Crisis (32 page)

‘You remembered!’ exclaimed Olive.

Bannerman smiled.

‘It’s nice to have you back,’ said Olive.

‘Nice to be back,’ said Bannerman, but it wasn’t
how he felt. He said hello to everyone in the lab then
made for the sanctuary of his office where he could
let the mask slip. Olive brought in coffee then left
him to read through a small mountain of mail. He
managed to sort it first without opening anything.
All obvious advertising literature went straight into
the bucket
virgo intacta.
That left university and
medical school material, which he felt obliged to read, and some letters which gave no outward clue
as to their source. None proved to
be
interesting.

Bannerman ploughed through the university mail
with a heavy heart and growing impatience. How
could so many people spend so much time on so
little? he wondered, as he had so often in the past.
He reminded himself that if anyone could, academics
could. They seemed to be blessed with an innate
capacity to say absolutely nothing, at enormous
length. ‘Three pages!’ he muttered angrily, ‘three
bloody pages on car-parking at the hospital.’ And
what was the bottom line? There wasn’t one as far
as he could discern, but that was par for the course.
Actual conclusions were a grey area in academia;
academics were happier with a range of possibilities.
And decisions? Perish that fascist thought.

Bannerman screwed the missive into a ball and
chucked it across the room just as Olive came in.
He had to smile sheepishly in apology.

‘Already?’ she said. ‘Your holiday hasn’t done you
much good.’

‘It was no holiday,’ said Bannerman, with a hint
of bitterness. ‘Would you get me the MRC please Olive.’

‘Milne.’

‘It’s Ian Bannerman. I’m back at St Luke’s.’

‘Glad you made it back safely Doctor. What can I
do for you?’

‘I requested that the shore at Inverladdie Farm be monitored for signs of radioactivity?’

‘Ah yes,’ replied Milne, with what Bannerman
thought was a hint of embarrassment. ‘We did ask
the Health and Safety Executive to do this …’

‘And did they?’ asked Bannerman.

‘They did, and they found nothing.’

‘Nothing,’ repeated Bannerman, feeling that there
was more to come.

‘But … they did report that the area had been
cleaned.’

‘Cleaned?’

‘Sprayed with detergent, recently.’

‘Damnation,’ said Bannerman. ‘There was no trace
of detergent when I was there. They must have
treated the area after I left.’

‘Unfortunately, there is no law against it,’ said Milne
cautiously, as if fearing Bannerman’s response.

‘So they get away with it!’

‘
I’m afraid so. There is no evidence that the
shore was ever contaminated. I think we have to
be philosophical about it Doctor.’

‘Quite,’ said Bannerman, and put down the phone.
It rang again almost immediately. Bannerman snatched
it and snapped, ‘Yes?’

‘Well hello to you too,’ said Stella.

‘Sorry Stella,’ said Bannerman, ‘I’m a bit …’

‘
I can tell you’re a bit… ,’ said Stella. ‘I phoned
to see if we could have lunch. I’m not in theatre this
afternoon.’

‘I see,’ said Bannerman. He hesitated for a moment
trying to assemble his thoughts into some kind of
order, but failed. His mind was a maelstrom.

‘Of course, if you’re too busy

‘No, no, I’m just a bit upset that’s all. Lunch will
be fine. I’ll see you in the car-park at one?’

‘Look forward to it,’ said Stella and the line
went dead.

Bannerman replaced the receiver slowly and tried
to put thoughts of Achnagelloch out of his mind.
He wondered what Stella would have to say about
Shona when he told her. Would she be happy
for him? Or would she see it as an opportunity
for sophisticated sarcasm? He lit a cigarette and
massaged his forehead with the tips of his fingers.
He opened his desk drawer to see if that was where
the cleaner had hidden the ash tray and his eyes
alighted on three microscope slides propped up in
the slide rack in the corner. They were the slides
sent to the MRC by Lawrence Gill and forwarded by
the MRC, to him, for his opinion. The slides that had
started the whole furore. He hadn’t returned them
to the MRC. He decided to have another look and took them over to his microscope.

He focused on the first slide with a low power
objective then swung the high power oil immersion
lens into play. If anything it was even clearer than
he had remembered it. A perfect illustration of the
havoc wreaked on the human brain by Creutzfeld
Jakob Disease. He read the little label on the end of
the slide and saw that it had written on it in pencil,
G. Buchan.

This information had been irrelevant the first
time but now it meant something - as did the
initials, MN on each of the slides. Morag Napier
had prepared them. This section had been made
from Gordon Buchan’s brain. Buchan had been
the married sheep worker. He remembered seeing
the cottage on Inverladdie where he and his wife
May had lived. He wondered if May Buchan had
come back from holiday yet and whether or not she was living with her parents in Stobmor as
Sproat suggested she would. He scanned the brain
section, looking at the cells which had once made the decisions in Gordon Buchan’s life.

A knock came to the door and Bannerman said,
‘Come in,’ without turning round.

‘Nice to see you back,’ said Charlie Simmons’
voice.

‘Hello Charlie, how are things?’ asked Bannerman,
still without turning round.

‘No real problems. We had a bit of trouble with
the freezing microtome but it’s been sorted out.’

‘What sort of trouble?’

‘It was cutting tissue sections too thick. It’s getting
old. Maybe you could think about requesting a new
one, or putting in a grant request to somebody?’

‘
I’ll try Charlie,’ said Bannerman. He knew that
hospital equipment funds had been used up for the
current financial year and any request would just go
into the queue for next year beginning in April. A
grant request was a possibility however. Milne at
the MRC had dangled that particular carrot before
him, for whatever reason.

‘Are you taking back control of the lab immedi
ately?’ asked Charlie.

Bannerman shook his head and said, ‘No, I’ll wait
until Monday. I’ll ease myself back in gently.’

‘Karen’s leaving,’ said Charlie.

‘Why?’

‘She’s been offered a job in one of the private
hospitals.’

‘More money?’

‘More money,’ agreed Charlie.

‘
The hospital board will probably freeze the post,’
said Bannerman.

‘I was afraid of that,’ said Charlie, ‘but we’ll
manage. We always do.’

‘I’ll press for a replacement as hard as I can,’ said
Bannerman.

Charlie Simmons nodded and asked, ‘Anything
interesting?’ He nodded in the direction of the
microscope.

Bannerman got up and said, Take a look. Tell me
what you see.’

Simmons adjusted the width of the eye-pieces and
started to examine the slide. A few moments passed
in silence then he said, ‘Extensive spongioform
vacuolation … senile decay … and fibrils which
I think might be SA fibrils
…
I’d go for Creutzfeld
Jakob.’

‘Me too. This is the reason I went north. The slide
was made from the brain of a thirty-year-old who
died after a three week illness.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘
That’s what I said when they first told me,’ said
Bannerman. ‘In fact I still can’t get over it. That’s
why I’m looking again.’

‘I’m glad it’s not April the first,’ said Charlie. ‘I’d
never have believed you. I would have said someone
had switched the slides.’

Bannerman put down his knife and fork; every
thing tasted like cardboard and the restaurant was unpleasantly crowded.

‘Not hungry?’ asked Stella who seemed not to
notice.

It told Bannerman that there was nothing wrong
with the food or the restaurant. It was the way he
was feeling. ‘Not really,’ he replied.

‘You shouldn’t let it get to you like this,’ said Stella.
‘You did your best to get evidence. The main thing
is that this mutant virus or whatever it was is now
dead and gone.’

‘Like Lawrence Gill and the three men in Achna
gelloch,’ said Bannerman.

‘From what you’ve told me, Gill could conceivably
have slipped to his death. You don’t know for sure
that he was murdered. As for the three sheep work
ers, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It could happen to any of us.’

‘But the missing brain samples, the fire at the
medical school - doesn’t that tell you something?’
asked Bannerman.

‘
I agree that some skulduggery appears to have
been going on but the fire could have been coinci
dence. Couldn’t it?’

‘
I don’t believe it,’ replied Bannerman.

‘Maybe you don’t want to believe it,’ said Stella.

‘It’s not that simple,’ said Bannerman. ‘I didn’t
imagine being assaulted. I didn’t imagine being
shot at. The fairies didn’t slash the tyres on my
car,’ protested Bannerman.

‘You said yourself that there was local feeling
against you because of job fears,’ said Stella.

The local yobs wouldn’t have mounted a clean-up
operation on the beach,’ said Bannerman. That
would have required a management decision. You
know the funny thing? I had almost written off any
involvement of the power station until Milne told
me about the clean-up this morning.’

‘You can’t read too much into that either,’ said
Stella. ‘If the management at the power station
thought you were going to make trouble they would be bound to clean up their act. That’s human nature.
It’s like dusting before your mother-in-law arrives.’

‘So you don’t believe me,’ said Bannerman.

‘
I believe, that you believe it,’ said Stella. ‘I’m just
trying to get you to relax. It’s over. You did your best
and from what you’ve told me there doesn’t seem
to be a new disease to worry about, so why not let
it drop?’

Bannerman nodded. He had no intention of letting
it drop but he had no wish to continue talking
about it.

‘So what else is new?’ asked Stella.

Bannerman smiled and said, ‘I met someone while
I was away, a girl.’

‘Good for you,’ said Stella. ‘Is she special?’

‘I think so,’ replied Bannerman.

Then I’m happy for you,’ said Stella. Tell me
about her. Is she young?’