thought it unusual to see a church building exuding light. It made him think of Christmas.
‘Come in,’ said Malloy. He was wearing jeans and an Aran sweater and holding a glass of red wine in his hand. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘A glass of that would be very nice,’ replied Dewar, nodding to the wine.
‘A precocious little bugger I picked up from Safeways,’ said Malloy, pouring Dewar a glass. ‘Rich in ambition but modest in price. He exaggerated a Scottish accent for the last few words. What’s the problem?’
‘The men who tried to coerce Hammadi into working on smallpox are still in the city. I don’t know why but I have to consider all possibilities.’
‘Why doesn’t someone arrest them?’
‘No evidence,’ said Dewar. ‘We couldn’t even prove they met Hammadi let alone what they asked him to do.’
‘So why do you think they’re still here?’
‘At worst I have to consider that they might be trying to persuade someone else to help them to get what they want.’
Malloy looked aghast. ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he said in a shocked whisper. ‘No one in their right mind would even dream of it.’
‘I take it, no one’s approached you?’
‘No. They’d get short shrift if they did’
‘How about if they were to offer you half a million pounds to do it?’
‘Half a mil … No, absolutely not.’
‘A million?’
‘I … ‘
‘Two million?’
‘All right, I take your point,’ said Malloy. ‘We’ve started to haggle about the price. But I still hope I would say no. It would be sheer madness to attempt it and how could you live with yourself, knowing you’d resurrected one of the worst killers the world’s ever known? You wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, assuming you survived at all after playing around with something like that.’
‘I sincerely hope everyone feels like that,’ said Dewar. ‘But I have to ask you who at the institute might be put to the test?’
‘You’re serious?’
Dewar nodded. ‘I need you to tell me who has the necessary expertise to do the job without of course, suggesting in any way that they would.’
‘Assuming they were supplied with everything they needed?’
Another nod.
‘There are lots of people with DNA skills but not that many with practical experience of working with high risk micro organisms. Basically it would come down to the people in my lab and those in Gary Cairns’s lab. We work with HIV so we’re used to handling dangerous material.’
‘Point taken.’
‘We could leave out first year grad students. Second year? Possible. Post docs, yes and of course, Gary Cairns and me, I suppose.’
‘Technical staff?’
Malloy thought for a moment. ‘Andrea in Cairns’s lab would be a possibility. She has the right background and she’s been here a while. She might be able to do it at a pinch.’
‘George Ferguson?’
‘No experience of DNA manipulation, technically able and well used to handling dangerous organisms but wrong background for this sort of thing.’
‘So how many are we talking about?’
Malloy brought his shoulders up to his ears and made shaking gestures with both hands. ‘I’d go for eight.’ he said.
‘I need their names,’ said Dewar.
‘This is giving me a bad feeling,’ said Malloy, as he got up. ‘It feels like I’m betraying my colleagues. He fetched pen and paper from his desk.
‘You’re not,’ Dewar assured him. ‘You’re simply appraising their competence and expertise.’
Malloy wrote down the eight names and handed it over. ‘Mind you, I’d bet my life savings against any of these people being involved in anything like this,’ he said.
‘And I wouldn’t dream of betting against you,’ said Dewar. ‘If only our Iraqi friends would get the hell out of the city then we could all stop being so paranoid and rest easy.’ He declined the offer of a second glass of wine and was escorted to the door. ‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell anyone else about our meeting.’
‘It’s hardly something I’m likely to brag about,’ said Malloy.
Dewar drove back to the city, taking his time on the narrow roads in the dark In many places they had acquired a coating of wet leaves, it would be all too easy to come to grief under heavy braking and finish up among the trees whose tall, dark presence blotted out the sky. He felt better when he’d got back on to the main road and had a clear run back into the city.
Once back in his hotel room he phoned Karen to exchange notes about the day and make arrangements for the week end.
‘You won’t think of an excuse not to come down and see my mother will you?’ asked Karen.
‘Of course not,’ Dewar assured her, his spirits falling at the thought of an evening in the company of Karen’s mother. He found her hard to take.
‘Good, so why don’t we say that you’ll be down for supper on Saturday and you’ll stay over till Sunday?’
‘Fine,’ said Dewar. ‘I take it I’ll be on the couch downstairs?’
‘You know how Mother feels about that sort of thing,’ said Karen.
‘I know,’ agreed Dewar.
‘Besides … she goes out to her church social on Sunday afternoon, that’ll give us plenty of time …’
‘Here’s to Sunday afternoon,’ said Dewar.
Dewar entered the names of the eight people Malloy had given him into his laptop as part of his next report for Sci-Med. He looked at them, white letters on a blue screen. He hadn’t been quite honest with Malloy. It wasn’t just a matter of compiling a list of people with the right know-how. Once Barron had the names, all the people on that list would be subject to round the clock surveillance just like the two Iraqis. To imagine anything else would be naive. Steven Malloy and Gary Cairns headed it, Pierre Le Grice and Simone Clary were next then Sandra Macandrew and Kurt Lehman, finally Andrea Bowman and Josh Phelps. He assumed the names he didn’t recognise were people working in the Cairns lab. It might be worth running the names through the police computer. He’d bet on eight zeros coming up but it would be a sensible, routine thing to do and Sci-Med liked him to do sensible routine things from time to time. You never know, he assured himself, one of them might turn out to be a mad axe-killer. He called Grant at police headquarters on the off chance he might be there although it was now after ten. He wasn’t there but the man who answered from Grant’s office — Sergeant Nick Johnstone, said that he was still on duty.
‘There was a nasty hit and run incident over in Marchmont;’ said the sergeant. ‘A lassie got knocked off her bike; I think she was killed. He went over to the hospital about an hour ago. Anything I can help with? The Inspector said if you called at any time we were to play ball, to use his expression.’
‘I was going to ask him to run some names through the computer for me,’ said Dewar.
‘Fire away,’ said Johnstone.
Dewar read out the list and Johnstone wrote them down with Dewar providing spelling where necessary.
‘Wait a minute … ‘ said Johnstone.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Just a minute … ‘
Dewar heard the phone being put down. The wait started to seem endless when Johnstone finally returned and the receiver was fumbled before being picked up successfully.
‘I thought so,’ said Johnstone. ‘The lassie in Marchmont, she’s on your list, if it’s the same one. Sandra
