‘I’m afraid, with the child Nina, she was exposed to acolossal number of grays because of ingestion. She swallowed two capsules. And children have a smaller cellular structure. I will return to that poor girl in a moment.
‘Let me show you how this formula works in the Toppings case. Screen please.’
He gestured to a projector screen hanging directly above Edward, at the opposite end of the nave to the pulpit, that he had barely noticed until now. It was presumably extended and retracted to display hymn lyrics and the like. Gregson turned in his pew and began to read the formula directly above him.
Actinium 224
7 × 10-10 sieverts per becquerel
Lethal dose 10 sieverts
Amount required
10 ÷ 7 × 10-10 becquerels
= 14bn becquerels
= 77 nanograms
It might as well have been a foreign language. Edward winced as noise began to slowly build in the church. The audience were surrendering angrily to the detail, becoming impatient, needing to know what this all meant. A whispering had started, which spread from pew to pew, almost a hiss, like steam blowing through the spout of an old stove kettle in the moment before the whistle blew.
Someone shouted, ‘Get to the point! What is a nanogram when it’s at home? Speed up, man!’
‘Are we all infected?’ someone else shouted.
The scientist seemed thrown by the reaction, as if he was expecting a more positive crowd. But the hundreds of Sidmouthians in the audience just wanted the conclusion. How much of this substance was a fatal dose? Who else would die?
‘One gram is about what a paperclip weighs. Imagine a paperclip cut into a million pieces. Each weighs one nanogram. A lethal dose of Ac-224 would be one third the size of one of the pieces. We recovered a sample the size of a pea. That alone could kill, realistically, a million people. But—’
It was too late: the audience descended into chaos.
Eventually someone blew a whistle. An old-fashioned police whistle! It was not an officer – it was the old man who looked after Sidmouth Museum most weekdays; he must have locked up and come next door to watch the show. He blew and blew and blew on the whistle until the room was calm.
The commissioner pushed her mouth into the microphone and the volume when she spoke quelled the tumult. ‘Wait, everyone. This is not supposed to be a bad news speech. Doctor, please get to the point.’
The scientist continued. ‘I know I scared you by saying the sample had enough radiation to kill everyone in Exeter, but most of the radiation from Ac-224 is extremely short-range. Yes, it would kill someone who swallowed it, but not someone who touched it for less than, say, an hour or two. The motorbike rider with his lead panier would be safe, the pizza parlour customers are not irradiated, not one of you is irradiated, but poor Nina, who ate two of the capsules, is dead.’
There was a long silence as Gregson finished speaking, then a flurry of conversation, though with the heat taken out of it now. At that moment Edward saw that a television monitor showing the face of Jordan Callintree, which had been propped unobtrusively against a leg of the trestle table, had now fallen onto its back. One of the vergers had noticed and pulled it upright again. Callintree was evidently speaking, not realizing he had been on mute for the last thirty minutes.
‘Stay where you are, everyone. That’s not the end of it. Doctor, please give us the – I could almost call it “the punchline.” Go on, quickly please.’
‘If this was a terrorist attack, it was pretty hopeless – like a terrorist trying to blow up a tower block with an indoor firework. It was certainly not delivered in the way any true terrorist would have planned,’ he concluded. ‘For that reason, I see no cause for the people isolating to hide themselves away any longer. My judgement is that not one of them will be irradiated.’
Chapter Thirty
The revelation that there was no threat in the attack, no danger from the radioactive substance unless some poor soul actually swallowed it, was almost as dramatic as the equivalent bad news would have been. One minute this had been a dose that could ‘kill a million’, the next it was perfectly safe unless you ate it.
On saying his last word – appropriately, ‘irradiated’ – Dr Gregson had sat back down, his bottom landing on Melody’s mobile. Before the scientist could be moved, he turned to Edward and said: ‘I think that went rather well, don’t you?’
Edward responded: ‘In news we call that “burying the lead”. Would you mind if I reached for my phone?’
People were moving around the church now, talking excitedly, and before the scientist could shift, or even realize what he had been asked to do, he was collared by an eager young couple in matching teal scarves who appeared in front of him with big, white-toothed grins. ‘What wonderful news! We were on the seafront at the time of the attack and we were wondering about testing ourselves. You can get a cheap Geiger counter on Amazon,’ the woman said.
Dr Gregson put in: ‘Ah. That won’t work, I’m afraid. AGeiger counter measures becquerels not grays. You would need a blood test for that.’
The eager man said, ‘Thank God that’s not necessary!’
Beside Edward, the scientist suddenly yelled, ‘Yowsers!’ and jumped up, exposing the mobile phone on the wooden pew seat below him. It was buzzing against the dark wood. Edward took the phone and saw a messge:
