Ken McClure - Wildcard

Steven’s arrival in Manchester coincided with the newspapers getting hold of the story. ‘Killer Disease Stalks Manchester Hospital’ was what he read on the first billboard he saw in the station. He bought several papers and flicked through them while he had a weak and slightly cold coffee in the station buffet. The press had the basic story but not much more. They knew that several people connected with the hospital had gone down with an unidentified disease, but they didn’t appear to know anything about Ann Danby, the cause of it all. One of the tabloids, however, speculated that the source of the illness might well have been a drug-addicted prostitute who had overdosed and been picked up by the police before being taken to the hospital in question. They went on to cite the problems that Glasgow had suffered recently with a killer disease that struck at drug addicts. That had been shown to be due to the toxin of a bacterium called Clostridium. Was this the same thing? the paper asked.

‘I wish,’ thought Steven. He finished his coffee and took a cab to the City General Hospital, where he was introduced to the medical superintendent, Dr George Byars, a short dapper man wearing a pinstripe suit which emphasised his lack of height and narrow shoulders.

‘They tell me you’ll be working flat out on finding the source of this damned thing,’ said Byars.

‘I’m going to give it my best shot,’ replied Steven. ‘How do things stand at the moment?’

‘Not good. The pathologist, Saxby, died early this morning and two of the others, the lab technician and PC Lennon, are dangerously ill. Everyone feels so helpless, but there’s nothing we can do other than give them nursing care. They either pull through or they don’t.’

Steven nodded and asked, ‘Have there been any more cases?’

‘Not yet, but Public Health aren’t counting their chickens and, frankly, we could be in trouble. This hospital isn’t equipped to deal with a big outbreak of a disease like this. We have a special containment unit, but it’s really designed to deal with the occasional foreign traveller who goes down with something nasty. As for an… epidemic?’ Byars seemed reluctant to use the word. ‘Forget it.’

‘I suspect that’ll be the case with most hospitals?’

‘Correct. It’s been government policy for some time now to close down all the old fever hospitals.’

‘So what are you guys going to do?’

‘Hope that Public Health have been quick enough off the mark in rounding up the patients’ contacts. If they have, they tell us we can expect something in the order of ten to twenty new cases. We plan to re-open two of the wards we closed last year and use them as an isolation unit. We’ve already got in the Racal suits for the nurses and we’re running refresher courses on barrier nursing for the nursing volunteers we’ve asked for.’

Steven nodded, but the look on his face prompted Byars to add, ‘I know, it all smacks of wartime spirit and backs-against-the-wall stuff, but that’s the way it is, I’m afraid. We’re just not prepared for this sort of thing.’

‘At last a use for the Millennium Dome,’ murmured Steven.

The comment made Byars relax a little. ‘I think we’ll be okay as long as there aren’t any more wildcards like Ann Danby in the pack. If there are, God knows what the outcome might be.’

‘Well, she’s my problem.’

Steven was taken on a tour of the hospital special unit, where he had to suit-up before entering and where he could look at the current patients behind glass screens. They did not make for pretty viewing. ‘Poor sod,’ whispered Byars as they looked at Lennon who was not expected to pull through; he seemed to be bleeding all over.

‘You know, it’s a funny thing,’ said Byars. ‘Despite all the bleeding, haemorrhagic fever cases rarely die from blood loss.’

‘You’ve had experience of it before?’

‘No,’ Byars confessed. ‘I read it in a book.’

Steven accepted an invitation to attend a meeting later in the hospital with representatives from the Public Health Service and other bodies concerned with the outbreak, then headed for the police station where Lennon and Clark had worked.

He was seen by a chief superintendent who seized the opportunity to subject him to a short lecture about the dangers his officers on the street were constantly exposed to. It was short because Steven interrupted him with a request to see the shift rota the two sick officers were on at the time of the call to Ann Danby’s place. He followed this up with a request to speak with Sergeant John Fearman.

‘I’ve known Tom Lennon for fifteen years,’ said Fearman. ‘Salt of the earth, he is. That’s why I put young Clark with him — I thought he’d teach the lad a lot about what police work’s all about.’

‘Tell me about that night,’ said Steven.

‘It’s all in the report,’ said Fearman. ‘We got a call from one of the neighbours about loud music. Tom and Clark attended and had to force an entry to the Danby woman’s flat. The rest is history.’

‘No, tell me the details.’

‘What’s to say? Tom thought she was dead when they arrived — he couldn’t find a pulse — but then she moved and he yelled for an ambulance. Clark actually tried mouth-to-mouth on her, poor little sod — I suppose that’s how he got it. But by the time the ambulance got there she really was dead.’

‘You say she moved?’

‘Clark was watching her when it happened. She was the first body he’d ever come across, see, and when she moved it gave him the fright of his life.’

‘Then what?’

‘Tom called immediately for an ambulance and tried clearing her throat. There was vomit on the pillow so he thought her airway might be blocked, but he told me it was all clear when he put… his fingers in her mouth.’

Steven and Fearman exchanged glances as they both saw the significance of this action.

‘Tom kept trying to wake her up because he thought she’d taken an overdose of pills, as indeed she had, and he thought he was succeeding, too, when she appeared to come round and say something. But it was no use. She died.’

‘She said something?’ asked Steven.

Fearman shrugged ruefully. ‘Tom told me that her last words were, “All men are bastards.”’

Steven said he wanted to take a look at Ann Danby’s flat. He had no specific reason in mind but it was vital that he understand as much as possible about her because she was — in the absence of any known contact — the sole cause of the Manchester outbreak. He was told that the police and Public Health people had finished their business there, and was given a key, which had been marked for collection by her parents on the following day; it had been necessary to change the lock after the police’s forced entry. He was driven over to the flats in a police Panda car, and he told the driver not to wait, as he might be some time.

‘Just like Captain Oates, eh?’ said the driver.

‘But I’m planning on coming back,’ countered Steven.

Palmer Court had little architectural merit, being a rather nondescript block of concrete flats four storeys high with roughcast walls and a flat roof, but it had a well-cared-for appearance. The grounds inside the gates were obviously professionally tended, with manicured lawns and knife-edged borders. The residents’ parking bays were white-lined and numbered and the rubbish bins, also numbered, were discreetly stored in a little stable of their own at the side of the building, disguised with climbing plants. The hallmark of the middle class, thought Steven, a place for everything and everything in its place.

A round-shouldered man wearing a blue serge suit and a grubby-collared shirt, supposedly made respectable by a thin black tie secured with an incredibly tight knot, admitted him to the building. He carried a large bunch of keys on a metal ring as if it were a symbol of his authority and walked with a shuffling gait that suggested his shoes were too large. His complexion spoke of a long association with alcohol but his breath smelled of peppermint. He seemed pleasant enough when he asked Steven his business. Steven showed his ID and said why he’d come.