Wildcard

FIVE

Edinburgh

‘Yes, what is it, Jean?’ snapped Paul Grossart.

His secretary moved back involuntarily from the intercom, surprised at his tone of voice. A change had come over her boss in the last week or so. Ever since the Americans’ visit he had been preoccupied and on edge. ‘I have a Mr Brannan on the phone for you.’

‘I don’t know any Brannan, do I?’ asked Grossart.

‘He’s a journalist with the Scotsman. He wonders if he might have a few words.’

Grossart paused and swallowed hard before saying, ‘Put him through.’

‘Mr Grossart?’ said a friendly sounding voice. ‘Jim Brannan, science correspondent of the Scotsman.’

‘What can I do for you, Mr Brannan?’ said Grossart, adopting a neutral tone.

‘There’s a rumour doing the rounds that Lehman is making a big cut in its transgenic research initiative.’

‘What gives people that idea?’ asked Grossart defensively.

‘You paid off a number of staff at the end of last week.’

Grossart had to think fast. He hadn’t realised that this was a newsworthy event but it was a fact that Lehman had paid off a number of support staff engaged on the Snowball project whose services were no longer required. They were relatively low-grade, and none had been privy to the overall aims of the project, but a couple were part-qualified junior technicians and might have been able to figure out something. ‘We are a cutting-edge research company, Mr Brannan,’ said Grossart. ‘Our priorities constantly have to change with the ever-advancing state of scientific knowledge. The loss of jobs was simply the unfortunate fall-out from a course adjustment we had to make.’

‘So Lehman isn’t abandoning its transgenic animal work?’

‘We remain committed to exploring every avenue of medical research which will benefit mankind,’ replied Grossart.

‘I trust I can quote you on that,’ said Brannan sourly, thinking he could have found a better quote in a Christmas cracker.

‘Of course.’

‘It was a bit sudden, this “course adjustment”, wasn’t it?’

‘Not at all. We’d been considering it for some months.’

‘Right,’ said Brannan slowly, sounding less than convinced. ‘So nothing went wrong, then?’

‘Nothing at all,’ said Grossart.

The conversation ended and Grossart took several deep breaths before looking at his watch and doing a mental calculation. He punched the intercom button and said, ‘Get me Hiram Vance in Boston.’ He tapped nervously on the desk until the connection was made.

‘Paul, what can I do for you?’

‘They know,’ hissed Grossart hoarsely. ‘For Christ’s sake, Hiram, they know. I’ve just had the press on the phone asking about the shutdown of the Snowball project.’

‘Slow down, Paul,’ said Vance, sounding calm and controlled. ‘Just take it easy and tell me exactly what happened.’

Grossart gave him the details of his conversation with Brannan.

‘Then what the hell are you worried about?’ said Vance. ‘You said exactly the right thing and it’s my guess that will be an end to it.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Grossart hesitantly.

‘Trust me,’ said Vance. ‘A story about a few guys losing their jobs isn’t exactly Watergate, is it? By tomorrow it’ll be yesterday’s news.’

‘Brannan knew they were working with transgenic animals.’

‘Who isn’t these days, in our line of business?’ said Vance. ‘Relax, Paul.’

‘If you say so.’

‘One thing worries me, though,’ said Vance, sounding less friendly. ‘I see our UK share price has dropped sharply.’

‘The market here’s a bit volatile at the moment,’ said Grossart, feeling his throat go dry.

‘I certainly hope that’s all it is,’ said Vance. ‘I wouldn’t like to think anyone there was trying to unload large numbers of our shares, if you get my drift?’

‘I’m sure that’s not the case,’ lied Grossart.

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Vance. ‘You have a nice day.’

Grossart tried to reciprocate but the line went dead.

Glenvane, Dumfriesshire

It had been a good day and Steven had insisted that Sue and Richard go out to dinner while he babysat: they didn’t often get the opportunity, so there was usually one night when he offered to do this on his visits. Earlier, he and Sue had taken the children up to Edinburgh, where they had visited the zoo, eaten ice cream and generally had a fun time. The children had walked like the penguins, growled like the lions and behaved like the chimpanzees all the way home. The afterglow of a happy day was still with him as he watched a film on late-night television while nibbling potato crisps and sipping a Stella Artois. He always found it easy to unwind at the house in Glenvane. It seemed a million miles away from the bustle of London.

The earth was in danger of being hit by a giant asteroid but the missiles launched by the USA were on their way. Men with caps and epaulettes carrying several kilos of scrambled egg watched their progress on a giant screen, but instead of a nuclear impact Steven’s mobile phone went off and he hit the mute button on the TV remote.

‘Dunbar.’

‘Duty officer at Sci-Med here. Mr Macmillan would like you back in London as soon as possible, Dr Dunbar.’

‘I’m on leave.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to tell him that yourself.’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Don’t know but you could try working the words “shit” and “fan” into a well-known phrase or saying.’

‘Gotcha. I’ll catch the first flight in the morning.’ As Steven spoke, he heard the clatter of a diesel engine outside and saw Sue and Richard get out of a taxi. They were giggling like naughty children and it made him smile.

‘Bad news?’ asked Sue when she saw the phone in his hand.

‘I’m on the first flight to London.’

‘Tough luck, old son,’ said Richard. ‘But I’m glad they didn’t take you away earlier, because we have just had a bloody good time.’ He slumped down into an armchair with a silly grin on his face. ‘We really are very grateful, you know.’

‘Not nearly as grateful as I am to you two,’ said Steven, thinking on a different plane. ‘I couldn’t begin to tell you.’

Sue smiled and put her finger to her lips. ‘Coffee?’

‘I’ll make it,’ said Steven.

Steven crept out of the house a little before five in the morning, trying to make as little noise as possible. It was dark and there was a damp mist hanging in the still air. He looked up at Jenny’s bedroom window and imagined her sleeping there, snug and warm and very much part of a loving family. He blew her a kiss before getting into his car and heading north to Glasgow airport to catch the first British Airways shuttle of the day to London Heathrow.

‘They seem determined to deny you a holiday,’ said Jean Roberts when Steven arrived in her office.

‘Next time I’m just going to disappear without saying where I’m going,’ said Steven.

‘Strikes me Mr Macmillan will still know where you are. He has an uncanny knack of knowing where everyone is at any given time.’

‘Electronic tags would be a better bet,’ said Steven. ‘I’m going to take a closer look at my shoes when I get home. What’s up?’

‘I don’t know everything but I do know that the government’s chief medical adviser, several Public Health people and two senior people from the Department of Health are with him at the moment.’

Steven looked at his watch. ‘So I just wait?’

‘I suppose so. He knows you’re here.’

‘I’ll grab some coffee next door.’

Steven was sipping his second cup of coffee and reading the clues of the Times crossword before committing pen to paper — he had to get at least four before starting to fill it in — when he heard the sound of people leaving next door. A few moments later Miss Roberts popped her head round the door to say that Macmillan was asking for him.

John Macmillan was standing looking out the window when Steven entered and closed the door softly behind him. From past experience he knew that Macmillan took up this pose when he had bad news to impart.

‘Any idea why I called you back?’ asked Macmillan.

‘You’re going to tell me there’s been another case of haemorrhagic fever,’ suggested Steven.

‘Guess or inside information?’ asked Macmillan, sounding surprised.

‘Just a guess.’

Macmillan turned round. ‘There are seven new cases in Manchester. One woman has already died.’

‘Sweet Jesus!’ exclaimed Steven. ‘Seven?’

Macmillan walked over to his desk and picked up a sheet of paper. ‘The dead woman is Ann Danby, aged thirty-three, a graduate computer expert who lived alone in the city. Ostensibly she took her own life, but she was found to have been suffering from the disease.’

Steven looked puzzled.

‘The police were called to her apartment by neighbours concerned about noise. They found that she’d taken an overdose of sleeping tablets and washed them down with booze, although it’s not clear why. Maybe it had something to do with her illness, but when a routine post mortem was performed, she was found to be suffering from the disease. Two policemen, a pathologist, a hospital houseman, an ambulanceman and a medical lab technician have all gone down with the disease and all are dangerously ill. They were all contacts of this woman in one way or another. Public Health are waiting for the next wave, when contacts of these people start falling ill. They are resigned to it spreading further.’

‘Classic kinetics of a disease spread by body contact,’ said Steven. ‘If one gets you six, six will get you thirty-six and so on, like ripples on a pond. I take it this woman was a passenger on the Ndanga flight?’

Macmillan shook his head. ‘No, damn it, I’m afraid she wasn’t.’

‘Then how?’

‘That’s really why I called you back. The Danby woman was not on that flight, nor has she been out of the country anywhere during the past two years, not since a holiday in Majorca in spring of 1998.’

‘But she must have had contact with someone from the Ndanga flight?’

Macmillan shook his head again. He said, ‘Public Health have gone through the passenger manifest with a fine-tooth comb. They can’t find a connection with the dead woman at all.’

‘But there must be one.’

‘You’d think so. Apparently the police pathologist started to have doubts during the PM. He thought he was examining a routine drink-and-drugs suicide, but when he opened her up he found that she’d been haemorrhaging badly. Haemorrhagic fever crossed his mind, but when he couldn’t come up with an African connection after talking to the woman’s parents he didn’t sound the alarm for fear of looking foolish.’

‘We’ve all been there,’ said Steven.

‘The Public Health people have been working round the clock to isolate contacts, but unless we find out — and soon — where the disease originates from, we could be looking at a very unpleasant situation indeed. What do you think?’

‘Well, assuming that we’re talking about the same disease here — are we?’

‘Porton haven’t finished analysing the samples from the Manchester cases yet, but it would be a hell of a coincidence if it wasn’t.’

‘Then obviously the passenger, Barclay, and this woman, Danby, are the prime movers in the affair. We know how everyone else got the disease. We have to find out how these two got it.’

‘That’s where you come in,’ said Macmillan. ‘The authorities up in Manchester are going to be working flat out to contain the outbreak. Although there will be an epidemiological team investigating the cause, I want you involved as well, because it’s absolutely vital that we establish the source as quickly as possible. I’ve had this okayed at the highest level, so you’ll have a free hand to operate as you see fit. You’ll have the support of the police and the Public Health Service should you need them, and of course you’ll have access to all the medical and scientific back-up you need. What do you say?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘No.’

‘Then I say I’d best get started.’

‘Miss Roberts will prepare a background file for you in the usual way. After that, you’re on your own.’

‘This hasn’t reached the press yet?’ said Steven.

‘Only because the disease doesn’t have a name and there’s no obvious African connection to scaremonger about, but six associated people going down with something nasty is not going to go unreported for long.’

Steven had lunch in a city pub, an old-style pub with high ceilings and self-conscious Victorian fittings. He cut an anonymous figure as he sat in a corner, eating a cheese roll and sipping a beer while mulling over the situation. The thing troubling him most was the fact that the Public Health people had failed to establish a connection between the woman in Manchester and the Ndanga flight. If there really wasn’t one, it would suggest that there was an original source of viral haemorrhagic fever in Manchester. Not a happy thought. And not a likely one, either, he decided after some consideration. Despite the failure to establish a connection, there just had to be one. Maybe some lateral thinking was called for.

Although the true natural reservoir of Ebola and the other filovirus infection, Marburg disease, had not yet been established, he was aware of a strong suggestion among investigators that animals — particularly monkeys — were involved in the chain of events. If his memory served him right, the very first case of Marburg disease had been contracted in the German town of that name, back in the late 1960s by a worker who got it from an African lab monkey. If by any chance the woman in Manchester had had contact with animals — perhaps as a ‘friend of the zoo’ or as a voluntary helper or some such thing — that might conceivably be where she had picked up the disease. That would be the best possible outcome, he concluded. It would also be one hell of a coincidence.

Steven returned to the Home Office to pick up his briefing file, which he’d been told would be ready by two thirty if Miss Roberts worked through her lunch hour to collate information supplied by the authorities in Manchester. She obviously had, for a purple folder was waiting for him on her desk when he went into her office. Jean Roberts had gone off to have a late snack but she had left a Post-it note stuck to the cover of the file, wishing him well. He in turn left her one, thanking her.

Steven paused on the pavement outside and thought about taking the file home to read, but then decided on using the facilities of the medical library at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he had a reader’s card. He would have access there to all the reference books and current journals he might need.

The first page of the Sci-Med file was entitled ‘Primary Victims’. Humphrey Barclay, he read, had been a middle-ranking civil servant who had been attached to the Foreign Office for the last fourteen years after shorter stints at the Ministry of Agriculture and the DHSS. He had a BA from Durham University in geography and had joined the civil service immediately after gaining his degree, a lower second. Two years later he had married Marion Court-Brown, daughter of a Surrey stockbroker, whom he had met at university. The marriage had produced two daughters, Tamsin and Carla.

Barclay’s annual job appraisals suggested that his career had been in the doldrums for the past few years, his performance never being assessed any higher than ‘satisfactory’ during the past four. Illness had played a part, in that he had suffered intermittently from heart problems, although this had apparently been put right after surgery earlier this year.

Barclay’s being sent to Ndanga had been seen as a bit of a test by his superiors to find out if he merited promotion to the next grade after all. Barclay himself had been made aware of this and had been keen to do well, according to his superior, Sir Bruce Collins. Confidential vetting reports obtained from Special Branch suggested that there was no scandal in Barclay’s life. He was honest, straight and reliable to the point of being dull. Steven sighed and moved on to the next file.

Ann Danby had been thirty-three at the time of her death; she was unmarried and lived alone in Palmer Court, an expensive apartment block on the West Side of Manchester. She was a graduate of the University of Manchester in computer studies, and worked as an IT specialist with Tyne Brookman, a large academic publishing firm in the city. Her parents also lived in Manchester and she had one brother, John, who lived and worked in London for a public relations firm. By all accounts, she had been settled and content, even if regarded as a bit of a loner by her neighbours — although university involvement in a whole variety of societies had suggested otherwise. No one interviewed could suggest a reason why Ann Danby should want to take her own life, and the possibility of this action being connected with her illness seemed entirely plausible. She had not been outside the UK since 1998 when she had taken a package holiday to Majorca, apparently alone. She had never been to Africa, nor had she any known connection with anyone who had.

Steven shook his head and sighed again. There was absolutely nothing in these two biographies to suggest an opening course of action. He couldn’t see a first move and first moves were all-important, be it the first leg of a journey or the first move in a chess game. Get it wrong and it could be hard to recover lost ground. He moved on to the list of ‘Secondary Victims’ but found nothing helpful — it was quite clear how these people had contracted the disease. It was impossible not to be struck by the tragedy of so many young lives being wiped out; the stewardess and the nurse had both been well under thirty.

Steven noted down some key points for a plan of action. He saw the impending report from Porton as being critical, because it would establish whether or not the two outbreaks had been caused by the same virus. If, by any chance, they had not — and he sincerely hoped against hope that this might be the case — he would concentrate all his efforts on finding out where Ann Danby had picked up the disease, starting first with any animal connection he could establish. If, as was more likely, the two viruses turned out to be one and the same, he would have to gamble on there really being a connection between Ann Danby and the Ndanga flight, despite the authorities’ failure to find one. Either way, Manchester was the place to be. He would travel up there in the morning. In the meantime, he would read up on filovirus infections and in particular the reports on any recent outbreaks of the disease. He started with the 1995 epidemic of Ebola in Kikwit in Zaire where 80 per cent of the 360 cases identified in the outbreak died.

Steven’s arrival in Manchester coincided with the newspapers getting hold of the story. ‘Killer Disease Stalks Manchester Hospital’ was what he read on the first billboard he saw in the station. He bought several papers and flicked through them while he had a weak and slightly cold coffee in the station buffet. The press had the basic story but not much more. They knew that several people connected with the hospital had gone down with an unidentified disease, but they didn’t appear to know anything about Ann Danby, the cause of it all. One of the tabloids, however, speculated that the source of the illness might well have been a drug-addicted prostitute who had overdosed and been picked up by the police before being taken to the hospital in question. They went on to cite the problems that Glasgow had suffered recently with a killer disease that struck at drug addicts. That had been shown to be due to the toxin of a bacterium called Clostridium. Was this the same thing? the paper asked.

‘I wish,’ thought Steven. He finished his coffee and took a cab to the City General Hospital, where he was introduced to the medical superintendent, Dr George Byars, a short dapper man wearing a pinstripe suit which emphasised his lack of height and narrow shoulders.

‘They tell me you’ll be working flat out on finding the source of this damned thing,’ said Byars.

‘I’m going to give it my best shot,’ replied Steven. ‘How do things stand at the moment?’

‘Not good. The pathologist, Saxby, died early this morning and two of the others, the lab technician and PC Lennon, are dangerously ill. Everyone feels so helpless, but there’s nothing we can do other than give them nursing care. They either pull through or they don’t.’

Steven nodded and asked, ‘Have there been any more cases?’

‘Not yet, but Public Health aren’t counting their chickens and, frankly, we could be in trouble. This hospital isn’t equipped to deal with a big outbreak of a disease like this. We have a special containment unit, but it’s really designed to deal with the occasional foreign traveller who goes down with something nasty. As for an… epidemic?’ Byars seemed reluctant to use the word. ‘Forget it.’

‘I suspect that’ll be the case with most hospitals?’

‘Correct. It’s been government policy for some time now to close down all the old fever hospitals.’

‘So what are you guys going to do?’

‘Hope that Public Health have been quick enough off the mark in rounding up the patients’ contacts. If they have, they tell us we can expect something in the order of ten to twenty new cases. We plan to re-open two of the wards we closed last year and use them as an isolation unit. We’ve already got in the Racal suits for the nurses and we’re running refresher courses on barrier nursing for the nursing volunteers we’ve asked for.’

Steven nodded, but the look on his face prompted Byars to add, ‘I know, it all smacks of wartime spirit and backs-against-the-wall stuff, but that’s the way it is, I’m afraid. We’re just not prepared for this sort of thing.’

‘At last a use for the Millennium Dome,’ murmured Steven.

The comment made Byars relax a little. ‘I think we’ll be okay as long as there aren’t any more wildcards like Ann Danby in the pack. If there are, God knows what the outcome might be.’

‘Well, she’s my problem.’

Steven was taken on a tour of the hospital special unit, where he had to suit-up before entering and where he could look at the current patients behind glass screens. They did not make for pretty viewing. ‘Poor sod,’ whispered Byars as they looked at Lennon who was not expected to pull through; he seemed to be bleeding all over.

‘You know, it’s a funny thing,’ said Byars. ‘Despite all the bleeding, haemorrhagic fever cases rarely die from blood loss.’

‘You’ve had experience of it before?’

‘No,’ Byars confessed. ‘I read it in a book.’

Steven accepted an invitation to attend a meeting later in the hospital with representatives from the Public Health Service and other bodies concerned with the outbreak, then headed for the police station where Lennon and Clark had worked.

He was seen by a chief superintendent who seized the opportunity to subject him to a short lecture about the dangers his officers on the street were constantly exposed to. It was short because Steven interrupted him with a request to see the shift rota the two sick officers were on at the time of the call to Ann Danby’s place. He followed this up with a request to speak with Sergeant John Fearman.

‘I’ve known Tom Lennon for fifteen years,’ said Fearman. ‘Salt of the earth, he is. That’s why I put young Clark with him — I thought he’d teach the lad a lot about what police work’s all about.’

‘Tell me about that night,’ said Steven.

‘It’s all in the report,’ said Fearman. ‘We got a call from one of the neighbours about loud music. Tom and Clark attended and had to force an entry to the Danby woman’s flat. The rest is history.’

‘No, tell me the details.’

‘What’s to say? Tom thought she was dead when they arrived — he couldn’t find a pulse — but then she moved and he yelled for an ambulance. Clark actually tried mouth-to-mouth on her, poor little sod — I suppose that’s how he got it. But by the time the ambulance got there she really was dead.’

‘You say she moved?’

‘Clark was watching her when it happened. She was the first body he’d ever come across, see, and when she moved it gave him the fright of his life.’

‘Then what?’

‘Tom called immediately for an ambulance and tried clearing her throat. There was vomit on the pillow so he thought her airway might be blocked, but he told me it was all clear when he put… his fingers in her mouth.’

Steven and Fearman exchanged glances as they both saw the significance of this action.

‘Tom kept trying to wake her up because he thought she’d taken an overdose of pills, as indeed she had, and he thought he was succeeding, too, when she appeared to come round and say something. But it was no use. She died.’

‘She said something?’ asked Steven.

Fearman shrugged ruefully. ‘Tom told me that her last words were, “All men are bastards.”’