Ken McClure - Wildcard

‘The son shall also rise,’ murmured Steven. Spicer was married to ‘Matilda, nee Regan’ and they had a daughter, Zoe, aged seven. He was currently acting as a spokesman on health matters and was widely tipped as a future minister. He supported Manchester City and enjoyed hill-walking. Steven felt that a little gloat might be in order. There was now no doubt in his mind that he had found the elusive Victor.

Spicer had recently returned from an expedition to Nepal, where he had narrowly escaped death through illness. Steven could feel the pulse beating in his temples as he read the story. Spicer and three companions, one European and two Nepalese, had fallen violently ill with altitude sickness when several hundred miles from the nearest civilisation. Spicer was the only survivor when another walking party had eventually come across them.

‘Altitude sickness, my backside,’ whispered Steven. ‘It was haemorrhagic fever, my son, and you lived to tell the tale.’

It made perfect sense. Spicer had fallen ill with haemorrhagic fever while in Nepal but he’d survived and come home to infect Ann Danby with the virus, which he was still harbouring inside him. It was odds on that he had infected her when they made love on the Thursday when they’d last met, but then it looked very much as if Spicer had ditched her and she had ended up taking her own life.

The spotlight was now swinging away from Ann and the question was no longer how she had got the disease — he’d answered that one. What he had to find out now was how Spicer had contracted it. Steven could see one big plus in this change of emphasis. Unlike Barclay from the African flight and the Scotsman McDougal, Spicer was alive. He was the one prime mover in this affair who could answer questions. This was a cause for elation.

However, it was not going to be plain sailing. Spicer would have to be handled with kid gloves. He’d probably start off by denying any involvement with Ann Danby so Steven would have to win his trust and assure him of complete discretion in the affair, whatever he felt about the man on a personal level. The object of the exercise would be to gain Spicer’s co-operation in finding out how he had contracted the virus, not to blow his career out of the water or destroy his marriage.

Steven wondered how best to contact Spicer and concluded that there must be a good chance that the MP had remained in Manchester after his televised spat with the Labour man, just to see if any more political points could be scored by decrying the current handling of the crisis. His Manchester home address and telephone number were included in the Sci-Med report.

Steven picked up the phone and dialled.

A woman answered. She had a plummy contralto voice and Steven immediately had an image of her standing at the gate of her home announcing to a waiting gaggle of reporters that she would be standing by her man in spite of everything. He dismissed the thought and asked, ‘I wonder if I might have a word with Mr Spicer?’

‘Who’s speaking please?’

‘My name is Steven Dunbar.’

‘My husband holds surgeries on the first Saturday of each month, Mr Dunbar. Perhaps you’d like to go along to one of them? I’ll just check when the next-’

‘I’m not a constituent, Mrs Spicer,’ interrupted Steven. ‘It is Mrs Spicer, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m an investigator with the Sci-Med Inspectorate. It’s to do with the current virus outbreak.’

‘One moment, please.’

‘William Spicer,’ said the voice from the TV programme.

Steven made his request for a meeting.

‘I really don’t see how I can help,’ said Spicer, sounding puzzled.

‘Don’t worry, I think you can, Mr Spicer,’ said Steven cryptically.

‘Oh, very well. Come on over tomorrow morning at eleven. I can give you fifteen minutes.’

Steven put down the phone.

At five in the evening, with confirmed cases standing at fifty-seven and eleven more deaths reported, Fred Cummings rang Steven to say that a state of emergency had been declared in the city.

‘Justified?’ asked Steven.

‘No, it’s political. HMG are determined to appear on the ball, so we’re taking this step, with the support of the CDC Atlanta team, to divert attention from the fact that City General can’t take any more virus patients. We’re going to start using a couple of disused churches to accommodate new cases.’

‘Churches?’ exclaimed Steven.

‘Yes. I know it’s unfortunate and I know Joe Public won’t like it, but it makes sense. There’s no point in trying to squeeze virus patients into other hospitals where they’re not going to benefit anyway because there’s nothing anyone can do for them except give them nursing care. They’ll just be a danger to everyone concerned. It makes much more sense to house them together, away from other patients and the community and concentrated in an area where trained staff can cope.’

‘How are you doing for trained staff?’

‘It is becoming a problem,’ admitted Cummings. ‘We’re almost stretched to the limit but we’ve had a good response to a request for volunteers. Nurses who’ve left the profession in the past few years have been calling in to offer their services. We’ve had retired GPs volunteering to help and Caroline Anderson has been working as a volunteer down at one of the churches.’

‘Good for her,’ said Steven. ‘I wondered what she was going to do. Which one?’

‘St Jude’s on Cranston Street.’

‘Maybe I’ll go round and see her. She got a raw deal.’

‘The vagaries of public life,’ said Cummings.

‘You didn’t say what emergency measures you were bringing in,’ said Steven.

‘Closure of public places like cinemas, theatres, night clubs and restaurants in the first instance, asking people not to make journeys that are not absolutely necessary, and a leafleting campaign about simple precautions to be taken in avoiding the disease. We’re also going to have to insist on cremation of the dead from the outbreak within twenty-four hours. Apart from the mortuary space problem, the bodies are just reservoirs of the virus.’

‘It sounds as though you think it might be airborne, after all,’ said Steven.

‘We still can’t be sure,’ said Cummings, ‘but it’s hellishly infective if it’s not. Contacts are going down like David Ginola in the box. We could be looking at over two hundred cases before we’re through, and that’s providing there are no new nasty surprises.’

‘Then the new cases are all still contacts?’

‘That’s the one good thing,’ said Cummings. ‘There are no new wildcards.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘One other thing,’ said Cummings. ‘Three patients have recovered, so at least we know now that it’s not a hundred per cent lethal.’

‘Good,’ said Steven. He felt sure that he could think of a fourth. ‘What’s the state of the Scottish problem?’

‘Eight cases, three deaths, but they’re containing it well. I understand they don’t have any high-rise housing schemes to worry about. People have more room to breathe up there.’

‘Let’s hope their luck holds.’

Steven drove down to St Jude’s church and found a police cordon round it. It comprised a series of no-parking cones and striped ribbon tape except for an area near the front entrance, which was guarded by two constables and where ambulances had access. He showed his ID and was permitted to enter. As he walked in through the stone arch he found himself thinking that this was the first time he’d ever entered a church and found it warm. Industrial fan heaters had been pressed into service to raise the temperature to hospital standards. Large signs in red warned against proceeding any further without protective clothing.