Another nod.
‘There are lots of people with DNA skills but not that many with practical experience of working with high risk micro organisms. Basically it would come down to the people in my lab and those in Gary Cairns’s lab. We work with HIV so we’re used to handling dangerous material.’
‘Point taken.’
‘We could leave out first year grad students. Second year? Possible. Post docs, yes and of course, Gary Cairns and me, I suppose.’
‘Technical staff?’
Malloy thought for a moment. ‘Andrea in Cairns’s lab would be a possibility. She has the right background and she’s been here a while. She might be able to do it at a pinch.’
‘George Ferguson?’
‘No experience of DNA manipulation, technically able and well used to handling dangerous organisms but wrong background for this sort of thing.’
‘So how many are we talking about?’
Malloy brought his shoulders up to his ears and made shaking gestures with both hands. ‘I’d go for eight.’ he said.
‘I need their names,’ said Dewar.
‘This is giving me a bad feeling,’ said Malloy, as he got up. ‘It feels like I’m betraying my colleagues. He fetched pen and paper from his desk.
‘You’re not,’ Dewar assured him. ‘You’re simply appraising their competence and expertise.’
Malloy wrote down the eight names and handed it over. ‘Mind you, I’d bet my life savings against any of these people being involved in anything like this,’ he said.
‘And I wouldn’t dream of betting against you,’ said Dewar. ‘If only our Iraqi friends would get the hell out of the city then we could all stop being so paranoid and rest easy.’ He declined the offer of a second glass of wine and was escorted to the door. ‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone else about our meeting.’
‘It’s hardly something I’m likely to brag about,’ said Malloy.
Dewar drove back to the city, taking his time on the narrow roads in the dark In many places they had acquired a coating of wet leaves, it would be all too easy to come to grief under heavy braking and finish up among the trees whose tall, dark presence blotted out the sky. He felt better when he’d got back on to the main road and had a clear run back into the city.
Once back in his hotel room he phoned Karen to exchange notes about the day and make arrangements for the week end.
‘You won’t think of an excuse not to come down and see my mother will you?’ asked Karen.
‘Of course not,’ Dewar assured her, his spirits falling at the thought of an evening in the company of Karen’s mother. He found her hard to take.
‘Good, so why don’t we say that you’ll be down for supper on Saturday and you’ll stay over till Sunday?’
‘Fine,’ said Dewar. ‘I take it I’ll be on the couch downstairs?’
‘You know how Mother feels about that sort of thing,’ said Karen.
‘I know,’ agreed Dewar.
‘Besides … she goes out to her church social on Sunday afternoon, that’ll give us plenty of time …’
‘Here’s to Sunday afternoon,’ said Dewar.
Dewar entered the names of the eight people Malloy had given him into his laptop as part of his next report for Sci-Med. He looked at them, white letters on a blue screen. He hadn’t been quite honest with Malloy. It wasn’t just a matter of compiling a list of people with the right know-how. Once Barron had the names, all the people on that list would be subject to round the clock surveillance just like the two Iraqis. To imagine anything else would be naive. Steven Malloy and Gary Cairns headed it, Pierre Le Grice and Simone Clary were next then Sandra Macandrew and Kurt Lehman, finally Andrea Bowman and Josh Phelps. He assumed the names he didn’t recognise were people working in the Cairns lab. It might be worth running the names through the police computer. He’d bet on eight zeros coming up but it would be a sensible, routine thing to do and Sci-Med liked him to do sensible routine things from time to time. You never know, he assured himself, one of them might turn out to be a mad axe-killer. He called Grant at police headquarters on the off chance he might be there although it was now after ten. He wasn’t there but the man who answered from Grant’s office — Sergeant Nick Johnstone, said that he was still on duty.
‘There was a nasty hit and run incident over in Marchmont;’ said the sergeant. ‘A lassie got knocked off her bike; I think she was killed. He went over to the hospital about an hour ago. Anything I can help with? The Inspector said if you called at any time we were to play ball, to use his expression.’
‘I was going to ask him to run some names through the computer for me,’ said Dewar.
‘Fire away,’ said Johnstone.
Dewar read out the list and Johnstone wrote them down with Dewar providing spelling where necessary.
‘Wait a minute … ‘ said Johnstone.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Just a minute … ‘
Dewar heard the phone being put down. The wait started to seem endless when Johnstone finally returned and the receiver was fumbled before being picked up successfully.
‘I thought so,’ said Johnstone. ‘The lassie in Marchmont, she’s on your list, if it’s the same one. Sandra Macandrew. Student at the Institute of something or other?’
‘That’s her,’ said Dewar, feeling as if a heavy weight had suddenly descended on his shoulders. ‘You said she was dead?’
‘The report from the attending officers said she was a gonner.’
‘I see,’
When Inspector Grant heard she was a student at the institute he said he was going up to the hospital. That was the last I heard. That was about an hour ago.’
‘Where did they take her?’
‘The Royal Infirmary.’
‘Thanks,’ said Dewar, feeling numb.
‘Do you want me to call you back when the computer’s had a look through your names?’ asked Johnstone.
‘No, I’ll get back to you later. I’m going to see if I can catch Grant at the hospital.’
Dewar felt sick in his stomach. He hadn’t known Sandra Macandrew well but well enough to like her as a person and see that she was a bright student with a promising future. Now she was dead. Hit and run, Johnstone had said, the second person from Malloy’s lab to die in the space of a month. The uneasy feeling he’d been — carrying around with him had just multiplied tenfold.
Mounting frustration at the slowness of the traffic was pushed to even higher levels at not being able to find a parking place near the hospital. He tried reminding himself there was no hurry; Sandra was dead, but his instincts overruled his reason. His gut feeling was that somehow Sandra’s death must have had something to do with the smallpox thing and the sooner he got to the hospital and talked to Grant about it the better.
He saw a Ford Fiesta start to vacate a place by the kerb so he braked abruptly to the annoyance of the driver behind. He ignored the angry tooting and waited until the Fiesta had pulled away before putting the Rover in nose first and abandoning it with its tail sticking out untidily.
‘Arsehole!’ shouted the driver who’d been held up. Dewar ignored him and headed for the hospital. He only had eyes for the infirmary which loomed in front of him against the night sky. It was an old fashioned hospital, all towers and turrets on the outside — like a Disney castle, with endless corridors and peeling ceilings on the inside. Light spilled out from the A amp;E entrance, lighting up the ambulance apron where two vehicles stood waiting for fate to play its next card. Dewar entered through the automatic doors and approached the desk.
‘Sandra Macandrew,’ he said to the clerk. ‘Hit and run victim, brought in dead about an hour ago. Are the police still here? I’m looking for Inspector Grant in particular.’
The clerk looked at him over his glasses. ‘And you are?’
Dewar showed him his ID.
‘Are you Ms Macandrew’s own doctor?’ asked the man.
‘No,’ answered Dewar, wondering why the question was asked in the first place and what the politically correct term was these days for mental defective. Differently intelligent, he supposed. Right now he didn’t feel like going to war with obstructive officialdom.