Caroline looked at Steven and he could read in her eyes that she was only minutes from death. He’d seen that look before in the eyes of fatally wounded soldiers. It was an almost serene acceptance of the inevitable. ‘Oh, my lady,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Hang in there. Please hang in there.’
‘The joke, Steven.’
He looked at her questioningly.
‘Tell me… the joke.’
Steven realised what she meant and slowly removed his hood and visor. He lay down beside her and put his cheek next to hers on the pillow. He kissed her hand and began, ‘There was this little polar bear sitting on a rock, watching the ice floes drift by…’
As he delivered the punchline, Steven felt Caroline give his hand a tiny squeeze. He couldn’t risk looking at her, because of the tears running down his face. All he could do was squeeze her hand back and remain there motionless, hating the entire world and its ‘All things bright and beautiful’ philosophy. Why didn’t they understand what an awful place it was in reality? Not the fucking Disney theme park they kept pretending it was! Dog eat dog. Kill or be killed. Nature red in tooth and claw. Fucking nightmare!
The rolling tide of anger and grief that swept over Steven gradually abated, and he took a few deep breaths to try to get a grip on himself. Kate made the first move: she bent down and put her hand lightly on his shoulder. ‘She’s gone, Steven,’ she said gently. ‘Caroline’s gone.’
He nodded and got up slowly. He replaced his hood and visor and acknowledged Kate’s sympathy by taking her hands in his for a moment, before turning to head for the exit tunnel and the shower.
Back in his room, he managed to down the best part of a bottle of gin before sleep — or maybe it was unconsciousness — overtook him and excused him any more pain for one day. It was there waiting for him, however, when he awoke at ten the next morning with the maid wanting to do the room.
‘Okay,’ he said, his eyes closed against the light. ‘But just leave the bathroom.’ Suddenly fearing that the maid was going to use a vacuum cleaner, a sound he loathed even without a hangover — he felt sure that hell would be filled with the sound of vacuum cleaners — he opened one eye and saw that she was trailing an electric lead across the floor. This spurred him out of bed and sent him padding across the floor in his bare feet to seek refuge in the shower. He stayed there until he felt sure that the maid and her fearsome machine had gone, and then sent down for orange juice, coffee and aspirin. He got dressed while he waited.
Despite the distraction of a headache, he knew that this was going to be a crucial day for him. He wanted to grieve for Caroline — in fact, he wanted to wallow in grief, self-pity and sadness — but he couldn’t afford to. He had gone through one personal hell when he’d lost Lisa and the world had ceased to have any point or meaning, and he recognised some of those signs and symptoms in himself at the moment. He couldn’t let himself go down that road again, or he might end up in an institution staring at a blank wall. He would have to deal with Caroline’s death by blocking it out of his mind as much as he could. Throwing himself into his work was going to help: he had to decide what to do about Greg Allan’s list.
The hospitals probably wouldn’t hand out the information he needed about the new names, so he asked Sci-Med for help. He hoped that once he had established who the donors were he might be able to see something they had in common.
The information when it came through left Steven speechless.
‘You’re absolutely sure about that?’ he asked eventually. ‘All of them?’
‘Absolutely. They’re all recipients. There are no donors at all on that list.’
‘So what the hell were they given?’ Steven wondered out loud.
‘Heart valves,’ replied the duty officer, sounding puzzled.
‘Thanks, but that’s not exactly what I meant,’ said Steven. Then he suddenly saw the importance of what he’d just learned. ‘Oh Christ!’ he exclaimed. ‘Is Mr Macmillan there?’ As soon as he was patched through, he said, ‘The list that Greg Allan had. They’re all recipients.’
‘I know,’ said Macmillan. ‘I’ve just been told.’
‘But don’t you see? Eighteen people on that list have already gone down with the virus,’ said Steven. ‘The remaining…’ mental arithmetic was a challenge with this hangover… ‘thirty-eight have still to go down with it. Don’t you see? They’re all potential wildcards! They’re people who had the same surgery as the others but haven’t got the disease yet. We’ve got to isolate them. Once we’ve done that there won’t be any more unexplained outbreaks popping up all over the place.’
‘Yes, of course, I see what you mean,’ said Macmillan. ‘If you’re right, it means HMG can forget about calling a state of emergency.’
‘It certainly does. They can go back to worrying about fox hunting and the euro.’
‘And maybe the cost of official cars for travel to Manchester,’ countered Macmillan. ‘How is your friend, by the way?’
‘She died early this morning,’ said Steven flatly.
‘God, I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me,’ said Macmillan.
‘You weren’t to know,’ said Steven.
There was a long pause; then Macmillan said, ‘Change of subject. I don’t suppose you’ve any idea about the relationship between the people on the list and the filovirus?’
‘Not yet,’ said Steven. ‘But Greg Allan knew. I’m sure that’s why he killed himself.’
‘Pity he didn’t think to tell us all about it before he did,’ said Macmillan ruefully, and he rang off.
Steven went back to thinking about the fifty-six people on the list. They had all been given human heart valves, and that fact alone had exposed them to the ravages of a terrible infection, although not immediately. The delay was a stumbling block in itself. The other stumbling block was that, if fifty-six people had received human-tissue valves, there must have been at least fourteen donors, people who had, presumably, died in accidents all over the country and who had no connection at all with each other, and yet had all been carrying the same strain of a brand-new filovirus… That was — absolute bloody nonsense, he concluded. There was no other word for it.
EIGHTEEN
He was relieved to have put the constraints of so-called logic behind him. The real question he should be asking was: what was wrong with the heart valves those patients had been given? A few moments’ consideration told him that there was only one way to find out for sure. He’d have to recover one of the transplanted valves from a wildcard victim and subject it to a whole range of tests.
This was going to be not only risky — a post mortem on a filovirus victim was a dangerous procedure — but difficult, because filovirus victims were cremated as soon as possible. He would have to move fast. He called Sci-Med back, asked them about the current condition of the wildcard patients, and told them why he wanted to know.
‘All dead and burned except two,’ said the duty officer.
‘How come the exceptions?’ Steven asked.
‘One’s a success story; it looks as if she might be one of the few who’ll recover.’
Steven closed his eyes for a moment and wished it could have been Caroline. He forced the thought from his mind.
‘The other one’s the nun, Sister Mary Xavier. She wasn’t cremated.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Steven.
‘They came up with a special dispensation for her — apparently, her order has severe religious objections to cremation. Because of the special circumstances and because the convent’s so isolated, the sisters were allowed to bury her in the grounds.’
‘I didn’t realise they made concessions over something like a filovirus,’ said Steven acidly.
‘A local decision in Hull,’ said the duty man. ‘I think they had to comply with strict conditions: sealed body bag, lead-lined coffin and all that. It’s a possibility, don’t you think?’
‘A good one,’ agreed Steven. He thanked the man for his help and rang off, already deep in thought. Requesting the exhumation of Sister Mary Xavier would be certain to meet with a lot of opposition on the grounds of insensitivity, but the only alternative was to wait until another wildcard case got ill and died. That could take another week or two, maybe even longer, and he needed to examine one of the heart valves as soon as possible. He decided to put in the request and get Sci-Med to fix the permissions and paperwork. He would deal with the flak as and when it came.