NINETEEN
Dewar decided to call Ian Grant at police headquarters at a quarter to seven. There was going to be a meeting of the team at seven and he was interested to hear Grant’s assessment of the police role so far.
‘The honeymoon period,’ said Grant when Dewar said he’d heard things were going well. ‘People are confused, a little bit afraid. They don’t understand what’s going on yet so they’re watching television to find out. Tomorrow if it’s dry they’re going to go out and start talking to each other in earnest. They’ll fuel off each other’s dissatisfaction. They’ll complain about being kept in the dark. Leaders will emerge and we can expect some concerted opposition.’
‘You don’t expect trouble tonight then?’
‘Oh, yes,’ countered Grant but just from the yobs not the ordinary folks. As long as Tulloch realises that and doesn’t get too heavy, they should be able to head off trouble where and when it looks like happening although there’s no denying it could get a bit unpleasant. There’s nothing nastier than a bunch of yobs who think they’ve come up with a good reason for behaving like they usually do anyway. Piece of trash to urban hero in one easy step. It’s important not to fuel their self delusion by taking them on head to head. You’ve got to play it by ear, back off when it seems right, be prepared to lose a little face even.’
‘And the Superintendent knows this?’
‘He’s read the book and done the course,’ said Grant.
‘What does that mean?’
‘There’s a big ravine between book learning and reality in most situations.’
Dewar knew what he meant.
Cameron Tulloch was the last to arrive for the meeting at eight minutes past seven. Rain-water formed a puddle round his feet as he took off his waterproofs in the hallway and hung them up on a peg. He entered the room, rubbing his hands but exuding confidence. ‘Sorry I’m a bit late.’
George Finlay smiled and said, ‘How are things, Superintendent?’
‘Everything’s been going very smoothly, thank you. I think we’re on top of the situation. We’ve made our presence felt and I think people have accepted that law and order will prevail.’
‘Good,’ George Finlay said, ‘I wish I could be as up-beat with my news. We’ve had twenty-seven new cases today.’
People sighed and exchanged worried looks except for Hector Wright who held up a broad sheet of graph paper. ‘I know that seems a lot,’ he said. ‘But by my reckoning that’s a good few less than expected from the earlier figures. This is the predicted course of the epidemic. You can see the numbers fall below the line just here.’
‘If it’s good news, don’t knock it,’ said Finlay, showing no real inclination to examine the graph for himself.
‘How’s the contact tracing going?’ asked Finlay of Mary Martin.
‘I hesitate to say it but I think we’ve been lucky there too. The very fact that most of Kelly’s contacts were unemployed addicts like him has meant that they didn’t wander far from the area most days. The contacts and disease are still confined to a relatively small area. It hasn’t had a chance to spread out into other parts of the city.
‘Hector Wright, who had been puzzling over his graph and deep in thought said, ‘I think I know why the numbers were a bit lower today than expected.’ He turned to Dewar and said, ‘Adam, you told me last night that the man Hannan had gone downhill as fast as Kelly.
‘The change in him was quite dramatic.’
‘He’ll die soon,’ said Finlay.
‘But, you said that the other cases were developing in a more text book fashion?’
‘That’s what Dr MacGowan told me last night when I spoke to her,’ said Dewar.
Finlay nodded his agreement. ‘That’s quite true. The others are running to form, starting with a macular rash, progressing through papular, finally becoming pustular after seven days or so.’
‘I think this would argue that both Kelly and Hannan contracted the disease through an abnormal route, said Wright.’
‘Agreed,’ said Dewar.
Wright said, ‘It would therefore seem certain they were the cause of the original outbreak in Muirhouse, but they infected people they came into contact with in the normal way so that these people would develop the disease over a more usual timescale.’
‘But how does this explain the dip in numbers?’ asked Finlay.
‘Being infected with a high initial dose not only meant that Kelly and Hannan succumbed much faster to the disease, but also that they had less time to infect people around them before being admitted to hospital. The number of people they infected was therefore less than we and the book might otherwise have expected. It worked in our favour.’
‘Makes sense,’ agreed Finlay, nodding his head. ‘So we’ve been lucky in having less primary contact cases arising from Kelly and Hannan.’
‘But we won’t be so lucky with the fall-out from the secondary cases,’ said Dewar. ‘They’ve had the normal incubation period and therefore much more time to spread the disease before they fell ill,’ said Dewar.
‘Lap of the gods,’ said Finlay. ‘On the other hand, Dr Martin and her people have been doing their best to minimise that through confining the contacts to their homes.’
‘With mixed success, I have to say,’ said Mary Martin. ‘Social services have been struggling to cope with the demands of some of them today; a few have been getting very restless. We’ve done our best to persuade them to stay indoors but it’s an uphill struggle. People miss not being out and about.’
‘That was only to be expected,’ said Finlay.’
‘I take it, you’ve been supplying addicts with drugs where necessary?’ said Dewar.
‘As the lesser of two evils,’ replied Mary Martin. ‘We thought if we supplied the addicts it would act as an incentive to keep them indoors. The trouble is we don’t know who’s really an addict and who’s not. The junkies have been persuading the others to say they’re hooked so that they can get their hands on some extra stuff to sell. On top of that, everyone lies about how much they’re taking in order to get as much as possible. There’s constant cause for friction and argument.
‘Nothing’s ever easy,’ sighed Wright.
‘Are we any closer to understanding how Kelly and Hannan came to get the disease in the first place?’ asked Finlay.
‘I think we do know,’ said Dewar. ‘But proving it is quite another matter. Kelly’s dead and Hannan is out of the reckoning as far as being a source of information is concerned. Denise Banyon won’t say anything on principle and Sharon Hannan hasn’t got anything useful to tell.’
‘I suppose, as long as the primary source isn’t still out there somewhere, we don’t have to worry too much about it right now,’ said Finlay.
It was an unsettling thought all the same, thought Dewar and one he hadn’t dwelt on too much. He took comfort from the fact there had been no further cases of the rapid form of the disease. If that were to happen it would mean there was a source of the virus outside of the institute and outside of anyone’s control. Surely fate just couldn’t be that malevolent?
As the meeting broke up, Dewar asked George Finlay about Sharon Hannan’s condition.
‘She wasn’t very well this morning when I looked in,’ replied Finlay. ‘I’d say she’s entering the final stages of incubation. The virus will be well into her bloodstream by now. We can expect to see the rash break out tomorrow or the next day.’
Dewar went up to his room to phone Karen and tell her of the day’s events.
‘Any gut feelings?’ asked Karen.
‘Still too early,’ replied Dewar. ‘Could go either way.’
‘Wright’s point about there being fewer contact cases arising from the first two was a good thought,’ said Karen.
‘A candle in the dark,’ said Dewar.
