Wildcard (6 page)

‘How the hell did they get hold of that so quickly?’ exclaimed Steven.

‘This was the conclusion of medical scientists who examined specimens taken from the victims of the Heathrow incident in a maximum-security lab at Britain’s biological defence establishment at Porton Down. The source of the virus remains unknown. Health officials when contacted by Sky News in the last hour, however, have stressed that the outbreak posed no threat to the general public.’

Bloody hell, thought Steven. Does everything leak these days?

The report was accurate and had obviously been leaked to the media by someone present at the briefing. Accurate or not, any government assurance that things posed ‘no threat’ still smacked of the false assurances given during the time of BSE, he thought.

The news editor had decided to pad out the story and had found a microbiologist to interview.

‘Dr Marie Rosen is a medical microbiologist at a leading London hospital. Where do
you
think this virus emanated from, Doctor?’ asked the interviewer.

‘Well, I haven’t seen the report yet,’ replied the woman. She was dressed in ‘sensible’ clothes and rimless glasses that sat well down her nose. Her skin looked as if it desperately needed moisturising and her plentiful mop of grey hair suggested she had recently been standing out in a gale. ‘But I understand that the aircraft at the centre of this incident had just arrived from Africa. That would seem to be the likely source of the virus. It wouldn’t be the first to come … “
out of Africa
”.’ She seemed pleased with her allusion.

‘Why do you think this is, Doctor?’ continued the interviewer, not bothering to smile. ‘Why should new viruses appear all the time in Africa when this doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world?’

‘I would question whether or not they really are new viruses,’ replied Rosen. ‘I think it highly likely that they’ve been there all along, but with so much of the African interior being opened up these days, and people moving around much more than they used to, we’re seeing what happens when a vulnerable population are suddenly exposed to agents they have not come into contact with before.’

‘A bit like the situation when Native Americans were exposed to measles when the Pilgrim Fathers landed?’ suggested the interviewer.

‘Quite so.’

‘But surely it can only be a matter of time until one of these viruses slips through the net and threatens us all?’

‘I think the way the authorities dealt with the problem at Heathrow demonstrates that we can have confidence in the defences currently in place,’ said Rosen.

‘Maybe you should talk to Fred Cummings,’ said Steven under his breath. He watched the rest of the news, then switched off the set. He decided to pack his bag for his trip up to Scotland tomorrow. He made a mental note to buy presents for Jenny and Sue’s children after he’d talked with Macmillan in the morning.

FOUR

Manchester, England

Miss Warren looked at the luminous numerals on her bedside clock: it was 2.35 a.m. She tried once more to get to sleep by turning on her side and pressing one ear to the pillow while holding the bedcovers to her other but it was no use; the music was too loud. She didn’t know what it was (it was Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The River’) but it had been playing non-stop for the last two hours. She looked up at the ceiling and sighed, feeling more puzzled than annoyed because this was all most unusual; in fact, it had never happened before. It was just not the sort of thing one expected at the Palmer Court flats.

When the music started she had assumed that her upstairs neighbour, Ann Danby, must be having a party. That in itself would be unusual, but maybe it was a special occasion, a birthday, perhaps, or job promotion? But as time went on Miss Warren came to realise that there was no sound of people in the flat above, no clinking of glasses, no party chatter, no intermittent gales of laughter, just that loud, unremitting music.

Although younger than most of the other residents in the flats – somewhere in her mid-thirties, she would guess – Miss Danby had always seemed to fit in so perfectly at Palmer Court. She dressed well, had an executive job – although Miss Warren didn’t know exactly what – and was always polite and courteous when they met in the hall. More than that, she was usually the first to pay her resident’s fees for grass-cutting and lift maintenance and could always be relied upon to turn up at meetings of the residents’ association – which was more than could be said for some of the others.

Miss Warren decided that she couldn’t stand the noise any more: she would have to go upstairs and have a word. She got out of bed, put on her slippers and dressing gown, fastening the belt with a firm tug and a large bow. She stopped to glance at herself in the hall mirror and primped her hair before opening the front door and padding along the landing to the doors leading to the fire-escape stairs. She almost turned tail when she heard voices and concluded that perhaps there was a party after all and the guests were now leaving, but then she recognised a man’s voice, that of George Dale, Miss Danby’s neighbour.

Miss Warren climbed the stairs and pushed open the landing door. George and Lucy Dale turned round. They wore matching dressing gowns in navy with green piping.

‘Whatever’s going on?’ she asked.

‘She won’t answer the door,’ replied Lucy Dale. ‘George has been knocking for the past five minutes. The noise is driving us mad.’

‘It’s not like Miss Danby at all,’ said Miss Warren. ‘Can you see anything through the letterbox?’

George knelt down with some difficulty, holding his right knee and lowering himself gently. ‘Bedroom light’s on,’ he said. ‘God, I feel like a peeping Tom … No sign of movement, though. Miss Danby! Are you there?’

There was still no response after several tries.

‘She hasn’t been well, you know,’ said Lucy. ‘She told me she thought she had flu coming on when I spoke to her the other day.’

‘Do you think we should call the police?’ asked Miss Warren.

Lucy looked doubtful. ‘I don’t like the idea of that,’ she said. ‘Policemen clomping their big boots all over the place. Maybe she just took a sleeping pill and fell asleep with the music on.’

‘If she can sleep through that, she’s the only one!’ snapped her husband. ‘I agree with Miss Warren. I think we should call the police.’

‘Oh dear, I hope it won’t cause bad feelings,’ said Lucy. ‘One hears such dreadful things these days about neighbours falling out.’

‘We’re doing it with the best of intentions,’ Miss Warren reassured her. ‘We’re worried about her welfare.’

As agreed, Miss Warren called the police when she went back downstairs. She did so in a very apologetic way, as she did most things in life, and was told that a Panda car would shortly be on its way. She gave the operator details of her buzzer number so that she could admit the officers when they arrived and then sat by the window. Her heart sank when she saw the flashing blue light appear. Drama was the last thing she or any of the other residents of Palmer Court would welcome, but at least the police car wasn’t making that awful noise.

Miss Warren admitted the two constables and briefed them on what had been happening.

‘And you say there was no response at all?’ asked the elder, PC Lennon.

‘None, and Mr Dale tried several times.’

‘Right, then, Miss Warren, leave it to us.’

The two officers went upstairs, their personal radios crackling with the static created in the steel-framed fire escape.

‘Nice place,’ remarked PC Clark as they climbed.

‘You’d need a few bob to live here,’ replied Lennon. ‘Come back when you’re a chief super.’

They went through the same routine that George Dale had before deciding to force an entry. Lennon, the beefier of the two, crashed his shoulder into the door three times before the lock gave way and splintered wood fell to the ground around their feet. The door swung open and the sound level went up even more. The two policemen entered and heard Bruce Springsteen going mournfully ‘down to the river’. They made their way slowly through the hall but did not call out, knowing that they could not compete with Bruce.

Lennon signalled to Clark to kill the music and watched as the younger man tried to figure out the controls on the front of the expensive sound system. In the end, he lost patience and pulled the plug out of the wall. A respectable silence was restored to Palmer Court.

‘Miss Danby? Are you there?’ The two policemen walked through to the bedroom and found a woman on the bed. She was wearing a nightdress and lying on top of the covers with her eyes closed. Her pillow was stained with vomit and her nightdress soaked in sweat.

‘Miss Danby?’

They moved closer and saw an empty whisky bottle on the bedside table. An empty pill bottle lay on its side next to it.

‘Oh, love, was life really that bad?’ murmured Lennon as he felt for a pulse at the woman’s neck.

‘Is she dead, Tom?’

‘Yeah, poor lass. Just shows you, money can’t buy you happiness.’

Both men looked around at the expensive furnishings.

‘This is my first,’ said Clark, looking down at the body. ‘She looks just like she’s sleeping.’

‘She’s not been dead that long, she’s still warm. Wait until you see them pulled out the canal after a week or lying on the floor in summer for a month because they didn’t have anyone to check on them.’

At that moment the ‘corpse’ moved its head and Clark jumped back. ‘Jesus, she’s alive!’

‘Christ!’ exclaimed Lennon. ‘I couldn’t feel a pulse. Get an ambulance. Miss Danby! Miss Danby, can you hear me?’

The woman groaned quietly.

‘Come on now, waken up! D’you hear me, Miss Danby? Waken up!’

‘Men …’

‘What’s that? What about men?’

‘All men … are bastards.’

‘Come on now, Miss Danby, waken up. Don’t go to sleep again.’

Her head slumped back on to the pillow.

‘Shit! Maybe her airway’s blocked. It’s the sort of thing that happens when drunks throw up. Come on, son, give me a hand here.’

Lennon reached into her mouth to clear away any obstruction, while Clark held her on her side. ‘Come on, Miss Danby, cough it up, love, cough it up.’

Both men worked at trying to get her to breathe again but she fell back on the bed and was absolutely still.

‘Will I try mouth-to-mouth, Tom?’

‘Might as well make it a big night for “firsts”.’

Clark carried out textbook resuscitation until Lennon told him to stop. ‘It’s no good, son, she’s gone. You did your best but she wouldn’t have thanked you for it, anyway. She’s got what she wanted. Let’s get cleaned up before the cavalry arrive.’

At a little after 4.15 a.m. Ann Danby’s body was removed from Palmer Court. Miss Warren, still awake and standing at the window, watched the zipped-up plastic bag being loaded into the waiting ambulance in the courtyard. She swallowed as she saw the doors close and the vehicle move off. ‘Goodbye, Miss Danby,’ she whispered. ‘God bless.’

The body of Ann Danby was taken through silent, deserted streets to the local hospital, where she was formally pronounced dead on arrival by the houseman on duty. She was taken to the mortuary by the night porter on a covered trolley and transferred to a metal tray, which was slid into bay 3, row 4 of the mortuary fridge. The big toe on her left foot was labelled with her name and the date and time of her arrival.

There were no suspicious circumstances as far as the police were concerned: it seemed a clear case of suicide but, as with all sudden deaths, a post-mortem examination would be required before a death certificate could be issued; there could be no funeral without it. Establishing the exact cause of death would be the responsibility of a forensic pathologist. Arranging the funeral would be the responsibility of Ann Danby’s parents who at 4.30 in the morning did not yet know of their daughter’s death. The task of telling them fell to the two constables who had found her.

‘Another first,’ said Lennon as they turned into the Danbys’ street in a pleasant, tree-lined suburb. ‘Wakey wakey, your daughter’s dead. Jesus, what a game.’

Clark looked at him sideways. ‘I suppose you’ve done a lot of these,’ he said.

‘More than you’ve had hot dinners, my son. Your husband’s been involved in a car crash … Your wife’s been involved in an accident … Your son fell off his motor bike … We’ve found a body in the river and we think it may be …’

‘Will you tell them?’

‘Yeah. You can do it next time.’

‘Yes, who is it?’ asked a woman’s voice from behind the door of number 28.

‘Police. Could you open the door, please, madam?’

‘Do you have identification?’

Lennon pushed his warrant card through the letterbox and the door was opened. A small woman with white hair corralled in a hairnet stood there in her nightclothes. ‘It’s Johnny,’ she said. ‘He’s had an accident, hasn’t he? Oh my God, is he …?’

‘No, it’s not Johnny, madam. Do you think we could come inside? Is your husband awake?’

With both the Danbys sitting on the couch in the living room and the two constables facing them, the news of Ann’s death was broken to them. The fact that it was suicide seemed to come as an even bigger shock than her death.

‘I just can’t believe it,’ said Mr Danby. ‘Ann had everything to live for. She was doing so well in her job and up for promotion yet again. Why on earth would she do such a thing?’

‘When did you last see your daughter, sir?’

Mr Danby turned to his wife, who was sitting with head bowed and a handkerchief pressed to her face. ‘I suppose about two weeks ago. She came to lunch. She seemed absolutely fine. But you spoke to her on the phone the other night, didn’t you, Alison?’

She nodded mutely, then after a pause said, ‘She thought she was getting flu and might have to stay off work. She didn’t like doing that; she was always so conscientious.’

‘Your daughter wasn’t married?’

‘No, she was very much a career woman, Officer,’ said Mr Danby.

‘No boyfriends?’

‘What has that got to do with anything?’ snapped Mrs Danby.