Edinburgh
Paul Grossart hitched up the waistband of his trousers as he approached the desk of the George Hotel. He had lost weight recently and his clothes were starting to hang badly on him.
‘I’m having dinner with Mr Vance,’ he told the receptionist, thinking that eating dinner was the last thing he wanted to do. Food just wasn’t high on his agenda these days.
The girl, wearing corporate uniform with a distinctive Scottish theme, pushed her hair back with both hands and checked a small lined notebook in front of her. ‘Mr Vance’s party is in a private dining room this evening, Mr…?’
‘Grossart.’
‘Mr Grossart. William will take you up, sir.’ She smiled, and summoned the short stocky porter lurking by the stairs and Grossart was led to a small dining room, where he found Vance sitting talking with two other men. His first impression was that the men were not scientists; they were dressed too well.
‘Come in, Paul,’ said Vance, getting to his feet. ‘I thought it best if we met on neutral ground this time round. Drink?’
Grossart asked for a gin and tonic, which Vance ordered before introducing him to the strangers. ‘Paul, this is Clyde Miller, a crisis-management specialist, and this is Dr Lee Chambers, one of our in-house physicians and a specialist in infectious diseases.’
Grossart shook hands with both men and sat down.
‘How are things?’ asked Vance.
Grossart looked at him as if it were an obscene question. ‘You know how things are,’ he retorted. ‘Both my people at the field station have called in sick — that’s why you’re here, damn it. Look, Hiram, this thing has gone far enough. I think we should come clean and be done with it.’
Vance looked at him coldly and said, ‘Not an option, I’m afraid. We’re all in this together and there’s no going back.’ He spoke with such finality that Grossart was speechless for a moment.
‘And just what the hell do I do about my people in Wales?’ he asked when he’d recovered.
‘Nothing,’ said Vance. ‘Absolutely nothing. That’s why Clyde and Lee are here. They’ll be on their way to Wales first thing tomorrow morning and they’ll take charge of everything. They’ll see to it that your folks get the best of treatment, should they need it. They’ll want for nothing, I promise. All you have to do…’
Grossart looked at him expectantly.
‘All you have to do is stall the families when they start asking awkward questions. We’ll have to sever direct communications with the field station until the situation resolves itself one way or the other, so they’re bound to start complaining.’
‘And what the hell do I tell them when they do?’ complained Grossart.
Vance leaned forward in his seat, all trace of good humour gone from his face. ‘You use your initiative, Paul, that’s what you do. I fucking well pay you enough!’
Manchester
The first snow of the winter fell on Manchester. It quickly turned to brown slush on the city streets, but the parks and gardens managed to hold on to their blanket of white long enough for Steven to see the irony of a white coat being worn by such a black day. Twelve new admissions were made to City General, thankfully all of them known contacts, while three more people in Perth went down with the disease, again, known contacts of the dead man, McDougal.
Jack Cane avoided eye contact with anyone when he admitted quietly at the morning meeting that no connection between the Manchester and the Scottish outbreaks had been established, nor was one likely to be. His team had worked all day and right through the night with their opposite numbers in Scotland, but had failed to find a link.
‘The damned thing seems to have come out of the blue,’ said a weary-looking Cane.
Steven took no pleasure in seeing that all Cane’s self-confidence had disappeared and he seemed a broken man.
Cane’s comment heralded thirty seconds of silence, before George Byars said, ‘So it seems fair to say things aren’t looking too good this morning.’
‘One of my nurses in the special unit reported sick this morning,’ said Miss Christie. ‘I think it’s serious. She sustained a needlestick injury last week while changing a saline drip. The patient was only semi-conscious at the time: he moved at the wrong moment and the needle went right through her suit into her arm.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Byars quietly. The others also murmured muted words of sympathy as if suddenly and painfully aware of how helpless they all were against the virus.
‘This is bound to affect morale among the nurses,’ said Miss Christie. ‘Protective clothing is all well and good in a laboratory, where the virus sits obediently in a glass test tube, but when the reservoir is a delirious patient with flailing arms and blood and vomit leaking out of him, that is a completely different situation.’
‘I don’t think we can speak highly enough of your nurses, Miss Christie,’ said Byars. ‘And I am only too aware that the medical staff in this situation are largely redundant. The nurses are the only factor standing between the patients and death. Please make sure that they are aware of our high regard for them, and pass on our thanks.’
Miss Christie nodded and said that she would.
‘The papers aren’t exactly helping when it comes to morale,’ said one of Cane’s team. ‘Have you seen the latest?’ He held up a front page that said, ‘Killer Virus Stalks City’. ‘Talk about scaremongering.’
‘People are beginning to panic,’ said Morely. ‘You can feel it in the air. Fear is breeding anger, and they’re looking for someone to blame.’
‘Perhaps an appeal for calm?’ suggested one of the senior nurses. ‘Local radio and television?’
‘You’d be as well holding up a big sign that says, “Panic!”’ said Caroline Anderson. ‘People tend not to pay attention to that sort of thing any more. They’ve been conned too often in the past.’
‘And what has the good Dr Dunbar come up with this morning, might I ask?’ said Cane.
‘Almost as little as you and your team, Professor,’ replied Steven, but he was pleased to see that Cane still had some fight left in him. ‘But I do have a lead that I’m following up, for the Manchester outbreak at least.’
Cane swallowed and seemed embarrassed at the revelation. ‘Are you going to share this with us, or do Sci- Med investigators prefer the Lone Ranger approach?’
‘Whatever gets the job done, Professor,’ replied Steven evenly. ‘Ann Danby had a boyfriend. I’m currently trying to find out who he was.’
Cane looked at the other members of his team, who shook their heads in unison. ‘My people seem to disagree,’ he said. ‘That’s an avenue we’ve already explored thoroughly.’
‘She kept it pretty much a secret but she did have one,’ insisted Steven. ‘I can even tell you his name; it’s Victor. He’s almost certainly married and has a high-profile job here in Manchester.’
‘But you’re the only one who knows about this Victor,’ said Cane with a barely disguised sneer in his voice.
‘No, I think a couple of other people do,’ replied Steven evenly. ‘It’s just a question of persuading them to confide in me.’
Caroline Anderson looked at Steven wide-eyed, as if suddenly realising why she had been asked to put pressure on Pelota. Steven acknowledged her look with a slight shrug and a raising of his eyebrows.
‘And are you proposing that this man gave the disease to Miss Danby, Doctor?’ asked Cane.
‘I think it’s entirely possible. I can’t say more than that.’
‘Then I’m sure we’ll all await developments with bated breath,’ said Cane.
‘As it appears to be the only lead we have, I wish you luck, Doctor,’ said Byars. There was a murmur of agreement from all the others except Cane and his people, who had gone into a huddle to murmur among themselves. ‘Might I remind everyone,’ continued Byars, ‘that we are all in this together. There is absolutely no room for petty feuds and academic jealousies.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Cane, who obviously knew that the implied criticism had been levelled at him.
‘We must keep our nerve and pull together if we are to defeat this thing,’ said Byars.
‘I’m afraid that matters may be taken out of all our hands in the next few days,’ said Sinclair, speaking for the first time that morning. ‘My masters tell me that a government crisis-management team is being put together as we
