Dewar remembered the unpleasant smell of the common entrance to the building. He recalled thinking last time that it could have done with a good sluice out with disinfectant. This time however, the same thought stopped him in his tracks. He brought his hand to his forehead and cursed his stupidity. ‘What an idiot!’ he berated himself. He had been assuming that the flat had been lying empty since the night he and Sharon Hannan had left it to take her husband, Tommy to hospital but this wasn’t so. The Public Health people would have been here in the interim! They would have carried out a full fumigation of the place immediately after the couple’s admission to the Western General!
Dewar cursed as he saw the implication of just what that meant. The team would have taken the cat away and most likely had it put down. The cat itself couldn’t get smallpox but its fur would have been seen in the same light as contaminated bedding or clothes — a potential vector for spreading the disease. How could he go back and tell Sharon that? A dead pet at a time like this was all she needed!
He looked down at the keys in his hand, feeling stupid and thinking about turning away but at the same time trying to think of some way the cat might have survived. It was just conceivable that the Public Health people had decided to attempt cleaning it up but that would have meant going to a lot of trouble and it would still have left a risk, albeit a small one. On balance, he felt it more likely they had decided to put it down and take no risks at all. They would have put it to sleep and burned the corpse.
On the other hand, he argued with himself, this had happened at an early stage in the outbreak — before any real pressure had been put on the public health service. Hannan was only their second case. They just might have gone for the difficult option. He took out his mobile phone and called the switchboard at the Scottish Office, asking to be patched through to Mary Martin.
Reception on the phone was a bit poor because of the high tenements. He walked slowly towards the corner of the street as he waited for an answer, watching the strength of signal pick up on the meter.
‘Hello Adam. What can I do for you?’ said Mary Martin’s voice.
‘You can confirm my worst fears, Mary. This is going to sound silly, but when your people carried out the decontamination of the Hannans’ place did they have the cat put down?’
‘The cat, did you say?’
‘Yes. Sharon Hannan had a cat.’
‘Hold on.’
Two young boys, kicking a plastic football backwards and forwards between them came past. One spat at regular intervals like he’d seen his heroes do on TV. Perhaps he thought it aided ball control, Dewar thought idly. The other boy, wearing baggy jeans and baseball cap fashionably reversed, looked up at him and saw the mobile phone. ‘Prat!’ he said on the way past.
Dewar digested the social comment without response and ignored the itch in his right foot. He watched as a huge lorry, laden with beer, according to the markings on its side, came labouring past, heading for the docks. The noise it made drowned out the first part of Mary Martin’s reply. ‘Sorry, can you say again?’
‘I said, I’ve spoken to the team leader. He doesn’t actually remember a cat being in the flat. He certainly didn’t have one put down. If there was one there, of course …’
‘Quite so,’ said Dewar, filling in the details for himself. The gas used in the fumigation procedure would have killed it.
‘Thanks, Mary. I’m obliged.’
Dewar looked at the keys in his hand again and decided to take a look at the flat anyway. He’d better know the worst. It could have been hiding. Cats did have a habit of finding obscure hiding places for themselves, under beds, in cupboards, on top of high shelves, so it was quite possible that the decontamination team had overlooked its presence if they’d had no prior warning.
The flat felt cold and damp and still smelt strongly of the disinfecting gas. Dewar examined the windows and saw that the seals applied during the sterilising procedure had been broken so the team had returned after the fumigation to air the flat. Nevertheless, the smell remained. He suspected it might for a very long time. He imagined some future tenants wondering what it was.
He put the plastic bag containing the cat food on the kitchen table and took off his coat, hanging it on the back of a chair. Starting with the kitchen itself, he walked slowly round each room, expecting, at every turn, to find the corpse of a poisoned cat lying there. The bathroom door was difficult to open and he feared the worst but it was a scrunched up bath mat rather than a feline corpse causing the trouble. He completed a tour of the premises without finding a body.
He then started on the airing cupboard, patting the lagging on the hot water tank to make sure the cat had not slipped inside. He continued his search in the bedroom wardrobe, which was empty but for a few cardboard boxes containing photographs and memorabilia of Sharon and Tommy’s life together He searched through the boxes briefly, sadly contemplating a framed wedding portrait showing the couple smiling at each other.
Now the marriage was over, one way or the other. If Sharon survived she would be a widow, badly scarred and maybe even blind. If she didn’t, the Hannans would just be two more people who’d briefly passed through the tenement in its long life. Dewar put the boxes back and stepped down from the chair to stand there, wondering where to look next.
As he shivered slightly in the cold of the bedroom, he became aware of a scratching sound. His eyes darted to the skirting board where he thought the sound had come from. He waited for movement. Had mice or worse still, rats, moved in to replace the Hannans as tenants? The noise came again but still he saw nothing move despite being sure that the sound was coming from inside this room. Another scratch and his gaze finally settled on the fireplace in an unblinking stare.
Before the decontamination team had set off the gas ‘bomb’ to fumigate the flat they would have sealed up all the doors and windows to make sure that the gas could not escape before it had done its job. The bedroom fireplace would have been seen as a route to the outside; they had sealed it up with plywood secured by adhesive tape. The scratching was coming from behind the seal that the team had obviously forgotten to remove when they returned to air the flat.
Could it be that the cat was behind it? Had it been hiding in the chimney when the team arrived? Maybe it had fled there out of fear when strangers had walked in?
Dewar stood in front of the fireplace, regarding it with a mixture of hope and apprehension. It could still be a mouse or a rat, and angry rats came pretty high up the list of things Dewar would rather not have fly at his face when he removed the plywood seal. He looked around for some kind of protection, quickly deciding that the black-wire fire-guard standing beside the fireplace should suffice.
Before he did anything else he went back to the kitchen and opened one of the tins of the cat food he’d brought and tipped it out into a plastic dish, filling a second dish with water. He brought them both back to the bedroom and placed them under the window. This might be tempting fate, he thought but he needed a positive thought to work on. He really wanted it to be the cat but common sense demanded that he make another trip to the kitchen and return with a heavy soup ladle just in case.
He closed the bedroom door and positioned the fire-guard in front of him with one hand while he started to strip away the adhesive tape with the other. The scratching noise stopped instantly. He couldn’t help but imagine the animal preparing its next move, crouching, tensing its limbs, preparing to spring, ready to fight for its freedom. A frightened cat or an angry rat?