What was more important was that there was no sign of Le Grice having been in the room, no tell-tale foot or hand prints in the dirt and dust. Dewar came out on to the landing and started to climb up to the next level, the spiral stone steps inducing vague feelings of claustrophobia as he lost the daylight of one level and entered almost complete darkness before emerging into the light of the next. There were no working lights on the stair walls or in the ceiling; the electricity to this part of the building had been cut off when occupancy ceased.
Dewar stood for a moment at the head of the stairs, just listening. There was no sound save for the distant background rumble of the traffic outside the hospital gates. Standing perfectly still and listening however, had heightened his other senses. The air still smelt musty and unpleasant but there was something else in it, a vague suggestion of cologne. He recognised it. Le Grice was somewhere up here.
Dewar’s heart rate rose until he was physically aware of it beating in his chest. He supposed he should start back down the stairs and tell Grant so that they could summon assistance but, if at all possible, he would prefer to speak to Le Grice alone about the smallpox virus and how far he’d gone with it so far. Once the police were involved with handcuffs and the attendant trauma of arrest he feared that Le Grice might just clam up and say nothing. If he could persuade him to talk before officialdom stepped in he might just have a better chance of getting at the truth. He’d have to be careful but if the worst came to the worst he was as big and as strong as the Frenchman. If he kept his wits about him and didn’t walk into any kind of trap or ambush, he should be all right.
He took a step towards the tower room on this level; the door was almost closed but not quite. He looked above it to see if anything had been mounted there to fall on unwary heads; there was nothing. There was of course, the possibility that Le Grice could be waiting just inside, his body pressed to the wall ready to jump him as he walked through. He pushed the door open gently but didn’t enter. The door hinges creaked in protest at having their slumber disturbed.
To his surprise, Dewar found Le Grice sitting there facing him. He was directly opposite the door and sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him, his back propped up against the circular wall. It was as if he’d been waiting for him to arrive. Although Le Grice could hardly have been deemed to have adopted an aggressive stance, Dewar was still wary of the man. He wasn’t dealing with an idiot.
‘Hello Pierre,’ he said quietly.
Le Grice nodded. ‘I ‘ad a feeling it might be you,’ he said, his accent seemingly more pronounced than on past occasions. ‘I misjudged you.’
‘I hoped you might tell me all about it before the police join us.’
Le Grice shrugged. ‘What’s to tell? If it hadn’t been for that stupid, interfering girl everything would ‘ave been all right. She just didn’t understand. She would have benefited too from access to more fragments, so would Peter but no, the silly bitch decided to — ow you say? Cut off her nose to spite her face.’
‘Sandra?’
‘Bloody Sandra.’
Not exactly filled with remorse, thought Dewar, steeling himself to keep his cool in the interests of learning as much as possible. ‘How much did they pay you to do it?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The Iraqis.’
‘What Iraqis?’
Dewar sighed and said, ‘What’s the point of denying it now?’ he said. ‘If you’ve any decency in you at all you’d make a clean breast of things and tell me everything. We’ve got to make a start on minimising the damage. Christ man, don’t you care at all? Don’t you realise what you’ve done?’
‘I broke the rules, the holy rules, the sacred bloody rules and that little bitch decided to ruin my career. ’Ow long will I get?’
‘If Sandra dies, thirty years. If she doesn’t maybe a bit less. But if you’ve reconstructed that virus and handed it over they’re going to bring back hanging specially for you and I’ll be cheering in the front row so tell me, how far did you get?’
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ said Le Grice.
Dewar shrugged and said, ‘If you really want to play it that way it’s time we were going.’
Le Grice shook his head slowly. ‘I think not,’ he said.
Dewar felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise; he became very wary. Although Le Grice was still sitting on the floor and there was no way he could mount an attack, the words made him feel uneasy. The feeling heightened when he saw Le Grice take out a surgical scalpel from his inside pocket and take off the blade protector.
‘That’s what you cut the ventilator with,’ he said, remembering the clean, sharp incisions in the plastic tubing.
Le Grice smiled and moved to bring his legs round. ‘I really did underestimate you,’ he said.
‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ cautioned Dewar, as Le Grice started to move into a kneeling position. ‘You’re not going anywhere. You must see that. There’s no way out. The police are downstairs.’
Le Grice nodded slowly and said, ‘Oui, all over. My hopes for the vaccine … my career … my ambitions … my freedom … all over. You don’t ‘ave to tell me that. I know.’ He smiled wanly and with a sudden darting movement of his hand he brought the scalpel blade cleanly and deeply across his own throat.
Dewar stepped back as a fountain of crimson splashed into the dust at his feet. Le Grice tipped over on to his face and lay in a crumpled heap.
‘Oh, my God,’ whispered Dewar.
‘Hello! Anyone up there?’ came Grant’s voice from the stairs.
‘Here,’ answered Dewar. He waited, motionless until Grant joined him.
‘Christ almighty,’ said Grant. ‘I hope you didn’t do that.’
Dewar shook his head.
‘Bloody considerate of him, I’d say,’ said Grant. ‘Saves us a great deal of time and trouble, not to mention the cost of a trial and legal aid to fund some smart-arsed lawyer to claim he was actually half way up the bloody Eiffel Tower at the time of the incident. Why’d he do it?’
‘Like we said, he was a very bright man. He saw the future and it didn’t work for him.’
‘Did he tell you what you wanted to know?’
Dewar shook his head. ‘Not a thing.’
‘So where does that leave us?’
‘With something unpleasant to do. I’m going to close down Steven Malloy’s lab and have everything in it taken away.’
‘Christ, he’ll love that.’
‘There’s no alternative. The place is full of bottles and tubes with labels that mean nothing to anyone except their originator. Trying to pick out Le Grice’s stuff from the rest in the absence of Ali Hammadi and now Sandra Macandrew is a non-starter. The only way we can be sure we’ve destroyed whatever Le Grice was working on is to put the whole damned lot into the steriliser. We’ll analyse what we can but the main priority is safety.’
‘I’m glad you’re the one going to be telling Malloy,’ said Grant. ‘This is going to put an end to his research career.’
‘It might also destroy two Ph.D. theses and what’s left of a technician’s working life.’
Dewar waited until Le Grice’s body had been bagged and taken away before driving over to the Institute of Molecular Sciences. He showed his ID to the two uniformed policemen on the door but didn’t tell them that Le Grice wouldn’t be coming after all. He found Steven Malloy going through racks of tubes that he’d removed from a lab fridge. George Ferguson and Peter Moore were removing the contents of a chest freezer and stacking them on an adjacent bench. There was a large wire basket sitting on a table in the centre of the room. Dewar guessed that this was for Le Grice’s stuff.