make sure he unleashed a fierce punch into his stomach and the man fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
‘Now, just what the hell are you talking about?’ demanded Dewar.
There was just enough light for him to see that his attacker was wearing a raincoat buttoned unevenly over several layers of clothing judging by his bulk. He had a wild mane of dirty grey hair and a beard that seemed to sprout at all angles from his face. Everything pointed to him being a down and out, living rough in the tunnel. The lager can outside now made sense.
‘You killed Tam, ya bastard and now … you’re gonna kill me,’ gasped the man. He was half weeping, half struggling for breath and clutching his stomach. Dewar regretted having hit him so hard.
‘I don’t know you from Adam,’ said Dewar. ‘And who’s Tam?’
‘Don’t give me that shit. What fuckin’ harm were we doin’? Eh? Answer me that?’
‘What is this place?’ asked Dewar.
‘Don’t give me that … ‘
The man stopped in mid sentence as Dewar, growing tired of the impasse, grabbed hold of his lapels and brought his face up close. He rasped, ‘Just answer the question.’
‘The tunnels.’
‘What tunnels?’
‘The City Hospital tunnels, ya numpty.’
Alarm bells started to ring in Dewar’s head. ‘The City Hospital?’ he repeated. You mean these houses out there are built on ground where the City Hospital used to be?’
‘Every bugger knows that.’
Dewar’s mind reeled with the implications of this news. He hadn’t found a secret government establishment but he had found the site of an old hospital and that hospital had been the city’s infectious diseases hospital. He knew that because George Ferguson in Steven Malloy’s lab had told him so! Dewar felt slightly light-headed as so much began to make sense. Ferguson had worked there for thirty years and this was the area where the smallpox vials had been unearthed. It all fitted. Ferguson was the missing link with the institute! Good old George Ferguson.
The virus hadn’t come from any hi-tech reconstruction in the institute or indeed from any secret wartime research centre, it had come from an old infectious diseases hospital, a place that had seen most of the diseases that afflicted mankind in its time.
‘Tell me about Tam,’ he said to the man on the floor.
‘We lived here for more than three years. It was warm and even when the heating stopped it was still better than kissin’ arse down the church places for a bowl o’ soup.
‘What happened?’
The man raised an arm slowly and pointed. ‘Through there,’ he said. ‘You’ll need these.’ He threw Dewar a box of matches.
Dewar frowned but followed the man’s directions, moving cautiously in case of any kind of trap. There was a dark alcove to his left and he had the sudden sensation that he was no longer alone. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck as he took out a match and struck it. There, sitting propped up against the wall, like a rag doll at rest was the blackened, charred corpse of a man, the flesh from his skull all but gone. The fingers of his right hand moved as a rat let go and dissolved into the darkness.
‘Jesus Christ,’ muttered Dewar putting his hand to his mouth. He felt himself shiver all over.
‘Why are you keeping him here?’ he demanded as he returned to the man on the floor.
‘I couldn’t decide on a coffin,’ came the sour answer. ‘I report it and I don’t have a home any more.’
‘What happened?’
‘One night the digger came and started working. ‘We thought the builders were gonna fill in this bit of the tunnel too so Tam and me moved back but they stopped and went away so we came back. Then next night some bastard poured petrol down the hole while we were sleepin’ here and torched the place. They burned Tam alive, poor bastard.’
‘Where exactly did they pour the petrol down?’
‘Along there.’
Once again, Dewar followed the line of the man’s pointing finger. He passed the alcove with its grisly inhabitant and came to an earth wall blocking any further progress. He could tell the earth had not been there very long. It was still damp. It smelled fresh like a garden after rain but there was also a smell of burning associated with it. He started to kick away at it but became dissatisfied at the progress he was making. He found a piece of metal that had once comprised part of a support bracket for the piping and pressed it into service as a digging tool. His first sign of success came when he felt a thin column of cool, fresh air on his cheek.
This inspired him to greater efforts and he succeeded in clearing a way up to the outside. He pulled himself up on to the grass and sat there for a moment looking down into the hole that Michael Kelly had made with his digger. He stood up and looked around to get his bearings. He could see that he was at the north east corner of The Pines estate, about twenty-five metres to the north of the nearest house. That should be enough to work out on a plan of the old hospital what had once stood where he was standing now but he thought he already knew the answer to that. He’d put money on this being the sight of the old microbiology lab where George Ferguson had worked for so long. The lab itself had been levelled to the ground but the underground access tunnels for heating and steam pipes had been left untouched because the builders weren’t actually erecting anything on this plot. Ferguson must have known of some old storage facility for virus cultures and decided to make himself some money.
Dewar decided he’d better go back the way he’d come. He had to do something about the down-and-out. He wanted to assure him that no one had meant to kill his friend; it had been an accident but it was also true that he couldn’t go on living there. There would have to be a full examination of the tunnel system just in case Ferguson’s fire had not wiped out everything he’d left behind and then the whole lot would probably be filled in for good. Dewar dropped back down into the tunnel and piled up loose earth behind him so that no one out walking his dog would see anything more than a dip in the ground above. When he got back to where he’d left the down-and-out there was no one there. He considered giving chase but decided not to. The guy lived outside society; that was the way he wanted it; he could stay that way. He personally had more pressing problems to take care of. He made his way back to the derelict boiler house and climbed out of the hatch. He took out his mobile phone and called Steven Malloy.
As expected, Malloy sounded dry but there was no time to apologise for the previous evening. Dewar said. ‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes,’ answered a puzzled Malloy. ‘Why?’
‘Because George Ferguson is the man we’re after. Is he there at the institute?’
‘What?’ exclaimed Malloy. ‘How on earth … ’
‘Is he in today?’
‘He’s on sick leave.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Dewar.
‘He’s not been himself recently. I told him to take some time off, sort out whatever was troubling him.’
‘Jesus,’ said Dewar. ‘I know what was troubling him all right. Do you have his home address?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll pick you up at the institute and we’ll go over from there to confront him. I’ll fill you in on the details on the way.’
‘I just can’t believe that George had anything to do with … ‘
‘Trust me,’ said Dewar. ‘He’s as guilty as sin.’
Dewar was about to begin wriggling under the wire again when he considered that there must be an easier way out, the one the down-and-out and his pal had been using for some time. He walked round the inside of the fence, examining all the posts until he noticed one that seemed loose at the base. It also coincided with it being the end of one stretch of wire and the beginning of the next. Dewar pulled at the post and it came away. He could now swing the section back like a gate. ‘Cheers guys,’ he muttered, replacing the post and hurrying back to the car.
