She said, ‘Pull the curtains, will you?’
Greg did so. ‘D’you know them, boss?’
She nodded. She was like marble. I could see that, despite the mask.
‘That’s Will and Emma, the parents –’ she indicated the sofa ‘–that’s Malcolm North… and that’s Craig Holland. They’re all BTA members.’
Craig! The one she’d been with the night before last…
I went over to her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No. It’s OK, I’ll survive. Get an ambulance for the baby, would you?’
I took out my phone and keyed 999. Called for an ambulance, stressing that the patient was a baby, probably dehydrated, who had to go straight into isolation.
‘What a mess…’ Rebecca said.
‘Boss, look at this…’ Greg, over by a computer we hadn’t noticed before.
Dreamlike, we went over. There was a message on the screen:
WE COULDN’T GO THRU WITH IT. PLEASE LOOK AFTER MY BABY…
Then Tim, who hadn’t said anything up until now, called me back to where he was kneeling beside a coffee table.
‘Smell that,’ he said, pointing to a champagne flute on its side, still with some liquor in it.
I knelt beside him and cautiously sniffed. Almonds. We looked at each other, then I got up and examined the faces of the couple on the sofa more closely…
She was more a girl than a woman and looked very peaceful, but her face was bright pink. I looked at the others, then called Rebecca over.
‘I think this is cyanide poisoning,’ I said, and told her about the smell and pink complexions, both characteristic, then pointed to the champagne bottle on the sideboard. ‘I’ll bet that contains Potassium Cyanide.’
‘Where would they get that?’
‘A lot of labs used to use it for differentiating types of bacteria.’ I turned to Tim. ‘We haven’t got any, have we?’
He shook his head. ‘Not since before I came.’
‘It looks like a suicide pact,’ I said
She was shaking her head. ‘I find that very hard to believe...’
‘Why –?’ I began, but was cut off by the sound of the ambulance siren.
‘Could you see to the baby?’ she said.
I nodded and went back outside to the platform. Started down the steps as the ambulance turned into the space.
I explained what had happened – some of it – told them they’d have to be vaccinated and then got them gowned up. We went in.
‘Poor little bugger,’ one of them said, as the other picked him up. Just feel of the man’s arms around seemed to calm him. Liquid dripped from the swollen nappy as they carried him out.
I went back to the living room. They were all outside the door and Greg was sealing it with yellow tape. Rebecca was on the phone.
She finished the call. ‘Scene of Crime’s on the way,’ she said. ‘They know what to expect. We’d better do what we came to do.’
She led the way back to the bedroom and pointed to the door in the wall at the far side. ‘I think that might be our laboratory.’
I hadn’t noticed it before. I made sure my mask was on properly, then went over and tried the handle. It was locked.
‘Let me,’ said Greg.
He knelt in front of it and examined the lock for a few moments before producing a bunch of keys. Selected one and tried it. Then another. The third one worked.
‘All yours, doc,’ he said, standing up.
I opened the door, just a crack at first, then cautiously as far as it would go. Put my head round, found a light switch.
The room was about six feet by fourteen. A bench ran along the far side. On it were items of equipment.
I beckoned Tim and we went in.
‘I wonder where they got this,’ he said. This was a microscope, upright, black and ancient.
‘And this…’ An elderly centrifuge. ‘Perfectly serviceable, though.’
There was a Bunsen burner, the tube running through a hole to a cylinder underneath; a large plastic container filled with liquid, presumably distilled water; an old, oven sized incubator; a ‘fridge; reagent bottles and also underneath, a freezer. A cable from a multipoint board ran through the wainscoting to the bedroom.
‘Must have been fun getting that incubator up the steps,’ he mused.
‘Anything in it?’ I asked.
He pulled the chrome handle and the heavy door swung open. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘It’s up to temperature though, so presumably, there was.’
‘What about the freezer?’
He went down on his knees and opened it. The layer of ice inside suggested it hadn’t been defrosted in perhaps a month.
‘A rack of what looks like cell cultures,’ he said.
‘Nothing buried in the ice?’
He prodded around a bit. ‘Not that I can see.’
I opened the ‘fridge. ‘Nothing here, either.’
He got to his feet and took another look round. ‘No hood,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised they risked working without one.’
‘The Health and Safety Officer speaks,’ I said. ‘These were idealists.’
‘But what about the baby?’ he said, looking at me. ‘A mother, exposing her baby to this…’
‘We don’t strictly know what this is yet,’ I said. ‘More to the point, what are we going to do with it?’
‘Bomb it out,’ he said. ‘Just as soon as I’ve got the samples I need.’
He meant boiling a vessel of formaldehyde in it until the vapour had penetrated every crack. ‘That goes for the whole flat,’ he added.
Rebecca, whom I’d forgotten for the moment, called out, ‘What have you found?’
I left Tim to bag up the cell cultures and take whatever other samples he wanted, went out and told her. ‘One thing, though,’ I said, ‘I don’t think they built that room. It looks to me as though it’s been there some time.’
She nodded. ‘Probably some sort of junk room. They found it and realised what it could be used for.’ She looked at me. ‘SOC’ll be here soon – can we let them examine the bodies?’
‘I think so. I’ll get them immunised after they’ve finished.’
‘You’re satisfied that’s it, then?’ She nodded towards the hidden lab.
I nodded. ‘Strictly speaking, I suppose we should wait till we’ve looked at the cell cultures we’re taking, but I don’t know what else it could be.’ I told her how we were going to bomb it out as soon as Tim had finished.
‘You’ve got the stuff here to do that?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘I’ll have to go back to the hospital for it. Needs to be done ASAP, though.’ I looked round. ‘The rest of the flat too, as soon as Scene Of Crimes has finished.’
Rebecca’s mobile went – Phil, telling her SOC had arrived. We went out to the hall, and while she phoned Brigg to tell him what had happened, I went out onto the platform, de-gowned and stuffed everything into an incinerator bag. I then went down and explained the situation to SOC, glad we’d brought enough gowns. They’d used them before. I told them they’d have to be immunised later today, then asked them to tell Tim I’d gone to fetch the bombing equipment.
As I drove back, ignoble thoughts ran through my mind about Rebecca and Craig... She’d been shocked sideways finding him there, though she’d recovered quickly enough. Or was that just professionalism?
I supposed that that kind of thing went with her job. I remembered the story in the papers about the undercover cop who’d infiltrated an environmental group and had affairs with several of the women before eventually ‘crossing over’ to them.
Had she ever been tempted to do that, I wondered? Although that presupposed she’d been doing this kind of work for a while…
I realised my thoughts were bordering on the prurient and thrust them away.
At the hospital, I found the equipment quickly enough, loaded it and went back. Tim had finished and was waiting for me.
We unplugged the lab’s e
lectrics, opened the doors of the fridge, freezer and incubator, then Tim connected up the boiler and glugged a Winchester bottle of formaldehyde into it. He came out, coughing, then quickly shut the door and began sealing it with tape.
‘I’ll never get used to that stuff so long as I live,’ he said.
‘Nor me. What about this?’ I indicated the hole the cable ran through.
He sealed that too, then switched on.
‘How long does it need to boil?’ I asked.
‘Half an hour’ll do it. Add twenty minutes to get it to the boil, say an hour altogether to be on the safe side.’ He glanced at his watch.
‘You get the samples back,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay and do the rest of the place. Two vessels, hour and a half boiling?’
He nodded. ‘That’ll do it. I’ll have the EM result on those cultures in a couple of hours. PCR’ll have to wait till tomorrow.’ He meant electron microscopy and polymerase chain reaction, the latter being the definitive test for the virus.
‘I’ll get the cultures of the swabs up as well,’ he said.
‘I hope to God they’re negative,’ I said.
He’d taken swabs from around the lab and bedroom; if the virus was on any of those, it increased the risk it might have escaped from the flat.
I gave him the keys to my car and he left.
I went to find Rebecca. She was by the living room door, watching the SOC team as they photographed, measured, took samples from around the bodies.
‘How long d’you think they’ll be?’ I asked.
‘Should be done in a couple of hours.’
‘I’d like to get the rest of the flat bombed out tonight,’ I said.
‘Will we be able to get in afterwards?’
‘Not for a day or two at least, and even then, it won’t be pleasant. Were you surprised by who it was?’ I asked, indicating the bodies.
‘By Emma and Will, no, since they’d have to have known,’ she said. ‘The other two, yes. I thought the Chair’s wife, Hannah, far more likely. In fact, I still do.’ She continued slowly, ‘In fact, I’m not convinced by this convenient little scenario.’
I asked what she meant.
‘I find it hard to believe in their sudden and unanimous remorse,’ she said. ‘Even harder to believe in their mass suicide, and impossible to believe a mother would leave her baby in that state while she did so.’
‘But she’d already risked him, hadn’t she? Just by being here…’
‘I suppose so.’ She sighed. ‘We’ll have to wait and see what SOC come up with, I suppose. And the PMs.’
I looked at her. ‘You think they were murdered?’
She nodded slowly. I went on, ‘In that case… are you saying you still think there’s a risk of a smallpox outbreak?’
‘Don’t you?’
I thought about it...
If someone was still out there with the virus, then… ‘Yes,’ I said.
I stayed while the bodies were bagged up and taken away, then bombed out the flat. Rebecca and Greg helped me seal up the windows, then I set up the vessels, one in the living room and one in the hall. I ran cables from them and the mains, to the platform outside. Greg had made a hole in the door big enough to get them through.
When all was ready, I poured two Winchesters into each vessel then, almost coughing my guts up, ran outside. Once Greg had sealed the door and the hole, I connected up the cables.
‘How long will it take?’ Rebecca asked.
I was still taking deep breaths to try and flush the formaldehyde away… at last – ‘At least two hours altogether, to make sure it gets into every room.’
‘Won’t it boil dry?’ Greg asked.
I shook my head. ‘It’d take a day to do that. It gets viscous as it boils.’
Rebecca made a face. ‘From the smell of you now, I don’t envy the person who’s got to clear it up.’
‘I’ll be delegating that – to Tim,’ I said as I stripped off my gown and thrust it into the bag.
‘Delegation, is that what you call it?’ Greg was tearing off his own gown. ‘Abuse might be more appropriate.’
‘He’ll have a gas mask.’
‘How d’you clear all the fumes?’ Rebecca asked.
‘Extractor fans. Then we scrub it down and let nature do the rest.’
‘Can’t see it having too many takers as a flat for a while,’ said Greg. ‘Even the squatters’d pass on that.’
My mobile rang. It was Tim.
‘Those cell cultures we found,’ he said, ‘they’re definitely infected, and the pattern looks like a poxvirus to me. I’ve made an EM prep, it’ll be ready in about half an hour.’
I passed on the news to the others. ‘Could you give me a lift?’ I asked Rebecca.
Greg and Phil stayed while she drove me to the hospital. She came up with me. Nearly all the staff had gone home by now. Tim came out of the prep room carrying a metal sample holder about the size of a toothbrush.
‘I’m about to look at it, if you’re interested,’ he said.
Rebecca said, ‘Does it mean dressing up again?’
I shook my head. ‘Just a lab coat. The sample’s been fixed. Killed,’ I explained.
I found her a coat and we followed Tim into the EM room.
The barrel of the electron microscope, a stainless steel tube about four feet high and six inches wide, rose from a desk-console covered in switches and dials. Thick electric cables fed into the barrel at intervals.
Tim sat at the console and pulled a switch. A circle of green light grew on the viewing screen beneath the barrel. The screen was encased in a metal dome with glass portholes and the whole structure somehow made you think of being in a submarine.
Tim turned a dial and the light grew in intensity. ‘Saturation,’ he murmured, his hands straying over the controls, ‘Focus... condenser.’ An image of the microscope’s filament appeared and disappeared on the screen.
He picked up the metal holder and inserted it into a hole about a third the way up the barrel. There was a hiss, then the whine of an electric motor.
‘What’s that?’ Rebecca whispered.
‘Vacuum pump,’ Tim said. ‘You always lose some vacuum when you put in a specimen.’ He reached for a button. ‘Low mag first…’ The criss-crossed image of the specimen grid leapt onto the screen. ‘Could you kill the light please?’
I did so, and the image became clearer.
‘Magnification… ‘ He turned a dial, and with each click, the image jumped in size.
A single square appeared. He searched it, looking for a suitable field. The magnification reader read 1000, the limit of an ordinary light microscope.
‘Ah, this’ll do…’ Tim twisted the dial again, the image in the screen jumping in size with each click until the magnification reached 10,000. He began a systematic search.
‘What cell line was it grown in?’ I asked.
‘Vero – look, you can see the nuclear membrane and mitochondria, this is a good microscope – Ah!’ he said again, ‘Just there, look…’
The magnification leapt again, and we were looking at a curious brick shaped structure with rounded corners, covered in tube like adhesions…
‘Beautiful,’ Tim breathed... He turned to face us, his face radiant in the green light. ‘May I introduce you to Variola Major, the smallpox virus…’
‘We don’t strictly know that yet, do we?’ I said, feeling slightly awkward in the face of his enthusiasm. ‘Not till we’ve done the PCR.’
‘Oh, come on, what else could it be?’
‘Alastrim, Vaccinia… Oh, all right. As you say, what else can it be?’
Chapter 23
Herry picked up his own car and followed Rebecca back to the flat.
It was nearly dark by the time they got there. Also very cold, if Greg’s and Phil’s shivering as they got into Rebecca’s car was any indication.
‘Took your sweet time, didn’t you?’ Greg chattered.
‘I told you to bring a coat
,’ she said unsympathetically. ‘Anyone called at the flat?’
Greg shook his head, still shivering. The back door opened as Herry climbed in next to Phil.
Rebecca phoned Brigg to bring him up to date. ‘Sir,’ she said when she’d finished, ‘I don’t think this was suicide.’
‘You mean someone killed them?’
‘Yes.’
‘So the virus could still be out there?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right. I’ll be down in the morning.’ He rang off.
She passed this on to the others, then looked at Herry, who was slumped in the back seat with his eyes closed and his arms folded.
‘Why don’t you go home?’ she said to him. ‘We can finish off.’
He opened his eyes and shook his head. ‘I’ve got to do it myself. Regulation 1001, or thereabouts, para y subsection z.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Only another twenty minutes,’ he said, then folded his arms and closed his eyes again.
Greg said, ‘Are you going to let the others know that the pressure’s off them now?’
‘I’m not sure it is,’ she said. ‘Not in Bristol and Bath, anyway.’
‘It’s just that we could use some of them down here tomorrow, couldn’t we?’
‘Mike and Dan can come,’ she said, ‘maybe Josh as well. Naomi and Stella’ll have to stay. I’ll let them know after we’re finished here.’
They continued chatting in a desultory way while they waited. Herry didn’t say anything. When the time was up, they climbed the iron stairs again. Herry unplugged the connections, opened up the hole in the door enough to push the plugs and sockets through, then quickly resealed it. Just that had released enough fumes to make all choke.
‘Which at least means it’s worked,’ Herry said when he’d recovered.
Greg had fitted a very sturdy looking hasp to the door earlier, and now snapped an equally business-like padlock over it. Then the others went back down while he sealed the stairway with scene of crime tape.
Herry looked ready to drop, Rebecca thought.
‘Are you sure you’re OK to drive?’ she asked him.
He nodded. ‘Just the thought of home and a long hot bath’ll be enough to keep me going.’
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