The Lazarus Strain

TEN

Steven completed his investigation into suspicious surgical death patterns at the Victoria Hospital during the second week of January. The inquiry had straddled Christmas, which he had spent with his daughter Jenny and Richard and Susan and their children — a happy time although quickly overshadowed by the tsunami that hit the Far East on Boxing Day. Jenny had wanted to send her new bicycle to Thailand to make a child there happier.

The investigation had proved quite straightforward in the end and although the surgical death rates were undoubtedly higher than in other comparable hospitals, examination of the dead children’s notes had revealed the reason why. The head of paediatric surgery at the Victoria had real courage. Unlike so many of his contemporaries who always kept one eye on the statistical returns, Mr Cecil Digby FRCS, had taken on challenges that many other surgeons would have turned down and often agreed to operate on cases which were generally regarded as being too difficult or just plain hopeless. As a direct result of this, the death rate in his unit was much higher than the norm. Common sense dictated that it would be, but common sense didn’t show up in hospital returns; only numbers. On paper — the government’s preferred method for assessing so much, particularly in education and health — Digby’s figures looked worrying but the numbers weren’t telling the whole truth. The babies who died would have died anywhere else. The babies who lived however, had special reason to be grateful — or rather, their parents had — because anywhere else, they would probably have died too.

Steven had been able to determine this without ever confronting Digby personally. It was Sci-Med’s policy to keep their inquiries as discreet as possible and in this case, confidential arrangements had been made with the hospital records people in order to grant Steven access to patients’ notes. He managed to leave the hospital without Cecil Digby ever knowing he’d been investigated… or why. Steven was pleased and relieved at the outcome. At the outset, he’d been afraid that he had been sent to investigate the not uncommon problem of a surgeon continuing to operate after his or her abilities had started to decline.

The facts of the case however, made him reflect on the government obsession with auditing and target setting — well intentioned, no doubt, but disastrous in practice and the cause of much figure manipulating. Surgeons avoided high risk operations in favour of routine ones with a much higher success rate. Short operations were preferred to longer ones simply because you could get through more and therefore make the figures look better on paper — fine for those patients who needed a short, routine operation, not so good for those who needed complex surgery. Another example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions, he thought and then puzzled over who had said that to him recently…

It was after ten on Saturday evening when Steven got back to London after driving down from Newcastle — too late to start writing up his report for Sci-Med he reckoned: that could wait until Sunday. A hot bath, a large gin and tonic and a film on TV sounded a better option, but first he wanted to catch up on what had been happening in the world. He tuned to the Sky News channel and stuck with a discussion about the upcoming Iraqi elections until the headlines came up. The first item made his blood run cold. ‘Animal rights extremists carry out a second murder at English research institute,’ intoned the presenter over filmed footage of the Crick Institute and a dramatic musical score.

The substance of the report was that fifty-seven year old Robert Smith, a lab assistant, employed to look after animals at the institute had been attacked in his car as he drove down for his morning newspaper. Three men, reportedly driving a Land Rover, had forced him off the road, locked him inside his vehicle and set fire to it. He had been burned alive. Leaflets found near the scene had proclaimed his attackers’ allegiance to the animal rights movement.

Nick Cleary, appearing deeply upset, was interviewed on the steps of the institute. He pointed out the bitter irony of murdering someone who had been involved in animal welfare rather than experimentation — Smith had been employed to clean and feed the animals, he pointed out. Frank Giles, ill at ease in front of camera and sounding stilted, appealed for witnesses to come forward after stressing the horrific nature of Smith’s death and just how important it was that such vicious killers be caught. The head of a recognised animal rights movement was also interviewed — somewhat reluctantly, thought Steven. He condemned the murder while doing his best to distance himself and his organisation from the perpetrators, just as he had had to do only a couple of months before.

Steven phoned Giles. ‘I just saw it on the news.’

‘If ever there was a stupid, pointless crime, this is it,’ said Giles. ‘It doesn’t make sense on any level. They get huge adverse publicity after last time and then they go back and hit the same place all over again! What’s more, they pick on the one guy in the place who looks after animals. Talk about shit for brains!’

‘Does this put the mysterious Ali back in the frame?’ asked Steven.

‘In the worst possible way,’ said Giles. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you yet. Between you and me, I’ve got one good witness and I really wish I hadn’t.’

‘You don’t hear that too often from the police,’ said Steven.

‘Ever since his arrest, Kevin Shanks’s relatives have been doing their level best to drum up press interest in his claim that there was a third man involved in the attack on the Crick Institute. They’ve been telling the papers that a man named, Ali, was the real murderer and stressing the fact that he’s a Pakistani. Up ’til now the Press have refused to run with it. Even they can see the danger of fuelling racial tension by suggesting that Devon’s torturer and murderer was a bit duskier than a whiter shade of pale.’

‘But?’

‘My witness is a woman who says she passed the Land Rover a few minutes before the attack on Smith. She says the three men in it were, to use her words, “the people you see in corner shops these days”.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Steven.

‘Oh dear indeed,’ said Giles. ‘We could be talking Christmas riots when this particular crock of shit hits the fan.’

‘It never rains…’

‘How true,’ sighed Giles.

‘I don’t suppose they could have had another reason for picking on Smith, could they?’ asked Steven.

‘Like what?’

‘Like maybe he caught sight of the mysterious Ali the first time around and could identify him.’

‘Smith didn’t strike me as someone holding something back,’ said Giles. ‘I saw him a few minutes after he’d found that the institute had been broken into and the intruders had long gone by that time.’

‘Just a thought,’ said Steven.

‘Keep ‘em coming,’ said Giles. ‘We’re going to need all the help we can get on this one.’

Steven put the phone down and considered for a moment. All desire to watch a film had evaporated. Giles was right; another attack on the Crick seemed all wrong, ludicrously wrong from the point of view of an animal rights activist. And to pick on Smith, a low level employee who had looked after the animals’ welfare beggared belief. He was the wrong man in the wrong job working in definitely the wrong place to attack again. What else could you get wrong… from the point of view of an animal rights activist? But suppose there was another view, Steven wondered as he refilled his glass. The leaflets found near the burned out car had naturally been construed as a responsibility claim and a declaration of motive but could there have been another agenda hiding behind the obvious? Giles had discounted the one alternative possibility he had come up with — that Smith had known more about the first attack than he’d let on — so what did that leave? Maybe he should talk to Smith’s widow just in case. He would drive up there in the morning.

The Smiths’ house was a small white-painted cottage sitting just outside the entrance to the Crick Institute and surrounded by neatly clipped privet hedges and cherry trees. There were two cars parked outside, one on the road and one in the short drive-in in front of the garage. Steven had been prepared for relatives to be present but was surprised to find a woman PC at the door. He showed her his ID and asked how things were.

‘The press have been pretty merciless in their attempts to talk to Mrs Smith. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen them myself,’ she said. ‘Hyenas don’t come close.’

‘How is she bearing up?’

‘Pretty well, I’d say, all things considered. Her GP was here again this morning so I guess she’s getting something to help her through it. Her main concern seems to be the house: it came with the job.’

‘Bad luck,’ said Steven. It seemed inadequate but at least he hadn’t said it to Amy Smith who agreed to see him after the WPC had gone inside to ask her. She had however, requested that her sister, Ethel, who had stayed overnight with her, be allowed to remain in the room. ‘Of course,’ said Steven and he was shown inside.

The cottage was gloomy despite the brightness of the day outside, a direct result of its age. Its walls were solid stone, more than two feet thick so the windows were deeply recessed — good for providing nice deep windowsills to stand vases and books on but bad for letting in light. The standard lamp beside the chair Amy Smith was sitting on was switched on, lighting her below like a small, pale porcelain figurine. Steven was introduced to both women and offered his sympathy.

‘I hate disturbing you at a time like this, Mrs Smith,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure you, more than anyone, appreciate the need for us to catch these monstrous people.’

‘Smithy loved animals,’ said Amy. ‘Why pick on him?’ She held a handkerchief up to her face while her sister put a protective arm round her shoulder.

‘It doesn’t make sense, I agree,’ said Steven. ‘This may seem like a very strange question Mrs Smith, but can you think of any reason at all why someone might have wanted to harm your husband?’

Amy bristled. ‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘Smithy got on with everybody. Everyone liked him.’

Steven noticed the look that appeared briefly on her sister’s face and figured that this might not be an entirely accurate answer. Amy looked up at her sister as if seeking reassurance and, suspecting that it was less than solid, she added, ‘He always said what he thought but no one blamed him for that… He told the truth. They respected him for it.’

‘I’m sure they did,’ said Steven, trying to think of an alternative angle to approach the subject from. ‘Did you notice anything troubling Smithy in recent weeks?’ he asked. ‘Any change in his behaviour? Had he become worried, irritable?’

Once again, Steven read the look on Ethel’s face. It suggested that Smithy had always been irritable.

‘He was very upset over what these people did to the professor,’ said Amy. ‘We all were. Smithy said they should bring back hanging for them and even that would be too good for them.’

‘Apart from that.’

‘I don’t think so… apart from that silly business with the monkey but that was just Smithy…’

Steven felt the hairs on his neck start to rise. ‘What business was that?’ he asked.

‘Oh, it was daft,’ said Amy. ‘Nothing really. Something and nothing you could say. When the soldiers finally found the body of the last monkey who’d escaped — they’d been searching for it for weeks — and brought it back to the institute for burning, Smithy went up to see it. He said it was a different animal… They’d got the wrong monkey.’

‘A different animal,’ repeated Steven, feeling his blood turn to ice.

‘Smithy said he knew his Chloe and it wasn’t her; it was a different monkey,’ said Amy. ‘I think the soldiers thought he was having a laugh, telling them they’d got the wrong monkey after all the trouble they’d been to, but he wasn’t. He was quite serious.’

‘Can’t be too many monkeys out there… in Norfolk,’ said Amy’s sister, suppressing a jaundiced little smile.

‘That’s what the soldiers said,’ said Amy. ‘Silly old fool. But once he got an idea into his head… You see, Smithy prided himself on knowing all the monkeys by name. He said they were as different from each other as human beings once you got to know them. They all look the same to me mind you.’

Steven smiled in order to encourage her. ‘Me too.’

‘Six of them escaped. Five were brought back to the institute. Smithy said that Chloe was the missing one but then, when they brought the last one in, he said it wasn’t her.’

‘Typical Smithy, if you ask me,’ said Ethel. ‘If you said black, he’d say white on principle.’

This attracted a hurt look from Amy and her sister gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze and said, ’You know what I mean, Ames. He’d cross the street to find an argument.’

‘I suppose,’ said Amy. ‘The soldiers pointed out the monkey had been out in the wilds of Norfolk for weeks in the middle of winter and that Smithy’d look a bloomin’ sight different as well if he tried that, but he wouldn’t change his mind. Said it was another monkey. Nothing like Chloe, he said.’

With the words ‘nothing like Chloe’ reverberating inside his head, Steven thanked Amy for agreeing to talk to him and was shown to the door by Ethel who whispered to him as he left, ‘He was an old bugger really.’

Steven gave a conspiratorial nod.

‘Learn much, sir?’ asked the WPC on the door.

‘A little more than I bargained for,’ said Steven cryptically before continuing to his car where he sat for a moment with both hands clasping the top of the steering wheel tightly. If Smith was right and it was the wrong monkey that the soldiers had brought in, it opened up a whole new can of worms. Please God, he was wrong. Please God, it had been the animal’s suffering in the wild that had altered its appearance. He started the engine and nodded to the WPC before driving off.

Back in London, Steven wrote up his report on paediatric surgery at the Victoria Hospital although he was continually distracted by doubts arising from what he’d learned in Norfolk. Why couldn’t every investigation be as straightforward as the Newcastle one with clearly defined questions attracting clearly defined answers and everything ending in unequivocal conclusions? He answered his own petulant question with the unpalatable — but inescapable — rejoinder that there would be no need to employ him if that were the case.

‘So what’s your feeling?’ asked Macmillan when Steven told him next morning about his talk with Amy Smith.

‘The soldiers might well be right about the animal looking significantly different after weeks in the wild…’ said Steven, ‘and Smith was a contrary old sod by all accounts…’

‘That’s the explanation I would prefer to go with,’ said Macmillan. ‘But not you?’

‘I just feel uncertain,’ said Steven. “Uncertain” seemed such a prissy little word to describe what was going on inside his head.

‘Call me unimaginative but I can’t see an alternative explanation,’ said Macmillan, ‘unless global warming is more advanced than we thought and monkeys are to be found swinging from the Norfolk trees these days…’

‘Chloe was the virus control animal in Devon’s experiment,’ said Steven. ‘She was infected with live Cambodia 5 virus: she hadn’t been given the vaccine he was testing.’

‘Another reason perhaps for her change in appearance,’ said Macmillan. ‘Not only was she living rough in winter, she was also very ill. Chances are she’d been born and bred in captivity so she wouldn’t know what to do out there anyway.’

‘That animal was a genuine threat to the health of the nation,’ said Steven.

‘Dramatic… but true I suppose,’ said Macmillan. ‘But it strikes me that any alternative explanation cannot be a simple one. If the monkey the soldiers found really wasn’t Chloe it implies that someone must have deliberately carried out a substitution with intent to deceive and all that goes with that can of worms.’

‘I know,’ nodded Steven. ‘It might also suggest that Robert Smith was murdered to keep his mouth shut about the monkey.’

‘Something that nearly worked,’ said Macmillan. ‘If you hadn’t decided to go talk to his widow we would never have known about his doubts.’

Steven thought for a moment before saying, ‘All things considered… it makes more sense than his murder being another animal rights hit. They just couldn’t be that stupid.’

Adopting an air of resignation, Macmillan said, ‘Unfortunately, I have to agree with you… which leaves us with potentially a very big problem.’

‘What happened to the real Chloe; where is she; who has her and what do they intend doing with her?’

‘That just about covers everything,’ said Macmillan. ‘How is Dr Martin coming along with the vaccine?’

‘She’s optimistic, I understand.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said Macmillan. It sounded heartfelt.

‘Have you heard how the Elwoods are?’ asked Steven.

Macmillan looked thoughtful. He said, ‘Actually no. Lees was supposed to phone me last week about their condition. Strikes me, the way things are going, no news could be bad news.’ He pressed the intercom button and asked Jean Roberts to get him Nigel Lees at the Department of Health. Sitting back in his chair he crossed his legs and said, ‘So where do we go from here?’

Steven sighed and said, ‘Frank Giles of the Norfolk Police is faced with looking for someone named Ali in the Asian community and I’m left looking for a monkey that’s disappeared into thin air.’

The phone rang and Macmillan asked Lees about the Elwoods. Steven watched his face as he listened to the reply. It was not encouraging.

Macmillan replaced the receiver with deliberate slowness. ‘David Elwood is dead,’ he said. ‘Officially, bronchial complications setting in after treatment for animal bites… can happen in the elderly.’

‘And unofficially?’

‘Cambodia 5.’

‘And his wife?’

‘Not at all well. Could go either way.’

Steven shook his head and said, ‘What a mess. And all to be swept under the official carpet.’

‘Right now, we have other things to worry about,’ said Macmillan. ‘There’s a meeting of the Earlybird committee tomorrow. I’m going to voice your concerns about the virus.’

‘The monkey that attacked the Elwoods,’ said Steven. ‘It was one of the test animals which had received Devon’s experimental vaccine.’

‘Your point being?’

‘The vaccine didn’t work,’ said Steven. ‘The animal was infectious. I want to call Code Red status on this.’

Macmillan got up from his desk and walked slowly over to the window. Snow had just started to fall. ‘At times like this, Steven… retirement and the south of France seem very attractive… but you’re right. Code red status is granted.’ Almost as an afterthought he added, ‘You don’t suppose Dr Martin is using the same seed strain for her vaccine, do you?’

‘Maybe I’ll ask her,’ said Steven.

Requesting Code Red status meant that the investigator on the ground had decided that preliminary investigations were over and that there was a serious Sci-Med investigation to be made. If granted, all the stops would be pulled out to support that investigator and he would no longer be reliant on voluntary cooperation from police and other authorities. He would have full Home Office backing in making any requests he saw fit. He would have access to a wide range of auxiliary services ranging from lab support to the supply of weapons. Three admin staff in the Home Office would operate twenty four hour cover on a special telephone line for requests and inquiries coming in at any time of the day or night and special finance arrangements would be set up through the supply of two credit cards.

‘Jean will make arrangements and let you know in the usual way,’ said Macmillan.

When he got back to the flat, Steven wondered if he should phone Frank Giles and tell him of his suspicions surrounding the death of Robert Smith. He recognised that his reluctance had more than a little to do with the fact that he hadn’t been totally honest with Giles about the virus carried by the escaped animals. What made him even more uncomfortable was that he had used the same ruse as Nigel Lees in telling Giles that it was influenza without elaborating any further on the strain. He convinced himself that their motivation in doing so had been different. Lees had been trying to cover up a serious mistake in judgement while he had been… what exactly had his intentions been? He supposed after a moment’s thought that he had been afraid that Giles might have felt obliged to tell his superiors about the true identity of the virus and they in turn would have made the matter public, not out of concern but in order to protect themselves — the prime motivation for any form of warning being issued these days. He felt strongly that ‘Beware of Falling Rocks’ should be subtitled ‘Just so you can’t sue us’.

The real question he had to ask himself was, would the police investigation take a different course if he gave them a possible alternative motive for Robert Smith’s death? At the moment, they would be mounting a major offensive to tackle the animal rights brigade over the identity of Ali, hoping it might lead not only to him but also to the three Asian men in the Land Rover who had murdered Smith. He couldn’t see that changing even if he told Giles about his suspicions. For the moment he would let things take their course. It might be Machiavellian, but media pressure was on the police right now to hunt down Smith’s murderers and that was fine by him: he didn’t want to ease it any by throwing them a ready-made diversion concerning a monkey’s identity and a possible health hazard.

Steven’s mobile announced an incoming message. It said, ‘Dunbar: Code Green’, indicating that his Code Red status had been activated. It also listed a telephone number. Steven called it and made his first request to the duty officer. ‘I need to know something about how you buy monkeys in this country,’ he said. ‘How you go about it, who does it and who has been doing it over the past three months?’