Cummings looked sidelong at him and said kindly, ‘Don’t let it become your problem, Steven. You’ve got to stay detached from the nitty-gritty and concentrate on finding the source. There must be one.’
Steven said, ‘It’s hard to remain detached when people are dying around you and you haven’t a clue where to look next.’
‘It’ll come to you. It sometimes takes more courage not to become involved.’
‘How’s Sourpuss Cane doing?’
‘He’s all but given up,’ replied Cummings. ‘Going strictly by the book, as he’s done all his life, has yielded precisely nothing. Your coming up with a boyfriend for Ann Danby whom he and his lot failed to spot and the government calling in help from CDC were severe blows to his pride. It’s my guess he’s about to realise that he needs to “spend more time with his family” and resign.’
‘Another resignation?’ said Steven. ‘Not good for morale. Who’s taken over from Caroline at Public Health?’
‘Her number two, Kinsella. He’s okay but Caroline already ran a good department; he’s just taken up the reins. Pity Spicer played politics with Caroline’s job. She was a big asset.’
‘Right.’
Steven returned to his hotel and started to work his way once more through all the data he had gathered on the people classified as wildcards. Yet again he searched for a common factor he might have overlooked but yet again he and his computer failed to spot one. ‘More data,’ he murmured. ‘Must have more data.’
He rang Sci-Med and asked for more information about the people involved. No, he couldn’t be more specific, he told them, just send anything they could come up with, however trivial. Better too much information than too little.
Steven thought long and hard about what Cummings had said about not becoming too involved. It made sense, and he acknowledged that, but his gut instinct was telling him something else. It was telling him that waiting for inspiration was something that could be done anywhere. It might just as well be down at St Jude’s.
Assuming that Caroline and Kate would take their mid-shift break around the same time they had on the previous evening, Steven drove down to the church and waited for them to emerge. He waited fifteen minutes before the pair of them appeared with hair wet from the shower and dark rings under their eyes from tiredness.
‘I really didn’t think I’d see you here again,’ said Caroline quietly.
‘I find I have another free evening,’ said Steven, using bravado to combat what he really felt.
‘Good for you,’ said Kate. Caroline echoed this but her eyes said that she understood just how big an effort it was for him.
When the two women returned to work after after their break, Steven joined them as an extra pair of hands. If anything, conditions in the old church had got worse overnight. Patient numbers had risen sharply; there was an extra line of beds, making three in all and housing something in the region of sixty desperately ill people.
‘We’re having to use the old vestry as a mortuary,’ said Kate Lineham. ‘The crematoria are finding it difficult to cope. There’s a bit of a backlog.’
Steven swallowed and gave a slight nod.
‘Let’s go to it, guys,’ said Kate.
Steven worked a five-hour shift as he had the night before and left with Caroline again, feeling drained but very conscious that Caroline had worked twice as long as he had.
‘I think I have a tin of corned beef in the cupboard at home,’ said Caroline, ‘and maybe some beans. What d’you say?’
‘You temptress, you,’ said Steven, feeling again that he could do with some company. ‘But I’m sure I could get us both dinner at my hotel if you’d like?’
Caroline shook her head and said, ‘No, I’m all in and I must look it. Let’s go home. You can take me to dinner when this is all over.’
‘That’s a date.’
‘What on earth possessed you to come back to St Jude’s, feeling the way you do?’ asked Caroline while they waited for the beans to heat.
‘I’m still a doctor. I couldn’t stand by when staffing levels are as bad as they are,’ replied Steven. ‘My precious feelings are a luxury the situation can’t afford.’
Caroline gave a nod of understanding, perhaps tinged with admiration, and asked, ‘Did you find it any easier today?’
‘I’ve just thrown up in your bathroom, if that answers your question, but you’ve been doing much more than me. How are you coping?’
Caroline swallowed as she thought about the question, and Steven saw vulnerability appear in her eyes for the first time. It disappeared when she tried to disguise it but then it returned and remained. It brought a lump to his throat.
‘We had nineteen deaths today,’ she said quietly. ‘We piled them up in the vestry… one on top of the other… like sacks of potatoes. Somebody’s daughter, somebody’s son, all waiting in a heap to be collected… and burned. I never thought I’d see anything like that in England in this day and age.’
‘When did you last have a day off?’ asked Steven gently.
‘None of us without family commitments are taking days off until we get some extra nurses down there,’ said Caroline.
‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ said Steven.
‘Maybe I deserve to be. Maybe if I’d put out an alert after that girl went to the disco, it really would have made a difference.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Steven. ‘We’ve been through all that. You made entirely the right decision in the circumstances. You have nothing to reproach yourself for, absolutely nothing. That MP just used you and the circumstances to get himself noticed — self-seeking little bastard.’
‘Thanks… but I’m not entirely convinced.’
Steven’s assurances were interrupted by his mobile phone going off in his jacket pocket. He went out into the hall to retrieve it and took the call there. When he returned Caroline could see that something was the matter.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘They think there’s a new wildcard case in Hull,’ Steven replied, still stunned at the news. ‘Sci-Med are sending details, but Public Health have been unable to establish any contacts. They seem to think that this is the best example yet of a case occurring spontaneously.’
‘Shit.’ Caroline sighed. ‘Where’s all this going to end?’
Steven looked at her bleakly for a moment, then said, ‘It will end when we wipe out the source, isolate all the contacts and stop the spread, just like with every other outbreak. We have to believe that.’
Caroline nodded slowly but she seemed preoccupied.
‘Don’t we?’ Steven prompted.
‘Of course,’ came the weak reply. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just so damned tired. I’m not thinking straight.’
‘And no wonder.’
‘Tell me a joke, Steven. I feel as if I haven’t smiled for weeks.’
‘Know the feeling,’ said Steven.
‘C’mon, tell me a joke.’
He thought for a moment then began, ‘There was this little baby polar bear sitting on a rock, watching the ice floes drift by. Suddenly he looked up at his mother beside him and asked, “Mum, am I a polar bear?” “Of course you’re a polar bear,” said his mother and she patted him on the head. A short time later the little bear repeated the question and got the same response. A short while later the little bear asked the question yet again. By now his mother was losing patience. “Of course you’re a polar bear,” she snapped. “I’m a polar bear, your father’s a polar bear, your brother’s a polar bear. We’re all polar bears. Now, what is this nonsense?” “Well,” sighed the little bear, “it’s just that I’m fucking freezing!”’
Caroline’s face broke slowly into a grin and then she started to laugh. She laughed until her sides were splitting, and Steven feared she might be becoming hysterical, but it was just that the joke had acted as a release valve for all her pent-up emotions. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said with the tears running down her face. ‘Spot on, Dunbar. Bloody brilliant.’