White Death (23 page)

‘It would be if that’s what happened,’ said Dutton, adding to Steven’s mounting frustration.

‘Mr Dutton, you do accept that a toxic substance was found in the vaccine vials prepared by your company?’

‘So they tell me.’

‘But you’re not concerned?’

Dutton looked at Steven and shook his head. ‘Nope.’

‘My God, man, if your maintenance schedules allowed a toxic chemical to get into a vaccine …’

‘I should be on my knees asking the Almighty for forgiveness,’ said Dutton. He leaned towards Steven. ‘But it never happened.’

At that moment Dutton’s wife came into the conservatory with a silver tea tray and laid it down between them. ‘There you are. I hope you two are having a nice chat. The scones are freshly baked – just out the oven …’

Steven did his best to fake up a smile and said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Dutton, that’s very kind.’

‘Just shout if you want more …’

Mrs Dutton backed out through the French doors and closed them with a last beaming smile.

‘What d’you mean, it never happened?’ demanded Steven as the electric atmosphere returned. ‘The scientists at St Clair Genomics found toxin in the vials, the same one that you had been bottling the day before.’

‘So they did.’ Dutton resumed his watch on the conifers in the garden.

‘Are you saying that it didn’t come from the production line?’ asked Steven.

‘Well, you got there in the end,’ said Dutton.

Steven’s senses were reeling. ‘But how else would it get in?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Dutton. ‘It’s true that we’d bottled a number of toxic compounds for a pharmaceutical company in Kent the day before we did the vaccine vials for St Clair and everyone thought they’d jump on the obvious bandwagon. But what the smart arses didn’t know was that the main production line broke down that day and I had to move the job to our back-up facility in C building. The technicians fixed the problem with the main line overnight and we were able to use that for the St Clair job. The contaminating chemical was never near the main line. It wasn’t even in the same building.’

Steven swallowed as he felt his throat dry. ‘But you must have told someone this?’

‘Of course,’ said Dutton. ‘They didn’t want to know. I was told not to worry. It was a technicality. Everything would sort itself out.’

‘So how did the vials become contaminated?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘But unless that is established …’

‘Redmond Medical can’t reopen for business?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Redmond Medical isn’t going to open again for business,’ said Dutton. ‘Our owners have decided to close it down. The staff have been told they’ll be paid to the end of the month and that’s it. Finito.’

‘Bloody hell, that’s a bit over the top,’ said Steven. ‘Have you any thought about what you’ll do?’

Dutton gave Steven a look that suggested he’d been thinking about little else. ‘Word gets around in the pharmaceutical business, Mr Dunbar. Who’s going to employ a production line manager held responsible for the fuck-up that closed down Redmond Medical?’

‘But from what you say, you weren’t.’

‘Yeah, I could tell them that,’ said Dutton sourly.

‘But there must be others who know what happened?’

Dutton gave a contemptuous snort. ‘Staff are in line for a bonus if they sign up to a confidentiality clause. They’re being paid extra to say nothing about anything they did at Redmond. It almost doubles their redundancy money.’

‘Surely that kind of clause wouldn’t extend to something like saying which production line was working and which wasn’t on any particular day?’ said Steven.

‘It covers everything.’

‘You’re making it sound as if Redmond are quite content for people to think the contamination happened on their production line?’

Dutton shrugged and said, ‘They don’t seem to care too much about how or where it happened. They’ve accepted it was their fault and rolled over. Any further inquiries would just be an academic exercise as far as they’re concerned.’

Steven heard echoes in that of what the Home Secretary had said at the Home Office meeting. ‘It’s not exactly what you’d expect a company like Redmond to do in a situation like that,’ he said. ‘Denial and counter claim is usually the order of the day until someone proves what happened.’

‘Well, not in this case,’ said Dutton. ‘When a toxic chemical being processed by us on one day is found in vials in the production run on the following day, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what the conclusion’s going to be. All I’m saying is that it didn’t happen on my production line.’

‘Thanks for telling me all this, I appreciate it,’ said Steven, preparing to leave and feeling absurdly guilty about not having sampled Mrs Dutton’s scones.

‘If you find out what did happen, will you let me know?’ asked Dutton.

Steven assured him that he would.

He shook his head as he got into the car and sat for a few moments thinking about what he’d just learned. It was a totally unexpected twist and not at all what he had been looking for in an investigation in which the ground continually seemed to move beneath him. A boy with TB in a Leicester hospital? – no such boy – a boy with TB in a Swedish clinic? – no such boy – the boy disappears completely. All lies, smoke and mirrors designed to obscure the truth about a secret trial of a new vaccine. Children receiving the new vaccine fall ill and a rogue toxin getting into the production process is blamed. But now … there was no rogue toxin in the production process of the vaccine according to Dutton, so where did it come from?

Steven called Tally. There was no reply from her home phone so he left a message saying he’d called. He set out to return to London but had barely gone a mile when she rang.

‘Hi, I’ve just got in. I found your message. Where are you?’

‘Near Milton Keynes. I thought I might come up but maybe if you’re just in …’

‘No, that would be great. I look forward to seeing you.’

Steven suddenly felt a whole lot better. The thought of seeing Tally was just so good – the prospect of light, warmth, company and intelligent conversation – not to mention sex – instead of going home to sit in silence and brood about the latest puzzle in the green sticker saga was the perfect antidote to feeling depressed about his progress. He joined the motorway and gunned the Honda up to seventy, reckoning that he should be there in about an hour.

Traffic was light and, as the miles passed by, he allowed himself to wonder if it could ever be this way on a more permanent basis. Driving home to Tally was a nice thought; it had a comfortable ring to it … or maybe it was just a daydream? Yes it was, but there was no harm in that, he reckoned. He started to wonder how Jenny would take to Tally and vice versa if they should ever meet. The two ladies in his life, would they get on? Could they get on? It was seductive to imagine that they would and a short step from that to thinking about picnics, days out, whispered confidences, Christmas at home …

The reality would probably be different, he conceded. Tally’s career was every bit as demanding as his own and equally important to her. His cosy notion of domestic bliss – if it really existed – probably required a completely different cast or enough commitment to change things to make it possible … Old doubts returned. Were the problems really insurmountable or was he looking for an excuse to treat his association with Tally as a finite thing, a beautiful love affair but doomed from the start because of fate – his preferred reason – or maybe the fact that he was a selfish bastard – a strong contender.

Steven turned the car into Tally’s street and drew heavily upon his favourite mantra:
Life is what happens to you while you’re planning for the future
…

Tally was waiting for him at the door to her apartment when he emerged from the lift. She was dressed casually in a sweater and jeans, barefoot and her hair still damp from the shower and smelling of shampoo. Steven kissed her and wrapped his arms around her, unwilling to detach himself from the perfumed heaven he found himself in.

‘What have you been up to?’ he asked.

‘Working,’ replied Tally ruefully. ‘I should have known. As soon as I arranged to meet up with my sisters for a boozy lunch and a long gossip, something turned up at the hospital and I had to work on my weekend off.’

‘Bad luck,’ said Steven. ‘I didn’t know you had sisters.’

Tally laughed and said, ‘I’ve got two. There’s a lot you don’t know about me. We hardly know each other. And if you say it seems like we’ve known each other for ever, I’ll knee you where it hurts.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Steven with a smile.

‘Anyway, what have you been up to? That’s got to be much more interesting. What happened at the meeting?’

‘The government are hell-bent on developing new vaccines because of fears of a biological attack.’

‘And?’ asked Tally when she saw Steven hesitate.

‘It seems a number of over-ambitious civil servants thought they’d please their masters and accelerate their own careers by setting up an unofficial trial of a new vaccine against TB using the kids at Pinetops. The company involved, a biotechnology outfit called St Clair Genomics, convinced them that getting the necessary paperwork was just going to be a time-consuming formality. There was some talk of a misunderstanding over how far the officials could bend the rules but, in any event, it all went terribly wrong when the vials got contaminated with a toxic agent on the production line.’

Tally was speechless for a few moments during which she spread her hands and looked up at the ceiling. ‘A
misunderstanding
?’ she exclaimed. ‘How could you have a
misunderstanding
over something like that? And then they managed to poison them? How on earth could something like that happen? That’s absolutely outrageous. They should all be hung, drawn and quartered …’

Tally suddenly realised what Steven’s long silence implied. ‘Oh God, you’re not going to tell me they’re going to get away with it, are you?’

‘I’m afraid that’s the bottom line,’ said Steven. ‘I’m as sick about it as you but the alternatives are just too awful to contemplate.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Tally, her eyes full of accusation.

EIGHTEEN

Steven talked Tally through what would happen if the Pinetops affair was made public and saw the same frustration grow inside her that he had felt – the battle against an inescapable logic which concluded that saying nothing was the right thing to do – however unpalatable.

‘The bastards,’ said Tally. ‘There’s a reason for all these safeguards.’

‘My heart agrees but my head understands why everyone wants to speed things up if we really are at risk of a biological attack.’

‘What’s the evidence for that?’ asked Tally.

‘I haven’t seen it but the government believes an attack is inevitable. They insist that the intelligence is overwhelming. There’s no chance of getting the vaccines we require developed and tested through the normal channels so they’re smoothing the way wherever possible.’

‘And giving rise to
misunderstandings
…’

‘So it would appear,’ agreed Steven.

‘Do you believe them?’ asked Tally, watching Steven closely for the slightest flicker of his eyes or any change in body language that might belie his response.

Steven was aware of her scrutiny. ‘There are still some things that disturb me,’ he said. ‘Yet I have no option but to accept what they say. On the other hand … I don’t think I’ve been told the whole truth about the Pinetops disaster … There’s something not quite right with their version of what went wrong with the vaccine and how.’

Tally saw this as a scaling down of the main argument and it showed on her face but she reined in her temper, recognising that continuing to express outrage wasn’t going to get them anywhere. She poured them both a drink and sat down. ‘How so?’

Steven told her about his discussion with Dutton.

Tally looked doubtful. ‘If that’s what they were bottling before the vaccine run, surely it has to be the number one suspect?’ she said. ‘Even if they didn’t actually use the same production line, they might still have transferred parts from it, a filter, a dispensing head, a piece of tubing. How else could it get in, or are you suggesting that someone actually injected it into the vials deliberately?’

Steven made a face and shook his head. ‘No, you’re probably right but Dutton is an experienced man … He wouldn’t have made an elementary mistake like transferring a contaminated filler head from one line to another …’

‘It didn’t have to be him,’ said Tally. ‘I still think it’s odds on the fault was in the production process.’

‘Maybe that’s what we were meant to think …’

Tally looked at him questioningly. ‘Very cryptic,’ she said. ‘You could write tag lines for
EastEnders
… Doof, doof …’ She hummed the theme tune.

‘I just don’t feel comfortable about it. And now they are closing down the company. Something doesn’t ring true.’

‘You’re right,’ said Tally. ‘A company admitting liability and doing the decent thing doesn’t ring true at all these days.’

‘But don’t you see, there was no pressure on them,’ said Steven. ‘The affair’s not going to be made public so there will be no tabloid editors demanding blood, no TV reporters standing outside the building, demanding to know what happened. It’s a small company so there are no shareholders to worry about. Why shut up shop before any detailed investigation has taken place?’

‘I hate to say it but isn’t this a minor consideration, Steven?’ asked Tally. ‘Does the precise mechanism of how the toxin got into the vials really matter in the great scheme of things when the damage has already been done and these children have been harmed? Isn’t it academic?’

‘No, it isn’t,’ insisted Steven. ‘People keep saying this but it’s like the piece of a jigsaw puzzle left over at the end when you thought the picture was complete. You can either hide it and pretend everything’s okay or admit there’s a problem and take a closer look only to discover that some of the pieces don’t really fit at all: it’s all just an illusion.’