Going Viral

by Andrew Puckett

  Staples said, ‘The records state clearly that Som 3 was destroyed.’

  ‘So where did this come from?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Concern has been expressed in the past about the security of the Russian lab, but they weren’t sent any of –’

  Blake cut in, ‘For the moment, let’s be practical and just accept that these people have got it, shall we? Which means we have to take this threat seriously.’

  Brigg looked for a moment as though he might argue, but then thought better of it. Blake went on.

  ‘Thanks to Dr Page,’ he nodded to the chemist, ‘we do have an idea of where to start looking. I’ll let her explain.’

  Dr Page seemed to be a slightly shorter, younger, less assertive version of Fenella. Fenella-lite, perhaps…

  ‘I took a sample of the egg shell – sterilised, of course – and ran as complete an analysis as I could in the time available. I then compared this with the specifications supplied by all medium to large animal food manufacturers. To cut a very long story short, the shell contained a form of calcium carbonate used by only one of them: South Western Feeds. It’s a medium sized company based in Devon – a few miles north of Exeter.’

  ‘Presumably they supply throughout the UK?’ Fenella said,

  ‘In theory, yes – but in practice, virtually all their produce is sold in Devon and Somerset. So the chances are that the egg comes from that area.’

  ‘I thought all eggs had to be marked with the farm of origin now.’

  ‘Only if they’re from a supplier with more than a hundred hens.’ She shrugged. ‘I think this one would have to be from a small supplier anyway, for the egg to be fertile.’

  ‘So you’re assuming that John Amend-all are in that area, but couldn’t they have bought the egg there and taken it elsewhere?’

  Brigg came in ‘They could have, yes, but I don’t believe they could’ve foreseen this. I think they’re local.’ He went on, ‘We’re playing a percentage game on this, as we are throughout. We’ve no choice.’ His voice, from so uncompromising a face, was surprisingly soft and persuasive. It had no discernible accent.

  Blake asked if there were any more questions for either of them and was about to excuse them, when I said, ‘I have one for Dr Staples. You told us that this strain of virus is more infectious – can you tell us how much more infectious?’

  ‘No, because infectivity varies so much anyway. The notes just say increased infectivity.’

  ‘Would that have any effect on the vaccines we have now?’

  The present vaccines would be fine, he assured us.

  ‘Talking of vaccines,’ Brigg said, ‘isn’t John Amend-all taking a huge risk? Assuming that vaccines are more or less impossible to get hold of for anyone unauthorised, isn’t he at risk of catching smallpox himself?’

  Staples smiled. ‘All he’d have to do is go to a farm, find a cow with cowpox and infect himself, and he’d have stronger immunity than any vaccine would give him.’

  He then proceeded to treat us to the well-worn story of how Edward Jenner had discovered smallpox vaccine two centuries earlier, when he’d noticed that milkmaids never got smallpox and worked out it was because they’d already had cowpox. I’ve always wondered what Jenner, a respectable married man, was doing staring at milkmaids.

  There were no more questions for the Porton Two, so Blake thanked them and let them go. As the door closed, he turned to Brigg.

  ‘Commander, I know you’ve been making other enquiries, perhaps you’d like to share them with us?’

  Brigg looked round, making sure he had our full attention.

  ‘First, the parcel itself. The packaging materials are of no help, all readily available from anywhere. Also, no fingerprints or anything like that. It was sent first class from a post office just off the Edgware Road. We’ve retrieved the CCTV tape and we think this is the person who sent it.’

  Blake dimmed the lights again and a grainy image appeared on the monitor.

  ‘This is the best of them - which I know doesn’t say much for the rest.’

  It showed a man of about average height turning away from the counter. He was wearing an overcoat, hat and scarf. A beard and moustache covered most of his face and he wore glasses.

  ‘The beard, moustache and glasses are almost certainly false.’

  The army major, Gibb, asked if it was possible to use a computer to enhance the picture and Brigg told him that it was the enhancement he was looking at. ‘All we can really say is that it’s probably a male.’

  ‘So nothing we can glean from it?’ Gibb asked.

  ‘The post office is only half a mile from Paddington Station, which fits with someone coming up from the West of England to post it.’

  Blake switched off the screen and turned up the lights. ‘But that’s not all you’ve done, is it?’

  ‘We’ve had a profiler examine the letter. She suggests a middle-aged white male who’s naive, but also complacent, pleased with himself and patronising. A schoolteacher, perhaps – the way he repeats certain parts, as though to children. Also the use of the French Pour Encouragement. But she thinks the best clue is the obsession with Africa. She suggests someone involved in a charity specifically concerned with Africa and/or slavery…’

  Brigg had certainly done his homework, there were 27 such registered charities in England and Wales, three of them based in the west: Bristol to Africa and The Anti-Slavery League in Bristol, and Open Door in Bath. Bristol to Africa was the largest, with branches in Gloucester, Exeter and Plymouth, while the other two were restricted to Bristol and Bath.

  ‘No registered charity would get involved in anything like this, surely?’ Fenella said.

  ‘No, but whoever John Amend-all are, they could well be people who’ve met through one of them.’

  ‘A bit tenuous, isn’t it?’

  ‘Can you suggest anything better at the moment?’

  No, she couldn’t, she had the grace to admit.

  ‘What about the name they’ve chosen,’ Gibb asked, ‘John Amend-all?’

  It was the pseudonym for the rebel group in Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel The Black Arrow, Brigg told him, and only a clue inasmuch as an older person would have been more likely to have read it. After a pause, he went on, ‘We propose infiltrating people into the head offices of all 27 charities. For the three in the South West, we’re putting someone into every branch as well – that’ll be six altogether.’

  ‘Is there time for that?’ Fenella asked. ‘We’ve got less than -’

  ‘If you’ll allow me to finish… If we take a gung ho approach to these charities, demanding access to their membership files and so on, they’ll almost certainly scream police brutality and obstruct us.’

  He glanced at the woman beside him. ‘My colleague Inspector Hale is the Group Leader in the South West. With your permission, Sir Colin, I’d like her to say a few words about how that’ll work...’

  Blake said, ‘With respect Ms– er – Hale, I think that’s the kind of detail you can discuss later among yourselves. I’d like to move on to how SCRUB intends to cope, should the worst come to the worst, with an outbreak.’

  ‘Forgive me, Sir Colin,’ Brigg said firmly, ‘but there’s an important point I must raise now. Part of Inspector Hale’s job will be to get the membership lists of all these charities.’ He looked at Fenella. ‘Would you say, Professor, bearing in mind what John Amend-all have already done, that one of them has experience working with viruses?’

  ‘Yes – even just to grow the virus, I’d say they certainly would.’ She looked at me and I nodded my agreement.

  Brigg turned to Blake. ‘This gives us another line of enquiry. If the Professor and Dr Smith can put together a list of all the virologists in the South West, we could see if any of them come up in Inspector Hale’s lists.’

  Blake agreed. ‘My only question is why didn’t we think of this earlier?’ he said, and then promptly added another. ‘Could it be expanded to a national level?’ />
  ‘With the virologists, I imagine so...’ He looked at Fenella, who nodded . ‘With the charity workers, not so easily. I’ll give it some thought.’

  ‘Do that,’ Blake said.

  Brigg went on – ‘The other thing we need to consider is whether John Amend-all have a laboratory of their own hidden somewhere, or whether they’re doing it surreptitiously in an official lab.’

  He directed this to Fenella, but she batted it straight on to me. I said, ‘Security’s much tighter in NHS labs now, as is the auditing, which makes that less likely. And I don’t think any use hen’s eggs now, although some of the university labs -’

  ‘Do we really need this kind of detail now?’ Blake cut in rudely. ‘As I said earlier, I want to move on to how SCRUB will manage an outbreak. Professor?’

  No more Fenella, I noticed…

  She took a moment to switch channels, then – ‘In a word, two words, Ring Vaccination.’ She explained how the moment a case was suspected, the putative victim would be isolated and all possible contacts traced, vaccinated and also isolated, if necessary. ‘Then, we repeat the process with their contacts. Only when that’s done do we start thinking about vaccinating the general public.’

  Gibb came in again. ‘Supposing say, a dozen people were infected, would that be enough to start an epidemic? Or would you be able to contain it?’

  ‘In the normal way of things, yes, we’d almost certainly be able to.’

  Brigg leaned forward. ‘Why the qualification, professor? In the normal way of things…’

  ‘Because we have no idea of the infectivity of this virus. Dr Staple informed us, coyly, that it’s increased, but when Dr Smith asked him to enlarge, he declined. We don’t know if it’s the original virus or whether it’s been accentuated in some –’

  ‘Would a straight answer be possible?’ Blake interrupted again.

  She regarded him a moment, then, ‘Very well. I believe we could contain an outbreak of a dozen. Would you agree, Herry?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘taken with your qualification.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Blake said softly, ignoring me. ‘Which brings us, lastly, to the eventuality I devoutly hope won’t arise – that of isolating an entire area. Major, if it did become necessary, how would you go about it?’

  ‘Depends on the size and nature of the area,’ he told us. ‘A village, or even a small town can be sealed off easily enough, but an urban area… well, that’s trickier…’ He was a smallish, slightly tubby man with a round, humorous face and a moustache. He told us a bit about the practicalities, then finished by saying he’d put a Chinook and a platoon of men on standby.

  Blake thanked him, then said, ‘I think now may be an appropriate time for us to split up, since there are matters I need to discuss with Professor Mason.’ He rose to his feet. ‘If you’re ready, Professor…?’ He held the door open for her.

  *

  The atmosphere relaxed the moment the door clicked shut. Gibb stretched himself and got up.

  ‘I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could do with some more coffee. Shall I be mother?’

  We variously nodded and grunted our agreement. As he took our cups and filled them, Brigg leaned across to me and said quietly, ‘Forgive me, but I don’t think your boss is doing herself any favours.’

  I said, ‘Mm,’ which was as far as I was prepared to go.

  Once we were all re-coffeed, Brigg asked the inspector to tell us how she was going to manage the infiltration. She looked up – she had deep brown eyes to go with her hair, I noticed, which seemed somehow appropriate in an undercover worker.

  ‘As the commander said just now, there’ll be six of us covering the South West, one in each of Gloucester, Bath, Exeter and Plymouth, and two in Bristol. I’ll be taking Exeter because we think it’s the most likely. I’ll con –’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ I said, ‘but why d’you think Exeter’s the most likely? I head the SCRUB team there.’

  Her eyes turned to me. ‘It’s the nearest to the animal feed place, and the profiler thought it the sort of town this kind of person would like. You know, cathedral city with Dartmoor and the sea nearby, but only a couple hours from London.’

  She had a pleasant, slightly husky voice and a South London accent.

  ‘What about Bath?’ I asked.

  ‘The profiler felt that Bristol to Africa was the most likely of the three charities and they don’t have a branch in Bath.’

  She told us how she was going to phone the chairman of the BTA branch in Exeter that afternoon to join and volunteer her services. She’d drive down tomorrow and hopefully meet him for a chat, then go to all their meetings and get to know as many of them as possible. ‘They’re far more likely to give things away about themselves in that kind of setting than in a police interview,’ she finished.

  ‘And meanwhile, you want me to make a list of all the virologists in the area?’ I said.

  ‘Please. I’ll contact you when I’ve got something to compare it with. What’s your mobile number?’

  I gave her all my numbers, work, home and mobile. When I asked for hers, she hesitated…

  ‘I’d rather not at the moment. I don’t want the risk of you calling while I’m with the BTA people, not in the early stages, anyway.’

  Close to, her straight brown hair and snub nose made me think of an Indian maiden – North American Indian, I mean, with their characteristic aloofness.

  I said, ‘What if something urgent comes up?’

  Brigg said, ‘Phone me, and I’ll pass it on.’ He continued, ‘The most useful thing you can do, Dr Smith, is to make sure you and your teams are ready for an outbreak.’

  ‘How much can I tell them?’

  ‘How many people are we talking about?’

  There were five teams in the Western Area, I told him, each containing two medics, two nurses and a scientist, making 25 in all.

  He thought for a moment… ‘You can tell them about the threat, but not the police operation. The less people know, the better – so as few as you can, and only what’s necessary.’

  Rebecca Hale came in again: ‘There is one other thing – where are they doing it? I had the impression earlier that you think it’s more likely that they’ve got a lab of their own hidden away somewhere?’

  ‘It’s just that security’s so tight now in NHS labs that I don’t think you’d be able to get away with it.’

  She nodded. ‘OK – could you look into that? Oh, and a list of the equipment they’d need would be useful.’

  I hear and obey, I thought, making a note.

  Gibb, who up till now had been watching all this with a look of detached amusement, asked whom he should liaise with if the worst happened.

  ‘Me,’ said Brigg.

  ‘And in an emergency?’

  ‘Still me. I’ll be available at all times.’

  We talked for a while about what constituted an emergency and how we’d communicate as things went on. Brigg told me I should make myself available at all times to cooperate with Inspector Hale in case my medical knowledge was required.

  ‘Anything else?’ I enquired. ‘The laying on of hands, perhaps?’

  Brigg glanced quickly at her, then replied deadpan, ‘You can try that if you like, so long as you don’t mind a foot in the groin in reply.’

  There was nothing to do but take it gracefully and smile. A moment later, we were all laughing.

  We finished shortly after that. Fenella was waiting for me and we walked back to the Tube together.

  ‘Well, he’s accepted it for now,’ she said.

  It seemed that Blake had told her the day before that since I’d have my hands full as Area Head, he thought she should seriously consider having Roland as her executive. Which explained his po-face on seeing me turn up…

  ‘What made you risk it?’ I asked.

  ‘Because I think you’d be better. But also because, bearing in mind your present difficulties with Roland, it seemed to me the th
in end of a very thick wedge.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She went on, ‘He was never happy about your appointment – Sir, I mean. He’d assumed Roland would get it – as did I. The difference being that whereas I was pleased, he was not.’ She gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘I underestimated Roland – I hadn’t realised the extent to which he’d managed to crawl into Sir’s bed. Forgive the revolting imagery.’

  She didn’t say anything about how bad a bollocking it had been… although then again, perhaps she just had.

  Chapter 3

  Rebecca Hale parked the ratty looking Nova with some difficulty at the end of the street, locked it, and started walking back along the row of Victorian terraced houses. They were what she thought of as Grade Two terraces. She had one herself in Tooting.

  Grade Ones were those fronting directly onto the pavement, Two, those with a front garden, but too small to convert into a car space, and Three, large enough for the car with perhaps a bay window and porch thrown in. Four was so far out of her pay scale that she didn’t bother thinking about them.

  She found number 26 and pressed the bell, reminding herself not to scratch the vaccination site on her arm where it was beginning to itch.

  She’d picked up the Nova (which wasn’t anything like as ratty as it looked) from the car pool, driven down to Exeter and moved into the anonymous police owned flat the day before.

  After the Home Office meeting, she’d phoned Marc Bell, Chair of the Exeter branch of Bristol to Africa, whose name she’d got from their website. She’d told him she’d just moved into the area, was very taken with what she’d read about BTA, and would like to volunteer her services.

  He’d asked her a few questions, then suggested she come and see him Thursday evening (which was what she’d been angling for). So, here she was…

  The door was opened by a sturdy looking thirty something woman with short dark blonde hair.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh… I was looking for Marc Bell…’

  ‘And you are…?’