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persuaded to postpone his deadline. Kit shuddered when he thought of his enormous debt remaining unpaid. But there was no point in going ahead when failure was so likely.

He left the bathroom. The clock on the hi-fi said 07:28. It was early to telephone, but this was urgent. He picked up the handset and dialed.

The call was answered immediately. A man's voice said simply, "Yes?"

"This is Kit. Is he in?"

"What do you want?"

"I need to speak to him. It's important."

"He's not up yet."

"Shit." Kit did not want to leave a message. And, on reflection, he did not want Maureen to hear what he had to say. "Tell him I'm coming round," he said. He hung up without waiting for a reply.

7:30 AM

TONI GALLO thought she would be out of work by lunchtime.

She looked around her office. She had not been here long. She had only just begun to make the place her own. On the desk was a photograph of her with her mother and her sister, Bella, taken a few years ago when Mother was in good health. Beside it was her battered old dictionary- she had never been able to spell. Just last week she had hung on the wall a picture of herself in her police constable's uniform, taken seventeen years ago, looking young and eager.

She could hardly believe she had already lost this job.

She now knew what Michael Ross had done. He had devised a clever and elaborate way of getting around all her security precautions. He had found the weaknesses and exploited them. There was no one to blame but herself.

She had not known this two hours ago, when she had phoned Stanley Oxenford, chairman and majority shareholder in Oxenford Medical.

She had been dreading the call. She had to give him the worst possible news, and take the blame. She steeled herself for his disappointment, indignation, or perhaps rage.

He had said, "Are you all right?"

She almost cried. She had not anticipated that his first thought would be for her welfare. She did not deserve such kindness. "I'm fine," she said. "We all put on bunny suits before we went into the house."

"But you must be exhausted."

"I snatched an hour's sleep at around five."

"Good," Stanley said, and briskly moved on. "I know Michael Ross. Quiet chap, about thirty, been with us for a few years-an experienced technician. How the hell did this happen?"

"I found a dead rabbit in his garden shed. I think he brought home a laboratory animal and it bit him."

"I doubt it," Stanley said crisply. "More likely he cut himself with a contaminated knife. Even experienced people may get careless. The rabbit is probably a normal pet that starved after Michael fell ill."

Toni wished she could pretend to believe that, but she had to give her boss the facts. "The rabbit was in an improvised biosafety cabinet," she argued.

"I still doubt it. Michael can't have been working alone, in BSL4. 1 ven if his buddy wasn't looking, there are television cameras in every room-he couldn't have stolen a rabbit without being seen on the monitors. I hen he had to pass several security guards on the way out-they would have noticed if he were carrying a rabbit. Finally, the scientists working in the lab the following morning would have realized immediately that an animal was missing. They might not be able to tell the difference between one rabbit and another, but they certainly know how many there are in the experiment."

Early though it was, his brain had fired up like the VI2 engine in his Ferrari, Toni thought. But he was wrong. "I put all those security barriers in place," she said. "And I'm telling you that no system is perfect."

"You're right, of course." If you gave him good arguments, he could back down alarmingly fast. "I presume we have video footage of the last time Michael was in BSL4?"

"Next thing on my checklist."

"I'll be there at about eight. Have some answers for me then, please."

"One more thing. As soon as the staff begin arriving, rumors will sprcad. May I tell people that you'll be making an announcement?"

"Good point. I'll speak to everyone in the Great Hall at, say, nine-thirty." The grand entrance hall of the old house was the biggest room in the building, always used for large meetings.

Toni had then summoned Susan Mackintosh, one of the security guards, a pretty girl in her twenties with a boyish haircut and a pierced eyebrow. Susan immediately noticed the picture on the wall. "You