limbs appear to double in weight as the prospect of sleep finally became a reality. His mind, however, was still troubled by conflicting arguments. Logic insisted that the replacement heart valves must be the cause of the outbreak, because they were the only common factor among the wildcard patients, but eighteen replacement valves could not possibly have come from one infected human heart. As he spiralled down into a deep sleep, the last image he had was of the driver saying, ‘Maybe you only think it’s impossible.’
Only four hours later he was jolted awake when a chambermaid in the corridor dropped what sounded like a metal tray laden with the crockery from a royal banquet. He lay staring at the ceiling for a while before acknowledging that he was not going to be able to get back to sleep. He got up and showered, then ordered an omelette and a salad from room service. He turned on his laptop and downloaded his e-mail while he waited.
Skipping an apology for not yet having details of the donors’ names, he read through the general details of how transplant organs and tissue were made available and how they were requested and allocated through a central register. It occurred to him that the register itself was a common link. All the replacement valves must have passed through it in terms of paperwork if not in substance. He asked Sci-Med to contact the operators of the register and request that they check their records for any factors common to the wildcard patients.
An hour and a half later he got his reply. There was another apology for still not having details of the donors but this one came with an explanation. The co-ordinating officer at the central register who was dealing with the request had been taken ill and sent home. Unfortunately, he had taken with him the computer disk with details of the donor files on it. People were trying to contact him urgently. With regard to Steven’s request that the wildcards be screened for common factors, one common factor had already appeared. The wildcard patients had all been found heart valves by the same co-ordinator, Greg Allan, and he, by a curious coincidence, was the man who had just gone sick.
‘Well, well, well,’ murmured Steven. ‘Strikes me, I’d better take Mr Allan some grapes.’
He called Sci-Med and asked for Greg Allan’s address as a matter of urgency. He was called back four minutes later by the duty officer, who said, ‘I’ve got it but it won’t do you much good. He doesn’t seem to be there at the moment.’
‘I thought he went home sick?’
‘That’s what his colleagues thought, and they all say he looked ill when he left. But when they tried to contact him about the disk they discovered he wasn’t at home and his wife hadn’t seen him since he left for work this morning.’
‘Give me the address anyway,’ said Steven and wrote it down; it was in Leeds. For once, luck was on his side. He was closer to Leeds here in Manchester than he would have been had he stayed in London. He could be at Allan’s place in an hour; the question was, would Allan be there when he arrived? He told the duty officer of his plans and asked that Sci-Med contact the local police and ask them to put an immediate trace on Allan’s car. ‘Give them my mobile number and ask them to contact me the moment they find him.’
‘Do you want him arrested?’
‘No, just found. He knows something we don’t about these heart valves, and I want him to tell me personally.’
Steven turned into Braidmoor Crescent in Leeds just after seven-thirty. There was a light in the window of Allan’s bungalow, and he knocked on the door. A worried-looking woman in her mid-thirties answered. She put her hands to her mouth when she saw a stranger, and said, ‘It’s about Greg, isn’t it? You’ve found him. What’s happened? Where is he?’
He said apologetically that he couldn’t answer her questions and that he was just another of the people who wanted to find her husband. He showed her his ID and asked if he could come in for a few minutes.
Her demeanour changed from alarm to worried bemusement as she showed Steven into the living room. ‘What on earth is going on?’ she asked. ‘Where is Greg? First his colleagues tell me he’s ill and he’s supposed to be here, then they decide they need to speak to him urgently, then the police start asking about him and now you. Just what is all this about?’
Steven told her who he was and what his job entailed.
‘But what has the virus outbreak got to do with Greg? He’s an administrator: he deals with transplant requests, matching potential donors to recipients.’
‘How long has he been doing that, Mrs Allan?’
‘Six years, give or take. You still haven’t answered my question.’
‘Only because I can’t,’ confessed Steven. ‘I don’t know the answer yet, but your husband was the co- ordinator for eighteen heart-valve-replacement operations in which the recipients went on to develop the new virus.’
Mrs Allan’s eyes opened wide and her face froze. ‘But… that’s outrageous,’ she stammered. ‘How can that possibly be?’
‘I was rather hoping your husband might be able to help with that one,’ said Steven. ‘But he’s not here.’
Mrs Allan started to come out of her shocked state, and he tried to guess what was going through her mind. She glanced briefly out of the window to where a new Ford Focus sat on the drive, and he guessed that it was hers. He had no idea what kind of wrongdoing, if any, Greg Allan was caught up in, but in his experience chicanery usually involved money. He wondered if there had recently been a change in the Allans’ circumstances.
‘What kind of car does your husband drive, Mrs Allan?’ he asked innocently.
‘A BMW. Why?’
Steven watched the thought process start again in Mrs Allan’s eyes. ‘Just in case he should drive into the street as I’m leaving,’ he said pleasantly. ‘New? Old?’
‘New,’ said she flatly. ‘A silver 5-series.’
‘Nice car,’ said Steven. He sensed that she was on the brink of saying something, but his mobile rang and the moment was gone. He said, ‘Excuse me,’ and took the call. It was the local police.
‘You requested a trace on Gregory Allan.’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Steven, cupping his hand tightly over the earpiece in an effort to contain the sound.
‘I think you’d better get over here, to the woods at the east end of Gaylen Park,’ said the policeman. ‘The car’s here and I think we’ve found him.’
Steven felt uncomfortable. The implication was that Allan was dead, and Steven was sitting less than six feet from the man’s wife. He did his utmost to keep his face expressionless and said, ‘Understood. I’m on my way.’
‘News of Greg?’ asked Mrs Allan.
‘Not yet,’ lied Steven. ‘But I have to go.’ He managed to avoid eye contact with her while he said goodbye: he felt that the news should not come from him.
Fifteen minutes later, Steven found several police vehicles parked beside Allan’s silver BMW at the edge of the woods bordering a small park. There wasn’t much activity among the officers, who were standing in a group, talking. He made himself known, and the inspector in charge said, ‘We’ve been waiting for you to get here. We haven’t touched anything.’
Steven guessed that Sci-Med had used full Home Office clout in making the request to the local police. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘What have you got?’
The inspector led him through the trees and into a small clearing illuminated with police arc lights. ‘I take it that’s your man?’ he said, pointing upwards. Steven saw a man hanging from the bare branches of a beech tree. ‘Obviously decided to decorate a tree with himself this Christmas,’ said the policeman.
Steven did not respond. Allan’s face was purple and his distended tongue lolled out of his mouth, making him look like a hideous gargoyle on a medieval church. The fact that he’d hanged himself with a modern tow-rope, bright red with yellow bands at intervals, somehow detracted from the tragedy and lent substance to the policeman’s awful allusion.
‘Poor bastard,’ said Steven.
‘Can we bring him down now?’
Steven nodded. ‘Sure.’ He watched, grim-faced, as Allan was cut down and lowered to the ground, where the police forensic team were waiting to begin their work. They could have been about to begin a shift at a car-making plant: they were casual, at ease, relaxed; just another body, just another day. The police surgeon pronounced Allan officially dead and the inspector asked if Steven could confirm that the dead man was Gregory Allan.
‘’Fraid not,’ said Steven. ‘I’ve never met him.’
‘Are we allowed to ask what he’s done?’ asked the inspector, squatting down with Steven beside the
