The Chosen Dead

by M. R. Hall

  ‘So there’s a possibility this strain might have escaped from a government laboratory?’

  ‘It’s one possibility among many,’ Andy said. ‘No more than that.’

  ‘How could that happen? They must have every precaution imaginable.’

  ‘You’d be surprised. All it takes is one act of carelessness. One of the lab staff gets infected, goes to a shopping mall or cinema and sneezes, or leaves a trace of infected mucus on a door handle or rail. It’s not particularly likely, but it’s not impossible, either.’

  ‘It sounds plausible,’ Jenny said, ‘but if that’s the case, I can see even less reason why Adam Jordan’s body would be of any interest.’

  Andy Kerr’s glance told her he had a suspicion.

  ‘You’ve already speculated once,’ Jenny said, ‘so don’t try to convince me you’ve got a rule against it.’

  ‘I could make a wild guess, but that’s all it would be.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He could have acted as a courier, bringing samples from Africa. If you’re importing a new strain, someone has to bring it in. It’s the kind of job you would only give to someone entirely trustworthy.’

  ‘Why would a courier jump off a bridge?’

  ‘If he thought he was doing one thing, but found out he was really doing another?’

  They exchanged a look, both suddenly suspecting they were dealing with something far darker than they had feared.

  Andy stepped back out of sight as a car crept past. The driver, a woman, appeared to glance in their direction.

  ‘Relax,’ Jenny said, ‘it’s just someone looking for a space.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Andy said, turning sharply, ‘nothing to worry about.’ He pushed through the door and disappeared inside.

  Jenny had never seen Andy Kerr frightened, and the ominous feeling that there was more going on in his mind than he had felt able to share grew stronger during her short journey back to the office. She knew him well enough to appreciate that he wouldn’t have mentioned the highly secretive government laboratories at Porton Down unless he was convinced of their involvement, but it was the implications of that prospect that he hadn’t felt able to discuss. Was he frightened for himself or for her, she wondered. Now, as she thought of Jordan standing on the motorway bridge, she pictured him filled with an irredeemable guilt at his part in something that had gone far beyond whatever he had intended. But she still had no clear insight into the inner man. Had he remained an idealist or had he been corrupted? Was it conceivable that he’d been turned and was doing the bidding of the ‘spooks’ Harry Thorn so loathed?

  ‘Mr Moreton just called,’ Alison said, the moment Jenny stepped through the office door. ‘He wanted to know when you’re planning to resume the Sophie Freeman inquest. He seemed a little impatient.’

  ‘He’ll have to put up with it. I’m still gathering evidence.’ Her spirits sank at the sight of yet another fresh pile of reports waiting for her attention.

  ‘Dr Verma phoned earlier.’ She handed Jenny a note. ‘They’ve found the other two girls from the Recife and they seem to be clear. I think she’s hoping you’ll see your way to writing Elena Lujan’s death certificate without an inquest.’

  ‘There’s a short answer to that,’ Jenny said, and dropped the memo into the bin.

  ‘As long as you think you’ve time.’ Alison got up from her desk and pulled on her jacket.

  ‘You’re going?’

  ‘I haven’t left my desk since 8.30 this morning, Mrs Cooper. Some of us do have lives.’

  It was a comment intended to both wound and inspire guilt. It succeeded on both counts.

  ‘Of course,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Good night, Mrs Cooper.’ Alison picked up her briefcase and left.

  Jenny lifted the heavy heap of papers and moved into the quiet cool of her office. Often this solid Georgian room, closed off from the world by its heavy oak door, served as a place of respite and sanctuary, but in the stillness of a late-summer afternoon its quietness soon became oppressive. The harder she tried to push Adam, Sophie and Elena from her mind and concentrate on the mundane tasks before her, the more she imagined their ghosts moving through the slanting light and their whispered voices in the empty rooms beyond. She looked up from her desk, frustrated at being impeded by such irrational thoughts, but there it was: a force as irresistible as it was confounding, leaving her no choice but to push all else aside and dig deeper. Immediately.

  She began with the Freemans, and was grateful to reach Ed on his mobile phone. He was unusually quiet – he hinted at a row with Fiona – and Jenny almost thought better of troubling him with more unsettling information. But he had anticipated the promise of another insight and was eager for Jenny to tell him what she had found. She couched the connection with Porton Down as the remotest possibility, but it was one he seized on.

  ‘That’s who those sly bastards are, sneaking around the hospital.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Jenny insisted.

  Ed was dismissive. He had made up his mind. ‘What are you going to do? They’ll be the last people to tell you the truth.’

  ‘I’ll start by looking for a connection. You don’t know anyone who works there who might have come into contact with Sophie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Had she been anywhere she wouldn’t normally go in the last few weeks – a friend’s house?’

  ‘I’ve been through all this with Verma’s people – it was still term time, just the normal routine of home and school.’

  ‘She must have been somewhere else besides.’

  ‘She went into town a few times with Fiona. That’s all. There’s no point to this, it’s hopeless.’ He seemed overcome with despair. ‘Don’t you have powers to demand answers? We’re not looking for a public apology; we just want to know where it came from.’

  Jenny persisted, ‘Maybe she had a boyfriend you didn’t know about – is that possible? Have you checked all her online activity?’

  ‘There was no boyfriend.’

  ‘What about the cinema – or anywhere she might have been close to other people? Just think . . .’

  He fell silent.

  ‘Ed? Are you still there?’

  ‘I just thought of something,’ he said quietly. ‘I belong to Hampton’s—’

  ‘I know it. St Edward’s Road.’ Hampton’s, in affluent Clifton, wasn’t so much a gym as a fully fledged country club. David had been a member before he declared that it had become too effeminate for his manly tastes. As Jenny remembered it, there were tennis and squash courts, a gym, and a large and elegant kidney-shaped pool.

  ‘I dropped in one Sunday morning – about a month ago. Fiona had to go to her mother’s. The girls came with me and went swimming.’

  ‘You’d forgotten this?’

  ‘No—’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  He gave a despairing sigh. ‘There’s someone I sometimes have coffee with.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘No one you know. We’re just friends. But Fiona read a couple of texts one time and made assumptions.’

  ‘She doesn’t know you were there?’

  ‘The girls had promised her they’d be doing their music practice, so it was all a bit of a secret . . . Oh God. What have I done?’

  ‘I won’t mention this to anyone, I promise. I’m just ruling out a possibility.’

  Ed Freeman fell into another unreadable silence.

  ‘Whatever I find out, I’ll speak to you before doing anything,’ Jenny said. ‘You have my word.’

  ‘Sure,’ he grunted.

  Hoping that this particular lead would lead nowhere, Jenny called the anxious manager of Hampton’s and, after first assuring him that her inquiry remained strictly confidential, asked him to forward the contact details of all club members who had visited during the twenty-four hours before Ed and his daughters. Alarmed, he tried to play for time, asking to consult with his company’s solicitors. Jenny gave him a straight
choice: comply immediately, or find himself a witness at her inquest. She left the decision with him.

  Switching her attention back to Adam Jordan, Jenny tried to plot her next moves. She needed to trace the girl he had been with at Great Shefford, but felt it was still too soon to share this information with Karen Jordan. There was no point going back to Harry Thorn or his employees – they wouldn’t break ranks this side of the witness box – which left her with only one possibility: Sonia Blake.

  Jenny paused to marshal the rush of thoughts her name prompted. Stay rational, she told herself, reason it through, one step at a time. She knew only three things about her for certain. She was a respected academic with an expertise in African conflicts. She was a pragmatist who didn’t shy from advocating violent means to achieve just ends. And her father had been a geneticist who was murdered thirty years ago in Arizona. Her father’s profession was an odd but resonant detail that Jenny found vaguely disturbing. It was made all the more so by the fact that Adam Jordan went to meet her having just bought a rare, out-of-print book by a Russian microbiologist. Even viewed through the prism of pure logic, there was a theme emerging.

  Sonia Blake was, Jenny imagined, just the kind of person who, alongside her academic career, might have become involved with governments or other shadier interested parties in the conflict-ridden areas she researched. But Jenny had no handle on that world and no means of understanding it. For all she knew, Adam Jordan and Sonia Blake might have had a professional relationship that extended far beyond anything she had admitted during their brief interview. To talk to her again felt like a step into the unknown, perhaps even a dangerous risk, though what was at stake Jenny couldn’t say. She paced her office and prevaricated, wrestling with how she should approach her, what she should give away and what she should hold back, until she had argued herself to a standstill. Deciding finally to play it by ear, she searched out her number.

  Sonia Blake answered her phone in a distracted voice, as if she had been deep in thought.

  Jenny felt a pressure behind her ribs as she opened her mouth to speak; she was inexplicably nervous. Stumbling slightly, she apologized for disturbing her yet again, but explained that certain facts had come to light which she would like to discuss.

  ‘Oh. I’ll do what I can.’ Sonia Blake sounded mildly irritated by the request.

  Attempting to seize the upper hand, Jenny said, ‘May I ask if you work for anyone outside the university, Mrs Blake?’

  ‘No.’ She was affronted. ‘What does this have to do with Adam Jordan?’

  Again, Jenny wanted to prove that she wasn’t afraid of being direct: ‘His employers were under pressure to work for British interests. I wondered if you might have anything to do with that world.’

  ‘It’s my area of study. That’s why I made contact with him.’

  ‘And that’s as far as your interest extends?’

  ‘Yes . . . But I’m intrigued to know what you’re getting at, Mrs Cooper. I don’t know if I can help you, but if you’d like to meet, I’ll happily give you the benefit of what little relevant knowledge I might have.’

  Her tone had shifted yet again. Jenny’s instinct was not to trust her, but the offer of a meeting was too enticing to turn down.

  ‘That would be very helpful. Are you available tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m going to Oslo – academic conference season, I’m afraid. I return next Tuesday.’

  ‘What about tonight?’ Jenny said impulsively.

  She hesitated. ‘I suppose that would be all right. As long as we’re not too late – I’ve an early start.’

  ‘I can be with you by eight.’

  ‘Well, you know where to find me.’

  Ninety minutes later, Jenny finally found a parking space in a city that seemed determined to repel all outsiders who arrived by car, and made her way on foot through the narrow streets of Jericho to Worcester College. Several shots of filthy service-station espresso had done little to banish the exhaustion of having spent eight hours on the road in a single day. This was the last trip she would make on this case, she promised herself, no more running around the country chasing shadows.

  ‘Mrs Cooper?’

  The porter had spotted her from the window alongside his desk and come out of his lodge to greet her.

  ‘Mrs Blake will be back shortly. She’s gone for her evening run.’ He smiled, as if the notion were slightly mad. ‘Nice evening for a turn round the gardens. Down the steps to your left, and through the passage.’

  Feeling that she had been offered no option, and in no mood for crossing swords with a busybody, Jenny did as he suggested. At the foot of a flight of stone steps, she passed through a narrow stone passageway that connected the quad to the gardens beyond.

  She turned right, following a cinder path that led behind the terrace of medieval cottages to a large and gracefully curving lake. Willows swept the surface of the water, providing shelter for a contented colony of ducks. She wandered on around the lake’s perimeter, admiring the shifting views of the ancient college buildings, and paused to sit for a while on an ornamental stone bench dappled with lichen. How strange it must be, she thought, for a woman like Sonia Blake to live in such rarefied surroundings yet to have her mind filled with the dirty politics of troubled, faraway countries.

  Stirred by the first hints of a chill evening breeze, she continued on her way. The path took her past the college playing fields and through some tasteful modern accommodation blocks, before leading her into a courtyard behind the far side of the quad. A long flight of creaking wooden stairs delivered her back almost at her destination, on the ground floor of Sonia Blake’s staircase.

  It was ten minutes past the time they had agreed to meet, so Jenny carried on up the stairs to the second floor. She found Sonia Blake’s oak door slightly ajar.

  ‘Mrs Blake?’

  Silence.

  Pushing the inner door open, she peered inside. The room was much as she remembered it, strewn with books and files. Then something caught her eye: liquid was dripping from the edge of the desk; a cup had been recently knocked over and the contents spilled over loose pages and items of mail scattered about the computer monitor.

  ‘Mrs Blake, are you there?’

  Jenny stepped through the door and called again. The dead quiet was interrupted only by the slow drip-drip of coffee onto the carpet. Approaching the desk, she dipped her finger into the small pool of brown liquid and felt that it was cold. She noticed, too, that the toppled cup had a brown ring halfway down its interior surface, as if it had been standing, half-full, for some time.

  ‘Mrs Blake?’

  The silence remained unbroken.

  She crossed the room and approached the one internal door. Her heart beat hard against the wall of her chest as she twisted the brass knob and pushed it open. It gave onto a small bedroom. The single bed was made, the wardrobe closed. To the right of the chest of drawers was another door. Jenny knocked on it and, receiving no reply, opened it to find a small passageway no more than ten feet long. At the far end was another door. She approached it, turned the handle and found that it was locked.

  Retracing her steps, she became aware of the sound of a wailing siren that grew louder as it approached, then came to a stop not far away. She went to one of the windows overlooking the quad, and moments later saw police uniforms and the porter walking briskly through the cloisters in her direction. She turned away with a rising sense of dread. Something was badly wrong; she had felt it from the moment she saw the toppled cup. Acting by instinct rather than reason, she took out her phone, and switched on its camera, and took as many photographs of the room as she could before the sound of heavy boots reached the final flight of stairs.

  She met the two constables on the landing. ‘Both doors were open,’ she said. ‘I came to meet Mrs Blake. Has something happened?’

  They pushed past without answering her.

  It was the porter who spoke, doubled over from the effort of running up t
he stairs. ‘A woman’s body’s been found on Port Meadow,’ he gasped. ‘They think it’s her.’

  ‘She’s dead?’

  ‘She always ran with her phone strapped to her arm. They checked. It was hers.’

  The news sucked the breath from Jenny.

  ‘How?’ she whispered.

  The porter shook his head. ‘That’s all they’ve told me.’

  Another set of footsteps was racing up the stairwell, faster and more agile than the ones that had preceded it. Alex Forster appeared, calling out to the porter as he scaled the final flight two steps at a time.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  One of the police officers stepped out of the room and barked at the porter. ‘Who else has got keys to this door?’

  ‘Just me,’ he answered.

  ‘Will somebody tell me what’s going on?’ Forster demanded.

  The constable pulled out his radio. ‘Everyone stay over here. We’re treating this as a crime scene.’

  SIXTEEN

  IN THE FIFTEEN MINUTES IT HAD taken Detective Inspector Gregson and his team to arrive, Jenny had managed to be excused to visit the bathroom, moments she used to email the dozen photographs she had taken of the inside of Sonia Blake’s room to Alison’s account and delete all trace from her phone. She had no idea what, if anything, the pictures might contain; her only thought had been to secure the proof of what she had found. She no longer felt able to trust anyone.

  Alex Forster had sat silently on the stairs, making no attempt to question the police once he had heard of the body’s discovery, or to ask Jenny what had brought her back. The porter, however, whose name was Davies, had maintained a non-stop monologue. He hadn’t seen anyone suspicious come or go, he kept repeating to the two constables, ‘The only person I let into the college was Mrs Cooper, and she went round the garden, I saw her.’