Wildcard sd-3

by Ken McClure

  Steven’s arrival in Manchester coincided with the newspapers getting hold of the story. ‘Killer Disease Stalks Manchester Hospital’ was what he read on the first billboard he saw in the station. He bought several papers and flicked through them while he had a weak and slightly cold coffee in the station buffet. The press had the basic story but not much more. They knew that several people connected with the hospital had gone down with an unidentified disease, but they didn’t appear to know anything about Ann Danby, the cause of it all. One of the tabloids, however, speculated that the source of the illness might well have been a drug-addicted prostitute who had overdosed and been picked up by the police before being taken to the hospital in question. They went on to cite the problems that Glasgow had suffered recently with a killer disease that struck at drug addicts. That had been shown to be due to the toxin of a bacterium called Clostridium. Was this the same thing? the paper asked.

  ‘I wish,’ thought Steven. He finished his coffee and took a cab to the City General Hospital, where he was introduced to the medical superintendent, Dr George Byars, a short dapper man wearing a pinstripe suit which emphasised his lack of height and narrow shoulders.

  ‘They tell me you’ll be working flat out on finding the source of this damned thing,’ said Byars.

  ‘I’m going to give it my best shot,’ replied Steven. ‘How do things stand at the moment?’

  ‘Not good. The pathologist, Saxby, died early this morning and two of the others, the lab technician and PC Lennon, are dangerously ill. Everyone feels so helpless, but there’s nothing we can do other than give them nursing care. They either pull through or they don’t.’

  Steven nodded and asked, ‘Have there been any more cases?’

  ‘Not yet, but Public Health aren’t counting their chickens and, frankly, we could be in trouble. This hospital isn’t equipped to deal with a big outbreak of a disease like this. We have a special containment unit, but it’s really designed to deal with the occasional foreign traveller who goes down with something nasty. As for an… epidemic?’ Byars seemed reluctant to use the word. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘I suspect that’ll be the case with most hospitals?’

  ‘Correct. It’s been government policy for some time now to close down all the old fever hospitals.’

  ‘So what are you guys going to do?’

  ‘Hope that Public Health have been quick enough off the mark in rounding up the patients’ contacts. If they have, they tell us we can expect something in the order of ten to twenty new cases. We plan to re-open two of the wards we closed last year and use them as an isolation unit. We’ve already got in the Racal suits for the nurses and we’re running refresher courses on barrier nursing for the nursing volunteers we’ve asked for.’

  Steven nodded, but the look on his face prompted Byars to add, ‘I know, it all smacks of wartime spirit and backs-against-the-wall stuff, but that’s the way it is, I’m afraid. We’re just not prepared for this sort of thing.’

  ‘At last a use for the Millennium Dome,’ murmured Steven.

  The comment made Byars relax a little. ‘I think we’ll be okay as long as there aren’t any more wildcards like Ann Danby in the pack. If there are, God knows what the outcome might be.’

  ‘Well, she’s my problem.’

  Steven was taken on a tour of the hospital special unit, where he had to suit-up before entering and where he could look at the current patients behind glass screens. They did not make for pretty viewing. ‘Poor sod,’ whispered Byars as they looked at Lennon who was not expected to pull through; he seemed to be bleeding all over.

  ‘You know, it’s a funny thing,’ said Byars. ‘Despite all the bleeding, haemorrhagic fever cases rarely die from blood loss.’

  ‘You’ve had experience of it before?’

  ‘No,’ Byars confessed. ‘I read it in a book.’

  Steven accepted an invitation to attend a meeting later in the hospital with representatives from the Public Health Service and other bodies concerned with the outbreak, then headed for the police station where Lennon and Clark had worked.

  He was seen by a chief superintendent who seized the opportunity to subject him to a short lecture about the dangers his officers on the street were constantly exposed to. It was short because Steven interrupted him with a request to see the shift rota the two sick officers were on at the time of the call to Ann Danby’s place. He followed this up with a request to speak with Sergeant John Fearman.

  ‘I’ve known Tom Lennon for fifteen years,’ said Fearman. ‘Salt of the earth, he is. That’s why I put young Clark with him — I thought he’d teach the lad a lot about what police work’s all about.’

  ‘Tell me about that night,’ said Steven.

  ‘It’s all in the report,’ said Fearman. ‘We got a call from one of the neighbours about loud music. Tom and Clark attended and had to force an entry to the Danby woman’s flat. The rest is history.’

  ‘No, tell me the details.’

  ‘What’s to say? Tom thought she was dead when they arrived — he couldn’t find a pulse — but then she moved and he yelled for an ambulance. Clark actually tried mouth-to-mouth on her, poor little sod — I suppose that’s how he got it. But by the time the ambulance got there she really was dead.’

  ‘You say she moved?’

  ‘Clark was watching her when it happened. She was the first body he’d ever come across, see, and when she moved it gave him the fright of his life.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Tom called immediately for an ambulance and tried clearing her throat. There was vomit on the pillow so he thought her airway might be blocked, but he told me it was all clear when he put… his fingers in her mouth.’

  Steven and Fearman exchanged glances as they both saw the significance of this action.

  ‘Tom kept trying to wake her up because he thought she’d taken an overdose of pills, as indeed she had, and he thought he was succeeding, too, when she appeared to come round and say something. But it was no use. She died.’

  ‘She said something?’ asked Steven.

  Fearman shrugged ruefully. ‘Tom told me that her last words were, “All men are bastards.”’

  SIX

  Steven said he wanted to take a look at Ann Danby’s flat. He had no specific reason in mind but it was vital that he understand as much as possible about her because she was — in the absence of any known contact — the sole cause of the Manchester outbreak. He was told that the police and Public Health people had finished their business there, and was given a key, which had been marked for collection by her parents on the following day; it had been necessary to change the lock after the police’s forced entry. He was driven over to the flats in a police Panda car, and he told the driver not to wait, as he might be some time.

  ‘Just like Captain Oates, eh?’ said the driver.

  ‘But I’m planning on coming back,’ countered Steven.

  Palmer Court had little architectural merit, being a rather nondescript block of concrete flats four storeys high with roughcast walls and a flat roof, but it had a well-cared-for appearance. The grounds inside the gates were obviously professionally tended, with manicured lawns and knife-edged borders. The residents’ parking bays were white-lined and numbered and the rubbish bins, also numbered, were discreetly stored in a little stable of their own at the side of the building, disguised with climbing plants. The hallmark of the middle class, thought Steven, a place for everything and everything in its place.

  A round-shouldered man wearing a blue serge suit and a grubby-collared shirt, supposedly made respectable by a thin black tie secured with an incredibly tight knot, admitted him to the building. He carried a large bunch of keys on a metal ring as if it were a symbol of his authority and walked with a shuffling gait that suggested his shoes were too large. His complexion spoke of a long association with alcohol but his breath smelled of peppermint. He seemed pleasant enough when he asked Steven his business. Steven showed his ID and said why he’d
come.

  ‘Another one, eh,’ said the man. ‘Poor woman has had more visitors since she died than she ever did when she was alive.’

  ‘That’s often the way,’ said Steven, keen to engage the man in conversation in case he had useful information. ‘People tend to turn up at your funeral when they wouldn’t have crossed the street to say hello to you while you were alive.’

  ‘Ain’t that the truth,’ agreed the man. ‘You know, I still can’t get over it.’ He sighed. ‘Poor Miss Danby. She seemed happy enough when I talked to her the weekend before last. She was asking me about a good garage to service her car. I sent her to Dixon’s in Minto Street. My brother works there.’

  ‘Then you didn’t think she was the sort to take her own life?’ probed Steven.

  ‘Who’s to say?’ replied the doorman, philosophically. He put his head to one side and both hands behind his back to impart his wisdom. ‘People often put a brave face on things. Hide the truth from the world, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Sure,’ replied Steven, hoping he wasn’t about to be subjected to a series of examples. ‘You implied that she didn’t have many friends?’

  ‘If she did, very few of them ever came here,’ replied the man. ‘Having said that, she quite often went away for the weekend but maybe that was work.’

  ‘She didn’t say?’

  ‘She was a very private person, was Miss Danby, not the sort to volunteer that kind of information, and I’m not the sort to ask,’ replied the doorman.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Steven. He asked for directions to the flat.

  ‘Third floor, second door. You can still smell the disinfectant. God knows why they’d want to go and do that.’

  Steven had overlooked the fact that the Public Health people would have disinfected the flat thoroughly in the wake of the PM findings. He got the full lingering force of it when he opened the door and entered the hall. They had obviously used a formaldehyde ‘bomb’ to make sure that the disinfectant got everywhere and that no virus particles were left alive. This was effective, but unfortunate from Steven’s point of view, because he hated the smell of formaldehyde and had done ever since his early days at medical school, where the cadavers the students worked on were stored in solutions of the stuff. He put a handkerchief over his nose and mouth until he opened a window in the living room and waited by it until the air had cleared enough for him to take a look around.

  The flat was very well furnished but in a pleasantly understated way — good-quality stuff but kept to a minimum so that there was a feeling of light and space about the place. He noted that Ann Danby had an eclectic CD collection, all stacked neatly in purpose-built racks beside the Bang and Olufsen music centre. A closer inspection revealed that they were filed neatly in alphabetical order. Steven moved on to her tape collection and found that the same system applied. It spoke of a tidy, organised mind. Her books, however, were arranged by subject and occupied three tiers of black metal shelving fitted to the wall opposite the window.

  Many of the titles were computer- and probably work-related. They took up almost the entire top shelf, while a liking for poetry was demonstrated by the titles to the left on the middle shelf. Keats seemed to have been a particular favourite but Auden, Rupert Brooke and Wordsworth were also well represented. At the end of the poetry section, just before the shelf divider, there were a number of volumes of love poetry. Steven saw a certain poignancy in that in view of the picture the man on the door had painted of a rather solitary, lonely woman.

  Steven picked up a little book of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s work and moved through it until he found the one that had been Lisa’s favourite. ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’ He lingered over the last line, ‘And if God choose I shall but love thee better after death’, and felt a lump come to his throat. He replaced the book and noticed there was a triangular gap a little further along, as if one had been removed, so that the books to the right of it had flopped back. He looked around the room and noticed a small blue-covered volume lying on the lamp table beside the chair that Ann Danby had used most, judging by the letter and newspaper racks beside it.

  Steven went over, picked it up and saw that The Sonnets of William Shakespeare had been her last reading companion. He checked for a bookmark, to see if he could find the last poem she’d read, but didn’t find one. He did, however, note with some surprise that the flyleaf had been ripped out. It had not been cut out, because a jagged remnant of paper had been left, as if it had been done in anger.

  Puzzled as to why such a meticulous woman would do such a thing, he looked for the missing page in the waste-paper basket but found nothing. Then he noticed a piece of paper lying on the window ledge. It had obviously been crumpled up at one point, but had been smoothed out in order to make examination possible. He suspected that the police had found it on the floor but had assigned no significance to it. It was the missing flyleaf. There was some writing in light-blue ink on it. It said simply, ‘My love for ever,’ and was signed ‘V’. The initial had been done with quite a flourish, the sign of an extrovert personality perhaps?

  Steven sat down for a moment and wondered why there had been no mention of a boyfriend before. Had this been an oversight or… a secret? A secret lover might explain a lot, but why had she kept him secret? Could V be a woman? Not everyone was comfortable with openly gay relationships, even in these enlightened times.

  Steven remembered the policeman’s recollection of Ann’s last words, ‘All men are bastards.’ Not terribly original but now it made sense, and it was conveniently significant because it suggested strongly that V was a man. The fact that the relationship had been kept secret also suggested that he might be married, but, whatever the personal details, finding out the identity of V was now going to be a priority, particularly if it should turn out that he had been on the Ndanga flight.

  Steven put the book back in its place on the shelf and glanced quickly through the other titles. There were a number of biographies, mainly of politicians both past and present, half a dozen reference books, a number of illustrated books about French Impressionist painters and fiction ranging from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before. The right-hand corner of the very bottom shelf was given over to books on hill-walking. Lakeland, Snowdonia and the Scottish mountains were all featured, but there was also a guide to trekking in Nepal. Why had there been no mention of a love of outdoor pursuits in the file on Ann Danby? Or had she kept that a secret, too? Perhaps this had been an interest that she had shared with V: it might even account for the weekends away. On the other hand, it could be that she had just been an armchair enthusiast for the outdoor life.

  The question was resolved when he found hill-walking gear in the walk-in wardrobe in the main bedroom. There were two expensive shell jackets, one in red and one in blue Gore-Tex fabric, and two matching fleeces hanging on the rail beside a range of good-quality business and leisure clothing. A pair of Scarpa mountain boots sat on the floor with boot stockings stuck inside them. A Berghaus rucksack was propped up against the back wall, along with two Leki walking poles.

  The smaller of the two bedrooms had been used by Ann as a study, and featured a pine desk and a wide range of computer equipment. There were two small metal filing cabinets and a swivel chair in light-cream leather with a matching footstool. Steven didn’t like the thought of doing it, but he would have to search the desk drawers for more information about Ann Danby’s life, not least for clues as to who V might be.

  The fact that she had been an almost obsessively tidy person proved to be a big help. All her bank and credit card statements were filed neatly together in an A4 binder. There was a separate binder for household bills and another for mortgage and insurance details. Within minutes, he was able to establish that Ann Danby had had no money worries. Her salary, paid directly into her cheque account on the thirtieth of each month, had been more than sufficient to cover all outgoing expenses and had left enough for a
monthly transfer of five hundred pounds into a savings account with the Halifax Building Society. This account currently showed a balance of something over fifteen thousand pounds. In addition, she had tended to pay off her credit-card accounts, three in all, in full every month.

  Steven paid particular attention to the credit-card statements because of what the doorman had said about Ann going away for the weekends. He could not, however, find any pattern of spending to support this or give any clue as to where she had gone. Did this mean that her trips had been connected with work, in which case they would have been paid for through a company account? Another possibility was that someone else — V for example — had been paying.

  He found a leather-bound diary in the bottom desk drawer and opened it hopefully, only to find that it was merely an appointments diary. Better than nothing, he reassured himself, and started looking through it to see if the weekends featured. He found that they did, but without any detail: Ann had simply written in the letter V approximately every third or fourth weekend. There had, however, not been any weekend featuring V for the last six weeks then suddenly V popped up on a weekday, the Thursday during the week before Ann Danby died. He had been pencilled in for p.m. and she had put three concentric rings around the initial.

  Steven felt a small surge of excitement as he realised that a meeting on that particular day would make V a possible suspect for having given Ann the virus. The subsequent incubation period would have been about right. But what had happened to V himself? Why hadn’t he gone down with the disease? Steven decided there was no point in wasting time worrying about that at the moment. His first priority must be to find out if there had been any passengers on the Ndanga flight with a first name starting with V. The passenger manifest had not been included in the Sci-Med file, so he requested the information by mobile phone, asking that the list be e-mailed to him as soon as possible.