by M. R. Hall
Williams answered from inside a noisy pub. ‘Who’s this?’
‘It’s Jenny. Jenny Cooper.’
‘Bloody hell! I’ve been trying to get hold of you all evening. I thought we’d lost you.’
‘Sorry to disappoint. Where are you?’
‘In sodding London – what does it sound like? Hold on . . .’
Jenny waited as he picked his way bad-temperedly across a crowded bar before making it to the relative peace of the street.
‘Thank God for that. You’d die here sooner than find a place to have a quiet pint—’
Jenny cut him short. ‘Any luck with the girl?’
‘I’m not sure—’
‘What does that mean?’
‘We got to your Mr Thorn’s place and found the door kicked in, the whole place turned over. No sign of him or his lady friend. Same at his office – door in, papers everywhere, not a soul in sight. I’m afraid I had to call in the local Old Bill.’
‘There’s a girl who worked there. Eda. Eda Hincks – c-k-s. See if you can find her.’
‘I know—’
‘You’ve spoken to her?’
‘Mrs Cooper! Listen!’
She fell silent. He had never shouted at her before.
‘Tell me where you are,’ Williams insisted.
‘I’d prefer not to say.’
‘You’re not to go home tonight. There was an incident at Thorn’s office – a violent incident. A woman was nearly killed. Look, how about if I arrange for someone to pick you up? . . . Mrs Cooper? Are you there?’
Jenny dropped the receiver onto the cradle and ran to her car.
TWENTY-FIVE
SHE HAD DRIVEN FOR AN HOUR across country, winding through back roads heading vaguely west until, overtaken by tiredness, Jenny had pulled into a shabby hotel somewhere in the Wiltshire countryside near Marlborough. There was a shower, a bed and, most importantly, Wi-Fi. Aside from that, the room was typical of a cheap English hotel: rickety mismatched furniture and a tasteless patterned carpet no longer able to disguise several decades’ worth of stains. Hanging her jacket on the wardrobe rail, she wished she’d been brave enough to have had a stiff drink before coming up, but there was another of life’s ironies: she could take on half a dozen hostile lawyers in a crowded courtroom and play cat and mouse with military intelligence officers, but couldn’t face the embarrassment of stepping between a handful of leering men at a bar.
Kicking off her shoes, she picked up the phone – a grubby relic of the 1980s – and dialled into her voicemail. There were three messages in a row from Williams left earlier in the evening, each one a little more desperate than the last, two ring-offs from a caller too impatient to speak, then a brief and enigmatic communication from Alison: ‘I’m trying to reach you, Mrs Cooper. Please call me immediately you receive this.’ Jenny recognized her measured tone: it was the voice she used to break bad news to relatives. She assumed that Alison must have some of her own. More than likely she had buckled under the stress of Jenny’s neglect and decided she couldn’t cope with work any longer. She steeled herself to call her back, but chose the cowardly path of listening to the next message first.
‘Jenny, it’s David. I need to speak to you urgently. I’m at a weekend conference in Glasgow. Call me on the mobile.’
It was left just before nine. He had called again thirty minutes later:
‘Jenny, I really need to speak to you. Ross is down with some sort of fever with headache and chest pains. He argued with Sally, she’s gone home to York, and Debbie’s climbing the walls thinking it’s something infectious. I told her to call an ambulance. I can’t get home tonight – there’s no plane. Where the hell are you? No one knows where you are!’
Jenny struggled to recall David’s number and wasted precious seconds retrieving it from the contact list on her SIM-less mobile. She punched it into the room phone. David answered at the first ring.
‘Jenny? Where are you? Didn’t you get my messages?’ His panic was making him shout.
‘Wiltshire. I just got them—’
‘He’s at the Vale, in the isolation unit. They don’t know what it is.’
‘It’s not meningitis?’ Jenny struggled to push the word past her lips, which along with her hands had become numb. Paraesthesia – one of the first symptoms of acute anxiety.
‘Doesn’t seem so, but culture tests take a while. They’ve pumped him full of antibiotics, but as far as I can tell . . .’ He struggled to remain calm. ‘I don’t even know why I’m asking this, but I don’t suppose you have any idea what it might be? It’s not just him I’m concerned for – he was with Debbie and the baby all day, all week in fact.’
‘Q fever.’
‘What? I can’t hear you!’
The numbness had become tingling, sharp pins and needles spreading through her limbs and deep into her viscera. Her diaphragm tightened, every breath an effort.
‘Tell them to test for Q fever.’
David lapsed into astonished silence. ‘Q fever? That’s an animal disease.’
‘I’ll call you back in ten minutes.’
As she put down the phone she heard him yell, ‘Jenny! What’s your number? Where the bloody hell are you?’
Grabbing her smartphone, Jenny fumbled to log on to the hotel Wi-Fi and ran a search: Q fever symptoms. A slew of results appeared. She chose the most respectable source she could find – the HPA’s Centre for Infection – and was confronted with a list: sudden onset, high fever, nausea, fatigue, myalgia, sweats, chest pains and, further down, endocarditis.
She stared at the screen. All she could hear was David’s unfinished sentence: ‘They’ve pumped him full of antibiotics, but . . .’ They were doing nothing, is what he hadn’t been able to bring himself to say.
She needed to speak to Henry Blake, but only had the hospital number. She stabbed at the phone with clumsy fingers and got through to the John Radcliffe switchboard, but just as she had feared, the home numbers of staff were strictly off-limits, even for coroners. Changing tack she tried the Radcliffe’s pathology department, roused a technician, and finally extracted a mobile number for Chris Randall, the pathologist who had carried out the autopsy on Sonia Blake.
Dr Randall was at a dinner party and in no mood to be disturbed by a coroner. Only when Jenny had raised her voice loud enough for the whole floor of the hotel to hear that Sonia Blake died from a recombinant strain of Q fever did he offer a bemused apology and let her have Blake’s personal number.
Waiting for Blake to pick up his phone, Jenny was aware that she had broken through to a sudden clarity. The sensation of panic had given way to anger and a ferocious desire to act. She was no longer feeling anything. Her only thoughts were of what she might do. Her world had become binary: her son’s life or death.
‘Hello,’ Blake answered groggily. He was in a room with a television playing.
‘It’s Jenny Cooper. I think my son may have Q fever.’
‘Right.’ He didn’t believe her. ‘You know how late it is?’ It felt like a routine he had acted out before with Sonia.
‘He’s in the isolation unit at the Severn Vale District Hospital, Bristol. His name is Ross Tarlton – I keep my maiden name. His father is a consultant cardiac surgeon there. Please do not question what I’m telling you.’ She heard her voice as if it were a stranger’s: clipped and mechanical. ‘I am calling you because frankly I could think of no one else who might have a clue what to do with an antibiotic-resistant strain that has been engineered to kill. Can you help me?’
‘Jesus . . .’ was all he could say.
‘I’m not interested in bringing your name into this, Dr Blake, I just need some insight. I need to do something.’
Jenny heard a woman’s voice from another room, demanding to know who was calling this late.
He gave an evasive answer, but the woman grew more insistent as she drew closer.
‘Please,’ Jenny insisted.
‘All I can tell you is that ideal
ly any agent used as a BW would be developed alongside an effective antidote, especially if there was any risk of infection to the administering party.’
The woman’s voice was in the room now: ‘For Christ’s sake. It’s not about her, is it? I thought we’d agreed.’
Blake ended the call.
BW. Biological Weapon. An image of Ross in a plastic tent passed before her eyes. Medical staff in biohazard suits; drips, wires, monitors and the crushing sense of life slipping away through delirium into darkness.
Jenny forced her mind back to the problem. She needed to know who had killed Sonia Blake. Without that knowledge she had nothing. She could call Ruth Webley and pray that she wasn’t complicit in murdering innocent civilians, or she could hold that option in reserve until she had exhausted all others. She had very few left.
A list formed in her mind. Three steps. She worked through them.
Step one. She would check the Public Register of Genetically Modified Organisms. There was an outside chance it would list any application to alter the genetic make-up of Q fever. Her search engine brought up the government website on which the register was hosted. Her fingers worked the screen at lightning speed, adrenalin pumping now, but within seconds she had the answer she feared: Your search returned 0 results.
Step two. She reached for the landline and dialled Kwan’s number, planning to threaten him with immediate arrest for obstructing the course of justice unless he gave her the name of the company Sonia Blake had been pursuing. Kwan was screening his calls. She was starting to leave a message when the phone was answered and a woman’s voice came on the line.
‘Who is this?’
‘I’m a coroner. Jenny Cooper. I need to speak to Dr Kwan immediately.’
‘Coroner?’
‘Please pass me to Dr Kwan if he’s there.’
‘He isn’t. You said you’re a coroner – is he all right?’
‘I assume so.’ Jenny stumbled. ‘When did you last see him?’
‘He went out earlier this evening. He had to fetch something from work. He hasn’t called. I don’t know where he is. You don’t know anything?’
‘No.’ Jenny hesitated, but her conscience pricked. ‘Listen. Call the police and tell them he was recently detained by officers from military intelligence. It was in connection with his work.’
‘His work?’
‘Yes. That’s all I can tell you.’
This time it was Jenny who put down the phone; she had given her all she could.
Step three. Her final option. Jenny took up her phone and keyed in the email address Kwan had given her earlier that evening. What the hell, she had nothing to lose by telling the truth. She gave the full story:
I am the Severn Vale District Coroner, Jenny Cooper. I believe you knew Sonia Blake. You may know she died last week. Her death was caused by a recombinant strain of Q fever. I came into contact with Mrs Blake while investigating three other deaths, this time caused by a recombinant strain of meningitis. My son, too, may now have been infected with Q fever. If you have any information to assist me in this crisis, you may answer in confidence, but I would, of course, prefer to talk to you in person. Lives have been lost. Please don’t allow a young man to die if you can possibly avoid it.
As she sent the message, water dripped on to the screen. Jenny had glanced up at the ceiling, looking for the source, before she realized it was a tear from her own eye. She felt no connection with it; it belonged to someone else.
The landline rang. Jenny stared at the receiver as a player of Russian roulette might at the cocked pistol. Was it the front desk? Did she have visitors waiting for her in reception? She answered, ready to jump from the window if she had to.
‘Are you there, Jenny?’
‘Yes.’ It was David. ‘Sorry—’
‘Sorry? What are you doing in a hotel in fucking Marlborough when our son may be dying, or is the answer too tragically obvious for words?’
‘I’m alone, David! I’m trying to get information.’
‘Jenny, listen to me. I don’t know what the hell it is you’re playing at, but I do know that no one with an ounce of maternal feeling would be sitting where you are with a dangerously ill son only half an hour’s drive away.’
‘If you’d hear me out—’
He wouldn’t. ‘Debbie’s the only mother he’s had today, and frankly, it sickens me.’
‘Go to hell, David.’
She slammed down the receiver and in a fit of fury ripped the cable from the socket. The bare phone wires whipped back and struck her face. Shit! She snatched the cheap vase from the desk and flung it at the television mounted on the wall. Glass exploded and scattered to the four corners of the room, leaving the flat screen shattered. Jenny stood barefoot and paralysed, nowhere to tread without cutting her feet on splintered glass. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. It was over. There was nothing more to say or do. She would drive to the hospital, be a mother for the last minutes she had left, give David the satisfaction of seeing her destroyed along with their son, because it was, after all, exactly what she deserved.
Jenny left the door of the room swinging open and headed down to the lobby. She elbowed her way past the group of overweight men in suits all reeking of beer, who grinned and nudged one another as they spilled out of the bar, and pushed out into the night. The car park was at the rear of the rambling Victorian building and largely unlit. She found her hire car squashed in tightly between two others. She had started to edge in to try to open the driver’s door when she heard the sound of tyres crunching over gravel. A car made its way towards her and came to a stop pointing directly at her, blinding her in the full glare of its headlights.
The driver climbed out. Jenny felt her fingers clenching into a fist.
‘Mrs Cooper!’
The voice from behind the lights belonged to a woman.
‘Alison? How did you get here?’
‘Your husband called. He had this number. You have spoken to him?’
‘Yes.’
She was walking towards her, a strange shambolic figure silhouetted against the headlights, wearing an anorak over her cotton pyjamas.
‘I’m glad I wasn’t arrested dressed like this,’ Alison said drily. ‘I was doing over a hundred on the motorway. I’m sure Ross would like to see you. Would you like me to drive?’
‘No.’
‘You really don’t look in any fit state—’
Jenny felt a faint vibration in her pocket.
‘Come on.’ Alison reached out a hand.
Jenny dodged away from her and fetched out the phone. A red dot had appeared on the mail icon. The symbol in the top left corner indicated that she still had a sliver of Wi-Fi signal.
‘Let’s go,’ Alison insisted.
‘Wait.’
It was a reply to the email she had sent to the address Kwan had given her. She opened it.
If you are genuine, I can help. Your number?
‘Do you have a phone? I need your phone,’ Jenny said urgently.
‘Mrs Cooper, we’ve no time for this.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘He really is very ill—’
‘I’ve got someone who can help. Give me your bloody phone.’
Taken aback, Alison did as she asked.
‘What’s your number?’
‘You know it.’
‘I’ve forgotten.’
Alison recited her number through clenched teeth as Jenny tapped out a reply and marched back towards the building to make sure that the email was sent.
Alison called after her. ‘Are you going to tell me why we’re still standing here while your son—’
‘While he’s dying? Yes, I know that. I’m aware of that.’
‘You can’t let this happen, Mrs Cooper. I promised your husband he wouldn’t be by himself. Now get in the car. We’ll talk on the way.’
Alison grabbed Jenny’s shirt. Jenny twisted away, running between the cars, disappearing into the shadows.
‘Mrs Cooper!’ A
lison was beside herself. ‘Please.’
It came. Alison’s phone lit up and rang.
Jenny fumbled with unfamiliar controls. ‘Jenny Cooper. Hello?’
‘Hello.’ The voice was male, thirties, quiet, ordinary. He made no attempt to introduce himself.
It was left to Jenny to make the running. ‘Did you know Sonia Blake?’ The question seemed the only one to ask.
‘Not personally. But yes, we had contact.’
‘About your work? You were at Diamond, weren’t you? You’re working for a company—’
‘Please be careful.’
Jenny couldn’t help herself. ‘You were the man who met with Adam Jordan at the filling station. That was you, wasn’t it?’
‘Do you want me to end this call, Mrs Cooper? It would be very easy for me.’
Jenny glanced left at the sound of Alison’s approaching footsteps.
‘My son – I think he’s got Q fever.’
‘You said.’ He fell silent, as if reaching a momentous decision.
Alison was standing right behind her now. Jenny could hear her angry breath.
‘Four people dead,’ Jenny said, gently coaxing him. ‘Ayen Deng is missing, so are Adam Jordan’s colleagues, and now Jason Kwan. And that’s all on top of what happened in Africa. This has to end. I think you know that. I think that’s why you’ve called me.’
Still he didn’t answer.
‘You’ve something to say, I know you have. You can trust me. I can protect you.’ It was only a half-truth, and he sensed it.
‘We have to meet – face to face.’
‘But my son—’
‘I might be able to help. How sick is he?’
Jenny turned to Alison, asked the question she hadn’t dared ask before. ‘How long do they say he’s got?’
‘He needs you tonight.’
‘I heard,’ the caller said. ‘You’ve given me a big problem.’
‘No,’ Jenny said, ‘I didn’t start this. Now how are you going to end it?’
Seconds passed. Jenny let him think, weigh the odds. She offered a silent prayer.
