‘Do you want him arrested?’
‘No, just found. He knows something we don’t about these heart valves, and I want him to tell me personally.’
Steven turned into Braidmoor Crescent in Leeds just after seven-thirty. There was a light in the window of Allan’s bungalow, and he knocked on the door. A worried-looking woman in her mid-thirties answered. She put her hands to her mouth when she saw a stranger, and said, ‘It’s about Greg, isn’t it? You’ve found him. What’s happened? Where is he?’
He said apologetically that he couldn’t answer her questions and that he was just another of the people who wanted to find her husband. He showed her his ID and asked if he could come in for a few minutes.
Her demeanour changed from alarm to worried bemusement as she showed Steven into the living room. ‘What on earth is going on?’ she asked. ‘Where is Greg? First his colleagues tell me he’s ill and he’s supposed to be here, then they decide they need to speak to him urgently, then the police start asking about him and now you. Just what is all this about?’
Steven told her who he was and what his job entailed.
‘But what has the virus outbreak got to do with Greg? He’s an administrator: he deals with transplant requests, matching potential donors to recipients.’
‘How long has he been doing that, Mrs Allan?’
‘Six years, give or take. You still haven’t answered my question.’
‘Only because I can’t,’ confessed Steven. ‘I don’t know the answer yet, but your husband was the co-ordinator for eighteen heart-valve-replacement operations in which the recipients went on to develop the new virus.’
Mrs Allan’s eyes opened wide and her face froze. ‘But… that’s outrageous,’ she stammered. ‘How can that possibly be?’
‘I was rather hoping your husband might be able to help with that one,’ said Steven. ‘But he’s not here.’
Mrs Allan started to come out of her shocked state, and he tried to guess what was going through her mind. She glanced briefly out of the window to where a new Ford Focus sat on the drive, and he guessed that it was hers. He had no idea what kind of wrongdoing, if any, Greg Allan was caught up in, but in his experience chicanery usually involved money. He wondered if there had recently been a change in the Allans’ circumstances.
‘What kind of car does your husband drive, Mrs Allan?’ he asked innocently.
‘A BMW. Why?’
Steven watched the thought process start again in Mrs Allan’s eyes. ‘Just in case he should drive into the street as I’m leaving,’ he said pleasantly. ‘New? Old?’
‘New,’ said she flatly. ‘A silver 5-series.’
‘Nice car,’ said Steven. He sensed that she was on the brink of saying something, but his mobile rang and the moment was gone. He said, ‘Excuse me,’ and took the call. It was the local police.
‘You requested a trace on Gregory Allan.’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Steven, cupping his hand tightly over the earpiece in an effort to contain the sound.
‘I think you’d better get over here, to the woods at the east end of Gaylen Park,’ said the policeman. ‘The car’s here and I think we’ve found him.’
Steven felt uncomfortable. The implication was that Allan was dead, and Steven was sitting less than six feet from the man’s wife. He did his utmost to keep his face expressionless and said, ‘Understood. I’m on my way.’
‘News of Greg?’ asked Mrs Allan.
‘Not yet,’ lied Steven. ‘But I have to go.’ He managed to avoid eye contact with her while he said goodbye: he felt that the news should not come from him.
Fifteen minutes later, Steven found several police vehicles parked beside Allan’s silver BMW at the edge of the woods bordering a small park. There wasn’t much activity among the officers, who were standing in a group, talking. He made himself known, and the inspector in charge said, ‘We’ve been waiting for you to get here. We haven’t touched anything.’
Steven guessed that Sci-Med had used full Home Office clout in making the request to the local police. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘What have you got?’
The inspector led him through the trees and into a small clearing illuminated with police arc lights. ‘I take it that’s your man?’ he said, pointing upwards. Steven saw a man hanging from the bare branches of a beech tree. ‘Obviously decided to decorate a tree with himself this Christmas,’ said the policeman.
Steven did not respond. Allan’s face was purple and his distended tongue lolled out of his mouth, making him look like a hideous gargoyle on a medieval church. The fact that he’d hanged himself with a modern tow-rope, bright red with yellow bands at intervals, somehow detracted from the tragedy and lent substance to the policeman’s awful allusion.
‘Poor bastard,’ said Steven.
‘Can we bring him down now?’
Steven nodded. ‘Sure.’ He watched, grim-faced, as Allan was cut down and lowered to the ground, where the police forensic team were waiting to begin their work. They could have been about to begin a shift at a car-making plant: they were casual, at ease, relaxed; just another body, just another day. The police surgeon pronounced Allan officially dead and the inspector asked if Steven could confirm that the dead man was Gregory Allan.
‘’Fraid not,’ said Steven. ‘I’ve never met him.’
‘Are we allowed to ask what he’s done?’ asked the inspector, squatting down with Steven beside the body.
‘You can ask,’ said Steven, almost mesmerised by Allan’s face and wondering what had brought him to such a sad and sorry end, ‘but right now I’ve no bloody idea. I wish to God I had.’
The contents of Allan’s pockets were emptied out on to a ground sheet and one officer said, ‘There’s a note, sir.’ The paper was obviously wet and the man held it by a corner as he passed it over.
The inspector put on gloves, took it gingerly and opened it with care. ‘It’s to his wife,’ he said. ‘It says, “I’m sorry” — obviously a man of few words. It’s wet because he pissed over it when his sphincter went.’
‘Any sign of a computer disk in his pockets?’ asked Steven. Shaking heads said not. ‘How about in the car?’
The inspector said, ‘Take another look, will you, Edwards.’
Edwards, a tall red-haired constable wearing a white plastic ‘noddy’ suit two sizes too small for him, went over to the BMW and began searching it thoroughly. He returned as Allan’s body was being zipped into its transport bag for transfer to the city mortuary. ‘Down the side of the passenger seat,’ he said. He handed the disk to the inspector who passed it on to Steven.
‘Do you want me to sign for it?’ asked Steven.
‘Not with the friends you’ve got,’ replied the inspector. ‘Maybe you’d like it gift-wrapped?’
‘This’ll be just fine,’ said Steven, slipping the disk into his pocket. ‘Thanks for your help.’
SEVENTEEN
Capel Curig
Karen Doig and Ian Patterson left Capel Curig police station feeling thoroughly depressed. They had just been told by the inspector in charge that none of the local taxi firms had been called to the field station in recent weeks. How and why Amy and Peter had disappeared remained a mystery, and there was nothing more the police could do in the circumstances. They, like the Scottish police, had a policy of non-interference in domestic matters.
‘I don’t believe they walked down from the mountains,’ said Karen with a shake of her head.
Patterson murmured his agreement.
‘Apart from the fact that they weren’t equipped to go walkabout in the Welsh mountains in winter — at least Peter wasn’t.’