by Peter May
MacNeil forced himself to meet the pathologist’s eye. ‘Is that a problem?’
‘She’s sick.’
‘Oh.’
‘But I can make a general assessment, spot any major bone injuries and missing parts, recover tissue from the marrow and order up some toxicology.’ He paused. ‘I’d suggest we get Amy in. She’s good with skulls, and she’s done a lot of work on human ID.’
MacNeil felt his heart skip a beat at the mention of her name, and he wondered if it showed in his face. A slight blush, perhaps. He sensed Tom watching him closely, as if looking for some sign, but if he was it did not betray itself in his eyes. ‘Sure, if that’s what you think,’ MacNeil said. He turned and reached up a hand to be helped out.
‘Careful,’ Tom said quickly. ‘Some people think it’s dangerous to turn their back on me.’
MacNeil turned his head slowly to look at him. It was a dark, dangerous look that needed no words.
Tom smiled. ‘You’re so butch.’
Silence hung over the site, like a low-lying fog. It was extraordinary, really, here in the very heart of the Capital. No traffic noise, no voices raised in casual communication or amusement, no overhead roar of jet engines as planes circled towards Gatwick or Heathrow. Just the plaintive cries of the seagulls which had flown up the estuary to escape the stormy weather in the North Sea, fragments of white wheeling overhead, for all the world like vultures waiting for death.
Death had already come, but there was nothing left on the bones to pick.
MacNeil was aware of all the faces watching him. The man from the ministry stood off, arms folded across his chest. ‘Well?’
‘I want everyone off the site,’ MacNeil said. ‘We’re going to seal it off and make a search.’
The man from the ministry tilted his head to one side. Only his eyes betrayed his anger. ‘There’ll be trouble,’ he said.
‘There’ll be trouble if anyone doesn’t do as they’re told.’ MacNeil raised his voice so that everyone on the site could hear him. ‘This is a murder scene.’
II.
‘What the fuck did you say to him?’
‘I told him it was a murder scene and we were going to search the site.’
Laing looked at him sceptically. ‘Well, whatever you said, he’s pretty pissed off. You any idea what kind of shite’s coming down on me right now?’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Can you?’ Laing glanced at his watch, then picked up the remote to turn on the TV on the filing cabinet. ‘You know, when I came down to the Met from Glasgow thirty years ago, I thought I’d left cowboys like you behind. People are better mannered down here, know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, they threaten you more politely.’
Laing glared at him. ‘I never imagined for a minute I’d be haunted by some Highland hard case just as I’m looking forward to retirement.’ He turned up the sound on the television. They were reporting again on the death of the Prime Minister, and Laing clearly wanted to hear it.
MacNeil glanced at the framed photograph of the DCI and his wife which sat on the bookcase behind his desk. They were an odd couple. Laing came from the old school of working-class Glasgow cop. He swore, he made crude jokes, he was physically aggressive. He wore Brylcreem in his hair, and slapped Old Spice freely on to shiny, shaved, drink-veined cheeks. You smelled him before you saw him. His wife, on the other hand, was a genteel lady, a doctor’s daughter from Chelsea who liked opera and theatre and lectured in English and drama at the Queen Mary University of London. They lived somewhere out west, in a large, terraced town house. Laing was a different man in her company. MacNeil had no idea what she saw in him, but whatever it was, she brought out the best in him. Some people did that to you. MacNeil reflected that while Martha might not have brought out the worst in him, she certainly hadn’t brought out the best. He envied Laing his relationship.
He glanced through the open door into the detectives’ room. There were only a couple of DCs on duty, and a handful of uniform and administrative staff. The pandemic had taken its toll here, too.
Something on the news caught his attention, and he turned to see a line-up of dark-suited men sitting at a table groaning with microphones. They all wore masks, as did the journalists firing the questions. Centre table was a man whose face had become familiar during these last few months, even behind the mask. He had large, dark eyes, beneath thick black eyebrows that contrasted with blond, crew-cut hair, and wore distinctive silver-rimmed oval spectacles. He had a creamy, smooth voice which spoke English with just the hint of a foreign accent whose origin was impossible to define. His name was Roger Blume, and he was the doctor in charge of Stein-Francks’ FluKill Pandemic Task Force.
‘Fucking leeches!’ Laing’s expletive echoed MacNeil’s unspoken thought. ‘I see their share price is up again.’
Stein-Francks was the French-based pharmaceutical company whose antivirus drug, FluKill, had been singled out by the World Health Organisation during the run-up to the pandemic as the remedy most likely to be effective against the bird flu, should it ever become transmissible from human to human. The WHO had also warned that such an eventuality was inevitable. As a result, those countries around the world who could afford it had placed more than three-and-a-half billion euros’ worth of orders. Britain alone had bought nearly fifteen million courses of the drug to treat a quarter of the population. Health and law enforcement workers were to be the first in line to receive it. Not that it was a cure. The best that could be hoped for was an amelioration of symptoms, and a shortening of the course of the flu, making survival more likely. And with a mortality rate of nearly eighty per cent, anything that could improve your odds was in huge demand.
The Stein-Francks press conference was to announce a further stepping up of FluKill production to meet the increased requirements. A cynical journalist amongst the press pack asked Dr Blume if the increase in production might have anything to do with the announcement by several developing countries that they intended to produce their own generic form of the drug. Blume easily shrugged off the clear implication that his company was only interested in maintaining its monopoly.
‘We have a brand-new facility in France, custom-made to produce FluKill,’ he said. ‘It comes on-line next week. It has been a long time in the planning. So this is no rush move to fight off the competition. We can produce the drug faster and more efficiently than anyone else. And we have all the quality controls in place to ensure its effectiveness.’
‘Your vaccine didn’t prove very effective.’ The journalist’s tone reflected the general feeling of resentment around the country that anyone should profit from the disaster.
‘A matter of great regret,’ said Blume. ‘Not for any crass, commercial reason, but because of the lives it might have saved.’
‘And why didn’t it work?’ Another voice fired off its accusation.
‘Because we guessed wrong,’ Blume said simply. ‘Bird flu has been around for a long time, but it was only in 1997 that we confirmed the first human case of it. On that occasion, the virus was transmitted from bird to human. But from that moment on, it was only a matter of time before the bird virus combined with a human flu virus, making it transmissible from human to human. We knew when that happened, the human race would be in big trouble. A pandemic was inevitable, and would almost certainly be worse than the Spanish Flu of 1918. That killed fifty million people. So the race was on to find a way of beating it this time before it began.’ He ran a hand back across his bristly skull. ‘We, along with many others, tried to create in the laboratory something that would look to the immune system like a humanly transmissible avian flu. And so create a vaccine. That involved mixing and matching genes from the H5N1 bird flu virus with a common human flu virus. For that purpose we chose the H3N2 strain, which has been behind most recent human flu outbreaks.’ The doctor shook his head. ‘The goal was to substitute t
he eight genes of each virus, one by one, with the eight genes from the other, to see which combinations would create versions easily spread amongst humans. The trouble was, that with more than two hundred and fifty possible combinations, hitting on the right one was a bit like winning the lottery.’
‘But you thought you’d done it.’
‘Yes. Because when the real virus actually emerged, we found we had created something almost identical. The trouble was, it was just different enough that the immune system wasn’t fooled, and we knew it was going to take anything up to six months to put that right.’
‘So has anyone at Stein-Francks come up with a reasonable explanation of why the pandemic started in London rather than Asia?’
‘That’s not our job,’ said Blume smoothly. If he detected the hostility coming from his questioners, he was ignoring it. ‘It’s something you’ll need to ask the Health Protection Agency.’ He paused. ‘But you don’t have to be very smart to figure that it only takes one infected individual from Vietnam, or Thailand, or Cambodia, to fly into London, New York or Paris, and you’ve sown the seed. In this modern age of air travel, we really do live in a global village. And we’ve created the perfect incubators for breeding and passing on infection, in the buses and planes and underground trains we travel on. We were a human disaster waiting to happen.’
The newscast cut back to the studio and breaking news of a development in the race to fill the power vacuum left by the death of the PM. But by now Laing had lost interest and turned it off. He swivelled in his chair and looked speculatively at MacNeil. ‘You’re a fucking idiot, man. Quitting now. You’re a good cop . . .’ He hesitated. The compliment had been grudging. Something he was loathe to admit. ‘You could have been sitting in my seat in a few years.’
‘By which time Sean would nearly have finished school.’ MacNeil shook his head. ‘There’s no second chances with kids. You can’t turn the clock back on childhood.’ He looked beyond Laing, out of the window to Kennington Road below. The shops and restaurants opposite the police station. Trafalgar Lock and Key, Perdoni’s Restaurant, Peter’s Gents Hair Stylist, the Imperial Tandoori. All more familiar to him than his own son. He’d spent more time in the company of Laing, for God’s sake!
Laing said, ‘I’ll need to ask for your FluKill back before you clock off tomorrow.’ MacNeil looked at him. ‘I’m sorry, Jack. You’re no longer on the front line. Or at least, you won’t be.’
‘Fine.’
Laing slapped his palms on his desk. ‘You’ve got two hours to get that site searched before I send the diggers back in.’
CHAPTER THREE
I.
It was a little like a jigsaw puzzle, putting a person back together. Amy sat breathing into the claustrophobic cotton of her mask and smelled the decay rising from the table in front of her. She remembered her first real facial reconstruction. It had been in Manchester. She had travelled up by train and stayed with relatives. The lady had been dead for nearly three months. Her skull had been boiled slowly in water and detergent, with some bleach, and still it stank so much that the FSS had rented her a hotel room to work in. They didn’t want Amy stinking up a lab, or someone’s office.
The hotel management had been suspicious of all the plain-clothes cops popping in and out, parking unmarked cars out front, visiting the young Chinese woman in room 305. They probably suspected some kind of prostitution. In any event, the chambermaid had complained about the smell, and Amy had been asked to leave.
Tom had laid out a body bag on the table, draped it with a clean sheet and assembled the bones in their rough anatomic position. The hands and feet he had left in small piles. The spine he had divided into its cervical, thoracic and lumber sections, but the pieces were not in their correct order. Neither were the ribs. Amy smiled when she saw the skeleton diagram that he had pinned to the wall. Bones had never been his forte. From day one at med school he had been more interested in the organs, the cardiovascular system, the brain. But something about the human frame had attracted Amy. It was, after all, the structure around which everything else was built. Which was what had led her improbably, in the end, to teeth.
She started carefully rebuilding the hands. The small hands of a child. There were 206 bones in the adult human, more than half of them in the hands and feet. But there were 350 in an infant. Some bones fused as they grew. Amy was uncertain how many bones there would be in this particular child, but she was sure she would spot any that might be missing.
She looked up, along with half a dozen others, as the door swung open and Zoe came in. They all knew she’d been standing out on the front steps even before they smelled the smoke off her.
‘Mask!’ someone called. She’d forgotten to put it back on.
‘Oops, sorry.’ She pulled it up over her mouth and nose. ‘You know you’re just as likely to catch it from touching something an infected person’s been touching,’ she said. ‘As long as no one’s sneezing in your face.’ She was a post-graduate microbiologist training in forensics at the FSS, and she liked to show off. But the contagious qualities of the flu virus were known to everyone these days. It was why the government had introduced emergency measures to prevent the printing and distribution of newspapers. Paper was a perfect carrier. Newsprint handled by an infected person would pass the disease on to another reader. Once the virus was on your hands, it could pass into your system via food, or even by rubbing your eyes. News was only disseminated now by radio, television and the internet.
Zoe wandered over to Amy’s table to look at the skeleton. ‘Just a kid, huh?’
‘Yes.’ Amy was annoyed by the interruption, but held her peace. She could smell the cigarette smoke now. It was better than the stale body odour which had hung around Zoe in a faint cloud while she was still living with her boyfriend. She had admitted once to searching through the laundry basket for something to wear when her blouse drawer was empty. Apparently, she thought this was an amusing anecdote. For everyone else it just explained the smell. But things had improved since she had moved back in with her parents. Her mother, it seemed, was doing her laundry now.
Zoe said, ‘You know, they’re gearing up for mass production of a new mask that’ll actually sterilise pathogens when an infected person sneezes or coughs. It’s got thousands of tiny perforations allowing it to breathe, so that it doesn’t blow back into your face. But here’s the clever bit – the perforations are medicated with an antiseptic that’ll sterilise any emissions passing through. Clever, huh?’
‘Very.’ Amy was trying to sort through the metatarsals of the right foot.
‘Have you any idea how many droplets there are in a sneeze?’
‘Millions.’
‘Yeah, and every one carrying the virus. Like an infected aerosol. Jesus, aren’t you glad they’ve given us a course of FluKill?’
‘Let’s just hope we never have to take it.’ Amy wanted to tell her to piss off, but it wasn’t in her nature to be rude. Her rescue came unexpectedly.
‘Isn’t there something you should be doing, Zoe?’ Tom threw Zoe one of his supercilious looks as he stepped up behind Amy, and she tutted a little huffily.
‘Yes, doctor.’ She flounced off across the lab.
Amy smiled at him gratefully. ‘Hi.’
He lowered his voice. ‘She’s a pain in the arse, that one.’
Amy raised an eyebrow. ‘You would know.’
He pursed his lips. ‘Not that kind of a pain.’ He looked at the skeleton. ‘How are you getting on with our unknown child?’
‘Getting to know her a little better,’ Amy said.
‘Her?’
‘Yes. She’s a little girl. But she wouldn’t have survived as long as she did if her bones had been in the order you laid them out.’
He grinned lasciviously. ‘Much more into the flesh, me.’
Amy completed the jigsaw of the right foot. ‘Speakin
g of which, how is Harry?’
Tom raised his eyes to the ceiling and sighed theatrically. ‘You know, I spend my life falling for straight guys, and the first gay who fancies me back turns out to be the most promiscuous creature on God’s earth. And you know me. A one-man man.’
‘What I know,’ Amy said with some certainty, ‘is that you and Harry are not a match made in heaven.’
‘Yes . . . there’s always some dick coming between us.’
Amy couldn’t resist a smile. Tom had made her laugh from the moment they had met at med school nearly twelve years ago. Oddly enough, their first encounter had been in anatomy, and Tom had made some crude comment about having a boner for the prof. Even though they had gone on to quite different specialities, they had remained friends throughout their training, and beyond. She had no idea how she would have survived those dreadful months following the accident without him. He had been, literally, the best friend a girl could have. And so she put up with all his foibles and moods and let him sleep on the settee in her apartment when he and Harry fell out. Which was regularly.
She waved a hand vaguely towards the next table. ‘Could you get me that dental chart over there?’
‘Get it yourself, girl.’
She gave him a look, and he tipped his head and cocked an eyebrow at her, and she thought how good-looking he was. And what a waste. That shock of straw yellow hair, and pale blue eyes. It was his way never to pander to her. He had always insisted she do things herself. He wasn’t her slave, and she wasn’t an invalid. It was his forcing the issue that had made her as independent as she was now. She grabbed the controller on the right armrest and spun the chair around, propelling herself towards the next table to get her chart.
