seem natural, the perfect crime committed by someone who can afford to wait a little.’
‘Like her own son,’ said Lisa with disgust.
‘Take a look at life again soon,’ said Dunbar.
‘So now you have nothing at all to go on against Medic Ecosse,’ said Lisa.
Dunbar shrugged and said, ‘Nothing except the word of two nurses and one of them’s now dead.’
‘The remaining one knows what she’s talking about,’ said Lisa firmly.
FOURTEEN
Dunbar decided to look at some of Ross’s published research before going out to Vane Farm; it might help him understand what he found there. Sci-Med had supplied him with reprints of Ross’s most recent papers, but he’d put them to one side until now. There were four, three on animal work and a fourth on something called ‘Immuno- preparation’, which he left in the file while he concentrated on what he thought the more relevant stuff.
He suspected he might find it hard going but Ross had a good writing style and presented his data in straightforward fashion. What really helped was the fact that one of the papers was a review article about current work in the field. Like all scientific reviews, it was aimed at scientists but not confined to those working in the same field. Technical detail was therefore kept to a minimum.
Ross’s papers made it clear that he believed the use of animal organs — pigs’ in particular — for human transplant was the way ahead. It would eliminate the awful uncertainty of patients having to wait for a human organ to become available, with the attendant moral dilemma of wishing misfortune on someone else. It would also obviate the continual struggle to convince an unwilling public that carrying donor cards was a good idea when their gut instinct told them otherwise. It was seen as tempting fate; courting disaster.
Whenever the medical profession made any headway in that direction, it seemed, a story would break about the recovery of some coma patient who had been declared brain-dead by the experts. This awakened fears akin to the age-old dread of being buried alive. Only now people imagined their organs being removed while they were still conscious but unable to communicate.
A further advantage of using animal organs, according to Ross, was that the donor animal could be kept alive until the very moment the organ was needed. It would therefore be well oxygenated and ‘fresh’. There would be no more rushing to and fro across the globe with tissue decaying in transit with each passing hour. There would be no more hoping against hope that unforeseen delays would not render vital organs useless. An added bonus was that the social and moral problems associated with hospitals ‘delaying’ the death of putative donors by keeping them on life-support machines, solely to keep their organs in good condition, would become a thing of the past.
The main focus of the research was the immunological problem associated with the introduction of foreign tissue. Like tissues from any other source, animal organs had to be made compatible with the patient’s own immune system, otherwise they would quickly be rejected as alien material, causing the transplant to fail and the patient to die. Ross’s experimental work had shown that it was possible to breed pigs with the immune system of a human patient in addition to their own. This scenario would ensure that the pig’s organs would be perfectly acceptable to the patient whose immune system the pig had been given. This was all experimental, of course, qualitative work performed to establish the validity of theory. The idea of preparing a pig donor for each and every human being in case they should need a transplant at some time in their life was beyond practicality. The morality of it was another issue.
Dunbar wondered if it could possibly have been attempted for selected individuals at Medic Ecosse, but concluded not. The timescale would have been all wrong for cases like Amy Teasdale or Kenneth Lineham. These patients had come to Medic Ecosse already very ill and needing transplants quickly.
The more he read, the more depressed he felt. Unless Ross had made some great secret leap forward in technology there would have been no point in attempting to transplant pig organs into human patients. Rejection would have been almost guaranteed. Had Ross made such a breakthrough? He hoped to find out at Vane Farm.
Douglas was already in the Crane when Dunbar arrived at five to eight. They shook hands and sat down on the same seats as last time.
‘How’d you get on?’ Dunbar asked.
‘It looks possible. The staff are all gone by ten o’clock. That just leaves two security men in the gate-house. They’re supposed to patrol the grounds every half-hour but they were a bit lax after midnight. They probably rely on the electric fence doing its job.’
‘Electric fence?’ exclaimed Dunbar.
‘Nothing too desperate,’ said Douglas. ‘It’s more of an alarm than a line of defence. Low voltage. We can bridge it easily.’
‘How about the building itself?’
‘That’s our biggest problem. We can’t use a window — there aren’t any — and the door has an electronic lock.’
‘But you said it was possible.’
‘I think it’s possible,’ said Douglas. ‘It’s going to depend on this.’ He took from his pocket a small piece of plastic the size of a credit card. It was unmarked save for a strip of magnetic tape across it.
‘A key?’
‘We’ll call it that if it works.’
‘Did you make it?’
‘Let’s say an acquaintance did. I persuaded him to take time off from giving the Bank of Scotland a hard time to manufacture it for me.’
‘Won’t there be a code number attached to the lock as well?’ asked Dunbar.
Douglas nodded. ‘The code is entered on tone buttons. I recorded the tones when one of the guards went into the building. I know the number.’
‘And if the key doesn’t work?’
‘Then it’s up to you. We could take out the guards and use their passkey.’
‘No violence,’ said Dunbar.
‘Please yourself.’
‘When?’
‘Tonight, if you’re up for it.’
Dunbar nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘When and where?’
Douglas looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Have you done anything like this before?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I have,’ replied Dunbar. He didn’t volunteer anything else and Douglas didn’t ask. He simply nodded and gave directions on how to get to the yard of a disused suburban railway station on the north side of the city. He could leave his car there and they would go on to Vane Farm in Douglas’s Land-Rover.
‘Just in case we have to rough it across country later,’ said Douglas. ‘Do you need clothing?’
‘I’ve got dark stuff,’ replied Dunbar. ‘I could use a balaclava, though.’
‘No problem. Gloves?’
‘I’ve got gloves.’
‘One o’clock, then.’
Dunbar returned to his hotel room and turned on the television while he looked out the clothing he was going to wear later and laid it on the bed. He needed some noise as a distraction from thinking about the repercussions if something should go wrong. Scottish Television was showing an episode of Taggart. A body was being pulled from the Clyde to the accompaniment of glum faces and bad jokes. This was not the sort of distraction he needed; he switched off the television and turned the radio on instead, tuning it to Classic FM. Mozart’s Horn Concerto would do.
At half-past midnight Dunbar checked his pockets for the last time, then left his room and walked quietly along to the lift. Adrenalin was starting to flow. He handed his key to the night clerk, who acknowledged it with a nod before returning to his paperback. Dunbar was pleased at his lack of interest.
The directions Douglas had given him were excellent; concise and to the point. He had no difficulty in finding
