Ken McClure - White death

‘How odd. It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘It does if he didn’t exist,’ said Steven.

‘What?’ exclaimed John Macmillan when Steven told him. ‘How dare they send us off on a wild goose chase? They gave me their absolute word and I promised cooperation on that basis.’

Steven thought about this while Macmillan stalked around the office, giving vent to his anger. ‘I suppose in the strictest sense of the word, they didn’t lie,’ he said, secretly knowing that he was just adding fuel to the fire. The Whitehall Mafia were not his sort of people and he enjoyed seeing them found out. ‘Mubarak can’t be in any danger if he doesn’t actually exist… and by the same token, he couldn’t have been responsible for what happened to Keith Taylor or Trish Lyons, I suppose…’

‘Don’t play semantics with me,’ fumed Macmillan. ‘Clinics in Sweden… requests from the highest level… double-dealing bastards.’

‘It could be to our advantage that they don’t know that we know they were lying,’ said Steven.

Macmillan stopped stalking round the office. ‘Go on.’

‘If you go back to DOH with all guns blazing before we even have an inkling about what they’ve been up to, they’ll find some way to bluster their way out of trouble. They’ll muddy the water with the usual nonsense about failures of communication and unfortunate misunderstandings. The end result will be that they’ll batten down all the hatches and tough it out. We may never find out what went on at Pinetops.’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘We say nothing, let them think we’re playing ball while we try to find out what’s really been going on.’

‘Makes some sort of sense, I suppose,’ said Macmillan, calming down a little.

‘Let’s take stock,’ said Steven. ‘We have a situation where one hundred and eight children were given BCG vaccine without any apparent cause… if indeed, that’s what they were given.’

Macmillan rolled his eyes.

‘Several of these children have presented with skin complaints. One has died of necrotising fasciitis although the diagnosis remains incomplete because the lab can’t confirm it and another girl looks like she’s developing a similar problem. First, I think we have to establish exactly what the kids were given and why, and see if that provides clues as to what’s been happening to them. I’ll leave the “whys” up to you.’

‘Where will you start?’

‘Pinetops has its own small clinic and at least one fully qualified nurse on the staff. I’m hoping that they were involved in the administration of the vaccine — it’s my guess they were if only because it might have aroused suspicion if they hadn’t been. I’ll go up there and talk to them, ask them if they noticed anything out of the ordinary at the time. Then I’ll pay another visit to Edinburgh and see how things are with Trish Lyons. I’ll also have another talk to Scott Haldane’s widow. Something still tells me that her husband figured out something that I should know.’

‘Maybe the something that got him killed?’ said Macmillan.

‘Quite so.’

In contrast to his first visit, Steven found the activities at Pinetops in full swing when he arrived. The camp had its full complement of children enjoying the outdoor life and a series of character-building experiences under the eyes of ever-vigilant instructors. Steven paused to watch a number of them practise rolling and righting their canoes near the edge of the lake. He’d never been fond of that manoeuvre himself — water always got up his nose — although he recognised it as being an essential skill to have. He empathised with one boy who was coughing and spluttering after his roll to the amusement of the others. Their accents said they came from London.

‘You just can’t stay away from here, can you?’ said David Williams when Steven put his head round the door.

‘Makes me wish I was a kid again,’ said Steven, looking back at the water. ‘The lake looks wonderful this morning.’

The instructor joined him. ‘Takes some beating, doesn’t it? God’s own backdrop. What can I do for you this time?’

Steven asked if he could talk to the clinic staff.

‘No problem. I know that Joan, our registered nurse, is dealing with a cut knee at the moment. I’ll take you across.’

Steven and the chief instructor walked across the camp compound passing as they did a posse of children about to depart for a walk in the hills, all clutching maps and compasses.

The smell of disinfectant assaulted their noses as they entered the clinic where the camp nurse had just finished bandaging a young boy’s knee. She was telling him to come back in the morning for a change of dressing. ‘And don’t get it wet, young man.’

‘Joan, this is Dr Dunbar from the Sci-Med Inspectorate; he’d like to ask you a few questions,’ said Williams.

‘Hope we’re not in any trouble,’ said the nurse with a smile.

‘Nothing like that,’ said Steven, nodding his thanks to the instructor, who took his leave. ‘It’s about the BCG vaccinations that were administered to a number of children here a few months ago. Were you involved in that?’

‘Yes, I helped administer them.’

‘Excellent,’ said Steven. ‘I was hoping you’d say that. Tell me about the team. How many people were involved?’

‘Let me see, the doctor and four assistants. Six including myself and Carol my assistant.’

‘Did you know this doctor?’

‘I’d never seen him before.’

‘So he wasn’t local?’

‘No, I think someone said they all came up from London.’

‘You didn’t happen to catch his name, did you?’

‘Leyton, I think. Yes, he introduced himself as Dr John Leyton. Is there something wrong? Why are you asking?’

‘No real problem,’ said Steven, anxious to dispel the seeds of suspicion the nurse was showing. ‘But a few of the kids have fallen ill since getting the vaccine so we have to be sure that correct procedure was followed; you know how it is these days?’

‘Tell me about it, forms for everything and an entire nation waiting for the chance of compensation.’

‘Exactly,’ said Steven. ‘I take it you noticed nothing out of the ordinary about Dr Leyton and his team?’

‘Nothing at all, they seemed very nice.’

‘Did they bring the vaccine with them or was it ordered in for them?’

‘They brought it.’

‘Can you remember anything at all about it… what it said on the labels for instance?’

‘It said BCG,’ said the nurse as if she were talking to an idiot.

‘Well, that’s a good start,’ said Steven with a smile. ‘Anything else? Dates? Manufacturer’s name?’

The nurse looked askance at him. ‘Surely no one is suggesting they were given the wrong vaccine?’ she exclaimed.

‘No,’ sighed Steven. ‘But these days you and I both know that we have to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s.’

‘I checked the expiry date out of habit. I can’t remember what it said but it was fine.’

‘Manufacturer?’

‘Sorry, wait, no, there was a name… Nichol, I think. I can’t be a hundred per cent certain but I’m pretty sure it was something like Nichol or Nichols. I didn’t pay that much attention.’

Steven thanked the nurse and told her she’d been an enormous help. He struck up a conversation with her about her background in nursing and the types of injury she came across at Pinetops just to reinforce the friendly, routine nature of his inquiry but in reality hoping that she wouldn’t bother to mention his visit in any formal record she had to submit.

Before driving off, Steven phoned in a request to Sci-Med, asking them to check up on any pharmaceutical company having a name like Nichol or Nichols who was involved in the manufacture of BCG vaccine. At the same time he checked to see if the London lab had managed to grow anything from the post mortem samples taken from Keith Taylor. ‘No, nothing,’ came the reply.