Sarah looked utterly bemused. “I don’t understand,” she confessed. “What’s going on?”
“I think we may have done Dr Logan a disservice,” said Lafferty. “We let dislike colour our judgement.”
“You mean he wasn’t involved in the body theft?” asked Sarah in astonishment. “But he was always on about the lack of transplant organs and how Murdoch Tyndall didn’t press the relatives hard enough for them!”
“We didn’t know about his son,” said Lafferty. “We should have listened more carefully to what Logan was complaining about. I think Murdoch Tyndall didn’t press the relatives for permission... because he didn’t want them to give permission!”
“What?” exclaimed Sarah.
“It makes sense now. John Main said that Tyndall asked him at precisely the wrong moment. You yourself suggested he did the same thing with the O’Donnells. He did that because he didn’t want the relatives to give transplant permission.”
“But why not?”
“Because he and his brother wanted to use the bodies for something else,” said Lafferty.
Sarah’s mouth fell open. “But what?” she asked in a voice that shock had reduced to a whisper.
“I don’t know, Sarah,” said Lafferty.
“But why kill Logan?” asked Sarah, desperate to seek out flaws in Lafferty’s argument.
“I think when Logan came to see you about telling tales to Tyndall he suddenly realised that there was something fishy about the whole thing. He realised while he was speaking to you that Tyndall must actually have wanted the relatives to say no. He must have gone to Tyndall to have it out with him — the row you heard them having. When he didn’t get any joy out of Tyndall he, like us, must have worked out that removal of the Sigma probes presented the best chance for ‘diverting’ the bodies. He must have come here to the Institute and this is the result.” They both looked down at Logan’s corpse.
“Good God,” said Sarah.
A sudden whirring noise startled them. “What is it,” asked Sarah, her voice betraying panic.
“A lift!” replied Lafferty, suddenly realising what the sound was. He caught a glimpse of light coming from a slight crack in one of the wall panels. Pulling Sarah out of the way, he indicated that she get under the bench. As soon as she was hidden, he joined her. A few seconds later they heard the lift come to a halt and the wall panel slide back.
Lafferty couldn’t see who got out, only that it was a man, and he was wearing white surgical trousers and short, white rubber boots. The man crossed the lab and let out an oath when he reached the door to the corridor and saw the burst lock. “Jesus H. Christ!” he exclaimed and then started running along the corridor.
“We’re trapped!” said Sarah.
“Come on!” said Lafferty.
“But where?”
Lafferty indicated the lift and pulled Sarah towards it.
“If he’s going to search the basement we can beat him to the front door!”
He slid open the door to the lift and they got in. The lift was long and narrow. Lafferty didn’t have to be a genius to work out why. He pressed the ‘up’ button and nothing happened. He pressed it again and then four times rapidly in succession. Still nothing. He looked around for some kind of brake switch or emergency button that might have been holding the car, but there was none. There was only one other button. It had a down arrow on it. In desperation, he pressed it and the lift door slid shut. He looked at Sarah with amazement on his face as they both realised that they were going down. They had got on in the basement but they were definitely going down!
Sarah let her head slump forward on to Lafferty’s chest and he shared her dejection.
Lafferty broke away from Sarah and bunched his fists in readiness. He had no idea what to expect when the lift doors opened, but he was going to go down fighting. The doors slid back to reveal nothing more sinister than a plain, green-painted wall. They stepped out into a narrow corridor leading to two swing doors. There was no point in going back up in the lift. It did not reach the upper floors. It simply connected the Sigma lab to this sub-basement. The long narrow car had been designed to carry coffins. The missing bodies did not go off to some fancy private clinic; they obviously came here.
Sarah looked first through the glass in the swing doors and let out her breath in a low whistle. Lafferty took a look and saw what seemed to him a unit very much like HTU. It was lit with low green lighting and each bed was surrounded with life-support machinery. The patients were enclosed by inflated plastic bubbles.
There did not seem to be any staff around, so Lafferty and Sarah went in through the doors and approached the nearest bubble. “Oh my God,” said Sarah, putting her hand to her mouth. “It’s John’s son! It’s Simon Main!”
“But he’s dead!” exclaimed Lafferty. “What’s he doing here?”
“They’re all dead,” said Sarah, looking up the line. “Brain dead. But their bodies are still being kept ventilated and nourished.”
They moved on to the next bubble and found Martin Keegan. Pumps and relays clicked and hissed perpetual life into him.
“I don’t understand,” said Lafferty. “What’s the point of it all? If they are all brain dead, why keep them on the machines?”
“I’m not sure,” whispered Sarah. “Maybe this will tell us something.” She had seen a plastic clip-board hanging on the wall between the two bays. She lifted it off its hook and read, “MAIN. CHALLENGE DOSE 5, VARICELLA ZOSTER, 10.7 PFU per ml.”
“Mean anything?” asked Lafferty.
Sarah nodded thoughtfully and turned the page. “KEEGAN, PROTECTION I, PRIMARY COMPLETE, SECONDARY +2, CHALLENGE 1 DUE +14. H. SIMPLEX.”
“Well?” prompted Lafferty.
“They are using these people as human cell cultures,” said Sarah, not hiding her distaste. “Their bodies are being used as laboratory animals.”
“What do you mean?”
“Viruses won’t grow outside living cells,” said Sarah. “To work with them in the lab you need some kind of cell culture system to keep them alive. This usually takes the form of a tissue culture system — usually animal cells growing artificially in glass bottles with some kind of liquid nutrient. It’s not as good as using human cells but the availability of human cells is, of course, limited — and they don’t survive well in artificial culture anyway. They tend to die off after a few days.”
“But if you use a whole person...” said Lafferty, looking down at Martin Keegan.
“Precisely,” said Sarah. “They’re using whole bodies as living tissue cultures for viruses.”
“But what for?” asked Lafferty.
“The record cards suggest that Simon Main’s body has been immunised with the Herpes vaccine and been challenged five times with the virus, the last time with Varicella zoster.”
“And Martin Keegan?”
“I think the code means that he has just been given his primary dose of vaccine. He still has to get a second injection in two days and then he will be challenged with Herpes simplex virus in fourteen days’ time.”
“My God,” said Lafferty, his voice betraying the revulsion he felt. “This is repulsive.”
“This must be how they developed and tested their vaccine so quickly,” said Sarah. “They were using a human model from the beginning, so there was no need for small animal tests followed by time-consuming, expensive tests on primates.”
“But surely the Department of Health must have asked questions?” asked Lafferty. “If they granted a licence for the vaccine they must have known how it was developed and tested?”
“You would think so,” said Sarah.