Read Online Something in the Water by Trevor Baxendale - Free Book Online

coughing fit. ‘Yeah,’ he gasped after a pause. ‘That’s it. I’ve taken some codeine for the pain; I’m just sitting the cough out.’
    ‘Pain?’
    ‘In the throat, when I cough. Most likely it’s a bad throat infection.’
    Owen nodded, thinking. He wondered whether he should say he’d stopped in at the Trynsel practice or not. But the pause in the conversation had given Strong the chance to reassess his visitor.
    ‘You didn’t say what you called for.’
    ‘It’s just routine,’ Owen lied. ‘When a GP goes down as quickly as you have, we have to follow it up. It’s automatic.’
    ‘We?’
    ‘NHS Direct.’ Owen had said the first thing that came into his head and instantly regretted it.
    Strong wasn’t impressed. ‘Rubbish,’ he said, and a more wary look came into his eyes.
    ‘No, it’s true. When a GP contracts a serious illness we have to investigate. Government policy now.’
    ‘Serious illness?’ There was genuine worry now. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’
    Owen hoped serious illness was just enough to steer Strong away from asking too many questions about where he’d come from. ‘Well, it’s probably nothing, is it? But it’s procedure. Have to be sure.’
    ‘Sure of what?’
    ‘That it’s nothing too serious.’ Hold on, this is getting daft. Nothing-too-serious? Not-serious-enough? Just-about-right-serious?
    Strong leant forward, hunched over as he coughed once or twice and looked Owen carefully in the eyes. ‘My boss thinks it’s biological warfare, you know.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘You’ve got to admit it makes a kind of sense. It sounds mad but it’s not as unlikely as all that. What if there’s been a leak somewhere, from some kind of government research facility. Look what happened last year with that foot-and-mouth outbreak – all because of some burst drainpipes in the floods. Contaminated the area where some builders were working, and then they trampled it onto the farms.’ Strong sat back, his chest rumbling with another cough. ‘Maybe there’s something in the water. Or someone’s brought this into the surgery, probably by accident, and I’ve picked it up.’ He looked pointedly at Owen. ‘And that’s why you’re here.’
    ‘It is?’
    ‘You’re not from NHS Direct. You’re from the Government, I can tell. Got Civil Service written all over you. Could even be MI5 – am I right?’
    ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you.’
    Strong laughed and then coughed, long and hard, turning red in the face with the strain of it. Owen went out into the kitchen and fetched a glass of water. By the time he got back, Strong was slumped in his chair, pale and exhausted, with flecks of spit on his chin. ‘God, I feel awful,’ he muttered, rubbing his chest. ‘So. What happens now? Am I whisked away to a top secret research lab for tests? Or just disappeared, so no one will ever know what happened to me?’
    Owen looked as though he was considering for a moment before replying. ‘We may have to do some tests, yes, but you won’t have to go anywhere. In fact I can take a blood sample right here, right now.’ He reached into his jacket pocket and took out the field kit he always carried: a slim box no bigger than a pencil case containing needles, syringes, sterilised pads, scalpels. Some of the stuff was more advanced than the most up-to-date medical equipment available anywhere in the world.
    ‘You came prepared,’ said Strong, automatically rolling up his shirtsleeve.
    ‘I was a Boy Scout.’ Owen pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, assembled a hypodermic, sterilised a patch of skin on Strong’s forearm and tapped a vein until it stood out. Then he quickly and expertly extracted some blood.
    ‘Nicely done,’ Strong said, and then coughed. ‘Didn’t feel a thing.’
    ‘I’ll get this analysed and then we’ll know what’s what,’ Owen said as he stowed the kit and sample. ‘But as far as we’re concerned, at the moment you’ve just got a bad case