Limestone Cowboy (3 page)

“It’s Ebola, Charlie. They’ve got Ebola virus in Heckley General.”

There was no need for me or anybody else to shout it from the rooftops, because even as we spoke the news was being disseminated by more efficient means. The nurse who started the scare rang her parents, who recognised the dreaded word Ebola in the midst of her hysterical rantings, and from then on it spread like a bloodstain through the community. At five o’clock it was on the local news, at six the nation heard about it and by twenty past the more daring camera crews started arriving.

A couple of weeks ago there had been a TV special about the 1994 outbreak of Ebola in the Central African Republic, so the public was well clued-up. The Ebola River is a tributary of the Congo, and the people who live along its banks hunt monkeys for food and to sell for medical research. Back in the seventies another virus that the monkeys carry suffered a mutation in its
DNA that gave it the ability to exist in their close relative – Homo sapiens. This virus has an incubation period of several years and is only passed on by the most
intimate
contact, but it spread stealthily – an invisible cloud of poison that chose its victims all the way from the mud huts of Africa to the marble mansions of the most privileged people in the world. When they
started
to die it was given a name – AIDS.

Ebola probably has the same origins, but its MO is different. Ebola can be transmitted through the air, like the common cold, and it kills nine out of ten of its
victims
in fifteen days. There is no cure.

Residents of Heckley who had caravans or
bungalows
at the coast suddenly decided that now was a good time for a visit. Others decided that an extended weekend away was long overdue and hastily threw a few belongings in the back of the Mondeo. The queue of vehicles leaving town gridlocked with the rush hour traffic trying to get home, anxious to see if the wife and kids were feeling OK, and Heckley ground to a
stand-still
.

I went home, made myself a salad sandwich and watched it on TV. The usual pundits were there,
outside
the hospital, spouting their limited knowledge at the camera, scaring everybody sugar-less. First
symptom
was a headache, we were told, then the whites of the eyes turned scarlet as the capillaries burst,
followed
by bleeding from all the body’s orifices.

“I feel like that everyday,” I mumbled, fielding a piece of tomato that fell out of my sandwich and
reaching
for the remote control.

By eight o’clock it was all over. False alarm. “A
patient was admitted who had recently travelled in Africa and showed the early symptoms of Ebola,” a hospital spokeswoman told the waiting cameras. “The hospital was quarantined as a precaution, but tests for Ebola have proved negative and the quarantine can now be lifted. This was a routine safeguard and at no time was any member of the public or staff at risk.”

Pull the other one. God, what a farce. I went into the garage, cut some hardboard to size and painted it white. In less than three weeks I had to produce a
couple
of paintings worthy of my not-inconsiderable
reputation
. Something that “my five-year-old daughter could do,” as numerous friends and colleagues would take great delight in pointing out. Would it be a couple of Picassos, or maybe a pair of Modigliani ladies? They always went down well. When I’d finished I thought about phoning Rosie, but it was too late. I’d ring her tomorrow, make arrangements for Saturday. Mr Ho, the proprietor of the Bamboo Curtain, was a friend of mine. One of his special banquets was an event rather than a meal. I was sure Rosie would enjoy it. Before I went to bed I found the bottle of cheap champagne I’d been saving and put it in the fridge.

We didn’t make the front page, which was a
disappointment
for the troops. A Town in Fear was a better headline than The Face of Evil, so the first six pages of the tabloids were filled with graphic descriptions of Ebola symptoms and primary school diagrams of DNA, showing how red triangles could mutate into blue hexagons with deadly results. The broadsheets used the scare to highlight the multi-million dollar trade in
living primates, printing hard-hitting articles from their libraries to pad out the pages and demonstrate their concern.

Our PR people had prepared a couple of statements from me – one for if we lost the trial; one for if we won – so I read that I was pleased with the result and hoped that it would be of some comfort for the families of the victims.

“See!” I announced as I went into Gilbert’s office for our morning meeting. “Nothing to worry about. When’s he coming home?”

“Tomorrow, all being well,” he replied, pushing the file he’d been reading to one side. “But it was a worry, Charlie. Did you see that programme on TV about it? If that gets loose it could be the end of the world.”

“Nah,” I said. “A comet. That’s what’ll do it, like it did for the dinosaurs, sixty-five million years ago.” I’ve been swatting up on dinosaurs recently.

I opened the champagne in the office and we drank it from our coffee mugs. It was just a little ceremony to mark the closure of the case: a collective sigh of relief and mutual back-slap, expressed in fizzy pop. We’d had a major piss-up the weekend after the arrest, but the job’s not over until someone has the key turned on them.

Most of the troops knew what cases they were on with, and I had a couple of others to hand out. Prioritising the work is a big part of my contribution, but it sometimes makes me unpopular with the public. Each detective has at least five or six crimes to deal with at any time. If there’s a chance of an arrest in one of them it moves to the front of the queue, if there isn’t
it goes backwards. So victims sit at home, surrounded by what’s left of their scattered belongings, waiting for the handsome crime-fighter to come knocking at the door to detect the villain. But he doesn’t come, not for three days, because he knows he has a better chance of finding the youths who screwed the filling station in full view of the CCTV cameras.

One of the DCs approached me, more hesitantly than normal. “Um, can I have a quick word, Boss?” he asked.

“Oh, what do you want, my blue-eyed son?” I asked.

“It’s the coffee fund. You’re a bit behind.”

I delved into my jacket pocket and produced a handful of coins. “How much?”

“That’s not enough.”

“Go on.”

“Twelve pounds.”

“Twelve quid! Twelve quid! Just for coffee! It’s
highway
robbery.”

“You haven’t paid anything for three months.”

I found a twenty pound note in my wallet and handed it over, saying: “Make sure you enter it in your book. I think you must have forgotten, the last time.”

Dave Sparkington hung back as the team dispersed.

“How did you get on with the knicker thief,” I asked.

“Great. We got a description.”

“Go on.”

“Black lace, open crotch. I’m looking into it.”

I exhaled, slowly and deliberately, casting my gaze
towards the ceiling. Sparky likes to tell you things in his own way.

“About fourteen years old,” he added. “Short, with fair hair. Wears a grey football shirt. Not sure what it is but it could be something like Leeds United second team Tuesday morning away strip.”

“Good. Any other ideas?”

“We’ve a couple o’ names.”

“OK. Keep on with it.”

He dangled a telephone report sheet in front of me, saying: “They can wait. This came in about five
minutes
ago while you were upstairs. It’s from the General Hospital. They had an admission yesterday afternoon that might be a poisoning. Non-fatal but it could’ve been. Victim thinks his ex-wife is trying to kill ’im. Thought I’d go along and talk to him but wondered if you wanted to come.”

“The hospital?”

“Mmm.”

I shook my head vigorously. “Er, no, Dave. I think you can manage that one yourself.”

“OK. See if I care. I’ve had my flu jab. Apparently the ex-wife was runner-up in the Miss Ferodo
brake-linings
beauty contest.”

“On second thoughts,” I said, “if it’s an attempted murder maybe I should come along. I’ll get my coat.”

Pete Goodfellow was bent over his keyboard, his typing sounding like a dripping tap. “You’re in charge, Pete,” I called to him.

“No problem. Where are you going?”

“To the hospital.”

“Right. I’ve an appointment there myself next week, about this knee. It still isn’t right. Did I tell you?”

“Yes, Pete, you told us all about it, several times. Have you tried St. John’s wort?”

“No. I’ve tried glucosamine, and cod liver oil
capsules
, but they haven’t been much good. How does St. John’s wort work?”

“I don’t know but it cured Dave’s irritable bowel syndrome, didn’t it, Sunshine?”

“No, it gave me it. C’mon, let’s go.”

We went in my car, with Dave driving. As we pulled out of the station yard he said: “Who is she?”

“Who’s who?”

“The woman.”

“What woman?”

“The one that’s making you so flippin’ cheerful.”

“What makes you think it’s a woman?”

“You mean… it’s a man?”

“Er, no. You were right, it’s a woman.”

He gave a chuckle and looked across at me. “When you die, Charlie, we won’t have you cremated or buried. We’ll roll you flat and make you into a window.”

“Are you suggesting I’m transparent?”

“Only where women are concerned.”

“And you’ll go before me. Look at you: overweight, sedentary lifestyle. We thin nervous types live to a ripe old age.”

“Don’t you start, I’ve enough with Shirley and Sophie lecturing me. But you’re right, I need more exercise.”

I was quiet for a few seconds. Shirley is Dave’s wife, Sophie his daughter and my goddaughter. She’s
studying at Cambridge, about to start her final year, and breaking Dave’s heart. She’s tall and beautiful, and had hardly been home this year. Dave was having to come to terms with the apple of his eye being plucked off the tree by someone he didn’t know.

“Have you heard from Sophie?” I ventured.

“No. Not for about six weeks. Last we heard she was going to Cap Ferrat with this boyfriend and his parents, she said. They have a place there, apparently.”

“It was bound to happen, Dave. And if they’ve a place over there she can’t be doing too bad.”

“I don’t suppose so. She asked how you were, if you’d found a new girlfriend. Can I tell her about Miss X?”

“No. Tell her that I’m not looking, that she’s the only woman for me.”

“Uh!” he snorted, and his knuckles tightened on the wheel.

Ten minutes later we were running up the steps into the hospital.

“I assume you were fibbing about the Miss Ferodo bit,” I gasped between breaths.

“No, scout’s honour,” he replied, adding: “Mind you, it was 1945.”

The doctor in charge of the patient came to meet us at the front desk. He looked about twenty and smelled like a National Trust gift shop. Dave introduced me and we shook hands.

“Is everything back to normal now?” I asked.

“Just about,” he replied, grinning, “but it was
interesting
for a while.”

“Have the Press abandoned you now that there’s no story?”

“They have. It was like Downing Street on budget day for a while, out in the car park. They’ve gone now, thank God, but they might be back when they hear about this.”

“Really? So where do we begin?”

“He came in by ambulance,” he told us. “Rang for it himself. Must have been quite frightening for the poor chap. They were gathered round him, reading his vital signs and wondering what to do next, when the
houseman
dealing with him asked if he’d had any illnesses lately. He said he hadn’t, all innocent, but he’d just come back from a holiday in Kenya. Could it be
something
he’d picked up there? And that was that. This nurse – a black girl from Nigeria – said: ‘Oh my God, it’s Ebola!’ and everybody took ten paces backwards.”

From the expression on his face it was evident that he was enjoying telling us this. I was more interested in the poisoning but I stayed quiet, content to let the
doctor
have his five minutes and tell us in his own time.

“How is he now?” Dave asked.

“Ask him yourself. Come on, I’ll take you to him.”

Dave and I looked at each other and back at the
doctor
. “You mean…” I began. “You mean… the person we’ve come to see is the Ebola suspect?”

“He’s not a suspect any more. The toxicology results were quite conclusive, but it was quite a relief when they came back. Mind you, the ones with red faces might have preferred a full scale outbreak.”

He obviously wasn’t one of them. “So what was it?” I asked.

“Warfarin. We pumped him full of vitamin K and gave him a blood transfusion and he’s now well on the way to recovery.”

“What did it do to him?”

“It causes haemorrhaging, internally and externally. He’d summoned an ambulance because he was
having
breathing difficulties and then started passing blood. Lives alone, apparently. When he was admitted he was haemorrhaging from his nose and eyes and generally feeling out of sorts. What was happening inside we don’t know, but we’ll keep him in for a day or two, see how he fares.”

“Sounds nasty,” I said.

“It was.”

“Rat poison?”

“That’s right.”

“But sometimes used medicinally.”

“Yes. It’s an anti-clotting agent.”

“Had he been prescribed it?”

“He says not.”

We’d reached the corridor where the victim’s
private
room was situated, and slowed to a halt outside it. “Could the toxicology report differentiate between the two possible sources?” I asked.

“No, not at the level of testing we have available.”

“If it was rat poison, what’s the fatal dose?”

“Impossible to say. If the recipient has high blood pressure any dose could be dangerous. Prescribed dose is usually between three and nine milligrams. To be sure of killing someone it would have to be
massive
.”