Ken McClure - Resurrection

‘Something like that,’ agreed Dewar. ‘And there’s plenty of it today. I was blown off my feet at the airport. It looks like I’m going to be here for the next week or so. Will you let me know of anything that happens at your end that looks like it might be relevant?’

‘What sort of things?’

‘I’ll leave that to your judgement.’

‘I’ll keep you in mind.’

Next, Dewar phoned Steven Malloy at the Institute of Molecular Sciences.

‘Didn’t we just say good-bye?’

‘I thought so too,’ said Dewar. ‘But my masters have decided not to take any chances with this one. They sent me back. It’s a case of bolting the stable door before the horse has gone for a change. Can we talk? Somewhere other than the institute? I don’t want to advertise the fact that I’m back.’

‘You could come out to my place if you like?’ suggested Malloy. ‘Or I could meet you somewhere in town?’

‘Your place will be fine. 8 o’clock this evening?’

‘I’ll expect you.’

Dewar called the Reception desk and asked about renting a car now that he was staying for a while. A dark green Rover 600 was delivered in under twenty minutes. The interior was spotlessly clean but the previous driver had been a smoker, he could still smell the lingering stale legacy of tobacco smoke. He opened the sunroof. and turned on the fan.

He drove up the Mound then circled round past the Iraqi student centre in Forest Road trying to spot the surveillance. He couldn’t. That pleased him, he’d been harbouring notions of rival surveillance teams squabbling outside the entrance after hearing what Barron had said about ‘professional rivalry’. Maybe his fears had been groundless.

He drove slowly down the Royal Mile in the shadow of the old tenements, eventually turning right to pass in front of Holyrood Palace and enter the Queen’s Park, a large green area open to the public with an extinct volcano, Arthur’s Seat, as its centrepiece. He followed the road running through the park then turned off to the right to drive up round the hill and pull into a lay-by on the south side.He got out to take in the view and stood with his right foot resting on the first bar of the railings separating the road from a sheer drop. To the east he could see the sea. In the distance an oil tanker was making its way out of the Firth of Forth into the North Sea. To the south he could just make out the white tower block of the Institute of Molecular Sciences. He shivered slightly as a cool breeze caught his cheek.

It was a couple of minutes after eight when he drew up outside Malloy’s church home. It had been daylight the last time he’d been here so this time he stopped at the gate to take in the atmosphere of the place in the dark. Yellow light was spilling out from the windows where the stainglass had been replaced with ordinary clear glass. He thought it unusual to see a church building exuding light. It made him think of Christmas.

‘Come in,’ said Malloy. He was wearing jeans and an Aran sweater and holding a glass of red wine in his hand. ‘Can I get you anything?’

‘A glass of that would be very nice,’ replied Dewar, nodding to the wine.

‘A precocious little bugger I picked up from Safeways,’ said Malloy, pouring Dewar a glass. ‘Rich in ambition but modest in price. He exaggerated a Scottish accent for the last few words. What’s the problem?’

‘The men who tried to coerce Hammadi into working on smallpox are still in the city. I don’t know why but I have to consider all possibilities.’

‘Why doesn’t someone arrest them?’

‘No evidence,’ said Dewar. ‘We couldn’t even prove they met Hammadi let alone what they asked him to do.’

‘So why do you think they’re still here?’

‘At worst I have to consider that they might be trying to persuade someone else to help them to get what they want.’

Malloy looked aghast. ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he said in a shocked whisper. ‘No one in their right mind would even dream of it.’

‘I take it, no one’s approached you?’

‘No. They’d get short shrift if they did’

‘How about if they were to offer you half a million pounds to do it?’

‘Half a mil … No, absolutely not.’

‘A million?’

‘I … ‘

‘Two million?’

‘All right, I take your point,’ said Malloy. ‘We’ve started to haggle about the price. But I still hope I would say no. It would be sheer madness to attempt it and how could you live with yourself, knowing you’d resurrected one of the worst killers the world’s ever known? You wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, assuming you survived at all after playing around with something like that.’

‘I sincerely hope everyone feels like that,’ said Dewar. ‘But I have to ask you who at the institute might be put to the test?’

‘You’re serious?’

Dewar nodded. ‘I need you to tell me who has the necessary expertise to do the job without of course, suggesting in any way that they would.’

‘Assuming they were supplied with everything they needed?’

Another nod.

‘There are lots of people with DNA skills but not that many with practical experience of working with high risk micro organisms. Basically it would come down to the people in my lab and those in Gary Cairns’s lab. We work with HIV so we’re used to handling dangerous material.’

‘Point taken.’

‘We could leave out first year grad students. Second year? Possible. Post docs, yes and of course, Gary Cairns and me, I suppose.’

‘Technical staff?’

Malloy thought for a moment. ‘Andrea in Cairns’s lab would be a possibility. She has the right background and she’s been here a while. She might be able to do it at a pinch.’

‘George Ferguson?’

‘No experience of DNA manipulation, technically able and well used to handling dangerous organisms but wrong background for this sort of thing.’

‘So how many are we talking about?’

Malloy brought his shoulders up to his ears and made shaking gestures with both hands. ‘I’d go for eight.’ he said.

‘I need their names,’ said Dewar.

‘This is giving me a bad feeling,’ said Malloy, as he got up. ‘It feels like I’m betraying my colleagues. He fetched pen and paper from his desk.

‘You’re not,’ Dewar assured him. ‘You’re simply appraising their competence and expertise.’

Malloy wrote down the eight names and handed it over. ‘Mind you, I’d bet my life savings against any of these people being involved in anything like this,’ he said.

‘And I wouldn’t dream of betting against you,’ said Dewar. ‘If only our Iraqi friends would get the hell out of the city then we could all stop being so paranoid and rest easy.’ He declined the offer of a second glass of wine and was escorted to the door. ‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone else about our meeting.’

‘It’s hardly something I’m likely to brag about,’ said Malloy.

Dewar drove back to the city, taking his time on the narrow roads in the dark In many places they had acquired a coating of wet leaves, it would be all too easy to come to grief under heavy braking and finish up among the trees whose tall, dark presence blotted out the sky. He felt better when he’d got back on to the main road and had a clear run back into the city.

Once back in his hotel room he phoned Karen to exchange notes about the day and make arrangements for the week end.

‘You won’t think of an excuse not to come down and see my mother will you?’ asked Karen.

‘Of course not,’ Dewar assured her, his spirits falling at the thought of an evening in the company of Karen’s mother. He found her hard to take.

‘Good, so why don’t we say that you’ll be down for supper on Saturday and you’ll stay over till Sunday?’