White Death (26 page)

‘We had to remove her arm,’ said Fielding. ‘But I think you already knew we were going to have to do that?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Steven. ‘Has that stopped the tissue damage?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ came the measured reply. ‘She’s lost sensation in her feet … she’s wasting away before our eyes.’

‘Jesus,’ murmured Steven. ‘Her poor mother must be going through hell.’

‘She is,’ agreed Fielding. ‘Actually she’s fallen ill herself.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Steven. ‘She’s been under such stress for so long. She’s a strong-willed woman but …’

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ interrupted Fielding. ‘We think it may be the same problem that Trish has.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Steve, feeling as if he’d just been hit between the eyes. ‘How can that be?’

‘I quite agree, it’s a bit of a puzzle but she’s developed a large white patch on her arm and she’s been feeling very unwell … She’s been admitted to the Western General for tests.’

Steven put down the phone. How could Trish Lyons’ mother have been exposed to the toxin? Poisons weren’t infectious or contagious like bacteria or viruses. You couldn’t catch a poison … His gaze went back to the green sticker records showing on his laptop. These were solely the records of the children who’d been given the vaccine. There was no information in them about their families. He called Sci-Med and asked for an urgent check on all the families of green sticker children.

‘What are we looking for?’ asked the duty officer.

‘Anyone who has had cause to go to their GP since their children were put on the green sticker list.’

‘You mean, boils on the bum, cut fingers, verrucas …’

‘Everything,’ snapped Steven and put the phone down. He was edgy. His nerves were strung to breaking point. He had the awful feeling that he was on the brink of uncovering a nightmare.

He knew he’d have to wait some time for the information he’d asked for so he got out the codes he’d been given by Linda Haldane and started playing around with them to see if he could make any sense out of what appeared to be a random collection of letters and numbers but obviously wasn’t if Haldane had gone to the trouble of hiding them. There was a very real possibility that the knowledge contained in the codes was the reason Scott Haldane had ended up in woodland with his wrists slashed.

Steven looked for anagrams and acronyms among the letters and for jumbled up phone numbers or dates among the numbers but without success. Apart from anything else, he was having difficulty concentrating when his mind kept straying to what Virginia Lyons’ illness was telling him. He was making coffee when the duty man at Sci-Med called back.

‘Four of us have been working on it non-stop,’ said the man. ‘Turns out quite a few have been to see their doctor. Want the report emailed?’

Steven said that he did and thanked him. He tapped the end of his pen anxiously on the desk until the little envelope icon appeared in the taskbar signifying the arrival of the report. He activated the Sci-Med decoder and started to read through the unscrambled document as it scrolled up on the screen. Ignoring the everyday complaints that were the staple of GPs’ surgeries, Steven was left with a list of twenty-eight close family members of green sticker children who had consulted their doctors about skin problems or loss of sensation in one or more limbs. His fears had been realised. There was now no doubt in his mind. He called Tally.

‘Steven? I’ve only got a moment. I’m in the middle of a ward round.’

‘They’ve been lying.’

‘Who’s been lying?’

‘Any or all of them,’ replied Steven. ‘The toxin in the vaccine story is rubbish. The kids weren’t poisoned at all, they’ve been infected. We’re dealing with an infectious agent here.’ He told her about the family members who’d fallen ill.

‘My God,’ gasped Tally. ‘This just gets worse and worse.’

‘The vaccine itself is the problem,’ said Steven. ‘The contamination story was a blind.’

‘Steven, this is truly awful.’

‘Infectious disease in children is your specialty. Can we meet? I need to pick your brains.’

‘Of course. Look, I’ll get someone to cover for me this afternoon. Do you want to come up here?’

‘Let’s not take any more risks. I don’t want your Special Branch minders knowing about the meeting. Do you think you can give them the slip?’

‘I don’t know … I suppose so …’ said a startled Tally. ‘They’re not expecting me to try to avoid them. After all, they’re on my side. I make a point of saying hello to them.’

‘Give them the slip; drive south on the M1. I’ll meet you in the main restaurant at Watford Gap services at 3 p.m.?’

‘All right. Take care.’

‘You too. Keep looking in your mirror. Make sure you’re not being followed.’

‘And if I am?’

‘Find somewhere to stop and call me.’

Tally put the phone down without saying anything more and Steven knew what she must be thinking. He hated involving her but she was an expert in infectious diseases and that was exactly what he was going to need if he was to make any sense of this latest twist. A wave of frustration washed over him as he recognised that he still couldn’t see motive in any of this. A group of children had been given a supposed vaccine that had infected them with some undetermined microbial agent that was eating away at their flesh and was now being passed on to their families. Who in their right mind would want to cover this up and pretend that nothing had happened? The biotech company who had designed the vaccine? The government officials who had been colluding with them? Or was it conceivable that some other faction was involved? His hand went unconsciously to the holster under his left arm. The odds seemed stacked against him.

‘Who designed this place?’ growled Tally as they entered the restaurant. ‘Hieronymus Bosch?’

‘His sort of style,’ agreed Steven as they walked towards the serving area, thinking that a motorway service station was not an experience to make the human spirit rejoice. The sound of electronic games machines, the smell of fried food and the clatter of dirty plates being collected did little to provide a reassuring ambience.

‘You weren’t followed?’ Steven asked.

Tally shook her head and said, ‘I felt guilty sneaking away but no, I don’t think I was followed.’

‘I need your input. If an infectious agent is involved, as I’m sure it is, why can’t any of the labs grow it?’

‘It’s possibly viral. Many viruses are difficult to grow. You often have to rely on serological tests showing antibodies in the patient’s serum to indicate an underlying infection by a specific virus or group of viruses.’

‘Serology tests were all negative,’ said Steven.

‘Then I’m at a loss,’ said Tally.

‘Why would children respond differently in terms of time to an infectious agent?’

‘Some might be more immune than others, depending on what they’ve been exposed to in the past, or it could be that the agent grows very slowly and victims succumb at different rates.’

‘What sort of agents are we talking about here?’

‘If we’re considering everything, we’d have to include prion diseases like new variant CJD, they can take a very long time to develop, and many viruses can remain in latent form for undetermined periods of time. In the case of bacterial infections, TB can take a couple of months to grow in culture.’

‘I suppose TB would still be the thing to go for here,’ said Steven. ‘After all that’s what the vaccine was made from and is designed to combat but none of the labs managed to grow it …’

‘Because it’s not a live vaccine,’ completed Tally.

‘Suppose it was? They could have been mistaken about that too.’

‘Possible I suppose but from what you’ve told me the symptoms exhibited by the victims are nothing like TB. Tuberculosis is primarily a disease of the lungs, a chest infection.’

‘You’re right,’ sighed Steven.

They sat in silence for a few moments before Steven offered to get Tally more coffee.

‘I’d rather not,’ she said. ‘Have you made any progress with the codes Linda Haldane found?’

Steven shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ He brought out a copy and handed it to Tally.

‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘Not exactly obvious … By the way, there was one thing I meant to mention to you. On the two occasions you’ve been attacked your assailants picked you up at my place.’

‘I was aware of that.’

‘On both occasions you had just paid a visit to St Clair Genomics.’

Steven gave this some thought. ‘The first time I was driving the Porsche. I signed in at Reception and entered my registration number in the visitor book … The second time was on a Saturday morning when St Clair was the only person there. He was expecting me: I’d called the day before. I didn’t sign in but the Honda was the only car in the car park apart from St Clair’s. Someone could have bugged it while I was inside talking to him …’

‘Just a thought,’ said Tally.

‘And a good one. So why would St Clair Genomics want me dead?’ mused Steven. ‘I only know what they and the government told me.’

‘Maybe they thought you might find out what you’ve just told me about the infectious nature of the agent,’ suggested Tally. ‘That they were lying about problems on the production line and that there really is an issue with the vaccine itself. It has the capacity to kill people?’

‘And they of course would stand to lose millions from cancelled government contracts,’ completed Steven. ‘That makes sense but why did they think I would find out?’

Steven slapped his palm against his forehead as the answer came to him. ‘Because of my interest in Scott Haldane,’ he exclaimed. ‘I asked St Clair twice if the name Scott Haldane meant anything to him and he said no. He was lying. Rumours of what Haldane was saying must have got back to the company.’

‘St Clair must have thought you were getting too close to finding out what Haldane knew,’ said Tally.

Steven nodded. ‘That’s why they killed him. A GP, working in an ordinary practice in Edinburgh, figured out there was a major problem with the vaccine the kids had been given and maybe even what it was. He’d been told the kids had been given BCG but somehow he suspected different …’

‘I guess it’ll become clear when we crack the code,’ said Tally.

‘If Scott Haldane worked out what was wrong with the green sticker children then it’s odds on that Alan Nichol, the designer of the vaccine, must have worked it out too. He must have wanted to blow the whistle but his employer didn’t agree.’

‘So they came up with the toxin story to hide the real truth and murdered him when he wouldn’t go along with it.’

‘It’s just a question now of how many snouts are in the trough,’ said Steven thoughtfully.

‘You can’t think the government people knew about this?’ exclaimed Tally. ‘Now we know that it’s all about money.’

‘I’d like to think not,’ agreed Steven. ‘But we know there are individuals who at the very least collaborated in giving an untested vaccine to schoolchildren and finished up giving them an infectious disease which is now spreading to their families. That’s quite a skeleton to have in your cupboard.’

‘I’m certainly glad it isn’t in mine,’ said Tally. ‘I don’t know how they’re going to live with themselves.’

Steven took a moment to reflect and then said, ‘Of course, if they really still believe the toxin story that St Clair came up with and don’t know about the infectious nature of the vaccine, they won’t think they’ve done anything wrong. They’ll believe that their far-sightedness has led to the development of a new vaccine against TB which will shortly be going into production to protect the people. They’ll be expecting knighthoods and rounds of applause from a grateful nation.’

‘But the vaccine is infectious and dangerous,’ Tally protested.

‘We know that but we can’t prove it,’ said Steven. ‘The vaccine has been tested by umpteen labs and no infectious agent has ever been found in it. We know that Scott Haldane and Alan Nichol were murdered and we know why but we haven’t got the slightest shred of evidence.’

‘But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming,’ said Tally.

‘People won’t hear what they don’t want to hear.’

‘But surely no one in their right mind could let vaccination go ahead when you tell them what you know,’ said Tally.

‘St Clair will stick to their story of a rogue toxin and those with reputations on the line will want to believe them.’

‘But you must stop them,’ exclaimed Tally. ‘Sci-Med must stop them. You have to make them believe what you say is true. John Macmillan will believe you surely?’

‘I think he will,’ agreed Steven. ‘But he’ll need conclusive proof too before he can do anything. No one on the government side is going to want to listen even if they think it might be true. They’ll play for time so that they can melt away into the background and become the anonymous faces of yesterday’s government machine, men spending more time with their families or growing grapes in France or writing biographies of past politicians in the autumn sunshine of Umbria. New faces will be left to deal with new emergencies. It’s always the way. One man starts a war, another has to finish it.’

‘My God, do you really believe that?’ asked Tally.

The look on Steven’s face gave her the answer.

‘Then you’ll have to crack Scott Haldane’s code and give them proof they can’t ignore.’

Steven’s response was to hurl himself across the table and topple Tally off her chair to bring both of them crashing to the ground.

TWENTY-ONE

Tally let out a scream but the sound was drowned out by the windows beside them shattering in a hail of automatic gunfire. Steven’s arm held her pinned to the floor, keeping them both huddled behind the brickwork along the base of the windows which stretched the entire length of the wall. The air was full of flying glass and splintered woodwork as bullets ripped into the serving areas. Trolleys jerked and bounced and overturned, display cases exploded and people cowered everywhere, seeking what cover they could, horror etched in their faces. Some screamed constantly, seeming only to pause for breath, others were struck dumb, their faces white as snow.