Crisis (38 page)

Bannerman withdrew the key and re-inserted it,
three times in all but it refused to turn. He cursed
and tried one last time but to no avail. He was on
the point of leaving when it suddenly occurred to him what the trouble was. He was trying to unlock
a door that was already unlocked! He turned the handle and the door opened. MacLeod must have
forgotten to lock it earlier!

Bannerman felt embarrassed that he had not thought
of trying the door first. It confirmed his suspicion
that he had no talent for cloak and dagger activities.
What was required was a cool calculating mind.
He was a bundle of nerves and his pulse rate
was topping a hundred and twenty. He tiptoed
into the room where MacLeod said that he would
leave the equipment he would need for the brain
biopsy on Turnbull. There was enough light coming
in from the street lamps for him to find it without
trouble. Surgical gloves, 50 ml capacity disposable
syringes, wide-gauge needles, alcohol impregnated swabs and a range of specimen containers. Every
thing he needed to extract a sample of the dead
man’s brain.

Bannerman’s pulse was still thumping as he col
lected the equipment together on a stainless steel
tray and prepared to take it down into the cellar. As
he lifted it he heard a sudden thumping sound from
somewhere in the building. He nearly dropped the
tray. Had MacLeod come back after all? The noise
happened again and Bannerman was prompted to
call out, ‘Dr MacLeod? Is that you?’

There was no reply.

Bannerman felt unease grow inside him until it
tightened his stomach muscles. For God’s sake get a grip! he told himself. There are sounds in all
buildings at night. Central heating noises, fridges
switching on and off. You can hardly be afraid of the dead, you’re a pathologist for God’s sake! Get
down into that cellar, get the needle biopsy over and
done with and you can be on your way to Edinburgh
in the morning.

Bannerman opened the door to the cellar and
moved forward cautiously. He couldn’t risk putting
on a light until the door was safely closed behind him
for fear that it would be seen from the street. Once more, he noticed the sudden change in temperature
as he descended the stone steps. Another sound! A small shuffling sound. Surely it couldn’t be rats at
the body? He listened for the tell-tale scurry of paws.
Silence.
stood on the second last step and looked
around the cellar. Nothing moved in the floor area
lit by the single lamp but there were several dark
corners. The sheet covered corpse lay undisturbed
on its bench in the middle of the room. There was
however, one loose fold of sheet on the right side
of the head. Bannerman could have sworn that he
had tucked the sheet round the head securely. He
stared at it, his mind racked with unease.

He laid the instrument tray down by the side of the
body and took off his coat. He rolled up his sleeves
and put on a pair of surgical gloves, stretching his
fingers and snapping the material back on his wrists
to make sure the fit was perfect. He donned a second
pair. There was no point in taking any risks with
a disease as deadly as this. He fitted one of the wide-gauge needles aseptically on to a syringe and
put the sterile plastic needle guard back on while he
unwrapped the head of the corpse.

As he touched the sheet Bannerman experienced
a moment of sheer terror; the corpse suddenly sat
up straight. He could do nothing but stare wide
eyed and open mouthed at the unfolding nightmare
before him. The corpse’s head, still covered with the
sheet, turned slowly towards him and suddenly hit
him full in the face with a vicious head-butt. Pain
exploded inside Bannerman’s head and conscious
ness was lost in a galaxy of stars.

FOURTEEN

Bannerman came to with a blinding headache and
the taste of grit in his mouth. He sat up slowly, spat
the dirt out and gingerly touched his face to discover
that his nose had been broken. He let out a grunt of
pain as the bone moved under the skin. There was a good deal of congealed blood on his face but, as far
as he could determine, there was no further serious
damage. His ribs felt fine and his teeth were intact so
it seemed that the assault had been confined to the single head-butt that had laid him out. He looked
about him and saw that he was now alone in the room. The ‘corpse’ had gone.

Painfully, he got to his feet and deduced from the
stiffness in his limbs that he must have been lying
in the same position for some considerable time. He
had to pause half-way up the stairs and knelt for
a moment when he felt consciousness start to slip away from him again. He tried putting his head
between his knees to improve blood circulation but a protest from his aching head overruled the move. He compromised by resting for a moment before
continuing upstairs to telephone Angus MacLeod.

‘Who did you say did it?’ said MacLeod, thinking
that he hadn’t heard right.

‘The corpse, well, of course, it wasn’t the corpse,
it was someone pretending to be the corpse. Oh Christ, just get over here will you,’ he snapped.
He immediately regretted it but, for the moment, the pain in his head was dictating his behaviour.
He found a bathroom and examined the damage
to his face in the mirror. The blood made it look much worse than it actually was and he recoiled
from the sight that met him. He looked as if he
had just been a spectacularly unsuccessful contender
for the heavyweight championship of the world.
‘Lucky punch Harry,’ he murmured in true British
heavyweight style. ‘Lucky punch.’

MacLeod arrived and called out his name.

‘In here,’ croaked Bannerman.

MacLeod came into the bathroom and immediately
took over. ‘Let me do that,’ he insisted. ‘Come through here. It’ll be more comfortable.’ He led
Bannerman to one of the treatment rooms where
he set about cleaning up his face and resetting his
broken nose. ‘You’re going to have two lovely black
eyes in the morning,’ he said. ‘You can get dark
glasses at MacPhail’s in the High Street.’

‘Thanks,’ said Bannerman sourly. ‘I found the
front door unlocked when I arrived. Did you forget
to lock it?’

‘On the contrary, I distinctly remember locking it,’
said Macleod.

Bannerman nodded. ‘I should have thought of
that,’ he said. ‘Whoever broke in tonight was inside
when I arrived. It never even occurred to me to think
that someone had picked the lock. ‘I assumed you had
left it open.’

‘Should I call the police?’ asked MacLeod.

‘I don’t think so,’ replied Bannerman, thinking
the local constabulary would make of it all.

‘But Turnbull’s body. It’s gone.’

‘And I don’t think we’ll see it again,’ said
Bannerman. ‘Whoever removed it obviously sus
pected that I’d try to get to the body for path
specimens, permission or no permission, and they
were right. They even saw me arrive to carry out what
amounts to an illegal procedure. It could be argued that I am a bigger criminal than they are. They will
maintain that they were only seeing that the grieving
widow’s wishes were respected.’

‘Difficult,’ said MacLeod. ‘What do you want to
do?’

‘Sleep,’ replied Bannerman, touching the bridge
of his nose as if it were a butterfly’s wing. ‘
I need some sleep.’

Bannerman woke early. The wind had disturbed him by attempting to rattle his bedroom window out of its
frame as the latest gale swept in from the Atlantic to
funnel through the streets of Stobmor.
‘Bloody country,’ he murmured as he lay listening
to the sound which alternated between a moan and a
howl according to wind velocity. After a few minutes
he decided it would be better to get up. There was
an electric kettle in the room in deference to the
fashion for ‘tea making facilities’ in hotel bedrooms.
He got up and switched it on. He checked the range
of sachets beside the kettle while it boiled. Tea, coffee and hot chocolate. They all had one thing in common;
they had obviously been lying in the room for a very
long time. The packs were all brittle. Bannerman
guessed that they had seen summer come and go
in Stobmor. He tore open a sachet of instant coffee and braced himself for the taste. He was wise to do
so. The ‘coffee’ tasted like salt water laced with floor
sweepings and cigarette ash.

A couple of sips proved enough. He poured the
contents of the cup down the wash-hand basin and
caught sight of himself in the mirror. He drew his fin
ger lightly round the dark purple circles under both
eyes. ‘Good Lord,’ he murmured. ‘If London Zoo are
looking for a new panda, you’re in with a chance.’

With a sigh of resignation, he crossed to the window where he drew open the curtains to look
out on deserted, wind-swept streets. The sky was ominously dark and threatening. Rain wasn’t far away. ‘Bonnie Scotland,’ he whispered, ‘you’re an
absolute joy …’

Bannerman pondered on what he should do next.
He felt frustrated and angry at having been beaten yet again by the factions determined to prevent
investigation of the outbreak but he knew that he
mustn’t allow these feelings to dictate his actions. He
must be practical. He felt sure that Turnbull’s body would be kept hidden until a cremation took place.
Alerting the police might force the handing over of
the body but access would still be nigh impossible.
He would still not be able to get the specimens he
needed for lab investigation.

He still had the option of forcing the issue with
court involvement and Angus MacLeod’s collusion
but he’d ruled this out because of what it would do to relationships within the community. He decided
on a conservative course of action. Despite the terms
of the deal with Allison, which allowed him to call for
a full-scale investigation if another case arose within
the four week period, there was no point in doing so
if there was nothing there to investigate! There were,
however, a couple of other things he could do until
he had decided what to tell the MRC. One was to talk
to Gordon Buchan’s widow.

The last time he had been in the area May Buchan
had been recuperating on holiday. Presumably she
was back now and perhaps she could throw some
light on how her father had contracted the disease.
First he would have to find out where she was
staying.

He remembered that Sproat, the farmer at Inver
laddie, had said she would be moving back in with
her parents when she returned, but of course, they
were now both dead and the family house in Stobmor
had been burned to the ground. Would she still be
staying in the tied cottage on the farm? he won
dered. The girl who served him breakfast confirmed,
between sidelong glances at the state of his face, that she was. When it seemed that she might have
plucked up enough courage to ask what had hap
pened, Bannerman said quickly, ‘Don’t ask.’

Wearing a pair of dark glasses which he purchased
from MacPhail’s in the High Street, as recommended
by Angus MacLeod, Bannerman got into the car to
drive up to Inverladdie Farm. There hadn’t been a
mirror in the dark, dusty general store so he looked
at himself as best he could in the rear view mirror of
the car. ‘Very Jack Nicholson,’ he murmured at the sight. He hoped he wouldn’t alarm May Buchan.