Lockdown

Chapter Fifteen

Amy sat out on the metal balcony at the back of the apartment looking down on to the empty concourse below. It was cold, and she had a travelling rug wrapped around her shoulders to keep her warm. But the fresh air was good, and she had left the French windows open to let it blow through the top floor. The skull still smelled. And although she had wrapped it in several plastic bags and taken it down to the bottom landing, it had left an unpleasant odour lingering in the air.

She loved to sit out here on summer evenings, screened from the gaze of her neighbours by the wisteria she had trained to grow all around it. On long, lazy summer afternoons it was a sun trap, and in the evenings it was fanned by the cooling movement of the air. A delicious retreat from life, a place to forget.

Now the wisteria was naked and gnarled, providing no kind of a screen, and it was hard to believe that fresh growth would appear in the spring, cascades of lovely purple flowers falling all around the railings, drawing the first honeybees of the year in search of nectar. This was only her second winter since the accident, and that first year she had found November through March to be the hardest months. Cold days when you wanted to be out walking, striding out with the wind in your face, the cold sting of rain on your cheeks. Hurrying home for a bowl of hot soup, curtains drawn against the night, curled up on the settee with a good book and a glass of soft red wine.

And here she was, huddled bleakly in her wheelchair, cold and depressed and letting dark thoughts creep in to cloud her usual sunny disposition. Her heart bled for MacNeil, and wept for the memory of the young man who had died at the wheel of his car that fateful night just thirty months ago. The young man she was to have married. The young man whose baby she’d been carrying.

It had been just seven days since the test proved positive. They had already decided to marry, and so it was just one more reason for celebration. They couldn’t have been happier. Perhaps that’s why fate had dealt them such a cruel blow. They had dared to be so happy. Happier than anyone else they knew. Happiness had radiated from every pore. She had been so happy she glowed. She couldn’t stop smiling. Had anyone ever been happier in the history of the human race?

David had drunk only mineral water that night. He was driving, he said, and he had responsibilities now that he was to be a father. Amy had kept him company. She was pregnant. No alcohol for mum until after the baby was born. And then they could celebrate. Champagne to wet the baby’s head.

How ironic that it should have been a drunk driver whose car ploughed into the side of theirs at the junction. Straight through the traffic lights on red. Experts called to give evidence at the trial judged that he had been doing more than sixty. Even more ironic that he had walked away unscathed. In another three years he would be out of prison, with most of his life still ahead of him, able-bodied and fit. A job waiting for him in his father’s business. A forgiving family.

Amy found it difficult to forgive, but she had tried hard not to let it make her bitter. She had lost so much else, that to lose that core of sunshine that lit her personality would have plunged her into a dark world, depressed and defeated, and unable to face the challenges ahead. Challenges that would need all her reserves of courage and resolve and optimism.

But tonight she wasn’t sure how much deeper she could dig into those reserves. She grasped the controller on the arm of her wheelchair and manoeuvred herself back into the attic of the warehouse, closing the French windows behind her and drawing the curtains against the night. Time, she thought, for a glass of red wine to cheer herself up. She went to the kitchen and poured herself one. If only now she could curl up on the settee with a good book.

The electric motor whined as she crossed the floor to gaze for the umpteenth time at the little girl whose face she had recreated. She wasn’t sure about the hair. Something told her — instinct, the thing that MacNeil so hated when it came to analysis of evidence — that Lyn would suit her hair short. Not a bob cut. Something more primal — ragged and spiky. After all, a child from a developing country would not have had access to a stylist. And yet she had been here in London. Living here, perhaps. But not long enough, certainly, for a change of diet to affect her teeth. And there had been no surgery attempted to fix her lip.

Was she adopted? If so, who were her adoptive parents? Hadn’t they reported her missing? Questions, questions, questions. They had been rattling around her head all evening. An attempt, she recognised, to stop her dwelling on other things. But there had been no answers. Only flights of fancy. Speculation. Assumption. She knew no more now than she had this morning.

The phone rang and she crossed the room to answer it.

‘Amy, it’s Zoe.’

‘Hi, Zoe.’ Amy glanced at the time. It was after eleven. ‘You’re not still at the lab?’

‘Yep.’

‘You should have been home before the curfew.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m stuck here now, aren’t I? And it’s all your fault.’

Amy gasped her indignation. ‘My fault! How?’

‘You asked me to run a virology test on the bone marrow Dr Bennet recovered from the skeleton of the little girl.’

‘You’ve done a PCR test already?’

‘I did more than that.’ She sounded pleased with herself. ‘I recovered not only the virus, but the RNA coding.’

Amy experienced momentary confusion. ‘What? You mean you’re telling me she had the flu?’

‘She sure did. And the virus I recovered is definitely infectious. I mean, the pure RNA alone is still infectious. But the RNA and protein together, well, that’s sheer dynamite.’

‘Jesus, Zoe,’ Amy said, alarmed. ‘You should be working in a Level Three lab with infectious material like that.’

‘Yeah, probably.’ There was a hint of a yawn at the other end of the phone.

‘You don’t have lab three facilities there.’

‘Nope.’

‘But you used lab three precautions, right?’

‘Well, not exactly.’

‘Zoe!’ Amy was shocked. ‘You stupid idiot!’

‘Hey, keep your hair on, Amy. It’s cool. Honest. I know what I’m doing. I could have done it in my kitchen.’

Amy was furious. ‘Is Dr Bennet there?’

‘He’s got a couple of autopsies.’

‘Well, get him to call me as soon as he’s free.’

‘Aw, come on, Amy, you’ll get me into trouble.’

‘You should be in trouble, Zoe. You could infect yourself. You could infect everybody in the building.’

‘It’s all locked down and safe as houses. Honest.’ She paused, nursing her silent resentment at Amy’s anger. ‘So I suppose you won’t want to know what else I found, then?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Hah. Got your interest now, haven’t I?’

‘Zoe...’ Amy’s voice carried its own warning.

‘It’s not real.’

Amy heard the words, but she didn’t understand them. ‘What do you mean it’s not real?’

‘The flu virus. It’s not the H5N1 mutant that’s killing everyone. It’s been genetically engineered.’

Amy was having difficulty taking on board the implications of what Zoe was saying. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Well, it’s all just code, right? When you boil it right down to basics, any virus is just a series of letters — code words. And somebody left some words in the code that shouldn’t be there. I mean, for example, you would find the words Stu I AGGCCT and Sma CCCGGG in synthetic polio. And you know these create a restriction site that is easily recognised by treating the DNA copy of the virus RNA with a battery of restriction enzymes that cut the DNA at that site.’

‘Woah! Jesus, Zoe, hold on! Speak English.’

‘I thought I was.’

‘Okay, think molecular genetics for idiots.’

She heard Zoe sighing at the other end of the phone. ‘People have been collecting library sequence banks for the flu virus for years. I’ve got them all on file. Took only a few minutes on my laptop to compare the RNA of the virus we got from the girl with the sequence banks on the hard drive. The introduced restriction sites stood out like a sore thumb. I’m telling you, that kid didn’t just have any old garden-variety flu. She had a twenty-four carat, genetically engineered humdinger.’

Amy sat for a moment replaying what Zoe had just told her. None of it made any sense. ‘Is that what killed her?’ she asked. ‘This man-made flu?’

Zoe blew air through her lips three miles away across town. ‘I haven’t got the first idea.’