Crisis (10 page)

‘Again, the figures for tumours are statistically
higher than the norm but the population for the
region is so low that it’s very difficult to reach
firm conclusions. Here they are.’ Stoddart handed
Bannerman a clear plastic file.

‘Was it ever different?’ murmured Bannerman.

‘Pardon?’

Trying to make sense out of statistics,’ answered
Bannerman. ‘It’s often a case of the singer not the
song, don’t you think?’

Stoddart’s blank look said that he didn’t know
what Bannerman was talking about. Bannerman
said, ‘I think I’ve managed to collect enough in
the way of paper to keep me busy for a bit. I
wonder if someone could tell me how to get to my accommodation? I’ll settle in there and start going
through these files.’

‘Of course,’ said Stoddart. ‘I’ll have someone
drive you.’

That’s not necessary,’ protested Bannerman, but Stoddart insisted, saying that they had a pool of
drivers ‘sitting on their hands’. ‘You won’t mind if
it’s a van will you?’

The driver sent up from the pool to drive Bannerman was a short, round-faced man with ruddy cheeks and
a lop-sided grin. His peaked cap was pushed to the
back of his head, emphasizing a probable easy-going
approach to life. ‘Let me take that for you,’ he said,
stretching out to take Bannerman’s bag from him
and opening the passenger door of a black, 15 cwt
van with darkened glass windows at the back. It was no great challenge to guess what the van was usually
employed in transporting. The driver confirmed this
by saying, ‘It’s nice to have a live passenger for a
change.’

‘Do you know Edinburgh at all?’ asked the driver,
as they drove towards the castle.

Bannerman said not, adding, ‘I was a medical
student in Glasgow many years ago.’

‘I’d keep quiet about that if I was you,’ said the
man, with a grin.

As they turned into the High Street, the driver,
who by now had introduced himself as Willie
MacDonald, said, ‘You’ll be staying in the Royal
Mile. That’s the main street in the old town of Edinburgh; it connects the Castle at the top with
Holyrood Palace at the foot.’

They turned off into a courtyard on the left and
Willie said, ‘Here we are, Darnley Court.’

Bannerman got out and looked up at a recently restored tenement building, judging by the clean
ness of the stonework. There was a paved courtyard
at the front with large flower tubs posted around it.
In January they were empty, save for wet earth.

‘You are on the top floor,’ said Willie. He led the
way into the building and went up with Bannerman
to open the door and then hand him the keys.

‘This is wonderful,’ said Bannerman, walking over to the window to look at the view and marvel at how
high up they were.

‘It’s a beautiful city Doctor.’

‘Breathtaking.’

‘You’re looking out over Princes Street Gardens, to
the new town down there,’ said Willie, ‘and beyond
that, the Firth of Forth with its islands.’

‘What’s the big one?’ asked Bannerman.

‘
Inchkeith,’ replied Willie. He pointed out several
other prominent landmarks far below them and
joked that he hoped Bannerman had a head for
heights.

Bannerman felt that at least one good thing had
happened to him today. He thanked MacDonald and tried to tip him, but the driver declined, assuring him
that Professor Stoddart would have his guts ‘for one
of his practical classes’ if he accepted.

After a quick look round the apartment, Bannerman
unpacked and took advantage of the coffee that
someone had thoughtfully supplied along with a
few other basic necessities in the kitchen. He pulled
a chair over to the window, and settled down in it
with his mug to peruse the files he had been given. He had barely begun when the telephone rang and
startled him. It was George Stoddart.

‘
I forgot to say,’ said Stoddart, ‘that my wife and
I would be delighted if you would join us for dinner
this evening?’

‘That would be very nice,’ replied Bannerman, thinking it would be nothing of the kind. He took
down details of the address and agreed to be there for
eight. There were few things Bannerman liked less
than ‘academic’ dinners but he accepted it as part
and parcel of life, a necessary evil. It did however,
put paid to his plans to explore the neighbouring
hostelries that evening. He got back to reading
through the files.

FOUR

After an hour, Bannerman stopped reading and taking notes to make more coffee. He looked out
of the window while the kettle boiled and mulled
over what he had learned so far. The medical records
for the region had failed to provide him with what
he was looking for. Although it was true that there
had been an increase in leukaemia and cancer in the
area round Achnagelloch and Stobmor, it was not a
striking one - even when he examined the raw data
instead of the statistics, which he didn’t trust.

He had been hoping to find something in the
figures to indicate that the radiation leak from the
power station had been severe enough to affect
the health of the local community. This, in turn,
would have indicated that the levels of radiation
around the immediate area of the power station
would have been high enough to account for a
mutation occurring in the
Scrapie
virus. A twelve
per cent increase in childhood leukaemia sounded
a lot, but it was based on a relatively small number
of cases. It might have been due to a radiation leak
but, on the other hand, it might not. This conclusion
merited an expletive from Bannerman.

He sat down with his coffee and turned his
attention to the details of the three deaths. It made
alarming reading. The dead men had been employed
as farm labourers on Iverladdie Farm, to the north of
Achnagelloch. Only one of them, Gordon Buchan,
had been married; he had lived with his wife in a
tied cottage on the farm. The other two had stayed
in lodgings in Achnagelloch. An outbreak of
Scrapie
had been reported in the sheep of Inverladdie and
all three had been involved in the disposal of the
carcasses.

The men had died within a three week period
of working on the slaughter, after suffering head
aches, vomiting, and finally, dementia. One of the
two bachelors had run amok in the streets of Achnagelloch, smashing windows and screaming
obscenities before being constrained and taken to
the cottage hospital where he died the following
day. Witnesses had described him as being ‘out of
his skull’.

The married man had been nursed by his wife until
he had gone into a coma. His eyes had remained
open but he had not been able to communicate or respond to anything she said. Just before she called the doctor for the last time, who in turn called the ambulance, the man had appeared to develop some
unbearable itch and had scratched himself all over until he bled.

There were no details of how the third man’s illness
had progressed. He had been found dead in his room
by his landlady. She had, however, noticed that his arms had been scratched and bloody and there had been a wax candle in his mouth, as if he had been
trying to eat it.

Bannerman knew that there was not much to be
gained by studying the behaviour of deranged
patients. Once control of the brain had been lost, the
patient would be liable to do anything without neces
sary rhyme or reason. His or her entire behavioural
pattern would be indicated by circumstances and
events in his or her immediate surroundings. The
reports of scratching, however, were alarming and
Bannerman saw the significance in them. The sheep
disease had been given the name
Scrapie
because of
the infected animals’ habit of scraping themselves
against fences, as if fighting a constant itch. It sounded like the men had displayed the same
symptoms.

The pathology reports from Lawrence Gill and
Morag Napier reported extensive spongioform en
cephalopathy in the brains of all three men, just as
Bannerman had seen for himself in the microscope
slides the MRC had sent him. He could find no
loophole in the report as it stood. Many of the
lab tests had yet to be completed but all the
circumstantial evidence pointed to the dead men
having been infected with
Scrapie
while handling
contaminated carcasses on Inverladdie farm.

Gill had included some notes on
Scrapie
research.
It
had been established that the disease could be
transmitted from one animal to another through
scarified tissue. Bannerman supposed that this must be how the dead men had been infected. The agent
had got into their bodies through cuts and grazes on their hands while they worked on the disposal of the
slaughtered sheep. The supposedly mutant
Scrapie
virus had breached a normally impassable barrier and
attacked their brain cells.

Bannerman had a nightmarish thought. Perhaps
there was no species barrier at all. Maybe the virus could cross to man quite readily under normal cir
cumstances but the incubation time was so long that
the disease did not appear until old age. Under these
circumstances it might be called senile dementia. The
Achnagelloch mutation might be one which speeded
up the disease rather than allowing it to cross any
barrier. It was a complication he would have to bear
in mind.

Although Gill had referred to the possibility of
‘mutant’
Scrapie
in the notes he had not offered any
thoughts on what might have caused the mutation.
No mention was made of radiation or the proximity
of a nuclear power station. If it hadn’t been radiation, what else could it have been? Bannerman wondered.
Chemical or spontaneous mutation were the other
two possibilities. Viruses were notorious for chang
ing their structure. The AIDS virus did it all the time.
The ‘flu’ virus did it too. UV radiation? UV light was
a powerful mutagen. It was not inconceivable that
changes in the ozone layer might allow UV levels
to reach mutagenic levels. Chemical mutagenesis?
Modern society produced a host of chemicals capable
of altering DNA and inducing mutations. The possibilities seemed endless.

There were several practical questions that Bannerman
wanted to ask. How soon after the diagnosis of
Scrapie
in the sheep of Inverladdie had the infected animals
been slaughtered, and by what means? Had the corpses been buried quickly? Dead sheep lying
around the hillside would be prey to vermin and
carrion which would spread the virus.

Gill’s notes indicated that the local vet, Finlay, had
been called in quickly by the farmer. According to
Finlay’s report, the infected sheep had been slaugh
tered without delay and the corpses had been buried
immediately in lime pits on the farm. Everything
seemed satisfactory. Compensation had been paid
to the farmer at Inverladdie and the veterinary
inspectorate were keeping an eye on other farms
in the area for further signs of
Scrapie.