Ken McClure - Dust to dust

‘Send him in,’ said the small loudspeaker on Jean’s desk.

Steven related the events of the previous evening to Macmillan and told him of the successful detective work of the duty officer through the night.

‘The Pink Puffin, you say,’ said Macmillan, foraging around in the papers on his desk. ‘Wasn’t it a blessing you spend your evenings there…’

‘I don’t spend my…’ Steven had began before he saw the smile on Macmillan’s face. ‘I was following up an idea.’

‘And a bloody good one as it turned out. Well done. Mind you, I’m not sure the lab will agree. They spent all last night analysing donor samples from the north and now they’ve got even more work to do. I understand we should be getting the donor results around noon today.’

Steven glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll go get some coffee, stretch my legs. See you at noon.’

He took a favourite stroll through St James’ Park, enjoying the signs of spring and wondering idly what the year might bring. Spring had always been his favourite season, bringing with it signs of new growth and new hope. He found autumn heart-achingly sad and winter too icily sterile to engage with. Summer was more often than not disappointing but spring was full of optimism, the overture to the year.

He started to think again about the identity of Patient X and how the human cost of so much secrecy could ever be justified. Who in this world could be considered so important that keeping leukaemia a secret was worth the lives it had now either cost or ruined?

No one, he concluded, but there were clearly people out there who disagreed: powerful people, people with influence, the sort who got away with things. He knew they existed because he’d seen them do it often enough in the past. He’d felt the anger and frustration of watching the guilty walk free because it was ‘not in the public interest’ to pursue the matter further or ‘not in the interest of the state to prosecute’. It would be nice if, just this once, they — whoever they were — were held to account for what they’d done. Perhaps a first step towards that goal was to be found in the lab report on Michael Kelly.

Macmillan already had the report open on his desk when Steven got back to the Home Office. He took off his glasses and leaned back in his chair. ‘It’s pretty much what we feared,’ he said. ‘Michael Kelly was blood group A, rhesus positive and a near perfect tissue match for Patient X.’

‘Shit,’ said Steven.

‘Well,’ sighed Macmillan. ‘I think we’re at throw-a-six-to-restart time, eh?’

‘I just don’t get it. There has to be something special about Kelly. Group A, rhesus positive blood is the second most common group in the country. Just about every second human being in the street has it.’

‘There’s the tissue match too,’ Macmillan reminded him.

‘True,’ said Steven, ‘but you still wouldn’t need to scour the civilian and military medical records of an entire nation to come up with the match they’ve got here.’ He held up the lab report. ‘Bone marrow donors are much more plentiful than organ donors. It would be different if they were looking for a heart or a liver or any vital organ for Patient X but they weren’t… they were attempting to save someone with terminal leukaemia… someone whose identity had to be kept secret at all costs. Why? We’re still missing something…’

‘The discovering of what I’ll leave in your capable hands,’ said Macmillan, getting up from his chair. ‘I’ve got a meeting.’

‘Can I hold on to the report?’

‘Please do.’

Steven returned to his flat and spent a frustrating afternoon trying to see what was special about Michael Kelly. Reading and rereading the lab report didn’t help: there was nothing unique about Kelly. The bottom line was that he was an ordinary squaddie with a common enough blood and tissue type who’d contracted an MRSA infection after donating his bone marrow. The attempted cover-up of what had happened and why he’d actually died was, to use Macmillan’s word, amateurish, but the serious fact remained that anyone expressing the faintest interest in Kelly or the circumstances of his death was in danger of losing their life…

To break up a train of thought that was going nowhere, Steven phoned Louise at the University of Newcastle to ask how she was getting on with her analysis.

‘It should be complete the day after tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to email the report to you?’

Steven stalled for a moment. The day after tomorrow was Friday. On impulse, he decided he would go up to Scotland and spend the weekend with Jenny. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘If it’s okay with you I’ll drop by the lab on Friday.’

‘A long way to come,’ said Louise.

Steven told her of his weekend plans and they spoke for a bit about Jenny, her circumstances and where she lived.

‘That’s a lovely part of the country,’ said Louise. ‘A perfect place to grow up. My parents have a holiday cottage there… near Southerness?’

‘Know it well. Beaches that go on for ever.’

‘Aren’t they wonderful?’ said Louise, sounding pleased to be speaking to someone who shared her affection for a part of Scotland so often neglected by the tourist guides. ‘My brother and I adored our holidays there. In fact, now that you’ve mentioned it, I may go there myself this weekend. It’ll be the first time this year. I always like opening the cottage up after the winter: it’s like lifting the lid of a chest full of childhood memories. It’s a bit early for my folks; they’ll probably wait till it warms up a bit. They’re not as young as they were.’

‘Well, I’m glad I’ve sorted your weekend as well as my own,’ Steven joked. ‘See you Friday.’

As he gunned the Porsche up the M1 on Friday morning, Steven knew that it was not going to be the pleasant and relaxing weekend he might have hoped for. He was, to some extent, running away from an investigation that was coming close to grinding to a halt because he couldn’t see the way forward. It was odds-on that Louise’s analysis would be a formality and in agreement with the contract lab, so picking up the report was just a case of going through the motions. He would end up being no further forward in determining what was so special about Michael Kelly.

The only progress to be made after that would be through the lab analysis of the strain of MRSA that the Polish nurse was carrying. If that should provide proof positive that Michael Kelly had indeed been infected at St Raphael’s, it should be possible to force the hospital to reveal the identity of Patient X.

Steven found that he couldn’t work up much enthusiasm about that. It really wasn’t what he wanted to know. Bringing the identity of Patient X into the public domain would only annoy those who’d been determined to keep it secret. There had to be more to the deaths of Michael Kelly and his friend Jim Leslie than met the eye, and under those circumstances there was a real risk that the reasons behind their deaths would remain a mystery, as would the motive behind the horrendous toxin attack on John Motram.

Steven had tried to manage things so that he would arrive in time to be able to take Louise Avery to lunch as a thank you for her help in analysing the samples. She would, of course, be paid officially by Sci-Med, but, as with most payments to academic staff, money had a habit of being siphoned off by the university, a bit like tips for the waiting staff at a bad restaurant. As Louise was expecting him, Steven didn’t bother to announce himself at the front desk but went straight to the Motram lab and knocked on the glass door. There was no reply.

He checked his watch, fearing that she might already have gone to lunch, but it had only just gone twelve. Then he remembered Mary Lyons telling him that Louise was working with another research group in John Motram’s absence and concluded that that might be the reason for her absence. He went back to the front desk to seek information.