‘Poor George. He’s not having the best couple of years, poor bugger. They pull his hospital down after thirty years, transfer him all around the university and now this. He’s got a wife with cancer and a mentally retarded boy, you know.’
‘I knew about the boy,’ said Dewar ‘I didn’t know about his wife. I was speaking to him before I left, or should I say he was the only one left speaking to me by that time!’
Malloy gave a lop-sided grin. ‘I can imagine.’
‘He seemed to be taking it philosophically,’ said Dewar.
‘Good,’ said Malloy. ‘He usually imagines that life is waging a personal vendetta against him.’
Dewar smiled. ‘He has a point by the sound of it. And you? What will you do now?’
‘I’ve had a couple of offers from drug companies in the last year. I turned them down but maybe it’s time for a slice of humble pie. Maybe mammon and me’ll get along just fine.’
‘Academics often talk a lot of nonsense about working in industry,’ said Dewar. ‘If you’re good, there’s no problem,’ said Dewar. ‘It’s half-arses industry’s not so keen on and most of the university-luvvies throwing up their hands in horror at the very idea of industry are exactly that. They know they’d be rumbled in that world within ten minutes and be shown the door.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’
Malloy got out of his chair and replenished their glasses. Dewar was about to decline but thought better of it. He could always get a taxi back to town and pick up his car tomorrow. Malloy needed company; it seemed the least he could do in the circumstances.
The Getz record had come to an end. ‘Other side?’ asked Malloy.
‘Why not.’
Dewar woke with a splitting headache to find that he still had all his clothes on and was still in the church at Temple. Malloy was asleep in the chair opposite, snoring quietly, his glass lying on its side on the carpet at his feet. He looked for his own and found it standing on the table beside an empty whisky bottle.
‘Streuth,’ he muttered as he rubbed at the stiffness in his neck from having slept in a chair. He stood up at the second attempt and went over to the window to look out. The rain had stopped but the sky didn’t look too promising. The grass was speckled with wet autumn leaves, themselves spattered with mud after the downpour of last night. He went off to the bathroom and felt better when he’d sluiced some hot water up into his face then rinsed out his mouth.
When he returned, Malloy was coming to with groans of protest at the stiffness in his limbs. ‘God, what time is it?’ he asked.
Dewar looked at his watch. ‘Seven thirty.’
‘Coffee, I need coffee.’
Dewar grinned and switched on the kettle.
Malloy didn’t speak again until he had taken a second mouthful of black coffee then he said suddenly, ‘You know, I still don’t believe that Le Grice agreed to do what you think he did.’
‘Everything points to it.’
Another long pause while Malloy, coffee mug cupped in two hands, considered. ‘I knew the man well,’ he said. ‘I didn’t like him much but we got on and I respected him as an able scientist. He was a lot of other things too- ambitious, insensitive, intolerant, obstinate: I wouldn’t have wanted my sister to marry him but he was anything but a fool and only a fool would have contemplated playing around with smallpox.’
‘I hear what you say,’ said Dewar. ‘But I have to go on the facts and they say he was up to no good.’
‘Oh, I accept that,’ said Malloy. ‘I just don’t think live smallpox was involved in the no-good he was up to.’
‘I can honestly say I hope to God you’re right about that,’ said Dewar with feeling. ‘Let’s look forward to Sandra being able to tell us what really happened before too long,’
‘Thanks for coming over last night,’ said Malloy. ‘I appreciate it.’
Dewar got up and started to put on his jacket. ‘It’s been a while since I drank myself to sleep.’
‘Me too,’ said Malloy.
The two men shook hands and Dewar started back for the city. The journey was uneventful and he got a knowing look from the desk clerk at his hotel when he asked for his key. He answered it with a stony stare before going upstairs to shower and change. He checked with the hospital; Sandra was still unconscious. He checked with Barron; the Iraqis still hadn’t shown any signs of leaving. He reported in to Sci-Med and was told that the contents of Malloy’s lab had reached Porton Down safely and were now being examined as a matter of urgency. There was nothing to do now but wait.
By Friday morning Dewar was starting to worry, not because Sandra was still in a coma but because the Iraqis were still not preparing to leave the city. This was not in the script. The fact that they were still there even started to cast doubt over Le Grice’s role.
‘We’re bored stiff,’ complained Barron when Dewar spoke to him in the afternoon. ‘What the hell are they waiting for?’
‘I’m damned if I know,’ replied Dewar. ‘But it sure isn’t going to come from the institute now. The Porton mob took away the lot.’
‘Maybe they’re just sitting tight to make us think we were wrong all along,’ suggested Barron.
‘Or maybe they’re waiting until a new target institute’s been identified and then they’ll move on.’
‘As long as it isn’t in the UK,’ said Barron.
‘Self, self, self,’ said Dewar.
Karen phoned just after five to say that she had arrived at her mother’s. When would he be joining them?’
‘About seven?’ replied Dewar tentatively.
‘No excuses,’ replied Karen in a
‘Would I?’ said Dewar.
‘Hmmm.’
As good as his word, Dewar turned up at the house in North Berwick just before seven and kissed Karen lightly on the cheek before doing the same to her mother and saying, ‘Good to see you again, Jean.’
‘I understand you’re working in Edinburgh just now, Adam. What brings you up here?’
‘A problem at one of the research institutes,’ replied Dewar, accepting the glass of sherry that Karen held out to him.
‘Nothing to do with that foreign student who hanged himself a few weeks ago by any chance?’
‘He was a student at the same institute,’ conceded Dewar.
‘Foreigners,’ snorted Jean, ‘Intrinsically unstable.’
Dewar looked at Karen who shot him a warning glance.
Dewar said nothing. He had prepared himself for an evening of reactionary nonsense from the woman in tweeds. He was not to be disappointed as Jean put forth her views on the absolute necessity of arming the police, using the handle of her knife to emphasise important points by banging it down on the table. She followed up with a treatise on repatriation of coloureds and the introduction of more stringent immigration laws. Finally she outlined her master plan of imposing curfews on all UK streets after ten in the evening. She was of course, willing to relax regulations on certain days like new years eve — ‘I’m not a monster, Adam.’ — and certain other festive dates. Naturally some people would have to be exempted from the rules.
Dewar couldn’t help but feel that among those would almost certainly be certain elderly women, wearing tweeds, body warmers and substantial stockings who lived in large comfortable houses in North Berwick on money left to them by their late husbands.
Karen, suspecting that Dewar’s patience was running thin, suggested that he and she should have a walk round the harbour before doing the dishes. Dewar leapt at the chance.
‘How come you turned out normal?’ he asked Karen as they walked down the cobbled street leading to the harbour.
‘She’s not as awful as she sounds,’ said Karen. ‘She has a good heart really.’
‘I’ll take your word for that,’ said Dewar ruefully.
