White Death (22 page)

‘Was anyone else involved in the design?’

St Clair shook his head. ‘Not really. Alan had technical help but it was really all his baby. He snipped away at the genome of the TB bug until it was no longer infectious but still stimulated good levels of antibodies against TB – exactly what the doctor ordered, you might say.’

‘Absolutely, but I’m afraid I’m still not quite clear about the funding for the work,’ said Steven. ‘Vaccine design and production isn’t something you associate with small companies, no disrespect.’

‘None taken and you’re quite right but times have changed. Government needs all the help it can get these days and cash incentives were on offer to those who could come up with the goods, small or otherwise.’

‘Incentives?’ asked Steven.

‘If you were willing to take the risk and could find financial backers to support your confidence in your researchers and they came up trumps, the rewards for success were substantial – an initial seven-figure prize plus reimbursement of development costs, a further lump sum on completion of field trials and finally a government contract to supply the vaccine for general use.’

‘I see,’ said Steven. ‘But then you fell at the last hurdle and one hundred and eight children were injected with something that’s already caused one death with the possibility that it may still cause more?’

St Clair stopped smiling as if conceding that he had been insensitive in over-emphasising the positives. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘An unfortunate accident did occur, there’s no denying this but it was something beyond our control, a chance in a million, a problem in the manufacturing plant leading to contamination of the vials, something we worked day and night to help uncover, I have to say.’

‘How many were involved in that?’ asked Steven. ‘Alan Nichol and who else?’

‘Not Alan,’ said St Clair. ‘Alan died shortly before we discovered the source of the problem.’

‘I didn’t realise that,’ said Steven.

‘I had every other member of the scientific and technical staff drop whatever they were doing to work on it. The manufacturing company, Redmond Medical, had a team working round the clock and a government lab was also involved.’

‘Which one of you discovered the toxin?’

‘We did,’ said St Clair. ‘Traces of a cytotoxic agent were found in the injection vials. We discovered this by taking samples from the vials and injecting them into human cell cultures. When the cells started to die, the alarm bells started ringing. Naturally we informed both the DOH and Redmond Medical immediately and the plant was closed down.’

‘Does anyone know how the toxin got into the vials?’

‘Only that Redmond had been producing ampoules of these cytotoxic chemicals for a pharmaceutical company investigating combinations of these agents for anti-cancer properties. It’s pretty obvious there must have been cross-contamination at some stage but, as yet, we don’t know at which one.’

‘A worry,’ said Steven.

‘Tell me about it. Redmond is still at a standstill. The government has withdrawn their accreditation and we’ve had to use another company to start production again.’

‘Was Alan Nichol alive when kids started to fall ill?’

St Clair nodded. ‘Yes, it was Alan who drew our attention to it in the first place. He raised the alarm. He’d been keeping a close eye on the children’s health records.’

‘The green sticker monitor?’

‘Exactly. It wasn’t obvious to the rest of us at first but Alan saw a pattern emerge and hit the panic button.’

‘I think I may have asked you this before, but does the name Scott Haldane mean anything to you?’

St Clair appeared to give the question some thought before saying, ‘I do remember you asking but it meant nothing to me then and nothing now. Should it?’

‘He was a GP in Scotland who also suspected there was something wrong with the vaccine. I just wondered if he’d made contact with you or Alan Nichol at any point.’

‘Sorry, doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘No matter,’ said Steven pleasantly, getting up to go. ‘Many thanks for your help.’

‘Not at all,’ said St Clair. ‘I’m glad I was able to talk openly to you this time. Living with secrets is not as easy as people might imagine.’

‘No,’ agreed Steven, thinking of Tally.

Steven drove into Cambridge proper and found a place to eat: he had skipped breakfast after a restless night. He parked the car and looked around, finally settling for coffee and croissants in a small café boasting Tudor beams and a frontage leading down to the river. A couple of punts moored at the water’s edge and nestling under a weeping willow set the scene for calm reflection on what he’d learned.

It was Alan Nichol himself who had raised the alarm over what was happening to the green sticker children but he was dead by the time three separate groups had set out to establish the source of the problem. It was the scientists at St Clair Genomics who had uncovered traces of the toxin in the vaccine vials and the problem had been ascribed to Redmond Medical, the company contracted to prepare injection vials of the Nichol vaccine. Redmond had been bottling toxic compounds for another company immediately before starting the vial run for St Clair so everything seemed to fit … except for Alan Nichol’s murder.

Steven ordered more coffee from a waitress who looked and sounded as if she belonged in a Jane Austen novel. She was doing a Saturday job, he concluded. She’d be back studying English Lit on Monday morning. He wondered if he could have been wrong about Nichol being murdered. If his death
had
been an accident, he wouldn’t be currently left trying to fit a square piece into a round hole.

Try as he might, Steven could not bring himself to believe that Nichol’s death had been accidental. He remained convinced that he had been murdered. The strange red car, parked at the head of Nichol’s street, had been just too much of a coincidence. This still left him looking for a motive. Nichol had died after raising the alarm about the health of the green sticker children but before the vial contamination had been discovered. The answer had to lie somewhere in that time frame. Nichol couldn’t have been killed to stop him talking about the possibility of contamination because it was common knowledge among the others in the lab. In fact, just about everyone at St Clair Genomics had been detailed to work on it. His death didn’t make sense unless … someone was lying about something. But what?

Steven paid the bill and left, choosing to walk by the river for a bit and feeling nostalgic for the days of his youth when he came across groups of students enjoying a sunny Saturday, free of lectures and all care it seemed as they laughed and chatted their way along the banks of the Cam. It made him wonder if he had already reached the age where he had become invisible to the young. The argument that he was only … twice their age – my God, was it really that much? – failed to provide reassurance.

Was he looking for a big lie or a little one? Start with the big. Could what he and Macmillan had been told by people at ministerial level be a complete load of nonsense, designed to elicit their sympathy and gain their collusion in keeping it quiet? Maybe the children had not been given a new anti-TB vaccine at all? Perhaps they had been given something else entirely and for some other reason?

Steven shook his head in an involuntary gesture of dismissal, noting that he’d just got a nervous sideways glance from a man out walking his dog. This was going too far, he reckoned, and would demand the involvement of too many people. It made him think of the old adage,
Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead
.

He felt inclined to accept that the Nichol vaccine was exactly what the authorities maintained it was – a new and much needed vaccine against TB. So, what did that leave to lie about? The problem with the toxin, that’s what, he concluded, the contamination of the vials with an unidentified poisonous substance. There was something wrong with that story.

Phillip St Clair had told him that it had been one of a number of compounds being checked out by a pharmaceutical company looking for new anti-cancer drugs so, being experimental, it wouldn’t be listed in any lab handbook but, even if it wasn’t a listed substance, shouldn’t one of the labs investigating the samples taken from Keith Taylor or Trish Lyons have noted the presence of a toxin, even an unknown one?

Steven wasn’t sure. It may have been present in such small quantities that it hadn’t been picked up. Maybe the automated analytical equipment had simply not recognised it and therefore failed to report it. It was also possible that the vials had been contaminated to varying degrees so that some children got a bigger dose of toxin than others but that seemed less likely. If this had been the explanation for the toxin rampaging through Keith Taylor’s body like a full-blown infection, the lab would almost certainly have uncovered evidence of its presence and they hadn’t.

SEVENTEEN

Steven called the duty officer at Sci-Med and asked him to ring round the labs involved in analysing material taken from either Trish Lyons or Keith Taylor to ask about the presence of toxic compounds – identified or unidentified. He had his answer within an hour. The hospital labs in Carlisle and Edinburgh both reported that they had carried out routine biochemical analysis on a number of samples: all were negative for toxins. The London lab which had analysed the samples taken from Keith Taylor at the second post mortem and which was furnished with the best equipment money could buy had also drawn a blank.

Steven sighed but had to admit that the lab results were pretty much what he’d expected. After all, if any of them had noted the presence of a toxin, they would have reported it before now, but the negatives did raise an obvious question. If St Clair Genomics had detected the presence of a toxin in the vaccine vials, why hadn’t the relevant labs found it in the patients? He supposed it might have had something to do with breakdown of the toxin in the body – some poisons did this and could therefore remain undetected – but this was outside his area of expertise. He would have to seek expert advice but first he needed to gather more information about the contaminating toxin. Phillip St Clair didn’t have any chemical details; a talk to Redmond Medical was called for. He phoned Sci-Med and asked that they make contact with a senior person at Redmond Medical. He also asked for business background information on both St Clair and Redmond.

‘It’s Saturday afternoon,’ said the duty man. ‘It’ll probably mean getting someone at home.’

‘Fine.’

‘And the background info, when do you need that?’

‘Now.’

‘Watch this space, as they say.’

Steven smiled at the good-humoured response. He liked laid-back people.

The duty man called back forty-five minutes later. ‘Sorry, all the senior people at Redmond seem to be away for the weekend but I’ve managed to contact a Mr Giles Dutton; he’s the line maintenance manager at the company. He lives in Moulden at 34, Lipton Rise. He’s expecting your call.’

Steven noted down the number. ‘Okay, thanks.’

‘Jean Roberts has some stuff on Redmond. She says she’ll email it to you. She’s working from home.’

Thanks again.’

Steven had doubts about whether a line maintenance manager would be able to give him the information he was after, namely the identity of the toxic agent. He suspected not but, as he had nothing else to do meantime and nuggets of information often came from unlikely sources, he called Dutton and asked if he could come and speak to him.

‘Please yourself,’ replied Dutton.

It wasn’t quite the response Steven had expected but he took it as a yes and said that he’d be in Moulden in a couple of hours.

‘Right.’

Steven set off, feeling less than optimistic about getting anything at all out of Dutton who had sounded less than interested and hadn’t even bothered to ask what it was about but at least he was doing something. He was pleasantly surprised when a friendly looking woman opened the door to him at the pretty white bungalow in Lipton Rise. She invited him in. ‘Giles is in the conservatory,’ she said. ‘It’s through here …’

Steven followed her through a living room smelling strongly of furniture polish and out through French doors into a conservatory where the temperature was several degrees higher because of the sun on the glass. A man with thinning red hair and a matching pale complexion sat there in a cane armchair, glasses on his nose, feet up on a small footstool as he read his newspaper.

‘It’s the gentleman you’re expecting, dear.’

‘Steven Dunbar,’ said Steven.

Dutton grunted and pushed his glasses up his nose but didn’t get up.

‘Perhaps you’d like some tea or coffee, Dr Dunbar?’ asked the smiling woman. Steven got the impression she might be well used to being excessively polite and helpful in order to make up for her husband’s shortcomings.

‘Coffee would be lovely, thank you.’

Steven showed Dutton his ID card but he waved it away. ‘Makes no odds, just state your business.’

Steven sat down on the other cane armchair and said, ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions about the chemical that contaminated the St Clair company vaccine.’

‘Like what?’ said Dutton, making a point of looking out of the window at a high conifer hedge in the garden rather than at Steven.

‘Ideally, I’d like to know what it was, where it came from and how it got into the vaccine vials.’

‘Me too,’ said Dutton.

‘I’m sorry?’

Dutton turned to face Steven. ‘I’d like to know that too,’ he said.

Steven sensed there was more to this comment than he was taking on board. Dutton wasn’t just being rude; he was very bitter about something. ‘You’ve no idea?’ he asked.

‘None whatsoever.’

‘But if the company don’t know what happened, you have no way of stopping it happening again,’ said Steven.

‘Very true,’ said Dutton with what appeared to Steven to be a wry smile.

‘If you’ll pardon my saying so, Mr Dutton, you don’t seem to be very concerned about something so serious,’ said Steven. ‘Surely, as production line maintenance manager, it’s your responsibility if contamination occurs?’