by Ken McClure
Glass turned out to be a pleasant, helpful man in his late thirties with his feet firmly planted on the ground, who seemed keen to put any notion of curses or plagues from the past to rest. ‘It’s early days for some of the tests,’ he said, ‘but I think I can tell you what happened to John Motram.’
‘You can?’ exclaimed Steven. ‘That’s wonderful… or maybe not if we’re on the brink of an epidemic.’
‘Nothing like that,’ said Glass. ‘We’ve been working closely with the hospital lab and we’ve discovered that Motram was poisoned with a mycotoxin from the genus Amanita — a large dose.’
‘I’m all ears,’ said Steven.
‘Although we don’t think there were any living organisms inside the tomb we think that there was a large accumulation of fungal spores present in the dust that Motram stirred up when he went inside. We think that inhaling them when he took off his mask was the cause of the problem. It would also account for his apparent breathing difficulties and the liver failure that’s beginning to show up.’
‘And the mental derangement?’
‘There’s no telling what a massive dose of this toxin can do. It’s a very powerful poison.’
‘Well, I think we’re all in your debt, doctor. John Motram did not have any kind of mental breakdown and he wasn’t infected by some super-bug from the past. He was poisoned.’
‘That’s certainly the way it looks,’ agreed Glass. ‘There is one embarrassing thing, though…’
‘What?’
‘We haven’t been able to find any more of the spores in the air samples we took from the chamber. Everything so far seems to suggest there’s nothing but harmless dust in that tomb.’
‘I take it you and your people were wearing full bio-hazard gear when you went in?’
‘Absolutely. But we carried out extensive tests. The air inside the tomb is not the sort of stuff you’d want in your air freshener, but as far as we can see there’s damn all wrong with it in a biological sense. John Motram must have been really unlucky: the spores must have been present in the residue of the one cadaver he chose to disturb.’
‘Poor guy,’ said Steven. ‘But thank God you’ve found the answer. The sooner the tabloids return to exposing thieving bankers the happier I’ll be.’
‘Amen to that,’ said Glass. ‘Incidentally, our mobile lab is still on site up there. You’re welcome to use it for anything you need. We’re going to disinfect the site when everyone’s finished taking samples.’
Steven got back in the car feeling very relieved. There was no danger of an epidemic arising from the opening of the tomb. Motram had been poisoned by inhaling fungal spores, something which had absolutely nothing to do with Black Death. The only problem Steven had now was that he didn’t have anywhere to stay for the night if he still intended taking a look at the excavation site in the morning. Then he remembered reading in the file that Jean Roberts had given him that the Dryburgh Abbey Hotel was situated right next to the ruins. He called and booked himself in.
EIGHTEEN
It was dark when Steven drew up at the Dryburgh Abbey Hotel. He was glad his working day had come to an end, pleased at his progress but tired after the long drive up from London and the interview of two key players in the drama — although interview was probably the wrong word to use in John Motram’s case. All he was looking forward to now was a long, hot shower, a couple of gin and tonics and a decent meal.
It was dark, but he could see how close the hotel was to the ruins of the abbey, and the fact that he could hear running water when he paused to look up at the night sky told him how close he was to the River Tweed. An idyllic setting, he thought.
In the exchange of small talk at the desk, Steven asked if the hotel was full.
‘It was last week, after what happened to Dr Motram, but now it’s back to normal — about a third full,’ came the reply. ‘It’ll start to pick up again around Easter.’
‘You knew Dr Motram?’ Steven asked, surprised at hearing the name mentioned.
‘He and his colleagues used to come in for coffee and sometimes lunch when they were on site. As you can see, we’re right next door. A nice man, much nicer than the press who turned up in their droves afterwards.’
Steven smiled.
‘Oh, God. You’re not a journalist are you?’
He laughed. ‘No. I’m sort of looking into what happened.’
‘Whew.’
‘Any chance of a room overlooking the abbey?’
‘No problem. I’ll give you the one all the journalists were after last week. It was like having a plague of locusts on the premises,’ said the girl. ‘But like all plagues, it moved on to pastures new.’
‘How about scientists?’ asked Steven, wondering about Porton Down’s reported interest. ‘Any of them around?’
‘If they were, they didn’t say.’
Steven took his time signing the register, running his eye down the list of names to see if any were familiar. None was. When he’d finished, the girl handed him his key. ‘The abbey should look good tonight,’ she said. ‘The skies are clear and there’s a full moon.’
Steven spent some time in the lounge after dinner, drinking coffee and brandy and reading tourist pamphlets about the abbey and the surrounding area. This, when allied with the fact that the moonlit abbey did indeed look wonderful from his window, decided him on going outside and taking a walk around for himself. He took a small plan of the ruins — courtesy of one of the pamphlets — with him.
He had discovered in his reading that the abbey was the resting place of both Sir Walter Scott and Field Marshal Douglas Haig, two very different characters. The famous novelist had romanticised the Scottish Highlands and its clan culture beyond all recognition, while the soldier had sent men to their death in their thousands in the hell that was the First World War — the war to end all wars that didn’t. Steven reflected on the disparity as he stood before Scott’s tomb, only a stone’s throw from Haig’s grave.
A frost was beginning to settle on the grass, accentuating the moonlight which was already wonderfully bright in an atmosphere free from air and light pollution. He moved on to the east end of the abbey, where he knew the chapter house to be, wanting to experience the atmosphere of a place which had seen so much history. Frost was sparkling on the east cloister stairs as he descended carefully and made his way round to the chapter house, where he stood at the head of a flight of stone steps leading down into darkness. There was a strong smell of wet plaster coming from below, and something else… Almost at the same time as he realised it was — after-shave lotion, he heard the metallic click of an automatic weapon being primed and flung himself backwards to roll over on the frosty grass and out of sight of whoever was down there.
He was scrambling to his feet, preparing to sprint to the cloister stairs but fearing he wouldn’t make it, when he heard the sound of male laughter. A voice said, ‘You’re fast, Dunbar, I’ll grant you that, and it’s just as well for me you don’t carry.’
Steven recognised the voice but couldn’t put a name to it. Whoever it was knew his name and also knew he didn’t carry a weapon — something he didn’t do on principle unless he knew his life to be in danger. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he snapped.
A tall man climbed the stone steps and out into the moonlight. Steven took in the high forehead and slightly protruding chin. ‘Ricksen, MI5,’ he exclaimed, recognising an intelligence officer he’d come across before. ‘What the hell d’you think you’re playing at?’
‘Couldn’t resist, old boy. I’ve just arrived. When I saw your name in the register and the girl on the desk told me you’d just stepped out for some air… well, like I say, I couldn’t resist putting you to the test.’
Steven felt angry but relieved at the same time. He occupied himself with brushing frost and grass from his clothes until he’d calmed down sufficiently to ask, ‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’
‘Babysitting,’ replied Ricksen. ‘Porton Down have a co
uple of their boffins coming in the morning. I’m here to look after them, make sure they get their samples or whatever it is that they want from down there.’ Ricksen inclined his head back towards the chapter house stairs. ‘What’s Sci-Med’s interest?’
‘We wanted to know what happened to John Motram.’
‘Scientists have nervous breakdowns all the time,’ said Ricksen. ‘What makes this one different is the fact that he had his in a seven-hundred-year-old Black Death tomb and the papers heard about it.’
‘I take it you haven’t heard yet,’ said Steven. ‘It wasn’t a breakdown. The lab boys have shown that Motram was poisoned with fungal spores.’
‘Well, that saves us all a lot of trouble,’ said Ricksen. ‘Also buggers up a good tabloid story, I’m delighted to say. Buy you a drink?’
‘After that performance, I think you owe me one.’
Steven took a last look out the window at the abbey ruins before drawing the curtains and getting into bed. He felt ill at ease about something but couldn’t quite put his finger on what. Maybe it was just the stupid joke that Ricksen had played on him, but somehow he felt it was more than that. He’d always had a slightly uneasy relationship with MI5. Ostensibly he and they were on the same side but there was an important difference: Sci-Med operated independently of government while MI5 were instructed by them. There had been occasions in the past where John Macmillan’s people had ruthlessly exposed what government and MI5 would have preferred be covered up. That made them a bit of a loose cannon in the eyes of the establishment, although successive governments had been quick to realise that any attempt to neutralise Sci-Med would be seized upon by Her Majesty’s opposition and used as a heaven-sent opportunity to make political capital.
As he lay in the darkness, Steven thought about the coming day. He would take a look at the burial chamber and then what? He’d originally planned to visit both Alan Blackstone and Les Smith but, in view of what the labs had found, there really didn’t seem to be much point. They could only tell him what Tony Fielding already had, and Kenneth Glass had more or less assured him that, apart from the fungal spores, there was nothing sinister lurking down there in the tomb.
He thought a bit more about the mycotoxin that appeared to have been the cause of Motram’s condition — a large dose, Glass had said, which made it all the more puzzling that the lab staff had failed to detect any more of the spores in the air samples they’d taken. Even if Glass had been right about Motram’s being unlucky and the spores being confined to the dusty remains of the cadaver he’d examined, he would have expected there to have been some evidence of them inside the chamber.
NINETEEN
Steven was still thinking about Motram at the breakfast table when Ricksen appeared and sat down beside him. ‘My guys should be here by ten o’clock,’ he said. ‘What are your plans?’
‘I’m going to take a look at the burial chamber,’ said Steven.
‘Make sure they didn’t overlook the angel of death sitting in the corner?’ joked Ricksen.
‘That sort of thing,’ Steven agreed. ‘Then I’ll check with Public Health to make sure their microbiological tests haven’t come up with anything else. After that, I think it’ll be home sweet home. And you?’
‘Should be out of here by lunchtime if the Porton guys get what they want. Shouldn’t take too long to pack up a few samples of dust.’
Steven looked at his watch. ‘If I get a move on I should be out of the way by the time they arrive.’ He got to his feet.
‘See you around,’ said Ricksen.
Steven hadn’t been quite honest with Ricksen; he hadn’t mentioned that he intended to have a word with Motram’s wife before returning to London. It was probably something to do with the little niggle at the back of his mind, but he felt he wanted to know a bit more about the man.
He walked over to where the Public Health mobile lab was parked and made himself known to the technician in charge.
‘Dr Glass said you might turn up,’ said a young red-haired woman who was setting up equipment for disinfecting the chamber later. ‘You’ll be wanting a grave-robber uniform then?’
Steven was suited up inside ten minutes, masked and ready to enter the burial chamber through the makeshift airlock. There was no need for him to use a torch; the Public Health people had already rigged up temporary lighting inside. He could see the entire contents of the vaulted stone chamber as soon as he entered, crouching, through the gap in its wall. His first thought was that it was a dormitory for the dead, sixteen black body shapes lying on stone benches, eight on either side.
On closer inspection, he could see that a circular area on the torso of each corpse had been opened up, presumably subjected to examination to make sure they had all decomposed like the one examined by Motram, he thought. Alternatively, Motram might have put his fist through each in turn after his disappointment with the first. Steven made sure his mask was fitting well before putting his gloved hand into one of the exposed areas. It went straight down to the stone bench without impediment; the shroud was an empty shell with nothing inside but dust and bones.
He tried to imagine the utter dejection Motram must have felt when he’d discovered it. Seeing the apparently preserved body shapes in the tomb would surely have been the cue for elation, but then to find that they had no substance and would crumble to nothing when touched, as Steven proved now with the tip of his finger on a thigh, must have been a crushing blow. He could understand Motram tearing off his mask and cursing his luck, inadvertently breathing in the dust and the poison spores.
There was no point in lingering any longer. Steven went through the shower and decontamination procedure in the Public Health vehicle, suspecting it was more of a gesture than a necessity, and checked with the technician that no word of any new findings had come in from the lab.
‘I spoke to Dr Glass first thing this morning,’ said the technician. ‘Harmless dust, he said. He thought that going to the local swimming pool was probably more dangerous.’
Steven set off for the village of Longthorn, noticing as he left the car park that an unmarked white van had just arrived. From the complex filtering vents on its roof, he deduced that this was the mobile lab facility from Porton that Ricksen was expecting. Seeing it brought the uneasy feeling back again. He was missing something here.
Dr Cassie Motram was on compassionate leave from the group practice where she worked, Steven had learned when he phoned earlier that morning. According to the senior partner he’d spoken to, she had tried carrying on working as normal — to take her mind off things as much as anything else — but when press interest entered the equation she had found dealing with patients well nigh impossible. A number of them believed she might give them Black Death. ‘And it’s going to take them a while to get their heads round Amanita mycotoxin,’ he added.
The look of exasperation that appeared on Cassie Motram’s face when she answered the door prompted Steven to assure her immediately that he had nothing to do with the press. Cassie looked at his ID but said, ‘Never heard of you.’
‘Not many people have,’ said Steven with a smile. He explained briefly what Sci-Med did and Cassie shrugged and invited him inside the pleasant cottage where she and John lived.
‘I’m busy in the kitchen,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk in there if you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all.’ Steven perched on one of stools at the breakfast bar and watched Cassie busy herself collecting ingredients, which he assumed had to do with the open recipe book lying on the bar. His immediate thought was that here was a woman who was keeping herself busy for therapeutic reasons. He could sympathise. ‘How is he this morning?’ he asked.
‘Not good.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So what is it you are investigating exactly?’ asked Cassie as she weighed flour out on a set of digital scales.
‘I was sent to find out what happened to your husband in the tomb at Dryburgh Abbey,’ said Steven.
‘An
d whether it had anything to do with the Black Death corpses lying there,’ added Cassie with a wry smile.
‘That was our fear,’ agreed Steven. ‘The idea of Black Death making any kind of come-back certainly concentrated minds in Whitehall, but now we know what really happened — a combination of fungal spores and sheer bad luck.’
Cassie glanced at Steven sideways. ‘I’ll be frank with you, Dr Dunbar. When John told me he was planning to open up a seven-hundred-year-old Black Death tomb, I was far from delighted. I knew such fears were groundless — I’m a doctor; I can work out the odds — but even in the twenty-first century the thought of Black Death tends to grip the imagination.’
Steven nodded. ‘I know what you mean. I went inside the tomb this morning. Whatever you tell yourself beforehand, your mind starts working overtime as soon as you’re inside.’
‘But your fears were groundless, doctor; mine weren’t,’ said Cassie, pausing in what she was doing. ‘My husband didn’t come back to me. They were considering putting him on life support this morning when I phoned.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Steven saw the sadness in Cassie’s eyes and felt a lump come to his throat.
Cassie quickly recovered her composure. ‘Would you care for some coffee, Dr Dunbar?’
‘Thank you,’ said Steven, collaborating in the restoring of normality. ‘Black, no sugar.’
As they grew comfortable in each other’s company, Steven tried to inject some encouragement into his words. ‘Now that the hospital know what the problem is with John, they’ll be better placed to come up with treatment,’ he said.
‘There’s really nothing they can do right now,’ said Cassie. ‘Dr Miles has withdrawn from the case and the toxicologist I spoke to admitted it’s down to life support and good nursing at the moment. He thinks John must have inhaled a massive dose.‘
