Ken McClure - White death

‘Health and Safety officers, however, will be able to dance on our mass graves — once suitable safety barriers have been erected — from Land’s End to John o’Groats, comfortable in the knowledge that they stopped vaccine safety regulations being breached.

‘Food for thought, eh, John?’ said the Home Secretary to break the silence that ensued.

‘And if we do nothing?’ asked a sombre Macmillan, causing Steven’s heart to miss a beat.

‘I’ll be perfectly frank with you; nothing much will change. We must go on pressing for new vaccines and streamlining the testing process. We have to. Time is not on our side and letting Health and Safety decide whether we live or die is not an option. There may well be occasional victims but this is the way it has to be if our way of life is to survive.’

‘At least you’re honest,’ said Macmillan.

‘Can I ask what happens now to the Nichol vaccine?’ said Steven.

‘We see it as a perfectly good vaccine. It will go into production with a different manufacturing company.’

‘Before you’ve established the exact cause of the problem last time?’

‘We know what the problem was. Establishing at which point in the production process the contamination occurred is purely academic. The company won’t be used any more.’

Macmillan sensed that Steven was squaring up to argue so he interrupted. ‘What about the affected children?’ he asked.

‘We will award generous financial compensation to their parents under the guise of medical insurance covering the children while they were at camp.’

It was Steven’s turn to look down at the table.

‘What a mess,’ growled Macmillan when he and Steven got back to his office. He poured sherry into two glasses and handed one to Steven before settling in behind his desk.

‘Do we really believe it was down to a few ambitious civil servants and a misunderstanding over the rules?’ asked Steven.

Macmillan looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I think we have to, don’t you? The alternative that a British government presided over such a completely unlawful experiment is just too much to contemplate.’

‘It’s not without precedent for people in high places to let it be known that they are unhappy about certain situations and for more junior people to take the hint,’ said Steven.

‘So if it goes wrong, the powers that be can deny all knowledge of it,’ added Macmillan.

‘They do all the wrong and we end up with all the angst,’ said Steven.

‘It was certainly the time to play the collective responsibility card, I’ll grant you,’ said Macmillan ruefully. ‘One out, all out and it will all be Sci-Med’s fault, the fall of the government, a monumental scandal… the incoming government faced with an impossible situation… the country hopelessly vulnerable to biological attack. Ye gods, you couldn’t make it up.’

After a few moments of deep thought, Macmillan asked, ‘What are your feelings?’

‘The need for new vaccines has certainly put them between the proverbial rock and a hard place but occasionally, that can be more comfortable than it sounds. It can be used as an excuse for all sorts of suspect decisions and actions. The pendulum may have swung too far in the direction of health and safety legislation where vaccines are concerned — and it has — but actually there’s still something that worries me about the Nichol vaccine.’

‘What’s that?’

‘They’ve decided that there’s nothing wrong with it before establishing exactly how the problem arose last time. They’re using a presumption as a basis for conclusion — never a good move.’

‘They would argue that time is not on their side.’

‘Another comfortable excuse.’

‘So what do we do?’ asked Macmillan, giving birth to yet another long silence that neither found easy. The weight of responsibility on their shoulders was almost unbearable but the seemingly impatient patter of rain on the windows served as a reminder that a decision had to be made.

‘It’s incredible,’ said Steven. ‘We went into that meeting holding all the aces and we came out with a pair of twos and it’s our turn to bet or fold…’

‘I don’t think we have any option,’ said Macmillan. ‘We have to keep this quiet. The alternative just doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘You’re right, of course,’ agreed Steven. ‘But it doesn’t half leave a nasty taste in the mouth…’ He was thinking of the parents of the dead boy, Keith Taylor, and of Trish Lyons facing life without her arm if indeed she had a life to look forward to at all. Guinea pigs used in a good cause? Just one of these things? You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs? Sacrifices for the common good? Tough choices, difficult decisions? They died so that others… Bollocks to the lot of it. The big picture just did not translate to personal circumstances.

‘Then we’re agreed?’ asked Macmillan before Steven talked himself out of going along with it. ‘We say nothing?’

Steven nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Can I take it that Sci-Med’s interest in the Pinetops affair is now officially at an end?’

‘No,’ said Steven. ‘Not yet, I need a bit of time to mull things over. There are some things that still bother me.’

‘Like what?’

‘Scott Haldane’s death… why the poison raced through Keith Taylor’s body the way it did… why the kids are reacting to it in different ways at different times… how the poison managed to survive the cleaning process and get into the vials… things like that.’

Macmillan nodded. ‘Does that mean you want me to tell the Home Secretary about your continuing interest despite the fact we won’t be taking things any further?’

‘No,’ said Steven. ‘I’ll just pick away at it on my own for a bit.’

‘I know this is not the sort of ending we might have hoped for but you did well taking things as far as you did,’ said Macmillan.

‘Thanks,’ said Steven but his heart wasn’t in it.

Steven decided that he needed fresh air and walked by the Embankment for a bit, low in spirit and with a sense of anticlimax that seemed to be accentuated by the very normality of everything around him. Did these people pushing prams and carrying briefcases appreciate what was being done on their behalf in the name of security? Of course they didn’t, but they expected it. In fact, they demanded it. They expected government to respond to every threat to their person, even the merest suggestion of a threat or woe betide them come election time.

The sun broke through the clouds and Steven took the opportunity to sit down for a few minutes and enjoy its warmth on his face. How good was the intelligence that suggested biological attack was imminent? How imminent was imminent? Was the information more reliable than the intelligence that sent the army to war in Iraq? Or less? Had it been filtered, manipulated, sexed-up, made to fit an alternative agenda? Or might even the suggestion of that lead to personal disaster as it had for Dr David Kelly in the weapons of mass destruction furore?

For his own peace of mind, he felt that the deaths of both Scott Haldane and Alan Nichol had to be fitted into the picture before he could fully accept the explanation given by Coates for the Pinetops disaster and, for the moment, he could not see how that was going to come about.

He thought about each in turn as he continued to enjoy the sunlight on his eyelids. If Scott Haldane’s unease over Trish Lyons had centred on a suspicion that she had been poisoned, why hadn’t he said anything about it at the time? There was no reason to keep such a theory to himself, particularly when her doctors at the time were failing to find any cause of infection. There was certainly no reason to keep quiet ‘until he was sure’ — the explanation given to his wife for his silence. It didn’t make sense.