The Devil's Landscape

One

London 2014

Dr Steven Dunbar arrived at the Home Office and climbed the stairs to the small suite of offices allocated to the Sci-Med Inspectorate. He was greeted by Jean Roberts, secretary to the unit and PA to his boss, Sir John Macmillan. She smiled as he entered then frowned and looked him up and down before saying, ‘You look like a TV reporter.’

Steven grinned, understanding the allusion to the Berghaus jacket he was wearing. ‘You’re right. I should be standing outside 10 Downing Street telling people that nothing had happened in the six hours I’d been waiting there.’

‘Or wading through knee-deep floods in the west country to show us dumb folks what water looks like,’ added Jean.

‘It was just so cold this morning,’ said Steven, removing the Berghaus and shrugging his shoulders into his suit jacket. ‘This winter seems to be going on for ever. Is John in yet?’

Jean shook her head. ‘Time enough. The meeting’s not till eleven.’

She referred to the Whitehall committee meeting that Macmillan and Steven were due to attend to hear decisions about government research funding for the coming year. Sci-Med had been for some time concerned about the possible use of biological weapons against the UK and had been urging government action to step up vaccine production to protect the public. This particular elephant had been in the room for a very long time but there was still a reluctance to acknowledge it.

This was not due to any underestimate of the damage that such weapons could do — quite the contrary, the nightmare possibilities were endless — but more down to a general embarrassment over not knowing what to do about an event which couldn’t be defined in advance. You knew where you were with explosions — even nuclear ones — you could coordinate the actions of the emergency services, practice the drills, refine the responses ahead of the incident, but to come under attack without warning from an invisible enemy — a bacterium or virus — would be very different. It would create a scenario where the emergency services would be severely limited in what they could do in any practical sense. People running around in biohazard suits spraying disinfectant everywhere would be little more than a public relations exercise. They wouldn’t know what they were looking for or where it was coming from. This would spread panic in a population who didn’t have the benefit of protective suiting. Them and us. Always bad.

No meaningful response could be mounted until the identity and characteristics of the infecting agent had been established and chances were by then it would be too late. The wait for analysis would put the authorities on the back foot and they’d probably never catch up. It was conceivable that citizens living in towns and cities in the twenty-first century would have no more recourse to help and protection than people living in these same towns back in the fourteenth century when Black Death came to call.

John Macmillan arrived as Steven was pouring coffee from the machine. He said, ‘Me too please.’ and rubbed his hands vigorously before scanning through his appointments for the day in Jean’s desk diary which she turned and pushed in his direction.

The Sci-Med Inspectorate was Sir John Macmillan’s brainchild, a small group of scientific and medical investigators which he’d managed to convince government there was a need for some years before when it was his belief that science and medicine were progressing at such a rate that the police lacked expertise to investigate successfully in these areas.

Despite eventual cross-party agreement for the concept, the unit had suffered a difficult birth due to Macmillan’s prescient insistence that it must be allowed to operate independently and with guaranteed freedom from government-of-the-day interference. He had foreseen that high level wrong-doing might well involve people in high places, people in authority and with perhaps intimidating amounts of power and so it had proved. The unit’s success in occasionally exposing the errors of judgement of the rich and powerful had not won it a great deal of popularity in the corridors of power, but had earned it respect and continued autonomy. Macmillan had wryly pointed out on more than one occasion that Sci-Med’s greatest ally was Her Majesty’s Opposition — whoever they might be. Those in power knew that any attempt to muzzle Sci-Med would inevitably result in howls of synthetic fury from the opposition followed by the need for a humiliating climb-down.

Steven, a qualified doctor who had rebelled against a conventional medical career path and joined the army after admitting to himself that he had studied medicine for all the wrong reasons — parents and teachers had thought it a good idea. Our son the doctor. A credit to the school.

As an athletic type with a love of the outdoors and a thirst for adventure. he had found himself well suited to army life although his new employers had not completely overlooked his medical background. A compromise had resulted in his becoming an expert in field medicine — the medicine of the battlefield — as well as acquiring the skills and attributes of a Special Forces soldier. He had served with distinction in areas ranging from the deserts of the Middle East to the jungles of South America.

When the time had come for him to leave the army in his mid-thirties — Special Forces operations were a young man’s game and his body had started pointing this out — he’d found himself facing a depressingly small number of unattractive career options open to a man who could perform surgery under fire in the desert or jungle and who boasted an impressive range of combat skills... drug company rep, cruise-ship doctor, in-house medic for big business. His spirits had been at a low ebb when John Macmillan had come along at the right moment to ensure that the round peg that was Steven Dunbar ended up in the round hole that was Sci-Med investigator.

Steven had built up a record of success in his new role and had become Sci-Med’s principal investigator. His personal life however, had not run as smoothly. His wife, Lisa, a nurse whom he’d met in the course of an early investigation in a Glasgow hospital, had died of a brain tumour when their daughter Jenny was only two years old, leaving him without hope or purpose until time had worked its healing magic and allowed him to climb out of the abyss to face the world again. Jenny had gone to live with Lisa’s sister, Sue, her husband Richard and their two children in Glenvane, a small village in Dumfriesshire in Scotland where she was currently being brought up as one of their own.

Although female company had come and gone in the following years, finding a lasting relationship had eluded Steven until Dr Natalie Simmons had come along. Tally had been working in paediatric medicine at a Leicester children’s hospital when she and Steven had met during the course of one of his investigations. Respect and an immediate liking for each other had evolved quickly — as these things tended to do when fear and uncertainty were present to act as a catalyst — and it didn’t take Steven long to realise that Tally was special. For her part, Tally had been reluctant to embark on a relationship with someone who lived and worked in a different part of the country — perhaps seeing the difficulties more clearly than Steven who had so quickly lost his heart to her — but his persistence and the undeniable strength of her own feelings had made it inevitable that they would give it a go.

The relationship had had its ups and downs with Tally never feeling at ease with the dangers present in Steven’s job — something she had witnessed for herself after their initial meeting — and the distance that existed between them for most of the week, but after a change in circumstances which had seen Tally apply for and get a position at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London. Tally had sold her flat in Leicester and they had set up home together in Steven’s flat in Marlborough Court in London.

‘How is Dr Simmons these days?’ asked Macmillan as he settled into his chair.

Steven smiled inwardly at Macmillan’s insistence on formality when referring to Tally. He supposed it was an age thing. ‘I think she’s still finding it a bit strange.’

‘How so?’

‘She’s been so used to having to fight for everything on a daily basis that coming to Great Ormond Street has been a bit of an eye opener.’

Macmillan smiled. ‘Makes all the difference working in an establishment with a world-wide reputation.’

‘I think it’s money that makes the difference.’

‘One begets the other,’ said Macmillan. ‘Wealthy people like to be associated with heart-warming good causes. Show business people fall over each other to front-up sick children’s charities — there’s nothing quite like being filmed handing out presents in a children’s ward when it comes to furthering your career.’

‘And I thought I was the cynic in this outfit.’

‘You are, but I’m becoming increasingly-aware of the role of imagery in medical care in our country. We’re all being manipulated and I don’t like it.’

Steven nodded and said, ‘If you’re going to develop a condition, make sure it’s a fashionable one or you could be in trouble. No one gives three pounds a month to fight arthritis or deafness.’

‘Quite.’

‘What’s the plan for the meeting today?’

‘Rumour has it our suggestion will be turned down again.’

‘Surprise, surprise,’ said Steven. ‘But then politicians always tend to see bio-defence as a poisoned chalice.’

‘Vaccination isn’t sexy and won’t get you votes. They’ll pay lip service to the need for it, but when push comes to shove, other interests will come first. I understand we’ll be in competition with cancer research, genetic engineering, stem cell development and some new kid on the block, epigenetics I think it’s called. I’m told it’s the coming thing?’

‘There’s been a lot about it in the scientific journals,’ replied Steven. ‘It’s going to explain why we are all individuals and just what makes us different from each other.’

Macmillan’s expression suggested that he was less than impressed but he didn’t say so, obliging Steven to continue, ‘Some of the concepts are difficult to get across,’ he conceded. ‘But if you stick with it you just might get a sense of how big it’s going to be.’

‘I’ll await my epiphany.’

Steven was reluctant to let it go at that. ‘Look at it this way. Think of our DNA as our hardware — we can’t change it: we’ve got four trillion cells inside us and nearly all of them carry an exact copy of our genome. We can’t hope to replace a faulty gene in each and every one. But the good news is that we also have what those in the know are calling the epigenome. This can be regarded as our software — the tools we need to switch genes on and off. If we can get control of that, we could start telling our hardware what to do or what to stop doing.’

‘And how do we go about doing that?’

‘That’s the million-dollar question.’

‘That new?’

Steven nodded. ‘They’ve recently demonstrated strong epigenetic involvement in brain function, particularly during the change from childhood into adulthood. Some genes are switched on and others switched off and hey presto the ugly duckling with an attitude problem becomes a rational swan leaving for university to study history of art.’

‘Actually,’ said Macmillan thoughtfully and making a steeple with his fingers, ‘I do seem to remember reading something recently about identifying brain differences between optimists and pessimists.’

‘That’s all part of it,’ agreed Steven.

‘Be that as it may, I can’t see epithingy standing much of a chance in the competition for funds against the big boys unless they’ve got some kind of scientific superstar making the pitch.’

‘I think they just might,’ said Steven.

Macmillan opened his eyes wide. ‘Please God, not another telegenic pretty-boy.’

Steven shook his head. ‘I don’t think Professor Dorothy Lindstrom falls into that category.’

‘A woman... name seems familiar.’

‘She hit the headlines a few years ago, never off the telly, regarded as brilliant and not afraid to speak her mind but ruffled a few feathers in her time. There were a few sighs of relief when she went off to Yale.’

‘Of course,’ exclaimed Macmillan, relaxing back into his chair, ‘Now I remember. She was a bit unusual, wasn’t she, a big player in science who didn’t worship at the feet of Charles Darwin.’

‘That’s her,’ Steven agreed. ‘She’s a committed Christian, a Roman Catholic who thought there were just too many convenient evolutionary accidents required by Darwinists and wasn’t afraid to say so.’

‘So, what made Professor Lindstrom return to these shores?’

‘Tragedy.’

Macmillan looked over his glasses. ‘What happened?’

‘Just over a year ago there was a fire in her lab. It happened at night but two of her young post-doctoral workers were working there at the time and perished in the flames. The lab was completely destroyed.’

Macmillan made a face.

‘Dorothy took it very badly.’

‘Understandable.’

‘Yale were very supportive, told her to take as long as she needed to recover and assured her that her lab would be rebuilt as quickly as possible, but that didn’t happen. Dorothy told Yale she wouldn’t be needing a new lab, she was resigning. She did her best to have her people re-assigned to other research groups and took the decision to return to the UK.’

‘That really is taking it badly,’ said Macmillan.

‘She also decided to change her field from neuroscience to epigenetics.’

‘No small step.’

‘It certainly wasn’t. Most people at the top of their game are happy to drift along, dotting ’i’s and crossing ’t’s on their previous success.’

‘But not Professor Lindstrom.’

‘No, she moved back across the Atlantic after persuading a drug company to give her a year of start-up funding and Capital University here in London to give her lab space. One of her younger post-docs elected to come with her and she recruited new staff here. Things have been going well and she’s had a couple of papers published recently in good journals.’

‘What’s in it for Capital?’

‘Publicity. Dorothy is high profile. Every time she publishes a paper the press turns up to interview her. She’s good at... maximising the potential of her discoveries.’

‘They all are these days,’ said Macmillan.

‘Publicity means grants.’

‘You’d have thought the press would have wised up to their weekly breakthroughs by now,’ said Macmillan.

‘Symbiosis,’ said Steven. ‘The scientist gets a grant; the press gets a story.’

‘Well, I guess we’ll see how successful she’s been in attracting funding from the wise old owls of a government grants committee.’