Ken McClure - Resurrection

Dewar held out his hand and said, ‘Adam Dewar, Sci-Med Inspectorate.’

‘Eric Larsen. I’m a post doc here.’

The two tall men stood with Davidson in between them like the meat in an under-filled sandwich.

‘You must have screwed up the paperwork, Eric,’ said Davidson petulantly.

‘I don’t think so,’ replied the Swede. ‘I think you checked it yourself when I was finished.’

‘I didn’t check it, I signed it. God, do I have to do every little thing myself in this place.’

Larsen moved uncomfortably from one foot to the another. Dewar sympathised with the big man but decided to keep a stony countenance. It was always unwise to get involved in the politics of such a situation. He opened his brief case and brought out his copy of the official fragment list for the department. ‘Maybe you could read from yours and we can identify and agree the extra pieces.

‘Sure,’ said Larsen. He started through the list.

Half way through, Dewar said, ‘No, I don’t have that one.’

Larsen read out the number again.

‘No, definitely not.’

Davidson snatched the paper from Larsen and asked, ‘Are you absolutely sure about this fragment?’

‘Sure I’m sure. I went through the fridge, just like you asked. This one was there. I couldn’t have made the number up,’ said Larsen, letting his anger show just a little.

Dewar suddenly sensed in Davidson the stirring of a memory that he would rather not have recalled. It was something to do with his eyes that gave him away. There was a slight pause while Dewar presumed Davidson was searching for some way out of his predicament. Eventually he just said, ‘Oh dear.’

Humble pie time, thought Dewar.

‘I remember now,’ Davidson announced, clearing his throat to cover embarrassment, ‘Six months ago, I was talking to a French scientist; I met at the Birmingham virus meeting, you remember, Eric?’

Larsen nodded. He was enjoying Davidson’s discomfiture as much as Dewar was.

‘He was working as a post doc in Malloy’s lab in Edinburgh. Maybe he still is. He was working on much the same thing as us and he’d obtained DNA for a couple of smallpox fragments that I thought would be useful to us too. He agreed to send some to me to save me going through the usual bureaucratic channels. I quite forgot about that.’

‘Otherwise you wouldn’t have declared them on your audit,’ said Dewar.

Davidson remained silent.

‘As it is, you delegated the job to someone else who came up with the truth and declared it.’

‘What happens now?’ asked Davidson, coming as near to contrition as someone like him could.

‘Six months ago, this sort of thing was little more than a paperwork offence,’ said Dewar. ‘But things have changed. There is an absolute ban on the movement of these fragments, official or unofficial and the twenty percent rule is being rigidly enforced. Decide what fragments you no longer need and I’ll take them away with me to bring you under the twenty percent mark. On this occasion this will be the last you hear of it. You will of course be subject to unannounced auditing from time to time in the future. I’ll also have to ask you the name of the French scientist you mentioned.’

‘Is that really necessary. He did it as a personal favour to me.’

‘He knew the rules too.’

‘Pierre Le Grice. He works at the Institute for Molecular Sciences in Edinburgh.’

As Dewar headed south again he looked around at his fellow passengers in First Class and wondered if any of them were carrying anything as bizarre as two fragments of smallpox virus DNA in their briefcases. It seemed unlikely but there again, making predictions about human behaviour was something you could never do with absolute confidence.

Looking back on what had happened in Manchester did not bode well for his current assignment. One institution had been caught out simply because someone had told the truth. How many others were holding illegal stocks and falsifying their returns so that officialdom would see what they wanted to see? From previous experience he knew that researchers were a competitive, self-centred breed. Rules were there for other people to obey unless it either suited or caused no inconvenience. Nothing would be allowed to get in the way of their pet projects if they could help it. There wasn’t much he could do about that. Swimming against the tide of human nature was not an option for the intelligent. He had to be pragmatic in the circumstances. If he couldn’t change the way things were in the scientific establishment he could at least be firm about stressing the consequences of not complying with the WHO/UN ruling. The prospect of having their labs closed down and their careers damaged should do the trick. If there was one thing researchers cared more about than their research it was their careers. Any good that came out of research was almost invariably a by-product of the competitive struggle for career advancement and personal glory.

He felt tired when he got into the flat. He kicked off his shoes and took a cold Stella Artois from the fridge, rejoicing in the first ice-cold swallow. After a second, he ‘woke up’ his IBM Aptiva computer and checked the message centre. There was one from Sci-Med and one from Karen. He played that one first.

‘Adam, I’m going to be tied up at the lab all evening. There’s been a Salmonella outbreak centred on Kensington. We’re trying to find the source. Give me a call when you get back. Love you.’

Dewar permitted himself a small smile at the idea of Salmonella in Kensington. He played back the Sci-Med message. The voice said, ‘Fax for you on code 9.’

Dewar frowned and sat down to bring up the Fax Centre on the machine and then prompt the unscrambling code with his password. The printer whirred into a life and spawned a single page message. It was an update on the institutions complying with the audit request. All had now reported and all had declared having only what they were supposed to have. There was however one addendum — the reason for the message coding. The Sci-Med computer had come up with a piece of information that it had correlated as being relevant to his current assignment. A PhD student, working at the Institute of Molecular Sciences in Edinburgh, had recently committed suicide. He was Iraqi.

Dewar stared at the name, Ali Hammadi. ‘Now, what were you working on, Ali, I wonder,’ he muttered out loud.

He looked at his watch and called Karen at the lab before it got any later. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Like a fairground. We’ve had seventeen confirmed cases over the last twenty-four hours and we’ve got another nine suspected ones to check out.’

‘No idea where it’s coming from?’

‘Eight cases ate at the same Greek restaurant, the others didn’t so it must be something coming from a common supplier. It’s just a question of which one and what product. How was Manchester?’

‘Shit.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t mention that word at the moment.’

‘Sorry. Are you going to come round later?’

‘I think I may just go back to the flat. It’s going to be late when I get away and I’m whacked.’

‘Call you tomorrow?’

‘You know where I’ll be.’ sighed Karen.

Dewar put down the phone and smiled affectionately. He and Karen, a down to earth Scottish girl from the East Lothian fishing village of North Berwick, had been together for nearly two years now. They had actually attended the same medical school but hadn’t really got to know each other until they met up again some four years after graduating when Karen had already been with the Public Health Service for three years and Dewar had just joined Sci-Med after deciding a career in research was not for him. He’d had an unhappy attempt at post graduate research and finally decided he’d had enough of pretending to be a team player when he clearly wasn’t. He was a loner by nature and wouldn’t pretend any more. The fact the earth went round the sun had not been discovered by ‘a team’ led by Copernicus. At Sci-Med he’d found a job where he could do things his way.