Ken McClure - Wildcard

‘Have you no idea at all what Peter and Amy were working on?’ asked Steven.

‘They weren’t allowed to say,’ replied Patterson. ‘Secrecy is important to research companies like Lehman.’

‘What kind of scientist is your wife?’

‘She’s an immunologist.’

‘Not a virologist?’

‘No.’

‘And Peter?’ asked Steven, turning to Karen.

‘He’s a medical lab technician by training. He worked at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh from the time he graduated, but he got fed up with the low pay. The job with Lehman came up about nine months ago.’

Steven nodded. ‘I take it he didn’t say what he was working on, either?’

‘’Fraid not, although he did have a name for it. He called it the Snowball project. Maybe it was a pet name he made up. I’m not sure.’

‘Thank you,’ said Steven with heartfelt sincerity. He had the link he was looking for. The disk with the heart valve recipients’ names on it had been headed ‘SNOWBALL 2000’. He said, ‘Could I ask you folks to show me the way to this field station?’

‘It burned down,’ said Patterson.

‘The night before we got here,’ added Karen. ‘But there was no one inside at the time, although the company Land-Rover that Peter and Amy had used was still parked there.’

‘But they had gone?’ said Steven.

‘Yes, but we’re not sure how. The police checked the local taxi firms for us but with no joy.’

Steven felt a hollowness creep into his stomach. He didn’t like what he was hearing, but he tried his best not to show it. ‘I think I’d like to take a look at the place anyway,’ he said.

‘That’s how we felt,’ said Karen.

‘Did the police have any idea what caused the fire?’ Steven asked.

‘They didn’t say,’ replied Patterson. ‘But they obviously kept some pretty inflammable chemicals there. There was only a burned-out shell left.’

Steven’s hollow feeling got worse. ‘There’s no point in us all going,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we arrange to meet later-’

‘Wait a minute,’ interrupted Karen. ‘You haven’t told us what you know about this. Who are you exactly, and what’s going on?’

‘You’re quite right and I’m sorry,’ conceded Steven. ‘If you’ll just bear with me for the moment, I promise I’ll tell you as much as I can later on.’

Reluctantly, Karen and Patterson agreed, but only after getting a firm undertaking from Steven that he would meet them again that evening. They then gave him directions to the field station.

Steven called Sci-Med as soon as he got to his car, and asked if there was any information available about Lehman Genomics yet.

‘Reputable biotech company, American parent company, shares rose thirty per cent last year, several products licensed and doing well in the marketplace, strong research group believed to be working on transplant organs from animal sources, UK arm fronted by Paul Grossart, a former senior lecturer in biochemistry at the University of Leicester. Any use?’

‘Transplant organs from animal sources,’ repeated Steven slowly. ‘Any more information on that?’

‘There’s a rumour going around that they pulled the plug on a major animal project recently.’

‘I’ll bet they did,’ murmured Steven. ‘It was called the Snowball project. Any more from Porton about Sister Mary’s heart valve?’

‘No. What more do you want? They say there was nothing wrong with it. It was in good working order and a perfect immunological match for her.’

‘Ask them to carry out a DNA sequence on it,’ said Steven. ‘As fast as they possibly can.’

‘What are they looking for?’

‘Let them tell us that,’ said Steven.

‘Okay, you’re calling the shots. Anything else?’

‘Not right now.’

‘Word is that Special Branch have located Mair Jones in Majorca. She should be back in the UK by this evening.’

Steven followed the directions he’d been given and three hours later he found himself high on a Welsh hillside, collar up, shoulders hunched against a bitter wind, looking at the charred remains of the field station. The bad feeling he’d been harbouring was made worse by the sight of the twisted metal frame of the Land-Rover. Unlike Karen Doig and Ian Patterson, who saw its presence as a puzzle, he feared it was stating the obvious: that Peter Doig and Amy Patterson had never left. They — or more correctly their bodies — were still here.

The police had found no human remains, but he suspected that that was exactly what they had been set up to find. Finding nothing suspicious, they would have no further interest in the building, which would be left as a ruin but still be owned by Lehman, who would leave it untouched in perpetuity. Steven examined the stone-flagged floor, which had largely been cleared of debris during the initial search, but ash and carbon dust had filled all the cracks so that it was impossible to tell if any of the flagstones had been disturbed before the fire. He looked around outside and found a metal bar he could use as a lever. He started in the centre of the first of the ground-floor rooms, but by the time he’d raised four of the heavy stones he’d decided that this was no job for one man on his own. He called in the local police for assistance.

Two hours went by before one of the officers doing the digging called out that he’d found something. He held up a human femur like a fish he’d just caught. The talking stopped and for a moment the only sound was that of the wind blowing through the ruins. ‘There’s more,’ said the officer almost apologetically.

Steven took little pleasure in having his worst fears realised. As he’d suspected, the burned-out building had been obscuring the site of an earlier cremation.

‘Almost the perfect murder,’ said the inspector in charge of the operation, who was clearly embarrassed that the police had overlooked this possible reason why the Land-Rover was still there.

‘No,’ said Steven, without taking his eyes off the bones being removed gingerly from the trench and laid on a tarpaulin beside the rim. ‘It was natural causes.’

‘What? How can you possibly say that?’

‘These are the remains of two scientists who were sent here to work. I think they fell ill with the same virus that’s been affecting Manchester — don’t ask me how. They were given expert nursing care, but they died. Their employers sought to cover up their deaths by cremating them and burying their remains beneath the floor, before setting fire to the building itself.’

‘Bloody hell, you’ve got that all worked out,’ said the inspector. ‘Dare I ask what the reason was?’

‘Tomorrow,’ replied Steven sadly. ‘Ask me that tomorrow.’

He drove back to Caernarfon with a heavy heart: he would have to break the news to Karen Doig and Ian Patterson. He had arranged to meet them at a hotel near the castle, but didn’t want to tell them in a public place, so he called Charles Runcie at Caernarfon General and asked if he could provide more suitable surroundings.

‘My office?’ suggested Runcie.

‘Perfect,’ agreed Steven. ‘I’d like you to be there too, if that’s all right?’

‘Whatever you think,’ replied Runcie.

Telling the pair was as awful as Steven had imagined. The look that came into Karen’s eyes when he told her that Peter was dead was something that would remain with him for a long time. After that she collapsed into tears and Runcie did his best to comfort her. Ian Patterson seemed to take the news about his wife more stoically. He sat very still in his chair, looking wordlessly at the floor, but then Steven saw tears start to fall, and he felt a lump come to his own throat.