by Hall, M. R.
She introduced herself as the specialist microbiologist on the team handling the Freeman case. She was, she implied, an expert with knowledge far in excess of anything Jenny could hope to match, although she didn’t appear to be much over thirty. Dipping into her briefcase, she pulled out a copy of the Western Mail.
‘Have you seen this, Ms Cooper?’
Jenny admitted that she hadn’t.
Dr Verma handed it across the desk. At the foot of the front page was an article headed Mystery Superbug Kills Girl, 13. Sophie Freeman was named as the victim of an infection said to be of unknown origin, which had caused officials to close down her school and quarantine her classmates. An anonymous hospital source was quoted as saying that her death had caused near-panic among medical staff already uneasy about the increasing incidence of fatal, drug-resistant infections at the Severn Vale District Hospital.
‘I’ve just received word that the story has been picked up by the national press. It’s already springing up on their websites – suitably embellished of course.’
‘That’s unfortunate,’ Jenny said, handing the newspaper back to her. ‘I was told they had agreed not to mention the case.’
‘We assume it’s the misinformation from their inside source which made it irresistible. I don’t suppose you have any idea who that source might be?’
‘Not a clue,’ Jenny said. ‘Though I’m not sure it is misinformation. I get every impression that there is something close to panic breaking out at the Vale.’
‘Really?’ Dr Verma feigned surprise. ‘From whom?’
Jenny parried the question. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve no interest in spreading alarm, only in conducting an orderly inquiry. I presume your team will have some definitive lab results fairly quickly.’
‘We already do, Ms Cooper. Meningococcal meningitis. A virulent strain, but nothing unprecedented. All those who have had contact with Sophie Freeman in recent weeks have been put on notice to report any symptoms, but no new cases have been identified. If we were dealing with an outbreak we would have expected to see several more by now.’
She reached into her case a second time and handed Jenny a document that ran to several pages. ‘My preliminary report. There is more detailed analysis to be done, but we’re satisfied it’s more than sufficient for you to issue a death certificate.’
Jenny glanced over the dense technical text that appeared to compare the sudden onset of Sophie Freeman’s symptoms with similar patterns in other recorded cases. ‘What does this have to say about the issue of drug resistance?’ Jenny asked.
‘That’s a subject for more detailed study,’ Dr Verma said. ‘But as I understand the law, if it’s beyond doubt that death was caused by a specific and identifiable disease, you needn’t concern yourself any further.’
‘That would depend,’ Jenny said. ‘I can’t limit my concern to a specific case if there’s a possibility the originating cause is something else entirely. If a patient dies from an infected wound on a filthy ward, it can’t simply be treated as a death from septicaemia. I have to explore the surrounding circumstances.’
‘That’s precisely what we do at the HPA, Ms Cooper,’ Dr Verma said. ‘And without wishing to be disrespectful, I should remind you that we operate some of the country’s most sophisticated laboratories.’
‘Perhaps you’re not familiar with coroners’ inquiries, Dr Verma. I don’t contract my work out to other agencies.’
‘Our lawyers have assured us that an inquest isn’t necessary.’
‘The problem with lawyers is that you can always find one who’ll tell you what you want to hear,’ Jenny said. ‘And for the record, I don’t write death certificates according to the wishes of interested parties. That would be a denial of due process.’
Dr Verma looked at her in dumb astonishment, as if it had never occurred to her that she wouldn’t be unquestioningly obeyed. ‘You’re intent on holding this inquest?’
‘I have no option.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as possible. I was thinking next Monday.’
‘I don’t know what you’re expecting to hear.’
‘Nor do I,’ Jenny said. ‘That’s why it’s called an inquest. Is that all? I’ve got a lot to do.’
Dr Verma felt compelled to have the last word. ‘I’m sure our lawyers will be in touch.’
Jenny refused to be bullied. ‘That’s what you pay them for,’ she said and smiled.
Dr Verma snapped her briefcase shut and rose sharply to her feet. ‘Thank you, Ms Cooper. You’ve been most unhelpful.’
It’s not my job to help you, Jenny said to herself as the young doctor left. It’s to find out whatever the hell it is your people don’t want me to know. There would be something, she felt sure. The optimistically named Health Protection Agency had the unenviable job of stopping the spread of notifiable diseases as soon as they were detected. Any failure on its part wasn’t just a potential embarrassment, it could cost lives. A case of meningitis ignored by officials that proved the spark for an outbreak would most probably end someone’s career. If there had been negligence at the HPA, Jenny doubted that an employee as earnest as Dr Verma was responsible, but Verma was just the sort who might be lined up to take the drop if uncomfortable truths came to light. She was young and ambitious enough to see being sent on a mission to bully the coroner as a professional compliment, and inexperienced enough not to see what she was being dragged into. Despite her rudeness, Jenny hoped it wouldn’t be too painful a lesson for her.
Other cases intruded on Jenny’s thoughts. She had a married mother of five to telephone, whose husband, a thirty-five-year-old construction worker, had fallen to his death the previous afternoon. The post-mortem conducted overnight had revealed that he suffered a massive coronary as a result of an undiagnosed congenital defect: a time-bomb with which he had been born had exploded at random that particular afternoon. There would be no compensation for the widow, only the small comfort that he had been fortunate to have lived as long as he had.
She was bracing herself to deliver the news, when she heard Alison answer the phone from her desk in reception.
‘Yes, that’s me,’ Alison said. She listened to the caller in silence, then offered a muted ‘I understand’, before asking them to hold for a moment. She set down the receiver and came to the door of Jenny’s office. The colour had washed from her face. ‘Can you do without me this afternoon, Mrs Cooper?’
‘Of course. Is something wrong?’
‘Just a medical appointment.’
Jenny nodded, knowing not to ask any more. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Cooper. I’ll be sure to make up the hours.’
Closing the door behind her, Alison gathered her things and dashed from the office. The news couldn’t have been good. Jenny suspected that a mammogram had shown up a fresh irregularity her oncologist wanted to investigate immediately. It seemed so unfair. Within months of Alison leaving her ungrateful husband for the lover she should have married twenty-five years before, a tiny dark spot on an X-ray had cast the shadow that tainted her happiness and dug at her conscience. It was only natural to look for justice, or at least some shape and predictability to the chaotic chain of events that derailed and ended lives, but Jenny had long ago concluded that if they existed at all, the fates operated by laws far removed from human understanding.
She took a deep breath and lifted the phone. She would deal with the construction worker’s widow, then set the wheels in motion for Sophie Freeman’s inquest. The best she could do for Alison right now was to pretend that everything was normal.
Jenny pulled into the spotless driveway of David’s house a little before eight o’clock. She had left it late enough that the baby, Scarlett, would be in bed. Visiting the house that had been her home for nearly fifteen years was always an ordeal, but the prospect of David and his pretty young partner, Debbie, showing off their ten-month-old girl was intolerable. Whenever she crossed their threshold, Jenny
felt like a stain on their perfect domesticity.
It was Ross who came to the door. ‘Hi, Mum.’ He was wearing a shirt she’d bought as a birthday present, though doubted he remembered that it was her who had given it to him. ‘Are you going to come in?’ He glanced guiltily over his shoulder. ‘Debbie’s still upstairs with Scarlett – teething or something.’
‘Why don’t we fetch your things first?’ She didn’t want to turn him down, but wanted to be sure that if Debbie appeared she could make a quick getaway without having to endure a stilted conversation.
Ross fetched his bags from her car, managing to avoid the subject of his change of heart, and told her instead about his plans to fetch Sally up from Brighton the following week. She had already managed to fall out with her father and was desperate to escape to ‘normality’. Jenny was tempted to ask in what way he considered David more normal than her – would it be normal for her to have a lover twenty years her junior? – but kept the petulant thought to herself. There was as little fairness within families as elsewhere. He’d learn that soon enough.
As Ross dumped the last of the bags in the hallway, David strode downstairs, quickly slipping his reading glasses into his shirt pocket. ‘Jenny. Come in. Glass of wine?’
‘Sure.’ She didn’t feel able to refuse.
‘Pop out to the garage and fetch a bottle of red, would you, Ross?’ David said.
Ross took his cue to give them a moment by themselves and disappeared along the hall. David steered Jenny to the spacious kitchen–diner that was fast becoming a shrine to baby Scarlett: framed photographs of her dotted the walls; finger paintings were neatly pinned to a cork board alongside Debbie’s shopping list written in a neat, girlish hand.
David fetched glasses from a cupboard. ‘Ed emailed to say you’re opening an inquest on Monday.’
‘Yes,’ Jenny answered. ‘Though I probably shouldn’t discuss it.’
David persisted. ‘I’ve heard the HPA have been sniffing around all over the hospital. Any idea what they’ve found?’
‘No. I really shouldn’t—’
‘What about the path’ lab – they must know what’s going on? Any of them breaking ranks yet? They can’t all be collaborators.’
‘It’s all about confidence, isn’t it?’ Jenny said. ‘Someone has to step forward first. If a senior consultant were to offer himself . . .’
‘Nice try.’
David leaned against the counter and folded his muscular arms. She could tell from their snaking veins that he’d been putting in the hours at the gym. When they were married, he would stand naked in front of the mirror and tell her there was nothing more pitiful than a fat middle-aged man who expected his wife to find him attractive. It was meant to be an invitation to leap on him, but she seldom did. Having sex with David had always felt like a competition she could never win: whatever she gave, he always wanted more.
‘The hospital has microbiologists employed specifically to deal with this sort of thing,’ he said. ‘You must be able to haul them over the coals.’
‘The good news is that there haven’t been any more cases.’
‘Yet.’ She could see that he was shaping up for one of his lectures. ‘Do you have any idea what it’s like for those of us who live with the threat of infection every day? Frankly, every night I come home, I’m nervous of touching my own child. And that’s not to mention the implications for my private practice if the hospital gets a reputation—’
‘You’re worried about your practice?’
‘It is the reason we all have the life we do, Jenny – your home, mine, Ross’s university place.’
Jenny struggled to hold her temper and took a deep breath. She tried to change the subject. ‘Ross tells me his girlfriend’s coming next week.’
‘Listen to me, Jenny – there’ll be reports tucked away on management’s computers, briefing notes, emails from the path’ lab – a whole host of concrete information. It just needs you to dig for it.’
‘I’ve told you – it takes a witness to come forward. I can’t go on fishing trips.’
‘This is Ed Freeman’s daughter we’re talking about. One of my oldest friends.’
She looked at him open-mouthed, not quite believing what he had just said. ‘I hope you haven’t made him any promises.’
‘Of course not.’
He was a bad liar.
A door slammed at the back of the hallway. Ross was returning from the garage. Jenny answered David quietly: ‘You’ve always been very good at telling other people to be brave; maybe it’s time to take your own advice?’
Ross arrived carrying a bottle of wine, and looked from one of them to the other, sensing the atmosphere between them.
‘Who are you seeing tonight?’ Jenny asked, trying to sound breezy.
‘Just some friends.’ He set the bottle on the counter. ‘I’ve got to get ready. I’ll call you about coming over.’
He vanished again, retreating to his room at the top of the house. The sound of his hurried footsteps on the stairs brought back memories of countless nights throughout his childhood when he had fled as she and David traded insults. And even though they had known they were hurting him, they hadn’t been able to stop themselves.
David snatched a corkscrew from the drawer. ‘Well done, Jenny.’
‘Me?’
‘You hardly went out of your way to make him feel welcome. He told me you didn’t even have food in the fridge.’
‘Oh, really? What else has he been saying?’
He dodged the question. ‘I don’t think he knows where he stands with you. You seem to give him mixed messages.’
‘You mean I’m not at home tending to his every need?’
‘Don’t say it.’ David snapped the cork out of the bottle. ‘Do you still want this drink, or what?’
Jenny shook her head. ‘I’ll go and talk to him.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea – Debbie’s trying to settle the baby.’ He filled his glass. ‘She likes to keep things calm.’
‘She’d rather I wasn’t here.’
David sighed. ‘Do we have anything useful to say to each other?’
He took a large mouthful of wine and gave her the look that said the conversation was over.
Jenny was more than happy to go. ‘Goodbye, David.’
Stepping around David’s car on the way back to her own, it was as much as she could do not to reach for her keys and scrape them along the glistening paintwork.
Hunched at her desk in her small, cluttered study tucked away at the foot of the stairs, Jenny pored over the scientific papers she had downloaded from the Internet on the subject of bacterial meningitis. Wading through the jargon, she managed to establish that the micro-organism that had killed Sophie Freeman was present in dormant form in the throats of between 5 and 15 per cent of the population. What made it particularly aggressive was the fact that it had a double skin, the outer layer of which secreted endotoxins: poisons that attacked the host’s red blood cells, causing fever, haemorrhage and toxic shock. It was also coated with a chemical – a polysaccharide – which, by devious imitation, tricked the host’s immune system into believing it was a friendly cell and not a deadly invader. It was, in short, one of the most cruelly efficient killing machines that nature had ever invented.
She learned that there was a lively debate over precisely how such a sophisticated bacterium had come to exist, and even why it existed at all. During the course of its evolutionary history, it had clearly developed alongside healthy and productive cells, learning to pick the locks as swiftly as the human organism fitted new ones. But it had no purpose beyond its continued existence, no positive benefit to any other life form. It seemed to exist only in order to destroy. The more Jenny read, the more obvious it became to her that anyone who believed in such a thing as a ‘life force’ had also to believe in its opposite. Every human body was, at the microscopic level, a permanent battleground in which life was winning the day only by a fractio
n.
She glanced up from her desk at the sound of footsteps on the path leading to the front door. It was nearly midnight and she wasn’t expecting visitors. Jenny froze as the steps stopped outside her window.
‘It’s only me,’ a voice said. Michael.
She went to the door with heart still pounding, ready to be angry with him, but opened it to find him holding flowers.
‘All the way from Cork.’
He handed her what six hours earlier would have been a stunning bouquet of summer blooms, but which hours out of water had caused to wilt beyond the point of revival.
‘Thank you.’ She hid her disappointment, touched by the gesture. ‘Any particular reason?’
‘I saw them and thought of you.’
She couldn’t recall him ever having given her flowers before. There was something different about him as he stepped inside. He was tired and unshaven, but his eyes were shining like they had in the first months they had been together, when each encounter was as fresh and thrilling as a teenage date.
‘You know what happened to me today?’ Michael said.
‘No idea.’
‘Near-miss landing at Cork. First time in years. Some clown of a businessman piloting his own helicopter nearly took my wing off. You know what picture I had in my mind all day after that?’
Jenny shook her head.
‘You,’ Michael said. ‘I kept seeing you.’
‘Was that a good or a bad thing?’
‘What do you think?’
He smiled and kissed her on the lips, and Jenny found herself responding. And as their kiss became deeper, he pulled her to him with an urgency that he couldn’t control. His hands sought out her skin, every point of contact an electric charge that shot straight to her core. Work, David, Ross, all her anxieties melted away as they abandoned themselves to the pure, delicious rush of life.
Jenny had never felt as close to him. They lay exquisitely exhausted with the smell of night-scented stocks drifting through the open window. For the first time since she had known him and for reasons completely beyond her understanding, Michael seemed truly at peace. She could feel it in the heaviness of his arm lying perfectly relaxed beneath her breasts, and in the deep, slow, steady rhythm of his breath. He had wanted her so badly, and she him, but their love-making hadn’t been rough or urgent; they had passed a threshold and found themselves in limitless space. It had been ecstatic. There was no other word.