‘It’s the second time I’ve seen the buggers,’ he bawled. ‘They’ve been hanging around asking questions a bit too much, so I’m taking it seriously. They’re after us, and they’re after the place at Podgate where they breed the animals for Dr Pitman. I warned ’em I was being watched, told ’em to keep an eye out themselves, and they’ve seen ’em too. Bloody loiterers hangin’ about – must think we’re half-wits, don’t know trouble when we see it. Well, I do, and I’m not putting up with their bloody meddling. And I’m buggered if I’ll give ’em the satisfaction of making me do anything other than what I want to do. I want to go on extracting this stuff for Dr Pitman until such time as he says don’t. Now, if there’s any of you don’t fancy working with me on account of the way things are, then say so now and your wages’ll be made up and no bad feelings. But Gawd help anyone who stays on and then tries to come the acid afterwards. Do I make myself clear?’
The three men who worked in the shed looked at each other and then at him, and then one of them said, ‘What sort of things is it you think they’re up to, Mr Clough?’
‘Oh, the usual shit. They’ll come and burn the place down on account of we work with animal exploiters, that’s the way these buggers think. I ask you, animal exploiters, us! The stuff we’re using here comes from women, so if they called us women exploiters they could be right. But animals? What’ve we got to do with bloody animals?’
‘Dr Pitman does though, don’t he? I was reading in the paper this morning that he experiments on rabbits and monkeys and that. Doesn’t seem right, really ….’
‘Experiments, my bloody foot,’ Clough said. ‘He just uses ’em, that’s all. I’ve seen his animal room, been over to Minster to see him, many’s the time, and I can tell you he treats his animals a bloody sight better than some men treat their wives. You a vegetarian then?’
‘Eh?’ The man blinked his bewilderment.
‘You a vegetarian? D’you live on lentils, only wear plastic shoes, then?’
‘No,’ the man said and shook his head at his two mates. Old Clough was off his rocker for good and all, now, obviously.
‘Then don’t you go talking about people ill-treating animals when you eat them, and walk on their tanned skins, all right? Anyway, there it is. It’s my belief these Animal Brigade people plan to get in here, that they’re watching us to find out our weak points, and get in and wreck the place, and I don’t reckon it, I don’t reckon it one little bit. I’ve got a half dozen blokes taken on temporary as guards around the fences and at the gate – if you don’t fancy staying, in spite of precautions like that, then like I said, sling your hook. Now.’
‘I’m with you, Mr Clough. Don’t like Other people deciding whether I work or not, not these days. No one’s got any right to interfere with anyone else, that’s how I see it. If I was a miner I’d be bloody working, and I’ll go on working here too an’ all ….’
‘No one’s talking about strikes,’ Clough growled. ‘Just about protecting the job.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ the man said triumphantly. ‘Protecting the job. I’m on. Stay overnight if you like ….’
‘It might be an idea at that,’ Clough said. ‘I’ll be staying here myself for a couple of nights, to be on the safe side, but if anyone else fancies doing it – it’ll be worth double time. I make a good product here, all above board and legal, and no one’s going to tell me I’m an exploiter or stop me running my business any way I bloody want. As long as Dr Pitman can use his stuff and I can get the materials, then I’ll make sure there’s plenty of it. No matter who prowls around spying on us.’
‘It’s not my bailiwick,’ Dan Stewart said, and then said it louder as though that would help. ‘Nothing to do with me! I can’t release the stuff … I don’t even know where it is! You’ll have to wait till Ben Pitman gets back ….’
At the other end of the phone Lyall Davies swore under his breath and then said cajolingly, ‘Look here, Stewart, you know the way his mind works as well as any. Always been a friend of his, haven’t you? Yes. Well, I dare say if you put your mind to it you could work out where in his laboratory he keeps the stuff, and go and find it? Then I’d take full responsibility for ….’
‘I’m sorry, Dr Lyall Davies,’ Dan said loudly. ‘Can’t be done. Got to go, I’m afraid. Afternoon!’ And he cradled the phone with a clatter and then scowled at it. Bloody man. He’d do anything, anything at all, to get more glory over this damned business, and he for one wasn’t about to let the old faker get away with it. He was right about one thing though; finding Ben’s Contravert wouldn’t be all that difficult a thing to do. He knew the lab pretty well, knew where Ben kept the refrigerator keys and so forth – seen him lock up and put them away more times than he could remember – and it might be just as well to get the stuff out and tucked away somewhere safer. With Ben away, anything could happen there ….
He found the laboratory working apparently as usual when he walked in. Errol was washing petri dishes at his sink in the corner, jigging to the muffled dance of the earphones clamped over his ears, his woolly hat a glorious splash of colour in the ill-lit space, and Moscrop and Harry Gentle were both busy at their benches while Annie sat beside the centrifuge, ostensibly waiting for it to stop so that she could unload it, but in fact using the time to file her already perfect scarlet nails.
‘You too?’ Harry Gentle looked up at him sardonically. ‘I’d have laid odds you wouldn’t come beating the path to the magic door, but there, I was wrong. Can’t win ’em all, I suppose ….’
‘Talk sense, Harry,’ Dan grunted and leaned against the bench beside him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Got so many complete blood work requests we’re swamped in ’em,’ he said cheerfully. ‘So I’ve stopped worrying. We’ll get through as many as we can and when the boss gets back, he can worry about the backlog. Right, Moscrop?’
‘Right.’ Moscrop didn’t look up.
‘And if we get any more interruptions from people wandering in here asking oh-so-casually where Ben keeps his magic muck, then we’ll get even fewer done, won’t we?’
Dan flushed. ‘I’m only looking for it to keep it away from that old devil, Lyall Davies. He’s been pestering me all morning ….’
‘And half the consultants around the country been pestering us,’ Harry said, and bent his head to his microscope again. ‘And they’re all wasting their bloody time, because it isn’t here.’
‘Isn’t here?’ Dan stared at him and then said more loudly, ‘What do you mean it isn’t here?’
Harry Gentle was clearly enjoying himself greatly. ‘What I said. It isn’t here, H–E–R–E here. Where it isn’t. Eh, Moscrop?’
‘Right,’ Moscrop said, still keeping his eyes clamped to his microscope.
‘Why?’ Dan shook his head in bewilderment. ‘Why not?’
‘Because dear old Ben, trusting soul that he is, decided it wouldn’t be wise to keep his precious stuff on the premises, what with break-ins and so forth, and took it somewhere else to be safe before he went to London to feast at the media’s lush troughs. Lucky bastard. Why can’t I make great medical breakthroughs now and again? Some of those telly bits are real stunners. Very munchy. I’d really get some good out of a trip to the BBC, but old Ben just took Jessie Hurst with him, and much good that’ll do him.’
‘Where did he put it, then?’ Dan demanded.
Harry shrugged his shoulders. ‘If he’d told us, that would have damaged the object of the exercise, wouldn’t it?’
‘You’re talking riddles, Gentle!’ Dan said, irritation sharpening his voice. ‘What are you on about, for Heaven’s sake?’
Moscrop lifted his chin for the first time and stared at him. ‘He doesn’t trust us, Dr Stewart, that’s what Harry means. He wouldn’t leave his stuff here while he was away, not because he was afraid of break-ins again, but because he was afraid one of us might try to make some use of it. And that would muck up his patents or whatever good and proper, wouldn’t it?
If one of us managed to get hold of some of the Contravert and work out what it was and we might make it ourselves. I’m told that people who patent new drugs make a lot of money, a great deal of money. So we reckon that’s why Dr Pitman took it away and hid it somewhere outside this building. Not because of break-ins, but because of break-outs. Charming, isn’t it? All this public concern about people’s welfare and all the time thinking of the money ….’
‘I ought to knock you down, Moscrop!’ Dan said very softly. ‘You’re a bastard, do you know that? I’ve known and worked with Ben Pitman a great many years, and I know him better than you ever could. And he’s no more thinking about his own profit in this bloody affair than you … than you ever think of anything bur your own lousy skin. If you dare say another word like that, so help me, I’ll murder you. You hear me? If he took his work away from here, he had bloody good reasons to do it. And they weren’t financial. Now, go to hell and stay there ….’ And he turned and slammed out of the lab so loudly that even Errol jumped at the slam of the door which interrupted his music.
He’d calmed down enough by the time he got back to his own office to be able to be almost amused at the thought of Ben’s prudence in taking his precious stuff away from the lab and putting it somewhere else. Dan was certain that Ben would have been thinking solely and wholly of the risk of further break-ins by those idiot Animal Freedom Brigaders, but he’d been at greater risk from his own staff; because there wasn’t the least doubt in Dan’s mind now that Moscrop would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down, given half the chance. He was one of the most devious people he’d ever met, he told himself as he locked his car and went up three steps at a time, to his office. I’ve got to warn Ben the moment he gets back what a snake he’s got there, see what I can do to help him get rid of him, union or no union – but where the hell is the stuff in the meantime? Where could he possibly have put it to keep it safe till he needed it next? Well, only Ben would be able to answer that question, he told himself as he reached for his phone to check on the newest figures for the epidemic. I’ll ask him as soon as I get the chance. If I get the chance, the way things are going ….
The weather had picked up a good deal by the time Timmy had had his tea and his sniffles seemed a little less than they had been, and he was nagging over and over again to go to Auntie’s house and hang up the paper chains; so stifling the doubts she had about the advisability of taking him out, June wrapped him up warmly and strapped him into his pushchair and set off, going via the supermarket in Greenway Road. The fridge at home would be empty, and she must be sure she had something for Timmy’s supper. A few fish fingers maybe, and a little potato she could bake in its jacket – and at the last moment she remembered the possibility that Ben would come home too, from London, and added a pack of frozen curry for one. There’d be no time to do anything better, not with Timmy to look after ….
When she had got home and switched on the heating to make it comfortable for Timmy, and had taken him round the house to remind him of it, so that he’d be comfortable there, she went to the kitchen to unpack the food and put it in the fridge; it would be dreadful if the fish fingers defrosted before she could cook them, because that would be unhealthy, everyone knew that. But the fridge was full when she opened the door, and she stood there and stared at its contents with her face blank, not knowing quite what to do. Or where to put the fish fingers.
29
‘I’ve asked for police help,’ Mrs Cloudesley said. ‘They’ll do their best, but it seems there’s no law against them standing around the gates waiting. There ought to be, but there isn’t.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Ben said. ‘I’m sorry the hospital’s being bothered with all this ….’
‘Not your fault,’ Mrs Cloudesley said with a gracious air, and then spoiled it. ‘Well, of course it is, in a sense, but there’s no need to apologize, that’s what I meant. You ought to be congratulated really, I suppose. If it weren’t for the epidemic everyone’d be cock-a-hoop over your discovery ….’
‘Not precisely a discovery,’ Ben murmured, but she continued as if he hadn’t spoken.
‘… And the hospital would be very proud. Well, we are proud. I just wish we didn’t have all these wretched journalists to put up with. It gives the domestic staff ideas, you know. They’re all hanging round the gates wanting to be interviewed. As if they’d be likely to have anything useful to say or do!’
‘They can do a great deal,’ Ben said and got to his feet to peer out of her window at the gates below. ‘It was a domestic who caused a good deal of this trouble in the first place.’
‘Yes,’ Mrs Cloudesley said. ‘But what can you expect of women of that sort anyway?’
Ben looked at Jessie, who had opened her mouth to protest, and shook his head slightly, and as though he’d spoken she knew what he meant: they had enough to deal with without getting involved in silly arguments over a silly woman’s silly snobbery.
‘She didn’t make the problem because she was a domestic, but because she was …’ he said. ‘Well, that doesn’t matter now. What we have to do is decide how to cope with the extra work there is, as well as all the fuss. I’ve only been away twenty-four hours and the demands for blood work have almost quadrupled while I’ve been gone. We’re not going to be able to cope with it all, unless we get more people in – and more equipment – or you offload some to Doxford and Farborough. Can you arrange that?’
‘I’ll have to,’ Mrs Cloudesley said, looking distracted. ‘I suppose I’ll have to. I certainly can’t find you new people. Are they willing to work overtime, the ones you have?’
‘No,’ Jessie said, and Mrs Cloudesley swivelled her eyes at her. She was still irritated by the fact that Ben had brought Jessie with him to this meeting; one of the main rewards of her position for Mrs Cloudesley was the way she spent so much time with men and men only. The presence of another woman detracted from her own importance, and she objected to that. But Ben had brought her and there was nothing that could be done to send her away.
‘Oh?’ she said frostily.
‘They’ve got some sort of notion into their heads,’ Jessie said carefully, speaking more to Ben than to the woman behind the big desk. ‘Moscrop in particular. He thinks you’re going to make a lot of money out of Contravert, and he’s livid.’
‘Money?’ Ben laughed then, a loud sound full of genuine amusement. ‘You’ve got to be joking.’
‘I’m not. Nor is Moscrop. He was bursting with it when we got back. You went straight into your office but he clobbered me as soon as I walked in. Wanted to know where you’d been, whether you’d seen any pharmaceutical firms. Made any deals was what he said.’
‘If he’d asked me he’d have got his answer,’ Ben said, his face patchily red now with anger. ‘How dare he? How dare … I’m going back there now to take him apart ….’
‘No!’ Mrs Cloudesley and Jessie said it together, but it was Jessie who went on urgently. ‘Don’t be stupid, Ben. To have a row won’t help him change his mind; but it could give him just the excuse he wants to stop work altogether. And we need him, if we’re to get the jobs even halfway dealt with.’
Slowly Ben sat down again, for he had got to his feet in his sudden access of anger. ‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘Why the hell did I start all this? I wish I’d never begun looking for the bloody stuff. I wish I’d never found it. How can it all have turned into such a stinking mess? People thinking I’m a money-grabber and … I don’t think I can bear it ….’
There was a little silence and then Jessie said in a voice that was much brisker than she felt, ‘Well, you’ll have to. It’s tiresome, I know, but it can’t be helped. You did find it, it’s a marvellous development in medicine, as you’ll realize when all this initial fuss is over, and it’s downright ungrateful of you to wish it hadn’t happened. Anyway, it’s silly. You can’t unhappen anything. What’s done is done.’
He was staring at her and as she closed her mouth with almost a snap he laughed, a hiccu
pping little sound. ‘You sound like a Victorian nanny.’
‘You make me feel like one,’ she retorted and subsided, rather flushed about the face and caught Mrs Cloudesley staring at her with a more than usually owlish expression in her round eyes.
‘Dear me, but you two are a double act, aren’t you?’ She tittered then. ‘You want to be careful! You’ll have people talking more than they already are, but about different things, if you go on like this!’
Ben threw her a look of cold dislike and stood up. ‘You’ll arrange with the other two hospital path, labs to take on some of our work? I dare say they’re fairly heavily loaded too, but they’ve got better facilities and more staff than we have. And better staff, too. Come on, Jessie. There’s a lot for us to do, and it seems we’ll be doing it mostly on our own – unless Harry Gentle’s opted for us rather than the repellent Moscrop.’
‘Hard to say,’ Jessie was on her feet too and following him to the door. ‘You can never tell what Harry’s really thinking. I’ll see how the situation is once I’ve checked the requisitions and sorted them out – which should I send to the other labs? The full blood counts or the ….’
‘I’ll let you know what they’re willing to take,’ Mrs Cloudesley said, ‘If they are. But you’ll have to be prepared for a bit of overtime, clearly. Not that that will worry you two unduly, I imagine,’ and she looked at Ben with her chin tilted at a provocative angle and he looked back, his face expressionless.
‘I’ve never noticed the hours I’ve worked for this hospital, Mrs Cloudesley, and I don’t imagine I’ll start now. Good morning. Let me know as soon as possible what I can offload …’ and he almost pushed Jessie through the door and shut it behind them with what was very close to a slam.
‘Bloody woman,’ he said wrathfully. ‘She’s got a mind like a goddammed sink, with her revolting innuendoes ….’
The Virus Man Page 29
