Resurrection by Ken McClure Read Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t an alcoholic and he didn’t get depressed. That isn’t why he topped himself. We had an occasional couple of pints at the union on a Friday night, that’s all.’
    ‘But he never loosened up enough to tell you what was wrong?’
    ‘Fraid not.’

 
     
     
     
    FOUR
     
    The Sci-Med Inspectorate
    The Home Office
    London.
     
    ‘Jean has prepared a file for you,’ said the director, John Macmillan to Adam Dewar as he showed him to the door. I think the WHO are erring on the side of caution in banning the movement of these fragments but it certainly seems the side to err on as far as this bug’s concerned. I’ve taken the liberty of arranging a meeting for you with a leading virus consultant at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine this afternoon, a man called Hector Wright. He’ll give you a crash course on the disease; he’s expecting you at three.’
    ‘Right you are sir,’ said Dewar.
    ‘I think this one is probably just a paperwork exercise but good luck anyway.’
     
    Dewar had lunch at a pub by the river on the way back to the flat. It was sunny so he sat outside in the autumn sunshine with a pint of Guinness, watching the river traffic go by and thinking it might be the last time he’d do that this year. He was pleasantly surprised at how quiet the pub was. It encouraged him to open his briefcase and take out the folder he’s been given. He flicked through the contents while he waited for his prawn salad.
    Basically it was a list of the universities and research institutes currently holding DNA fragments of the smallpox virus. There were twelve, two in Scotland, the rest in England. Eight had already complied with the audit request, four were still to file. The two in Scotland were among the four. Of the eight that had made returns, seven had submitted lists that agreed with the central source file. One, the Institute of Biosciences in Manchester appeared to have two more fragments than they were officially credited with. That seemed like a good starting point, thought Dewar as he put away the file and took a sip of his beer.
     
    Hector Wright turned out to be a short fat man in his late fifties. He had a shock of white hair, a pugnacious expression and eyes that looked and learned all the time. He would never manage to look elegant or distinguished, whatever he wore, but no one would ever sell him a vacuum cleaner he didn’t want.
    ‘So you want me to tell you all about smallpox,’ said Wright as he slumped back down in his chair behind his desk after shaking hands. Dewar caught the body language of a man about to launch an interrogation. ‘Why?’
    ‘I understand you’re a leading expert on the subject,’ said Dewar, deliberately misunderstanding the question.
    Wright nodded thoughtfully. He knew that Dewar had side-stepped the question. He also reckoned that he wasn’t going to get anywhere by pursuing it. ‘I don’t know if anyone can ever claim to be an expert on that little bastard,’ he said with feeling. ‘When I worked with it all these years ago it always seemed to have some new trick up its sleeve. You’d think you understood it then - I know it’s stupid to say this about a virus for God’s sake - it’s about the most basic life form you can get and some people would argue that it isn’t even that - but it was almost as if it had a mind of its own, that it was malevolent, if you get my meaning, that it wanted to kill you.’
    Dewar saw that the man meant what he was saying; he wasn’t just coming out with it for effect.
    ‘I don’t mind telling you I got pretty mad when these people put a stop to the WHO proposal to wipe it out altogether back in ‘95. All that rubbish about destroying something that God had created and what an interesting little beast it really was. Jesus! the only function a smallpox virus ever had on this earth was to kill human beings. There’s no intermediate vector, no animal hosts, no life cycle of its own; it only affects