White Death (21 page)

‘One of the children who was given the vaccine was immunocompromised,’ said Steven. ‘He had a bone marrow transplant a year ago.’

At this, another man stood up and introduced himself as Dr John Leyton, the doctor who had administered the vaccine supplied by St Clair. ‘I’m aware of that,’ he confessed. ‘But as the Nichol vaccine is a non-live vaccine, there was no danger to the child. He may not have produced antibodies in response to the vaccine but there was no chance of him being infected by it.’

‘But he’s dead,’ said Steven.

‘Not because of the vaccine.’

‘It’s something we all regret, I’m sure,’ said the Home Secretary, a view echoed solemnly by the others.

‘But why should this child have been more susceptible to a poison than the others?’ asked Steven.

Leyton shrugged and said, ‘I’m afraid you have me there. Maybe just normal human variation. We all have different levels of susceptibility to a lot of things. It could be the same for toxins.’

‘Was it a case of corners being cut in the manufacturing process?’ asked Macmillan point blank. ‘Sloppy procedures?’

‘Absolutely not,’ countered Coates. ‘We’ve been over the firm’s practices with a fine-tooth comb. They couldn’t be faulted.’

‘But a poison still ended up in the vials,’ said Steven. ‘A poison that’s killed one child and looks like killing another soon.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Leyton. ‘And we all deeply regret that.’

‘I take it you’re still investigating what exactly happened?’ asked Macmillan.

‘We’re currently examining all the equipment used in the vial manufacturing process.’

‘So where does this leave us?’ said the Home Secretary. ‘Sci-Med has caught us – and by “us” I mean Her Majesty’s Government –
in flagrante delicto
, for this is something for which we must take collective responsibility. Although it was the fault of a few over-zealous individuals and a misunderstanding perhaps over how
flexible
the rules might be in the current climate, we are responsible for administering a new vaccine to one hundred and eight of our school children and, it has to be said, unwittingly putting their lives at risk. You don’t have to be a tabloid editor to see where this is going to end up should it become public knowledge.

‘Just in case there is any doubt,’ the Home Secretary continued, ‘the government will fall, the children’s parents will launch criminal and civil actions, the vaccines programme will grind to a halt and we will be left defenceless against anything the terrorists care to throw at us. They will be free to launch plague after plague until we succumb totally and our green and pleasant land becomes a barren desert.

‘Health and Safety officers, however, will be able to dance on our mass graves – once suitable safety barriers have been erected – from Land’s End to John o’Groats, comfortable in the knowledge that they stopped vaccine safety regulations being breached.

‘Food for thought, eh, John?’ said the Home Secretary to break the silence that ensued.

‘And if we do nothing?’ asked a sombre Macmillan, causing Steven’s heart to miss a beat.

‘I’ll be perfectly frank with you; nothing much will change. We must go on pressing for new vaccines and streamlining the testing process. We have to. Time is not on our side and letting Health and Safety decide whether we live or die is not an option. There may well be occasional victims but this is the way it has to be if our way of life is to survive.’

‘At least you’re honest,’ said Macmillan.

‘Can I ask what happens now to the Nichol vaccine?’ said Steven.

‘We see it as a perfectly good vaccine. It will go into production with a different manufacturing company.’

‘Before you’ve established the exact cause of the problem last time?’

‘We know what the problem was. Establishing at which point in the production process the contamination occurred is purely academic. The company won’t be used any more.’

Macmillan sensed that Steven was squaring up to argue so he interrupted. ‘What about the affected children?’ he asked.

‘We will award generous financial compensation to their parents under the guise of medical insurance covering the children while they were at camp.’

It was Steven’s turn to look down at the table.

SIXTEEN

‘What a mess,’ growled Macmillan when he and Steven got back to his office. He poured sherry into two glasses and handed one to Steven before settling in behind his desk.

‘Do we really believe it was down to a few ambitious civil servants and a
misunderstanding
over the rules?’ asked Steven.

Macmillan looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I think we have to, don’t you? The alternative that a British government presided over such a completely unlawful experiment is just too much to contemplate.’

‘It’s not without precedent for people in high places to let it be known that they are unhappy about certain situations and for more junior people to
take the hint
,’ said Steven.

‘So if it goes wrong, the powers that be can deny all knowledge of it,’ added Macmillan.

‘They do all the wrong and we end up with all the angst,’ said Steven.

‘It was certainly the time to play the collective responsibility card, I’ll grant you,’ said Macmillan ruefully. ‘One out, all out and it will all be Sci-Med’s fault, the fall of the government, a monumental scandal … the incoming government faced with an impossible situation … the country hopelessly vulnerable to biological attack. Ye gods, you couldn’t make it up.’

After a few moments of deep thought, Macmillan asked, ‘What are your feelings?’

‘The need for new vaccines has certainly put them between the proverbial rock and a hard place but occasionally, that can be more comfortable than it sounds. It can be used as an excuse for all sorts of suspect decisions and actions. The pendulum may have swung too far in the direction of health and safety legislation where vaccines are concerned – and it has – but actually there’s still something that worries me about the Nichol vaccine.’

‘What’s that?’

‘They’ve decided that there’s nothing wrong with it before establishing exactly how the problem arose last time. They’re using a presumption as a basis for conclusion – never a good move.’

‘They would argue that time is not on their side.’

‘Another comfortable excuse.’

‘So what do we do?’ asked Macmillan, giving birth to yet another long silence that neither found easy. The weight of responsibility on their shoulders was almost unbearable but the seemingly impatient patter of rain on the windows served as a reminder that a decision had to be made.

‘It’s incredible,’ said Steven. ‘We went into that meeting holding all the aces and we came out with a pair of twos and it’s our turn to bet or fold …’

‘I don’t think we have any option,’ said Macmillan. ‘We have to keep this quiet. The alternative just doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘You’re right, of course,’ agreed Steven. ‘But it doesn’t half leave a nasty taste in the mouth …’ He was thinking of the parents of the dead boy, Keith Taylor, and of Trish Lyons facing life without her arm if indeed she had a life to look forward to at all. Guinea pigs used in a good cause? Just one of these things? You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs? Sacrifices for the common good? Tough choices, difficult decisions? They died so that others … Bollocks to the lot of it. The big picture just did not translate to personal circumstances.

‘Then we’re agreed?’ asked Macmillan before Steven talked himself out of going along with it. ‘We say nothing?’

Steven nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Can I take it that Sci-Med’s interest in the Pinetops affair is now officially at an end?’

‘No,’ said Steven. ‘Not yet, I need a bit of time to mull things over. There are some things that still bother me.’

‘Like what?’

‘Scott Haldane’s death … why the poison raced through Keith Taylor’s body the way it did … why the kids are reacting to it in different ways at different times … how the poison managed to survive the cleaning process and get into the vials … things like that.’

Macmillan nodded. ‘Does that mean you want me to tell the Home Secretary about your continuing interest despite the fact we won’t be taking things any further?’

‘No,’ said Steven. ‘I’ll just pick away at it on my own for a bit.’

‘I know this is not the sort of ending we might have hoped for but you did well taking things as far as you did,’ said Macmillan.

‘Thanks,’ said Steven but his heart wasn’t in it.

Steven decided that he needed fresh air and walked by the Embankment for a bit, low in spirit and with a sense of anticlimax that seemed to be accentuated by the very normality of everything around him. Did these people pushing prams and carrying briefcases appreciate what was being done on their behalf in the name of security? Of course they didn’t, but they expected it. In fact, they demanded it. They expected government to respond to every threat to their person, even the merest suggestion of a threat or woe betide them come election time.

The sun broke through the clouds and Steven took the opportunity to sit down for a few minutes and enjoy its warmth on his face. How good was the intelligence that suggested biological attack was imminent? How imminent was imminent? Was the information more reliable than the intelligence that sent the army to war in Iraq? Or less? Had it been filtered, manipulated, sexed-up, made to fit an alternative agenda? Or might even the suggestion of that lead to personal disaster as it had for Dr David Kelly in the weapons of mass destruction furore?

For his own peace of mind, he felt that the deaths of both Scott Haldane and Alan Nichol had to be fitted into the picture before he could fully accept the explanation given by Coates for the Pinetops disaster and, for the moment, he could not see how that was going to come about.

He thought about each in turn as he continued to enjoy the sunlight on his eyelids. If Scott Haldane’s unease over Trish Lyons had centred on a suspicion that she had been poisoned, why hadn’t he said anything about it at the time? There was no reason to keep such a theory to himself, particularly when her doctors at the time were failing to find any cause of infection. There was certainly no reason to keep quiet ‘until he was sure’ – the explanation given to his wife for his silence. It didn’t make sense.

Apart from that, harbouring such a suspicion would certainly be no reason to commit suicide but on the other hand, could voicing it to the wrong person have provided grounds for murdering him? It was certainly true that the government had no desire to see what had happened at Pinetops being made public – in fact, they had everything to lose – but Haldane had displayed no desire to tell anyone: he didn’t even want to tell his wife. Introducing state-sanctioned murder into the equation seemed to be going a little far.

As for Alan Nichol, the designer of a new TB vaccine, something that was still being regarded as a big success despite the contamination problems, why should anyone want to kill him? Nichol would have been among the first to see from the green sticker survey that all was not well with the kids on the trial. He or one of his colleagues would have raised the alarm and started an immediate investigation. They would have left no stone unturned before establishing the presence of a toxin as the cause of the trouble. Nichol probably had less reason than anyone to make this public, so killing him to keep it quiet seemed a non-starter. As the designer of the vaccine, he would automatically get the blame from the public whatever the truth of the matter.

It occurred to Steven that it might be worth checking with Phillip St Clair the series of events leading up to the discovery of the contamination problem. He also reminded himself that his search for a murder motive was personal. Officially, Alan Nichol’s death had been an accident.

Steven phoned St Clair Genomics and was relieved to get an answer considering that it was nearly seven o’clock on a Friday evening. It was Phillip St Clair himself who answered the phone because – as he pointed out – he was the only one there.

‘What can I do for you, Dr Dunbar?’

‘I wondered if we might have another chat,’ said Steven. ‘Now that we’re both aware of what’s been going on?’

‘Yes, I heard there had been some sort of meeting,’ said St Clair. ‘When would you like to come?’

‘I don’t suppose you work on Saturdays?’

‘I work every day that God sends,’ said St Clair. ‘This is a small business, remember. The buck stops with me.’

‘Then tomorrow?’

‘I’ll be here from about ten: I allow myself a long lie-in at the weekends,’ said St Clair with what Steven felt was a somewhat strained attempt at humour.

‘See you then.’

There was only one other car in the car park when Steven arrived, a black Porsche Cayenne, which he assumed would belong to Phillip St Clair. The Honda looked like a toy beside it. The door to the building was locked so he rang the bell and waited for a voice from the grille beside it. Instead, St Clair came and opened the door personally. ‘Come on in. I’m just about to have some coffee. Will you join me?’

Steven thanked him. ‘Black, no sugar. Nice car,’ he said, looking back at the Cayenne.

‘Thanks, a 4x4 with the performance of a 911, what more could you ask? You’re a Porsche man too, aren’t you? In the garage?’

‘Bit of an accident,’ said Steven.

‘Sorry to hear that, not your fault, I hope. Insurance is a bit of a killer on these things.’

‘Not exactly,’ said Steven as St Clair went next door for the coffee.

‘Thank God you didn’t ask for a skinny, decaf latte or some such thing,’ laughed St Clair when he returned with two mugs bearing the company logo. ‘Coffee seems to have become an A level subject these days.’

‘Know what you mean.’

‘So, how can I help you?’

‘The Nichol vaccine,’ said Steven. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘What’s to say? It’s a brilliant piece of work from a brilliant scientist who tragically won’t see his work receive the acclaim it richly deserves. I understand they still haven’t got the bastard who ran him down.’