Crisis (44 page)

‘Last night you brought in a sample of sheep brain
to the Poisons Reference Bureau and requested toxic
analysis on it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Surely it’s a reasonable question, Doctor,’ said
Jackman.

‘So is mine,’ said Bannerman.

‘Frankly, Doctor, I think I should warn you that if
you continue to be obstructive you could be in very
serious trouble,’ said Mildrew.

‘What did they find in the sheep brain?’ asked
Bannerman. They did find something, didn’t they?
That’s what this is all about.’

‘Where did you get it?’

The impasse continued in silence for a few
moments before Bannerman said, ‘I’d like to make a telephone call.’

‘Do you think you need a lawyer, Doctor?’ asked
Jackman.

‘I’m not calling one,’ said Bannerman. ‘I would like
to speak to Mr Cecil Allison of the Prime Minister’s
office.’

The Prime Minister’s office?’ repeated Jackman.
‘What do you have to do with the Prime Minister’s
office?’

‘I’ve been carrying out an investigation on behalf
of the Medical Research Council in conjunction with
the PM’s office,’ replied Bannerman.

Mildrew and Jackman looked at each other and
then at Morris who shrugged his shoulders. ‘We were unaware of this,’ said Jackman. There seems
to have been a breakdown in communications
somewhere.’ His look to Morris indicated where
he thought it lay. ‘Perhaps Inspector Morris will place the call for you.’

Morris moved to an adjoining room and returned
a few moments later to say to Bannerman, ‘Mr Allison
is on the line, sir.’

Bannerman closed the door behind him and picked
up the receiver.

‘I understand you are in a spot of bother, Doctor,’
said Allison.

Bannerman never thought he would be pleased to
hear the sound of Allison’s voice, but he was. He
told him about the sheep brain and about his having
requested a chemical toxin analysis on it.

‘But what did they find?’ asked Allison. ‘What’s all
the fuss about?’

‘
They won’t tell me and I won’t tell them where I
found it, so we’re sitting here, looking at each other.’

‘Perhaps I should speak to them,’ suggested.
Allison.

‘I’d be
grateful.’

Mildrew spoke to Allison in private, then returned
to the room and indicated to Bannerman that Allison
wanted to speak to him again.

‘Bannerman, I suggest that you cooperate fully
with Mr Mildrew and his colleagues,’ said Allison.

‘Without question?’ said Bannerman.

‘Yes.’

‘No way,’ said Bannerman, flatly. ‘I’ve not come
this far to be fobbed off like this. I want to know what
was in the sample.’

‘I thought you’d say that,’ said Allison. ‘I warned
Mildrew you might. Mr Mildrew is prepared to tell
you more but first you will have to sign the Official Secrets Act.’

‘Ye gods! What next,’ exclaimed Bannerman.

‘If you lab boffins had got this right in the first
instance, none of this would have been necessary,’
said Allison and put down the phone abruptly.

‘Well thanks a lot,’ said Bannerman to the dialling
tone.

‘Sign where I’ve marked it,’ said Jackman, handing
Bannerman a copy of the Official Secrets Act.

Bannerman signed without comment and pushed
the form to one side.

The brain sample you presented last night con
tained traces of a chemical called NYLIT,’ said
Mildrew.

‘Nylit,’ repeated Bannerman. ‘Never heard of it.’

‘We would have been surprised if you had.’

‘Where does it come from?’

‘
This is the cause of our interest, Doctor,’ said
Mildrew. ‘NYLIT is not a by-product of any chemical
process, as so many toxins are. It was a specific
component of a biological weapon developed in 19
… some time ago.’

‘A weapon?’ exclaimed Bannerman.

‘It was one of a chain of compounds developed by
our defence establishment.’

‘And it’s a powerful mutagen?’

‘Among other things, yes.’

‘So how the hell did it get into a sheep in the north
of Scotland?’

‘
That’s what we intend finding out, Doctor, with
your help of course.’

‘I’ll give you all the information I have,’ said Bannerman.

It was after ten in the evening before Bannerman got
back to the hotel. He was exhausted, having told Mildrew and Jackson every single detail he could remember about the investigation in Achnagelloch and Stobmor.

‘I’ve been so worried,’ said Shona. ‘What did they
want?’

‘
The sheep were exposed to a powerful mutagen,’ said Bannerman.

‘Where did it come from?’

‘We don’t know, but the best guess at the moment
is that some canister was washed up on the beach
at Inverladdie and through time it leaked and contaminated the ground. Grazing sheep which were
incubating the
Scrapie
virus at the time were affected
by it, and the rest you know.’

That still doesn’t explain how Colin Turnbull came
to be affected,’ said Shona.

‘No it doesn’t,’ agreed Bannerman but there was a
more pressing question on his mind. He was again
considering why the brain sections taken from the
dead men at Inverladdie had shown such perfect signs of classical Creutzfeld Jakob Disease when the sections from the poisoned sheep showed no
brain degeneration at all? He feared that the answer
to that must lie with the people responsible for the
pathology on the dead men, Lawrence Gill who was
dead and Morag Napier … who was not.

It was late and Bannerman did not want to voice his
suspicions to Shona. Despite the fact that it was he
who had finally worked out the puzzle he was smart
ing over his earlier certainty about the involvement of
the Invermaddoch nuclear power station. He seemed
to have been so wrong so often in this affair that he
decided he would keep his thoughts to himself for
the moment. He would go into the medical school in the morning and try out a little test of his own. He still had the samples of sheep brain. He would
let Morag go ahead with the animal tests she had promised to do.

Bannerman had just left for the medical school when
the phone rang and Shona answered.

‘May I speak to Dr Bannerman please?’ asked a
female voice.

‘I’m afraid he’s just gone out. Can I give him a
message?’

This is Morag Napier at the medical school. I wanted to remind him about the sample he said he
would bring in for animal inoculation.’

‘I think he’s on his way to see you now, Dr Napier,
with the news.’

‘What news?’

‘Apparently the sheep were affected by some poi
son on the land, but Ian will tell you all about it
himself when he gets there.’

‘That sounds interesting, thank you,’ said Morag
Napier.

‘Hello
again
,’
said Bannerman as he entered
Morag Napier’s lab.

‘Good morning,’ smiled Morag. ‘You’ve brought
the sample?’

Bannerman took out a small bottle containing
sheep brain. ‘Here you are. Can I watch you do
the inoculations?’

‘If you like,’ said Morag. She took the bottles over
to a fume hood and switched on the extractor fan.
It accelerated slowly into life and settled down to a
steady hum.

Morag, now gloved and gowned, transferred the
contents of the first bottle into the heavy glass reser
voir of an emulsifier. She added sterile saline solution
and fitted the cap which housed a sharp metal blade
mounted on a long shaft that reached to the foot of
the bottle. She clamped the reservoir to its platform
and made the motor connection to the upper end of
the shaft. She then switched on the power and the
blade started whirling inside the glass, emulsifying
the brain into a smooth, injectable solution.

Morag inspected it by eye and then gave it another
couple of minutes. She then loaded the contents of
the reservoir into two sterile plastic syringes. She
fitted needles to both and said, ‘Shall we go down
to the animal lab?’

There was still a vague smell of burning about the animal laboratory despite the fact that it had been
completely reconstructed since the fire. It mingled
with animal smells and that of fresh paint in an
unpleasant cocktail which made Bannerman wrinkle
up his nose as they went in. He noticed that Morag
used her own key. There was no one inside.

‘I thought I would do six mice,’ said Morag.

‘Good,’ said Bannerman watching her every move.

‘I wonder, would you get me the experiment
register from the office?’ asked Morag.

Bannerman went to the office but as soon as he
turned the corner he turned back to look at what
Morag was doing. He saw her take out two filled
syringes from a drawer below the bench and replace
them with the two she had brought down from
upstairs.

‘Is that how you did it last time?’ asked Bannerman
from behind her.

Morag jumped, but regained control quickly. ‘I
don’t know what you mean,’ she said.

‘It had to be you. You faked the brain sections and
the animal tests to make it look as if the men in
Achnagelloch had died from sheep
Scrapie.
Lawrence
Gill must have found out what you’d done and tried
to send true samples of the men’s brains to the MRC
for proper analysis but he was murdered before he
could say anything about it.’

‘He wasn’t murdered!’ insisted Morag with flashing eyes. ‘He fell from the cliff. It was an accident!
The whole thing was an accident! If the farm workers
hadn’t been so greedy the sheep would have been
safely buried and none of this would ever have
happened!’

‘How about Colin Turnbull, Morag? What did he
do wrong?’

‘Perhaps I can answer that Doctor,’ said a foreign
voice.

Bannerman turned round to see a man emerge
from the animal food store. He was holding a gun.
Bannerman felt himself go cold when he looked
into the man’s eyes. He had seen them before.
They had been above a ski mask up on Tarmachan
Ridge. He’d only seen them for a second but now
it all came back to him. There had also been two
other occasions when he had seen this tall, fair,
good-looking man. The first had been when he had
been partially obscured behind Morag Napier when
they had both come into the restaurant where he was
eating in the Royal Mile and the second time had been
in van Gelder’s car up in Stobmor on the night he had
been assaulted in the car-park.
‘You’re van Gelder’s son,’ he said.