Bannerman ploughed through the university mail with a heavy heart and growing impatience. How could so many people spend so much time on so little? he wondered, as he had so often in the past. He reminded himself that if anyone could, academics could. They seemed to be blessed with an innate capacity to say absolutely nothing, at enormous length. ‘Three pages!’ he muttered angrily, ‘three bloody pages on car-parking at the hospital.’ And what was the bottom line? There wasn’t one as far as he could discern, but that was par for the course. Actual conclusions were a grey area in academia; academics were happier with a range of possibilities. And decisions? Perish that fascist thought.
Bannerman screwed the missive into a ball and chucked it across the room just as Olive came in. He had to smile sheepishly in apology.
‘Already?’ she said. ‘Your holiday hasn’t done you much good.’
‘It was no holiday,’ said Bannerman, with a hint of bitterness. ‘Would you get me the MRC please Olive.’
‘Milne.’
‘It’s Ian Bannerman. I’m back at St Luke’s.’
‘Glad you made it back safely Doctor. What can I do for you?’
‘I requested that the shore at Inverladdie Farm be monitored for signs of radioactivity?’
‘Ah yes,’ replied Milne, with what Bannerman thought was a hint of embarrassment. ‘We did ask the Health and Safety Executive to do this …’
‘And did they?’ asked Bannerman.
‘They did, and they found nothing.’
‘Nothing,’ repeated Bannerman, feeling that there was more to come.
‘But … they did report that the area had been cleaned.’
‘Cleaned?’
‘Sprayed with detergent, recently.’
‘Damnation,’ said Bannerman. ‘There was no trace of detergent when I was there. They must have treated the area after I left.’
‘Unfortunately, there is no law against it,’ said Milne cautiously, as if fearing Bannerman’s response.
‘So they get away with it!’
‘I’m afraid so. There is no evidence that the shore was ever contaminated. I think we have to be philosophical about it Doctor.’
‘Quite,’ said Bannerman, and put down the phone. It rang again almost immediately. Bannerman snatched it and snapped, ‘Yes?’
‘Well hello to you too,’ said Stella.
‘Sorry Stella,’ said Bannerman, ‘I’m a bit …’
‘I can tell you’re a bit…,’ said Stella. ‘I phoned to see if we could have lunch. I’m not in theatre this afternoon.’
‘I see,’ said Bannerman. He hesitated for a moment trying to assemble his thoughts into some kind of order, but failed. His mind was a maelstrom.
‘Of course, if you’re too busy
‘No, no, I’m just a bit upset that’s all. Lunch will be fine. I’ll see you in the car-park at one?’
‘Look forward to it,’ said Stella and the line went dead.
Bannerman replaced the receiver slowly and tried to put thoughts of Achnagelloch out of his mind. He wondered what Stella would have to say about Shona when he told her. Would she be happy for him? Or would she see it as an opportunity for sophisticated sarcasm? He lit a cigarette and massaged his forehead with the tips of his fingers. He opened his desk drawer to see if that was where the cleaner had hidden the ash tray and his eyes alighted on three microscope slides propped up in the slide rack in the corner. They were the slides sent to the MRC by Lawrence Gill and forwarded by the MRC, to him, for his opinion. The slides that had started the whole furore. He hadn’t returned them to the MRC. He decided to have another look and took them over to his microscope.
He focused on the first slide with a low power objective then swung the high power oil immersion lens into play. If anything it was even clearer than he had remembered it. A perfect illustration of the havoc wreaked on the human brain by Creutzfeld Jakob Disease. He read the little label on the end of the slide and saw that it had written on it in pencil, G. Buchan.
This information had been irrelevant the first time but now it meant something — as did the initials, MN on each of the slides. Morag Napier had prepared them. This section had been made from Gordon Buchan’s brain. Buchan had been the married sheep worker. He remembered seeing the cottage on Inverladdie where he and his wife May had lived. He wondered if May Buchan had come back from holiday yet and whether or not she was living with her parents in Stobmor as Sproat suggested she would. He scanned the brain section, looking at the cells which had once made the decisions in Gordon Buchan’s life.
A knock came to the door and Bannerman said, ‘Come in,’ without turning round.
‘Nice to see you back,’ said Charlie Simmons’ voice.
‘Hello Charlie, how are things?’ asked Bannerman, still without turning round.
‘No real problems. We had a bit of trouble with the freezing microtome but it’s been sorted out.’
‘What sort of trouble?’
‘It was cutting tissue sections too thick. It’s getting old. Maybe you could think about requesting a new one, or putting in a grant request to somebody?’
‘I’ll try Charlie,’ said Bannerman. He knew that hospital equipment funds had been used up for the current financial year and any request would just go into the queue for next year beginning in April. A grant request was a possibility however. Milne at the MRC had dangled that particular carrot before him, for whatever reason.
‘Are you taking back control of the lab immediately?’ asked Charlie.
Bannerman shook his head and said, ‘No, I’ll wait until Monday. I’ll ease myself back in gently.’
‘Karen’s leaving,’ said Charlie.
‘Why?’
‘She’s been offered a job in one of the private hospitals.’
‘More money?’
‘More money,’ agreed Charlie.
‘The hospital board will probably freeze the post,’ said Bannerman.
‘I was afraid of that,’ said Charlie, ‘but we’ll manage. We always do.’
‘I’ll press for a replacement as hard as I can,’ said Bannerman.
Charlie Simmons nodded and asked, ‘Anything interesting?’ He nodded in the direction of the microscope.
Bannerman got up and said, Take a look. Tell me what you see.’
Simmons adjusted the width of the eye-pieces and started to examine the slide. A few moments passed in silence then he said, ‘Extensive spongioform vacuolation … senile decay … and fibrils which I think might be SA fibrils … I’d go for Creutzfeld Jakob.’
‘Me too. This is the reason I went north. The slide was made from the brain of a thirty-year-old who died after a three week illness.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘That’s what I said when they first told me,’ said Bannerman. ‘In fact I still can’t get over it. That’s why I’m looking again.’
‘I’m glad it’s not April the first,’ said Charlie. ‘I’d never have believed you. I would have said someone had switched the slides.’
Bannerman put down his knife and fork; everything tasted like cardboard and the restaurant was unpleasantly crowded.
‘Not hungry?’ asked Stella who seemed not to notice.
It told Bannerman that there was nothing wrong with the food or the restaurant. It was the way he was feeling. ‘Not really,’ he replied.
‘You shouldn’t let it get to you like this,’ said Stella. ‘You did your best to get evidence. The main thing is that this mutant virus or whatever it was is now dead and gone.’
‘Like Lawrence Gill and the three men in Achnagelloch,’ said Bannerman.
‘From what you’ve told me, Gill could conceivably have slipped to his death. You don’t know for sure that he was murdered. As for the three sheep workers, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could happen to any of us.’
‘But the missing brain samples, the fire at the medical school — doesn’t that tell you something?’ asked Bannerman.