“I’m so sorry,” Katie said, as they shook hands. “This is such a terrible thing to have happened.”
“Thank you.” Mary’s eyes were red and she looked very tired, but she seemed to have herself well under control. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, “but the director’s secretary – Siobhan, is it? – she told me that you were so good, looking after Gemma while the ambulance was coming. And she said that she thought Gemma spoke to you.”
“She did, yes, and I’ve been thinking such a lot about that. Of course you’ll want to know what she said.”
“Please.”
“Let’s have some tea, shall we?”
As they entered the canteen, Mary looked around curiously. “I’ve never been here before. Gemma and I, well, we followed very different paths.”
Katie left Mary at a table and went to get the tea. She wondered how Mary would react when Katie told her that she had pretended to be Mary. But she had a right to know everything.
When Mary heard what she had to say, her eyes filled with tears. “She did say that? She asked for me? You’re certain?” “Not a doubt about it. She spoke quite distinctly. I wondered who Mary was, whether she was a friend, or even maybe a daughter. And when I let her think I was Mary, that soothed her and she was quiet again. I hope I did right?”
“Oh, thank you, thank you. It means everything that she wanted me there at the last and I’m so glad that she thought I was there.” She fumbled in her bag for a tissue and Katie went to get paper napkins for her. She came back and handed them to her.
Mary said, “By the time I got to the hospital, I couldn’t be sure that Gemma even knew I was there. We used to be close as children – there’s only fifteen months between us – and then... not so close, and it means so much –” she gulped and broke off. After a few moments she said, “And you see, I, well, sometimes it’s so hard to know what to do for the best.” Tears were rolling down her face. She dabbed at them.
Katie leaned over and squeezed her arm.
“I don’t know if I did the right thing,” Mary said. “I arranged for her to have Anointing of the Sick. The local priest came to the hospital.”
“Is that what’s also known as the last rites?” Katie asked.
“More or less, but it’s not called that any more. It’s quite a simple thing, really. The priest lays his hands on the sick person’s head and then he anoints their forehead and the palms of their hands with holy oil, and makes the sign of the cross. And now I’m thinking that perhaps I shouldn’t have done that. Because, you see, Gemma was a militant atheist.”
“Ah.” Katie was beginning to understand.
“We come from a big Catholic family. We’ve got an older sister who’s a nun, and a cousin who’s a priest. But Gemma lost her faith when she was at university.”
“And that caused a rift in the family?”
“Not that so much. It was the way she behaved, so intolerant – scornful even, as if we were idiots for not seeing things her way. She said some very hurtful things. My mother was terribly upset. But all the same, I don’t know if I had a right to over-ride Gemma’s wishes.”
Katie didn’t know what to say. Mary needed comfort, but she deserved something better than glib reassurances.
Mary was looking at her, waiting for an answer.
“OK, well, as I see it,” Katie said slowly, “there are two possibilities. Either Gemma knew what was going on or she didn’t. If she didn’t, then she didn’t know that you were going against her wishes, but you’ve got the comfort of knowing that she died – how would you put it?”
“In the grace of the church.”
“Yes, and if she did know – and they think hearing is the last sense to go, so maybe she did – then again there are two ways to think about that. She might have been angry, as you said. But even if she didn’t believe, perhaps it comforted her to have the priest there – to go back in a way to her childhood. And I think perhaps that’s the most likely thing, because she wanted you there, even though she knew that the two of you didn’t agree about religion.”
Mary had been listening intently. She said, “There’s another option. Perhaps she went back to her faith. Perhaps right at the very end she did believe. I’d like to think she was absolved of her sins. ‘Between the stirrup and the ground, Mercy I asked, mercy I found.’”
“It’s possible,” Katie conceded. After all, no one could know what might have been the last thoughts of the dying woman.
“So you think I did the right thing?”
Katie hesitated before she said, “You had to decide for her and you did your best. You don’t have anything to reproach yourself for – in my view.”
Katie reflected on what Mary had said about asking for mercy. She wondered if Gemma had felt in need of that at the end. She guessed that Mary would say that we all needed mercy and she would be right about that. We all make mistakes and we all have things to regret. But Gemma had certainly seemed very troubled by something. Should she tell Mary?
As if she’d read Katie’s thoughts, Mary asked, “Did she say anything else, apart from wanting me?”
“At one point she did get quite agitated. That was before she thought you were there. She was terribly exercised about something that had happened in the Congo. An outbreak of Sangha fever.” Katie explained what Gemma had said.
Mary sighed. “I’m afraid we weren’t in contact a huge amount in the last few years. I really regret that now. But I did make a point of ringing her every now and then, and of course I remember that trip, because we were so afraid that she might have caught that horrible disease herself. I know Professor Delaney was out there too. I think I’ll ask him about it.”
CHAPTER 33
Katie went back to the lab and got her head down for the rest of the day. By the end of it the results of running the experiment for the second time were ready. Once again she had failed to transfer the virus, even though she had followed to the letter the procedure detailed in Claudia’s lab book. There was definitely something wrong, but what? It could simply be that there was something she hadn’t got quite right. Or else it just didn’t work: the evidence was stacking up, though it still wasn’t conclusive. She would have to talk it over with Lyle that evening.
She wished it had worked. She was longing to get away from Debussy Point. She looked again at the procedure and pondered. Interesting, how Claudia had chosen to do it. Actually, it wasn’t quite how she, Katie, would have tackled the problem.
It was getting dark by the time she made her way back up the hill to her flat. This time, there was definitely a light on in Gemma’s cottage. In fact, as she got nearer, she saw that all the lights were on. It was probably Mary. She decided to ring the doorbell and see if she was alright. If she was beginning to sort out Gemma’s things on her own, that would be a grim task.
At first no one came to the door. She stood and listened. She couldn’t hear anyone inside. Then she heard slow footsteps making their way towards her. Whoever it was fumbled at the catch and she could hear them muttering as they struggled to release it.
At last the door swung open. She was surprised to see Bill staring out at her. Even from a couple of feet away, the reek of whisky reached her.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Come on in.” His speech was slurred. He turned and she followed him through the hall into the sitting room.
Someone must have done some cleaning. The smell of vomit had gone. She guessed that Siobhan had seen to that, but otherwise the place was just as Gemma must have left it. There was a copy of Vogue open on a coffee table, a cardigan draped over the back of a chair. Katie shivered. The place was chilly, a draught blowing through the room. There must be a window open somewhere.
Bill groped for a chair and sat down awkwardly. There was a bottle of whisky on the floor beside him, and a glass. He picked up the bottle and waved it. “Get yourself a glass,” he invited her.
She didn’t want a drink, but she did want to know what Bill was doing
there. She sat down opposite him. He looked terrible, his clothes looked as if he had been wearing them for days, and he hadn’t shaved.
He took a swig of whisky. “I loved her,” he informed Katie.
“I know you did.”
“I need to be here, where I was so happy, and then I thought – if I looked through her things, I’d know.” He leaned forward and looked earnestly at her. “If I could just get the idea out of my head. I’m tormented by it. You do see that, don’t you, Caitlin?”
“I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Bill.”
“You see, if there was someone else, I have to know. Now that she’s gone, it’s all I have, knowing that she was mine. But I have to be sure. That’s not unreasonable, is it? You understand, don’t you? There were times when I thought, when I suspected –”
Katie broke into the rambling monologue. “Bill, you don’t mean you came here to –”
“Yes, yes, I have to know.” He was vehement. At the same time he was talking as if it were a perfectly natural thing that he should be searching the belongings of his dead lover for evidence of infidelity. “I haven’t found anything. But someone had been in before me. I could tell.”
“But that might have been her sister.”
“Her sister’s gone back to her family. The things in her bedroom – they weren’t where I remembered. I hoped her phone might be there.”
“Gemma’s phone?”
“I know,” he said. “Stupid of me.” Tears were welling up in his eyes. “Even if it had been, I don’t know her password. But then I’d have known for sure, don’t you see?”
She looked at his ravaged face. Jealous over a dead woman! Was he in his right mind? Had Gemma’s death tipped him over the edge? There was a darker side to Bill than she had suspected.
Bill raised his glass to his lips. Katie leaned forward and took it from him. “I don’t think you should have any more, Bill.”
He didn’t resist. “Perhaps you’re right,” he mumbled, and slumped back in his chair. He closed his eyes.
Katie wondered if she should make him a cup of coffee, or at least get him to drink some water. He was going to feel dreadful in the morning. And – where was this blast of icy air coming from?”
She got up and went out into the kitchen. The kitchen window was wide open and the floor was strewn with broken crockery. What had happened here? She looked more closely and saw that there was a footprint on the draining board and then she understood. She’d assumed that Bill had let himself in with a key, but he must have arrived here already drunk, found the window ajar – perhaps left like that to air the place? – and clambered in. She put the kettle on and while it boiled found a dustpan and brush, and swept up the crockery.
She made a cup of instant coffee and took it through to Bill.
He seemed to have fallen asleep. She shook him gently.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Come on. You’d better drink this.” She pulled the coffee table towards him and set the cup down on it.
He fixed her with a bleary eye. “You know, she never left it lying around. Even took it into the loo with her.”
“What are you talking about, Bill?”
“Her phone. I’ve thought and thought about who it might be and I’ve seen them laughing together once or twice.”
“You’re not making sense, Bill.”
“I’m not saying there was someone else, but if there was, I wondered about Tarquin.”
“Tarquin?” Surely Tarquin was gay. Hadn’t he implied as much at the Burns Night dinner? And he’d been with a male companion when she saw him at Wells Cathedral. Of course that might have just been a friend. All the same...
“I really don’t think so, Bill.”
“You don’t?” His eagerness was pathetic.
“No, honestly.”
Bill sipped his coffee.
Katie was starving, she realized. It was eight o’clock and she hadn’t eaten since lunch. But she didn’t like the idea of leaving Bill here. For one thing, he had more or less broken into the place.
She said, “What are you going to do now? I think you should go home.”
Bill nodded. He did seem to be sobering up a bit.
When he had finished his coffee, Katie made sure the house was secure and let Bill go out first before she shut the door behind her and tested it to make sure that it was really locked.
They made their way up to the house and Katie walked round with Bill to his flat in the stable block. She had to help him get his key in the lock, but he didn’t seem too drunk to be left alone.
Back in her flat, as she got her supper, she remembered the conversation she’d had with Julia at the private investigators’ agency about cheating partners. “And you know the biggest giveaway?” Julia had said. “Suddenly their mobile phone never leaves their side. They even take it into the bathroom with them, because they don’t want their partner to see the messages and who’s been calling them.”
It was all too likely that Bill was right, but if so, she hoped he never found out.
CHAPTER 34
SATURDAY
“Hi, Caitlin, hi!”
Katie turned to see Caspar jogging down the track after her. It was the following morning and she was heading for the lab. She slowed down to let him catch up and fall into step with her. My, but he was in good shape. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
He said, “I’m glad I’ve caught you. I’ve been wanting to have a word with you. Have you got time for a coffee?”
She nodded.
They went to the canteen, almost empty at that time on a Saturday. When they were settled at a table, he said, “I felt I needed to check in with you, see if you’re OK. After what’s happened with Gemma.”
She was touched and impressed that with all he had on his plate as director of the institute, having to manage what was a terrible situation, he’d made time for her.
He went on: “It’s no small thing to lose the PI for a project that you’re working on. It wouldn’t be surprising if you were upset by that – and of course there’s the impact on Claudia and the knock-on effect of that on you.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him about when she had lost Michael, her beloved PI, a few years ago, but she remembered in time that that was part of her other life.
Instead she said, “I’m OK, thanks. After all, I barely knew Gemma. I only met her that one time. But it’s hit Claudia hard. I’ll do my best to support her.” No sooner were the words out of her mouth than it struck her that it might on the contrary be said that she was doing her best to undermine Claudia.
Caspar sighed. He pushed the grey hair back from his forehead. “Bless you. I know you will.”
That ruffled hair, those oh-so-blue eyes... He looked more attractive than ever, and if it wasn’t for the fact that she was already in love with Justin and that Caspar was married, well – better perhaps not to go there!
“This must be very difficult for you,” she said.
“Oh, it is, it is. I’ve known Gemma such a long time. Some people didn’t find her easy to get on with, but she was a good scientist and when we spent time together in the field, I didn’t have a problem with her. And that reminds me. Mary Bellinger, Gemma’s sister, came to see me. She said that when Gemma was delirious, she was raving about something that had happened in the Congo?”
Katie nodded. “That’s right.”
Caspar sighed. “I’m sorry that was on her mind, but I’m not really surprised. It was such a traumatic thing for all of us who were out there. Gemma was particularly affected by it. I tried to persuade her to have counselling, but she was having none of it.”
“What exactly happened?”
“What do you know about Sangha fever?”
“Only what I’ve read online. Horrible haemorrhagic fever, highly contagious, just that one outbreak. And wasn’t it named after a local river, like Ebola was?”
“That probably covers abo
ut everything that there is to be known. The likelihood is that as with Ebola and Lassa fever, we’re looking at an animal vector. It’s probably carried by monkeys, and leaps the species barrier through the consumption of bush meat. Coincidentally, Gemma and I were out there doing research into that – trying to trace the course of a previous outbreak of Ebola, working back to patient zero.”
He paused. A far-away look came over his face and he gazed off into the distance. “It was just chance that Gemma happened across that village. She managed to call me on the satellite phone, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She wasn’t making much sense and when I reached her, well, I’d never seen anything like it.” He passed his hand over his eyes. “It was just a little place in a clearing, surrounded by forest. The stench – that was the first thing to hit you – and the flies.”
Katie had never been to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, had never even set foot in any part of Africa, yet such was the power of Caspar’s narrative that as he went on, she seemed almost to see the place, to feel the sticky heat, and to sense the horror of what Gemma had stumbled upon.
“Of course, in that heat, bodies decompose very fast,” he said. “They had managed to bury the first people who had died, but they didn’t know how dangerous those bodies were and they didn’t take any precautions. Infection must have spread like wildfire. Everyone was either sick or dying.”
“What did you do?” she asked.
“There wasn’t a lot we could do. We weren’t medics and we didn’t have any protective clothing. All we could do was alert the authorities, and it turned out that they were dealing with an outbreak forty miles away. So the call had already gone out and teams from Doctors Without Borders were flying in that day. A local nursing team in protective gear arrived in the village a few hours later.”
“It must have been terrifying.”
“I never want to live through anything like that again,” he admitted. “We had to be quarantined, me and Gemma, and Joseph, our interpreter. I can’t tell you what it was like, knowing that we might have contracted this terrible disease.” He took a deep breath and put his hands up to his mouth in a prayer-like gesture. “Joseph did contract it – Gemma and I had realized immediately that it must be highly contagious. In fact we thought it was Ebola and it was only later that it was identified as being a completely new disease. We warned Joseph not to touch anyone, but he already had.”
An Air That Kills Page 18