Ken McClure: White death

‘Yes,’ agreed Steven. ‘Has that stopped the tissue damage?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ came the measured reply. ‘She’s lost sensation in her feet… she’s wasting away before our eyes.’

‘Jesus,’ murmured Steven. ‘Her poor mother must be going through hell.’

‘She is,’ agreed Fielding. ‘Actually she’s fallen ill herself.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Steven. ‘She’s been under such stress for so long. She’s a strong-willed woman but…’

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ interrupted Fielding. ‘We think it may be the same problem that Trish has.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Steve, feeling as if he’d just been hit between the eyes. ‘How can that be?’

‘I quite agree, it’s a bit of a puzzle but she’s developed a large white patch on her arm and she’s been feeling very unwell… She’s been admitted to the Western General for tests.’

Steven put down the phone. How could Trish Lyons’ mother have been exposed to the toxin? Poisons weren’t infectious or contagious like bacteria or viruses. You couldn’t catch a poison… His gaze went back to the green sticker records showing on his laptop. These were solely the records of the children who’d been given the vaccine. There was no information in them about their families. He called Sci-Med and asked for an urgent check on all the families of green sticker children.

‘What are we looking for?’ asked the duty officer.

‘Anyone who has had cause to go to their GP since their children were put on the green sticker list.’

‘You mean, boils on the bum, cut fingers, verrucas…’

‘Everything,’ snapped Steven and put the phone down. He was edgy. His nerves were strung to breaking point. He had the awful feeling that he was on the brink of uncovering a nightmare.

He knew he’d have to wait some time for the information he’d asked for so he got out the codes he’d been given by Linda Haldane and started playing around with them to see if he could make any sense out of what appeared to be a random collection of letters and numbers but obviously wasn’t if Haldane had gone to the trouble of hiding them. There was a very real possibility that the knowledge contained in the codes was the reason Scott Haldane had ended up in woodland with his wrists slashed.

Steven looked for anagrams and acronyms among the letters and for jumbled up phone numbers or dates among the numbers but without success. Apart from anything else, he was having difficulty concentrating when his mind kept straying to what Virginia Lyons’ illness was telling him. He was making coffee when the duty man at Sci-Med called back.

‘Four of us have been working on it non-stop,’ said the man. ‘Turns out quite a few have been to see their doctor. Want the report emailed?’

Steven said that he did and thanked him. He tapped the end of his pen anxiously on the desk until the little envelope icon appeared in the taskbar signifying the arrival of the report. He activated the Sci-Med decoder and started to read through the unscrambled document as it scrolled up on the screen. Ignoring the everyday complaints that were the staple of GPs’ surgeries, Steven was left with a list of twenty-eight close family members of green sticker children who had consulted their doctors about skin problems or loss of sensation in one or more limbs. His fears had been realised. There was now no doubt in his mind. He called Tally.

‘Steven? I’ve only got a moment. I’m in the middle of a ward round.’

‘They’ve been lying.’

‘Who’s been lying?’

‘Any or all of them,’ replied Steven. ‘The toxin in the vaccine story is rubbish. The kids weren’t poisoned at all, they’ve been infected. We’re dealing with an infectious agent here.’ He told her about the family members who’d fallen ill.

‘My God,’ gasped Tally. ‘This just gets worse and worse.’

‘The vaccine itself is the problem,’ said Steven. ‘The contamination story was a blind.’

‘Steven, this is truly awful.’

‘Infectious disease in children is your specialty. Can we meet? I need to pick your brains.’

‘Of course. Look, I’ll get someone to cover for me this afternoon. Do you want to come up here?’

‘Let’s not take any more risks. I don’t want your Special Branch minders knowing about the meeting. Do you think you can give them the slip?’

‘I don’t know… I suppose so…’ said a startled Tally. ‘They’re not expecting me to try to avoid them. After all, they’re on my side. I make a point of saying hello to them.’

‘Give them the slip; drive south on the M1. I’ll meet you in the main restaurant at Watford Gap services at 3 p.m.?’

‘All right. Take care.’

‘You too. Keep looking in your mirror. Make sure you’re not being followed.’

‘And if I am?’

‘Find somewhere to stop and call me.’

Tally put the phone down without saying anything more and Steven knew what she must be thinking. He hated involving her but she was an expert in infectious diseases and that was exactly what he was going to need if he was to make any sense of this latest twist. A wave of frustration washed over him as he recognised that he still couldn’t see motive in any of this. A group of children had been given a supposed vaccine that had infected them with some undetermined microbial agent that was eating away at their flesh and was now being passed on to their families. Who in their right mind would want to cover this up and pretend that nothing had happened? The biotech company who had designed the vaccine? The government officials who had been colluding with them? Or was it conceivable that some other faction was involved? His hand went unconsciously to the holster under his left arm. The odds seemed stacked against him.

‘Who designed this place?’ growled Tally as they entered the restaurant. ‘Hieronymus Bosch?’

‘His sort of style,’ agreed Steven as they walked towards the serving area, thinking that a motorway service station was not an experience to make the human spirit rejoice. The sound of electronic games machines, the smell of fried food and the clatter of dirty plates being collected did little to provide a reassuring ambience.

‘You weren’t followed?’ Steven asked.

Tally shook her head and said, ‘I felt guilty sneaking away but no, I don’t think I was followed.’

‘I need your input. If an infectious agent is involved, as I’m sure it is, why can’t any of the labs grow it?’

‘It’s possibly viral. Many viruses are difficult to grow. You often have to rely on serological tests showing antibodies in the patient’s serum to indicate an underlying infection by a specific virus or group of viruses.’

‘Serology tests were all negative,’ said Steven.

‘Then I’m at a loss,’ said Tally.

‘Why would children respond differently in terms of time to an infectious agent?’

‘Some might be more immune than others, depending on what they’ve been exposed to in the past, or it could be that the agent grows very slowly and victims succumb at different rates.’

‘What sort of agents are we talking about here?’

‘If we’re considering everything, we’d have to include prion diseases like new variant CJD, they can take a very long time to develop, and many viruses can remain in latent form for undetermined periods of time. In the case of bacterial infections, TB can take a couple of months to grow in culture.’

‘I suppose TB would still be the thing to go for here,’ said Steven. ‘After all that’s what the vaccine was made from and is designed to combat but none of the labs managed to grow it…’

‘Because it’s not a live vaccine,’ completed Tally.

‘Suppose it was? They could have been mistaken about that too.’