‘Are you a relative?’
‘No,’ replied Dewar, now having difficulty keeping his temper. ‘Is Inspector Grant still here or not?’ he asked again in level tones devoid of social nicety.
‘Ms Macandrew’s not dead,’ said the man, trumping Dewar’s card.
Dewar felt stunned. He felt his mouth drop open. ‘Not dead,’ he repeated in a bewildered voice.
‘She’s in a bad way; she’s in intensive care but she’s not dead. The police are still here. I’m not sure if your Inspector Grant is one of them.’
Dewar asked for directions and followed them quickly without actually running, a memory from his early medical training. Nurses and doctors don’t run inside the hospital. They can walk fast but they don’t run. He found Grant who had just been briefed on Sandra Macandrew’s injuries by a young looking doctor who’d then disappeared into a side room in the Intensive Care Unit.
‘How is she?’
‘How did you know?’ Grant asked him.
Dewar told him about his phone call to headquarters. ‘What happened to her?’ he asked.
‘She was cycling home from work and some drunken bozo ran into her and didn’t stop. The street was well lit. Her bike had serviceable lights and her jacket had fluorescent tape on it so there was no excuse for not seeing her. He must have been pissed out his mind.’
‘I hope you get the bastard,’ said Dewar looking through the glass panel to the room where Sandra was lying. Two nurses were busy with her. With so much bandaging and intubation it could have been anyone lying there, he thought. ‘What did the doctor say?’
‘Fractured skull, multiple fractures to both arms and legs, her collar bone’s smashed and her pelvis is damaged. I think the bottom line is, touch and go, poor lassie. Malloy’s not going have much of a research group left at this rate. I’m beginning to think that place is jinxed.’
‘Were there any witnesses?’ asked Dewar.
‘Nothing useful. A couple of people said they saw the car speeding off after they heard the crash. They couldn’t tell us the make, not even the colour under the street lights. A light one they thought. There were lots of people about but their eyes automatically went to the victim and stayed there. By the time they thought to look for the car it had gone.’
‘But you’ll get paint scrapings from her bike?’
Grant shrugged. ‘For whatever good that’ll do, unless it was a white Rolls Royce or a yellow Ferrari. If it’s from a blue Ford I don’t fancy our chances.’
‘Have you considered it wasn’t an accident?’ asked Dewar, still looking through the glass panel.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Supposing it was attempted murder.’
Grant came over to join Dewar in looking through the glass partition. ‘Have you any reason to believe that?’ he asked.
‘No,’ admitted Dewar. ‘No good reason but gut feeling tells me it was. I think someone deliberately tried to kill her.’
‘Why?’
Dewar decided to trust Grant completely. ‘The Iraqis have been trying to get their hands on smallpox virus,’ he said.
‘Christ! I thought that was a thing of the past.’
‘It involves reconstructing it from fragments of the viral DNA that are used in research but it’s difficult. I think they tried forcing Ali Hammadi to do it for them but he killed himself so they need someone else. I think Sandra Macandrew might have been approached; we suspected they might try something like this. That’s why I’m back here. If they did and Sandra turned them down they might consider she knew too much. If she were to report them to the authorities we’d have the evidence we need to nail them to the wall. We might still get it if and when she regains consciousness. Are your men planning to stay with her?’
‘An officer will be stationed here throughout the night in case she comes round although the medics don’t think that’s too likely.’
No one can ever be sure in a case like this,’ said Dewar. ‘It’s always hard to define or quantify brain damage. I think it would be a good idea if there was more than one officer with her,’ said Dewar. ‘And they should be made aware of a possible further attempt on her life.’
‘Okay,’ said Grant. ‘But I take it there’s no proof of this?’
‘No,’ agreed Dewar. ‘But I’ll take responsibility, and I want to be the first to talk to her when she comes round.’
‘By rights a serious crime has been committed and we should speak to the victim before …’
Dewar interrupted and held up his hand. ‘I understand that,’ he said ‘But millions of lives could depend on what she has to say,’ interrupted Dewar. ‘If the Iraqis asked her to do something, I have to know what exactly what it was so we can find out what stage they’re at in the reconstruction. I know the right questions to ask. You don’t.’
‘I thought the glamour boys were sitting on the Iraqis,’ said Grant, changing the subject.
‘So did I,’ said Dewar, taking Grant’s point. If MI5 and Special Branch were watching the Iraqis’ every move, how come they could mount an attempt on Sandra Macandrew’s life?
ELEVEN
When Dewar opened his eyes in the morning, the first thing he considered was the fact that no one had called him during the night. He threw back the covers, swung his legs round and dialled the hospital, to ask about Sandra Macandrew’s condition.
No change, still critical and deeply unconscious, was the report from the intensive care unit. The policemen outside her room had had an uneventful night too, without any other kind of problem. No one had attempted to visit Sandra.
Dewar was having breakfast in the hotel dining room when he was joined by Simon Barron. Without saying so, Barron gave the impression that he had been up for hours. Probably run ten miles and swam across the Forth to pick up his morning paper, thought Dewar uncharitably.
‘Hoped I might catch you,’ said Barron. ‘Have you got the list?’
‘It’s ready,’ replied Dewar. ‘Coffee?’
‘Never touch the stuff.’
Probably impedes performance, thought Dewar, refilling his own cup. ‘Did any of your lot slip up yesterday?’ he asked.
‘In what way?’
‘Could the Iraqis have gotten out to play without you knowing about it?’
‘Which ones? We’re just watching Siddiqui and Abbas,’ replied Barron. The students come and go as they please. Why d’you ask?’
Dewar thought for a moment before replying. He was considering what Barron had said about the students, in particular the possibility that one or more of the students might have been recruited to Siddiqui’s cause.
‘One of the graduate students from the Institute of Molecular Sciences was involved in a hit and run incident last night. She was knocked off her bike as she was cycling home from the lab; she’s critically ill. It could have been an accident — the police thought some drunk might have hit her, but her name’s Sandra Macandrew and she’s on the list.’
After a moment of blankness, realisation dawned on Barron’s face. ‘You think it wasn’t an accident? It had something to do with her being on that list?’
‘If she’s on the list we have to consider that she may have been approached by the Iraqis. For the sake of argument let’s assume she was and she turned them down, probably even threatened to go to the police. What d’you think would happen then?’
‘Point taken,’ agreed Barron. ‘That’s quite a thought. Turning down the Iraqi offer would be like signing your own death warrant.’
‘On the other hand, the Iraqis must know that most scientists would be outraged at being asked to do what they suggest. They can’t be planning to kill them all so they must have some way of deciding what individuals might be amenable to a business arrangement?’
‘They’d have to do their homework,’ said Barron. ‘Make discrete inquiries, find out who’s disgruntled, who has financial problems, who has secrets they’d rather not have made public, that sort of thing.’