Crisis (11 page)

Bannerman found a problem with the research
notes, however, when he tried to find out what experimental measures had been taken to investi
gate the pathology of the men’s deaths. He checked
through all the papers again but found nothing. He
felt sure that brain samples would have been sent to
the Neurobiology Unit for testing in mice. He would
check. He got out his diary where he had made a
note of Hector Munro’s number, and called it. He
remembered that Munro had said at the meeting in
London that his people would be happy to give any
help they could.

‘Munro.’

‘Dr Munro? This is Ian Bannerman. We met at the
MRC in London.’

‘Of course, you decided to take the assignment then?’

‘
This is my first day,’ said Bannerman. ‘I’ve been
going through the case notes and I find I need some
information.’

‘Fire away.’

‘I presume Gill asked your people to test the
brains of the dead men for confirmation of
slow
virus infection and to measure incubation times in
mice. Do you have any results yet?’

‘I’m afraid you presume wrongly,’ replied Munro.
‘Gill did not send us anything from the autopsies.’

‘But your people are the acknowledged experts
on this sort of thing!’ said Bannerman. The short
incubation time is one of the most striking and
worrying features about this whole business!’

‘I wouldn’t disagree with that,’ said Munro,
‘but
nothing has come to us. I supposed that Stoddart’s people were carrying out their own investigation.’

Bannerman let out a sigh of frustration. ‘Depart
mental politics,’ he complained. ‘I’ll check on that.
In the meantime would you mind if I sent you some
brain biopsies for mice inoculation. I understand
the men’s bodies are in the medical school here in
Edinburgh. I’ll take the samples myself.’

‘We’d be delighted to help in any way,’ said
Munro. The sooner we got this sorted out the
better.’

Thanks. I’ll get them to you as quickly as I can.’

Bannerman put down the phone and cursed under
his breath. What the hell was Gill playing at? He must
have seen the awful implications in the men’s deaths,
and yet he had failed to send samples to Munro’s Unit, and he had picked this very moment to bugger off with
some dolly-bird. ‘Clown!’ he murmured. He called
Stoddart to be told by his secretary that he had left for
the day. He looked at his watch and muttered, ‘Short
day George.’ He remembered that he would be seeing
him later for dinner. He could ask about it then.

The Stoddarts lived in a spacious Georgian Flat in Edinburgh’s new town, the elegant area to the north
of the castle and Princes Street, favoured by the pro
fessional classes. The room was freezing. Bannerman
had to exercise great restraint in not rubbing his arms
to keep the circulation going. A ‘small problem’ with
the hearing, as George Stoddart called it, had been
compensated for by placing a single-bar electric fire at the head of the dining-room. In a room which was
thirty feet long and something like fourteen feet high,
this did not make a lot of difference.

The room was also oppressively quiet. Bannerman
was the only guest, since Morag Napier and her
fiancé£ had had to call off at the last moment.
Every clink of the cutlery seemed to resound
in the long silences that punctuated the meal
between infrequent, staccato bursts of polite con
versation.

Bannerman gathered, when introduced to
Stoddart’s wife, that she did not have a medical
background. He therefore thought it improper to
pursue the subject of brain pathology while eating the haggis which the Stoddarts had thought appro
priate to welcome him to Scotland. He had managed to glean, however, that she was a leading light of the
university wives’ ‘Friends of Rumania’ circle, and did
his best to make conversation about that.

Stoddart seemed totally uninterested in anything
his wife had to say and would interrupt, at will, with
completely unrelated observations. ‘Of course I’m a pituitary man myself,’ he suddenly announced in the
middle of a discussion about orphanage conditions.
‘Really?’ said Bannerman, embarrassed on behalf
of Stoddart’s wife, who looked down at the table
cloth and appeared to be holding her tongue in
check.

‘1 suppose you’re familiar with my work?’ asked Stoddart.

‘Of course,’ lied Bannerman, thinking it must have
been twenty years since Stoddart had last published
anything.

Stoddart saw this as his cue to launch into an after-dinner lecture on his life’s work.

Bannerman sought solace in the brandy while
nodding at appropriate intervals and sneaking sur
reptitious glances at his watch. When, eventually,
Mrs Stoddart asked to be excused so that she
could begin clearing the table, Bannerman took
the opportunity to interrupt Stoddart and find out
what he wanted to know.

‘Professor, I must ask you, what animal tests
were set up on the brains of the three men from
Achnagelloch?’

Stoddart adopted a serious expression. He thought
for a moment, and then said, ‘1 think you would have
to ask Lawrence Gill that.’

‘But I can’t can I?’ said Bannerman.

‘I suppose not,’ agreed Stoddart. Then I suppose
Dr Napier would be your best bet.’

‘You haven’t been taking an interest in this inves
tigation yourself then?’ asked Bannerman.

‘I’m the collator for the MRC survey figures,
of course,’ said Stoddart, with comfortable self-importance.

‘I see,’ said Bannerman, who was seething inside.
Jesus Christ, he thought. He’s confronted with
something like this and he’s collating the figures.
If ever there was a candidate for early retirement,
he was currently listening to him drone on about
the pituitary gland.

The following morning was Saturday, but Bannerman
was in the medical school just after eight-thirty. He
wasn’t sure if Morag Napier would be around but
he thought he might be able to get her home
phone number from someone. Apart from that, he wanted to carry out an examination of the
bodies of the three dead men and to get brain biopsies to send to Munro at the Neurobiology
Unit. He found his way to the mortuary and
collared the duty attendant. He told him what he
wanted.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said the man, shaking
his head.

‘What do you mean, you don’t know about that?’
asked Bannerman, irritated but trying to keep his
temper.

‘I’ve no note of this,’ said the man. ‘It’s not on
my list.’

Then put it on your list!’ exclaimed Bannerman.

The man shook his head with a pitying smile and
said, ‘It’s not as easy as that I’m afraid. There are
procedures to be followed.’

Oh Christ, thought Bannerman. A traffic warden
in charge of the mortuary is all I need. ‘Do you have
a phone?’ he snapped.

‘Not an outside call, I trust,’ replied the man.

Bannerman brushed past him and called Stoddart, not caring if he was still in bed. As soon as Stoddart
answered, he said curtly, ‘This is Bannerman. I’m at the mortuary and I want to examine the cadavers of
the men Gill brought down from the north. Will you
please tell your man that this is in order?’ Without waiting for a reply, he handed the receiver to the
attendant and stared down at the desk, taking deep
breaths as Stella had advised him to do when losing his temper. He heard the man say, ‘Yes sir, certainly
sir, right away Professor,’ and then put the phone
down.

‘
I was just following the rules, sir,’ he said
to Bannerman.

So were the guards at Auschwitz, thought
Bannerman.

‘Any particular order sir?’ asked the attendant.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ replied Bannerman, taking off
his shoes and putting on Wellingtons. He gowned-
up while the attendant brought the first body through the narrow, tiled corridor leading from
the vault and slid it on to the table. The light
above the table stuttered into being and produced
a background hum as Bannerman, fastening the last
of the ties on his gown, walked up to the table and
peeled back the shroud.

Even if no one had told him beforehand, he could
have guessed that the dead man had had an out
door occupation and that it involved physical effort.
Despite the pallor of death there were still signs of a
ruddy complexion, and the muscular development
of his legs was marked. A jagged, dark line round his skull indicated where the skull cap had been removed when Gill had carried out the previous post-mortem.

‘I’ll need some specimen containers,’ Bannerman
said to the attendant, who was keeping his dis
tance.

‘What type?’

‘Glass, one ounce, Universal.’

The attendant brought four containers to the head
of the table while Bannerman removed the top of the
skull. He picked up a scalpel and forceps from the
instrument tray that had been opened for him and
looked inside the skull cavity. He felt stupid. There
was nothing there!

Feeling as if he had been given a bad line to say in an amateur production, Bannerman said to the
attendant, ‘Where is the corpse’s brain?’

‘If it’s not in his head, I don’t know, sir,’ replied
the attendant, with an apparently straight face.

‘
I take it you were not in attendance when Dr Gill
carried out the first autopsy?’

‘No sir. I’m just weekends.’

‘Are copies of the reports kept down here?’

‘No, sir.’

Bannerman hadn’t really imagined that they
would be. It was a forlorn hope. He was beginning
to feel as though he was running in soft sand. ‘Put him back. I’ll check the other two.’

The story was the same with the other two cadav
ers. The brains had been removed and, by the look
of them, the cranial cavities had been cleaned out afterwards.

Bannerman washed and went upstairs to see if he
could find someone to give him Morag Napier’s
telephone number. If he couldn’t, then it would
mean another call to Stoddart. In the event he saw
a light on in one of the labs and knocked on the
door. He was invited to enter by a foreign sounding
voice. He learned that Dr Klaus Lehman was on
an exchange visit from the Max Plank Institute in
Germany to work on a research project on allergies.
Bannerman said he hoped that he would be able to
talk to him about his project at some later date, but in the meantime, did he know if there was a staff telephone list? Lehman said that there was and that
he had a copy.

The phone rang eight times before Morag Napier
answered. ‘You caught me in the bath,’ she com
plained.

‘I’m sorry, but it’s important. I couldn’t find any
details about the animal tests that you and Dr Gill
must have set up on the brains of the three men
from Achnagelloch. You must have left the notes out of the file.’

There was a pause before Morag Napier said, ‘I
gave you everything there was in Lawrence’s desk.
I wasn’t involved with the animal tests.’