‘Aren’t you reading too much into this?’ asked John Macmillan. ‘I mean, it could be that Porton were just a bit slow in getting their act together.’
‘Porton and MI5 slow off the mark when the possibility of a new killer agent was in the offing?’ exclaimed Steven. ‘I don’t think so. Public Health had had time to examine the chamber, take samples, confer with the hospital guys and actually work out what had caused Motram’s illness before they arrived. If the security services had really believed there was a possibility of something new and nasty being down there…’
‘Public Health would never have got near the place,’ Macmillan conceded.
‘They were putting on a show of turning up and taking samples for our benefit.’
‘But why?’
Steven took a moment before saying slowly and deliberately, ‘I thought about that all the way down. The only explanation I could come up with was that MI5 knew exactly what happened to John Motram: they might even have been the cause of it, with or without the collusion of Porton Down.’
Macmillan wore the expression of a man who had just been given some very bad news. ‘And why would they do something like that?’
‘I’ve no idea. I may be quite wrong, but I’m now pretty sure Motram’s illness has more to do with a dead marine and a bone marrow transplant than it does with mouldering corpses in a medieval Scottish tomb.’
‘What do we know about this dead marine you’ve suddenly become interested in?’
‘Nothing as yet. I thought I’d talk to you first, see what you thought.’
‘I take it that means you’d like to run with it?’ asked Macmillan, without much enthusiasm.
‘If only because someone at 5 or Porton thought they’d put one over on us.’
‘Not a good reason,’ said Macmillan flatly.
Steven tried again. ‘Cassandra Motram is a very nice woman, a hard-working GP whose husband — also a decent person by all accounts and a brilliant academic in his field — is now close to death. I think MI5 had something to do with it, or know who did.’
‘Better,’ said Macmillan, ‘much better. I’ll have Jean come up with what she can on the dead marine. Meanwhile, perhaps you can find out something about the transplant Motram was involved in?’
‘On my way.’
The sun was shining when Steven left the Home Office so he chose to walk back home along the Embankment, pausing to sit on a bench and watch the river traffic pass by. He planned to phone Cassie Motram later to ask for more details about her husband’s dealings with the London hospital, but for the moment he concentrated on the toxic spores and how they came to poison Motram. If Steven was right about MI5’s knowing more than they were letting on, it raised the possibility that Motram had been poisoned deliberately.
No one had been in the tomb before Motram so the spores couldn’t have been planted there: the poisoning must have taken place before Motram went into the tomb. This would explain why Kenneth Glass and his people had failed to find the deadly spores in the air samples they’d taken from the chamber. There never had been any spores in the chamber.
But if this were so, Motram’s attacker would have had to be in a position to administer the toxin at exactly the right time in order to create the red herring of his being affected by something in the tomb, something that the lab would uncover and blame on the dust. That surely narrowed the field down to Motram’s three colleagues; the two men from the geo-survey firm, and the on-site observer from Historic Scotland, Alan Blackstone.
Not a promising cast of suspects, but then Steven remembered that others had been present on site that morning. Tony Fielding, lying in Borders General Hospital, had told him that people from Health and Safety and a doctor from Public Health had been present before work started, and what’s more, the four involved in the opening of the tomb had been given injections just before they started work. Injections.
Steven called Kenneth Glass at Public Health.
‘Hello, Steven,’ said Glass, thinking he would be calling about the screening of the chamber. ‘All samples from Dryburgh are still negative, you’ll be relieved to hear.’
‘Thanks, Kenneth, but it’s actually something else I’m calling about. One of your medics was on site the morning the tomb at Dryburgh was opened. He took some health details from the guys involved and gave them anti-tetanus injections.’
‘Really? That’s news to me. Do you have a name?’
Steven felt his blood run cold at Glass’s response. ‘Afraid not. I’ll try and get one if you like.’
‘No, it’s okay. I’ll ask around and get back to you.’
Steven realised that he didn’t have names for the Health and Safety representatives either but maybe Motram had mentioned them to his wife. He’d ask Cassie later when he called.
His phone rang and he just knew it was going to be bad news.
‘Hi, Steven. I’m afraid no one here knows anything about giving anti-tetanus shots to the guys at Dryburgh. In fact, at that time, we didn’t even know it was happening.’
‘Thanks,’ said Steven. ‘I was afraid of that.’
He ended the call and shivered as he thought about his latest discovery. It now seemed likely — even probable — that someone had turned up at Dryburgh Abbey, purporting to be from Public Health, and injected John Motram with the mycotoxin that had scrambled his brain. That explained perfectly the absence of spores in the air samples and the ‘large dose’ hypothesis. But only John Motram had been targeted. Three others had received injections without any ill effects. It had been a specific attack on Motram… because… he knew something about a marine who had been killed in Afghanistan?
This changed everything. He decided that a phone call to Cassie Motram would not be good enough; he’d go back up north and talk to her personally. He also needed to see Tony Fielding again to find out what he could tell him about the people from Health and Safety and Public Health or, more correctly, the people who weren’t from Health and Safety and Public Health. He’d phone Cassie to let her know he was coming and then drive on up to Borders General to talk to Fielding.
Steven was still thinking about it all when he got back to his flat. He didn’t know much about mycotoxins but Porton Down certainly would. Someone somewhere had taken the decision not to kill Motram but to scramble his brain instead. ‘All heart, you bastards,’ he murmured as he filled the coffee holder and switched on the espresso machine.
TWENTY-TWO
Steven collected the file on the dead marine from the Home Office before setting out for the north. Jean Roberts apologised for the lack of detail but she had only had time to get her hands on the official press release from the MOD and add in what she could garner from the newspapers. John Macmillan wasn’t in the office so Steven didn’t get the chance to tell him about the bogus Public Health official and what he’d deduced. He told Jean he’d call him later.
After an uneventful drive with only one stop for coffee at a service station, which had given him the chance to read through the slim file on Michael Kelly, he drew up outside Cassie Motram’s cottage: it was shortly after one o’clock. Cassie told him that she’d made sandwiches in case he hadn’t stopped for lunch. Steven smiled, thinking that this was exactly the kind of thing Cassie Motram would do. He accepted gratefully.
He was invited to take a seat in the small conservatory stuck on the back of the house where he sat and looked out on a picture-book country garden while Cassie went to fetch them, calling through from the kitchen that she had hoped to have been able to talk outside in the garden.