Crisis

by Ken McClure

  ‘1 suppose you’re familiar with my work?’ asked Stoddart.

  ‘Of course,’ lied Bannerman, thinking it must have been twenty years since Stoddart had last published anything.

  Stoddart saw this as his cue to launch into an after-dinner lecture on his life’s work.

  Bannerman sought solace in the brandy while nodding at appropriate intervals and sneaking surreptitious glances at his watch. When, eventually, Mrs Stoddart asked to be excused so that she could begin clearing the table, Bannerman took the opportunity to interrupt Stoddart and find out what he wanted to know.

  ‘Professor, I must ask you, what animal tests were set up on the brains of the three men from Achnagelloch?’

  Stoddart adopted a serious expression. He thought for a moment, and then said, ‘1 think you would have to ask Lawrence Gill that.’

  ‘But I can’t can I?’ said Bannerman.

  ‘I suppose not,’ agreed Stoddart. Then I suppose Dr Napier would be your best bet.’

  ‘You haven’t been taking an interest in this investigation yourself then?’ asked Bannerman.

  ‘I’m the collator for the MRC survey figures, of course,’ said Stoddart, with comfortable self-importance.

  ‘I see,’ said Bannerman, who was seething inside. Jesus Christ, he thought. He’s confronted with something like this and he’s collating the figures. If ever there was a candidate for early retirement, he was currently listening to him drone on about the pituitary gland.

  The following morning was Saturday, but Bannerman was in the medical school just after eight-thirty. He wasn’t sure if Morag Napier would be around but he thought he might be able to get her home phone number from someone. Apart from that, he wanted to carry out an examination of the bodies of the three dead men and to get brain biopsies to send to Munro at the Neurobiology Unit. He found his way to the mortuary and collared the duty attendant. He told him what he wanted.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said the man, shaking his head.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know about that?’ asked Bannerman, irritated but trying to keep his temper.

  ‘I’ve no note of this,’ said the man. ‘It’s not on my list.’

  Then put it on your list!’ exclaimed Bannerman.

  The man shook his head with a pitying smile and said, ‘It’s not as easy as that I’m afraid. There are procedures to be followed.’

  Oh Christ, thought Bannerman. A traffic warden in charge of the mortuary is all I need. ‘Do you have a phone?’ he snapped.

  ‘Not an outside call, I trust,’ replied the man.

  Bannerman brushed past him and called Stoddart, not caring if he was still in bed. As soon as Stoddart answered, he said curtly, ‘This is Bannerman. I’m at the mortuary and I want to examine the cadavers of the men Gill brought down from the north. Will you please tell your man that this is in order?’ Without waiting for a reply, he handed the receiver to the attendant and stared down at the desk, taking deep breaths as Stella had advised him to do when losing his temper. He heard the man say, ‘Yes sir, certainly sir, right away Professor,’ and then put the phone down.

  ‘I was just following the rules, sir,’ he said to Bannerman.

  So were the guards at Auschwitz, thought Bannerman.

  ‘Any particular order sir?’ asked the attendant.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ replied Bannerman, taking off his shoes and putting on Wellingtons. He gowned-up while the attendant brought the first body through the narrow, tiled corridor leading from the vault and slid it on to the table. The light above the table stuttered into being and produced a background hum as Bannerman, fastening the last of the ties on his gown, walked up to the table and peeled back the shroud.

  Even if no one had told him beforehand, he could have guessed that the dead man had had an outdoor occupation and that it involved physical effort. Despite the pallor of death there were still signs of a ruddy complexion, and the muscular development of his legs was marked. A jagged, dark line round his skull indicated where the skull cap had been removed when Gill had carried out the previous post-mortem.

  ‘I’ll need some specimen containers,’ Bannerman said to the attendant, who was keeping his distance.

  ‘What type?’

  ‘Glass, one ounce, Universal.’

  The attendant brought four containers to the head of the table while Bannerman removed the top of the skull. He picked up a scalpel and forceps from the instrument tray that had been opened for him and looked inside the skull cavity. He felt stupid. There was nothing there!

  Feeling as if he had been given a bad line to say in an amateur production, Bannerman said to the attendant, ‘Where is the corpse’s brain?’

  ‘If it’s not in his head, I don’t know, sir,’ replied the attendant, with an apparently straight face.

  ‘I take it you were not in attendance when Dr Gill carried out the first autopsy?’

  ‘No sir. I’m just weekends.’

  ‘Are copies of the reports kept down here?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Bannerman hadn’t really imagined that they would be. It was a forlorn hope. He was beginning to feel as though he was running in soft sand. ‘Put him back. I’ll check the other two.’

  The story was the same with the other two cadavers. The brains had been removed and, by the look of them, the cranial cavities had been cleaned out afterwards.

  Bannerman washed and went upstairs to see if he could find someone to give him Morag Napier’s telephone number. If he couldn’t, then it would mean another call to Stoddart. In the event he saw a light on in one of the labs and knocked on the door. He was invited to enter by a foreign sounding voice. He learned that Dr Klaus Lehman was on an exchange visit from the Max Plank Institute in Germany to work on a research project on allergies. Bannerman said he hoped that he would be able to talk to him about his project at some later date, but in the meantime, did he know if there was a staff telephone list? Lehman said that there was and that he had a copy.

  The phone rang eight times before Morag Napier answered. ‘You caught me in the bath,’ she complained.

  ‘I’m sorry, but it’s important. I couldn’t find any details about the animal tests that you and Dr Gill must have set up on the brains of the three men from Achnagelloch. You must have left the notes out of the file.’

  There was a pause before Morag Napier said, ‘I gave you everything there was in Lawrence’s desk. I wasn’t involved with the animal tests.’

  ‘But surely you must know what animal tests he set up?’ said Bannerman.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  Bannerman tapped the heel of his right hand against his forehead in suppressed frustration. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Where is the animal lab, and will there be someone there today?’

  Morag told him where the lab was and added, ‘One of the technicians will be in around noon.’

  ‘Good,’ said Bannerman. ‘Now can you tell me where the brains of the dead men are?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Morag. ‘The bodies are in the mortuary.’

  ‘But their brains aren’t,’ said Bannerman.

  ‘Lawrence must have removed them.’

  ‘Where would he keep them?’

  There’s a fridge-freezer in Lawrence’s lab. He sometimes stores specimens in that until they are no longer current.’

  ‘Can I get into it?’

  ‘It will be locked, and so will the lab.’

  Bannerman’s silence prompted Morag Napier into saying, ‘I’d better come in. I know where the keys are. Give me twenty minutes.’

  Bannerman went back to his own lab to wait. He tried to read the paper he had bought on the way in but found he couldn’t concentrate. He had flicked through all the pages without really having read anything.

  Morag Napier arrived wearing a navy-blue track suit with a university logo on it. Her trainer shoes were pristine white and she had tied her hair back in a bun. Bannerman noticed that she smelt of shampoo. She w
as carrying a bunch of keys in her hand. ‘Lawrence’s lab is open,’ she said.

  Bannerman thanked her for coming in and followed her into Lawrence Gill’s lab.

  Morag unlocked the large fridge-freezer and stood back for a moment to allow the frosty mist to clear. Bannerman saw that the fridge was well packed with a variety of plastic bags and boxes all containing bits and pieces of the human body. He made a superficial inspection for tell-tale grey material but there was no obvious sign of brains being stored there.

  ‘There’s an index,’ said Morag. She slid out a hard backed notebook from the space between the freezer and the wall and turned the pages until she reached the list of current contents. That’s funny,’ she said. They don’t seem to be here.’

  Bannerman rolled his eyes. ‘I’ll have to talk to Gill,’ he said. ‘Does anyone know where he is?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ replied Morag.

  ‘What conclusions did you and Gill come to about the deaths?’ asked Bannerman.

  ‘That the men had died from a degenerative brain disease and Lawrence thought that there might be some connection with Scrapie.’

  ‘The pathological evidence points to the men having died of Scrapie’ said Bannerman.

  ‘Or Creutzfeld Jakob Disease,’ said Morag.

  ‘But the incubation time was too short for that,’ said Bannerman.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So they must have died of something that looks like Creutzfeld Jakob,’ said Bannerman. That’s what made Gill think of Scrapie. It’s possible that the agent which killed the men is a mutant form of the sheep disease. That’s why the animal tests are of vital importance. If it transpires that Scrapie can cross the species barrier into man, for whatever reason, then we may have a major crisis on our hands.’

  ‘You mean if it can do it once, it can do it again?’

  ‘Yes. We have to find out how and why it did that,’ said Bannerman. The animal tests will tell us.’

  ‘But surely the danger is over,’ said Morag. The agent would be wiped out when the infected sheep were slaughtered?’ said Morag.

  ‘I hope you are right, and that all this was just a chance in a million, but we have to know for sure. We have to know why this happened in the first place. We know very little about the spread of Scrapie in the sheep population. It may be that the new virus, if that’s what it turns out to be, has already been spread all over the country through bird and animal food chains.’

  ‘What a thought,’ murmured Morag.

  ‘Unless Gill set up animal tests, the only source of infected material is the brains of the three men who died, and they are missing. We’ve got to find them so that the people at the Neurobiology Unit can run tests on them. That’s why I must talk to Gill.’

  Bannerman saw from the clock on the wall that it was coming up to twelve o’clock. ‘How do I get to the animal lab?’ he asked.

  Morag said, ‘I’ll take you there.’

  Bannerman followed her through a maze of basement corridors until he knew that they were getting near the animal lab from the unmistakable smell of mice. She knocked on a glass-fronted door that was reinforced by wire.

  ‘Who is it?’ came a voice from inside.

  ‘Morag Napier.’

  The door was unlocked, and Morag and Bannerman walked through into the animal house. The room was a whitewashed, basement room, lit by fluorescent strip lighting. One entire wall was decked with metal shelves upon which stood row after row of mouse boxes, each equipped with an automatic water feeder bottle. Another section of the lab housed rats, guinea pigs and rabbits. There was a preparation table in the middle of the floor and a row of sinks stood beyond. There were two small rooms leading off the main room. Bannerman could see an animal post-mortem board in one of them with a tray of instruments lying beside it.

  The girl who answered the door continued with her feeding schedule, dropping a handful of mouse ‘nuts’ into each box and checking to see if the inhabitants were still alive.

  ‘We need some information,’ said Morag.

  ‘Uh huh,’ replied the girl.

  ‘We need to know if Dr Gill asked for any mice tests to be set up when he returned from the north.’

  ‘It will be in the book,’ said the girl. The red one in the office.’

  Morag and Bannerman took this as an invitation to look for themselves. They started scanning back through the pages of the animal records.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Morag, underlining an entry with her finger. Bannerman looked over her shoulder.

  The entry read, ‘Six mice, Dr Lawrence Gill, three samples, two mice per sample. Ref. W 17–22. Cross Ref. MRC 3’.

  ‘MRC 3,’ repeated Bannerman. These must be the ones.’

  ‘How do we find W 17–22?’ Morag asked the technician.

  The girl stopped feeding her charges and moved along the row to tap one of the boxes with her palm. ‘From here to the left,’ she said.

  Morag took down the box the girl had touched and looked inside. ‘Alive and well,’ she said, handing the box to Bannerman and bringing down the next one. ‘Same.’

  All six mice were alive and apparently healthy.

  ‘Well, it’s a relief to know the tests were set up,’ said Bannerman. At least Gill had done something right. He put on protective gloves and picked up one of the mice from its box to let it run over the back of his hand. It seemed perfectly healthy in every way. The mouse tried to get a grip of his gloved thumb with its teeth and Bannerman massaged the black spot in its otherwise white fur until it let go. He dropped the animal gently back into its box and closed the lid. ‘I suppose it’s a bit soon for any brain disease to have developed, even if it is a new strain. We’ll have to keep an eye on these chaps. They may hold the answer to this whole business.’

  Morag nodded and said, ‘I’ll see to it.’

  ‘But I still have to talk to Gill,’ said Bannerman. ‘Does his wife live in Edinburgh?’

  Morag Napier looked at him in surprise. ‘Yes but surely you’re not going to …’

  ‘I need to see her,’ said Bannerman. ‘If she knows that her husband has run off with someone, she probably knows who with and possibly where to.’

  ‘But she’ll be upset!’ protested Morag. ‘How can you be so heartless?’

  ‘If three young men have died of Scrapie we have a great deal more to worry about than the sensibilities of Lawrence Gill and his wife,’ said Bannerman.

  ‘I suppose so,’ agreed Morag reluctantly. ‘I’ll get you the address.’

  Bannerman invited Morag Napier to have lunch with him, but she declined, saying that she had ‘things to do’. It wasn’t too big a disappointment; the offer had been made out of politeness. He suspected that Morag did not hold a single opinion that hadn’t been vetted by her subconscious for ‘suitability’. Instead, he had lunch at a pub in the High Street and watched the world go by for an hour or so before phoning Lawrence Gill’s wife.

  ‘Vera Gill.’

  ‘Mrs Gill, my name’s Bannerman. I’m a pathologist working for the MRC.’

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Bannerman?’ said a polite voice.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you about your husband.’

  ‘What about him?’ The voice had gone cold.

  ‘I’m sorry. I know it seems insensitive in the circumstances, but please, it’s very important.’

  ‘I can’t think what that could possibly be,’ said Vera Gill.

  ‘I’d rather not talk over the telephone. Could we meet?’

  Vera Gill hesitated, and Bannerman repeated how important it was.

  ‘Very well. Come round this afternoon.’

  Bannerman scribbled down the address and they agreed on a meeting at three-thirty.

  Vera Gill lived with her children, two girls, in a pleasant semi-detached house in the Colinton area of the city. The girls, who were wrapped up warmly against a cold east wind, were playing in the garden when Bannerman arrived. As he opened the gate and started t
o walk up the path the youngest girl asked, ‘Have you brought my daddy home?’

  Bannerman was struggling for a reply when the older child said, ‘She doesn’t fully understand yet.’

  Bannerman smiled apologetically. The older child could not have been more than ten.

  Vera Gill appeared at the door and invited Bannerman inside. As she ushered him past her she said to the older child, ‘Keep Wendy amused will you, darling. Mummy has to talk to this man for a little while.’

  ‘She is quite a young lady,’ said Bannerman as the door was closed.

  ‘She’s very mature for her age,’ agreed Vera Gill. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without her support over the last week or so. Now, what did you want to know?’

  ‘Mrs Gill, it’s very important that I find your husband. 1 need some vital information from him.’

  Vera Gill’s face clouded over. She said, ‘I have heard nothing from my husband since he left here on the 16th of January. Not a word.’

  ‘So you don’t know where he is?’

  ‘No.’

  Bannerman maintained a silence for a few moments, hoping that it might oblige Vera Gill to reconsider a little. She didn’t, so he pressed her a little further. ‘Mrs Gill, if your husband has just gone missing surely you would have reported the matter to the police?’

  ‘All right,’ snapped Vera Gill. ‘He’s gone off with another woman. Is that what you wanted? But I don’t know where they are.’

  ‘Do you know this other woman?’ asked Bannerman, aware of the pain in Vera Gill’s eyes but also knowing that she was his only hope of finding Gill.

  ‘No,’ replied Vera Gill, but Bannerman could see that she was lying. It wasn’t difficult. She wasn’t used to doing it. She diverted her eyes and looked guilty, just like a child.

  ‘Mrs Gill … I know how much this must have hurt you …’

  ‘Oh no you don’t!’ snapped Vera Gill with a venom that surprised Bannerman. ‘You couldn’t possibly know anything of the sort!’

  It was Bannerman’s turn to divert his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘Of course I don’t.’