An Air That Kills

by Christine Poulson

  “You gave me such a shock,” she said.

  He came to a halt beside her. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were there. I’m just coming back from the moth trap.”

  Of course – the path came out eventually at the gazebo.

  “Any luck?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Did you find anything interesting?”

  “Oh, no; it’s too early really.”

  So why were you visiting it? she wondered. Something about his voice made her ask, “Are you alright?”

  “It’s Gemma. I rang the hospital and they wouldn’t tell me anything. I’m not a next of kin. Surely – I mean, she can’t be as ill as all that, can she? It was you who found her, wasn’t it?”

  She responded to the plea in his voice. “Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?”

  Once they were in the flat and she saw how pale he was, tea on its own didn’t seem enough. She got out the bottle of brandy that Justin had thoughtfully included in the box of provisions and said a silent thank you.

  Once they were settled with tea and brandy, she told Bill what had happened. She didn’t tell him that she’d wondered whether it was sepsis.

  The brandy seemed to loosen his tongue.

  He said, “If anything happens to her, I don’t know what I’ll do. A month or two ago we were at the same conference. We got talking in the bar and one thing led to another and we – we spent the night together. I’ve been on my own since the divorce, and my two boys are mostly with their mother. I suppose at first it was that I was lonely, but then...”

  You fell in love with her, you poor sap, Katie thought. It was you I saw that night, leaving her cottage.

  He went on, “I fell for her in a big way. I’ve never known anyone like her. Of course I couldn’t expect her to feel the same way – at least, not so soon – but I think she was falling in love with me, and I hope that, well, I hope that we might have a future together.”

  Katie groaned inwardly as she remembered the way Gemma had thrust Bill from her that evening. She felt certain that Gemma was already getting tired of him and that Bill was deluding himself.

  He said again, “I don’t know what I’ll do if anything happens to her.”

  Katie stole a sideways glance at his stricken face. She understood now why Bill had been visiting the moth trap. He had been seeking the company – and the comfort – of his beloved moths.

  And like a moth, Bill had flown too close to the flame and his wings had been scorched.

  CHAPTER 27

  After Bill had gone, Katie went back to the lab. Working in the evening would have to be a regular thing now, because she was essentially doing two jobs. She was trying to replicate Claudia’s experiment on top of her own official work as a technician. Fortunately, the security staff thought nothing of her being in the lab outside office hours. They were used to the strange ways of scientists, to people coming and going at all hours of the day and night.

  Luckily, Claudia was rarely in evidence in the evenings. When a culture really did need checking, Katie offered to do it, even when it should have been Claudia’s job, and Claudia never objected. Now and then, someone came in to check something, but mostly Katie had the place to herself.

  She went to bed late and woke up feeling sluggish. She only picked at her breakfast. The place behind her ear was more than itchy; it was painful. As she put on her make-up she wondered if she’d developed an allergy to something. Using a small hand mirror, she managed to angle it towards the bathroom mirror so that she could see the sore place, which consisted of a cluster of small blisters. And that was when the penny dropped. She had shingles. All the symptoms fit, and considering the fact that she was highly stressed and running on very little sleep, and that her immune system had been weakened by her stay in Antarctica, hers was a classic case. She could kick herself for not realizing before, particularly as early treatment could halt the virus in its tracks. It had to be started within seventy-two hours of the first symptoms, which was Sunday night, so it probably wasn’t too late.

  There was a GP clinic on the island and they squeezed her in when she explained the situation. Armed with antivirals she took herself back to her flat and went to bed to catch up on some sleep.

  She woke in the late afternoon feeling a bit better, and, after something to eat, she decided to go to the lab. She couldn’t afford to lose too much time and she was getting close to the end of the experiment. And perhaps because of that, or simply because she was still not firing on all cylinders, she relaxed her guard.

  She was working on printouts of the data that had come into her private email account that afternoon. This would tell her if she had managed to achieve the mutation that would allow the avian virus to jump the species barrier and infect a human cell. She could have processed the data through the software available on the lab computers, but that would leave a trace on the system. This way, no one would know what she was up to. Working with the printouts was old school, but strangely satisfying and totally absorbing.

  The hum of the container hood masked the sound of footsteps coming up behind her. When someone touched her shoulder, she got such a shock that her heart felt as if it was going to leap out of her breast. She turned, hand clutched to her chest, and saw Tarquin.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. Their areas of research were so different that it was highly unlikely he’d realize she was doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack,” she complained.

  “Oh, sorry. I should have thought. I saw you in here and wondered if you’d like a coffee. I’ve been writing up my lab book.”

  “Coffee’ll keep me awake, but I’d love a cup of tea. Just give me five minutes.”

  They met in the staffroom.

  “Have you heard any more about Gemma?” Katie asked. Caspar had given out a bulletin at lunchtime. At that point there had been no change in her condition.

  Tarquin looked grave. “The news from the hospital isn’t good. I saw Caspar at tea-time and he says she’s still very ill. Apparently her sister is there with her now and she’s keeping Caspar informed.”

  “It’s still only been – what? – not much more than twenty-four hours since they started treatment,” Katie said. “That’s not long.”

  All the same, she didn’t like the sound of this. If they’d sent for Gemma’s next of kin, that wasn’t a good sign.

  Tarquin said, “How can someone so young and fit get so ill so quickly? If she was an old person and she’d had flu, that would be different. I was talking to Siobhan and she said you mentioned sepsis.”

  Katie’s thoughts ranged over the possibilities. “Yes, that’s one thing. And there’s viral pneumonia – that’s another. Antibiotics wouldn’t help in that case. They’d have given her an antiviral medication, like –”

  She pulled herself up with a jolt. What was she thinking? She wasn’t supposed to be a medic! She wasn’t supposed to know the names of the most recent antiviral drugs. But she did know, because she had been trained to use them on the base in Antarctica. Tarquin was looking at her with interest, waiting for her to complete her sentence.

  “Like my mother had when she had a viral infection,” she improvised.

  “Well, let’s hope there’ll be good news tomorrow,” Tarquin said.

  Katie went back to her bench feeling annoyed with herself. She wasn’t really cut out for subterfuge. It was far more difficult to conceal knowledge than she’d realized. She remembered what Julia had told her: it can be as hard pretending not to know something as it is to pretend you know something that you don’t. Perhaps her fictitious CV should have contained some medical training – she might have done a couple of years in med school and then dropped out – but it was too late for that.

  Well, by the morning she should know whether or not she’d replicated Claudia’s result. She hoped she had. Or did she? Of course she did! Though if she was honest with herself, it would be an
anti-climax if it turned out that there was nothing wrong – and she’d feel a bit of a fool into the bargain.

  Only one way to find out. She bent to her work again.

  It was midnight by the time she had finished and left the building. It was a still night with a clear sky and a glaucous moon. The path up through the woods gleamed with frost in the light from her phone, and the crunching of her boots seemed very loud.

  As she took the path through the wood, she glimpsed Gemma’s house among the trees and thought she saw a light in one of the windows. Was someone in there? As she walked on, her view was blocked by a tree, and when the house came into view again she saw that it was in darkness. The next moment she gave a shriek and her hand flew to her chest. Something had touched her leg. She looked down and saw – Denis. He gave a little trill of greeting.

  She couldn’t help laughing as she squatted down and petted him. When she stood up, he ran to the door of Gemma’s cottage, anticipating that he might be let in there. When she shook her head and set off up the path, he chased after her and trotted along beside her all the way back to the house, clearly delighted to have a companion in his nocturnal wandering. When they got to her door and she put her key in the lock, he looked up hopefully and she was tempted to let him in. She could do with the company – but no, better not. She managed to slip inside, and gently closed the door in his face.

  * * *

  The next morning she scanned the final sequence results of the experiment and was disturbed by what she saw. It hadn’t worked. The avian flu virus had not been transferred to the human cell-line.

  She pushed back her chair and rubbed her eyes. She felt drugged by fatigue. She still felt under par, though the antivirals were definitely kicking in. The blisters behind her ear weren’t as painful, so it looked as if she’d caught it in time.

  All that work and for nothing. It didn’t look as if she’d be leaving the island anytime soon. Her heart sank at that thought. So now what? Caffeine was what she needed, and lots of it.

  She went up to the canteen. Her colleagues were creatures of habit. Eleven o’clock was the time they met for coffee, and punctually at ten fifty-five they downed tools – unless, of course, they were in the middle of something that couldn’t wait. It was only ten fifteen and she banked on the place being more or less empty, and it was. She bought herself a double espresso and – craving that particular combination of fat and sugar – treated herself to a doughnut. She needed the energy, she told herself. What the heck, maybe she’d even have two.

  She sipped the coffee and waited for the caffeine hit to reach her.

  The problem was that she hadn’t really proved anything. It still left the question of fraud wide open. But there were many other reasons – more likely reasons, on the face of it – why it might not have worked. Working with complex living systems was so demanding, and virus RNA was notoriously prone to spontaneous mutation. It was why viruses were such a successful life form. They never stood still in the war between virus and host.

  She would have to have another go. She gave a yawn that made her jaw click. One thing was for sure: she couldn’t go on doing two jobs without a break. She’d have to have a night off and go to bed early. Perhaps she could wait for the weekend, when she could come into the lab during the day to begin the process of rerunning the experiment, checking every link in the chain.

  She felt very lonely. No one here really knew her. There was no one she could confide in or talk things over with. What was she doing in this godforsaken place? She yearned to see Justin. For a few moments she toyed with the idea of slipping away to meet him somewhere. But no, duty called. That would just have to wait. She and Justin would keep, she felt sure of it.

  She’d have to ring Lyle and let him know. He would be reassuring, but he would want her to try again. He’d also want to know about the inventory. She hadn’t had time for that, but she’d make a start on it soon. She certainly wouldn’t be able to get away at the weekend.

  Oh well, she thought, I am being paid to do two jobs, after all. She promised herself a long and expensive holiday – with Justin, she hoped – when all this was over. The Caribbean, maybe; somewhere hot, certainly. She drifted into a reverie. Sea and sand and blue skies...

  She came to herself with a jolt when someone pulled out the seat next to her.

  It was Maddie. Her eyes were big and anxious. She said, “I heard from Bill, who heard from Caspar – Gemma’s not responding to the antibiotics. They don’t know why.”

  “That’s worrying news,” Katie said. “I was hoping they’d have kicked in by now.”

  Maddie said, “I’m having a coffee. Can I get you another?”

  “Sure. Thanks. A latte, please.”

  After she’d gone to get them, Katie thought again about what she’d seen when they went into Gemma’s cottage. She had naturally assumed – and so, it seemed, had everyone else – that Gemma was suffering from something she had caught in the last week or so. But Gemma had been in Africa – perhaps not very recently, but still... Could she have picked up something with a long incubation period?

  She got out her phone and did some exploring online. As she thought, high fever was a common symptom of many tropical diseases, but mostly the incubation period was a matter of days or a week or two. So Gemma couldn’t have gone down with something like dengue fever or yellow fever.

  But something was nagging at Katie, something that she’d heard during her medical training. There was something that could have a late onset from the time of infection. Now what was it? There’d been a seminar when they’d looked at A&E case studies. What had the lecturer said about a patient presenting with a sudden high fever? “It’s always worth asking if the patient has recently returned from sub-Saharan Africa – and in the case of malaria it need not be all that recent.” But what exactly did “not all that recent” mean? Weeks? Months?

  She Googled malaria and read: “The incubation period between infection from a mosquito bite and initial symptoms may range from one week to a year.” A year! She wondered when Gemma had last been in Africa. She read on: “Symptoms include a high temperature with shaking chills, followed by profuse sweating when the fever suddenly drops, fatigue, headache, muscle aches, abdominal discomfort, nausea, vomiting, and feeling faint when standing or sitting up quickly.”

  Of course those symptoms were not specific to malaria. And anyway the doctors would have thought of that, wouldn’t they? Bound to have done.

  And if they hadn’t, surely Caspar or Bill had thought of it? But maybe not. After all, they weren’t medics. They didn’t work on actual human beings. It simply might not have occurred to them, if it was a long time since Gemma had been in the field.

  “Hi, Caitlin.” She gave a little start and looked round. Bill was standing behind her. She was struck by the change in him. His eyes were red-rimmed and his hair uncombed. He looked drained.

  She saw his gaze move to the screen of her phone and then back to her face. Tarquin came up and took the seat opposite her. Maddie was approaching too, carrying Katie’s coffee as well as her own.

  Katie felt obliged to speak. “I was just looking up malaria. The early symptoms are very like flu, aren’t they?”

  Maddie was close enough now to catch what she said. All three of them stared at her and she sensed hostility – or maybe it was just incomprehension?

  She ploughed on regardless. “I was just wondering: how long is it since Gemma was in Africa?”

  It seemed to her that there was a slackening of tension. Had they thought that she was suggesting that Gemma had somehow contracted malaria from the research being carried out here? Clearly that wasn’t possible.

  Bill pulled out the seat next to her and sat down. “It must be a couple of years – or nearly that. No way could she have been incubating it that long.”

  Maddie said, “Up to a year’s not unknown, but surely not two.” She pushed a mug over to Katie and sat down next to Tarquin.

  Tarquin rippe
d open a sachet of sugar and poured it into his cappuccino. “Caitlin’s right though,” he said. “The symptoms of malaria are very similar to flu, at least in the early stages. Do we know for sure that it really is completely out of the question?”

  “Let’s think about this,” Bill said.

  There was silence again, but this time it felt like the silence of a group of scientists dispassionately considering the evidence.

  Tarquin said, “OK. So incubation can take a year. But if it can take a year, can it also take a year and a day? I’d say it probably can. And if it can take a year and a day, can it take a year and a month?”

  “I’d say probably not,” Maddie said.

  “But perhaps not impossible, right? And if it could be a year and a month –”

  Bill said, “I’m trying to remember exactly when Gemma was last in the DCR. I was there at the same time. So twenty months, just over, it would have been.”

  Tarquin said, “What if Gemma’s an outlier? A statistical freak?”

  Katie was growing tired of this line of argument. She said, “Looking at this from another angle, being tested for malaria can’t do Gemma any harm, can it? And suppose later on we learned that she did have it, how would we feel if we hadn’t said anything?”

  Maddie said, “She hasn’t got it. She can’t have.” She sounded irritated. “Tarquin’s talking rubbish.”

  Katie said, “Why don’t we ask Caspar what he thinks?”

  Tarquin said, “That’s an idea.”

  “We’ll look like idiots,” Maddie complained.

  Katie looked at Bill. He was gazing into space.

  “Bill?” Tarquin prompted. “What do you say?”

  “What?” Bill said. He looked at them and saw that they were waiting for a response. “Oh, Caitlin’s right, of course. About testing Gemma.” He put his hands on the table and pushed himself heavily to his feet. “Best to make the suggestion through Caspar. He’s in touch with the hospital and with Gemma’s sister. I’ll go and see him now.”

  CHAPTER 28