Wildcard

SEVEN

Steven returned to his hotel with positive feelings about the meeting. He would have felt less happy with the news about the Manchester and Heathrow viruses being identical had it not been for his findings at Ann Danby’s flat. As it was, it just seemed to confirm that Vincent Bell was the link, something he should be able to establish beyond doubt next day. If he did, and if the medical teams in Manchester continued to keep tight control over the outbreak, there was a good chance that the whole affair might be consigned to history by the end of the following week.

The only loose end left would be how Humphrey Barclay had contracted the disease in the first place. It might not be relevant in a practical sense if the outbreak could be eradicated without knowing, Steven conceded, but he suspected that the question was going to niggle away at him for some time. If the answer lay in Africa, as it seemed it must, that was probably where it would remain. It would be yet another secret of the Dark Continent.

Steven flew down to London first thing in the morning and picked up a hired car from the Hertz desk at Heathrow. Traffic on the A2 was as bad as he expected, but he still managed to make Canterbury by lunchtime, and he left the car in one of the large car parks outside the city walls. He took a walk along the main thoroughfare in bright winter sunshine, looking for a street guide to tell him where Mulberry Lane was, but also because he wanted to take a look at the old city again.

It was a while since he’d been there and he had a soft spot for Canterbury, having spent many of the summer holidays of his youth working on an uncle’s fruit farm out in the Kent countryside. He saw the area as quintessentially English, different from the North he was more used to, England’s brain rather than its brawn. The cathedral’s huge presence still dominated the city and seemed to influence everything in it from the names of the narrow streets to the contents of its bookshops, the weight of its history almost tangibly forming a bridge between past and present. A chattering group of choristers from the cathedral school, unselfconscious in their cassocks, passed by and reminded Steven that Christmas was little more than a month away. They’d be singing carols soon.

Mulberry Lane, when he eventually found it, comprised a row of pretty little cottages backing on to the River Stour. It would not have looked out of place in a scene from The Wind in the Willows and he half expected Ratty and Mole to appear at any moment, arguing about nothing too important. He found the cottage he was looking for and walked up its meandering gravel path to knock on the heavy wooden door. After a short delay a stocky man with dyed auburn hair combed over a freckled, balding scalp opened the door and looked him up and down. He was wearing an apron with vintage cars on it and wiping his hands on a tea towel.

‘Mr Bell?’ asked Steven.

‘No, who wants him?’ asked the man. His voice had a lisp.

‘My name’s Dunbar. I’m an investigator with the Sci-Med Inspectorate. I’d like a word with Mr Bell.’

The man turned away and called, ‘Vincent! There’s a big handsome policeman here to see you. You’d better have a good story, love, I can tell you.’ He turned back to Steven and said, ‘And you’d best come in.’

Steven stepped inside the cottage, suspecting that his beautiful theory was about to turn to dust. Vincent Bell entered the room and with one word, ‘Hello,’ managed to blow even the dust of it away. Bell was overtly homosexual; he was clearly not Ann Danby’s secret lover.

‘What can I do for you?’ asked Bell. He put admiring emphasis on the word ‘you’.

‘I understand you were a passenger on the ill-fated Ndanga flight recently, Mr Bell?’ said Steven, not at all sure what he was going to do now.

‘I was indeed and d’you know, I still wake up sweating when I think about it, don’t I, Simon? There but for the grace of God, I say.’

‘You haven’t been unwell at all yourself?’

‘No, love, right as rain. Can I tempt you to some lunch? We’re just about to have ours.’

Steven was taken unawares by the offer, but with his theory shot to pieces and not having anything else to say he replied almost automatically, ‘That would be very nice, thank you.’

He sat down at the table and was treated to carrot and coriander soup and a smoked mackerel salad, prepared by Simon and accompanied by chilled Australian white wine.

‘Now, what else would you like to know?’ asked Bell.

The truth was, nothing, but Steven asked a few questions out of politeness. ‘Did you have any contact at all with the sick passenger, Humphrey Barclay?’

‘No, thank God. He was in a right state, by all accounts.’

‘How about a woman named Ann Danby?’

Bell looked blank. ‘No, sorry. Was she on the flight, too?’

‘No, she lives in Manchester.’

‘Poor woman. Where does she come into it?’

‘I don’t think she does any more,’ said Steven resignedly. ‘Have you visited Manchester recently, Mr Bell?’

‘Not recently, not ever, if truth be told — and let’s keep it that way, that’s what I say,’ replied Bell, getting a nod of agreement from his partner. ‘They say it rains there all the time.’

Steven smiled and said, ‘Don’t think me rude but can I ask you why you were in Ndanga?’

‘Business, love. African arts and crafts. Simon and I run a business marketing African carvings and artwork through zoos and wildlife parks. We needed some new lines so I went over to get them. Got some super carved rhinos. Would you like to see them?’

Steven said that he should really be going, as he had a lot to do. It wasn’t strictly true but he did have a date with depression about his wasted journey and for that he needed to be on his own. He had been wrong. Whoever V was, he certainly wasn’t Vincent Bell.

The sky had darkened during the course of lunch and it started to rain as he walked back to the car. It suited his mood. He sat for a while in the car park, pondering on the fickleness of fate and wondering what his next move was going to be. Bell was the only male passenger on the manifest with a first name beginning with V, but there had been a couple of females whom he’d dismissed at the time in the light of Ann Danby’s valediction about men. He wondered if he’d been wrong to do that. Her comment, he supposed, could have been unconnected with the end of her love affair… but he still thought not. That would be just too much of a coincidence. He decided against visiting the females on the list for the time being. Instead, he would have a try at making Ann Danby’s mother reveal what she knew about her daughter’s relationship. Something told him that she knew exactly who V was.

Steven spent the night in his own flat in London before flying back up to Manchester in the morning. His spirits weren’t exactly high when he boarded the aircraft, but when he opened out the newspaper he’d been handed by the flight attendant, they hit rock bottom.

‘IS IT EBOLA?’ asked the headline.

The story, concentrating on the Manchester outbreak, showed that the paper had identified the source of the outbreak as Ann Danby. It emerged that Ann’s mother had telephoned the paper, outraged that her daughter had been portrayed variously as a prostitute and a drug addict by the tabloids, when in fact she was neither. Having got that message across, she had gone on to tell the paper about the questions the authorities had been asking her and her husband. The paper had latched on to queries concerning Africa and connections with people on the Ndanga flight. ‘FIVE DEAD IN LONDON, FOUR IN MANCHESTER. HOW MANY MORE?’ it wanted to know. It followed up by accusing the authorities of covering up the truth and then drew parallels with the BSE crisis: ‘HAVE THEY LEARNED NOTHING?’

‘Shit,’ murmured Steven, causing the man in the seat beside him to turn and say, ‘Nasty business. Is it me or do we get a new disease every time medical science cures an old one?’

‘Certainly seems that way,’ agreed Steven, but he was thinking that his chances of speaking to Mrs Danby had just gone out the window: journalists from all the other papers would be camping outside her door. When he arrived he went directly to the City General, where he had to wait while a hospital spokesman, grasping his moment of fame and sounding like the returning officer in a by-election, made a statement to the waiting press and TV crews at the gates. ‘What we can say at this moment is that the disease is definitely not Ebola,’ he concluded. ‘Thank you all for coming.’

‘How can you be sure at this stage?’ yelled one of the pack.

The spokesman gave a superior little smile and said, ‘Because the scientists at Porton have assured us that-’

‘Porton? Porton Down? The biological weapons establishment? Are you telling us that Porton Down is involved in this?’ yelled the reporter.

The spokesman paled. ‘This was just a routine-’

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed the journalist, scribbling furiously. Questions started to rain down on the hapless man. He held up his hands with about as much success as Canute addressing the waves. Everyone wanted to know about Porton Down’s interest in the virus.

Steven slipped past the throng and showed his ID to a policeman on the gate, who waved him through with a wry smile. ‘Talk about a feeding frenzy,’ he said. ‘That lot make sharks look like tadpoles.’

Steven found George Byars holding an impromptu meeting in his office with the head of the Public Health team, Dr Caroline Anderson, and her deputy, a frizzy-haired young man named Kinsella. He was invited to join them.

‘Problems?’ asked Steven.

‘We thought we were almost out of the woods but we’re not,’ said Byars. ‘One of the contacts went walkabout last night.’

‘Not necessarily the end of the world,’ said Steven.

‘The lady in question is the eighteen-year-old sister of the ambulanceman who’s lying in the special unit; she sneaked out last night and went to a city-centre disco,’ said Caroline Anderson.

‘But if she was feeling well enough to go dancing-’ Steven said.

‘She’s feeling ill this morning,’ interrupted Kinsella. ‘She’s got a headache and she thinks she might be coming down with flu.’

‘Oh, I see,’ murmured Steven, realising the implications.

‘I thought we’d convinced all the contacts to wait out the incubation period,’ said Caroline.

‘You can’t convince teenagers of anything they don’t want to be convinced of,’ said Byars, as if from painful personal experience.

‘We were just discussing whether to put out an appeal for all the kids who were in the disco to come forward or… whether we should hold back at this stage,’ said Caroline.

Steven mentioned what he’d heard the spokesman saying at the gate.

‘Damnation!’ exclaimed Byars. ‘He was supposed to go out there and reassure everyone that it wasn’t Ebola. Now it sounds like he’s convinced them it’s something worse; the virus from the black lagoon. This makes things even more difficult.’

‘If I go by the book,’ said Caroline, ‘I should call the kids in, but do we really think that we can convince a couple of hundred teenagers that they should stay indoors for the next two weeks? My feeling is that we’ll just sow the seeds of panic and alarm.’

‘Well, it’s your call, Caroline,’ said Byars quietly.

‘I know,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘I’m not trying to pass the buck. There were two hundred young people in that disco last night. Do I put out an appeal for them to come forward, just so that I can tell them that they’ve been exposed to a deadly virus that we can do nothing at all about? Or do I hold off until we know more?’

She didn’t expect an answer and none was forthcoming.

‘Like I say, it’s your call,’ reiterated Byars.

‘I’m not convinced that an appeal would do anything other than cause absolute panic among the kids,’ said Caroline. ‘I’m going to take a chance and hold off until we know there actually is a problem.’

‘After all, we’re not sure yet that this girl has the disease,’ said Kinsella. ‘It could still turn out to be flu or even just a hangover.’

‘Then it’s decided: no appeal?’ asked Byars.

‘It’s decided. I’m going to leave it for the moment,’ said Caroline. ‘Maybe we’ll know more about the girl’s condition tomorrow.’

Byars reminded them that there would be a full meeting at three in the afternoon on the following day, and Caroline and Kinsella left.

When they had gone, George Byars asked Steven about progress in tracing the source of the outbreak.

‘I thought I’d found the link between the two outbreaks, but it turned out I was wrong,’ confessed Steven.

‘Professor Cane’s not been having much luck either. This damned virus seems to have appeared out of nowhere.’

‘No,’ said Steven, ‘it didn’t do that. That’s the one thing we can be absolutely sure about.’

On the way back to his hotel, Steven asked the taxi driver to take him round by the street where the Danbys lived. As he had anticipated, a scrum of cameramen and news reporters were camped outside the bungalow, forcing the cab to slow down to squeeze between carelessly parked vehicles.

‘What’s your interest in this?’ asked the taxi driver, his tone betraying irritation.

‘Just curious,’ replied Steven.

‘Poor sods have enough to worry about without rubber-neckers like you turning up.’

‘You’re probably right,’ agreed Steven distantly.

‘If you want my opinion-’

‘I don’t,’ snapped Steven, and they completed the journey in an uncomfortable silence.

When he got to his room he ordered coffee and sandwiches from room service and leafed through the Sci-Med file again, looking for anything he might have overlooked. He suspected that it would be a couple of days before press interest in the Danbys died down enough to give him a chance to speak to Mrs Danby. He needed something to do in the interim and his attention finally came to rest on the firm that Ann had worked for, Tyne Brookman, the academic publishers in Lloyd Street. He should have thought of that before, he told himself. Ann might have had a special friend or colleague on the staff there, someone she might have confided in. It was something definitely worth pursuing, but first he would hire a car. It was beginning to look as if he would be here for some time. He asked the hotel desk to arrange it, and a Rover 75 was duly delivered to the car park within the hour.

After a brief consultation with a street map in the hotel reception, Steven drove out of the car park to circle round the south side of the town hall on Fountain Street, intending to enter Lloyd Street. At the last moment he saw that entry was blocked at that end, as it was part of a one-way system, and had to skirt round the block on Albert Cross Street and enter from the west, off Deansgate.

The premises of Tyne Brookman were located in a Victorian building, three storeys high and black with the grime of a century’s traffic. The high ceilings were at odds with the poor lighting arrangements, resulting in an ineffectual dull yellow light in the entrance hall and making the place depressingly gloomy. The frosted-glass door marked Reception in black stick-on letters jammed against its frame when Steven turned the handle. It juddered open when he applied a deal more force.

‘It sticks,’ said the young girl behind the desk, stating the obvious.

Steven showed his ID and asked if he might speak to someone in charge.

‘Mr Finlay’s out and Mr Taylor’s at his brother’s funeral,’ replied the girl.

‘Someone else perhaps?’ ventured Steven, wondering why so many firms put an idiot at the interface between themselves and the public.

‘Can you give me some idea what it’s about?’ asked the girl.

‘Did you know Miss Danby, who worked here?’

‘Not well. She worked in computers.’

‘Then how about someone in computers?’ he suggested.

‘I could try Mrs Black — she works in computers,’ said the girl. She posed it as a question and Steven nodded. He looked about him while she made the call. Tinsel had been hung on the plain yellow walls. It fell in vertical strips at intervals of a metre or so. A single smiling reindeer galloped above posters advertising the firm’s latest books, pride of place going to A Molecular Understanding of Protein Interactions and A European View of American Corporate Law.

‘A couple of blockbusters there,’ said Steven when the girl had finished on the phone. She looked at him blankly, then said, ‘Mrs Black will see you. She’s on the floor above, in room 112.’

Mrs Black turned out be an extremely attractive fair-haired woman in her mid-thirties wearing a white blouse over a navy-blue pencil skirt. She got up from her desk and offered her hand when Steven entered. ‘Hilary Black. What can I do for you, Dr Dunbar?’ she asked in a friendly and pleasantly cultured voice.

‘I’m not sure,’ admitted Steven. ‘I’m trying to build up a picture of Ann Danby’s life so I’m doing the rounds, speaking to people who knew her. I take it that would include you?’

‘She was our systems manager.’

‘And you are?’

‘I’m now our systems manager; I was Ann’s assistant.’

‘I see. Did you know her well?’

‘She was extremely good at her job.’

‘That isn’t quite what I asked.’

‘We had the occasional after-work drink together, a pizza once in a while, that sort of thing, colleagues rather than friends.’

Steven nodded and asked, ‘How would you describe her?’

Hilary Black sat back in her chair and took a deep breath. ‘Pleasant, responsible, reliable, intelligent, discreet…’

‘Lonely?’

‘Lonely? No, I don’t think so. Ann wasn’t lonely. Loneliness suggests a state that’s forced on one. That wasn’t the case with Ann. People liked her. She kept them at a distance through her own choice.’

‘What did you think when you heard that she’d taken her own life?’

‘I was shocked. We all were.’

‘How about surprised?’

‘Yes… that too,’ agreed Hilary but less surely.

‘You hesitated.’

‘Ann had something on her mind, something that had been getting her down for at least a month before she died. She hid it from most people, simply because she was used to hiding most things from people, but working together I could tell that she was worried or depressed about something, though she wouldn’t say what.’

‘You asked her?’

‘Yes. I wanted to help but she wouldn’t let me. That was Ann, I’m afraid. But now I come to think of it, I remember thinking at one point that she had got over it. It was one day during the week before she died because she came in that day and was all smiles again. But it only lasted the one day.’

‘You can’t remember what day that was, can you?’ asked Steven.

‘Give me a moment.’ Hilary opened her desk diary and flicked through the pages before tracing her forefinger slowly down one of them. ‘It would have been a Thursday,’ she said. ‘Thursday the eighteenth of November.’

‘Thank you,’ said Steven. Thursday, 18 November, was the day that had been marked in Ann’s appointments diary as the day she was due to meet V — for the last time, as it turned out.

‘Mean anything?’ asked Hilary.

‘Not on its own.’ Steven smiled. ‘But the pieces are building. Did Ann have a boyfriend?’

‘Not that she ever admitted to.’

‘That’s an odd reply.’

‘All right, no, she didn’t have a boyfriend,’ said Hilary.

‘But she did?’ ventured Steven.

Hilary conceded with a smile. ‘Maybe she did. I had my suspicions. I think he was probably married.’

‘I don’t suppose she ever let slip a name?’

‘I thought she did once but then she covered it up so well that I sort of dismissed it as my imagination.’

‘Go on.’

‘I was telling her about an interview I’d seen on television with Michael Heseltine. John Humphrys was asking him about the Millennium Dome and she said something like, “Wotsisname says that’s a load of rubbish about urban regeneration,” and I said, “Who’s Wotsisname?” She sort of blushed and said, “Oh just someone I was talking to.” I know what you’re going to ask now but I don’t think I can remember the name. It was just a passing moment.’

‘If I were to tell you that his name begins with V?’ said Steven.

‘Yes,’ agreed Hilary, her eyes lighting up. ‘I remember now. It was Victor.’