Wildcard

NINE

Edinburgh

Paul Grossart hitched up the waistband of his trousers as he approached the desk of the George Hotel. He had lost weight recently and his clothes were starting to hang badly on him.

‘I’m having dinner with Mr Vance,’ he told the receptionist, thinking that eating dinner was the last thing he wanted to do. Food just wasn’t high on his agenda these days.

The girl, wearing corporate uniform with a distinctive Scottish theme, pushed her hair back with both hands and checked a small lined notebook in front of her. ‘Mr Vance’s party is in a private dining room this evening, Mr…?’

‘Grossart.’

‘Mr Grossart. William will take you up, sir.’ She smiled, and summoned the short stocky porter lurking by the stairs and Grossart was led to a small dining room, where he found Vance sitting talking with two other men. His first impression was that the men were not scientists; they were dressed too well.

‘Come in, Paul,’ said Vance, getting to his feet. ‘I thought it best if we met on neutral ground this time round. Drink?’

Grossart asked for a gin and tonic, which Vance ordered before introducing him to the strangers. ‘Paul, this is Clyde Miller, a crisis-management specialist, and this is Dr Lee Chambers, one of our in-house physicians and a specialist in infectious diseases.’

Grossart shook hands with both men and sat down.

‘How are things?’ asked Vance.

Grossart looked at him as if it were an obscene question. ‘You know how things are,’ he retorted. ‘Both my people at the field station have called in sick — that’s why you’re here, damn it. Look, Hiram, this thing has gone far enough. I think we should come clean and be done with it.’

Vance looked at him coldly and said, ‘Not an option, I’m afraid. We’re all in this together and there’s no going back.’ He spoke with such finality that Grossart was speechless for a moment.

‘And just what the hell do I do about my people in Wales?’ he asked when he’d recovered.

‘Nothing,’ said Vance. ‘Absolutely nothing. That’s why Clyde and Lee are here. They’ll be on their way to Wales first thing tomorrow morning and they’ll take charge of everything. They’ll see to it that your folks get the best of treatment, should they need it. They’ll want for nothing, I promise. All you have to do…’

Grossart looked at him expectantly.

‘All you have to do is stall the families when they start asking awkward questions. We’ll have to sever direct communications with the field station until the situation resolves itself one way or the other, so they’re bound to start complaining.’

‘And what the hell do I tell them when they do?’ complained Grossart.

Vance leaned forward in his seat, all trace of good humour gone from his face. ‘You use your initiative, Paul, that’s what you do. I fucking well pay you enough!’

Manchester

The first snow of the winter fell on Manchester. It quickly turned to brown slush on the city streets, but the parks and gardens managed to hold on to their blanket of white long enough for Steven to see the irony of a white coat being worn by such a black day. Twelve new admissions were made to City General, thankfully all of them known contacts, while three more people in Perth went down with the disease, again, known contacts of the dead man, McDougal.

Jack Cane avoided eye contact with anyone when he admitted quietly at the morning meeting that no connection between the Manchester and the Scottish outbreaks had been established, nor was one likely to be. His team had worked all day and right through the night with their opposite numbers in Scotland, but had failed to find a link.

‘The damned thing seems to have come out of the blue,’ said a weary-looking Cane.

Steven took no pleasure in seeing that all Cane’s self-confidence had disappeared and he seemed a broken man.

Cane’s comment heralded thirty seconds of silence, before George Byars said, ‘So it seems fair to say things aren’t looking too good this morning.’

‘One of my nurses in the special unit reported sick this morning,’ said Miss Christie. ‘I think it’s serious. She sustained a needlestick injury last week while changing a saline drip. The patient was only semi-conscious at the time: he moved at the wrong moment and the needle went right through her suit into her arm.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Byars quietly. The others also murmured muted words of sympathy as if suddenly and painfully aware of how helpless they all were against the virus.

‘This is bound to affect morale among the nurses,’ said Miss Christie. ‘Protective clothing is all well and good in a laboratory, where the virus sits obediently in a glass test tube, but when the reservoir is a delirious patient with flailing arms and blood and vomit leaking out of him, that is a completely different situation.’

‘I don’t think we can speak highly enough of your nurses, Miss Christie,’ said Byars. ‘And I am only too aware that the medical staff in this situation are largely redundant. The nurses are the only factor standing between the patients and death. Please make sure that they are aware of our high regard for them, and pass on our thanks.’

Miss Christie nodded and said that she would.

‘The papers aren’t exactly helping when it comes to morale,’ said one of Cane’s team. ‘Have you seen the latest?’ He held up a front page that said, ‘Killer Virus Stalks City’. ‘Talk about scaremongering.’

‘People are beginning to panic,’ said Morely. ‘You can feel it in the air. Fear is breeding anger, and they’re looking for someone to blame.’

‘Perhaps an appeal for calm?’ suggested one of the senior nurses. ‘Local radio and television?’

‘You’d be as well holding up a big sign that says, “Panic!”’ said Caroline Anderson. ‘People tend not to pay attention to that sort of thing any more. They’ve been conned too often in the past.’

‘And what has the good Dr Dunbar come up with this morning, might I ask?’ said Cane.

‘Almost as little as you and your team, Professor,’ replied Steven, but he was pleased to see that Cane still had some fight left in him. ‘But I do have a lead that I’m following up, for the Manchester outbreak at least.’

Cane swallowed and seemed embarrassed at the revelation. ‘Are you going to share this with us, or do Sci-Med investigators prefer the Lone Ranger approach?’

‘Whatever gets the job done, Professor,’ replied Steven evenly. ‘Ann Danby had a boyfriend. I’m currently trying to find out who he was.’

Cane looked at the other members of his team, who shook their heads in unison. ‘My people seem to disagree,’ he said. ‘That’s an avenue we’ve already explored thoroughly.’

‘She kept it pretty much a secret but she did have one,’ insisted Steven. ‘I can even tell you his name; it’s Victor. He’s almost certainly married and has a high-profile job here in Manchester.’

‘But you’re the only one who knows about this Victor,’ said Cane with a barely disguised sneer in his voice.

‘No, I think a couple of other people do,’ replied Steven evenly. ‘It’s just a question of persuading them to confide in me.’

Caroline Anderson looked at Steven wide-eyed, as if suddenly realising why she had been asked to put pressure on Pelota. Steven acknowledged her look with a slight shrug and a raising of his eyebrows.

‘And are you proposing that this man gave the disease to Miss Danby, Doctor?’ asked Cane.

‘I think it’s entirely possible. I can’t say more than that.’

‘Then I’m sure we’ll all await developments with bated breath,’ said Cane.

‘As it appears to be the only lead we have, I wish you luck, Doctor,’ said Byars. There was a murmur of agreement from all the others except Cane and his people, who had gone into a huddle to murmur among themselves. ‘Might I remind everyone,’ continued Byars, ‘that we are all in this together. There is absolutely no room for petty feuds and academic jealousies.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Cane, who obviously knew that the implied criticism had been levelled at him.

‘We must keep our nerve and pull together if we are to defeat this thing,’ said Byars.

‘I’m afraid that matters may be taken out of all our hands in the next few days,’ said Sinclair, speaking for the first time that morning. ‘My masters tell me that a government crisis-management team is being put together as we speak. If things don’t improve by the weekend in terms of case numbers, they’ll be brought in to take over control. There’s also talk of asking the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, for help.’

‘You’re bringing in the Americans? That’s going over the top, don’t you think?’ complained Cane.

Sinclair gave his practised diplomatic smile and said, ‘I don’t think I’m giving away any secrets in telling you that HMG does not want to be seen dragging its heels in this affair.’

‘So they’ve come up with a grand gesture?’ said Cane.

‘CDC Atlanta have more experience than anyone else in handling outbreaks of these African viruses,’ countered Sinclair.

Caroline Anderson collared Steven when the meeting broke up. ‘So that’s why you asked for the harassment of a law-abiding citizen,’ she said.

‘Ann Danby had dinner at his restaurant with the elusive Victor the week before she died,’ explained Steven. ‘Pelota knows who he is but refuses to tell me. Have your people been to see him yet?’

‘Yes,’ replied Caroline. ‘He wasn’t at all amused.’

‘Good,’ said Steven. ‘What worries me most right now is the possibility that Victor is a healthy carrier of the disease and doesn’t even know it.’

‘That would be the stuff of nightmares, all right,’ agreed Caroline, ‘but carrier status has never been shown for filoviruses.’

‘I’m clinging to that straw too,’ said Steven. ‘But that would mean either that he was incubating the disease when he gave it to Ann — in which case why hasn’t he turned up as a patient? — or that he was recovering from it and didn’t even know he’d had it, which sounds equally unlikely.’

‘Beats me,’ said Caroline.

‘Let’s rattle Pelota’s cage a bit more,’ said Steven.

Things had not improved by the weekend: in fact, they had got worse. Thirty new cases had been admitted to City General between Thursday and Sunday, stretching the nursing staff and ward facilities to breaking point. The only comfort was that all the new cases were contacts of known cases; there were no new wildcards. The depressing thing from Caroline Anderson’s point of view was that three of the new cases were contacts of the girl who had broken quarantine to go to the disco.

The government crisis-management team arrived on Saturday, as did an ‘advisory’ team from CDC Atlanta — two virologists and an epidemiologist. Steven decided to stay out of what he thought might be a recipe for internecine strife but was pleased to see that one of the crisis-management team was Fred Cummings. He arranged to meet him at his hotel on Sunday evening.

By Sunday, the newspapers had decided to upgrade the outbreak to epidemic status. They ignored the official figures required for such an accolade, but no one argued too much. People were dying, so what you called it was irrelevant. Five had died in the last two days and eleven more were on the critical list. Politicians had now decided that the press attention being focused on Manchester merited their presence, and fluttered northwards like moths to a flame to voice their opinions to a frightened public. While government ministers praised the relevant local authorities, opposition spokesmen accused them of bungling ineptitude and cover-ups.

Steven was watching a regional news bulletin on TV in his hotel room before leaving to meet Fred Cummings when a debate between a Labour health minister and a Manchester Conservative MP, introduced as the ‘shadow spokesman on health matters’, became very heated. The Labour man maintained that the outbreak had been handled in textbook fashion from the outset. The Conservative asserted that he had ‘proof positive’ that it had not, and that the spread of the disease could be blamed fairly and squarely on the shortcomings of the Public Health Service in the city.

When challenged, he started to relate the story of the disco girl. Steven closed his eyes in dread.

‘How could a girl who was suffering from the early stages of a killer disease, and whom the authorities had already listed as a known contact, very much at risk of contracting the disease, be allowed to visit a crowded city disco?’ the MP wanted to know. ‘And afterwards, what steps did the authorities take to warn the people at risk in the disco? None, absolutely none.’

The government man was forced on to the defensive, claiming weakly that he was ‘unable to speak about individual cases’.

The exchange gave Steven a bad feeling; this would be a natural story for the papers to pick up on in the morning and if that happened Caroline Anderson was going to be very vulnerable.

Fred Cummings was wearing one of his usual loud sports jackets when Steven found him in the bar of his hotel. He was also wearing a bright-blue tie with horizontal yellow stripes. Steven wondered for a moment if the man was colour blind but changed this to a positive thought — it made him easy to find in a crowded bar.

‘So it’s the streets of Manchester, not London,’ said Steven by way of greeting.

‘I take no comfort from that,’ said Cummings, getting up to shake Steven’s hand. ‘I thought your involvement in this was over.’

Steven explained that he had been reassigned to investigate the source of the outbreak.

‘Some guys get all the good jobs,’ said Cummings. ‘Heathrow, Manchester and now Scotland, and not even the suggestion of a link anywhere, as I understand it.’

‘About sums it up,’ agreed Steven.

‘Makes you think,’ said Cummings, looking thoughtful.

‘Makes you think what?’

‘Terrorism,’ said Cummings.

‘Are you serious?’

‘Three unconnected outbreaks of a previously unknown virus with a high mortality rate? It’s got to be a possibility, don’t you think?’

‘Frankly, I didn’t even consider it,’ admitted Steven. ‘But now that you’ve made me, you’re right, it is a possibility, albeit a remote one in view of them using individuals as prime targets — a London civil servant, a Manchester computer expert and a Scottish bank manager.’

‘Good thinking, Dunbar,’ conceded Cummings. ‘Just testing. So, give me the low-down on the game and the players.’

Steven filled Cummings in on the management team handling the outbreak so far, and gave his frank opinion of those involved. His conclusion was that he thought the whole thing had been handled well by people who knew what they were doing.

‘Who’s been in charge of epidemiology?’ asked Cummings.

‘Professor Jack Cane.’

‘Sourpuss Cane? Always looks as if someone has put vinegar in his tea?’

‘I’ve certainly not seen him smile much,’ agreed Steven. ‘But then he resents my involvement.’

‘That sounds like Jack: everything gets done by the book. He is to imagination what Tony Blair is to socialism, a complete bloody stranger.’

Steven laughed. ‘I take it you don’t rate him,’ he said.

‘The guy who was bottom of the class at medical school has to end up working somewhere,’ said Cummings.

‘He’s got a chair,’ Steven pointed out.

‘He married the vice-chancellor’s daughter,’ countered Cummings. ‘A woman with no dress sense, if I remember correctly.’

Steven almost choked on his drink.

‘Still, mustn’t speak ill of the brain-dead,’ said Cummings, getting up to fetch more drinks. When he came back, he asked, ‘How about the Public Health woman, Anderson?’

‘She’s very good but I’m worried about her,’ replied Steven. ‘Unlike your friend Cane, she doesn’t always play it by the book. She dared to use common sense at one stage and I think she’s about to pay dearly for it.’ He told Cummings about Caroline’s decision not to publicise the girl’s visit to the disco and about the television news earlier.

‘Doesn’t look good,’ said Cummings. ‘The gods might well demand a sacrifice.’

And so it proved on Monday. The papers, as Steven had feared, couldn’t resist making Caroline Anderson a scapegoat. She was blamed for the spread of the disease in the city through her lack of ‘decisive action at a crucial time’, as one of them put it. ‘Public Health Chief’s Blunder Threatens City’, crowed another. Caroline was forced to resign by three in the afternoon.

Steven called her to say how sorry he was.

‘They didn’t listen to a word I said,’ she complained, obviously bemused by the rapidity of events. ‘They’d all made up their minds before they even saw me.’

‘I don’t suppose it’s much help right now, but you made the right decision,’ said Steven.

‘Thanks, but I get the impression people are trying to avoid me this afternoon.’

‘Embarrassment,’ said Steven. ‘They don’t know what to say.’

Steven had scarcely put down the phone when it rang. ‘All right, you win, Dunbar,’ said a voice he didn’t recognise.

‘I’m sorry, who’s this?’

‘Just get these Public Health bastards off my back and I’ll tell you what you want to know. They’re ruining my business.’

The penny dropped: it was Anthony Pelota.

‘We close at midnight tonight — assuming anyone turns up after what you bastards have been doing to me. Come round then and I’ll tell you.’

‘It’s a date,’ said Steven, elated at the prospect of making progress at last. Another comforting thought was that he might not have to tackle Ann Danby’s mother after all. In his book, Ann and Charles Danby seemed two decent people whose life had been turned upside down by their daughter’s death. He suspected that respectability had always been a cornerstone of their lives and now they had to cope with the fact that not only had Ann taken her own life, but she was being cited as the cause of a virulent disease. On top of that, she had been wrongly labelled a drug addict and a whore by several tabloids. The Danbys really didn’t need him questioning them all over again about their daughter’s sex life.

At six in the evening Steven telephoned his own daughter, Jenny, to apologise for not having been up to see her at the weekend. He spoke first to his sister-in-law, Sue, to find out how things had been going.

‘No problems at all,’ she assured him. ‘Jenny was disappointed, of course, that you couldn’t come, but the school’s planning a Christmas fair and the kids are making the decorations, so that’s being keeping all three of them occupied. Jenny’s been made responsible for green stars.’

‘A big responsibility,’ said Steven.

‘You’d better believe it,’ said Sue. ‘I’ll put her on.’

Steven felt the usual lump in his throat when Jenny came on the line with a cheerful, ‘Hello, Daddy.’

‘Hi, Nutkin, how are you?’

‘Busy, busy, busy. I’m making stars for the school hall, beautiful green ones.’

‘Then I’m sure they’ll be the best green stars anyone’s ever seen,’ said Steven, ‘and I look forward to seeing them when I come up there. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it this weekend, Jenny.’

‘That’s all right, Daddy. Auntie Sue said you were busy with sick people, trying to make them better. We prayed for them at school this morning. Miss Jackson said they were very ill.’

‘They are, Nutkin, and the sooner I find out where the germs are coming from, the sooner people will stop falling ill.’

‘Best get on then. Bye, Daddy.’

‘Bye, Nutkin. Love you.’

‘Love you too, Daddy.’

Sue came back on the line. ‘Any idea how long the epidemic down there is going to run?’ she asked. ‘There were three more cases declared in Perth today.’

‘Something tells me it’s going to get worse before it gets better,’ said Steven. ‘Frankly, we’re no nearer finding the source of it today than we were at the outset.’

‘That’s not a happy thought.’

Steven agreed. He had a word with Sue’s kids, Mary and Robin, before hanging up. They asked if they could go to the zoo again the next time he came to Scotland and his ‘Maybe’ was taken as a cast-iron promise.

The streets around the Magnolia were dark and almost deserted when Steven got there just after midnight. The earlier snow had given way to a clear starlit night which had brought a hard frost to the pavements, and they glistened as he walked from his parking place to the restaurant. The lights were on inside but just like last time the blinds were shut and a ‘Closed’ sign hung on the door. He knocked on the glass but this time there was no response. He tried several more times before beginning to think that Pelota had changed his mind.

‘Shit!’ he murmured. More in frustration than anything else, he gave the door handle a sharp twist, and to his surprise the door opened. He stepped inside, paused and called Pelota’s name. Still no response. He looked around. The restaurant was warm, the table lights were all on and Mozart was playing gently in the background. He went to the back of the restaurant and pushed open the kitchen door. He found Pelota lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

‘Sweet Jesus!’ he exclaimed. He bent down to examine the body, which was curled up in the foetal position and facing away from him. The amount of blood convinced Steven that Pelota must be dead, but he was wrong: Pelota gripped his arm weakly and turned to face him. His eyes were wide and his lips drawn back over his teeth in agony. He tried to talk but blood was frothing from his mouth and Steven saw a kitchen knife embedded in his stomach.

‘Don’t try to speak, old son,’ said Steven, freeing himself from Pelota’s grip and fumbling for his mobile phone. He punched in three nines and asked for an ambulance and then the police. He gave the bare minimum of information, knowing that his skills as a doctor were pressingly in demand if Pelota was to survive. He stripped off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and donned a pair of plastic kitchen gloves before grabbing some clean table linen and getting to work on stemming the blood flow.

Stomach wounds were bad, and Pelota’s was particularly awful in that there had been intestinal damage: the contents were oozing out into his peritoneal cavity, increasing the danger of infection many-fold. Steven spoke automatically to the man as he worked, assuring him that help was on its way and all would be well soon. Pelota passed out and Steven felt for a carotid pulse; it was still there, but weak.

The last time Steven had dealt with such a wound he had been sheltering in a hollow in the desert while on operation in the Middle East. His patient on that occasion had been a fellow soldier whose insides had been opened by a grenade booby trap. The soldier had died because sophisticated help had been a long way away. Pelota’s chances would only be marginally better if he reached hospital in time. He had already lost an enormous amount of blood.

Mozart’s ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik’ gave way to the even more beautiful sound of an ambulance on its way. The wail of a police car joined the chorus. The thought of police involvement made Steven start thinking about the criminal aspects of what had happened, as well as the measures necessary to keep the wounded man alive. Pelota had a bone-handled kitchen knife protruding from his stomach and presumably he hadn’t put it there himself. Was it conceivable that the attempted murder had had something to do with his decision to tell Steven who Ann Danby’s lover was? It was a chilling thought. What could be so important about keeping a love affair a secret? What depended on it? A marriage? A career? A reputation? All three?

The ambulance stopped outside the door and two attendants entered the restaurant, carrying emergency equipment. They froze when they saw the man on the floor. ‘Jesus Christ!’ said one. ‘What the fuck?’ said the other.

‘He’s been stabbed in the stomach; there’s intestinal damage. He needs intravenous fluid quickly.’

‘Who are you?’ asked the first attendant suspiciously.

‘I’m a doctor and this man needs help fast.’

‘No one said anything about this amount of blood. You’ll have to wait for a specialist crew.’

Steven couldn’t believe his ears for a moment. ‘What?’ he exclaimed.

‘There’s a special service operating for high-virus-risk cases,’ replied the man, looking down at Pelota.

‘This is nothing to do with the virus,’ exclaimed Steven. ‘He’s been stabbed, for Christ’s sake, and if he doesn’t get to hospital soon he’s going to have no chance at all of making it.’

‘We’ll call a special equipment vehicle,’ replied the man, leading his colleague outside and leaving Steven speechless. As they left, two police officers from a Panda car came in.

‘Shit! Nobody said it was a bloody murder,’ complained the first.

‘At the moment it’s an attempted murder,’ said Steven through gritted teeth. ‘He’s still alive but he has to get to hospital.’

Another police car drew up and two CID officers entered. ‘Would you please step away from the victim, sir,’ said the first.

Steven looked up from holding an improvised linen swab against Pelota’s wound. ‘If I step away he’ll die,’ he said. ‘Your call.’

‘I’m sure the ambulancemen know what they’re doing, sir. So if you’ll please just step back…’

‘The ambulancemen are calling an ambulance,’ said Steven evenly. ‘I’m a doctor, and right now I’m the only thing between him and that great big kitchen in the sky.’

One of the ambulancemen came back into the restaurant and said, ‘It’ll be ten minutes. All the specials are out on shouts at the moment.’

There was a brief conversation between police and ambulancemen while Steven continued trying to stem the blood. The ambulancemen were adamant that they weren’t going to touch anyone exuding that amount of blood, certainly not without the special protective anti-virus suits.

‘So give me your equipment,’ said Steven.

The two men looked doubtful.

‘C’mon, for Christ’s sake. I’ve got to get a drip into him. He isn’t going to last ten minutes like this.’

The ambulancemen opened up their special equipment bag and Steven rummaged among the contents. ‘I need saline,’ he snapped. One of the men went to fetch it from the vehicle outside. Steven took the saline pack from the man and attached the giving set to it, asking one of the policemen to hold the plastic reservoir above the patient while he inserted the shunt needle into Pelota’s arm.

The minutes passed like hours as Steven worked and the emergency services watched. The show came to an end when Pelota’s head rolled to one side and his eyes opened but didn’t see. Steven felt desperately for a pulse and found nothing. He let his head slump against his chest for a moment before looking slowly up at the others and saying, ‘He’s dead.’