Tainted Read Online Free PDF

pockets, and unwound his scarf. “I think you’re going to be pleased.”
    “Terrific!” Zol said, smacking the air with his fist. “Banbury reviewed his slides? No CJD after all?”
    “No, that’s not it.”
    “Damn.”
    Hamish placed his scarf and coat on the rack in the corner of the room. He turned and shrugged. “Sorry.” He pulled up a chair and sat down, then lifted a tooled leather notebook from his briefcase. He reached in again and brought out a bottle of imported spring water. He unscrewed the cap and took a swig. Before setting the bottle on Zol’s desk, he hesitated. “Do you have a coaster?”
    Zol threw up his hands. “Forget the coaster! Tell me the good news.”
    “First, you have to congratulate me for finding the dentist’s widow and chatting her up for a tonne of details, all before ten thirty in the morning.”
    “Yeah, you’re right. You did great. Now start talking.”
    Hamish opened his notebook. He’d inscribed a title page: Mad Cows — And Englishmen. “I phoned Brenda McEwen first thing this morning,” he began. “She remembered me from U of T. The three of us were undergrads together. Hugh, Brenda, and me.” He took a swig from his bottle. “She invited me right over. I was there by nine.” He put down the bottle and fingered his notebook, clearly in no hurry to turn beyond the title page.
    Hamish would try even the patience of Job. “And?” Zol said, spinning a get-on-with-it gesture with his hands.
    “She reminded me that she and Hugh . . .” Hamish smiled and raised his eyebrows, as if on the brink of serving up the
pièce de résistance
. “Well, it turns out that she and Hugh lived in England for a couple of years. And — get this — he had a passion for British sausages.” He paused and pursed his lips, putting on his professorial expression. “They call them bangers, you know.”
    “I know that,” Zol said sharply. Why did university docs always figure they had a monopoly on knowledge and brains? “I also know that bangers are usually pork, and there’s often veal or beef in the mix.”
    Hamish turned and coughed a string of staccatos, as if covering his embarrassment at Zol’s unexpected roughness.
    Zol shifted in his chair and tugged at the collar of his shirt. Hamish’s cologne hung in the overheated air. Zol was about to remove his jacket but thought better of it; any movement on his part might distract Hamish into stalling further. “When did Hugh live in England?”
    Hamish tightened his lips. “I’m getting to that.” He tipped his bottle and swallowed another mouthful. “After we finished our biochem degrees in ninety-one, he went to Oxford. Spent twoyears there as a Rhodes Scholar. Brenda went with him.”
    “That’s twelve years ago,” Zol said.
    Hamish beamed. “Yes. And it’s perfect. Exactly within the incubation period of variant CJD .”
    Zol nodded. The timing of Hugh McEwen’s years at Oxford
was
spot on. And his passion for British sausages seemed like a clincher. Zol had been dismayed at the hole Natasha had punched in the English beef connection, but could she be wrong about Danesh Patel? Could the man have been a closet carnivore? Zol gestured at his computer. “When you arrived I was digesting the latest reports from England. So far, they’ve had seventy-two human cases of variant CJD .”
    “I know,” Hamish said. “I reviewed that ProMed posting this morning. Not too helpful. They’re releasing so few clinical details we can’t tell how closely our three cases match theirs.”
    “Tell me about the bangers,” Zol said flatly. Once again, Hamish had leapt ahead of him.
    “Hugh loved them. Ate them for breakfast every single day during their years in England. Brenda said she got sick of frying them up.”
    “Any other culinary infatuations?”
    Hamish scanned his notes. “Just a few. Seville orange marmalade, Scottish shortbread, smelly cheese, and Swiss chocolate. He was addicted to the stuff.”
    “Addicted