could therefore have Jenny living with him, but, if he was absolutely honest with himself, it hadn’t gone much further than that and it wouldn’t. It might be selfish — in fact, it almost certainly was, he admitted — but he liked working for Sci-Med too much to give it up. Any feelings of guilt he might harbour were comfortably offset by the fact that Jenny seemed very happy living with Sue and Richard and their kids, and they saw and treated her as one of their own.
The Getz track changed to something soulful and almost subconsciously he started to look round the room in the dim light coming from outside. There was a photograph of Lisa in her nurse’s uniform — she had been a nurse in Glasgow, where he had met her while on an assignment — and a photograph of the pair of them together when they went on holiday to Skye. He remembered that it had rained solidly for seven days before the weather had afforded them one beautiful day to walk in the Cuillins and appreciate just how lovely the island was. There was a picture of Jenny with Sue’s children at the beach in Dumfriesshire, holding hands as they paddled together, their eyes bright with childish joy. There was a picture of himself in uniform and one in civilian clothes with his friend Mick Fielding when they had served in Special Forces together. Mick now ran a pub down in Kent; at least, that’s what he’d been doing the last time Steven had heard about him — Mick tended not to keep up with old friends. God help the troublemakers down there, he thought with a smile.
There were a few bits and pieces he had rescued from the family home after his parents died, mainly books, but also a Spanish guitar he had bought when he was seventeen and still played when the notion took him. Not much to show in the way of possessions for a man on the wrong side of thirty-five, he concluded. The music stopped and he got up to pour himself another drink. He turned on the TV to hunt for news.
‘The virus that has recently claimed the lives of three airline passengers, a stewardess and a nurse at the hospital where they were treated is thought to be a new one, previously unknown to medical science,’ announced the newscaster.
‘How the hell did they get hold of that so quickly?’ exclaimed Steven.
‘This was the conclusion of medical scientists who examined specimens taken from the victims of the Heathrow incident in a maximum-security lab at Britain’s biological defence establishment at Porton Down. The source of the virus remains unknown. Health officials when contacted by Sky News in the last hour, however, have stressed that the outbreak posed no threat to the general public.’
Bloody hell, thought Steven. Does everything leak these days?
The report was accurate and had obviously been leaked to the media by someone present at the briefing. Accurate or not, any government assurance that things posed ‘no threat’ still smacked of the false assurances given during the time of BSE, he thought.
The news editor had decided to pad out the story and had found a microbiologist to interview.
‘Dr Marie Rosen is a medical microbiologist at a leading London hospital. Where do you think this virus emanated from, Doctor?’ asked the interviewer.
‘Well, I haven’t seen the report yet,’ replied the woman. She was dressed in ‘sensible’ clothes and rimless glasses that sat well down her nose. Her skin looked as if it desperately needed moisturising and her plentiful mop of grey hair suggested she had recently been standing out in a gale. ‘But I understand that the aircraft at the centre of this incident had just arrived from Africa. That would seem to be the likely source of the virus. It wouldn’t be the first to come
… “ out of Africa ”.’ She seemed pleased with her allusion.
‘Why do you think this is, Doctor?’ continued the interviewer, not bothering to smile. ‘Why should new viruses appear all the time in Africa when this doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world?’
‘I would question whether or not they really are new viruses,’ replied Rosen. ‘I think it highly likely that they’ve been there all along, but with so much of the African interior being opened up these days, and people moving around much more than they used to, we’re seeing what happens when a vulnerable population are suddenly exposed to agents they have not come into contact with before.’
‘A bit like the situation when Native Americans were exposed to measles when the Pilgrim Fathers landed?’ suggested the interviewer.
‘Quite so.’
‘But surely it can only be a matter of time until one of these viruses slips through the net and threatens us all?’
‘I think the way the authorities dealt with the problem at Heathrow demonstrates that we can have confidence in the defences currently in place,’ said Rosen.
‘Maybe you should talk to Fred Cummings,’ said Steven under his breath. He watched the rest of the news, then switched off the set. He decided to pack his bag for his trip up to Scotland tomorrow. He made a mental note to buy presents for Jenny and Sue’s children after he’d talked with Macmillan in the morning.
FOUR
Manchester, England
Miss Warren looked at the luminous numerals on her bedside clock: it was 2.35 a.m. She tried once more to get to sleep by turning on her side and pressing one ear to the pillow while holding the bedcovers to her other but it was no use; the music was too loud. She didn’t know what it was (it was Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The River’) but it had been playing non-stop for the last two hours. She looked up at the ceiling and sighed, feeling more puzzled than annoyed because this was all most unusual; in fact, it had never happened before. It was just not the sort of thing one expected at the Palmer Court flats.
When the music started she had assumed that her upstairs neighbour, Ann Danby, must be having a party. That in itself would be unusual, but maybe it was a special occasion, a birthday, perhaps, or job promotion? But as time went on Miss Warren came to realise that there was no sound of people in the flat above, no clinking of glasses, no party chatter, no intermittent gales of laughter, just that loud, unremitting music.
Although younger than most of the other residents in the flats — somewhere in her mid-thirties, she would guess — Miss Danby had always seemed to fit in so perfectly at Palmer Court. She dressed well, had an executive job — although Miss Warren didn’t know exactly what — and was always polite and courteous when they met in the hall. More than that, she was usually the first to pay her resident’s fees for grass-cutting and lift maintenance and could always be relied upon to turn up at meetings of the residents’ association — which was more than could be said for some of the others.
Miss Warren decided that she couldn’t stand the noise any more: she would have to go upstairs and have a word. She got out of bed, put on her slippers and dressing gown, fastening the belt with a firm tug and a large bow. She stopped to glance at herself in the hall mirror and primped her hair before opening the front door and padding along the landing to the doors leading to the fire-escape stairs. She almost turned tail when she heard voices and concluded that perhaps there was a party after all and the guests were now leaving, but then she recognised a man’s voice, that of George Dale, Miss Danby’s neighbour.
Miss Warren climbed the stairs and pushed open the landing door. George and Lucy Dale turned round. They wore matching dressing gowns in navy with green piping.
‘Whatever’s going on?’ she asked.
‘She won’t answer the door,’ replied Lucy Dale. ‘George has been knocking for the past five minutes. The noise is driving us mad.’
‘It’s not like Miss Danby at all,’ said Miss Warren. ‘Can you see anything through the letterbox?’
George knelt down with some difficulty, holding his right knee and lowering himself gently. ‘Bedroom light’s on,’ he said. ‘God, I feel like a peeping Tom… No sign of movement, though. Miss Danby! Are you there?’
There was still no response after several tries.
‘She hasn’t been well, you know,’ said Lucy. ‘She told me she thought she had flu coming on when I spoke to her the other day.’
‘Do you think we should call the police?’ asked Miss Warren.
Lucy looked doubtful. ‘I don’t like the idea of that,’ she said. ‘Policemen clomping their big boots all over the place. Maybe she just took a sleeping pill and fell asleep with the music on.’
‘If she can sleep through that, she’s the only one!’ snapped her husband. ‘I agree with Miss Warren. I think
