again only his prints on it. It’s made and received calls from just two numbers.’
Bren handed her a note of the numbers. ‘One is another anonymous prepaid mobile. The other is a landline belonging to one Gloria Cummins with a Chelsea address. We know her.’ He handed Kathy a printout from the PNC.
‘A prostitute?’ Kathy skimmed down a string of aliases, cautions, arrests, charges and convictions.
‘She’s a madam now, and moved upmarket, running an escort service with a posh address and a stable of classy girls.’
‘Do we speak to her?’
‘I don’t know. I think there’s something funny about this. Gloria seems an odd choice for a rough bastard like Peebles. You should check out her website, appealing to a better class of punters, and expensive. And she’s in Chelsea.’
‘What are you thinking?’
‘Maybe she’s just an intermediary, a point of contact between Peebles and his client, maybe to hand over payments. And I imagine she’ll be very reluctant to tell us anything. Her business depends on confidentiality. No, I think we should sniff around a bit first. And then there’s the other number. Look at the timing of the calls-the day Peebles arrived in London, the evening of the day that Nancy died, and the night of Moszynski’s death.’
Kathy stared at the mobile number and felt a surge of adrenaline. ‘It’s him, isn’t it? The client, the one who ordered the hits. Peebles is telling him he’s done the job.’
‘Looks like it.’
‘You don’t think we can trace it?’
‘That’s priority number one. Leave it with me.’
‘Boss?’ Mickey was standing at the door, looking worried.
‘What?’
‘Immigration are holding Peter Namono in a secure medical facility at the Gravesend detention centre. They say he’s sick, but they’re still running tests to find out what it is.’
‘Right, thanks, Mickey. I’ll let Brock’s doctors know.’
‘Something else. I had to speak to Tottenham to find out where Namono was, and they told me that Danny Yilmaz had collapsed and been rushed to hospital too.’
‘Blimey.’ Bren was staring at Kathy.
Kathy got on the phone. Sundeep answered his mobile with a clipped, ‘Mehta,’ and listened in silence as Kathy told him. He got her to run through the sequence of events, then said, ‘Well, if it’s the same thing, that would rule out the Russian as the source, wouldn’t it?’
‘You think the African might have typhoid or something?’
‘We’ll find out, Kathy.’
Kathy hung up. They were all staring at her. They had heard her say typhoid, and were waiting for enlightenment, reassurance. She shrugged. ‘They’re on to it. We just have to wait. So back to work.’
She sat down with Bren and set about planning the next steps in the investigation, then left a message with Sharpe’s office about Brock’s illness, and finally returned to her desk and the new pile of reports that had arrived.
Kathy was in the main computer suite when Sundeep finally rang back. ‘We have a diagnosis, Kathy.’ His tone was neutral, Kathy thought, like someone giving the time or a weather forecast.
‘Typhoid?’
‘No.’
‘Thank goodness.’ She smiled at the others who were on their feet, listening.
‘It appears to be something called MHF-Marburg Haemorrhagic Fever.’
‘Marburg? I’ve never heard of it. Is it serious?’
‘I’m afraid it is. Very serious. If it is MHF-and there seems to be little doubt-we will all have to be isolated. You must make a list of everyone who has been in contact with Brock since that day. Also Yilmaz and Namono.’
Kathy sat down slowly, fist tight on the phone cord.
‘The Marburg virus comes from East Africa, Kathy. It was first identified in a German laboratory where they were working with African monkeys. Since then there have been a number of outbreaks in Africa. It’s related to the Ebola virus.’
‘Ebola…’ Kathy stared at the others clustered around. Someone whispered, ‘Oh fuck!’
Zack was tapping away on his computer, and when Kathy put the phone down he said, ‘Hell’s bells.’
They looked at him as he read from the screen in front of him, ‘ Marburg is a biosafety level-four agent. Transmission through bodily fluids… Early symptoms non-specific, including fever, headache, myalgia. After five days a maculopapular rash often present on trunk
… Later-stage infection is acute and can include pancreatitis, delirium, haemorrhaging, liver failure… Symptoms usually last one to three weeks until the disease either resolves or kills the infected host… There is no specific antiviral therapy currently available. Fatality rate from twenty-three to ninety per cent. ’
Kathy felt dizzy. She took a deep breath and tried to pull herself together.
‘Pip, Mickey,’ she said, ‘inform front desk that no one is to enter or leave, then contact everyone in the building and tell them what’s happened. Tell them to tell their families to go home and put themselves in quarantine until we know more. Phil, I want a list of everyone who’s been in physical contact with Brock, Yilmaz and Namono since last Friday. You’ll have to contact Tottenham. I’ll speak to Commander Sharpe.’
She hesitated, then said, ‘Has anyone got any symptoms?’
There was a moment’s paralysed silence, then she said, ‘Okay. Get on with it,’ and the room erupted, people running for the door and the phones.
Kathy put the call through to Sharpe’s office, insisting on speaking to him immediately. As she waited to be connected, she remembered the rather awkward handshake that Sharpe had given Brock the previous evening. When he came on he listened to her report with little grunts of exclamation.
‘You’ll have to go into isolation, sir, and the Moszynski household, and probably most of our people at Tottenham.’
‘Good grief,’ he said finally.
SIXTEEN
T here was a confused interval in which people tried to behave as if everything was completely normal, while they secretly observed themselves and each other for symptoms-a gleam of sweat, the pulse of a headache, a twinge of nausea. Locked inside the Queen Anne’s Gate offices, they were obliquely aware of the turmoil going on outside as messages flew in from Personnel, the Press Bureau and senior management. Towards evening a team from the Hospital of Tropical Diseases arrived to take temperatures and blood. Their appearance, in face shields, impermeable tunics, leg and shoe coverings and double gloves, gave rise to black, self-conscious jokes from the police and some jittery looks between the civilian staff. Soon after the medics left with their samples, shrink- wrapped platters of sandwiches and cartons of soft drinks were deposited on the front doorstep of the building, as if the occupants were plague carriers, which of course they were.
Kathy and Bren, as senior officers on the premises, went around the offices trying to exude confidence and encouraging people to concentrate on the work they’d been doing. They met up at Dot’s office, where Bren was having a smile with Dot about some trait of the old man that had always irritated her. Kathy watched them through the open door, Dot wiping a tear from her eye with a tissue and Bren, like a younger version of his boss, big and gentle, putting an arm around her and giving her a hug. Though Kathy and he were of the same rank, Bren had been an inspector for much longer and was senior to her, and it suddenly struck her that she shouldn’t have taken over the way she had earlier. When he emerged from Dot’s office Kathy apologised.
‘Don’t be daft,’ he growled. ‘You did well. We’re a team, right?’
‘Yes.’ She hesitated and then said, ‘You’re worried about Deanne and the girls.’
He nodded.
