Wildcard (15 page)

‘I’m sorry, who’s this?’

‘Just get these Public Health bastards off my back and I’ll tell you what you want to know. They’re ruining my business.’

The penny dropped: it was Anthony Pelota.

‘We close at midnight tonight – assuming anyone turns up after what you bastards have been doing to me. Come round then and I’ll tell you.’

‘It’s a date,’ said Steven, elated at the prospect of making progress at last. Another comforting thought was that he might not have to tackle Ann Danby’s mother after all. In his book, Ann and Charles Danby seemed two decent people whose life had been turned upside down by their daughter’s death. He suspected that respectability had always been a cornerstone of their lives and now they had to cope with the fact that not only had Ann taken her own life, but she was being cited as the cause of a virulent disease. On top of that, she had been wrongly labelled a drug addict and a whore by several tabloids. The Danbys really didn’t need him questioning them all over again about their daughter’s sex life.

At six in the evening Steven telephoned his own daughter, Jenny, to apologise for not having been up to see her at the weekend. He spoke first to his sister-in-law, Sue, to find out how things had been going.

‘No problems at all,’ she assured him. ‘Jenny was disappointed, of course, that you couldn’t come, but the school’s planning a Christmas fair and the kids are making the decorations, so that’s being keeping all three of them occupied. Jenny’s been made responsible for green stars.’

‘A big responsibility,’ said Steven.

‘You’d better believe it,’ said Sue. ‘I’ll put her on.’

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 saying, ‘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!