Pestilence

by Ken McClure

  Saracen nodded. He respected professional enthusiasm but sometimes it was hard to take.

  “Can you stay?” asked Claire softly.

  Saracen shook his head. “I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “Then sleep here.”

  Saracen started to protest but Claire was already undoing his shoelaces. He sat down on the couch and put his head back on the cushion. He felt his eyelids come together.

  “Don’t worry James Saracen,” whispered Claire, “I won’t take advantage of you, even if you don’t realise how much you love her.”

  Saracen awoke with a start feeling disoriented for he had no idea at all where he was until Claire said, “Sorry, I woke you. I dropped my book.”

  Saracen blinked against the light. He saw that Claire had put a blanket over him. “How long?”

  “Four hours.”

  “I’d better get back to the hospital.”

  “Don’t”, begged Claire. “You need more rest, go back to sleep.”

  Saracen declined and sat up with a yawn.

  “You’re still dead on your feet.”

  “I’ve just had four hours sleep thanks to you,” said Saracen. “I’m grateful.” He got to his feet stiffly and put on his jacket, shrugging the shoulders to make it fit better before moving to the door.

  “Any idea what’s wrong with the telephone lines?” asked Claire.

  Saracen felt a chill run down his spine. “What do you mean?” he replied.

  “I tried to phone London, couldn’t get through.”

  “Happens all the time.”

  “No, I tried several different numbers,” said Claire.

  “Lack of maintenance due to the emergency,” lied Saracen.

  “Probably,” agreed Claire.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Saracen drove back to the hospital through streets that were wet and empty. As he turned into the hospital gate two military ambulances were leaving and he had to give way. He watched them go, their deep-treaded tyres sending up orange tinted spray in the neon street lights, their hooded crews anonymous in white plastic.

  Saracen went to A amp;E first and found the staff subdued. “Sister Lindeman died this evening,” said one of the nurses and Saracen nodded in resignation. “She was a fine woman,” he said quietly. The nurse agreed and asked, “When can we expect the antiserum? They seem to be taking their time.”

  “Soon,” said Saracen, uncomfortable with the lie. “What’s going on here?” he asked. He was looking at a group of men being attended to in the treatment room.

  “They were injured breaking into an off-license,” replied the nurse.

  Saracen nodded and did not have to ask why. The pubs in Skelmore had been closed under the quarantine order and, due to an administrative oversight; the off licenses had been included in the non essential shops register. On top of everything else sudden alcohol prohibition had been a recipe for trouble. To Beasdale’s credit the order had been rescinded to allow off licenses to open for two hours a day but the order would not take effect until the following day.

  “There’s a message for you on your desk,” said the nurse and Saracen went to look. The paper said, ‘Mrs Updale rang. Call her back’ and gave a number which Saracen dialled. He did not bother to check the time. For him and, he suspected, Mary Updale such considerations were a thing of the past.

  “Dr Saracen you asked me to let you know if I remembered anything about Frank’s other job?”

  “Yes.”

  “Frank entered it in his diary. The customer’s name was a Mr Archer and he lived on Palmer’s Green. Does that help?”

  “I think it does,” replied Saracen as calmly as he could under the circumstances.

  Once again Archer had come up as the obvious link in the spread of the disease but the revelation raised almost as many questions as it answered. How could Timothy Archer possibly have given Updale the bubonic form of the disease? and then there was the time factor. Saracen hastily scribbled down some dates on the pad in front of him and discovered that for Archer to have given any kind of plague to Updale within the limit imposed by the incubation time Archer himself must have been in the advanced stages of the disease when Updale saw him. Was Updale well enough to confirm this?

  Jill was nowhere to be seen when Saracen got to the ward and for a moment he felt a chill of apprehension. One of the other nurses put his mind at ease. Jill was on her rest period.

  Updale’s breathing was shallow and rapid and his eyes had the look of a man running in a race that he knew he could not win.

  “Hard going,” said Saracen.

  Updale agreed with a single breathless syllable.

  “I have to ask you some questions. The answers could be very important.”

  Updale continues to stare at the ceiling and gave no sign of having understood.

  “You did a job for a man called Archer down on Palmer’s Green,” said Saracen.

  Updale licked his lips and moved his head to the side. “…Heating,” he said with great difficulty.

  “Yes on the heating system. Was Mr Archer ill when you saw him?”

  Updale rolled his head from side to side on the pillow. “No…not ill,” he breathed.

  “Think carefully. It’s very important.”

  “Not ill…perfectly well.”

  Saracen sighed wearily as he saw two and two add up to five. If Archer was well when Updale had seen him how could he have passed on the disease? The answer was not difficult it was just hard to face but Saracen forced himself to come to terms with it. However unlikely it seemed he had to consider the possibility that Updale had not contracted the disease from Archer at all, he had caught it somewhere else. The involvement of Archer had been a coincidence. Saracen baulked at the notion and remembered MacQuillan’s same reluctance to consider anything other than the Archers as the cause of the death of all the residents in the block where they had lived. “Just too much of a coincidence,” he had maintained and Saracen had agreed. He still felt that way but there was something desperately wrong with the explanation somewhere.

  “You just spent the one day down at Palmer’s Green?” Saracen asked Updale.

  “Thought it was going to be easy… found the air grille blocked… cleared it but flow still poor… fault was in the trunking… too big a job for me… removed the filters to improve the flow until he could call in a bigger firm… “

  “You didn’t go back to Palmer’s Green again?”

  “No.”

  “Did you speak to anyone else when you were there?”

  The caretaker.”

  “Was he ill?”

  “No.”

  “No one else?”

  “No one.”

  Saracen told Updale to rest and left quietly. He looked back once through the glass door to see him staring at the ceiling again, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he continued an unequal struggle.

  Saracen noticed that Philip Edwards, the boy with the medallion and the other sufferer from bubonic plague, was in the next cubicle. He went in and approached the bed to see if he was awake or sleeping. He found him to be neither. Philip Edwards was dead.

  The Staff Nurse was upset when Saracen told her. “Oh no,” she moaned. “He was stable when I looked in a few minutes ago. I had to go help Nurse Rivers at the top of the ward. There’s just so much… “She mopped her brow nervously.

  “I know,” said Saracen.

  Saracen thought about the name Edwards as he came back down the stairs. He felt that it should mean something to him but for the moment could not think what.

  MacQuillan phoned to say that Dave Moss had died in the County Hospital and Saracen took the news stoically for he had been preparing himself for it. It still did not prevent an empty, hollow feeling from settling in his stomach. “Any more thoughts on the bubonic cases?” he asked.

  “None,” replied MacQuillan. “The game’s over. We’ve lost.”

  MacQuillan’s attitude annoyed Saracen and he said so
before slamming down the phone. “Damn the man,” he muttered. It was obvious that MacQuillan had stopped working on the epidemiology of the outbreak and that was their last hope gone. Without establishing the true reason for the apparent random spread of the disease there would be no chance of creating the right conditions for it to burn itself out. Plague would claim the whole town unless Beasdale pre-empted it.

  Saracen began to write. He wrote down every single fact he knew about the epidemic in the hope that some new fact would emerge. Thirty minutes later he was no further forward. The best fit for all the pieces of the puzzle was still the one that MacQuillan had been using but once more the bubonic cases stood out like a sore thumb. Could that mean that all the rest was wrong? Saracen tried to free himself from the blinkers of the obvious and started to question everything right back to the very first assumption. Supposing, just supposing that Myra Archer had not started the outbreak at all… “

  Saracen loosened his tie and tugged at his top shirt button. If the first assumption was wrong how about the second? Could he test it? He got out the files on Archer and Cohen and felt excitement grow within him. Myra Archer died on the sixth so that meant that she must have been very ill on the fifth and probably on the fourth as well. That being the case she must have infected Cohen on the second or third when she was relatively well otherwise Cohen would have raised the alarm and called in a doctor for her. Cohen himself was brought in dead on the fourteenth. A man of his age, living on his own would have succumbed to the disease after three days at the most. That meant that Cohen must have developed plague on the eleventh…an incubation time of nine days…It was too long! It was more than six days and that’s what Chenhui Tang had been saying when she had had her ‘breakdown’! More than six days! She had realised that Myra Archer could not have infected Leonard Cohen! That’s why she had been so upset!

  Saracen fumbled in his desk drawer for a marker pen and then highlighted the cases on his list that had been assumed to have evolved from contact with the Archers. What else did they have in common if it wasn’t the Archers? The answer was plain for Saracen to see. It was Palmer’s Green! Myra Archer had not brought plague to Palmer’s Green. Palmer’s Green had given it to her!

  Saracen found that it was one thing to come to come up with a new theory but quite another when it came to finding evidence to support it. How could the place have given all these people plague? He threw his pen across the room in anger and frustration as he failed to come up with anything. Somewhere in the distance he heard the wail of sirens and was reminded that time was running out. Suddenly he saw his best line of approach. It was Francis Updale.

  Updale had spent only one day at Palmer’s Green and yet he had contracted bubonic plague. Something he had done on that day had given him the disease. One day in Updale’s life had to be re-created. Saracen needed help and the Public Health Department was hors de combat. It would have to be MacQuillan.

  MacQuillan had been sleeping in his clothes and smelt strongly of whisky. “We have to talk,” said Saracen.

  “The time for talking’s over,” growled MacQuillan.

  “It’s just beginning. Sober up,” said Saracen pushing his way past.

  “What are you talking about?” grumbled MacQuillan, scratching his head.

  “You and the others, you got it all wrong. Myra Archer wasn’t the source of the epidemic at all. It was a place not a person. The source of the outbreak is the flats on Palmer’s green.”

  MacQuillan looked at Saracen as if he were mad. “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded.

  “Get cleaned up and then we’ll talk,” said Saracen forcibly.

  “Who do you think you are talking to!” exclaimed MacQuillan, trying to recover some semblance of dignity.

  “Are you going to wash or am I going to stick your head under the tap?”

  MacQuillan saw that Saracen was serious and capitulated. He went to the bathroom to emerge some five minutes later, subdued and more sensible. Saracen told him what he had discovered.

  “I should have picked up on that,” said MacQuillan when Saracen pointed out the discrepancy in the incubation period for Leonard Cohen. “I saw it but I couldn’t let myself believe it.”

  “The Wittgenstein problem,” said Saracen.

  “But this is all going to be too late,” said MacQuillan.

  “No it isn’t,” insisted Saracen. “If we can establish beyond doubt where the outbreak is coming from we can tell Beasdale that it’s spread will soon be under control.”

  “If,” said MacQuillan doubtfully.

  “There’s no time to lose.” Saracen told MacQuillan of his thoughts about Francis Updale. “He only worked for one day on the heating system in the flats.”

  “I’ll talk to Beasdale,” said MacQuillan.

  “Tell him we need the architect of these flats, the builder, the site agent or anyone connected with the construction of the block.”

  Fifty minutes later the site agent arrived with the plans.

  “The heating system,” said Saracen when asked if there was anything in particular he was interested in. He helped the site agent spread out the blueprint on the table.

  “Show me the supply to flat fourteen, Myra Archer’s apartment.”

  The site agent’s finger traced out a line along the plan. “This is the main duct for the first floor. It has four branch lines, each supplying two flats.”

  “Two?” exclaimed Saracen looking closer. “Which is the other flat on Myra Archer’s line?”

  “Flat G3.”

  “Who lived there?”

  The agent checked his list. “A Mr Cohen.”

  “That’s got to be it then,” said Saracen quietly. “The bug is in the heating duct. That’s how Updale got it too. He was working on the duct.”

  “But how?” exclaimed MacQuillan. “The bug can’t survive on its own. It’s not like Legionnaire’s Disease, living in old water tanks for years or Anthrax lying dormant in the soil.”

  “I don’t know how but that’s got to be it,” said Saracen with the bit now firmly between his teeth.

  “But what about the other deaths in the building?”

  Saracen thought back to what Updale had told him and said to the site agent, “What effect would removing the filters in the system have?”

  “There would be an increased air flow and everyone in the building would effectively be on the same line.”

  This time even MacQuillan was convinced. “That would explain why everyone in the building got infected at the same time,” he conceded.

  “And the enormity of the dose,” added Saracen. “They would be breathing it in constantly.”

  “We’ll have to examine the trunking,” said Saracen to the site agent.

  “Now?” exclaimed the man in dismay.

  “Right now,” replied Saracen. “What do we need?”

  MacQuillan relayed the site agent’s requirements to Beasdale who agreed to have them delivered directly to the site. In less than forty minutes Saracen was down on Palmer’s Green donning protective clothing by the light of arc lamps supplied by the military. Two more hours had passed by the time the trunking had been disassembled as far as the branch that served the Cohen and Archer flats. “All ready,” said the site agent to Saracen. He handed him an open ended spanner. “You’ll have to squeeze through there,” he said, indicating to a narrow gap between the trunking and the wall. “You’ll find an inspection cover on the left hand side secured by four hex bolts, that’s what the wrench is for. You’ll need this too.” He handed Saracen a long thin probe. “To check for obstructions.”

  Saracen adjusted his respirator and eased himself through the gap. At first he found difficulty in seeing after the glare of the arc lights but, as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom he could make out the inspection cover in the wall of the duct. Three of the bolts gave in without protest but the fourth refused to budge.

  In the confines of plastic suit and face mask Saracen felt
the sweat begin to pour off him with the effort he was expending on the jammed bolt. He had to blink frequently to clear his eyes of the stinging perspiration that threatened his temper as much as his vision. He heard the site agent calling out to ask how he was getting on but did not reply; it was too much trouble. Instead he gathered himself for one last assault on the bolt.

  Holding the spanner as near to the end as possible so as to exert maximum leverage he strained till the veins stood out on his temples. He saw the paint around the bolt begin to crack, so slightly at first that he thought it might be his imagination but then a piece flaked off and the bolt’s resistance was over. Saracen let the cover clatter to the ground and took a breather. He heard the site agent inquire again. “I’m fine,” he replied.

  Saracen inserted the probe to the right found it moved freely at all levels along the duct. He removed it and tried to the left. The probe stopped after half a metre; it had touched something soft. Saracen left the probe in position and reached inside with his gloved hand. His outstretched fingers could feel the obstruction. It was a pile of rags…no it was furry…soft…not rags, a body…an animal’s body. He found what he thought was a leg and pulled the corpse back along the duct to the inspection hatch. In the gloom he saw the partly decomposed body of a cat.

  Moving backwards, for there was no room to turn around, Saracen emerged through the gap to look down at MacQuillan and the site agent. He held up the corpse and said, “Here’s the obstruction, a dead c…” Saracen stopped himself for in the light he could now see that what he held was not a cat at all. It was the black carcase of a wild rat.

  “Jesus God Almighty,” whispered MacQuillan.

  “Is that what you were looking for?” asked the site agent, alarmed at the look on MacQuillan’s face.

  MacQuillan ignored the question. “We’ll have to seal all this up,” he said.

  Back at the General MacQuillan poured whisky for himself and Saracen. He countered Saracen’s look by saying, “We both need it.” Saracen nodded and accepted the glass. “Do you know what I don’t understand?” he said. “If we have plague rats in Skelmore why don’t we have bubonic plague all over the place instead of just two cases with the rest all pneumonic?”