by Hall, M. R.
‘Has it occurred to you that we might have delayed precisely to prevent this sort of dispersal? You could have sent infected people all over the city.’
‘You told my court Sophie Freeman was an isolated case.’
‘If you would leave us to do our job we might stand a chance of containing this outbreak.’
‘So you’re admitting it’s an outbreak now? Are there any other cases I should know about, or have you decided that the coroner should be the last to know?’
Dr Verma showed no sign of backing down. ‘I suggest you follow your officer to our mobile clinic, Mrs Cooper – it might be best to take some precautionary medication.’ She nodded to the navy-blue van double-parked further along the road, lifted the police tape and stepped underneath.
Jenny could have reminded her that lying to her court was a serious act of perjury that could land her in prison, but trading words with a junior official would be futile. For Verma to have had the confidence to behave so brazenly, she must have received assurances from the highest level. Whoever it was who was deciding that the law could be trampled over, Jenny was sure of one thing: they had to be frightened they were dealing with something far out of the ordinary.
Her phone rang for what felt like the hundredth time that day.
‘Hello?’
‘Mrs Cooper? It’s Andy Kerr.’ He sounded agitated.
‘Hi.’ She moved away from the cordon and anyone who might be tempted to listen in. ‘What’s up?’
‘I heard you tracked down the last victim’s address.’
‘Not her home – the place where she worked. A massage parlour.’
‘I heard she lived in a bedsit upstairs, with a lot of other girls.’
‘Then you know more than me.’ Jenny glanced up at the three floors above the shop front. Shabby curtains were drawn across the windows. ‘Who told you that?’
‘A guy from the path’ lab.’
‘How did they get hold of the information?’
‘He didn’t say.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got time to meet? I think we should.’
The place Andy Kerr had suggested was the Beaufort Arms, a tiny pub untouched by the previous three decades, tucked away in a narrow street off Blackboy Hill. It was an occasional weekend haunt of his, he said, somewhere you’d come to hide away with no danger of bumping into friends or colleagues. Sure enough, apart from the two old men at the bar, they were the only customers. Jenny’s throat was still sore from the antibacterial spray an HPA medic had insisted on pumping into everyone who’d been near the Recife. Andy cheered her up with the news that she’d still be tasting it in three days’ time – it was designed to stick there, and it did what it promised.
They sat at a corner table away from the ubiquitous flatscreen playing non-stop sport and exchanged apprehensive glances, each waiting for the other’s bad news.
Andy reached into his rucksack and brought out a folder containing a dozen or more photographs of a female body badly disfigured by disease.
‘Miss Lujan,’ Andy said. ‘I did the p-m straight after I came back from court. The HPA sent a Home Office pathologist called Glazier up from London to join me.’
‘Did you know about her case when you came to give evidence?’ Jenny asked.
‘No. Her time of death was recorded as 8.30 this morning, but I wasn’t aware of her until midday. I may have been asked to soft-pedal in court, but not that much.’
Jenny believed him. A Presbyterian upbringing in Belfast had forged him into an often frustratingly cautious, but unswervingly honest, man. She didn’t believe he could lie to her even if he wanted to.
He turned through the pictures that showed the body from various angles inside an identical negative-pressure tent to the one in which Sophie Freeman’s body had been autopsied. The limbs were swollen to almost twice their natural width and the tissue of the cheeks so filled with fluid that the eyes were barely visible. The entire surface of the skin was covered with a blotchy rash, which in places had started to become black with necrosis. Andy explained that, as with Sophie Freeman, the cause of death was multiple organ failure caused by the body’s extreme reaction to the invading bacteria. Being older, Elena was a little stronger and her vital organs had kept her alive when circulation to much of her body had already ceased – hence the large areas of dead tissue. It was a horrific sight, on a par with the worst road accidents. It made Jenny feel nauseous. She had to look away.
‘Do we know for certain if it’s the same strain that killed Sophie Freeman?’ she asked.
‘We won’t have a confirmed match until tomorrow, but the lab did say the cultures they’ve got are resisting antibiotics in exactly the same way.’
‘What did Glazier have to say?’
‘Not much. He observed, took his samples and left as soon as we were done. I got the feeling he’d been told not to talk to me if he could help it.’
Jenny said, ‘If we’ve got two unconnected cases already, I’m assuming we should expect more.’
‘That’s the interesting thing,’ Andy replied. ‘This girl was working in a sauna, which I presume involves having sex with lots of different men. You couldn’t have a more efficient incubator than a steamy, enclosed space.’
Jenny shuddered as she recalled the warm, damp air inside the Recife and wondered what she might have drawn down into her lungs.
‘It’s no accident that the meningitis belt stretches across the tropical regions of sub-Saharan Africa,’ Andy continued. ‘No one knows for sure why Africa is where most of the world’s cases occur, but the temperature and close-packed populations are significant factors, I’d say.’
‘I had no idea it was an African disease.’
‘It’s not exclusively, but they have the lion’s share of cases. There are regular epidemics across the middle of the continent. They mostly occur within a 500-mile-wide belt from Senegal and Gambia in the west across to Sudan and Ethiopia in the east. Just like the flu, new variants appear every year. The World Health Organization is working like crazy to develop a vaccine. I’d hate to have been the one to break the news about this strain.’
Jenny tried to ignore the connection her mind had made between Adam Jordan’s work in Sudan and what Andy had just told her, but it lodged there, a malignant presence, as they continued to talk.
‘Is that where you think this strain came from?’ Jenny asked.
‘Possibly. African hospitals are likely to treat with only a limited range of drugs, simply through lack of resources. There’s no surer way of breeding resistance – the bacteria that survive the effects of one or two drugs then form the base pool from which the next generations evolve. A few years down the line you’ve got a strain with a whole range of defences.’
‘Like this one.’
Andy nodded. ‘Precisely.’
Jenny said, ‘Why all the secrecy, do you think? If this was flu we’d have nothing but public health warnings. There’d be no question of hushing it up.’
‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself. And I can only think of two possible explanations.’ He paused to swig from his bottle of beer. Jenny recognized his expression: he was testing himself, making doubly sure he was justified in what he intended to say. ‘Unless we’re talking state secrets,’ he continued, ‘people tend to hide things when they’re frightened of their errors being exposed. So we’re dealing either with a disease that has been overlooked, or with cases which have been mishandled in some way, or—’ He paused once again, checking himself.
‘I appreciate this is just conjecture, Andy. I’m not going to quote you.’
He moved a little closer towards her, dropping his eyes down to the table, as if he were slightly ashamed. He was a pathologist who prided himself on dealing only in provable facts, not in guesswork. ‘My contact in the path’ lab has a line in to the commercial laboratory where they’re carrying out a full DNA analysis of the bacterium. He thinks they’re looking for signs that it’s a recombinant strain.’
‘Meaning . . . ?’
‘That the DNA has been artificially recombined by geneticists – in a lab.’
Jenny looked at him disbelievingly.
Andy was deadly serious. ‘It could happen with the best of intentions. For example, if you’re working on a vaccine, you’ll need to create one that kills as many iterations of the disease as possible. If you’re tackling meningitis, you’ll probably have cultures of several drug-resistant strains. These days it’s no great technical feat to splice the antibiotic-resistant cassettes of DNA from each of those strains, and insert them all into a new, recombined variant of your bacterium. You deliberately create a monster in order to learn how to kill it.’
‘And this happens?’
‘All the time. It’s standard practice. But in the UK you need a government licence to modify DNA. My contact checked the registers and couldn’t find any applications relating to this organism.’
‘Could it have come from abroad?’
‘It could have come from anywhere.’
‘You said the secrecy could be to disguise an error. What kind?’
‘I genuinely have no idea,’ Andy said, ‘and I might not have troubled you with any of this, if it wasn’t for one thing.’
‘There’s more?’
Andy nodded, his expression saying he scarcely believed it himself. ‘After Elena Lujan’s post-mortem, Glazier wanted to collect some samples of cerebrospinal fluid and brain tissue from Sophie Freeman’s body. I had the technicians bring it into another tent and open it up. You know how the brain tissue is stored along with—’
Jenny nodded, not wanting to dwell on this unpleasant detail. One of the many indignities of post-mortem was that the dissected brain couldn’t be crammed back into the opened skull. Post-autopsy, the individual sections were placed in a plastic bag along with the other major organs and stitched into the abdomen, while the skull was stuffed with cotton wool to prevent it sounding hollow to the touch.
Andy continued. ‘When they opened her, the brain tissue was gone. All of it. And the spinal fluid had been tapped out, too.’
‘When? Who by?’ Jenny was stunned.
‘If it was anything to do with the HPA they’re pretty convincing liars. But the thing is, her body was stored in a locked drawer. My mortuary is staffed twenty-four hours a day and I can tell you now, no second autopsy took place. That body must have been taken, opened elsewhere, and returned later, all without my staff’s knowledge.’
Jenny’s mind filled with bizarre and outlandish possibilities, none of which made logical sense.
‘How did Glazier react?’
‘He was as spooked as I was. Scrubbed up and got away as fast as he could.’
‘Have you reported it?’
‘When I told my line manager she told me that if I said anything to anyone – including you and the Freeman family – I couldn’t expect to have a job in the morning. I was left in no doubt she meant it.’
Jenny tried to think calmly and rationally. ‘OK, let’s not worry about how the body was accessed. Let’s just try to think who might have had an interest in examining infected tissue.’
Andy Kerr shook his head. ‘Outside of the HPA I can’t think of anyone. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever known.’
Jenny left Andy Kerr with instructions to keep his head down, to communicate with her only via her private email account and to make a detailed note of any conversations with superiors who tried to silence him. It would all come out in the end, she assured him, but walking back to her car through the narrow Clifton backstreets, she felt less than confident. What had happened to Sophie Freeman’s body had unnerved her. At best it indicated a serious degree of panic and infighting at levels far higher than the hospital management and the local office of the Health Protection Agency. But how high? And who had the sophistication and resources to remove and then return a hazardous body?
Her deep feeling of disquiet intensified as she climbed behind the wheel of the Land Rover. She had intended to stop off briefly at the office before driving home, but something was holding her back. It was Adam Jordan. The seemingly illogical connection she had made while talking to Andy Kerr was gnawing at her. The mention of Sudan was an uncomfortable coincidence, but it felt like more than that. Then she remembered: the book. The book Adam Jordan had bought in Oxford was written by a Russian biologist.
She dialled Karen Jordan’s home number. The phone rang several times. A gruff, male voice answered in a pronounced Wiltshire accent.
‘I’m calling for Karen Jordan,’ Jenny said uncertainly. ‘It’s Jenny Cooper.’
‘Mrs Cooper the coroner?’
‘Yes—’
‘Oh. Detective Sergeant Cawardine, Avon and Somerset CID. It seems Mrs Jordan disturbed some intruders. I’m afraid she was hurt.’
TWELVE
KAREN JORDAN WAS SITTING PROPPED up in a bed at the end of the busy ward in Bath Royal United Hospital. Her right arm was in a sling, the right side of her face black with bruises. She was dressed in a green, hospital-issue surgical gown.
She turned her neck stiffly as Jenny approached, her face too swollen for any expression to register.
‘Hi,’ Jenny said, shocked at the sight of her battered body. ‘I hope you don’t mind—’
‘No,’ Karen answered in a hoarse whisper.
Despite the drugs that would have been pumped into her, the single word was still an effort. It had been a vicious and sustained assault. Another livid bruise at the V of her gown suggested she’d been kicked in the chest, an injury that only occurred when someone was lying defenceless on the ground.
‘Who told you?’ Karen croaked.
‘I called your home yesterday evening. A detective answered the phone. He said you disturbed burglars.’
‘So they tell me.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘They came at me from me behind. I didn’t see them.’ She flinched in pain.
Jenny sat on the visitors’ chair at the side of the bed, wondering how much, if anything, she should tell her of what she had learned from Dr Kerr.
Karen forced the issue. ‘Well? You didn’t come here to commiserate.’
‘You’re sure you’re all right to talk?’
‘Just tell me what you want.’
Jenny took her at her word. ‘When he was in Oxford, your husband bought a book. It was called Warrior in White. Did he mention it?’
‘No. He was always buying books.’
‘It was written by a Russian biologist called Slavsky. I think he might have worked for the Soviet military.’
‘And?’
‘I thought it might still be at your home.’
‘You want to know if they took a book?’
She was too bright to be fobbed off, even while sedated. Jenny had to give her more. ‘Secretly meeting a university tutor, buying books by obscure scientists, driving down to Berkshire without telling you. It’s not too far-fetched to want to see if there’s a connection.’
‘They took my jewellery, computer and television.’
‘I didn’t mean with what happened to you,’ Jenny lied.
Karen Jordan managed a hint of a smile. ‘Do you know what I think?’ she said, resting her head painfully back against the pillow. ‘You’ve got an imagination as crazy as his.’
Jenny left the hospital without answers, but with Karen Jordan’s permission to call at her house, where her mother was looking after her son, and to see if the book was anywhere to be found. Jenny hadn’t yet formed a mental image of Karen and Adam Jordan’s marital home, but if she had done, she wouldn’t have pictured an end-of-terrace in a well-to-do street at the west end of Bath. The houses were early Victorian and built solidly of dressed stone with wide bay windows; the kind that Jenny would have assumed were the homes of lawyers, doctors and business people, not an African aid worker and his mature-student wife.
Jenny was met at the front door by a far younger and more businesslike woman th
an she had expected. There was nothing grandmotherly about Claire King. Within seconds of meeting, she let Jenny know that she had taken a day away from the office to look after her grandson. They passed through a tiled hallway to a tastefully decorated sitting room. Aside from a square dark shadow on the wall where the flatscreen had hung, there were few signs of a recent burglary. After spending the entire night screaming, Sam had finally gone to sleep, Claire King said. Thank God he had been at day nursery and not with his mother when she was attacked.
She gestured Jenny to one of the leather armchairs.
‘How is she?’ Claire King asked. ‘She called to say you were coming, but she sounded dreadful.’
‘There’s nothing that won’t mend, but I’d say she was lucky.’
Claire King shook her head, as if to expel unwanted thoughts.
‘I’ve looked for the book she mentioned, but I can’t find anything.’ She nodded towards the shelves that covered most of one wall. ‘Is there any significance to it? I thought you’d be more interested in anything Adam had written down.’
‘He bought it a few days before he died. There was a receipt in his car.’
‘I see. So it has some relevance?’
‘Perhaps.’ Jenny trod gently. ‘The hours and days preceding a suicide often hold a clue. I get the impression that he might have been a more complex man than he appeared on the surface.’
Mrs King looked at her critically. Jenny noticed that her clothes, though unfussy, were of the most expensive kind: Bond Street, not Bath. Her perfect hair and age-defying complexion would also have come with a hefty price tag. She wasn’t the kind of woman, Jenny imagined, who would have readily chosen a man in Adam Jordan’s line of business for a son-in-law.
‘Is that a polite way of suggesting he had some sort of mental condition?’ Mrs King asked. ‘Have you found something in his medical records? Karen must have a right to know.’
‘There’s no evidence of any illness,’ Jenny said. ‘Your daughter would be the first to hear if there were.’
Claire King glanced over at some photographs lined up on a shelf. There were several of Adam and Karen together in a small African village, and one of him holding a newborn Sam to his naked chest. He had an untamed beard and narrow, bony shoulders, like a figure blown in from a previous age.
