‘Very well. There was a good response to the call for volunteer nurses, as I knew there would be. I think we can safely say that we are on top of things at the moment.’
‘Well done.’ He turned to Morely and asked, ‘How about contacts? Any problems there?’
‘All the friends and relatives we’ve seen seem to understand the gravity of the situation and are reconciled to staying indoors for the ten-day period. We’ve had no real opposition at all,’ said Morely. ‘I think the same goes for the community nurses?’
One of the nursing staff took her cue and agreed that this was the case.
‘Excellent,’ said Byars. ‘How about the academics? Any progress in establishing the source of the outbreak, Professor?’
‘Not yet,’ admitted Cane. ‘But we had one interesting piece of news this afternoon. Porton say that the Manchester virus is identical to the Heathrow one.’
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?’