just walk in here,’ said one man, a sentiment no one was going to disagree with although one person, later introduced to Steven as Dr Pat O’Brien, did point out that the microbial storage areas had remained secure throughout. ‘Woops, pardon me for speaking,’ he said when a silence ensued. ‘I always suspected looking on the bright side was a flawed philosophy,’ he murmured to Steven.

‘Paddy works on meningitis vaccines,’ said Cleary.

‘And this is Dr Leila Martin,’ said Cleary. He pronounced the name the French way. ‘Leila is a visiting research fellow from the University of Washington. She was working with Professor Devon. She too is an expert in the field.’

Steven shook hands with a good looking woman in her thirties with jet black hair, a smooth olive skin and dark brown eyes that seemed to appraise him without seeming intrusive.

‘Forgive me, Dr Dunbar, but I’m afraid I have no idea who or what Sci-Med are,’ she said.

Steven gave her a brief outline of Sci-Med’s function.

‘Ah, you’re a scientific policeman.’

‘Sort of,’ he agreed with a smile, thinking that only a French accent could make the word ‘policeman’ sound sexy. He wanted to tell her that but instead said, ‘Have you worked on influenza virus for long, Doctor Martin?’

‘I did my PhD on it.’

‘You must find it fascinating?’

‘I find its capacity for antigenic change fascinating,’ said Leila. ‘It’s one of the biggest challenges to be faced when it comes to vaccine design. It’s a sort of scarlet pimpernel of a virus, always moving, always changing its appearance and characteristics.’

Once again Steven found the French accent delicious. ‘Sounds like something the scientific police should be hunting down,’ he smiled.

Leila smiled politely.

‘Professor Devon’s death must be a huge blow to your research efforts?’

‘Tim was a lovely man. He knew more about flu virus than anyone else on Earth but he was a true scientist: he shared his knowledge with others unlike so many others these days who rush to the patent office as soon as they have a result. Because of Tim’s openness it will be possible for others to carry on where he left off.’

‘At least that’s something,’ said Steven. ‘And you personally, will you stay here or go back to the States?’

‘It’s too soon to say,’ said Leila. ‘I need time to think. This has come as such a tremendous shock to everyone.’

‘Of course. Well, whatever you decide, I wish you well.’

Steven moved on to chat to some of the others about their work before Cleary eventually escorted him to the front door. Steven handed him his card and looked him directly in the eye. ‘Let me know if you think there’s anything else I should know.’

‘Of course,’ said Cleary.

Steven sat in the car for a few minutes, trying to decide whether or not his investigation was over. The institute hadn’t been licensed to carry out work on the highly dangerous bacteria and viruses normally associated with biological weapons and the escaped animals had not been carrying anything more dangerous than flu virus. Five of the six beasts were already dead and the other probably wouldn’t last long in the wild. End of story… or not, because there was no denying that he did feel uneasy about something. Nothing the police or Cleary had told him had given him cause to feel this way. It was just a feeling that he wasn’t in full possession of all the facts. Someone was holding something back and that someone was Nick Cleary.

There had been something about Cleary’s body language during the interview that had aroused his suspicions. He felt sure the man had been considering telling him more but had changed his mind. It might have been something important: equally, it might not, but a small seed of doubt had been planted and Steven had the kind of mind that nurtured such things to maturity. He still had to talk to Marjorie Ryman, the police pathologist, but it seemed unlikely that she would be able to offer him reassurance or wipe away the unease.

Marjorie Ryman was at work in the post-mortem room when Steven arrived. One of the mortuary technicians spoke to her over an intercom link in the reception area: she asked him to put Steven on. After apologising for still being busy at the time they had arranged to meet she gave him the choice of joining her in the PM room or of waiting until she had finished — she thought about forty minutes. He chose to join her rather than wait — a trip to the supermarket was still on the cards. He was shown into a small adjoining room by the technician where there was a row of pegs along one white-tiled wall with green, surgical gowns hanging from them. Below them and underneath a wooden slatted bench, Wellington boots were lined up like troops guarding a royal route.

‘Size?’ asked the technician.

‘Eleven,’ replied Steven.

Steven slipped off his shoes and put on the boots he was handed before standing up to slip his arms through the sleeves of the green gown being held out to him by the Technician, who then secured the ties at the back. He declined the offer of gloves, saying, ‘I won’t be that involved.’

He entered the PM room, wrinkling up his nose at the smell. ‘Dr Ryman?’ he asked.

‘Come in, Dr Dunbar. Sorry I’m still up to my eyes but the police are anxious to have the report on this one and it just seems to have been one thing after another today,’ said a pleasant, endomorphic woman in her early forties with dark hair that was just beginning to grey and intelligent eyes that seemed to reflect a confident but pleasant personality. ‘Otherwise we could have had tea and biscuits in my office.’

‘The murder victim from last night?’ asked Steven, joining her at the furthest away of three stainless steel tables on which the pale corpse of a young man lay with its chest cavity already opened up.

‘This is the fellow,’ agreed Ryman. ‘Dead before his twenty-fifth birthday…’

There was a pause during which the gurgle of water sluicing down the drain on the table seemed to offer up a mocking requiem.

‘Inspector Giles seemed to think there might be a link between this murder and that of Professor Devon at the Crick Institute,’ said Steven.

‘So I understand,’ said Ryman. ‘But there’s no pathological reason to think that, so I couldn’t really comment. Suffice to say their deaths were very different. This chap was killed in anger after a short, violent knife attack. Prof Devon was subjected to slow deliberate torture over a period of several hours before being killed suddenly and efficiently by someone who knew exactly what he or she was doing. It takes some skill to puncture the heart with one thrust from a venous cannula. Can I ask why Sci-Med is interested in these deaths?’

‘It’s more the escaped animals that caught our attention,’ said Steven. ‘And what Prof Devon might have been using them for.’

‘Oh, of course, the monkeys,’ said Ryman with a knowing smile. ‘I should have realised. One of them actually bit someone I understand?’

‘A man over in Holt,’ said Steven.

‘Hope it wasn’t carrying anything too nasty.’

‘Only flu,’ said Steven.

‘That was a bit of luck,’ said Ryman. ‘I keep thinking it can only be a matter of time before one of these people releases something really nasty into the wild. They don’t seem to consider what “freeing” the animals means when they start throwing open the doors of research labs.’

‘They probably think it’s a Tales of the Riverbank world out there. All the animals will nip down to Toad Hall to attend a lecture on social responsibility with regard to the spread of infectious disease.’

‘You sound like Frank Giles,’ said Ryman with a smile. ‘He’s a sarcastic bastard too.’

‘Must be the job,’ said Steven.

‘Tell me about it,’ said Ryman, gesturing to the corpse on the table. ‘Strikes me, we’ve all come a long way from Walton’s Mountain.’

‘So what kind of person does what they did to Prof Devon?’

‘Not my province,’ said Ryman. ‘I deal with the dead not the living and in this instance, I’m glad about that. I don’t even want to think about the kind of minds behind that one.’

‘That bad?’

Ryman stopped working and looked directly at Steven. ‘I was physically sick when I wrote the report.’

Steven nodded and said, ‘Well, the general feeling seems to be that the animal rights brigade has gone too far this time. Any public sympathy they might have had has all but evaporated. That can only help the police catch whoever was responsible.’

‘I really hope so,’ said Ryman. ‘And when they do… they should melt the key.’

Steven thanked her and turned to leave. As he got to the door, Ryman said, ‘G’night John-boy.’

Steven smiled and turned. ‘G’night Elizabeth.’

‘I wish,’ said Ryman, already back at work inside the chest cavity.

Steven walked slowly back to the car, giving the light breeze that had sprung up time to eliminate any traces of the PM room that might be clinging to his hair and clothes. He hated the smells associated with pathology including that of the bloody awful air freshener they all tended to use. Even after all these years the sickly sweet smell of formaldehyde brought back images of cadavers stored in tanks of the stuff for medical students to hone their skills on.

‘And so farewell, Norfolk…’ he murmured as he started heading south, thinking about what he would tell John Macmillan in his report. No cause for alarm; the apparent secrecy surrounding Devon’s work had just been routine bureaucracy. Devon had been working on nothing more sinister than an influenza vaccine… unless of course… Nick Cleary knew different.

‘Damnation,’ said Steven as the lingering doubt about Cleary came back to haunt him. He tried arguing himself out of the sinister possibility that the animals had been infected with something more dangerous by considering the member of the public who’d been bitten by one of the animals but who had been released from hospital and was safely back home. He was absolutely fine… wasn’t he? This last doubt pushed Steven over some inner threshold. He turned the car through 180 degrees at the next roundabout and started heading back into Norfolk. He was on his way to Holt. He had to see for himself.

It was just after seven when Steven slowed the car and came to a halt in the main street of Holt where he rummaged through his briefcase on the passenger seat until he found the page from the file with the Elwoods’ address on it. ‘Bramley Cottage, Holt,’ he muttered out loud. He’d have to ask. It occurred to him that he could kill two birds with one stone by getting directions at the local chip shop while he picked up something to eat. He was starving: he hadn’t eaten since breakfast time.

‘Yes mate, take the third on your right and go straight up the hill. There’s a narrow opening on your left — just opposite the end of speed limit sign. Bramley is the second cottage along it. There are only three.’

Steven thanked the man and returned to the car to eat his fish and chips. They tasted good and he wolfed them down in no time at all, using a handful of moist tissues from the glove box to clean his hands and face when he’d finished and hoping that he wouldn’t smell too much when he got to the Elwoods’ cottage.

Bramley cottage was in darkness when he finally drew up outside it and he thought he saw disappointment on the horizon. He went through the motions however, and walked up the winding path to knock on the door with the heavy brass knocker which, he could see in the light coming from the neighbouring bungalow, was fashioned in the shape of a frog. As he expected, there was no answer but he tried again just to make sure: they might be very early bedders. There was no answer to the second knock but it did however alert the neighbours to his presence and one — a small woman wearing overly large glasses and carpet slippers fashioned as furry rabbits, came out to say, ‘I’m afraid the Elwoods are not at home. David’s been taken ill.’

Steven looked blankly at the woman. ‘David’s been taken ill’ was the last thing he wanted to hear. He wanted to be told that David was down the pub or out playing bingo. He wanted to be told that David had made a complete recovery and was enjoying life to the full. He did not want to hear that David had been taken ill.

‘Did you hear me? I said David’s been taken ill,’ repeated the woman, coming closer and peering up into Steven’s face.

Steven pulled himself together and smiled. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Nothing serious I hope?’

‘I really can’t say,’ said the woman. ‘Mary said she thought it was something to do with that dratted animal that attacked him. Anyway he’s in hospital and Mary went with him.’

Steven swallowed. This was going from bad to worse. ‘The same hospital as before?’ he asked hoarsely.

The woman shook her head. ‘No, I wanted to send him a card but Mary said she didn’t have an address yet. She said they’d been very good about things and that they were going to make sure that David got the best of medical attention. They told her she could stay with him in what they called their guest suite and it was all going to be at their expense.’ The woman drew even closer and added conspiratorially, ‘Somewhere private, I think.’

‘You don’t know who ‘they’ were by any chance?’ asked Steven.

The woman shook her head and said, ‘Didn’t think to ask. The institute, I suppose. I mean, it was their animal and they should take responsibility for it, don’t you think?’

Steven gave a non-committal nod and said, ‘It must have been very alarming for everyone round here.’

‘I’ll say,’ said the woman. ‘You don’t see men with guns running round your garden every day.’

‘Of course,’ said Steven who had been meaning the escaped animals, ‘I’d forgotten about the soldiers.’

‘Soldiers?’ exclaimed the woman. ‘More like spacemen if you ask me. They scared the living daylights out of me and Sam, I can tell you, creeping round the gardens like that.’

‘Spacemen…’ repeated Steven, struggling to appear normal when even more alarm bells were going off inside his head.

‘You know… these suits they wear… makes ‘em look like spacemen.’

‘I don’t think I do,’ said Steven. ‘Can you describe these suits, Mrs…?’

‘Jackson, Molly Jackson.’ She went on to give a reasonable description of something Steven reluctantly recognised as a bio-hazard suit.

‘It all sounds very exciting,’ he said calmly but his pulse rate had risen markedly. No one had mentioned in the report that the soldiers had been wearing bio-hazard gear… or more importantly, why.

‘Frankly, I think we’ve had enough excitement round here, thank you very much,’ said Molly. ‘I liked it fine the way it was.’

Steven returned to his car and put his head back on the restraint. ‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ he murmured. ‘What’s going on?’

Charlene Lyndon made an appeal on the early evening news for information about the murder of her dead son. She came across on screen as an unattractive woman in her forties with a weight problem due to bad diet and a make-up problem due to bad taste. Her hair was dyed jet black which contrasted badly with her pallid white skin and painted scarlet lips. Her cheeks were smudged with mascara runs from her tears.

‘Robert was a good boy,’ she said, reading with difficulty from a card in front of her while her T-shirted husband sat beside her like a stuffed toy, the word ‘love’, tattooed on the fingers of his right hand, clearly visible.

‘He was always helping people… He would do anything for anyone… Someone must know something about what happened to him last night… I’m pleading with you… Come forward and tell the police what you know… My son didn’t deserve to die like that… No one deserves to die like that…’ She put down the card and buried her face in her hands.

‘A good boy?’ said Morley when it was over and the Lyndons had been ushered away.

‘They all are to their mothers,’ said Giles. ‘She didn’t see what her little boy and his mates did to Timothy Devon.’

‘You still think Lyndon was part of that?’

‘Lyndon was an ineffectual little prat who couldn’t hold down a job or get a girlfriend. He was a known hunt saboteur who probably didn’t give a shit about animals but found some kind of acceptance — like many of these buggers — in a common cause — basically anything that brings them into conflict with the establishment that’s giving them such a bad time as they see it. He was weakest link material if ever I came across it.’

Morley nodded. ‘So what do we do now, sir?’

‘We wait for the phone to ring and pray we get lucky.’

Thirty minutes after the broadcast went out they got lucky. Morley came into the room. ‘This sounds good. The landlord at the Four Feathers pub in Swaffham thinks he recognised the dead man on the telly as being one of two men drinking in his pub last night. He remembers them arguing.’

‘Bingo! Get your coat.’

Gerald Stanley Morton, the licensee of the Four Feathers pub was a large man without an intellect to match but, in keeping with the undemanding standards of the times, saw his role in helping the police with their inquiries as coming pretty close to stardom and the achievement of celebrity status. Not quite ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me out of Here’, more a case of, ‘I’m a Nonentity; get me in front of a Camera,’ as Giles was to put it later. The Press were already in evidence when Giles and Morley arrived.

‘What the fuck are they doing here?’ exclaimed Giles as he caught sight of the scrum.

‘Morton must have called them.’

‘Arsehole!.. Park round the corner.’

Morley parked the unmarked car round the corner from the pub and the two policemen walked back to where Morton was talking to the Press.

‘I’m sorry, gentlemen,’ he was saying. ‘But it would be most inappropriate of me to divulge anything to you at this time without first saying what I have to say to the police. I can however reveal…’

‘Fuck me; the bugger must have heard someone say that on the telly once?’ said Giles as they approached. ‘Prat!’

‘Mr Morton! I’d prefer if you revealed absolutely nothing right now, if you don’t mind,’ said Giles, raising his voice. ‘Police,’ he added, holding up his warrant card. He walked purposefully through the reporters as if pausing weren’t an option and they parted like the Red Sea. ‘Let’s leave press conferences until later, shall we, Mr Morton? Much later.’