Pestilence

Chapter Fourteen

Saracen drove back to the hospital through streets that were wet and empty. As he turned into the hospital gate two military ambulances were leaving and he had to give way. He watched them go, their deep-treaded tyres sending up orange tinted spray in the neon street lights, their hooded crews anonymous in white plastic.

Saracen went to A amp;E first and found the staff subdued. “Sister Lindeman died this evening,” said one of the nurses and Saracen nodded in resignation. “She was a fine woman,” he said quietly. The nurse agreed and asked, “When can we expect the antiserum? They seem to be taking their time.”

“Soon,” said Saracen, uncomfortable with the lie. “What’s going on here?” he asked. He was looking at a group of men being attended to in the treatment room.

“They were injured breaking into an off-license,” replied the nurse.

Saracen nodded and did not have to ask why. The pubs in Skelmore had been closed under the quarantine order and, due to an administrative oversight; the off licenses had been included in the non essential shops register. On top of everything else sudden alcohol prohibition had been a recipe for trouble. To Beasdale’s credit the order had been rescinded to allow off licenses to open for two hours a day but the order would not take effect until the following day.

“There’s a message for you on your desk,” said the nurse and Saracen went to look. The paper said, ‘Mrs Updale rang. Call her back’ and gave a number which Saracen dialled. He did not bother to check the time. For him and, he suspected, Mary Updale such considerations were a thing of the past.

“Dr Saracen you asked me to let you know if I remembered anything about Frank’s other job?”

“Yes.”

“Frank entered it in his diary. The customer’s name was a Mr Archer and he lived on Palmer’s Green. Does that help?”

“I think it does,” replied Saracen as calmly as he could under the circumstances.

Once again Archer had come up as the obvious link in the spread of the disease but the revelation raised almost as many questions as it answered. How could Timothy Archer possibly have given Updale the bubonic form of the disease? and then there was the time factor. Saracen hastily scribbled down some dates on the pad in front of him and discovered that for Archer to have given any kind of plague to Updale within the limit imposed by the incubation time Archer himself must have been in the advanced stages of the disease when Updale saw him. Was Updale well enough to confirm this?

Jill was nowhere to be seen when Saracen got to the ward and for a moment he felt a chill of apprehension. One of the other nurses put his mind at ease. Jill was on her rest period.

Updale’s breathing was shallow and rapid and his eyes had the look of a man running in a race that he knew he could not win.

“Hard going,” said Saracen.

Updale agreed with a single breathless syllable.

“I have to ask you some questions. The answers could be very important.”

Updale continues to stare at the ceiling and gave no sign of having understood.

“You did a job for a man called Archer down on Palmer’s Green,” said Saracen.

Updale licked his lips and moved his head to the side. “…Heating,” he said with great difficulty.

“Yes on the heating system. Was Mr Archer ill when you saw him?”

Updale rolled his head from side to side on the pillow. “No…not ill,” he breathed.

“Think carefully. It’s very important.”

“Not ill…perfectly well.”

Saracen sighed wearily as he saw two and two add up to five. If Archer was well when Updale had seen him how could he have passed on the disease? The answer was not difficult it was just hard to face but Saracen forced himself to come to terms with it. However unlikely it seemed he had to consider the possibility that Updale had not contracted the disease from Archer at all, he had caught it somewhere else. The involvement of Archer had been a coincidence. Saracen baulked at the notion and remembered MacQuillan’s same reluctance to consider anything other than the Archers as the cause of the death of all the residents in the block where they had lived. “Just too much of a coincidence,” he had maintained and Saracen had agreed. He still felt that way but there was something desperately wrong with the explanation somewhere.

“You just spent the one day down at Palmer’s Green?” Saracen asked Updale.

“Thought it was going to be easy… found the air grille blocked… cleared it but flow still poor… fault was in the trunking… too big a job for me… removed the filters to improve the flow until he could call in a bigger firm… “

“You didn’t go back to Palmer’s Green again?”

“No.”

“Did you speak to anyone else when you were there?”

The caretaker.”

“Was he ill?”

“No.”

“No one else?”

“No one.”

Saracen told Updale to rest and left quietly. He looked back once through the glass door to see him staring at the ceiling again, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he continued an unequal struggle.

Saracen noticed that Philip Edwards, the boy with the medallion and the other sufferer from bubonic plague, was in the next cubicle. He went in and approached the bed to see if he was awake or sleeping. He found him to be neither. Philip Edwards was dead.

The Staff Nurse was upset when Saracen told her. “Oh no,” she moaned. “He was stable when I looked in a few minutes ago. I had to go help Nurse Rivers at the top of the ward. There’s just so much… “She mopped her brow nervously.

“I know,” said Saracen.

Saracen thought about the name Edwards as he came back down the stairs. He felt that it should mean something to him but for the moment could not think what.

MacQuillan phoned to say that Dave Moss had died in the County Hospital and Saracen took the news stoically for he had been preparing himself for it. It still did not prevent an empty, hollow feeling from settling in his stomach. “Any more thoughts on the bubonic cases?” he asked.

“None,” replied MacQuillan. “The game’s over. We’ve lost.”

MacQuillan’s attitude annoyed Saracen and he said so before slamming down the phone. “Damn the man,” he muttered. It was obvious that MacQuillan had stopped working on the epidemiology of the outbreak and that was their last hope gone. Without establishing the true reason for the apparent random spread of the disease there would be no chance of creating the right conditions for it to burn itself out. Plague would claim the whole town unless Beasdale pre-empted it.

Saracen began to write. He wrote down every single fact he knew about the epidemic in the hope that some new fact would emerge. Thirty minutes later he was no further forward. The best fit for all the pieces of the puzzle was still the one that MacQuillan had been using but once more the bubonic cases stood out like a sore thumb. Could that mean that all the rest was wrong? Saracen tried to free himself from the blinkers of the obvious and started to question everything right back to the very first assumption. Supposing, just supposing that Myra Archer had not started the outbreak at all… “

Saracen loosened his tie and tugged at his top shirt button. If the first assumption was wrong how about the second? Could he test it? He got out the files on Archer and Cohen and felt excitement grow within him. Myra Archer died on the sixth so that meant that she must have been very ill on the fifth and probably on the fourth as well. That being the case she must have infected Cohen on the second or third when she was relatively well otherwise Cohen would have raised the alarm and called in a doctor for her. Cohen himself was brought in dead on the fourteenth. A man of his age, living on his own would have succumbed to the disease after three days at the most. That meant that Cohen must have developed plague on the eleventh…an incubation time of nine days…It was too long! It was more than six days and that’s what Chenhui Tang had been saying when she had had her ‘breakdown’! More than six days! She had realised that Myra Archer could not have infected Leonard Cohen! That’s why she had been so upset!

Saracen fumbled in his desk drawer for a marker pen and then highlighted the cases on his list that had been assumed to have evolved from contact with the Archers. What else did they have in common if it wasn’t the Archers? The answer was plain for Saracen to see. It was Palmer’s Green! Myra Archer had not brought plague to Palmer’s Green. Palmer’s Green had given it to her!

Saracen found that it was one thing to come to come up with a new theory but quite another when it came to finding evidence to support it. How could the place have given all these people plague? He threw his pen across the room in anger and frustration as he failed to come up with anything. Somewhere in the distance he heard the wail of sirens and was reminded that time was running out. Suddenly he saw his best line of approach. It was Francis Updale.

Updale had spent only one day at Palmer’s Green and yet he had contracted bubonic plague. Something he had done on that day had given him the disease. One day in Updale’s life had to be re-created. Saracen needed help and the Public Health Department was hors de combat. It would have to be MacQuillan.

MacQuillan had been sleeping in his clothes and smelt strongly of whisky. “We have to talk,” said Saracen.

“The time for talking’s over,” growled MacQuillan.

“It’s just beginning. Sober up,” said Saracen pushing his way past.

“What are you talking about?” grumbled MacQuillan, scratching his head.

“You and the others, you got it all wrong. Myra Archer wasn’t the source of the epidemic at all. It was a place not a person. The source of the outbreak is the flats on Palmer’s green.”

MacQuillan looked at Saracen as if he were mad. “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded.

“Get cleaned up and then we’ll talk,” said Saracen forcibly.

“Who do you think you are talking to!” exclaimed MacQuillan, trying to recover some semblance of dignity.

“Are you going to wash or am I going to stick your head under the tap?”

MacQuillan saw that Saracen was serious and capitulated. He went to the bathroom to emerge some five minutes later, subdued and more sensible. Saracen told him what he had discovered.

“I should have picked up on that,” said MacQuillan when Saracen pointed out the discrepancy in the incubation period for Leonard Cohen. “I saw it but I couldn’t let myself believe it.”

“The Wittgenstein problem,” said Saracen.

“But this is all going to be too late,” said MacQuillan.

“No it isn’t,” insisted Saracen. “If we can establish beyond doubt where the outbreak is coming from we can tell Beasdale that it’s spread will soon be under control.”

“If,” said MacQuillan doubtfully.

“There’s no time to lose.” Saracen told MacQuillan of his thoughts about Francis Updale. “He only worked for one day on the heating system in the flats.”

“I’ll talk to Beasdale,” said MacQuillan.

“Tell him we need the architect of these flats, the builder, the site agent or anyone connected with the construction of the block.”

Fifty minutes later the site agent arrived with the plans.

“The heating system,” said Saracen when asked if there was anything in particular he was interested in. He helped the site agent spread out the blueprint on the table.

“Show me the supply to flat fourteen, Myra Archer’s apartment.”

The site agent’s finger traced out a line along the plan. “This is the main duct for the first floor. It has four branch lines, each supplying two flats.”

“Two?” exclaimed Saracen looking closer. “Which is the other flat on Myra Archer’s line?”

“Flat G3.”

“Who lived there?”

The agent checked his list. “A Mr Cohen.”

“That’s got to be it then,” said Saracen quietly. “The bug is in the heating duct. That’s how Updale got it too. He was working on the duct.”

“But how?” exclaimed MacQuillan. “The bug can’t survive on its own. It’s not like Legionnaire’s Disease, living in old water tanks for years or Anthrax lying dormant in the soil.”

“I don’t know how but that’s got to be it,” said Saracen with the bit now firmly between his teeth.

“But what about the other deaths in the building?”

Saracen thought back to what Updale had told him and said to the site agent, “What effect would removing the filters in the system have?”

“There would be an increased air flow and everyone in the building would effectively be on the same line.”

This time even MacQuillan was convinced. “That would explain why everyone in the building got infected at the same time,” he conceded.

“And the enormity of the dose,” added Saracen. “They would be breathing it in constantly.”

“We’ll have to examine the trunking,” said Saracen to the site agent.

“Now?” exclaimed the man in dismay.

“Right now,” replied Saracen. “What do we need?”

MacQuillan relayed the site agent’s requirements to Beasdale who agreed to have them delivered directly to the site. In less than forty minutes Saracen was down on Palmer’s Green donning protective clothing by the light of arc lamps supplied by the military. Two more hours had passed by the time the trunking had been disassembled as far as the branch that served the Cohen and Archer flats. “All ready,” said the site agent to Saracen. He handed him an open ended spanner. “You’ll have to squeeze through there,” he said, indicating to a narrow gap between the trunking and the wall. “You’ll find an inspection cover on the left hand side secured by four hex bolts, that’s what the wrench is for. You’ll need this too.” He handed Saracen a long thin probe. “To check for obstructions.”

Saracen adjusted his respirator and eased himself through the gap. At first he found difficulty in seeing after the glare of the arc lights but, as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom he could make out the inspection cover in the wall of the duct. Three of the bolts gave in without protest but the fourth refused to budge.

In the confines of plastic suit and face mask Saracen felt the sweat begin to pour off him with the effort he was expending on the jammed bolt. He had to blink frequently to clear his eyes of the stinging perspiration that threatened his temper as much as his vision. He heard the site agent calling out to ask how he was getting on but did not reply; it was too much trouble. Instead he gathered himself for one last assault on the bolt.

Holding the spanner as near to the end as possible so as to exert maximum leverage he strained till the veins stood out on his temples. He saw the paint around the bolt begin to crack, so slightly at first that he thought it might be his imagination but then a piece flaked off and the bolt’s resistance was over. Saracen let the cover clatter to the ground and took a breather. He heard the site agent inquire again. “I’m fine,” he replied.

Saracen inserted the probe to the right found it moved freely at all levels along the duct. He removed it and tried to the left. The probe stopped after half a metre; it had touched something soft. Saracen left the probe in position and reached inside with his gloved hand. His outstretched fingers could feel the obstruction. It was a pile of rags…no it was furry…soft…not rags, a body…an animal’s body. He found what he thought was a leg and pulled the corpse back along the duct to the inspection hatch. In the gloom he saw the partly decomposed body of a cat.

Moving backwards, for there was no room to turn around, Saracen emerged through the gap to look down at MacQuillan and the site agent. He held up the corpse and said, “Here’s the obstruction, a dead c…” Saracen stopped himself for in the light he could now see that what he held was not a cat at all. It was the black carcase of a wild rat.

“Jesus God Almighty,” whispered MacQuillan.

“Is that what you were looking for?” asked the site agent, alarmed at the look on MacQuillan’s face.

MacQuillan ignored the question. “We’ll have to seal all this up,” he said.

Back at the General MacQuillan poured whisky for himself and Saracen. He countered Saracen’s look by saying, “We both need it.” Saracen nodded and accepted the glass. “Do you know what I don’t understand?” he said. “If we have plague rats in Skelmore why don’t we have bubonic plague all over the place instead of just two cases with the rest all pneumonic?”

“The answer must be that we do not have plague rats in Skelmore. They must be confined in some way to one area, the Palmer’s Green site.”

“But the boy Edwards didn’t live on Palmer’s Green. He came from the Maxton Estate,” said Saracen.

“Doesn’t mean that he couldn’t have been down at Palmer’s Green for some reason, a delivery boy perhaps?”

Saracen remembered something. “Edwards!” he said out loud. “Edwards’ treasure!”

“What?”

Saracen told MacQuillan about the episode with the glue sniffers and the story of a boy named Edwards who had supposedly found treasure on the Palmer’s Green site. Half way through the explanation Saracen saw the connection with the medallion that Edwards had been wearing when the ambulance brought him in. He gave MacQuillan a quick resume of the legend of Skelmoris Abbey.

“Then the boy must have discovered the site of the abbey!” exclaimed MacQuillan.

Saracen agreed and said, “It could have been plague that wiped out the abbey all these years ago and anyone who went near it afterwards. That would account for the legend of the wrath of God. But how could the bug have survived this long?”

“In the rats,” said MacQuillan. “The bug could live indefinitely in a rat colony and have been passed on down through the centuries.”

“And if the rat colony had remained isolated from the town until developers moved in on the Palmer’s Green site…”

“We would have a sudden outbreak of plague,” agreed MacQuillan.

“But can that really happen?” asked Saracen.

MacQuillan nodded. “It’s called sylvatic plague,” he said. “There have been several recorded instances in the United States and in China where plague has established itself in a colony of small animals in the wild. It’s not a problem until man moves into their area but when he does you then have the potential for disaster.”

“So we have to destroy the rat colony,” said Saracen.

“Not only the rats but their fleas as well. Poisoning the rats isn’t good enough; the fleas will just look for new hosts. Gas is the answer.”

“We have to find them first,” said Saracen coming down to earth.

“Can we talk to the boy Edwards?”

“He’s dead,” said Saracen.

“How about the glue sniffers?”

“At the time they hadn’t managed to find out Edwards’ secret but they might have in the interim. It’s our only hope.”

“I’ll get the army to trace them.”

“Let’s do it ourselves,” said Saracen. “The addresses will be in the day book.” Saracen checked the book while MacQuillan brought round the car. They set off for the Maxton estate to be stopped twice en route by the army. They showed their identification and received an apology. It seemed that a growing proportion of Skelmore’s population had taken to doing their shopping by night, using bricks instead of Barclaycards. Looting was rife in the town.

Frith Street was like so many others on the Maxton estate. Walls were daubed with spray paint slogans, ground floor windows were boarded up and gardens grew wild. The whole area breathed resentment and aggression.

“Number seventeen, this is it,” said Saracen. They drew up behind an abandoned Ford Cortina. They assumed it had been abandoned for it had no wheels.

“I was brought up in an area like this,” said MacQuillan quietly. “In Glasgow.”

“A long time ago,” said Saracen.

“A long time ago,” agreed MacQuillan. They got out the car.

“Third floor,” said Saracen as they entered the building. The passage stank of urine, so badly that they were forced to hold their breath as long as possible. Saracen managed it to the second floor landing. They found the door they were looking for and knocked. There was no reply. Saracen rapped again and this time was rewarded with shuffling sounds from within. “What do you want?” rasped an angry female voice.

Saracen said who they were and asked to speak to her son.

“What’s he done?” demanded the woman. “What did he steal? The little bugger I’ll take his bloody life before he’s much older!”

Saracen assured her that her son had done nothing wrong and at this point the woman behind the door was joined by a man wanting to know what was going on. “Two doctors from the General,” said the woman’s voice, “They want to speak to the boy.”

“We don’t want anyone from that place coming here,” growled the man. “Don’t you know what bloody time it is?”

“It’s very important,” said Saracen, stretching self control to the limit. It’s vital that we speak to your son.”

MacQuillan and Saracen exchanged glances while they listened to a whispered argument rage on the other side of the door. The woman won and the door was opened. They were ushered into the living room and the woman went to waken her son while the man went back to bed. MacQuillan sat down on a brown plastic arm chair that listed to one side under his weight. Saracen shooed a cat off the sofa where it had been wrestling with a greasy paper that had earlier held fish and chips.

The woman returned with the boy and picked up the paper. “You do your best to keep the place nice…” she said, baring her teeth in what she felt was a smile.”I sometimes wonder why I bother.”

“Remember me?” Saracen asked the boy. The boy rubbed his eyes and remembered. “Your pal Edwards died tonight I’m afraid.” The boy remained impassive; his mother made appropriate noises.

“You told me that Edwards had found treasure on Palmer’s Green and I didn’t believe you,” said Saracen.

“It was true,” said the boy.

“I know that now,” said Saracen quietly.

“Treasure? What treasure?” squawked the mother. Saracen ignored her and addressed the boy again. “Did you ever find out where Edwards found it?” The boy shook his head but Saracen sensed that he was lying. “A lot of people’s lives depend on it,” he said. “I’m not kidding.”

Saracen could see the boy swither. He swallowed hard and prayed that he would make the right decision.

“Yeah, I know where he got it.”

Saracen closed his eyes and gave thanks. Almost immediately he had to consider that the boy might be infected like Edwards. “So you have been there too?” he asked.

“No, the watchman caught us. We went back last night but there was a bulldozer parked over it.”

“Over what?”

“The entrance to Edwards’ cave.”

“A cave?”

“The treasure cave where Edwards got his stuff.”

“Where exactly is this cave?”

The boy told Saracen and he took notes. “That’s exactly what we wanted to know,” he said, getting to his feet. He smiled at the boy and said. “You might just have saved this whole town.”

The boy’s mother shuffled along behind them to the door. “Excuse me asking,” she said with her bare toothed smile. “I just wondered… will there be any reward attached to this treasure?”

Saracen and MacQuillan returned to find chaos at the General. Military ambulances were blocking the access roads; engines were running and lights blazing while their drivers collected in small groups near the gates. Saracen found Tremaine who told him, “Ward Twenty is full, the County Isolation Unit is full and both the schools are now full. We have nowhere left to put them.”

“Then we stop admitting,” said Saracen.

“That’s what Saithe said but this is awful,” protested Tremaine. “It’s an admission of defeat and you know what will happen if there is no response from the emergency services when they are called out. The minute people find out that they are on their own it will be every man for himself.”

Saracen nodded grimly.

“Surely Beasdale must know that,” said Tremaine.

“Oh I think he does,” said Saracen quietly.

“Then why doesn’t he get new premises for the sick and bring it volunteer help?”

Saracen avoided the question with one of his own. “How many do we have out there in the ambulances?”

“Eighteen. We can’t just send them back,” pleaded Tremaine.

“We’ll bring them in and keep them in reception for the moment,” said Saracen.

“But…”

“It won’t be for long. There will be that many deaths in the next hour but we cannot admit any more.”

“Then you are admitting defeat too?” asked Tremaine.

“I am facing facts,” said Saracen. He took Tremaine to one side and told him that there would be no antiserum and why not. Tremaine’s will to argue all but evaporated and he sat down, obviously feeling weak at the news. “But the whole town will be wiped out,” he said distantly.

“There’s still a chance that it will burn itself out if we can remove the source of the outbreak,” said Saracen.

“But the Archer woman was the source of the outbreak,” said Tremaine.

“No she wasn’t,” said Saracen. “They got it all wrong.” He told Tremaine about the real source of the disease.

“But why has it never happened before?”

“Because the rat colony was never disturbed before,” said Saracen. “It was only when they started to build the flats on Palmer’s Green that they unwittingly opened up access to the rats.

“Skelmoris Abbey,” muttered Tremaine. “All these years.”

“The Curse of Skelmoris,” said Saracen. “It was plague.”

“Didn’t they burn the place to the ground in the story?” asked Tremaine.

“I suppose the rats survived in the underground cellars and passages,” said Saracen.

“What are you going to do?” asked Tremaine.

“Find the colony and wipe them out.”

“Claire might be able to help there,” said Tremaine. “She has plans of what the abbey was supposed to have looked like.”

Saracen agreed that that could prove invaluable when the time was right.

MacQuillan returned from contacting Beasdale and he and Saracen drove back down to Palmer’s Green. “What did he say when you told him?” asked Saracen.

“He kept asking about the ‘practical implications’ of the discovery,” replied MacQuillan.

“I hope you stressed the importance of having uncovered the true source of the epidemic,” said Saracen.

“Of course,” replied MacQuillan. “But I got the impression that he thinks things might just have gone too far already.”

Saracen felt a chill at what MacQuillan had said. “But he did agree to help?” he asked.

“He said he would,” said MacQuillan.

Saracen looked at the site with his notes in his hands. “That must be the bulldozer over there,” he said to MacQuillan and pointed to a silent, yellow machine near the Western edge of an apartment block. They donned their protective clothing and approached the bulldozer which was parked beside a small concrete bunker. Saracen asked what it was.

“It covers the air intake for the heating system in the flats,” said MacQuillan with a wry smile.

Saracen squatted down and peered between the tracks of the vehicle but could see nothing unusual. “Then we’ll have to move it,” said MacQuillan. MacQuillan climbed up on to one of the tracks and looked into the cabin. “The keys are in it,” he reported and climbed inside. The whir of the starter motor gave way to a roar and a cloud of diesel smoke rose into the air as the engine sprang to life. There followed a series of hydraulic jerks as MacQuillan tried a row of levers in turn before finding the gear stick. When he did the machine lurched forward ten or twelve metres before MacQuillan killed the engine and silence returned to the site.

“I don’t see anything do you?” asked MacQuillan as they both examined the ground where the bulldozer had stood.

Saracen was about to agree when he did notice something different. “These bricks,” he said. “They have been placed there.”

MacQuillan could see what Saracen meant. Bricks were hardly out of place on a building site but the six lying within a one metre area were the only ones on this side of the site. Someone had placed them there but for what purpose? Saracen moved them to one side and brushed at the dirt with his hands. Almost immediately he knew that he was on the right track because his fingers touched wood. MacQuillan helped him clear away the top layer to reveal a square block of chip board. Saracen prised it up and found a hole. “Well, well,” he said. “Edwards’ cave.”

“We’ll need torches.”

“Beasdale’s men should be here soon.”

A car drew up but it was not the army; it was Claire Tremaine. “Alan rang. I’ve brought the plans.”

“Thanks but it’s early days,” said Saracen. “All we’ve found is a hole in the ground.”

“I could help,” said Claire. “After all, holes in the ground are my speciality.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Saracen.

Claire put her hand on Saracen’s arm and said, “Please James, you know how much this means to me.”

“Did you inform your boss about this?” asked Saracen.

“No…there wasn’t time,” said Claire, taken by surprise at Saracen’s question.

“And being the first person in your team to find Skelmoris Abbey will do your career no harm at all,” said Saracen accusingly.

“All right, I admit there’s something in what you say,” conceded Claire.

An army LandRover arrived in a cloud of dust and interrupted them. Beasdale was in it. “I thought I had better come down and see for myself what was going on,” said Beasdale. He was speaking to Saracen but his eyes were questioning the presence of Claire Tremaine. Saracen realised this and introduced Claire. “Miss Tremaine is an archaeologist; she’s an expert on the abbey of Skelmoris and has agreed to help us with the excavations,” he said. Saracen saw the look of gratitude in Claire’s eyes and the questioning look in MacQuillan’s.

“Perhaps we can talk in the site office,” said Beasdale. “Just Doctor Saracen,” he added when MacQuillan and Claire showed signs of following. Saracen felt uncomfortable but there was no time to dwell on it. Beasdale closed the door behind them and said, “I’ve had Dr MacQuillan’s views on this new discovery now give me yours.”

“I’m sure they coincide,” said Saracen.

“Tell me anyway. I want a second opinion.” Beasdale smiled at his intended medical allusion.

“When we wipe out the source of the epidemic it will start to burn itself out.”

“But everyone will be dead by then,” said Beasdale.

“Not everyone,” said Saracen firmly. “A lot but not everyone.”

Beasdale adopted a pained expression as if what he had to say was difficult. “I don’t think you understand Doctor,” he said quietly.

“Understand what?”

“My position.”

“Tell me,” said Saracen though he feared that he would not like the answer.

“I believe that the situation in Skelmore will be out of control within seventy two hours if I let it.”

“How so?”

“Any policing operation, civil or military, depends on the co-operation of the majority. When it becomes generally known in Skelmore that the emergency services have broken down and that people are being left to die in their houses we will no longer have that co-operation. There will be an uprising and people will attempt to leave the town in large numbers. Under these conditions some would undoubtedly succeed and spread an incurable plague. I cannot allow that to happen.”

Saracen swallowed and said, “The disease has survived for centuries in these rats. If we don’t find the colony and wipe it out the chances are that it will survive any ‘misfortune’ that should befall Skelmore. Afterwards, of course, the colony might have to look for a new home…”

Beasdale’s face took on the hint of a smile. He said quietly, “All right Doctor, you have made your point. Find your colony, destroy it. I’ll give you every assistance I can. The only thing I cannot give you is time.”

Saracen nodded and said, “I understand.”

Beasdale got up and put on his cap. “I’ll leave a small detachment to help with the excavation,” he said. Keep me informed.”