“Max, it’s Michael Neef.”
“Yeah.”
“Can I come in?”
The door lock was released electronically and Neef stepped forward into an inner vestibule where he was confronted with another locked door. Pereira’s voice, coming from a speaker in the ceiling, instructed him to step forward on to a tray charged with disinfectant to disinfect his shoes. He did this and the door in front of him opened to admit him into a small changing room.
“Change into gown and boots, Mike,” said Pereira. “These are the rules. I’m in lab 5.”
Neef left his shoes and top coat in the changing room and walked along the corridor to Lab 5 in green gown and white Wellingtons. He knocked once and entered. Pereira was seated on a stool in front of a laminar airflow cabinet. He was in the process of injecting a pink-coloured liquid into a cell culture bottle.
“Be with you in a moment,” he said from behind the surgical mask he wore.
Neef looked around him at the shelves laden with bottles and tubes. It looked just like any other lab as far as he was concerned, but very modern and tidy.
Pereira dropped the syringe he’d been using into a CINBIN container and stripped off his gloves. He opened a pedal bin with his right foot and let them fall in with an air of contrived drama.
“What can I do for you Mike?” he asked, pulling down his face mask.
“The Press have got hold of the fact there has been a third cancer case caused by the mystery carcinogen and that Charlie Morse is the patient concerned. Eve Sayers is running the story.
“Oh,” said Pereira, looking down at his feet.
Neef took this as an admission of guilt. “I particularly asked you not to talk about that when I told you,” said Neef.
“I’m sorry, Mike,” said Pereira. “I met Eve this afternoon and I let slip that Charlie Morse had cancer. I didn’t think. That’s as far as it went, honest. She must have worked out the rest from there. She said something about it being odd that you hadn’t mentioned anything about it. She seemed to suggest you two had some kind of agreement about being straight with each other?”
Neef smiled wryly at Pereira’s barbed comment. He sighed, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
“Shakespeare. Right?”
“Walter Scott.”
“I’m sorry if I’m responsible for this,” said Pereira. “It was unintentional.”
“Not your fault,” sighed Neef. “If I had told her in the first place she probably wouldn’t have used it under the terms of our agreement. There have actually been four cases. The Public Health people came clean with her.”
“Four!” exclaimed Pereira. “Are these guys no nearer finding out where this stuff is coming from?”
Neef shook his head and said, “It’s invisible and undetectable.”
“I don’t think I believe that,” said Pereira.
“I don’t think I do either,” said Neef with a shrug.
“There must be some linking factor in four cases for Christ’s sake,” said Pereira.
Neef who was carrying his briefcase rather than leave it on the seat of his car, opened it up and took out the summary that Lennon had prepared. “See if you can spot it,” he said.
Pereira removed the half frame spectacles that were hooked over the neck-band of his tee shirt and put them on. He rested his bare elbows on the bench as he read the summary.
“Jesus,” said Pereira when he’d finished. “And you guys are looking for a chemical?”
“Why do you say it like that?” asked Neef.
“Because, you’re looking for the wrong thing.”
“What do you mean?” asked Neef. He could see that Pereira was alarmed by what he’d read.
“It’s as plain as day. It’s a virus,” said Pereira. “It’s a fucking virus you should be looking for!”
Neef felt unsettled by the notion. He tried to remain rational and not be swept along by Pereira’s assertion. “Viruses don’t give you cancer. You can’t catch cancer. It’s not a transmissible disease,” said Neef.
“It is now,” said Pereira. “You are looking for a virus that gave these folks their cancer. It’s all there, man. It’s been staring you in the face. MacSween’s finding of bilateral pneumonia in both cases he autopsied...”
“I think that was an immune response to the cancer,” said Neef.
“I think you’re wrong, Mike. It was a bit of both.”
Neef looked at Pereira. He was thinking about Frank MacSween’s unwillingness to abandon his pneumonia finding, maintaining that his findings were consistent with both pneumonia and cancer. “But there is no such virus,” he said.
“No known virus,” Pereira corrected. “You’ve got a new one.”
“A virus that gives you lung cancer,” said Neef slowly as if the words pained him. “You must be wrong,” he whispered. “You have to be wrong.”
“Look on the bright side,” said Pereira. It’s not highly infectious or you would have had more cases. It’s my guess you need to inhale a fair few virus particles to develop the disease and maybe there’s also a degree of natural immunity around.”
“But the virus lab did tests on Melanie Simpson and Jane Lees before and after death. They didn’t find any new virus.”
“They weren’t looking for a new virus,” retorted Pereira. “They’d be looking for antibodies stimulated by known viruses. That’s how diagnostic virology works.”
“But you’d think...”
“Not necessarily,” interrupted Pereira. “People, even trained scientists, are reluctant to see new things, even when they’re staring them in the face. Diseases can be around for anything up to a few years before labs start talking to each other and one of them admits they got some results they couldn’t explain, then another says the same and it goes on from there.”
“But where could a new virus have come from?” said Neef.
“New viruses are evolving all the time, Mike. You know that. AIDS, Llassa Fever, Marburg Disease, Ebola. They keep cropping up all the time.”
“I thought the theory was that they weren’t new; they had been there all the time and it’s just with jungle areas of Africa being opened up and modern transport being so easy that they get carried into the community and trigger off an outbreak?”
“That’s one of the theories,” said Pereira meaningfully. “There are others. One thing’s for sure.”
“What?”
“Old Africa isn’t going to get the blame for this one.”
“I’ll have to think about this, Max. I can’t simply voice your theory at a routine meeting. If we were worried about panic before. This could make it a thousand times worse.
“I guess it’s still just a theory,” said Pereira but it’s where my money would go. It would be worth putting Charles Morse in isolation.”
“That’s been done,” said Neef. “Albeit not for this reason. Would you be willing to join the team, so to speak?” asked Neef. “I think Public Health could use some help.”
Pereira shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t think I’d be too welcome but I’m here for you if you want to ask anything.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Let’s just say, previous experience with the British medical establishment has not been too... positive. My face doesn’t fit.”
“That must have made life difficult,” said Neef.
“You could say,” agreed Pereira. “Let’s just say, nobody does us any favours here at Menogen. Everything we do has to be done by the book, double checked, registered, licensed, recorded, you name it. There are plenty of people out there who would like to see us fall flat on our faces. We have one secretary working full time on making sure all our paperwork is in order. We get more inspections in a year than one of your university labs would get in a decade and God help us if we fall down on any of the safety procedures.”