'Yeah. He's at headquarters, in a meeting. Said to let him know if it grew serious.'
'Is that our serious or his serious?' Gareth has a reputation for magnifying things.
'Ah! Good question. Let's see what I can find out.'
He swivelled his chair round to face the console again and started speaking into his mouthpiece. At the second attempt the PS answered.
'What's the position, Paul?'
'Confused. Apparently there's some sort of infection loose in the hospital. They stopped all admissions yesterday afternoon, and this morning they're refusing to release anyone, including the staff. The doors are locked and the only contact is by telephone or the intercom on the door. There's people arriving all the time to pick up patients but the hospital won't discharge them, so they're growing restless, and visitors are arriving all the time too, which doesn't help.'
'Any ideas what sort of infection?'
'No.'
I said: 'Tell him I'll try to contact the hospital manager.'
'Mr Priest's with me. He says he'll try to contact the hospital manager. We'll get back to you, out.'
But the hospital manager wasn't answering his phone and nobody else was, either. I replaced the handset after ten fruitless minutes, saying: 'No doubt all will be revealed in the fullness of time,' because that's the nature of infections. They flourish or they wither, but either way, they pull the strings.
I walked across the road to the sandwich shop, bought a cheese and pickle and a curd tart and sauntered back to the office. The phone rang six times. Three were to ask if I'd heard anything; one was a reporter wanting a quote — I gave him You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows — and two were business. Rosie Barraclough didn't ring. I hadn't given her my number but she could have worked it out if she'd been really keen. There again, if she'd been that keen I'd probably have run a mile. I found a tabloid and a magazine in the outer office, made myself a coffee and lunched with my feet on the desk. The magazine was Dave Sparkington's copy of Naked Female Mud Wrestling USA. He takes it for the crossword.
The phone rang for the seventh time. 'Priest.'
'Hi Charlie. It's that time of year again.' It was an inspector from another division who organised the force's contribution to the annual Heckley Gala. Part of the show is an art exhibition, open to all but with a special class for cops. We have a surprising number of respectable watercolourists helping keep law and order on the streets. And one mad abstractionist.
'Oh God,' I said. 'I haven't anything prepared.'
'It's not for three weeks,' he told me 'Plenty of time for you to make a few daubs on some hardboard.'
'A few daubs!' I exclaimed. 'A few daubs! You're talking about fine examples of abstract expressionism.'
'That's what I said. Can I put you down for two, as usual?'
'I suppose so.'
'Do they have titles?'
'Yes.'
'What?'
'Untitled 1 and Untitled 2.'
'You're a toff, Chas.'
'I know. Have you rung Woodturner Willie yet?'
'No, he's next on my list.'
'Ask him to make me two frames for them, please.'
'Okie-dokie. How big?'
'Um, oh, about four by three.'
'Inches, feet or metres?'
'Feet, numbskull.'
'Will do.'
I carefully replaced the phone. The pictures might sell for fifty pounds each, which will go to charity. The frames will cost me twenty, the board a tenner and the paint at least that. There's something about business that I haven't grasped, yet.
Eighth time. 'Priest.'
The voice that answered was one that I'd grown sick of over the last six months, but today it was sweet as music. It was the CPS barrister, from the court. 'Not guilty on the first five, Charlie, guilty on the next two and the kidnapping. Twenty years tariff for each. Crack open the champagne.'
I didn't leap up with joy, fisting the air like some second-rate sportsman who's done what he's paid to do. I thanked him, told him well done, and slowly replaced the receiver. I was glad nobody was there with me. I buried my hands in my hair and gave an involuntary shudder of satisfaction and relief. Justice had been done and it was over. Over for me and the team, that is. It would never be over for the relatives of the victims, but now perhaps they could start thinking about the future.
I was glad I hadn't been in court, waiting, as those first five Not Guilties were announced, watching the face of the accused. Her spirits would rise imperceptibly with each one, and those of the prosecution team would sink a similar amount. 'Was she going to get away with it?' everybody would have been asking as the charges were dismissed, and then came those golden words: 'Guilty… Guilty… Guilty,' and she would have crumbled. And I wouldn't have liked to see that either, because my feelings towards her might have softened, just a degree, which would have been a betrayal of seven women and a young boy.
I brushed the hair out of my eyes, pulled my shoulders back and took three deep breaths. Gilbert's phone was engaged when I tried to pass on the verdicts, so I went up to see him. A sergeant crossed me on the stairs and shook my hand when I told him the news. 'Well done, Charlie, well done.'
Gilbert's arm was stretched out, his hand holding the phone as I went in and he looked up at me, fumbling with the handset, having difficulty replacing it. His expression was as bleak as a January dawn, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.
'Three life sentences,' I announced. 'Twenty years tariff.'
'Good,' he said, half-heartedly, his thoughts a million miles away. 'That's good. Well done.'
'What is it, Gilbert?' I asked, sitting in the chair opposite him. 'You look as if you've seen a ghost.'
'Do I? I'm sorry. It's young Freddie, Charlie. He's in the General, you know.'
'What's happened to him?'
'Well, nothing, but they won't let his mother in to see him. There's an infection loose and they've quarantined the whole place.'
'I've heard about it. They're always having infections in hospitals, Gilbert — it's all those sick people. And the cuts. He'll be all right, mark my words.'
But he wasn't listening. 'I rang the medical director,' he said.
'I couldn't get through when I tried.'
'I rang his wife and she gave me his mobile number.'
'Don't tell me — he's a lodge member.'
'It has its uses. This is in confidence, Charlie. It mustn't go outside these walls, you understand?'
I shrugged my shoulders. If galloping salmonella was rampaging through the corridors and wards of Heckley General I was hardly likely to go shouting it from the rooftops, but it was unfortunate for young Freddie.
'There's a virus loose in the place,' he told me.
'What sort of virus?'
'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
