which had largely been cleared of debris during the initial search, but ash and carbon dust had filled all the cracks so that it was impossible to tell if any of the flagstones had been disturbed before the fire. He looked around outside and found a metal bar he could use as a lever. He started in the centre of the first of the ground-floor rooms, but by the time he’d raised four of the heavy stones he’d decided that this was no job for one man on his own. He called in the local police for assistance.
Two hours went by before one of the officers doing the digging called out that he’d found something. He held up a human femur like a fish he’d just caught. The talking stopped and for a moment the only sound was that of the wind blowing through the ruins. ‘There’s more,’ said the officer almost apologetically.
Steven took little pleasure in having his worst fears realised. As he’d suspected, the burned-out building had been obscuring the site of an earlier cremation.
‘Almost the perfect murder,’ said the inspector in charge of the operation, who was clearly embarrassed that the police had overlooked this possible reason why the Land-Rover was still there.
‘No,’ said Steven, without taking his eyes off the bones being removed gingerly from the trench and laid on a tarpaulin beside the rim. ‘It was natural causes.’
‘What? How can you possibly say that?’
‘These are the remains of two scientists who were sent here to work. I think they fell ill with the same virus that’s been affecting Manchester — don’t ask me how. They were given expert nursing care, but they died. Their employers sought to cover up their deaths by cremating them and burying their remains beneath the floor, before setting fire to the building itself.’
‘Bloody hell, you’ve got that all worked out,’ said the inspector. ‘Dare I ask what the reason was?’
‘Tomorrow,’ replied Steven sadly. ‘Ask me that tomorrow.’
He drove back to Caernarfon with a heavy heart: he would have to break the news to Karen Doig and Ian Patterson. He had arranged to meet them at a hotel near the castle, but didn’t want to tell them in a public place, so he called Charles Runcie at Caernarfon General and asked if he could provide more suitable surroundings.
‘My office?’ suggested Runcie.
‘Perfect,’ agreed Steven. ‘I’d like you to be there too, if that’s all right?’
‘Whatever you think,’ replied Runcie.
Telling the pair was as awful as Steven had imagined. The look that came into Karen’s eyes when he told her that Peter was dead was something that would remain with him for a long time. After that she collapsed into tears and Runcie did his best to comfort her. Ian Patterson seemed to take the news about his wife more stoically. He sat very still in his chair, looking wordlessly at the floor, but then Steven saw tears start to fall, and he felt a lump come to his own throat.
Even in her pain, Karen was thinking. ‘How can you be sure,’ she asked, ‘if there was only… bones and ash?’
‘I know,’ agreed Steven. ‘It will take DNA profiling to be absolutely certain, but all the circumstances point to it being Peter and Amy.’
‘I don’t understand any of this. How could they possibly get the virus? And why would anyone want to keep it a secret and cover it up?’
‘I think Lehman Genomics can tell us that,’ replied Steven softly. ‘In fact, I think they can tell us how everyone got the virus.’
‘That bastard, Paul Grossart!’ exploded Karen. ‘He knew all along what had happened to them! And he let us go on thinking…’
‘In the long run he’ll answer for it,’ said Steven. ‘I promise.’
Karen and Ian were persuaded to stay overnight in Caernarfon and drive back to Scotland the following day. Their original instinct had been to leave for home immediately, but Runcie persuaded them that neither was in a fit state to undertake a long drive; they should wait until morning. Besides, the police would probably need a word with them before they left.
Steven had turned his phone off while he spoke to Karen and Ian. As soon as he switched it back on, Sci-Med rang to tell him that Mair Jones was due in on a flight from Palma to Manchester Airport at ten-thirty that evening. Did he want to speak to her? After the day he’d had, Steven thought that was probably the last thing he wanted to do. Her importance in the affair had diminished since the appearance of Karen Doig and Ian Patterson on the scene but, because so many people had gone to so much trouble, he said that he would be at the airport. He took the opportunity to check that Sci-Med had passed on his request about the heart valve to Porton.
‘The analysis is already under way. They’d actually decided to do some sequencing on the valve before you asked so you’ll get the result sooner than expected. They say they’ll run a homology search on it as soon as they have enough sequence data to feed into the computer.’
‘That’s exactly what I was going to ask them to do,’ said Steven.
The flight from Majorca was only a few minutes late. Mair Jones, a small woman with sharp eyes and jet- black dyed hair, was escorted to the interview room, while the police took care of retrieving her baggage.
‘Well, I’ve certainly had my fifteen minutes of fame,’ she said in a strong Welsh accent. ‘Who are you when you’re at home?’
Steven told her, and showed his ID. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Pissed off,’ she replied, missing the point of the question. ‘Wouldn’t you be if two British policemen turned up at your hotel in the early hours and suggested you accompany them home without giving any reason?’
‘You’ve no idea what this is about?’ asked Steven, disbelief showing in his voice.
‘I suppose it’s something to do with poor Maureen and the job we did?’
Steven nodded and said, ‘Yesterday, we had no idea how Maureen Williams contracted the virus, but then I spoke to her husband and he told me about the nursing assignment and your involvement. Maureen was in no position to tell us what we needed to know. That left you.’
‘Poor Mo,’ said Mair. ‘I suppose I panicked and ran off to the sunshine in case I was going to get it too.’
‘You could have taken it with you,’ Steven pointed out.
Mair Jones held up her hands and said, ‘All right, I know, I know, but I just had to get away. What happens now?’
‘I need to ask you some questions.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Who your patients were, what happened to them, and who paid you to look after them in the first place.’
‘We were paid in cash up front,’ said Mair, confirming what Williams had said. ‘Our patients were a man and a woman in their early thirties, Peter and Amy — we weren’t told their surnames, just that they had been diagnosed as having an extremely rare but very contagious viral infection. They were already pretty ill by the time we arrived at Capel Curig.’
‘What happened to them?’
Mair sighed and looked down at her feet. ‘They died,’ she said softly. ‘Mo and I did our best, but all to no avail, I’m afraid.’
‘Then what?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘What happened to them?’
‘Their bodies, you mean?’ exclaimed Mair, as if it were an improper question. ‘I really don’t know. Our job was over, so we were driven back to Bangor, and that was the end of it as far as we were concerned.’
Steven said, ‘Peter’s wife and Amy’s husband turned up this morning, so I was able to piece together quite a lot of what has been going on. They’d come to Wales to look for them.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Mair. ‘We had no idea. I suppose we assumed that they were married to each other. One of the Americans told us they were scientists who had infected themselves through their research work. We weren’t allowed to ask questions.’
‘Peter had a baby daughter,’ said Steven.
‘Poor love,’ murmured Mair. ‘We just never thought — not that there was much we could have done, mind you.’ After a few moments of silent contemplation, she asked, ‘Are you arresting me?’
Steven shook his head and said, ‘No. Private nursing’s not a crime, even though you and your friend may have been mixed up in something criminal.’
