Going Viral (7 page)
She introduced herself as the new treasurer and asked if she could have a look around. Rose said she
thought
it would be all right and Mary tentatively asked for some ID.
Suppressing a smile as she wondered what affect her warrant card would have, Rebecca produced a credit card.
‘You could always ring Marc Bell if you’re still not sure,’ she said.
They decided to accept the card and Rose showed her round. The two rooms at the back were used for storage and sorting, and there were also a small kitchen, loo and a back entrance that led to a yard. There were three cars parked in it.
‘It’s where we take deliveries,’ Rose said.
‘What’s that?’ Rebecca asked, pointing to a solid iron stairway going half way up the back of the house.
‘Oh, that’s the upstairs flat. The stairs inside have been sealed off, and that’s how they get in.’
‘Anyone living there now?’
‘Oh yes, a nice young couple with a baby.’
Rebecca wondered what ‘‘Elf ‘n’ Safety’ would think about carrying a baby up the steps, but didn’t say anything. They went back inside where Rose showed her the sealed-up door to the stairs. Opposite was another door, locked. She asked where it went. Rosemary looked at each other and Mary said, ‘The basement, I think.’
‘Is it used?’ Rebecca asked.
They didn’t think so. Why?
Just curious.
She looked around a bit more. There was a keypad just inside the front door, presumably an alarm of the sort you have to mute after you’ve opened the door. She surreptitiously studied it, but it didn’t seem to have been used much.
She wandered to the back rooms again and looked at the door there… another keypad, but here, three digits were grubby – 0, 1 & 6.
1066, she thought. But why did they use the back to get in rather than the front? Because that’s where they parked their cars, dumbo…
There were two locks - a Yale and a conventional lock with the door handle. She bought a couple of books, declined the offer of tea, thanked them and left. She returned to the flat and called Brigg.
‘It’s ideal,’ she said. ‘Rose and Mary lock up in the evening, and the perps come in at night or on Sundays and work in the basement.’
‘What about the couple in the flat, are they involved?’
She hesitated… ‘You wouldn’t think so, not with a baby.’
‘No. Pretty dangerous anyway, isn’t it? Working on live smallpox in a basement…’
‘Maybe not if they’d got themselves vaccinated… I’ll talk to Herry.’
‘Then what?’
‘I’ll take a look.’
After the SCRUB meeting on Monday, with banana skins in mind, I went through my Green Bag, since I’d told the others to make sure theirs were up to date. We all had a Green Bag, which held our personal protection equipment such as disposable gowns, gloves, masks, overshoes etc. I kept mine in my office.
The portable equipment for managing patients at the scene of an outbreak was kept in Red Bags, which were stored on Ward Seven – the isolation ward that had been designated in case of a smallpox outbreak. Roland, as Consultant in Infectious Diseases, was responsible for these, and I’d told him to make sure they were all checked. I’d check on his checking later.
I didn’t hear any more from Rebecca, so spent Tuesday and Wednesday catching up with my routine. My department handled all the medical virology investigations in the area, which made me responsible for all the reports we issued. When I was away, Caroline or James signed them, but when I was there, I went through them myself.
On Thursday afternoon, I was due to give a lecture to a group of housemen, and was looking through my notes and PowerPoints late in the morning when Rebecca phoned.
‘I need to see you,’ she said. ‘Can I come this afternoon?’
‘Difficult,’ I said, and told her about the lecture. ‘How about now?’
‘All right,’ she said, ‘half an hour. Can I be shown straight to your office? I don’t want to be seen hanging round.’
I told her yes, then went to arrange it with the receptionist.
She was punctual to the minute. She was wearing jeans and a rather nice coat. Not expensive nice, it just suited her rather well.
‘Sorry to be so cloak and dagger,’ she said when she’d sat down, ‘but it would be just my luck to be seen here by one of the BTA members.’
‘You could always say your doctor told you to bring in a sample.’
She smiled. ‘That’s exactly what I
was
going to say, but I’d rather not. Anyway, the list of virologists you gave me, I’ve compared them to the Exeter BTA membership list and didn’t get any hits. Have you got any more names from Tim yet?’
I told her he’d be bringing them in tomorrow.
‘Can you ring him now and ask?’
I got his answerphone and left a message.
She said, ‘While we’re waiting, can I pick your brains?’
I smiled. ‘Sure.’
She gathered her thoughts... ‘You told me on Friday that although Tim felt they were probably using a
bona
fide
lab somewhere,
you
thought it just as likely they had a hidden lab of their own. Do you still think that?’
I nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘How big would it need to be?’
I looked round my room. ‘Oh, say half the size of this. Ten by ten.’
‘And that would hold all the equipment on the list you gave me?’
‘Just about.’
‘Is it all fairly easy to get hold of, or could you do without some of it?’
I found my own copy of the list and we went through it.
‘Incubator – that’s easy enough, they’re only glorified ovens. ‘Fridge, freezer, electricity to run them, and gas as well, for a Bunsen…’
‘Would bottled gas do?’
‘A camping stove’d do. They’d need a microscope, that’s fairly easy, but then it gets trickier – cell lines for growing the virus, cell growth media, but a virologist wouldn’t have much trouble getting hold of them.’
She said, ‘I thought the virus grew in hen’s eggs?’
‘It does.’
‘Then why the cell lines?’
I thought about how best to put it. ‘Viruses are parasites, all of them. They have to have a living cell to grow in. In nature, that’s
us
, or some other animal or plant. A fertilised egg’s a cell, but Variola’s quite unusual in growing in a hen’s egg.’
Her brow furrowed as she took it in.
I went on, ‘To grow viruses in any quantity, you first have to grow a layer of animal cells, on a slide or the inside of a test tube, and then infect that with the virus.’
‘So an egg won’t do?’
‘An egg’s fine to demonstrate the virus, but to grow it in any kind of numbers, you need to have a cell line.’
‘What kind of cells?’
‘Mostly from human or monkey tissue – I’ll show you if you like –’ I started to get up, but she shook her head.
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘OK.’ I sat down again. ‘You’d also need a macerator, that’s something to chop up the cells and release the virus. At that stage, you’d really want a centrifuge to separate the virus out, although you could probably manage without. And then an aerosol producer of some kind to spread it – something like a hairspray would do.’
She stared at me… ‘So you’d just spray it around and people would breath it in and catch it?’
‘Oh, you’d want somewhere enclosed, like an office block or a nice crowded department store. You’d probably try and put it in the air conditioning, or something like that.’
‘But you could just spray it around?’
‘Sure, although some of the customers might wonder what you were up to.’
She thought about this, then, ‘OK, you’ve sprayed it around somehow, how long before people start going down with smallpox?’
At least ten days, I told her.
‘
That
long?’
‘And they wouldn’t even know they had smallpox at that stage, they’d think they’d got a bad dose of ‘flu. The spots don’t come out for another three or four days.’
‘So it would be two weeks before you saw any cases?’
‘At least.’
‘But meanwhile, other people could catch it from them?’
‘Oh, they could and would –’
The phone rang. It was Tim. He had a list of names and I wrote them down as he recited them. I asked how he was getting on.
‘Nearly done,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.’
I rang off and gave the names to Rebecca, who put them in her bag.
‘I’ll check them later,’ she said. She picked up the equipment list again. ‘What about this? Safety Cabinet – is that what you were telling me about on Friday?’
I explained what it was and how it worked.
‘So that’s the only problem really with the hidden lab?’ she said.
‘It’s quite a problem, you wouldn’t want to try growing Variola in your kitchen – there’d be a real risk of infecting yourself, and your family, if you had one.’
‘What about a cellar?’
I said, ‘Yes, that’d probably work… d’you have one in mind?’
She nodded.
‘Where?’ I asked, and she told me about the charity shop and its locked up basement… It was the first time I could remember seeing her really animated, the thrill of the chase, I suppose. It made her face come alive.
‘So what will you do?’ I asked. ‘Raid it?’
A shake of the head. ‘If I was wrong, it’d warn them and they’d get the real place covered up. I’ve got to break in myself and have a look.’
‘How’re you going to manage that?’
‘Oh, getting in’s easy enough,’ she said. ‘The problem is knowing what to look for. That’s why I need you to come with me.’
I stared at her…
‘Oh no,’ I said as it sank in. ‘No.
You’re
the spook,
you
do the breaking and entering. If you need help, use your colleague in Plymouth or wherever.’
‘They wouldn’t know what to look for any more than me.’
‘You’d recognise a microscope, surely?’
‘I really don’t know… and what if they didn’t leave it there? I might recognise an oven, and a “fridge/freezer”, but so what? There could be all sorts of reasons for them being there.’
I said, ‘I still think you’d recognise a laboratory if you saw one.’
‘Suppose I found something I
thought
was a laboratory, I’d still have to get you to come and see it… Look, it’s simply a matter of getting into the shop, going down to the basement and you taking a look –’
‘No,’ I interrupted her, ‘it’s not
simply
a matter of anything. For a start, you’d have to put on protective clothing before you went down there –’
‘Why? I’ve been vaccinated.’
‘Because you might bring something back up with you, that’s why.’
‘I rest my case.’ she said. ‘You’ve just given me a perfectly good reason why I need you there – I wouldn’t have thought of that. And I do seem to remember that you agreed with the boss to help me when I needed it…’
I stared at her for a moment… ‘When did you have in mind for this jolly?’
‘Tonight. I daren’t leave it –’
‘
Tonight
? Why tonight?’ I demanded… I suppose I’d been hoping there’d be some way out of it before it happened…
‘Because they might move it –’
‘Oh, come on…’
‘Because it’s a chance to get this whole dirty business wrapped up before the virus
does
get out and infect someone.’
She was right. I let out a sigh and said resignedly,
‘What time did you have in mind?’
‘I thought about eleven. We –’
‘Oh, great. Chucking out time…’
‘It’s not in the town centre, look…’ She brought out an A to Z and found the page… ‘Cecil Street, here… there’s a way in the back, here, so we park a little way down and walk back…’
*
Not in the centre maybe, but it wasn’t that far out and there were plenty of people around. We parked, walked back about fifty yards, then quickly turned right into a narrow, cobbled road that was little more than an alleyway. We were dressed in dark clothes and I carried the protective gowns, gloves etc. in a backpack. The talk I’d given in the afternoon to the house-persons hadn’t been my best…
We worked our way round –
‘What the hell’s that? I hissed, pointing to the lighted window above the shop.
‘A flat with a young couple in it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘What difference would it’ve made? Do shut up, Herry.’
The first time she’d used my Christian name and it was to tell me to shut up. The fact that it was whispered made it worse somehow…
She moved silently across a small, concreted yard to the door. I followed. There was hardly any light and yet the iron stairway up to the flat stood out stark against the sky. A tatty looking Escort was parked beside it.
Something flickered in her hand, a pencil torch. She shone it onto the lock and fished out a bunch of keys. They tinkled like wind chimes. She selected one, inserted and turned it, then repeated the process for the Yale. She turned the handle and tried to ease the door open …it moved a little way, then jammed on something… she tried manoeuvring it, and when that didn’t work, pushed harder… it opened with a loud creak …
She slipped inside, the beam flicked up to a keypad, but before she could reach it, a bleeping cut into the night…
She punched in a number and there was silence. She beckoned me in.
‘Someone might have heard that,’ I whispered.
‘Unlikely, but we’ll hang around a minute or two to see if there’s any reaction.’
We waited in silence…
‘How did you know the number?’ I breathed.
‘Worked it out when I came in.’
After another minute, she said in a low voice, ‘That’s long enough. This way…’ The pencil beam lit the bare wooden floor and a kettle gleamed faintly on a worktop. ‘Watch the step…’
Despite her warning, I stumbled slightly over it, then we were in the shop proper. She led the way past overflowing boxes to what seemed to be a small alcove, but was in fact a tiny hall with two doorways leading from it. One was bricked up.
She shone the beam onto the other door. Selected another key, which didn’t work, then another one, which did. I tapped her shoulder.
‘Gowns,’ I whispered.
‘I know.’
I took off the backpack and opened it. Handed her a gown and showed her how to put it on. Then overshoes, mask, bonnet and gloves.
When we were both gowned, she turned the handle and opened the door. Looked for a light switch, but there wasn’t one. Started down the wooden steps. I gingerly followed. The steps knocked hollowly.
At the bottom was another door, not locked. She pushed it open and this time did find a switch. The light from the bare bulb made me blink. We looked …
There was a bench, an old sink, some bottles and an orgy of cobwebs. There was nothing remotely resembling a lab.
‘All dressed up and nowhere to go…’ I murmured.
She shot me a look of contempt… then she spotted a door in the opposite wall… she strode over and pulled it open, but it was just a cupboard. She went round he walls, carefully examining them, but there was nothing else.
‘It seemed so right,’ she said, her voice muffled by the mask. For a moment she sounded almost pathetic, then she pulled it off and said, ‘Might as well get back, I suppose.’
We climbed back up to the top of the narrow stairway. She pushed the door, then stopped –
‘Oh shit,’ she breathed –
A pulsing blue light lit the shop and a loud voice came from the back. ‘Police, stay where you are…’
She motioned me back and gently pulled the door to… Found the key, slowly inserted and turned it… the noise it made sounded monstrous in my ears…
She turned off the torch and sank onto the stairs. I sank beside her, one step lower. My hand was on her foot, I could feel the roughness of the overshoe…
The voice, muffled now, said, ‘Police, come out and show yourselves…’
I left my hand where it was…
Footsteps, fading away. We stayed absolutely still.
The footsteps returned, closer… a faint light shone at the bottom of the door, illuminating Rebecca’s face for a moment... the rattle of the door as it was tried made me jump –
I found myself thinking:
He’s
there
and
we’re
here
,
less
than
a
foot
away
,
separated
by
a
thin
piece
of
wood
…
My hand was still on her foot and suddenly, for no reason I could imagine, I felt intensely horny… it flooded through me and my chest tightened, as did my grip on her foot…
Then the footsteps moved away. There were muttered voices, then these, too faded.
I whispered, ‘Have they gone?’
‘Shh. We stay put.’
We waited in silence. My horniness subsided, but I left my hand where it was. It felt comfortable.
After a few minutes, we heard muffled voices again, then nothing.
We went on waiting. It seemed like an hour, but she told me later it was only about fifteen minutes. Then, very carefully, she unlocked the door and slowly eased it open.
Nothing. I cautiously followed her out. My leg had gone dead and I stopped to rub it…
When she was sure no one was still there, she said in a low voice, ‘What do we do with these?’ She meant the gowns.
‘Tear them off and I’ll stuff them back in the bag.’ I showed her.
We listened for a few more minutes, then she said, ‘We’ll go out by the front.’
‘Why? We might be seen…’
‘If anyone’s watching, they’ll be at the back.’
She lit the pencil beam and moved slowly down the shop. I followed.
She was by the front door, fiddling with her keys. As I reached her, she said, ‘I’m going to make sure this one doesn’t bleep.’
She found the right key, unlocked the door, but didn’t open it. Instead, she keyed in the number, then said,
‘Put your finger on this button, and the moment I open the door, press it – OK?’
I nodded. She checked I had the right one, eased the door open –
‘
Now
…’
I pressed the button – silence. She slid out. I followed. There was no one around. She pulled the door shut and relocked it. Still silence. She whispered, ‘Keep to the side. Don’t run.’
She walked away, staying close to the side of the building. I followed. We didn’t say anything until we were in the car. She started the engine, said,
‘I’m not going back that way, you’ll have to direct me to your place.’
‘Down here, second left.’
She drove away. I said, ‘Who raised the alarm?’
‘I don’t know. Probably the people in the flat.’
‘I thought you said they wouldn’t hear anything.’
‘I said it was unlikely… they might have, I suppose.’
‘D’you think they’re part of it?’
‘If they were, would they have called the cops?’
‘They might…’
‘Yeah, they might.’
She drove in silence for a few minutes, then said, ‘Did you shut the door behind you? The back one, when we went in…’
‘I didn’t realise I was supposed to.’
‘Well, I expect it was when they found it open, they came in. They might not have otherwise.’
‘I didn’t want to come,’ I reminded her.
We continued in silence till she pulled up outside my house fifteen minutes later.
‘D’you want to come in?’ I said. ‘We need to talk.’
‘We can talk here.’
I was about to ask what was wrong with my house when she pulled out a tobacco pouch and started rolling a cigarette. Her car. She wound down her window and lit it. Pulled a drag.
I said, ‘It’s only just occurred to me – why did we have to hide from the cops anyway? You could’ve shown them your warrant card, couldn’t you?’
‘They might have had whoever raised the alarm with them, which would’ve got back to the perps and told them we were onto them.’
‘They’re going to know now anyway, aren’t they?’
‘I don’t think so. The door could’ve easily been left open earlier, which could’ve triggered the alarm.’
I said, ‘It would help to know who raised the alarm, wouldn’t it? Is it worth asking the cops?’
‘I’ll talk to the boss about it.’
‘I mean, the local cops
do
know you’re here, don’t they?’
‘I doubt those two who came a-calling do.’ She went on, ‘I’ve had a thought … Whether it was the people in the flat who raised the alarm or not, it’s a perfect excuse for those two cops to go and talk to them, ask them if they saw anything. If they didn’t, the cops can say the door had been left open... And they can have a look round the flat while they’re about it… How big did you say a hidden lab had to be?’
‘Ten by ten.’
‘Could it be smaller?’
‘Not by much…’
‘All right,’ she said. She dropped the fag out of the window and wound it up. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
This was obviously the signal for me to go, so I pulled the door handle. As I got out, she said,
‘Thanks for coming, Herry. Sorry it was a waste of time. It seemed so right…’
‘It’s OK,’ I said, and shut the door. Watched as she drove off, then let myself into my house.
I was too wound up to sleep. I poured a medicinal brandy and took a medicinal swig. Swallowed what was left, poured another, sat down.
If they were right about BTA, and right about the area, then it
would
have been the ideal place for a lab…
Could it be the flat? Unlikely, with the baby.
Was it in someone’s house, or garden shed? Or would they have chanced doing it in one of the academic labs? Were there any small ones around where the risks would be minimal? Torbay, Taunton…?
Were there any small industrial labs around? Couldn’t think of any…
I went to bed and tried to sleep, but it wouldn’t come. My mind went round and round, not constructively. I thought about me and Rebecca on the stairs and felt horny again…
I got up and had some more brandy. After that, I did sleep.
