Кен Макклюр: Miasma

Steven was pleased to see that Field’s latest paper had been published in Nature , perhaps the most prestigious scientific journal in the world. This meant that firstly, the contents of the paper had been judged to be of significant importance to people working in the same field and secondly, that it would be written in such a manner as to make it accessible to scientific readers working in different fields. Lesser journals tended to exclude casual readers, often by virtue of publishing papers using technicality to obscure the fact that not very much was being said at all — another brick in the wall of career-building scientists.

It quickly became obvious to Steven that Field’s current work on pain relief given to people suffering from terminal conditions had been centred on delivering such relief remotely in order to make the patient less dependent on nursing staff for palliative care and, if reliability could be established, the aim was that patients could safely be allowed to continue their own care at home.

Hospices for the terminally ill were widely regarded as being wonderful and rightly so, but there weren’t enough of them. If Field’s work on slow-release systems of giving pain relief were to come to fruition, it would be a win-win situation. As more patients were stabilised and sent home to see out their days in comfort, more could be admitted for care.

Steven couldn’t face reading through another scientific paper so he opted instead for fresh air and a walk. When he did this, he nearly always found himself drawn to the Thames and today was no different. At three in the afternoon on a sunny day in May the Embankment wasn’t too crowded although Japanese tourists ensured it wasn’t empty either and demanded that he execute occasional slalom moves to ensure not intruding on smiley pics.

Although he’d come out for a break, he found it impossible not to continue thinking about the two dead men. It had been the Sci-Med computer that had highlighted both of them being leading medical professionals. Their deaths had not made it to the national press — perhaps because the police had not released sufficient detail. It seemed that murder without lurid detail could be dismissed as a parochial affair and yet... the tourists with their cameras had reminded him of how global we had become. The great cities of the world were all complaining about the sheer numbers of foreign travellers pouring onto their streets. People were constantly on the move. This was not a happy thought when viewed in the light of the current Ebola epidemic in DRC, but it did have a relevance when thinking about the two dead men. He wondered if any other top medical professionals had met a sorry end recently... perhaps in other countries?

Steven called Jean when he got back to his flat and asked if she would put in a request to Interpol to carry out a search. He settled down and started working his way through Simon Pashley’s latest scientific paper. Unlike Field’s paper in Nature, it was hard going although it too had appeared in a prestigious journal and therefore had been published on the recommendation of expert peer reviewers beforehand. Steven picked up that it wasn’t so much the design of prosthetic limbs that Pashley had been involved in but the control of their movement through electronics, particularly micro-electronics. After half an hour, Steven took on board that small was beautiful and left it at that.

It was after eight before Tally got home from the hospital. ‘Sorry I couldn’t phone earlier,’ she said, ‘I was called to another meeting in late afternoon and we were asked to leave phones outside.’

‘Everything all right?’ asked Steven, not sure whether he should ask in the circumstances.

‘It was a follow up from yesterday’s meeting about the Ebola outbreak,’ said Tally.

‘Please don’t tell me it’s arrived here?’

‘No, nothing like that... yet, but there are fears that we are not getting a true picture of the situation. The last outbreak caused so much damage to commerce in DRC that the belief is that people are covering up possible cases of Ebola — they’re simply not reporting them so that prospective trade customers won’t be scared off.’

‘What are they doing with them?’ Steven asked.

‘They’re being nursed at home by the families who keep them hidden.’

‘Until they all go down with it,’ Steven murmured.

‘Exactly, the authorities know what’s going on, but they have an interest in keeping everything low profile too. They introduce curfews and legislation to stop the movement of people, but this is largely for the benefit of outside observers: they know they can’t enforce them. River traffic is banned at night, but with six hundred kilometres of Congo River between Mbandaka and Kinshasa and countless tributaries joining it, there is no possibility of patrolling it.’

‘Could get messy,’ Steven sighed.

‘There’s more,’ said Tally. ‘It’s now believed that the latest outbreak possibly started as far back as December 2017 and wasn’t reported until it reached Mbandaka and the DRC Ministry of Health finally reported it to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on May 8th this year.’

‘So, things could be even worse than we’ve been led to believe?’

‘Published numbers cannot be relied on.’

‘Sounds like the big money initiative has got off to a very big test.’

‘WHO are still hopeful about being able to contain it. They’re pointing out that people learned a lot from the previous outbreaks. They’ve been educated about safe burials and burning any clothes and bed linen used by victims. They understand the importance of washing and using disinfectants and fears of vaccination are not as widespread as they used to be. Every effort is being made to help them understand what ring vaccination is all about — at first, they couldn’t understand why sick people were being ignored while healthy people a kilometre away got injections. A lot of circles have been drawn in a lot of sand to demonstrate why the virus can’t spread once it’s been surrounded by immune vaccinated people.’

Steven’s lapse into silence prompted Tally to enquire about his day.

Steven told her about the two murders and how he was struggling to see a connection between the dead men.

‘Did you say one of them was named Pashley?’ Tally asked.

‘Simon Pashley.’

‘From Leicester?’

‘Of course,’ Steven exclaimed. ‘I’d forgotten about you working in Leicester when we first met, did you know him?’

‘He was quite an orthopaedic star,’ said Tally. ‘I didn’t know him personally but what I do remember is that he had a Rolls Royce — just like consultants did in the old movies.’

‘Ooh — err, Matron,’ said Steven, making a bad allusion to Carry On films.

‘That sort of thing. But, seriously, he was regarded as a bit of a genius in his field.’

‘Prosthetic design,’ said Steven.

‘I think it was more the control of such devices, but I may be wrong.’

‘No, you’re quite right,’ Steven assured her. ‘I’ve just spent an afternoon wading through one of his papers.’

‘Heavy going?’

‘Certainly was, but my electronic expertise begins and ends with the TV remote.’

‘How about the other man? I take it he didn’t work in the same field if you can’t see a connection?’

‘Pain relief,’ said Steven, ‘a leading expert in palliative care.’

‘Why would anyone want to kill these people?’ exclaimed Tally. ‘Are you sure there’s a connection, not just an awful coincidence?’

‘Both were murdered in exactly the same manner’

‘Which was?’

‘They were exsanguinated.’

‘They had the blood drained out of them?’ Tally exclaimed with a horrified look on her face.