to hospital.’
Another police car drew up and two CID officers entered. ‘Would you please step away from the victim, sir,’ said the first.
Steven looked up from holding an improvised linen swab against Pelota’s wound. ‘If I step away he’ll die,’ he said. ‘Your call.’
‘I’m sure the ambulancemen know what they’re doing, sir. So if you’ll please just step back…’
‘The ambulancemen are calling an ambulance,’ said Steven evenly. ‘I’m a doctor, and right now I’m the only thing between him and that great big kitchen in the sky.’
One of the ambulancemen came back into the restaurant and said, ‘It’ll be ten minutes. All the specials are out on shouts at the moment.’
There was a brief conversation between police and ambulancemen while Steven continued trying to stem the blood. The ambulancemen were adamant that they weren’t going to touch anyone exuding that amount of blood, certainly not without the special protective anti-virus suits.
‘So give me your equipment,’ said Steven.
The two men looked doubtful.
‘C’mon, for Christ’s sake. I’ve got to get a drip into him. He isn’t going to last ten minutes like this.’
The ambulancemen opened up their special equipment bag and Steven rummaged among the contents. ‘I need saline,’ he snapped. One of the men went to fetch it from the vehicle outside. Steven took the saline pack from the man and attached the giving set to it, asking one of the policemen to hold the plastic reservoir above the patient while he inserted the shunt needle into Pelota’s arm.
The minutes passed like hours as Steven worked and the emergency services watched. The show came to an end when Pelota’s head rolled to one side and his eyes opened but didn’t see. Steven felt desperately for a pulse and found nothing. He let his head slump against his chest for a moment before looking slowly up at the others and saying, ‘He’s dead.’
TEN
It was after three in the morning when Steven finished talking to the police. He couldn’t tell them much, apart from the fact that Pelota had been about to help him with his own inquiries, but hadn’t got round to it, thanks to the intervention of a kitchen knife. In theory, he wasn’t obliged to tell them anything at all, but Pelota had been murdered and police forces tended to resent anyone hiding behind rank or position where murder on their patch was concerned. Steven had no wish to antagonise those he might need help from in the near future, so he had given them all the information he could. The idea, however, that Pelota might have been killed to stop him revealing V’s identity he kept to himself for the time being. The police said that they would keep him informed of any progress and gave him a lift over to where he’d left his car earlier.
He drove slowly back to the hotel, where he immediately made for the mini-bar and splashed a miniature of Bombay gin into a tumbler. He added only an equivalent amount of tonic before downing it quickly. What a night, he thought, what a fucking awful night. He threw himself down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. If only Pelota had survived long enough to say something, things might have been so different. He might well have been talking to Victor by now and on his way to fitting a very large piece of the jigsaw into the puzzle.
But Pelota had died, thanks to those bloody obstinate jobsworths and their bloody union rules… Steven stopped himself going down this road, recognising that he was being unfair because of pent-up anger and frustration. Ambulancemen were only human like everyone else, and this was the real world, not the realms of TV drama where nurses were angels and doctors saints and the emergency services were crewed solely by self- sacrificing heroes.
The simple truth was that people were people and these days, in Manchester, the virus was uppermost in everyone’s mind. The men were probably right to take the stance they had. In fact, maybe it had been his own fault for not giving the emergency operator more information about Pelota’s condition; but he simply hadn’t had time. Pelota would have died there and then if he’d delayed in order to give details. Oh fuck, what did it matter now, anyway? He was back to square one with a vengeance, and apportioning blame wasn’t going to help — as if it ever did. He ran a bath and poured himself another gin, weaker this time.
Lying in the suds, he began to have doubts about his whole approach to the investigation. Quite early on, he had decided that Victor was going to be a crucial player in the game and had concentrated his efforts on finding him. That had been reasonable when it was a case of just two outbreaks of the virus, but perhaps he should have reconsidered when the Scottish outbreak had occurred. Now, at four in the morning, it seemed highly unlikely that Victor could be the missing link to both outbreaks. There was an unpleasant fact to be faced: Victor might be a red herring.
The water had gone cold. Steven stood up and towelled himself vigorously, still wondering about a change in tactics. Even if Victor did turn out to be a red herring, he would still have to find him in order to establish that fact for sure. Of course, if Victor was Pelota’s killer, the police might well find him first. In the meantime, and just in case they didn’t, he would continue the search.
Although he had never met Ann Danby, he had a soft spot for her. There was something about her and her circumstances that got to him. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt an empathy with her. Maybe it was the lack of any real presence in her existence, her lack of personal possessions. People liked her but no one knew her. Her flat had been like a room in a hotel, comfortable but totally impersonal. The same applied to her office.
Everyone had been kept at a distance, except, of course, Victor. She’d been the soul of discretion as far as Victor was concerned, to the point that she had not even kept any mementoes or souvenirs of their time together. There had been no letters from or photographs of the man she had clearly felt so much for, only a book of sonnets with a false declaration of undying love. In fact, there had been very few photographs of anything at all in Ann’s flat, come to think of it. He could recall seeing only two, and one was a duplicate of a print she kept in her office.
That thought brought Steven to a jarring halt. Why? he wondered. Why, if Ann hadn’t bothered with photographs as a general rule, had she kept two prints of the same one, one in her flat and one in her office? It wasn’t as if there was anything remarkable about the photograph; it was just the standard line-up at the formal opening of a dull exhibition. Nothing remarkable or special at all about it… unless of course… Victor was in it!
Excited at the prospect, Steven decided to drive over to Tyne Brookman as soon as the working day began and ask Hilary Black who the people in that photograph were.
‘Well,’ said Hilary with a smile, ‘Marie Claire didn’t change too much about your hairstyle. I thought maybe blond highlights and a quiff…’
For a moment Steven couldn’t think what she was talking about and then he remembered that the last thing he’d asked her was for directions to Ann Danby’s hairdresser.
‘I chickened out.’ He smiled.
‘What can I do for you this time?’
‘The photographs in Ann’s room. I’d like you to tell me the names of the people in them.’
‘I’ll just get them,’ said Hilary. She left the room and was back a few moments later with both photographs. She put them on the desk and then stood beside Steven.
‘This one,’ said Steven, pointing to the print of Ann shaking hands with the mayor.
‘This is Cedric Fanshaw, our managing director.’ Her forefinger moved along the row. ‘Tom Brown, our chief editor, Martin Beale, who organised the exhibition, and William Spicer, our local MP. This is the mayor, Mr Jennings, and, of course, Ann.’
Steven looked closely and pointed at Spicer. ‘I’ve seen him before and quite recently,’ he said. ‘He was on television.’
‘A rising star in the shadow cabinet,’ said Hilary. ‘I think Health is his current bag.’
‘That’s it,’ said Steven. ‘He was arguing with a Labour minister about the handling of the outbreak here. He was accusing the authorities of incompetence, and destroying the career of your director of Public Health.’
‘Did he deserve it?’ asked Hilary.
‘He’s a she, and no, she didn’t. Spicer reckoned the time was right for a scapegoat so he threw Caroline Anderson to the wolves in order to up his profile and further his own career.’
