been at high risk during the flight, Bell had only been asked to leave his name, address and the name of his GP, but that was enough. Steven now knew that Bell lived at 21 Mulberry Lane, Canterbury. Not the most convenient location from which to conduct an affair with someone in Manchester, but perhaps Bell was a travelling man, drifting up and down the motorways of the land six days a week in his company Mondeo. Alternatively, it could simply be a case of love knowing no bounds. As it often said in the personal columns of the papers, ‘good sense of humour essential’ but ‘distance no object’. He would soon find out for himself: he planned to travel to Kent in the morning.
Steven looked at his watch and saw that he was going to be late for the meeting at City General if he didn’t get a move on. He rang down to the desk to order a taxi and had a quick shower before changing. The cab driver was none too pleased at having to wait, but money smoothed the way as usual, and before the journey was over the driver was giving Steven his thoughts on the current outbreak at the hospital.
‘Bloody junkies — they should shoot the lot of them. Once a junky, always a junky, that’s what I say. All this shit about rehabilitation is just a bunch of crap, a waste of bloody money. And now they’re passing on their diseases to innocent people. Bloody criminal it is.’
‘I didn’t know drugs were involved in the outbreak,’ ventured Steven when he managed to get a word in.
‘Drugs are involved in most things these days, mate, take my word for it. Ninety-nine per cent of all crime in this city is drug-related, one way or another.’
‘But I don’t see the connection with the problem at the hospital,’ said Steven.
‘The junkies are riddled with disease, mate, all of them. AIDS, hepatitis, salmonella, the lot, and then when they land up in hospital they start giving it to the nurses, don’t they? That’s how it happens, mate. Those poor girls have enough to contend with without those wasters giving them things. Shoot the bloody lot of them. It’s the only answer.’
Steven got out the cab thinking that desert islands might have a lot going for them. He was preparing to apologise for his lateness as he entered the room, but found to his relief that the meeting had not yet started and there were still two other people to come. In the interim the medical superintendent, George Byars, introduced him to some of those present. There were too many names to remember, so Steven tried to memorise them in groups. There were three senior people from the Manchester social work department led by a short squat man named Alan Morely who obviously had a liking for denim clothes, and a team of five epidemiologists led by a sour-faced, grey- bearded man introduced as Professor Jack Cane. These people seemed seriously academic, thought Steven, narrow shoulders, bad eyesight and an ill-disguised impatience with the perceived stupidity of the rest of the world. There were four senior nurses, including the hospital’s nursing superintendent, Miss Christie, for whom no first name was proffered, and finally a small delegation from the Department of Health in London. This last group was fronted by an urbane-looking man named Sinclair who smiled a lot but looked as if he might be good at playing poker.
Steven accepted a mug of coffee but was conscious while drinking it of hostile glances from the epidemiology group and he suspected they might be resentful of his presence. This was a situation he was not unfamiliar with, having encountered it often enough before on assignment. Outside investigators were seldom welcomed with open arms by those already on the ground.
As a consequence, he had simply learned to be as self-sufficient as possible. If anyone offered help it was a bonus. John Donne’s assertion that no man was an island might well be true, but over the years he had become a pretty accomplished peninsula. In his view, team players — those whom society set so much store by — moved at the pace of the slowest member of the team. That the earth went round the sun was discovered by Galileo, not by a team or a group led by him.
The two missing people arrived; both were senior doctors from the special unit.
‘We’ve lost another two,’ said one by way of explanation.
‘The two you thought this morning?’ asked Byars.
‘Yes.’
‘Any new cases?’
‘No, but assuming a ten-day incubation period at the outside — it was actually less for the Heathrow people — we’ve still got four to go. Touch wood, things are looking good at the moment.’
‘Then I think we have cause for optimism,’ said Byars. ‘How have the barrier nursing courses been going, Miss Christie?’
‘Very well. There was a good response to the call for volunteer nurses, as I knew there would be. I think we can safely say that we are on top of things at the moment.’
‘Well done.’ He turned to Morely and asked, ‘How about contacts? Any problems there?’
‘All the friends and relatives we’ve seen seem to understand the gravity of the situation and are reconciled to staying indoors for the ten-day period. We’ve had no real opposition at all,’ said Morely. ‘I think the same goes for the community nurses?’
One of the nursing staff took her cue and agreed that this was the case.
‘Excellent,’ said Byars. ‘How about the academics? Any progress in establishing the source of the outbreak, Professor?’
‘Not yet,’ admitted Cane. ‘But we had one interesting piece of news this afternoon. Porton say that the Manchester virus is identical to the Heathrow one.’
SEVEN
Steven returned to his hotel with positive feelings about the meeting. He would have felt less happy with the news about the Manchester and Heathrow viruses being identical had it not been for his findings at Ann Danby’s flat. As it was, it just seemed to confirm that Vincent Bell was the link, something he should be able to establish beyond doubt next day. If he did, and if the medical teams in Manchester continued to keep tight control over the outbreak, there was a good chance that the whole affair might be consigned to history by the end of the following week.
The only loose end left would be how Humphrey Barclay had contracted the disease in the first place. It might not be relevant in a practical sense if the outbreak could be eradicated without knowing, Steven conceded, but he suspected that the question was going to niggle away at him for some time. If the answer lay in Africa, as it seemed it must, that was probably where it would remain. It would be yet another secret of the Dark Continent.
Steven flew down to London first thing in the morning and picked up a hired car from the Hertz desk at Heathrow. Traffic on the A2 was as bad as he expected, but he still managed to make Canterbury by lunchtime, and he left the car in one of the large car parks outside the city walls. He took a walk along the main thoroughfare in bright winter sunshine, looking for a street guide to tell him where Mulberry Lane was, but also because he wanted to take a look at the old city again.
It was a while since he’d been there and he had a soft spot for Canterbury, having spent many of the summer holidays of his youth working on an uncle’s fruit farm out in the Kent countryside. He saw the area as quintessentially English, different from the North he was more used to, England’s brain rather than its brawn. The cathedral’s huge presence still dominated the city and seemed to influence everything in it from the names of the narrow streets to the contents of its bookshops, the weight of its history almost tangibly forming a bridge between past and present. A chattering group of choristers from the cathedral school, unselfconscious in their cassocks, passed by and reminded Steven that Christmas was little more than a month away. They’d be singing carols soon.
Mulberry Lane, when he eventually found it, comprised a row of pretty little cottages backing on to the River Stour. It would not have looked out of place in a scene from The Wind in the Willows and he half expected Ratty and Mole to appear at any moment, arguing about nothing too important. He found the cottage he was looking for and walked up its meandering gravel path to knock on the heavy wooden door. After a short delay a stocky man with dyed auburn hair combed over a freckled, balding scalp opened the door and looked him up and down. He was wearing an apron with vintage cars on it and wiping his hands on a tea towel.
‘Mr Bell?’ asked Steven.
‘No, who wants him?’ asked the man. His voice had a lisp.
