Ken McClure - Resurrection

‘But you’ll get paint scrapings from her bike?’

Grant shrugged. ‘For whatever good that’ll do, unless it was a white Rolls Royce or a yellow Ferrari. If it’s from a blue Ford I don’t fancy our chances.’

‘Have you considered it wasn’t an accident?’ asked Dewar, still looking through the glass panel.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Supposing it was attempted murder.’

Grant came over to join Dewar in looking through the glass partition. ‘Have you any reason to believe that?’ he asked.

‘No,’ admitted Dewar. ‘No good reason but gut feeling tells me it was. I think someone deliberately tried to kill her.’

‘Why?’

Dewar decided to trust Grant completely. ‘The Iraqis have been trying to get their hands on smallpox virus,’ he said.

‘Christ! I thought that was a thing of the past.’

‘It involves reconstructing it from fragments of the viral DNA that are used in research but it’s difficult. I think they tried forcing Ali Hammadi to do it for them but he killed himself so they need someone else. I think Sandra Macandrew might have been approached; we suspected they might try something like this. That’s why I’m back here. If they did and Sandra turned them down they might consider she knew too much. If she were to report them to the authorities we’d have the evidence we need to nail them to the wall. We might still get it if and when she regains consciousness. Are your men planning to stay with her?’

‘An officer will be stationed here throughout the night in case she comes round although the medics don’t think that’s too likely.’

No one can ever be sure in a case like this,’ said Dewar. ‘It’s always hard to define or quantify brain damage. I think it would be a good idea if there was more than one officer with her,’ said Dewar. ‘And they should be made aware of a possible further attempt on her life.’

‘Okay,’ said Grant. ‘But I take it there’s no proof of this?’

‘No,’ agreed Dewar. ‘But I’ll take responsibility, and I want to be the first to talk to her when she comes round.’

‘By rights a serious crime has been committed and we should speak to the victim before …’

Dewar interrupted and held up his hand. ‘I understand that,’ he said ‘But millions of lives could depend on what she has to say,’ interrupted Dewar. ‘If the Iraqis asked her to do something, I have to know what exactly what it was so we can find out what stage they’re at in the reconstruction. I know the right questions to ask. You don’t.’

‘I thought the glamour boys were sitting on the Iraqis,’ said Grant, changing the subject.

‘So did I,’ said Dewar, taking Grant’s point. If MI5 and Special Branch were watching the Iraqis’ every move, how come they could mount an attempt on Sandra Macandrew’s life?

When Dewar opened his eyes in the morning, the first thing he considered was the fact that no one had called him during the night. He threw back the covers, swung his legs round and dialled the hospital, to ask about Sandra Macandrew’s condition.

No change, still critical and deeply unconscious, was the report from the intensive care unit. The policemen outside her room had had an uneventful night too, without any other kind of problem. No one had attempted to visit Sandra.

Dewar was having breakfast in the hotel dining room when he was joined by Simon Barron. Without saying so, Barron gave the impression that he had been up for hours. Probably run ten miles and swam across the Forth to pick up his morning paper, thought Dewar uncharitably.

‘Hoped I might catch you,’ said Barron. ‘Have you got the list?’

‘It’s ready,’ replied Dewar. ‘Coffee?’

‘Never touch the stuff.’

Probably impedes performance, thought Dewar, refilling his own cup. ‘Did any of your lot slip up yesterday?’ he asked.

‘In what way?’

‘Could the Iraqis have gotten out to play without you knowing about it?’

‘Which ones? We’re just watching Siddiqui and Abbas,’ replied Barron. The students come and go as they please. Why d’you ask?’

Dewar thought for a moment before replying. He was considering what Barron had said about the students, in particular the possibility that one or more of the students might have been recruited to Siddiqui’s cause.

‘One of the graduate students from the Institute of Molecular Sciences was involved in a hit and run incident last night. She was knocked off her bike as she was cycling home from the lab; she’s critically ill. It could have been an accident — the police thought some drunk might have hit her, but her name’s Sandra Macandrew and she’s on the list.’

After a moment of blankness, realisation dawned on Barron’s face. ‘You think it wasn’t an accident? It had something to do with her being on that list?’

‘If she’s on the list we have to consider that she may have been approached by the Iraqis. For the sake of argument let’s assume she was and she turned them down, probably even threatened to go to the police. What d’you think would happen then?’

‘Point taken,’ agreed Barron. ‘That’s quite a thought. Turning down the Iraqi offer would be like signing your own death warrant.’

‘On the other hand, the Iraqis must know that most scientists would be outraged at being asked to do what they suggest. They can’t be planning to kill them all so they must have some way of deciding what individuals might be amenable to a business arrangement?’

‘They’d have to do their homework,’ said Barron. ‘Make discrete inquiries, find out who’s disgruntled, who has financial problems, who has secrets they’d rather not have made public, that sort of thing.’

‘So what made them think Sandra Macandrew might be a possibility?’ Dewar wondered aloud. ‘When I met her she struck me as a normal graduate student, doing exactly what she wants to do in life. Not many of us can say that. Her thesis work was going well according to Malloy, although the ban on smallpox fragments will cause some interruption. She lives in a flat with other students, she’s vegetarian, a member of Friends of the Earth, cycles to and from the lab, has occasional nights in the pub, Chinese meal at the weekend with her friends, not much money but no money worries either. If you’re looking for Ms Typical Grad Student, Sandra Macandrew gets my vote.’

‘Then maybe you’re jumping the gun here. Maybe it really was an accident,’ suggested Barron.

Dewar shrugged, unconvinced. Both men fell silent for a while then Dewar said, ‘There’s another possibility.’

Barron raised his eyebrows.

‘Sandra wasn’t approached by the Iraqis… but she knows who was.’

‘And they tried to kill her to keep her quiet? Yes, that’s a starter, agreed Barron.’

‘It would also imply that the one they approached has actually agreed to do it,’ said Dewar. ‘Otherwise the Iraqis would be more interested in killing the one who’d turned them down than Sandra.’

‘It’s hard to believe they’d use students as hit men,’ said Barron. ‘And my people are good at their job. Their report for yesterday says that Siddiqui and Abbas left the student centre in the afternoon, accompanied by two of the students but they just went round the corner to the Bookstop Cafe in Teviot Place. They stayed there for about forty minutes, talking, then returned to the centre. Neither went out again.’

‘So we’re either looking for a hit man we know nothing at all about …. or maybe the police were right and it was some drunk.’

‘I take it you told the police about your suspicions?’

Dewar nodded. ‘I wanted them to mount a guard on her last night.’