The Virus Man

by Claire Rayner

  She’d never minded, and now as she reached for the light switch that illuminated this pen, she remembered this litter. It was the first that was her very own, really. Ben had been involved with most of her care of the rabbits at the beginning, but then, gradually, he’d handed over to her, and this particular group were the first to be born under her own eye. They had lain there, squirming in the observation nest, and she had watched them grow into the neat little bodies they now were with childish pleasure. It really was a tendency in herself she’d have to deal with, this affection for the animals. They were, after all, not pets. They had a purpose to their existence as far as the laboratory was concerned that went far beyond merely giving pleasure to humans. Or to themselves. They were here to find answers to important medical questions, and getting attached to them wouldn’t help them do that – or help her to do her job, either.

  The light swung a little as she switched it on, throwing long crazy shadows, and she steadied it with one hand and then looked down at the pen, and at first she couldn’t believe what she was looking at.

  There were five animals in this group, too, but these weren’t pushing their noses through her straw, nor were they eating. The food she had put out for them at midday was scattered but largely uneaten and the straw looked undisturbed. She could see two of them lying in a small heap against the wire of the pen, and she crouched to look closer.

  They were clearly dead, the limbs stiff and splayed and the eyes filmed over. They had scoured before they died, too, and were lying in their own ordure, and she reached for the straw rake from the corner and gingerly pushed it through the piles of straw to the back of the pen to look for the other animals.

  There was another body in the same state, and the remaining two were clearly close to joining it. One was lying on its side, its legs jerking a little as it tried to breathe and she looked at its bulging little eyes and they stared back, and it was almost as though there was an expression in them, as though it was trying to talk to her, and suddenly she remembered a poem she hadn’t thought of for years, one she’d learned at school:

  There is a rabbit in a snare …

  But I cannot tell from where

  He is calling out for aid;

  Crying on the frightened air …

  Little one! Oh, little one!

  I am searching everywhere!

  That had made her cry when she was a schoolgirl and it made her eyes prick now as she looked down at the rabbit, its eyes glazing as its breathing became more laboured and then jerkier still.

  She reached out to touch the dying creature, and then, almost automatically, pulled back. These were the group that had been injected with just the virus, not with the Contravert; touching them could be stupid. She’d better leave everything the way it was, and find Ben and tell him. At midday these animals had been fine and now they were … he had to be told at once.

  And she went running out of the animal room, and out of Ben’s office, leaving the doors not only unlocked but open. There was no one about at this time of night anyway, and it was important to get Ben here fast, before the last animals died. There might be evidence here he needed to observe for himself, because it was obvious, she told herself as she went pushing through the swing doors and turned right to hurry along to the mortuary and histology room alongside it, that his Contravert was doing something very remarkable indeed for the group B animals.

  9

  ‘I told you it would work!’ Hugh said jubilantly, and slapped the photographs down on the table in front of them, and they all leaned forwards together, like a rather jerky chorus line in a bad musical, to look at them. ‘You said I wouldn’t get the evidence and there it is! And in under a week, too! I should have taken that bet with you, Graham – I’d have cleaned up!’

  Graham looked morosely at the photographs, fanning them out on the table in front of him, and after a moment nodded. ‘All right, so you were right and I was wrong, but frankly I never reckoned you’d get anything, even if you got into the place. This is … well, it’s … what’s going on there? In this one?’

  ‘They’re dead,’ Hugh said, and made a face as on his other side Tracey, tonight looking singularly sweet in a Laura Ashley camisole over a billowing Indian batik skirt, burst into noisy tears. ‘Look, Tracey, getting upset isn’t going to help anyone. It’s angry you’ve got to be, not upset! What good would you have been if we’d activated Plan B last night the way I wanted to, and the first thing you’d done had been to bawl? We’d have been in a right mess. As it is …’ And he shot a malevolent glance at John and Graham, sitting side by side with their grey heads bent over the photographs. ‘As it is, we wasted a marvellous opportunity. That woman went out, left the place unlocked and wide open. I just walked right in, looked around, got my pictures, walked out again. If we’d been at the Red Alert stage, we could have liberated the lot.’

  ‘Not the dead ones,’ Tracey said, and sniffed lusciously. ‘Too late for them.’

  ‘Well, we won’t be too late for the others if we get a move on.’ Hugh reached for the photographs, taking them firmly from Graham’s fingers. ‘I vote that we go into action tonight. If I could get in so easily last night, then we can do it again. Strike while the iron’s hot and all that.’

  ‘And what do we do when we get in there?’ Graham said, and leaned back in his chair, hooking his thumbs into his waistcoat armholes in the way Hugh most hated. How such a pair of dried old twigs as John and Graham had ever got involved in the chapter Hugh couldn’t imagine. He should have blocked them out right from the start, brought in younger blood, but as he looked round at the rest of the meeting, he knew that was a vain hope. He’d spent long enough getting this lot together and a dreary enough bunch they were: Dora and Freda, a couple of old women as dismal as John and Graham were, and only Gail with any real meat on her bones; and he gave her a conspiratorial smile and she serenely returned it, very aware that Tracey had intercepted it and wasn’t best pleased. It was easy to get people to agree that animal experimentation was a terrible thing and get them to sign petitions, but to get them to behave in a proper militant fashion – he took a deep breath in through his nose, closing his eyes for a moment as part of his self-control exercise; if he wasn’t careful he’d lose his temper and then they’d all walk out on him.

  ‘What we do is liberate the animals, break up the cages, destroy the paperwork we find, and render the place unusable. That’s what we do. I’ve gone over and over Plan B with you and if you don’t understand it by now ….’

  ‘Well, I don’t like your Plan B. It’s a last step, as far as I’m concerned, and there are a lot of other steps we have to take long before we get to that.’

  ‘A lot of other steps,’ Hugh said scathingly. ‘Niminy piminy, namby pamby, mincing along like a fairy queen steps, I suppose.’

  ‘There’s no need to be offensive. You may be the chairman and all that, but we’re supposed to be a democratic organization. I’ve read the constitution they sent from headquarters if you haven’t, and I know my rights. I joined the AFB because I want to do something about animal rights ….’

  ‘What the bloody hell do you think I want?’ Hugh shouted.

  ‘Not because I want to play commandoes with a jumped-up schoolboy who thinks he knows more than anyone else. I fought in the war for the likes of you, sonny, and I know what real fighting is. You don’t have to get me all stirred up with talking about playing soldiers and breaking into places, because I know what it’s really like to get violent.’ Graham stopped and grinned at Hugh, who was now white with rage, and then looked at John sitting silently beside him and at Dora and Freda, who sat, as they usually did, side by side and silent. ‘So, let’s put it to the vote, shall we, according to the AFB constitution of which we are a chapter? I vote we consider other steps before we go breaking into private property.’

  ‘Private property?’ Hugh almost shrieked it. ‘What the hell has property got to do with anything? I want to save animals’ lives and you’r
e droning on about private bloody property and ….’

  ‘It’s a matter of the rule of law,’ Graham said, clearly enjoying himself now, getting cooler as Hugh became ever more incandescent with fury. ‘I think we do what’s lawful first. Only if the law refuses to face up to the reality of our protest do we do anything like breaking in. I vote to publicize what’s going on in this place, tell them how we found out, the lot, and use these photographs. I give you full credit for these – we could make a really powerful leaflet out of them, make people really sit up and take notice.’

  ‘Leaflets are a waste of time,’ Gail said unexpectedly. ‘It’s like those abortion ones they send round. The pictures are so hideous they make you feel sick, so you won’t look and you won’t think about it and you might go and have an abortion then, because you didn’t know how awful it was. It’s the same with animals. I keep seeing pictures of monkeys all wired up and all that and all it does is make me close my eyes. Leaflets are silly.’

  ‘Thank God for a bit of commonsense,’ Hugh said, and grinned at her. ‘You’re right, of course. It’s the young people we’ve got to get involved and you won’t get them by showing them pictures. That just upsets them the way it did Tracey. You can get money out of old people sending pictures round but what we want is action to save animals’ lives ….’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with old people,’ Dora said loudly. ‘There’s too much of the young ones in this if you ask me. Going off breaking into places – it’s not right! I joined to do something about the poor little animals but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to break the law. And if this committee’s going to turn into lawbreakers, then it can do without me.’

  ‘And me,’ Freda said, as Dora nudged her. And Graham looked benevolently at them and said, ‘Well, then, Hugh, time to take the vote, I’d say. Do we publicize these pictures – and I take Gail’s point about a leaflet and withdraw the suggestion – or do we put your plan into action? And I’ll tell you here and now, sonny, that if you do, I for one resign. I’ll go and join the Animal Protection League where they’ve got a lot of sense and real democracy.’

  ‘Me too,’ said John, and Freda and Dora nodded like the pair of stuffed dogs that John kept in the back window of his car.

  ‘Then I don’t see that I have much choice,’ Hugh said savagely, and then took a deep breath in through his nose again, remembering what he’d been taught about control last year when he was into yoga and meditation. ‘Though I must say your view of democracy and mine don’t match – what you’re doing sounds more like bullying to me than honest voting. But I can be reasonable, and no one can ever say otherwise, right, Gail? OK, we vote publicity rather than action at present. If publicity fails we return to Plan B. I can’t say fairer than that. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ Graham said, magnanimous in his success. ‘It’s up to you of course, old boy, chairman and all that. Through the chair, every time, hmm? Through the chair – and I vote for publicity. I know this boy, you see, son of a neighbour of mine-he’ll be very useful.’

  ‘I don’t give a sod about bloody animals,’ Joe said. ‘As far as I’m concerned they’re bloody nuisances that cover my shoes with shit. The only place I like to see ’em is stretched out on a butcher’s slab waiting to be cooked. But they’re a story, of course. I can’t deny that. Where’d you get this stuff from?’

  ‘Neighbour of ours,’ Simon said eagerly, hovering over Joe, his hand half outstretched as though he was afraid the photographs he was holding might disappear into thin air. ‘He was a bit mysterious about it, said he couldn’t reveal his source, but he swore this place is inside Minster Hospital, and that they’re abusing animals there. Those rabbits there, they’re dead ….’

  ‘I’m not a bloody half-wit,’ Joe said. ‘I can recognize a bloody dead rabbit when I see one.’

  ‘And those monkeys, they’re there too – they don’t look too bad,’ he added dubiously, bending even closer. ‘It’s like at a zoo, really. Still, they might be dead. Or ill-treated. Thing is, this chap says ….’

  ‘What chap? Facts, boy, facts, how often have I got to bloody tell you?’

  ‘His name’s Graham Board, he’s retired – made redundant from Hammonds last year-about sixty-odd I suppose. Goes out to a lot of meetings and such like, my Mum says. She’s home all the time, so she knows everything the neighbours do.’

  ‘Pity you aren’t home all the time as well, then,’ Joe grunted. ‘I want a bit more information than just these polaroids. They could be anything, taken anywhere. I have to have chapter and verse, so if you want this story, go and get the chapter and verse. In your own time!’ he added, as Simon grabbed the photographs and made for the door. ‘Right now, get back to that subbing. I want that page locked up tonight, not next week.’

  There might be something in it, Joe thought as he watched the boy go sulkily back to his desk. Cruelty to animals – it was a sure-fire peg for a bit of public excitement in this country. He could run features about the NSPCC till he was blue and no one paid a blind bit of notice, but show the punters one lousy rabbit with its toes turned up and say someone had done an experiment on it and they’re out there baying for blood. Stupid bastards, Joe thought, hating his readers more and more with each passing day. I don’t know why I stick with the stinking business.

  He was still sore because of the lukewarm response he’d had from the News man on the Bluegates affair. There he’d been with a really hot story, two kids dead from one school, looked like an epidemic of some mysterious unnamed disease, and what did the bastard say? ‘Keep it on the back burner, laddie. See how it shapes up.’ See how it shapes up! Joe thought, and slammed another sheet of galleys on the spike. See how the story shapes up be buggered. It was already shapely enough for anyone with two shreds of brain to tuck between his bat ears, which was more than that bastard at the News had.

  He leaned back in his chair and began to think. There must be a way to get the story into the nationals. He’d run his own piece of course, in last week’s issue, about the deaths, full of sympathy for the bereaved parents, the whole bit, but he’d said little about the epidemic because at that stage there hadn’t been all that much to worry about. A few kids with snotty noses, nothing much; but maybe by now there’d be a bit more? There was that talk he’d heard at Dimitri’s – he should have followed that woman out, found out more from her; she needed tracking down, she did. He’d have to give some thought to that. If Dimitri were a civilized man instead of a half-witted orang-utan it’d be different; he could ask him who the woman was, but as it was – he stretched his memory, digging in it for the woman’s name. Someone had used it, while he sat there mopping up his poached egg, and he’d registered it, out of force of habit, and now he closed his eyes and concentrated, trusting his trained memory to extricate it, and at last it did. ‘There isn’t much Edna misses, I can tell you!’ Edna. That would do for openers.

  It took them a long time to answer the phone at Bluegates, but at last they did, a breathless voice saying a little guardedly, ‘Yes?’, but not using the number or the name of the place as he would have expected.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, trying to sound affable. ‘That Bluegates School?’

  ‘Er … who is that?’

  ‘Oh, I’m just Joe – wanted a word with Edna, d’you see. You know old Edna – works in your kitchens?’ He dredged up a memory of the woman in Dimitri’s in all her shabbiness. ‘Middle-sized sort o’ lady, looks a bit tired, like ….’

  ‘Edna?’ There was silence and then a sharp little breath. ‘Oh, that’s all right, then. Edna, yes, works in the kitchens? Can’t say I do know exactly who you mean – teachers tend not to … well, yes. There’s an extension through to the kitchen. I’ll put you through. Just a moment.’

  Joe grinned to himself, settling his haunches more deeply into his chair. This was what it was all about, the teasing out of the lines of a story. Never mind what the story was, the real fun was pulling it out of the tangle, strand by strand,
and then laying the strands neatly to make a pattern. The pattern itself mightn’t be the most exciting when it was finished but, oh, the delight of getting it right. And he listened to the clicking of the phone and waited.

  ‘Mrs McGrath,’ the phone barked at him, and he blinked. ‘Hello? Who is that?’

  ‘I’m trying to get hold of Edna,’ Joe said, his voice relaxed and easy. ‘Works with you? Got a bit of news for her, you see, and I can’t find her at home. Just thought I’d try there ….’

  ‘Edna?’ The phone almost snorted at him. ‘That woman is no longer in this kitchen’s employ.’

  ‘Oh, sorry to hear that,’ Joe said, and moved the phone to his other ear, so that he could scratch his itching scalp. It always did that when he got really interested in something. ‘Nothing wrong, I trust?’

  ‘Who are you?’ the phone said, deeply suspicious.

  ‘Oh, just a person making enquiries, Mrs McGrath,’ Joe said, and dropped his voice half an octave. ‘Can’t say too much, you understand. Just need to get hold of Edna.’

  ‘Police, are you?’ the woman said, and Joe raised his brows.

  ‘Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, the stuff she took out of here. Not that I’m prepared to be a witness, mind you, and you can’t make me. I never said that.’

  ‘No, of course,’ Joe said soothingly. ‘But you can say where I could find her? Maybe I got the wrong address? Could you just check your records? I’m sure they’ll be very accurate. That’s what we need, isn’t it? Efficiency.’

  If the phone could have bridled it would have but the woman’s voice only said crisply, ‘Hold on,’ and then, after a moment recited, ‘Mrs Edna Laughton, 5a Wessex Street, East Minster.’

  ‘Mrs McGrath,’ Joe said fervently. ‘I thank you. You are a wonder. Good afternoon.’ And he cradled the phone and again sat and stared at the wall for a moment, digging down once more into his memory. And then shouted for Simon.