Ken McClure - Wildcard

Steven heard the duty man briefing Macmillan before he took up the phone.

‘Nothing in from Porton yet?’ asked Steven when Macmillan came on the line.

‘Not yet. I gather you have a problem?’

Steven told him about Karen Doig’s disappearance.

‘You think this is significant?’ asked Macmillan.

‘She’s an angry lady and she holds Grossart responsible for the death of her husband.’

‘So she might be thinking of doing something silly?’

‘Hard to say,’ said Steven. ‘The fact is that she came to Wales and did pretty well in finding the field station and establishing the connection with Maureen Williams. That alone says that she’s a pretty determined and capable woman.’

‘Damn, this could be messy,’ said Macmillan. ‘Are you sure you don’t want us to warn the local police?’

‘No. I’m going to try getting up there before her. I want to see Grossart and hear what he has to say before the police get to him.’

‘You’ll be lucky.’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Steven.

‘It’s Christmas Eve.’

‘Shit. I’d lost track. I’d better go. Could you e-mail me the file on Lehman and Paul Grossart? I’ll download it en route.’

‘Will do. Good luck.’

Steven had to use his ID and all the extra clout the Home Secretary had promised him in order to secure a seat on the plane up to Edinburgh. He was sipping orange juice when, twenty minutes into the journey, he was called to the flight deck. The captain handed him a handset and said, ‘It’s for you. A1 priority.’

‘Dunbar,’ said Steven.

‘It’s Clive Phelps here at Porton Down. We’ve done some DNA sequencing on the heart valve and it’s really amazing. All the immunological tests suggested that it was human and a perfect match for the patient, but it turns out the damned tissue isn’t human at all. The DNA says it came from a pig.’

‘Thank you,’ said Steven, silently congratulating himself on having won his bet. ‘Thank you very much indeed.’

‘Good news?’ asked the captain.

‘My cup overflows,’ replied Steven with a smile. He returned to his seat, confident that the last piece of the puzzle was now in place. It was no secret that biotech companies had been experimenting with pigs with a view to using them for human transplant purposes. The big prize in this line of research was to breed a strain with a genetically altered immune system so that human beings would not reject the acquired organs. It looked as if Lehman had succeeded where others had failed. But at what a cost. Talk about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

Steven thought he’d better check at the Lehman laboratories first. Although it was Christmas Eve there was a chance that a guilty conscience might be keeping Grossart at his desk, so he had a taxi take him to the Science Park on the south side of the city. There was only one car in the car park, a six-year-old Ford Escort with chequered tape on the back bumper, and it belonged to the security guard.

‘There’s nobody here, mate. It’s Christmas Eve.’

‘I thought Mr Grossart might be in,’ said Steven.

‘That bloke needs the rest more than anyone, if you ask me,’ replied the guard. ‘He’s been looking like a basket case for weeks now.’

‘Thanks,’ said Steven. ‘I’ll try to catch him at home.’

Steven gave the taxi driver Grossart’s home address and asked, ‘Is it near here?’

‘Ravelston Gardens? Other side of the bloody city,’ grumbled the driver, who’d maintained a sullen silence since the airport.

‘Then we’d best get moving,’ said Steven.

As they turned into Ravelston Gardens some thirty minutes later, Steven saw a green Toyota Land Cruiser some thirty metres ahead and told the driver to stop. ‘Okay, this’ll do,’ he said. ‘How much?’

‘Thirty quid on the meter,’ replied the driver, turning to offer a smile that was meant to encourage the tip.

‘Here’s forty,’ said Steven. ‘Buy yourself a personality for Christmas.’ He got out, leaving the driver unsure of whether to feel pleased or insulted.

There were probably thousands of green Land Cruisers in the country, and probably several in a well-heeled area like this, but something told Steven that this was Ian Patterson’s and that Karen Doig had beaten him to it. When he got nearer and saw in the window the wildlife stickers he remembered from the car park at Caernarfon General, he was sure. This was a complication he could have done without.

From across the street he took a quick look at the house, hoping to glimpse someone through one of the front windows. He wanted to get a feel for what was going on, but one window was net-curtained and the other had a large Christmas tree in it. His main problem was that he wasn’t sure about Karen Doig’s mental state and why she had come to Grossart’s house. If she was there to take an awful revenge, he didn’t want to spook her into action by startling her.

He walked slowly past, noting that there was a garage entrance at one side, shielded from the house by a tall hedge. It should be possible to get round to the back without being seen, and he decided that that was probably the safest option. He checked that there was no one coming up behind him, then crossed the road and started walking back. Another quick glance over his shoulder and, with the coast still clear, he slipped into the garage entrance and up past the hedge, pausing for a moment before moving in a crouching run along the side of the house to the rear corner.

He lay down and snaked his way round the corner, fearing that there might be someone in the back garden, but there wasn’t. In the back wall there was a window that he could easily pass under without showing himself, and then there was the back door, which he hoped would afford him access to the inside. He lay still for a few moments under the window, listening for sounds from within, but all was quiet, worryingly quiet: the sound of angry voices would have been reassuring.

The back door was a modern double-glazed one, so Steven would be able to see inside, but only at an angle unless he left the shelter of the wall and exposed himself to all the back windows. He watched, listened and waited for a full minute before deciding that the odds against someone standing silently where he couldn’t see them were suitably remote. He reached up and applied gentle pressure to the door handle. To his relief, the door was unlocked and opened smoothly. He slipped inside and closed it behind him. At once he became aware of a strong smell of petrol.

The feeling that there was something dreadfully wrong pushed Steven’s pulse rate higher as he moved towards the door to the hall. Grossart was a family man and this was Christmas Eve. The silence was all wrong… and that smell… A floorboard creaked as he stepped on it and he froze. He was about to continue when the silence was broken by Karen Doig’s voice saying, ‘So you’ve finally come round, have you?’

Steven thought for a moment that she was talking to him, but then realised that the sound had come from the front room to his left. He moved cautiously to the door. It was ajar, and he saw a man he presumed to be Paul Grossart lying on the floor in front of the Christmas tree. His hands were tied behind him and there was dried blood on his forehead. From what Karen had said, Steven deduced that Grossart was just regaining consciousness after a blow to his head. His clothes looked soaked, presumably with petrol from a red plastic container lying at his feet.

‘I wanted you to be conscious,’ continued Karen. ‘I wanted you to understand why I’m doing this. Was my Peter conscious when you burned him?’

‘No, no,’ gasped Grossart. ‘He died of the virus — they both did. You have my word. Everything possible was done for them, right to the end.’