‘Not nearly as grateful as I am to you two,’ said Steven, thinking on a different plane. ‘I couldn’t begin to tell you.’
Sue smiled and put her finger to her lips. ‘Coffee?’
‘I’ll make it,’ said Steven.
Steven crept out of the house a little before five in the morning, trying to make as little noise as possible. It was dark and there was a damp mist hanging in the still air. He looked up at Jenny’s bedroom window and imagined her sleeping there, snug and warm and very much part of a loving family. He blew her a kiss before getting into his car and heading north to Glasgow airport to catch the first British Airways shuttle of the day to London Heathrow.
‘They seem determined to deny you a holiday,’ said Jean Roberts when Steven arrived in her office.
‘Next time I’m just going to disappear without saying where I’m going,’ said Steven.
‘Strikes me Mr Macmillan will still know where you are. He has an uncanny knack of knowing where everyone is at any given time.’
‘Electronic tags would be a better bet,’ said Steven. ‘I’m going to take a closer look at my shoes when I get home. What’s up?’
‘I don’t know everything but I do know that the government’s chief medical adviser, several Public Health people and two senior people from the Department of Health are with him at the moment.’
Steven looked at his watch. ‘So I just wait?’
‘I suppose so. He knows you’re here.’
‘I’ll grab some coffee next door.’
Steven was sipping his second cup of coffee and reading the clues of the Times crossword before committing pen to paper — he had to get at least four before starting to fill it in — when he heard the sound of people leaving next door. A few moments later Miss Roberts popped her head round the door to say that Macmillan was asking for him.
John Macmillan was standing looking out the window when Steven entered and closed the door softly behind him. From past experience he knew that Macmillan took up this pose when he had bad news to impart.
‘Any idea why I called you back?’ asked Macmillan.
‘You’re going to tell me there’s been another case of haemorrhagic fever,’ suggested Steven.
‘Guess or inside information?’ asked Macmillan, sounding surprised.
‘Just a guess.’
Macmillan turned round. ‘There are seven new cases in Manchester. One woman has already died.’
‘Sweet Jesus!’ exclaimed Steven. ‘Seven?’
Macmillan walked over to his desk and picked up a sheet of paper. ‘The dead woman is Ann Danby, aged thirty-three, a graduate computer expert who lived alone in the city. Ostensibly she took her own life, but she was found to have been suffering from the disease.’
Steven looked puzzled.
‘The police were called to her apartment by neighbours concerned about noise. They found that she’d taken an overdose of sleeping tablets and washed them down with booze, although it’s not clear why. Maybe it had something to do with her illness, but when a routine post mortem was performed, she was found to be suffering from the disease. Two policemen, a pathologist, a hospital houseman, an ambulanceman and a medical lab technician have all gone down with the disease and all are dangerously ill. They were all contacts of this woman in one way or another. Public Health are waiting for the next wave, when contacts of these people start falling ill. They are resigned to it spreading further.’
‘Classic kinetics of a disease spread by body contact,’ said Steven. ‘If one gets you six, six will get you thirty- six and so on, like ripples on a pond. I take it this woman was a passenger on the Ndanga flight?’
Macmillan shook his head. ‘No, damn it, I’m afraid she wasn’t.’
‘Then how?’
‘That’s really why I called you back. The Danby woman was not on that flight, nor has she been out of the country anywhere during the past two years, not since a holiday in Majorca in spring of 1998.’
‘But she must have had contact with someone from the Ndanga flight?’
Macmillan shook his head again. He said, ‘Public Health have gone through the passenger manifest with a fine-tooth comb. They can’t find a connection with the dead woman at all.’
‘But there must be one.’
‘You’d think so. Apparently the police pathologist started to have doubts during the PM. He thought he was examining a routine drink-and-drugs suicide, but when he opened her up he found that she’d been haemorrhaging badly. Haemorrhagic fever crossed his mind, but when he couldn’t come up with an African connection after talking to the woman’s parents he didn’t sound the alarm for fear of looking foolish.’
‘We’ve all been there,’ said Steven.
‘The Public Health people have been working round the clock to isolate contacts, but unless we find out — and soon — where the disease originates from, we could be looking at a very unpleasant situation indeed. What do you think?’
‘Well, assuming that we’re talking about the same disease here — are we?’
‘Porton haven’t finished analysing the samples from the Manchester cases yet, but it would be a hell of a coincidence if it wasn’t.’
‘Then obviously the passenger, Barclay, and this woman, Danby, are the prime movers in the affair. We know how everyone else got the disease. We have to find out how these two got it.’
‘That’s where you come in,’ said Macmillan. ‘The authorities up in Manchester are going to be working flat out to contain the outbreak. Although there will be an epidemiological team investigating the cause, I want you involved as well, because it’s absolutely vital that we establish the source as quickly as possible. I’ve had this okayed at the highest level, so you’ll have a free hand to operate as you see fit. You’ll have the support of the police and the Public Health Service should you need them, and of course you’ll have access to all the medical and scientific back- up you need. What do you say?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘No.’
‘Then I say I’d best get started.’
‘Miss Roberts will prepare a background file for you in the usual way. After that, you’re on your own.’
‘This hasn’t reached the press yet?’ said Steven.
‘Only because the disease doesn’t have a name and there’s no obvious African connection to scaremonger about, but six associated people going down with something nasty is not going to go unreported for long.’
Steven had lunch in a city pub, an old-style pub with high ceilings and self-conscious Victorian fittings. He cut an anonymous figure as he sat in a corner, eating a cheese roll and sipping a beer while mulling over the situation. The thing troubling him most was the fact that the Public Health people had failed to establish a connection between the woman in Manchester and the Ndanga flight. If there really wasn’t one, it would suggest that there was an original source of viral haemorrhagic fever in Manchester. Not a happy thought. And not a likely one, either, he decided after some consideration. Despite the failure to establish a connection, there just had to be one. Maybe some lateral thinking was called for.
Although the true natural reservoir of Ebola and the other filovirus infection, Marburg disease, had not yet been established, he was aware of a strong suggestion among investigators that animals — particularly monkeys — were involved in the chain of events. If his memory served him right, the very first case of Marburg disease had been contracted in the German town of that name, back in the late 1960s by a worker who got it from an African lab monkey. If by any chance the woman in Manchester had had contact with animals — perhaps as a ‘friend of the zoo’ or as a voluntary helper or some such thing — that might conceivably be where she had picked up the disease. That would be the best possible outcome, he concluded. It would also be one hell of a coincidence.
Steven returned to the Home Office to pick up his briefing file, which he’d been told would be ready by two thirty if Miss Roberts worked through her lunch hour to collate information supplied by the authorities in Manchester. She obviously had, for a purple folder was waiting for him on her desk when he went into her office. Jean Roberts had gone off to have a late snack but she had left a Post-it note stuck to the cover of the file, wishing him well. He in turn left her one, thanking her.
Steven paused on the pavement outside and thought about taking the file home to read, but then decided on
