‘Which suits us fine. Think I should call it in?’
‘Nothing illegal about switching on lights during the hours of darkness… Mind you, if the Greens have their way…’
The patrol car drove on.
‘God, I feel ill,’ complained Neil MacBride as he returned to the bedroom in the flat he shared with his wife Morag and their two children on the fourteenth floor of Inchmarin Court. He’d just made his third trip to the lavatory in the past half-hour.
‘Serves you right. How much did you have down the Doocot?’
‘Just my usual. God’s honest truth. Mind you, I had a pie…’
‘God, how often have I heard that? Ten pints then you have a bad pie…’
‘I tell you, I had three pints tops.’
‘Come to think of it, I’m not feeling that brilliant myself.’
‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Neil, doubling up with stomach cramps. ‘Christ, I’ll have to go again.’
‘Maybe it was that chicken we had at tea time,’ Morag called after him.
‘Mummy, I’m not feeling well. I’ve got a sore tummy,’ said a small figure appearing at the door in pyjamas, clutching a teddy bear.
‘Me too,’ said another small voice from the bedroom next door.
It was a scene that was being played out in flats all over the four tower blocks. It was also being played out in five blocks of flats in Manchester, six in London and two in Liverpool.
At six a.m. Morag called the emergency out-of-hours service NHS 24. She couldn’t get through. Neither could callers in Manchester, London and Liverpool. The system was overwhelmed.
‘In point two miles, turn left,’ said the satnav voice. Khan slowed the vehicle, not that they were going very fast on the winding country road.
‘Turn left,’ said the voice.
‘Where?’ exclaimed Khan, straining to see through the darkness. The headlight beams were being diffused by drifting mist.
‘Recalculating.’
‘We must have missed it,’ said Patel. ‘I think there was a track
…’
Khan reversed the vehicle slowly
‘Turn left… Turn left.’
‘There,’ said Patel. ‘It’s a bit overgrown.’
Khan saw the opening and turned into it, shrubbery and branches scraping against the sides of the van. After a bone-jarring journey of a quarter of a mile over potholes that threatened to destroy the van’s suspension, they saw the shape of a farmhouse appear against the sky. It was in darkness.
‘Destination is on your left,’ the voice confirmed.
‘I thought someone would to be here to meet us,’ said Patel.
‘Looks like we’re first.’
They found a key under one of the curling stones that flanked the front door. The house was cold and dark but the sound of a fridge compressor turning on in the kitchen assured them there was power: they turned on the lights. When they opened the fridge door, they found there was food too.
They were joined an hour later by the two who’d carried out the Manchester operation and two hours after that by the two from Liverpool. The young men who’d driven up from London joined them at first light, and they all congratulated each other on a successful mission.
Khan and Patel, who’d managed to grab a few hours’ sleep, said they’d keep watch while the others got some rest.
‘We’re a good bit off the road here,’ said one of the London pair. ‘Mind you, I thought someone would be here to tell us what happens next.
‘Me too,’ said Patel.
‘They’ll be here today,’ said Khan.
TWENTY-THREE
‘You woke me to tell me there’s been an outbreak of gastro-enteritis in Pilton?’ exclaimed Dr Alice Spiers, Director of Public Health for Edinburgh and the Lothians. She was less than pleased at being woken at three a.m. Her husband turned over and pulled the duvet up round his ears.
‘How many?’ was her next exclamation. The repeated answer made her sit upright in bed, now fully awake, her free hand rubbing her forehead nervously. ‘The occupants of four tower blocks…’ she repeated. ‘How on earth…’
‘The Western General and the Infirmary have both been overwhelmed. We just don’t have the capacity for something like this,’ said the caller, Dr Lynn James, communications director with NHS 24.
‘No we don’t,’ agreed Spiers, trying to think ahead. ‘Patients will have to be seen at home while we sort out some emergency beds and figure out just what has happened.’ She was already out of bed and gathering her clothes to take to the bathroom. Her husband turned over again.
‘There are so many I think there has to be an element of hysteria,’ said James. ‘But, on the other hand, some of them really do seem quite ill.’
‘Too early for anything from the lab, I suppose?’
‘’Fraid so.’
Spiers held the phone between her shoulder and chin as she finished dressing. ‘At the risk of being melodramatic, I think I’m going to call a major incident on this.’
‘The numbers warrant it,’ agreed James. ‘But it does seem to be confined to the flats, which is a blessing.’
‘We need a cordon round the buildings. No one goes in or out save for medical and nursing staff until we establish what’s going on. I’ll see to that if you alert GPs in the area. We’ll have to get medical teams organised to treat people at home. I take it the Western and the Infirmary are on full alert.’
‘Everyone has been called back on duty.’
‘The water,’ said Spiers. ‘It had to be the water. They couldn’t all have eaten the same thing.’
‘But the sick are coming from four separate blocks of flats,’ said James.
‘And it wasn’t in the mains or the whole area would be affected,’ agreed Spiers. ‘So four separate storage tanks were…’
‘Poisoned?’
The major incident team assembled at the Western General Hospital at ten a.m. By that time, reports of similar outbreaks had come in from three other cities in the UK, putting beyond doubt the source of the outbreaks. ‘We have been subjected to a terrorist attack,’ announced the chief constable to the meeting. ‘Blocks of flats in four cities have had their water supply contaminated.’
‘Dare we ask with what?’ asked the council chief executive.
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘Do we know if it’s going to be fatal?’
‘We’re not aware of any fatalities at the moment but I understand from the ID unit that several patients are very ill indeed. We hope to have lab results later.’
Neil MacBride, one of the very ill patients, and one of the first to be admitted to the Infectious Disease Unit at the Western General, drifted in and out of an uneasy consciousness, making it difficult for the staff nurse trying to get a saline line into his arm to find a vein. ‘Hold still for me, Neil,’ she murmured, once again avoiding a flailing arm.
Every bed in the unit was full, not that there were many. The days of epidemics were long past… according to political wisdom over the past thirty years. No politicians were involved in the hasty decision to open an empty upstairs ward for business.
A junior doctor, Dr Assad Hussain, seconded from another part of the hospital to help out in the crisis, came over to the nurse who was wrestling with Neil MacBride and held him steady while she got the drip line in. ‘He really needs that,’ said Hussain. ‘He’s dangerously dehydrated.’
‘They all are,’ said the nurse.
‘This place stinks,’ muttered Hussain.
‘They’ve all got rampant diarrhoea,’ whispered the nurse ‘That’s why they’re bl- dehydrated, doctor.’
The young doctor smiled at the put-down but the smile faded from his face as he saw the bedpan on the floor beside the bed, waiting for removal to the sluice room. The cover over it had been dislodged.
‘What are you doing?’ hissed the nurse as she saw him kneel down to examine the contents.
‘Rice water.’
‘What?’
‘I know I’m just another first-year idiot,’ said Hussain, ‘but I recognise the signs. I’ve seen it in my own country. This patient doesn’t have gastro-enteritis… none of them do. They’ve got cholera.’