A Lovely Way to Burn

Thirty-Five

‘Stephanie, are you okay?’ Alexander Buchanan had known that it was Stevie on the other end of the line, before she said a word. The thought of her name blinking on the chemist’s phone was disquieting and Stevie wished she had acquired an anonymous pay-as-you-go mobile. Buchanan asked, ‘Where are you?’ His voice was as urbane as ever, but there was a note of anxiety beneath his charm.

Stevie had forced her way through the jam of departing four-by-fours, urban jeeps and estate cars in the streets around Sarah Frei’s house and now the Jaguar was eating up the miles. She put him on the speakerphone and glanced at the satnav’s map, checking that she was on the right road for Iqbal’s flat. Buchanan was the third person she had called. Neither Derek nor Iqbal had picked up and she had an increasing sense of her life burning away, like a fuse on a bomb steadily fizzing towards an explosion.

‘What were you and Simon up to?’ Stevie didn’t bother with niceties or preliminaries.

‘We were helping sick children get better.’

Buchanan’s voice sounded self-consciously reasonable, like the voice of a man who considered he had every right to be offended, but was refusing to rise to the bait.

‘There was more to it than that. You were making a lot of money.’

Stevie had expected to hear the bustle of the hospital in the background but Alexander Buchanan might have been answering her call from a soundproofed booth.

‘The treatment generated a profit, yes, but we put most of that into research, in the hope that we could eventually make it more readily available. I’m at my lab. If you come here I can show you some relevant paperwork.’

‘I’d prefer you to email it to me.’

‘All I have is hard copy, and right now I don’t quite have the time to scan and send it.’ The chemist’s voice had lost its veneer of tolerance. ‘Normally I’d ask one of our technicians to help out, but they seem to be either dead or otherwise occupied. So if you can’t examine it yourself, I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word for it.’

‘My sense of trust has taken a bit of a battering.’ Along with the rest of me, she thought, but didn’t say.

Stevie had expected to be snared in lines of traffic, but the roads were all but empty. Normally it would have been a relief, but she found herself hoping she would turn a corner and see a stream of vehicles, each one containing healthy, pissed-off travellers. Up ahead, traffic lights glowed red. Stevie slowed to check that there was nothing about to cross the intersection and drove through. She said, ‘Simon didn’t die of natural causes. He didn’t kill himself either. Someone murdered him, but perhaps you already know that.’

There was a pause on the line. The only sound the expensive purr of the Jaguar’s engine. After a moment Buchanan said, ‘It crossed my mind.’

‘It crossed your mind?’ She pressed her foot to the accelerator. ‘So all that guff about the possibility Simon had committed suicide was just an attempt to distract me. Who killed him?’

‘I said I suspected the possibility of foul play.’ He spat the words like a schoolteacher infuriated by a stupid answer from a bright pupil. ‘I didn’t say I was positive, and I certainly didn’t say I had a suspect in mind.’

‘But you seem to be extremely well informed.’

Somewhere in a quiet place beyond the car, beyond her imagination, Alexander Buchanan sighed.

‘I knew Simon for over thirty years. I also knew he had a weakness for exotic company, of a kind that could get you into trouble. Nothing personal, but you’re a case in point. At the risk of sounding like a terrible snob, surgeons don’t normally go out with salesgirls.’

Something dashed in front of the car, black and swift, a blur of legs and fur. Stevie swerved, bracing herself for the impact, but there was no bang, no sickening swell beneath her wheels, and when she glanced in the rear-view mirror she saw a dog running along the white lines in the middle of the road, as if they were a map that would guide it home.

She took a deep breath and said, ‘Going out with salesgirls isn’t a crime. Exploiting the families of sick children is.’

‘Agreed, but that’s not what we were doing.’

‘I heard otherwise.’

‘A-h,’ the doctor stretched out the vowel, like a dawning realisation. ‘You’ve been talking to Melvin Summers.’

‘He thinks you killed his daughter.’

‘Yes, he does. It’s a common delusion. Recently bereaved parents often find it impossible to absorb the senselessness of a child’s death. Some of them resolve their confusion by becoming convinced that the doctors were responsible. I wouldn’t say you get used to being a scapegoat, but for the most part you learn how to deal with it. Mr Summers is to be pitied. His wife committed suicide and he resorted to alcohol, not the best form of medication for a man already under great emotional strain, but he was a serious thorn in our sides. I’m afraid our diplomatic skills had failed and we were discussing the possibility of taking out an injunction against him.’

She was approaching another crossroads, another red light. Stevie pressed a foot to the Jaguar’s brakes again and, when there was no sign of an oncoming vehicle, sailed through. She said, ‘I might have bought that, if there weren’t other accusations against your team. Did you know Geoffrey Frei was investigating you?’

‘No, but he was perfectly welcome to do so.’

There was a school up ahead. A sheet drooped from its railings, QUARANTINE CENTRE painted across it in red. Whoever had made the sign had loaded their brush with too much paint and the letters were tailed by drips that made the words look as if they were bleeding. Stevie slowed the Jaguar to a crawl. The door to the school was open, the playground crammed with carelessly parked cars, but there was no other sign of life.

She put her foot back on the accelerator and said, ‘Frei’s investigation was brought to an abrupt halt. He was murdered and then someone broke into his house and stole his research.’

‘I heard about his murder, but I didn’t know about the burglary. Tell me, was that all that was taken, his research I mean?’

The sun cut into Stevie’s eyes, blinding her for an instant. She flipped down the sun visor. The Jaguar’s air conditioning was on, the space inside a comfortable fifteen degrees, but she had an urge to open the car windows and feel the air outside on her face. She kept them closed, the car sealed tight, like a space rocket speeding towards the unknown.

‘Other valuables were stolen, but that doesn’t prove anything. The killer would want the murder and burglary to appear unrelated.’

Buchanan gave a dry laugh. ‘That’s the thing about conspiracy theories; they rely on speculation and that makes them endlessly adaptable. Conspiracists can always come up with an explanation because they don’t have to stick to inconvenient facts. Tell me, what do you know about Frei?’

‘I know he went to school with you, Ahumibe and Simon. I spoke to his wife. She said he hated it. He was bullied.’

‘I’m afraid that was true. Frei was one of those boys that seemed to attract bullies. I never met his wife, but I’m glad to hear he found some happiness, even if he did intend to persecute us. Frei was a strange fish. Ahumibe kept up with him, but the rest of us had cut our ties long ago. He dropped out of medical school and seemed to have transformed his disappointment into a grudge against the profession.’

‘I don’t think there was anything personal about it. His wife said he was torn between old loyalties and an urge for justice.’

Buchanan let out a guffaw that made her sit back in the driver’s seat.

‘You’re right. He was torn, but not for those reasons. It used to make me laugh when I saw his column in the newspaper, his “good man” image, a crusader for the forces of justice in an unjust world. Oh, I daresay Frei did some good, but the man was a congenital liar. His whole life was predicated on deceit.’ Buchanan took a deep breath, as if considering what to say next. ‘Frei was a rather old-fashioned creature, a closeted, married homosexual with children. He and Ahumibe may have had an on-off dalliance; there were certainly rumours to that effect when we were at school. It was the source of some of the bullying. I don’t care what people get up to in their private lives. But I do know Frei had a weakness for casual pickups. When I read the news of his death, I couldn’t help wondering if it was the result of a brief encounter that had gone awry.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Ms Flint.’ Buchanan’s voice was exasperated. ‘I am getting rather tired of being called a liar. If you don’t believe anything I say, there doesn’t seem to be much point in our having this conversation.’

‘Please, don’t hang up.’ An army lorry passed her, headed in the opposite direction. Its sides were dusty and mud-spattered, as if it were in the middle of some campaign. Stevie stared at the road ahead, determined not to make eye contact with the other driver. She heard Buchanan breathing on the end of the line and wondered what was keeping him there. She said, ‘If there’s no truth behind Summers’ allegations or Frei’s investigation, why would anyone want to murder Simon?’

‘Let me ask you a question. How did you and Simon meet?’

It had been an Internet date. A week of late-night flirting online, that had led to a drink in Soho and ended in the bed of a hastily booked hotel room.

Stevie said, ‘We were introduced at a party.’

‘Did he tell you much about his background?’

‘Bits and pieces.’

‘I’ll interpret that as not much. Didn’t it strike you as funny that he never introduced you to his family or friends?’

‘Not really. I didn’t introduce him to mine.’

‘In that case perhaps it was a marriage made in heaven.’

‘We weren’t married.’

‘No, Simon wasn’t really the marrying kind. None of us were, although I had a disastrous attempt at it. Our little gang were the lost boys, the ones whose parents boarded them through the holidays because it was too far to fly us to wherever they were. None of us found it easy to make relationships, but we became some kind of family. Later we shared a flat and then, later still, we worked together. Simon was best man at my wedding. When my son was born I asked Simon to be his godfather, and when I got divorced he let me move into his apartment for a while.’

‘Where did Frei fit into all this?’

Stevie was driving along an avenue of trees, sunlight strobing between the leaves, turning her progress into a cartoon of alternating bright and dark. She wondered if the journalist really had been gay. His wife had made a big thing of his gentleness, but that meant nothing. Some of the gay men Stevie had met had been laddish, some of the straights fey.

‘I told you, Frei went his own way.’ Buchanan’s voice was too tired for impatience but she sensed his frustration. ‘What I’m trying to say is, the three of us shared a history. We looked out for each other.’

‘You also shared a business.’

‘Yes, we had a shared endeavour, to help sick children.’

‘You still haven’t told me why you thought Simon might have been murdered.’

An old man in a dressing gown and slippers was shuffling along the pavement, slow and determined, like a corpse making its own way to the grave. Stevie glanced in the rear-view mirror as she passed and thought his eyes had been blackened, though it may just have been the effect of shadows, settling in the hollows of his face. Buchanan’s sigh seemed to carry into the car, so close she could almost feel it against her skin.

‘I’m telling you this because it’s obvious you’re not going to give up easily. But it’s important you know that, if Simon was killed, trying to uncover the reason why could put you in danger.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Quite the opposite. I’m warning you.’ Perhaps Buchanan realised that his answer sounded like intimidation because he sighed again. ‘Lots of boys envied Simon at school. He was handsome, good at sports and managed to excel in his studies without being a bore about them. I’m repeating myself.’ The doctor paused as if picturing his friend’s gilded youth. ‘I’ve already mentioned how popular Simon was. He made the most of his time there, worked hard, gained excellent grades, went up to Cambridge, but deep down he hated it. Simon always felt that there was something more real beyond the bourgeois confines of our world. He wasn’t fool enough to throw away his advantages, but he became a social tourist. He sought out interesting company.’

‘Like salesgirls.’

‘That was unfair of me.’ Now that he had started, Buchanan seemed keen to get on with his story, like a university don aware of the ticking of the lecture-theatre clock. ‘At first it was people in the arts: musicians, poets, writers. He even dated a rock singer for a while. A strange-looking girl, all skinny legs, multicoloured hair and black eyeliner; like an angry parrot. I got the impression it was the world these people inhabited, rather than the work they did, that attracted Simon. After a while, unfortunately, their exoticism seemed to fade. I suspect Simon discovered that most of the arty crowd were hard-working and middle class, rather like him.’

Stevie asked, ‘Why unfortunately?’

A car was travelling slowly on the road ahead, its rear window jammed with bags, as if heading for the start of a family holiday. She overtook, and caught a glimpse of the car’s occupants. An elderly white lady was at the wheel, a small Asian boy in the passenger seat. Their mouths were moving in a song, the boy waving his arms in accompaniment.

Buchanan said, ‘When their appeal started to wane, Simon drifted towards an edgier set.’ His voice softened and Stevie realised that he had reached the point her ex-editor had called ‘the golden axis’, the moment when the story took over and the interviewee needed to go on. ‘We were at a school reunion when it struck me for the first time how deep Simon was in. It was the kind of boozy all-male affair you’d probably imagine: black tie, nursery food, lots of back-slapping and blue jokes. Simon regaled us with stories of his expeditions into the seamier side of society.’

‘The sex industry?’ Stevie touched a foot to the brakes, not trusting herself to steer the Jaguar straight. ‘Do you mean he slept with prostitutes?’

‘I very much doubt it.’ Buchanan spoke slowly, as if weighing his words. ‘Simon may have met people who were involved in the sex industry. If you turn over a stone you have no control over what crawls out, but that wasn’t what I meant. Surgeons need to be able to cope with risk. Not everyone can take a knife and cut into someone else’s body. Simon was cool under pressure and fascinated by people who had the same ability. No doubt that was what attracted him to you.’

‘My job isn’t dangerous.’

‘Perhaps not, but you present a show on live television with only the barest of scripts. Most people would find that impossible. And look at the way you’ve responded to this crisis. You could have run away, but instead you ran towards it. I’d give odds you’re the kind of person who undertakes extreme challenges for charity.’

Soon after her mother had died Stevie had abseiled down the Forth Railway Bridge in aid of Cancer Research. The thrill had hijacked her, the rush of air and sea, the moment when she had lost all of her thoughts and been no more than one of the gulls swooping above the iron girders.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I always thought those sponsored challenges were ego trips.’

Buchanan made a sound that might have been a laugh.

‘Simon preferred the kind of woman who would contradict him, strong women who weren’t afraid to rise to a dare. I daresay he had the usual moral objections to the sex industry, but it was also the wrong kind of risk-taking for him. He was drawn to people who put themselves on the line. He was especially elated the weekend of the reunion because he’d recently been introduced to a bank robber. “One more specimen for the Newgate Calendar,” was how he put it. Everyone else found his exploits hilarious. Simon was a natural storyteller. But the way his adventures were escalating worried me. I took him aside and warned him that sooner or later these people would want something from him, most probably access to drugs.’

Stevie passed an office block spray-painted with massive green letters: SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH. A week ago it would have made her smile. She asked, ‘What did he say?’

‘He thanked me for my concern and told me to drink up. I was falling behind and was in danger of becoming a bore.’ The chemist paused and took a deep breath, as if marking a change of chapter, and Stevie realised that he too was a natural storyteller. Buchanan continued, ‘Around seven years ago Simon met a woman called Hope Black. I think her background excited him. Her father had been a bookie, as had his father before him, back in the days when gambling was illegal. The Black family tree was intertwined with the family trees of people most of us would cross motorways to avoid. Hope was as proud of her connections as Simon was fascinated by them. They started to see rather a lot of each other. At some point Hope introduced him to back-room poker; illicit matches, high stakes, and the potential to win the jackpot or lose your skin. Simon was fond of Hope, but he fell in love with gambling. He told me later that he felt like he’d found the thing he’d been waiting for all of his life.’

The mention of Hope’s name had chilled her. Stevie tightened her grip on the Jaguar’s steering wheel, Hope’s steering wheel.

‘Didn’t you try to stop him?’

‘I might have, if I’d known what was going on, but it was only when things reached crisis point that Simon told me the full story.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was so predictable I’m surprised you need to ask. Simon was out of his depth. He got into a bit of hot water and Hope dropped him. Perhaps she didn’t have any choice in the matter. He came to Ahumibe and me with his tail between his legs and we helped extricate him, mainly through a bloody great loan to repay the money he’d borrowed from some rather demanding creditors. We hushed it up, Simon went for treatment with a colleague in Harley Street, who is almost as well known for his discretion as for his ability with addicts. All seemed well, for a while anyway. I thought I’d noticed a certain reckless edge to him over the last few months and wondered if he might be about to suffer a relapse. But when I confronted Simon, he assured me that everything was okay. He was in love, he said, and being in love made him silly. I told him not to be too silly and we left it at that. Now I wish I’d pursued it. If you’re looking for someone with a grudge against Simon you’re more likely to find them amongst his gambling associates than at the hospital, though as you’ll already have worked out, my advice is to let sleeping dogs lie.’

It fitted with what the lonely bookie in Better Bets had told her. Stevie thought of the thirty thousand pounds Simon had borrowed from Hope Black. It was as if Buchanan read her mind. He said, ‘Have you spoken to Hope yet?’

‘Hope Black is dead.’

‘Ah, that’s a shame. She was an attractive woman.’

His reduction of the woman to her looks irritated Stevie, but she asked, ‘You met her?’

‘Oh yes, we all met Hope.’

The doctor’s voice was cool, as if no one was dead, no brains leaked into the carpet, no body cold between soiled sheets.

‘Hope didn’t die of the sweats. Someone bashed her brains in.’ Stevie made her words deliberately crude, wanting Buchanan to picture the blood, the ruined skull. ‘I think they thought she was me.’

There was a roundabout up ahead. Stevie ignored the give-way lines, remembering the way Hope Black’s hand had seemed to beckon her. There was a blur of movement and her stomach swooped. A Honda Civic was travelling from the right and it was almost upon her. The other car had priority but Stevie put a hand on the horn and pressed her foot down hard on the accelerator, metal touching metal. She saw an open mouth, a blur of fear and wide eyes, heard the blare of the other vehicle’s horn and the screech of rubber against tarmac, and then she was away, the Honda a reflection skewed across the road in her rear-view mirror.

If Buchanan heard the commotion of skids and warning blasts he ignored it.

‘Hope didn’t look anything like you. She was at least ten years older. She was taller and darker as well.’

He sounded faintly amused. Stevie could imagine his smile, the pale lips stretched in the white face.

‘She resembled me enough for someone who didn’t know either of us to get confused.’

‘Hope lived life on the edge. That’s what drew Simon to her. It’s very probably what drew her death too.’

‘It’s more complicated than that. Someone’s been chasing me ever since I tried to deliver Simon’s package to Mr Reah.’

‘You mean the laptop?’ She heard a faint smile in Buchanan’s voice, as if he had caught her out in some gaucherie. ‘Get rid of it then. Hand it in to the authorities, or bring it here and allow me to dispose of it for you.’

‘I don’t have it any more.’

‘In which case, you’re off the hook. What did you do? Hand it in to the police?’ Stevie let the silence hang between them, and after a pause Buchanan asked, ‘Did you manage to read what was in it?’

‘No.’ It was only a half lie. ‘I couldn’t get past the password.’

The chemist’s voice became serious. ‘It’s possible the laptop might contain confidential information about our process . . .’ The sentence trailed away. Stevie could almost hear the faint murmur of the chemist’s thoughts, potential scenarios turning over in his head. ‘. . . but that wouldn’t have prompted anyone to want to get their hands on it so desperately that they would threaten you. Simon must have encoded other information there. If he had got involved with Hope again, then it could well have been something injurious to his health.’

Stevie drew Hope’s Jaguar to the side of the road. She could imagine Simon as a reckless, put-the-whole-stake-on-red gambler. She realised that she believed Buchanan, and that if Simon was with her now, she would tell him that whatever there had been between them was over. Tears filled her eyes; she wiped them away with her sleeve.

‘If I bring the laptop to you, you’ll be in danger too.’

‘Perhaps.’ Buchanan’s languid poshness seemed more brittle than sinister now. ‘But you’re forgetting I’ve dealt with Simon’s creditors before. They belong to a small world, smaller since the advance of the sweats, no doubt, and unlike you I’m a known quantity. People can’t go around killing respected research chemists without some questions being asked.’

‘They managed it with Simon.’

‘Simon crossed the line. I haven’t. I’m not compromised and I’ve got nothing to hide. I’ll make it clear that I’m going along with things in order to get them off your back, but that if they harm either of us, the full force of the law will come down on them.’

‘Assuming there’s any law left.’

‘That’s something we can only pray for.’ Buchanan no longer sounded smug.

‘Aren’t you afraid I will give you the sweats?’

‘My granddad flew Spitfires in World War Two. Fighter pilots used to say, If your number’s on it . . . I’ve adopted that as my motto for this particular conflict. The priority now is to try and find a cure. Scientists all over the world are online, pooling ideas and information.’ Buchanan sounded resolute. Perhaps he was still thinking about his grandfather, a young man running across the airfield towards his Spitfire, ready to embark on another mission that might be his last. ‘I can’t leave the lab, but I took the precaution of holding on to the contact numbers of the people I dealt with last time Simon was in trouble. They’re probably out of date, but it’s a place to start.’

Stevie wondered at his willingness to interrupt his research to help her, but then Buchanan asked, ‘Are you still healthy? No reoccurrence of symptoms?’ And she decided that he was more confident of saving her from Simon’s creditors than of finding a cure for the sweats.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve had lot of exposure to people with the virus and so far I’m fine.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s extremely good news. I heard it’s getting a little hairy outside. Tell me where you are and I’ll send my son William to collect you.’

‘I’ve managed on my own so far.’

‘That’s the kind of thing Hope would have said.’

‘I’m not Hope.’

‘No, she’s dead.’

‘And I’ve no intention of joining her. There’s someone I need to check on. As soon as I’m through I’ll deliver the laptop to you.’

‘It would make more sense to let William . . .’

Buchanan started to make some objection but Stevie killed the conversation and ignored the melody of his return call. She recognised the streets now, she was only a block or two from Iqbal’s apartment, but she turned on the robot voice of the satnav and let it guide her. The sound of a familiar voice, even a recorded one, was a comfort.