Wildcard sd-3

by Ken McClure

Steven felt the usual lump in his throat when Jenny came on the line with a cheerful, ‘Hello, Daddy.’

  ‘Hi, Nutkin, how are you?’

  ‘Busy, busy, busy. I’m making stars for the school hall, beautiful green ones.’

  ‘Then I’m sure they’ll be the best green stars anyone’s ever seen,’ said Steven, ‘and I look forward to seeing them when I come up there. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it this weekend, Jenny.’

  ‘That’s all right, Daddy. Auntie Sue said you were busy with sick people, trying to make them better. We prayed for them at school this morning. Miss Jackson said they were very ill.’

  ‘They are, Nutkin, and the sooner I find out where the germs are coming from, the sooner people will stop falling ill.’

  ‘Best get on then. Bye, Daddy.’

  ‘Bye, Nutkin. Love you.’

  ‘Love you too, Daddy.’

  Sue came back on the line. ‘Any idea how long the epidemic down there is going to run?’ she asked. ‘There were three more cases declared in Perth today.’

  ‘Something tells me it’s going to get worse before it gets better,’ said Steven. ‘Frankly, we’re no nearer finding the source of it today than we were at the outset.’

  ‘That’s not a happy thought.’

  Steven agreed. He had a word with Sue’s kids, Mary and Robin, before hanging up. They asked if they could go to the zoo again the next time he came to Scotland and his ‘Maybe’ was taken as a cast-iron promise.

  The streets around the Magnolia were dark and almost deserted when Steven got there just after midnight. The earlier snow had given way to a clear starlit night which had brought a hard frost to the pavements, and they glistened as he walked from his parking place to the restaurant. The lights were on inside but just like last time the blinds were shut and a ‘Closed’ sign hung on the door. He knocked on the glass but this time there was no response. He tried several more times before beginning to think that Pelota had changed his mind.

  ‘Shit!’ he murmured. More in frustration than anything else, he gave the door handle a sharp twist, and to his surprise the door opened. He stepped inside, paused and called Pelota’s name. Still no response. He looked around. The restaurant was warm, the table lights were all on and Mozart was playing gently in the background. He went to the back of the restaurant and pushed open the kitchen door. He found Pelota lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

  ‘Sweet Jesus!’ he exclaimed. He bent down to examine the body, which was curled up in the foetal position and facing away from him. The amount of blood convinced Steven that Pelota must be dead, but he was wrong: Pelota gripped his arm weakly and turned to face him. His eyes were wide and his lips drawn back over his teeth in agony. He tried to talk but blood was frothing from his mouth and Steven saw a kitchen knife embedded in his stomach.

  ‘Don’t try to speak, old son,’ said Steven, freeing himself from Pelota’s grip and fumbling for his mobile phone. He punched in three nines and asked for an ambulance and then the police. He gave the bare minimum of information, knowing that his skills as a doctor were pressingly in demand if Pelota was to survive. He stripped off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and donned a pair of plastic kitchen gloves before grabbing some clean table linen and getting to work on stemming the blood flow.

  Stomach wounds were bad, and Pelota’s was particularly awful in that there had been intestinal damage: the contents were oozing out into his peritoneal cavity, increasing the danger of infection many-fold. Steven spoke automatically to the man as he worked, assuring him that help was on its way and all would be well soon. Pelota passed out and Steven felt for a carotid pulse; it was still there, but weak.

  The last time Steven had dealt with such a wound he had been sheltering in a hollow in the desert while on operation in the Middle East. His patient on that occasion had been a fellow soldier whose insides had been opened by a grenade booby trap. The soldier had died because sophisticated help had been a long way away. Pelota’s chances would only be marginally better if he reached hospital in time. He had already lost an enormous amount of blood.

  Mozart’s ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik’ gave way to the even more beautiful sound of an ambulance on its way. The wail of a police car joined the chorus. The thought of police involvement made Steven start thinking about the criminal aspects of what had happened, as well as the measures necessary to keep the wounded man alive. Pelota had a bone-handled kitchen knife protruding from his stomach and presumably he hadn’t put it there himself. Was it conceivable that the attempted murder had had something to do with his decision to tell Steven who Ann Danby’s lover was? It was a chilling thought. What could be so important about keeping a love affair a secret? What depended on it? A marriage? A career? A reputation? All three?

  The ambulance stopped outside the door and two attendants entered the restaurant, carrying emergency equipment. They froze when they saw the man on the floor. ‘Jesus Christ!’ said one. ‘What the fuck?’ said the other.

  ‘He’s been stabbed in the stomach; there’s intestinal damage. He needs intravenous fluid quickly.’

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the first attendant suspiciously.

  ‘I’m a doctor and this man needs help fast.’

  ‘No one said anything about this amount of blood. You’ll have to wait for a specialist crew.’

  Steven couldn’t believe his ears for a moment. ‘What?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘There’s a special service operating for high-virus-risk cases,’ replied the man, looking down at Pelota.

  ‘This is nothing to do with the virus,’ exclaimed Steven. ‘He’s been stabbed, for Christ’s sake, and if he doesn’t get to hospital soon he’s going to have no chance at all of making it.’

  ‘We’ll call a special equipment vehicle,’ replied the man, leading his colleague outside and leaving Steven speechless. As they left, two police officers from a Panda car came in.

  ‘Shit! Nobody said it was a bloody murder,’ complained the first.

  ‘At the moment it’s an attempted murder,’ said Steven through gritted teeth. ‘He’s still alive but he has to get to hospital.’

  Another police car drew up and two CID officers entered. ‘Would you please step away from the victim, sir,’ said the first.

  Steven looked up from holding an improvised linen swab against Pelota’s wound. ‘If I step away he’ll die,’ he said. ‘Your call.’

  ‘I’m sure the ambulancemen know what they’re doing, sir. So if you’ll please just step back…’

  ‘The ambulancemen are calling an ambulance,’ said Steven evenly. ‘I’m a doctor, and right now I’m the only thing between him and that great big kitchen in the sky.’

  One of the ambulancemen came back into the restaurant and said, ‘It’ll be ten minutes. All the specials are out on shouts at the moment.’

  There was a brief conversation between police and ambulancemen while Steven continued trying to stem the blood. The ambulancemen were adamant that they weren’t going to touch anyone exuding that amount of blood, certainly not without the special protective anti-virus suits.

  ‘So give me your equipment,’ said Steven.

  The two men looked doubtful.

  ‘C’mon, for Christ’s sake. I’ve got to get a drip into him. He isn’t going to last ten minutes like this.’

  The ambulancemen opened up their special equipment bag and Steven rummaged among the contents. ‘I need saline,’ he snapped. One of the men went to fetch it from the vehicle outside. Steven took the saline pack from the man and attached the giving set to it, asking one of the policemen to hold the plastic reservoir above the patient while he inserted the shunt needle into Pelota’s arm.

  The minutes passed like hours as Steven worked and the emergency services watched. The show came to an end when Pelota’s head rolled to one side and his eyes opened but didn’t see. Steven felt desperately for a pulse and found nothing. He let his head slump against his chest for a moment before looking slowly up at the others and sa
ying, ‘He’s dead.’

  TEN

  It was after three in the morning when Steven finished talking to the police. He couldn’t tell them much, apart from the fact that Pelota had been about to help him with his own inquiries, but hadn’t got round to it, thanks to the intervention of a kitchen knife. In theory, he wasn’t obliged to tell them anything at all, but Pelota had been murdered and police forces tended to resent anyone hiding behind rank or position where murder on their patch was concerned. Steven had no wish to antagonise those he might need help from in the near future, so he had given them all the information he could. The idea, however, that Pelota might have been killed to stop him revealing V’s identity he kept to himself for the time being. The police said that they would keep him informed of any progress and gave him a lift over to where he’d left his car earlier.

  He drove slowly back to the hotel, where he immediately made for the mini-bar and splashed a miniature of Bombay gin into a tumbler. He added only an equivalent amount of tonic before downing it quickly. What a night, he thought, what a fucking awful night. He threw himself down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. If only Pelota had survived long enough to say something, things might have been so different. He might well have been talking to Victor by now and on his way to fitting a very large piece of the jigsaw into the puzzle.

  But Pelota had died, thanks to those bloody obstinate jobsworths and their bloody union rules… Steven stopped himself going down this road, recognising that he was being unfair because of pent-up anger and frustration. Ambulancemen were only human like everyone else, and this was the real world, not the realms of TV drama where nurses were angels and doctors saints and the emergency services were crewed solely by self-sacrificing heroes.

  The simple truth was that people were people and these days, in Manchester, the virus was uppermost in everyone’s mind. The men were probably right to take the stance they had. In fact, maybe it had been his own fault for not giving the emergency operator more information about Pelota’s condition; but he simply hadn’t had time. Pelota would have died there and then if he’d delayed in order to give details. Oh fuck, what did it matter now, anyway? He was back to square one with a vengeance, and apportioning blame wasn’t going to help — as if it ever did. He ran a bath and poured himself another gin, weaker this time.

  Lying in the suds, he began to have doubts about his whole approach to the investigation. Quite early on, he had decided that Victor was going to be a crucial player in the game and had concentrated his efforts on finding him. That had been reasonable when it was a case of just two outbreaks of the virus, but perhaps he should have reconsidered when the Scottish outbreak had occurred. Now, at four in the morning, it seemed highly unlikely that Victor could be the missing link to both outbreaks. There was an unpleasant fact to be faced: Victor might be a red herring.

  The water had gone cold. Steven stood up and towelled himself vigorously, still wondering about a change in tactics. Even if Victor did turn out to be a red herring, he would still have to find him in order to establish that fact for sure. Of course, if Victor was Pelota’s killer, the police might well find him first. In the meantime, and just in case they didn’t, he would continue the search.

  Although he had never met Ann Danby, he had a soft spot for her. There was something about her and her circumstances that got to him. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt an empathy with her. Maybe it was the lack of any real presence in her existence, her lack of personal possessions. People liked her but no one knew her. Her flat had been like a room in a hotel, comfortable but totally impersonal. The same applied to her office.

  Everyone had been kept at a distance, except, of course, Victor. She’d been the soul of discretion as far as Victor was concerned, to the point that she had not even kept any mementoes or souvenirs of their time together. There had been no letters from or photographs of the man she had clearly felt so much for, only a book of sonnets with a false declaration of undying love. In fact, there had been very few photographs of anything at all in Ann’s flat, come to think of it. He could recall seeing only two, and one was a duplicate of a print she kept in her office.

  That thought brought Steven to a jarring halt. Why? he wondered. Why, if Ann hadn’t bothered with photographs as a general rule, had she kept two prints of the same one, one in her flat and one in her office? It wasn’t as if there was anything remarkable about the photograph; it was just the standard line-up at the formal opening of a dull exhibition. Nothing remarkable or special at all about it… unless of course… Victor was in it!

  Excited at the prospect, Steven decided to drive over to Tyne Brookman as soon as the working day began and ask Hilary Black who the people in that photograph were.

  ‘Well,’ said Hilary with a smile, ‘Marie Claire didn’t change too much about your hairstyle. I thought maybe blond highlights and a quiff…’

  For a moment Steven couldn’t think what she was talking about and then he remembered that the last thing he’d asked her was for directions to Ann Danby’s hairdresser.

  ‘I chickened out.’ He smiled.

  ‘What can I do for you this time?’

  ‘The photographs in Ann’s room. I’d like you to tell me the names of the people in them.’

  ‘I’ll just get them,’ said Hilary. She left the room and was back a few moments later with both photographs. She put them on the desk and then stood beside Steven.

  ‘This one,’ said Steven, pointing to the print of Ann shaking hands with the mayor.

  ‘This is Cedric Fanshaw, our managing director.’ Her forefinger moved along the row. ‘Tom Brown, our chief editor, Martin Beale, who organised the exhibition, and William Spicer, our local MP. This is the mayor, Mr Jennings, and, of course, Ann.’

  Steven looked closely and pointed at Spicer. ‘I’ve seen him before and quite recently,’ he said. ‘He was on television.’

  ‘A rising star in the shadow cabinet,’ said Hilary. ‘I think Health is his current bag.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Steven. ‘He was arguing with a Labour minister about the handling of the outbreak here. He was accusing the authorities of incompetence, and destroying the career of your director of Public Health.’

  ‘Did he deserve it?’ asked Hilary.

  ‘He’s a she, and no, she didn’t. Spicer reckoned the time was right for a scapegoat so he threw Caroline Anderson to the wolves in order to up his profile and further his own career.’

  ‘How unlike a politician,’ said Hilary acidly.

  ‘Quite so. Is he married, do you know?’

  ‘Yes, I remember his election leaflets carrying pictures of his wife doing good works, handing out buns to the poor or knitting socks for AIDS victims, that sort of thing. Can’t remember her name, though.’

  ‘You’re absolutely sure his name is William?’

  ‘Well, yes. I didn’t vote for him but he is my MP. I live in silent-majority-land where they’re still in mourning for Margaret Thatcher. They’d vote a chimpanzee in as long as it was wearing a blue rosette and had a strong policy on law and order.’

  The description made Steven think about Ann Danby’s parents. ‘So how come you live there?’

  ‘I met my husband at university, where we shared ideals and principles about social justice. We were going to change the world.’ Hilary smiled at the memory. ‘He finished up by ditching me so he could marry his boss’s daughter and become a director of the firm but I got the house out of it, in “a nice area”.’

  ‘Life,’ said Steven sympathetically.

  ‘I wouldn’t have believed people could change so much.’

  ‘The rebels of today usually turn out to be the bald fund managers of tomorrow,’ said Steven.

  ‘And with that sobering thought…’ Hilary smiled.

  ‘Yes, I mustn’t take up any more of your time. Thanks again for your help.’

  ‘You’re still piecing together Ann’s life?’

  ‘Still trying.’

  ‘The
outbreak doesn’t seem to be slackening off.’

  ‘Things could get a bit worse yet,’ said Steven.

  ‘You look tired, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ said Hilary.

  ‘I had an exciting night,’ said Steven.

  ‘Lucky you,’ said Hilary.

  As he drove back to his hotel, Steven thought again about the men in the photograph. It was a pity that Spicer’s name was William and not Victor, because he would have fitted the bill nicely. He supposed that he might be attractive to women in a Tory MP way — chubby face, wavy hair, cheesy smile. He was married, had a high-profile job and was clearly ambitious. Steven decided that it would be worth asking Sci-Med for more information about him anyway. He still felt there had to be a reason why Ann had kept that particular photograph in both her flat and her office, and, apart from the mayor and the MP, she could see the others in the office on any old day of the week. He realised that he hadn’t bothered to ask the mayor’s first name. Ann might have had a thing about gnarled men in their sixties with small Hitler moustaches who wore heavy gold chains — a bondage thing, maybe? No, forget the mayor.

  Steven e-mailed his request for information about Spicer to Sci-Med, then downloaded and decoded the information he had requested earlier about the Scottish outbreak. He spent the next hour going through it, searching for a possible link — however tenuous — with either of the other two outbreaks but failing to find one. He was preparing to drive over to City General when the information on Spicer came through.

  The first line of the report made Steven feel that life was suddenly worth living: William Victor Spicer had been a Conservative Manchester MP for seven years.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ murmured Steven. ‘Got you, Victor!’ He read on. The MP had been educated at Ampleforth College before reading Classics at Cambridge and then joining his father’s export/import business. He had been appointed export manager with the company and had at one point survived a Board of Trade investigation into the nature of certain items being exported to Arab countries as ‘automotive spares’.