up past the hedge, pausing for a moment before moving in a crouching run along the side of the house to the rear corner.
He lay down and snaked his way round the corner, fearing that there might be someone in the back garden, but there wasn’t. In the back wall there was a window that he could easily pass under without showing himself, and then there was the back door, which he hoped would afford him access to the inside. He lay still for a few moments under the window, listening for sounds from within, but all was quiet, worryingly quiet: the sound of angry voices would have been reassuring.
The back door was a modern double-glazed one, so Steven would be able to see inside, but only at an angle unless he left the shelter of the wall and exposed himself to all the back windows. He watched, listened and waited for a full minute before deciding that the odds against someone standing silently where he couldn’t see them were suitably remote. He reached up and applied gentle pressure to the door handle. To his relief, the door was unlocked and opened smoothly. He slipped inside and closed it behind him. At once he became aware of a strong smell of petrol.
The feeling that there was something dreadfully wrong pushed Steven’s pulse rate higher as he moved towards the door to the hall. Grossart was a family man and this was Christmas Eve. The silence was all wrong… and that smell… A floorboard creaked as he stepped on it and he froze. He was about to continue when the silence was broken by Karen Doig’s voice saying, ‘So you’ve finally come round, have you?’
Steven thought for a moment that she was talking to him, but then realised that the sound had come from the front room to his left. He moved cautiously to the door. It was ajar, and he saw a man he presumed to be Paul Grossart lying on the floor in front of the Christmas tree. His hands were tied behind him and there was dried blood on his forehead. From what Karen had said, Steven deduced that Grossart was just regaining consciousness after a blow to his head. His clothes looked soaked, presumably with petrol from a red plastic container lying at his feet.
‘I wanted you to be conscious,’ continued Karen. ‘I wanted you to understand why I’m doing this. Was my Peter conscious when you burned him?’
‘No, no,’ gasped Grossart. ‘He died of the virus — they both did. You have my word. Everything possible was done for them, right to the end.’
‘Your word!’ sneered Karen. ‘What do you imagine your word’s worth, you bastard? You made me believe my husband had run off with another woman and all the time you knew… you knew, you little shit!’
‘No, no, please no, you don’t understand. It just all got out of hand… I never meant any of this to happen.’
‘I’ll bet you didn’t, now that you’re ten seconds away from hell.’
Steven heard the metallic rasp of a cigarette lighter being lit. He burst into the room, shouting, ‘No, Karen! Don’t do it!’
Karen was startled and dropped the lighter, but she picked it up again before Steven had a chance to get to her. ‘Get back,’ she warned.
‘You’re not thinking straight, Karen,’ said Steven. ‘You’ve lost Peter and you’re sick with grief, but you’ve still got your daughter and she needs you. You mustn’t do this. Let the law deal with him.’
‘I want him to burn like he burned my Peter,’ said Karen through gritted teeth. ‘I want his children to be without their father on Christmas Day, just like Kelly will be.’
‘It won’t make you feel better,’ said Steven. ‘Revenge is never sweet. It’ll taste like poison and you’ll end up regretting it for the rest of your life.’
She looked at him for the first time and he saw doubt creep into her eyes.
‘Give me the lighter,’ he said softly.
‘Get back,’ she said again, with new determination.
‘Look,’ stammered Grossart from the floor. ‘I never meant any of this to happen. God knows I didn’t.’
Steven saw Karen’s thumb move to the lighter wheel. ‘At least hear him out, Karen,’ he said. The thumb relaxed.
‘We succeeded in breeding a strain of pigs with a genetically altered immune system which made them perfect donors for human transplants,’ said Grossart.
‘The Snowball project?’ said Steven.
‘Yes. All the lab tests suggested that we were on to a winner, so we took a shortcut through all the red tape. We reached an agreement with one of the co-ordinators at the transplant register.’
‘You mean you bribed him to slip your heart valves through as matching human ones,’ said Steven contemptuously.
‘If you like,’ said Grossart. ‘Christ, we’d done every test we could think of on them. They seemed perfectly safe.’
‘But they weren’t,’ said Steven.
‘No,’ agreed Grossart. ‘One of our American virologists found a viral DNA sequence in the genome of our pigs and it was damn nearly identical to Ebola. It wasn’t doing the pigs any harm, but there was a chance that it might suddenly become active inside a human being. We pulled the plug on the whole thing, but it was too late for the patients who’d already been given the valves.’
‘And Peter and Amy?’ asked Karen.
‘They both worked on the project. A routine blood test showed that they were developing antibodies to the new virus, suggesting that they had been infected by it. We decided to send them away for a bit, to see if anything came of it — the trip to the field station in Wales. Unfortunately, they both went down with the virus. As soon as they reported feeling unwell, two of our American people, who had been standing by, went into action to make sure that they got proper nursing care and everything they needed… but they both died. I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry!’ exclaimed Karen. ‘You didn’t even let me say goodbye to him.’
Grossart shook his head. ‘It would have been too dangerous,’ he said. ‘One of the nurses was infected, too.’
‘And she’s very ill,’ said Steven.
Grossart shook his head again and said, ‘When things started to go wrong it was as if the whole affair took on a life of its own. There seemed to be nothing we could do to make things better.’
Steven disagreed strongly but he bit his tongue in case he provoked Karen into throwing the lighter.
‘I’m desperately sorry about Peter. He was a good bloke — everyone liked him,’ continued Grossart.
The kind words seemed to bring Karen to an emotional threshold. Her anger evaporated in an instant, to be replaced by overwhelming sorrow and grief. She dropped the lighter, covered her face with her hands and started to sob. Steven took her in his arms. When she had recovered sufficiently, he said, ‘Go on home, Karen. Kelly needs you. Start rebuilding your life.’
She nodded silently and left without looking again at Grossart.
Steven freed Grossart’s hands but he continued to sit on the floor for a few moments, rubbing his wrists. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’ he said. ‘There really was nothing we could do once the genie got out the bottle. We never meant to harm anyone — in fact, quite the reverse: we’re in the business of saving lives, not taking them. It was just one of those… unfortunate things.’
Steven’s eyes were dark with anger. ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t believe you. There was a whole lot you could have done in order to save lives, but that would have meant being punished for your greed and dishonesty, so you kept quiet. Lots of people died needlessly because we didn’t know where the wildcards were coming from. You could have told us but you didn’t.’
Grossart looked like a rabbit caught in headlights.
‘You knew what was happening out there. You knew people were going to die, and you let it happen. That knowledge makes it malice aforethought. You and your greedy bastard colleagues are going to be charged with murder.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Grossart as he got to his feet.
‘Clean yourself up while I call the police,’ said Steven. ‘Where are your wife and family?’
‘They’re at June’s mother’s. I had to tell her what had been going on.’
‘And she didn’t understand, either,’ said Steven sourly. ‘Get cleaned up.’
As Steven went over to the phone, Grossart got unsteadily to his feet. As he did, he lost his balance and fell backwards into the Christmas tree. He clutched at the branches but succeeded only in tearing at the wiring for the
