Ken McClure - Resurrection

‘Fine,’ said Dewar. ‘I take it I’ll be on the couch downstairs?’

‘You know how Mother feels about that sort of thing,’ said Karen.

‘I know,’ agreed Dewar.

‘Besides … she goes out to her church social on Sunday afternoon, that’ll give us plenty of time …’

‘Here’s to Sunday afternoon,’ said Dewar.

Dewar entered the names of the eight people Malloy had given him into his laptop as part of his next report for Sci-Med. He looked at them, white letters on a blue screen. He hadn’t been quite honest with Malloy. It wasn’t just a matter of compiling a list of people with the right know-how. Once Barron had the names, all the people on that list would be subject to round the clock surveillance just like the two Iraqis. To imagine anything else would be naive. Steven Malloy and Gary Cairns headed it, Pierre Le Grice and Simone Clary were next then Sandra Macandrew and Kurt Lehman, finally Andrea Bowman and Josh Phelps. He assumed the names he didn’t recognise were people working in the Cairns lab. It might be worth running the names through the police computer. He’d bet on eight zeros coming up but it would be a sensible, routine thing to do and Sci-Med liked him to do sensible routine things from time to time. You never know, he assured himself, one of them might turn out to be a mad axe-killer. He called Grant at police headquarters on the off chance he might be there although it was now after ten. He wasn’t there but the man who answered from Grant’s office — Sergeant Nick Johnstone, said that he was still on duty.

‘There was a nasty hit and run incident over in Marchmont;’ said the sergeant. ‘A lassie got knocked off her bike; I think she was killed. He went over to the hospital about an hour ago. Anything I can help with? The Inspector said if you called at any time we were to play ball, to use his expression.’

‘I was going to ask him to run some names through the computer for me,’ said Dewar.

‘Fire away,’ said Johnstone.

Dewar read out the list and Johnstone wrote them down with Dewar providing spelling where necessary.

‘Wait a minute … ‘ said Johnstone.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Just a minute … ‘

Dewar heard the phone being put down. The wait started to seem endless when Johnstone finally returned and the receiver was fumbled before being picked up successfully.

‘I thought so,’ said Johnstone. ‘The lassie in Marchmont, she’s on your list, if it’s the same one. Sandra Macandrew. Student at the Institute of something or other?’

‘That’s her,’ said Dewar, feeling as if a heavy weight had suddenly descended on his shoulders. ‘You said she was dead?’

‘The report from the attending officers said she was a gonner.’

‘I see,’

When Inspector Grant heard she was a student at the institute he said he was going up to the hospital. That was the last I heard. That was about an hour ago.’

‘Where did they take her?’

‘The Royal Infirmary.’

‘Thanks,’ said Dewar, feeling numb.

‘Do you want me to call you back when the computer’s had a look through your names?’ asked Johnstone.

‘No, I’ll get back to you later. I’m going to see if I can catch Grant at the hospital.’

Dewar felt sick in his stomach. He hadn’t known Sandra Macandrew well but well enough to like her as a person and see that she was a bright student with a promising future. Now she was dead. Hit and run, Johnstone had said, the second person from Malloy’s lab to die in the space of a month. The uneasy feeling he’d been — carrying around with him had just multiplied tenfold.

Mounting frustration at the slowness of the traffic was pushed to even higher levels at not being able to find a parking place near the hospital. He tried reminding himself there was no hurry; Sandra was dead, but his instincts overruled his reason. His gut feeling was that somehow Sandra’s death must have had something to do with the smallpox thing and the sooner he got to the hospital and talked to Grant about it the better.

He saw a Ford Fiesta start to vacate a place by the kerb so he braked abruptly to the annoyance of the driver behind. He ignored the angry tooting and waited until the Fiesta had pulled away before putting the Rover in nose first and abandoning it with its tail sticking out untidily.

‘Arsehole!’ shouted the driver who’d been held up. Dewar ignored him and headed for the hospital. He only had eyes for the infirmary which loomed in front of him against the night sky. It was an old fashioned hospital, all towers and turrets on the outside — like a Disney castle, with endless corridors and peeling ceilings on the inside. Light spilled out from the A amp;E entrance, lighting up the ambulance apron where two vehicles stood waiting for fate to play its next card. Dewar entered through the automatic doors and approached the desk.

‘Sandra Macandrew,’ he said to the clerk. ‘Hit and run victim, brought in dead about an hour ago. Are the police still here? I’m looking for Inspector Grant in particular.’

The clerk looked at him over his glasses. ‘And you are?’

Dewar showed him his ID.

‘Are you Ms Macandrew’s own doctor?’ asked the man.

‘No,’ answered Dewar, wondering why the question was asked in the first place and what the politically correct term was these days for mental defective. Differently intelligent, he supposed. Right now he didn’t feel like going to war with obstructive officialdom.

‘Are you a relative?’

‘No,’ replied Dewar, now having difficulty keeping his temper. ‘Is Inspector Grant still here or not?’ he asked again in level tones devoid of social nicety.

‘Ms Macandrew’s not dead,’ said the man, trumping Dewar’s card.

Dewar felt stunned. He felt his mouth drop open. ‘Not dead,’ he repeated in a bewildered voice.

‘She’s in a bad way; she’s in intensive care but she’s not dead. The police are still here. I’m not sure if your Inspector Grant is one of them.’

Dewar asked for directions and followed them quickly without actually running, a memory from his early medical training. Nurses and doctors don’t run inside the hospital. They can walk fast but they don’t run. He found Grant who had just been briefed on Sandra Macandrew’s injuries by a young looking doctor who’d then disappeared into a side room in the Intensive Care Unit.

‘How is she?’

‘How did you know?’ Grant asked him.

Dewar told him about his phone call to headquarters. ‘What happened to her?’ he asked.

‘She was cycling home from work and some drunken bozo ran into her and didn’t stop. The street was well lit. Her bike had serviceable lights and her jacket had fluorescent tape on it so there was no excuse for not seeing her. He must have been pissed out his mind.’

‘I hope you get the bastard,’ said Dewar looking through the glass panel to the room where Sandra was lying. Two nurses were busy with her. With so much bandaging and intubation it could have been anyone lying there, he thought. ‘What did the doctor say?’

‘Fractured skull, multiple fractures to both arms and legs, her collar bone’s smashed and her pelvis is damaged. I think the bottom line is, touch and go, poor lassie. Malloy’s not going have much of a research group left at this rate. I’m beginning to think that place is jinxed.’

‘Were there any witnesses?’ asked Dewar.

‘Nothing useful. A couple of people said they saw the car speeding off after they heard the crash. They couldn’t tell us the make, not even the colour under the street lights. A light one they thought. There were lots of people about but their eyes automatically went to the victim and stayed there. By the time they thought to look for the car it had gone.’