The Lazarus Strain (19 page)

‘And if things should get that far?’

‘If things should get that far and no vaccine protection has been made available . . . an epidemic would be unavoidable.’

‘Supposing a vaccine was available, how long does it take to become effective in preventing infection?’

‘Thankfully, not long at all, two or three days should be sufficient.’

‘Nothing more has been mentioned about a 9/11 style attack on Canary Wharf,’ said the officer from the Metropolitan Police. ‘Can we assume that this has now been discredited?’

‘I rather think we can,’ said the Home Office Minister. ‘It seems as if the scepticism of DIS expressed at our last meeting was justified. It was a diversion.’

‘To divert attention from an attempted Cambodia 5 virus attack?’

‘That may well be the case.’

‘It didn’t stop certain government sources claiming success for smashing a planned attack on Canary Wharf though, did it?’ said someone.

The Home Office minister looked uncomfortable. He said, ‘Sometimes those at the interface between government and the media interpret things differently . . .’

‘Spin doctors,’ said the same person with obvious distaste.

‘I think such an interpretation is called lying in your own interests,’ added the London Fire Brigades officer.

‘I think internal explanations and apologies, where seen fit, have already been made,’ said the Home Office minister. ‘Although it would be fair to say that no deliberate intent to deceive was involved.’

Perish the thought, thought Steven.

‘When the first reports from DIS came in they had to be treated as a genuine al-Qaeda threat. It was only after interrogation that DIS started to suspect they were being fed erroneous information.’

‘Perhaps Colonel Rose would care to give us an update on what DIS obtained from the suspects under interrogation?’ suggested John Macmillan.

‘Not a great deal,’ admitted Rose. ‘The truth is they didn’t know much to begin with – that’s why we were led to them in the first place. They were low level people, sacrificed by al Qaeda in order to send us on a wild goose chase. The best we’ve managed to get out of them is a few more names, which we’re checking out, but it’s odds on they’ll be low level operatives too.’

‘Thank you, Colonel.’

‘Well, ladies and gentlemen,’ said the Home Office minister, ‘if there are no more questions or comments, I think I’ll call this meeting to a close. Perhaps the Sci-Med people would stay behind for a few minutes.’

Steven and Macmillan looked at each other. Macmillan’s shrug told Steven that he didn’t know either why they’d been asked to stay.

‘No need to look so worried,’ said the Home Office minister when he rejoined Steven and Macmillan after seeing the others out. ‘Sherry?’

The two Sci-Med men sat sipping what Steven expected Macmillan to call ‘a decent amontillado’ although he didn’t, while the Home Office minister took a phone call. ‘Nothing I couldn’t handle, Home Secretary . . . Absolutely, Home Secretary . . . Nice of you to say so, sir . . . I certainly will, they’re with me now.’

‘The Home Secretary sends his regards and his congratulations to you Dr Dunbar for seeing through the animal rights ruse.’

Steven gave an ‘all in a day’s work’ nod.

‘I thought it only right to keep you chaps abreast of our efforts to clear the decks for Dr Martin’s vaccine if and when it becomes available. We have reached agreement with the FDA in the USA and with our own people at MHRA. They have both agreed to give her vaccine their seal of approval subject only to routine tests for bacterial contamination before distribution – understandable I think in the circumstances, when that’s what caused all the problems last year at Auroragen.’

‘So it’s all coming down to a simple race between Dr Martin and al-Qaeda,’ said Macmillan.

‘I saw her yesterday,’ said Steven. ‘The vaccine seed strain has been constructed. It’s growing up in fertile eggs as we speak. It’s just a question of whether it grows up in time to be handed over to Auroragen.’

‘Latest possible date is February 21
,’ said the Home Office Minister. ‘Any later than that and the company will revert to using the three strains recommended by the World Health Organisation.’

‘Has WHO been made aware of the situation?’ asked Macmillan.

‘Of course, but they can’t recommend incorporation of a vaccine seed strain that doesn’t as yet exist. They say they’ll have to advocate use of the best three known strains for the preparation of next year’s vaccine.’

‘And if Leila’s strain
is
ready in time?’ asked Steven, immediately wishing he hadn’t used Leila’s first name.

‘Then, like the FDA and MHPRA, they are prepared to nod it through with the minimum of paperwork.’

‘Good.’

THIRTEEN

‘A patrol car has just radioed in with some information, sir,’ said Sergeant Mark Morley. ‘They’ve been called to a flat in Sefton Road. Neighbours have been complaining about a smell . . .’

Frank Giles got to his feet. ‘I take it we’re talking about a particular smell if the officers have called in?’

‘Yes sir, PC Robson’s a twenty year man: he knows the smell of death well enough and in view of your alert about reports of illness . . .’

‘Do we know who the flat’s registered to?’

‘The lease holder is one, Abu Zahid. The neighbours say three young Asian men live there.’

‘Better organise a biohazard team and I’ll call Dunbar. This could be what he was looking for.’

Forty minutes later Steven, Giles and the biohazard team met up in Sefton Street which had already been sealed off by uniformed officers.

‘Do we know what we’re dealing with here?’ asked the leader of the biohazard team when he’d been introduced by Giles to Steven.

‘Not for sure, but possibly a highly infectious virus,’ said Steven. ‘We’ll need full containment protocol set up before entering the flat and full wash-down facilities for those coming out. The smell from inside says we’ll also need hermetic-seal body bags but we don’t know how many yet.’ Steven turned to Giles and asked, ‘I take it you have a forensic team standing by?’

‘They’re here, just waiting for the nod.’

‘They’ll need respirators.’

‘I’ll tell them. I take it you’re going in with the team?’

‘If they can give me a suit,’ said Steven.

The team leader detailed one of his men to fetch one. The man took a few seconds to appraise Steven’s size before heading off.

‘We’re going to look a right bunch of clowns if it turns out to be a dead rat in the drains,’ said Giles.

‘I could live with that,’ said Steven, considering the alternative. He took the suit that was handed to him and started getting into it. The other waited for him and then they all checked the seals on each other’s suits and hoods before setting off towards the entrance to the flat where two of the team had already set up a secondary entrance out of plastic sheeting. This amounted to a porch which would prevent any organism escaping from within the flat when the door was opened. Once they were all inside the plastic bubble, the sheeting was sealed behind them before the door was forced open and they moved inside.

There were three dead bodies in the flat, all of Middle Eastern appearance and all three found in the one bedroom where they lay on separate single beds. There was no obvious sign of violence and the abundance of tissue boxes and bottles of cough remedies and aspirin suggested illness rather than violence. There were bowls of congealed, blood-flecked sputum lying next to the beds and blood-stained tissues scattered across the floor. After making sure that all three were dead, Steven signalled to the team leader that they should leave things as they were and gestured towards the door. They trooped out in single file and were washed down with disinfectant sprays before removing their hoods.

‘Good call from your men,’ said Steven to Giles. ‘Three dead and they all look like virus victims. We should let forensics do their business before we touch anything. When they’re finished, the biohazard boys can wrap the bodies for removal and clear and disinfect the site. You’ll have to warn the police pathologist about the danger at post-mortem.’

‘I’ll tell Marge,’ said Giles.

When he heard the name, Steven remembered that he’d met her before and that she’d been right - they were all a long way from Walton’s Mountain.

By three in the afternoon, the dead men had all been identified from ID found in the flat. They were Abu Zahid (24), Nasser Qatada (23) and Ahmed Mohammed (23). A preliminary investigation established that they appeared to have no connection with anyone else in the city but all three had relations living in Leicester.

‘How did you get on?’ Giles asked Morley when he came back from leading the team interviewing the neighbours. ‘Let me guess. Quiet, respectable chaps who kept themselves very much to themselves?’

‘Incredible. You could give Paul Daniels a run for his money, sir,’ said Morley.

‘The point is,’ said Giles, ‘Was one of them “Ali”?’

‘Maybe we could try out Shanks with a photograph of the bodies?’ suggested Morley.

‘A good thought; do that, will you?’

‘I didn’t draw a complete blank with the neighbours,’ said Morley. ‘One of them told me that the dead men had a vehicle, an old Land Rover, he said. The kind farmers use. He thinks they kept it in a lock-up round the back in Granary Lane. Uniform are on it right now.’

‘Well done. Warn forensics and tell them to give it a right going over. They’re looking for anything that will connect the vehicle to the Robert Smith murder.’

Steven returned to his hotel and called Macmillan to tell him of the day’s events.

‘God, it’s like a nightmare unfolding before our eyes,’ said Macmillan. ‘Did you find any indication of what they were up to in the flat?’

‘No,’ said Steven. ‘But it wasn’t being used as a lab if that’s what you were getting at.’

‘It was,’ agreed Macmillan. ‘So on the face of it we have three dead men of possibly Middle Eastern origin with Cambodia 5 being the likely cause of death but with no indication as to how they got it?’

‘That’s about it at the moment but stay tuned, as they say,’ said Steven.

‘Wild horses, etc,’ said Macmillan.

Three hours later, as Steven was preparing to drive over to the city mortuary to check on progress of the post-mortem examinations of the men, he got a call from Colonel Rose at the Defence Intelligence Service.

‘They’re on our list,’ said Rose. ‘All three of them.’

‘You have the better of me, Colonel,’ said Steven. ‘What list?’

‘Suspected al-Qaeda associates. The three dead men are all English, born in Leicester, but they got sucked into the Muslim fundamentalist movement by persuasive clerics working the Midlands. All three have recently been ‘on holiday’ to Pakistan but it’s odds on they spent time at what we like to call, “Butlin’s, Kabul” – Mujahadeen training camps in Afghanistan.’

‘So now we have a definite al-Qaeda connection.’

‘’Fraid so,’ said Rose. ‘Albeit a low level one as far as these three were concerned. They’re puppets. It’s who’s pulling the strings we have to worry about.’

‘And what kind of show they’re planning to put on,’ murmured Steven. ‘Thanks Colonel.’

‘Well, John Boy, weren’t we lucky it was only flu that you and Sci-Med were worried about?’ said Marjorie Ryman sarcastically as Steven, gowned and masked, entered the post-mortem room. Frank Giles was already there.

‘Just doing my job, Elizabeth,’ said Steven although he was stung by the comment. Ryman was another of the people he had had to be circumspect with at the outset.

Ryman continued to work without saying anything for fully a minute although the sound of instruments she tossed into the metal tray beside her acted as punctuation marks in a silence that spoke eloquently of her displeasure. Eventually, she looked up at Steven and said, ‘This man’s airways were so full of bloody mucous that he actually drowned in it. That’s how he died . . .’

The stare continued and Steven was prompted to say, ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

‘Thank you, Doctor?’ exclaimed Ryman. ‘Is that all you have to say?’

‘What would you like me to say?’ said Steven evenly.

‘I would like you to tell me
why
his airways are so full of bloody mucous, Doctor,’ said Ryman.

‘Influenza,’ said Steven. ‘I wasn’t lying. It really is flu.’

‘But not as we know it, Captain?’ suggested Ryman acidly.

‘It’s a strain called Cambodia 5,’ said Steven. ‘It’s a genetically engineered variant of an avian flu virus found in Cambodia last year and is very similar to the pandemic strain of 1918. Professor Devon of the Crick Institute was asked by government to design a vaccine against it because the World Health Organisation thinks that such a strain will evolve naturally in the very near future.’

‘Well, thank
you
for that, Doctor,’ said Ryman. She turned to Giles. ‘Now I can tell
you
, Inspector, that this man almost certainly died of Cambodia 5 virus infection although lab tests – which I suspect will not be performed in the circumstances – would be needed to confirm that conclusion.’

‘And the other two as well?’ asked Giles.

‘No,’ said Ryman. ‘They were murdered.’

* * * * *

Giles and Steven looked at each other, stunned and equally taken aback. ‘Murdered?’

‘Both were suffering from the same disease as the man who drowned in his own mucosal secretions and probably would have died anyway judging by the state of their lungs and airways, but this obviously wasn’t quick enough for the person who decided to help them on their way. They were both asphyxiated.’

‘Shit,’ murmured Giles.

‘I guess they became surplus to requirements,’ said Steven.

‘Whose requirements?’ asked Ryman.

‘We don’t know that yet,’ said Steven. It drew a doubting look from Ryman but she carried on with her work.

Steven and Giles left the mortuary together. It was already dark and frost was making the pavements sparkle under the street lights. ‘Anything back from forensics?’ Steven asked.