Wildcard sd-3

by Ken McClure

  Patterson put a comforting arm round her and they paused for a moment. ‘Look, why don’t we get a drink and decide where we go from here?’ he suggested.

  Karen dabbed her eyes with a tissue and nodded silently. They crossed the road and went into the hotel where they’d gone on their arrival. They’d chosen not to stay overnight there, opting instead for a bed-and-breakfast place along the road.

  ‘Did you find it then?’ asked the barman who’d given them directions to the field station.

  Patterson said that they had and asked for two brandies.

  The man, noticing that Karen was still wiping her eyes, backed off and delivered the brandy without further question. He went back to reading his paper behind the bar.

  ‘I don’t see that there’s any more we can do,’ said Patterson. ‘If no one saw them and the police can’t help…’

  Karen took a deep breath to compose herself. ‘I will not believe that Peter has left me, not until I see some proof,’ she said. ‘There must be someone in this bloody God-forsaken place who knows something. Excuse me-’ and she leaped up and ran out of the room.

  ‘Is she okay?’ asked the barman, looking over his newspaper.

  ‘She’s upset,’ replied Patterson. ‘Her husband has disappeared without trace.’

  ‘Like that, is it? I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, I don’t think it is “like that”,’ said Patterson. ‘He and my wife were working at the field station we asked you about yesterday, but apparently none of the locals saw them and then suddenly they just disappeared completely. The Land-Rover they came down to Wales in was still at the field station when the fire broke out, and they didn’t use any of the local taxis, so we can’t work out how they even left the field station.’

  ‘Maybe I can help there,’ said the man.

  ‘But you didn’t see them, either,’ said Patterson.

  ‘No, but you aren’t the only people to ask for directions to the station.’

  Karen came back and sat down; she’d washed her face and reapplied her make-up.

  ‘Go on,’ said Patterson.

  ‘Four people came in here about ten days ago asking for directions, two men and two women. I remember ’cos they were rude about the coffee, see.’

  Karen, realising what the conversation was about, delved into her handbag and pulled out a photograph of her husband. She took it over to the barman. ‘Was he one of the men?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ replied the barman, almost before he’d looked. ‘They were Americans.’

  ‘Americans,’ repeated Patterson flatly. ‘You mean tourists?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so. The men were American, the women were Welsh, and local by the sound of them.’

  ‘But you didn’t know them?’

  ‘Never seen them before or since.’

  ‘But they asked about the field station?’ said Karen.

  ‘No doubt about it. I thought it a bit strange, like. None of them looked like boffins, if you know what I mean. They looked quite normal.’

  ‘I suppose they didn’t say why they were going to the field station?’ asked Patterson hopefully.

  ‘’Fraid not.’

  Karen asked if he could remember the exact date and he gave two possibilities. ‘Either the Monday or the Tuesday, I’m not sure which.’

  Karen turned to Patterson and said, ‘That would be about ten days after Peter and Amy came here.’

  Patterson agreed and added, ‘And round about the time the two of them stopped phoning.’

  Karen turned back to the barman and said, ‘This really is important: can you remember anything else at all about those people?’

  ‘Not really,’ replied the man. ‘They weren’t the friendliest folk I’ve come across. They stayed for a meal, complained about the coffee and then buggered off. No bloody tip, either, as I remember.’

  ‘How did they pay?’ asked Karen; the man’s comments had given her an idea.

  He had to think for a moment. ‘Credit card, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Ninety per cent of people do these days.’

  ‘Then you should have a record of the transaction,’ said Karen, her eyes bright with hope.

  The man shrugged and said, ‘I suppose. My wife deals with these things.’

  ‘Would you ask her, please?’ said Karen. ‘It really is important.’

  The man shuffled out of the bar and was gone for three or four minutes. When he came back he was arguing with a small grey-haired woman he called Megan. She was carrying a rectangular metal box, which she clutched to her bosom.

  ‘Megan thinks you’re from the Inland Revenue,’ said the man. ‘You’re not, are you?’ He gave an uncertain smile, revealing bad teeth.

  ‘Definitely not,’ said Karen.

  ‘No way,’ added Patterson.

  The woman opened the box and tipped out a bundle of credit-card receipts on to the bar counter. Her husband put on a pair of black-framed glasses and started sifting through them, licking his fingers to assist their separation.

  Karen felt as if she were watching a slow-motion replay of grass growing. She itched to snatch the forms and go through them herself, but she kept the impulse in check and made do with a glance at Patterson and a roll of her eyes heavenwards.

  ‘This is the one,’ announced the man. ‘This is it.’ He held the paper up closer to his glasses and read out with difficulty, ‘American Express. J. Clyde Miller. Mean anything?’

  Karen and Patterson shook their heads. ‘May I see?’ asked Karen. Her expression changed as she noticed something else. ‘Look!’ she said, handing the receipt over to Patterson. ‘He was using a company credit card. Look at the company name.’

  Patterson took the receipt. His eyes widened as he read out loud, ‘Lehman International.’

  ‘You’ve been a big help,’ said Karen to the two people behind the bar.

  ‘We can’t thank you enough,’ added Patterson.

  ‘So you think you can trace these people?’

  ‘They worked for the same company as my husband — at least, the one who paid the bill did. They must know something. You say the women were local?’

  ‘Sounded like it.’

  Karen looked at Patterson and said, ‘Looks like we won’t be going home just yet.’

  ‘Might you be wanting some dinner, then?’ asked Megan.

  Karen smiled, thinking that the least she and Patterson could do was to eat at the hotel. ‘I think we might,’ she agreed.

  Karen and Patterson made plans for the following day while they ate. ‘I think we should call Paul Grossart in the morning and ask for the women’s addresses,’ said Karen.

  ‘Grossart’s not exactly been helpful so far,’ said Patterson.

  ‘You think he might refuse?’

  ‘I think it’s a possibility. I got the impression he wanted to wash his hands of Peter and Amy.’

  ‘Jesus!’ exclaimed the barman, who was reading his paper again. He called out something in Welsh and Megan appeared, drying her hands on a cloth. He showed her a story in the paper and they seemed to agree about something.

  Karen and Patterson suddenly realised that the pair were staring at them. ‘What is it?’ Karen asked.

  ‘It’s her!’ exclaimed the man, pointing to the paper as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘This is one of the women who came here with the Americans.’

  Karen and Patterson went over, and the barman showed them a picture of a middle-aged woman.

  ‘She’s in Caernarfon General,’ said the man. ‘They say she might be the first case in Wales of the Manchester virus.’

  Manchester

  Back in his hotel room, Steven slipped the disk into his laptop and felt a welcome buzz of excitement. Please God he was at last holding the key to the outbreak. The disk must be vitally important if Greg Allan had chosen to end his life over it in a cold, dark wood a week before Christmas.

  The disk contained a single Microsoft Word file with no title. Steven clicked it open and watched the
first page come up under the header SNOWBALL 2000. Beneath it was a list of names in a vertical column, each aligned with the address of a hospital or clinic listed in a column to the right. His first impression was that the locations were pretty much spread over the entire UK. There was also a date assigned to each entry. Steven quickly scrolled to the bottom of the list to see what other information the document held, but there was nothing there. The list was all there was.

  He recognised some of the names as those of wildcard patients so he felt confident that he had got hold of the right disk. In fact, when he examined the list in more detail, all eighteen wildcard patients were there but what he found puzzling was that there seemed to be no correlation between donors and recipients. If this was a record of the donors used in the supply of heart valves, as he supposed it to be, why weren’t the donors matched up with their respective recipients? There was nothing to indicate who was what.

  In all there were fifty-six names, an even number, so at least in theory they could be twenty-eight donors and twenty-eight recipients, but there was no way of telling. Steven felt a tide of bitter, hollow disappointment sweep over him. There was nothing here to help him establish what had caused the outbreak, and nothing to suggest why Greg Allan should have committed suicide when someone had routinely asked for details of donors. Steven logged off. He’d had enough of puzzles for the moment. He decided to go and see how Caroline was.

  Kate Lineham had already come off duty and left for home by the time he got to St Jude’s, so he had to explain all over again — this time to the night staff — who he was and why he was there.

  ‘Dr Anderson’s not too well, I’m afraid,’ said one of the nurses. ‘She had a bad afternoon, according to Kate, but recovered some ground later on and she’s resting quietly at the moment. Kate left instructions that we should call her if there’s any change.’

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t disturb her?’ asked Steven.

  ‘No harm in sitting with her for a while, if you’ve a mind to,’ said the nurse. ‘It often helps to wake up and find a friendly face there.’

  Steven agreed that was what he would do and got changed into protective gear before moving through the airlock into the nave. When he saw Caroline, he was shocked at the change in her appearance since earlier that day. Her skin had taken on a yellowish pallor and her lips were thin and cracked, though beads of sweat were trickling down either side of her nose.

  He squatted down, rinsed out a sponge in the basin beside her and gently wiped the sweat away. Caroline stirred slightly, so he stopped for a few moments, shushing her with ‘Sleep, my lady, sleep easy. Everything’s going to be just fine.’

  Caroline moved again, as if she were in discomfort.

  ‘Think of sunshine… golden corn, white sails on blue water… the picnics we’ll go on in the summer…’

  One of the nurses came up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Everything all right?’ she whispered.

  Steven nodded as he saw Caroline settle down again and heard her breathing become deep and regular. Once she was sleeping easily, his gaze drifted up to the memorial board above her bed and to the names of those who’d died in the ‘bloody slaughter of war’. As he read through them, he couldn’t help but think that they at least had had a tangible enemy, one they could see and fight against, unlike the poor souls in the church, who had been stricken by a colourless, odourless, invisible enemy. Its only function was to replicate itself and, in doing so, kill the body that harboured it. All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small…

  Steven had been sitting with Caroline for about half an hour, holding her hand and soothing her, when she became restless again, as if in the throes of a bad dream. He tried shushing her through it, but this time to no avail. After a few more moments, he felt a convulsion ripple through her body and just managed to get a papier-mache bowl up to her face in time to catch the bloody vomit that erupted from her mouth.

  ‘Easy, my lady,’ he soothed.

  Caroline continued retching until there was nothing left in her stomach, her face reflecting her pain as the spasms racked her. When they at last stopped, her head flopped back on the pillow in exhaustion, blood trickling from her nose. He wiped it away and rinsed the sponge. Her eyes flickered open and recognition registered in them.

  ‘It’s you,’ she said. ‘God, I feel awful.’

  ‘But you’re winning,’ said Steven with every ounce of conviction he could muster. ‘Hang in there.’

  She started to answer but another convulsion ripped through her and Steven held up the bowl again. Although her stomach muscles contracted so violently that her whole body heaved, she brought up only a trickle of bloodstained mucus.

  ‘Jesus,’ she complained, seeking relief from the pain of the spasms by wrapping her arms tightly round her stomach. Her nosebleed restarted with a vengeance and this time, when her eyes opened, Steven could see that conjunctival haemorrhages were turning the whites of her eyes red. He got up and waved his arm to attract the attention of one of the nurses. He asked her to stay with Caroline while he emptied the sick bowl and washed out the blood-soaked sponges at the sluice.

  When he returned, the nurse said, ‘I’d better call Kate.’

  Steven knew the crisis had come. He sank to his knees beside Caroline again and did his best to make her as comfortable as possible with tender words and loving care. When she had a momentary respite from the spasms, she said haltingly, ‘I remember telling you I hoped someone would be there to look after me if I ever needed them… I didn’t realise it would be you.’

  ‘I guess you drew the short straw,’ said Steven.

  Her attempt at a smile was cut short by another convulsion.

  ‘I think I’m going to have to get some fluid into you, my lady,’ murmured Steven, reaching for a saline pack. ‘You’ve been losing too much.’

  ‘Be… careful,’ she cautioned. ‘I’m not… too responsible for… my actions… right now.’

  ‘Just try to relax.’

  ‘You’ve no idea… how ridiculous that sounds,’ said Caroline, grimacing with pain and drawing up her knees involuntarily.

  A nurse appeared at Steven’s shoulder and whispered, ‘Kate’s on her way. Can I do anything?’

  Steven asked her to hold Caroline’s arm steady while he inserted the needle. When it was secured in place he looked around for something to hang the saline reservoir from and settled on a corner of the memorial board. He pinned it next to the name of one Sergeant Morris Holmes who had died for King and Country at the battle of Ypres. He said, ‘Just you hold that there for the time being, Morris.’

  Steven’s spirits rose as Caroline’s spasms gradually became more infrequent and finally stopped, and she was able to relax into the margins between sleep and consciousness. But his optimism was short-lived: another wave of nausea overtook her and she started to retch all over again. When she at last settled again, she murmured, ‘I think something just snapped inside me. I could feel it go.’

  ‘What sort of feeling?’ asked Steven.

  ‘I think it was… my rubber band,’ replied Caroline with a smile so distant that it froze Steven with its poignancy. It was the moment when he knew that she was drifting away from him.

  ‘You’re going to be just fine,’ he said, although the words stuck in his throat and he had to swallow before he could say any more. ‘You’re over the worst now; the convulsions have finished and you’re on the mend. You must rest and build up your strength.’

  He was aware that Kate Lineham had arrived and was standing there with one of the other nurses. She chose, however, not to move into Caroline’s line of sight or to say anything.

  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, S
teven.’

  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.