‘It’s all right,’ she reassured him. ‘I don’t expect you to fly in the face of the facts as they stand. I just don’t understand it, that’s all. I really don’t. But then I don’t think I understand anything any more. The rejections of perfectly compatible organs, Sheila’s cancer, the pig experiments in the hospital, and now it seems that everything’s fine and above-board in that place?’
‘For what it’s worth, my gut feeling says there’s something terribly wrong too. It’s just that I have to have evidence before I do anything and there isn’t any.’
‘London weren’t too keen on the exhumation in the first place, were they?’ said Lisa.
‘You can say that again,’ said Dunbar wryly.
‘Are you going to get into trouble?’
‘I’m expecting a call at any minute, inviting me to London to face the music.’
‘You don’t think you’ll lose your job over this, do you?’ asked Lisa.
Dunbar grimaced and said, ‘I think in the circumstances I might feel obliged to offer my resignation.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You didn’t make a mistake. You acted in good faith. You had the courage of your convictions. Ring a bell?’
Dunbar smiled to himself. ‘But the fact of the matter is that the exhumation was a mistake,’ he said.
‘Only in hindsight,’ she insisted. ‘No one starts off with hindsight. Don’t resign. If they fire you there’s not much you can do about it, but don’t make it easy for them. You’re the one on the ground, not them. You did nothing wrong. Stand up to them.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Dunbar with a shrug, but he appreciated her support.
Dunbar received the expected call just after 4 p.m. He was told to report to Sci-Med in London the following day. The director would see him at eleven. He called Lisa to tell her.
‘Come round later,’ she said. ‘The condemned man deserves a fond farewell.’
Dunbar took the tube into central London from Heathrow. It was raining heavily and the carriage began to smell of wet clothes. There were no smiles among the morning commuters. They were apparently looking forward to the day as much as he was. He passed the time trying to predict what each of his immediate travelling companions did for a living. Unfortunately he couldn’t ask them if he was right.
He was glad of the fresh air when he finally got off the train and climbed the stairs to the outside. It didn’t matter that it was raining. He started looking for a cab to take him up to the Home Office. Because of the weather it took some time to find one, but he didn’t mind the wait. Turkeys didn’t long for Christmas.
‘Nice to see you again, Dr Dunbar,’ said the director’s secretary, Miss Roberts, with a welcoming smile. ‘Mr Macmillan won’t keep you waiting long.’
‘I’m in no great hurry,’ replied Dunbar with heavy irony.
She smiled but said nothing. A buzzer sounded on her desk and she nodded to Dunbar. ‘Good luck,’ she whispered as he passed.
‘Ah, Dunbar. Come in, sit down,’ said Macmillan. Tall and silver-haired, in any other environment he would have stood out as being extremely distinguished-looking, but here in Whitehall he was one among many. The upper echelons of the Civil Service seemed to attract such people. Dunbar often wondered if the job did it to the man or vice versa. On reflection he supposed that there was a type of person for most jobs. There were exceptions, of course, but the Hollywood stereotype for most professions often wasn’t far from the truth.
Macmillan closed the file he had been working on and put an end to Dunbar’s philosophizing. ‘You’ve dropped us in it, Dunbar,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Dunbar. ‘I was sure I was right.’
‘Do you realize how much it cost us to mount an unofficial exhumation?’
Dunbar had no idea but felt sure he was about to be told. The director told him. Dunbar looked suitably shocked.
‘Not to mention the calling in of favours and the fact that we are now beholden to Special Branch, of all people.’
‘Everything pointed to the dead child having been given the wrong organ — an incompatible animal organ,’ said Dunbar.
‘You mean a hysterical woman pointed to the dead child having been given the wrong organ. And you jumped to conclusions.’
‘Neither of the women involved can in any way be described as hysterical,’ argued Dunbar. ‘I’ve interviewed both of them and made up my mind about that. There’s also the fact that one of them, Sheila Barnes, has been the subject of what I believe to be a deliberate murder attempt, one that’s going to be successful very soon.’
‘Ah yes, the isotope in the wall,’ said Macmillan. ‘But I must remind you that the lab found nothing that linked the source to the Medic Ecosse hospital.’
‘That doesn’t mean they weren’t involved,’ said Dunbar.
Macmillan conceded the point with a doubtful shrug. He stroked his moustache thoughtfully, then said, ‘My feeling is that we should hand the Barnes case over to the police. There’s little doubt that a crime has been committed so they can take it from there and we can, with a bit of luck, extract ourselves from this mess you’ve landed us in.’
‘Despite your man’s findings I still think there was something odd about the two children’s deaths,’ said Dunbar. ‘I did a computer search for deaths under similar circumstances; there were none. Yet Medic Ecosse has had two. I believe we should hang on to the investigation. We’re the best qualified people to look into this sort of thing. That’s why we exist.’
‘Don’t try to tell me why we exist, Dunbar!’ snapped Macmillan.
‘No, sir. I just feel that handing everything over to the police at this stage is a bit of a cop-out. They’ll mount an investigation but they won’t get anywhere. As for us, we seem to be more interested in keeping our noses clean than in seeing this affair through to a conclusion.’
For a moment Dunbar thought he had gone too far. His P45 form floated before his eyes like a kite in a mocking breeze, but the anger died out of the director’s eyes.
‘You think that, do you?’
‘Yes, sir, I do.’
‘I’ll tell you what. If you can come up with an explanation of how these two damned women could still be right, in spite of the fact — fact, mind you — that Amy Teasdale’s body contains the right organ, then we’ll keep hold of the investigation.’
‘How long have I got?’ asked Dunbar.
‘Three days.’
Dunbar left the Home Office with mixed feelings. It could have been worse, he supposed. They could have fired him then and there. Instead they’d given him three days to come up with an explanation he’d been up most of the night searching for already. He walked along the Embankment hoping for inspiration, but all he got was wet. London was his favourite city but today he found himself totally impervious to its charms. In the rain, it could have been East Berlin. He returned to the airport to catch the shuttle back to Glasgow.
On the plane, he succumbed to the lure of a large gin and tonic offered by the stewardess. He was feeling low and his mood was not helped by the arrival of a plump northern businessman in the seat next to him. From the opening of ‘D’you go to Scotland a lot, then?’ he knew he was in trouble. Monosyllabic responses were no deterrent to Arthur Shelby, who was in hydraulic systems and was determined to fill this particular gap in Dunbar’s education during the following fifty-five minutes. There was barely time for Shelby to get round to ‘What line are you in yourself, then?’ before the plane landed and Dunbar was free at last. He called Lisa from the airport.
‘Well?’
‘They didn’t fire me. They gave me three days to come up with an idea.’
‘Is that good or bad?’
‘Depends if I do or not.’
‘Are you going to come over?’
‘I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we go out to dinner this evening?’
‘We might be seen by someone who works at Medic Ecosse,’ replied Lisa.
‘We can drive to some place out of town.’
