Ken McClure - Wildcard

‘Your word!’ sneered Karen. ‘What do you imagine your word’s worth, you bastard? You made me believe my husband had run off with another woman and all the time you knew… you knew, you little shit!’

‘No, no, please no, you don’t understand. It just all got out of hand… I never meant any of this to happen.’

‘I’ll bet you didn’t, now that you’re ten seconds away from hell.’

Steven heard the metallic rasp of a cigarette lighter being lit. He burst into the room, shouting, ‘No, Karen! Don’t do it!’

Karen was startled and dropped the lighter, but she picked it up again before Steven had a chance to get to her. ‘Get back,’ she warned.

‘You’re not thinking straight, Karen,’ said Steven. ‘You’ve lost Peter and you’re sick with grief, but you’ve still got your daughter and she needs you. You mustn’t do this. Let the law deal with him.’

‘I want him to burn like he burned my Peter,’ said Karen through gritted teeth. ‘I want his children to be without their father on Christmas Day, just like Kelly will be.’

‘It won’t make you feel better,’ said Steven. ‘Revenge is never sweet. It’ll taste like poison and you’ll end up regretting it for the rest of your life.’

She looked at him for the first time and he saw doubt creep into her eyes.

‘Give me the lighter,’ he said softly.

‘Get back,’ she said again, with new determination.

‘Look,’ stammered Grossart from the floor. ‘I never meant any of this to happen. God knows I didn’t.’

Steven saw Karen’s thumb move to the lighter wheel. ‘At least hear him out, Karen,’ he said. The thumb relaxed.

‘We succeeded in breeding a strain of pigs with a genetically altered immune system which made them perfect donors for human transplants,’ said Grossart.

‘The Snowball project?’ said Steven.

‘Yes. All the lab tests suggested that we were on to a winner, so we took a shortcut through all the red tape. We reached an agreement with one of the co-ordinators at the transplant register.’

‘You mean you bribed him to slip your heart valves through as matching human ones,’ said Steven contemptuously.

‘If you like,’ said Grossart. ‘Christ, we’d done every test we could think of on them. They seemed perfectly safe.’

‘But they weren’t,’ said Steven.

‘No,’ agreed Grossart. ‘One of our American virologists found a viral DNA sequence in the genome of our pigs and it was damn nearly identical to Ebola. It wasn’t doing the pigs any harm, but there was a chance that it might suddenly become active inside a human being. We pulled the plug on the whole thing, but it was too late for the patients who’d already been given the valves.’

‘And Peter and Amy?’ asked Karen.

‘They both worked on the project. A routine blood test showed that they were developing antibodies to the new virus, suggesting that they had been infected by it. We decided to send them away for a bit, to see if anything came of it — the trip to the field station in Wales. Unfortunately, they both went down with the virus. As soon as they reported feeling unwell, two of our American people, who had been standing by, went into action to make sure that they got proper nursing care and everything they needed… but they both died. I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry!’ exclaimed Karen. ‘You didn’t even let me say goodbye to him.’

Grossart shook his head. ‘It would have been too dangerous,’ he said. ‘One of the nurses was infected, too.’

‘And she’s very ill,’ said Steven.

Grossart shook his head again and said, ‘When things started to go wrong it was as if the whole affair took on a life of its own. There seemed to be nothing we could do to make things better.’

Steven disagreed strongly but he bit his tongue in case he provoked Karen into throwing the lighter.

‘I’m desperately sorry about Peter. He was a good bloke — everyone liked him,’ continued Grossart.

The kind words seemed to bring Karen to an emotional threshold. Her anger evaporated in an instant, to be replaced by overwhelming sorrow and grief. She dropped the lighter, covered her face with her hands and started to sob. Steven took her in his arms. When she had recovered sufficiently, he said, ‘Go on home, Karen. Kelly needs you. Start rebuilding your life.’

She nodded silently and left without looking again at Grossart.

Steven freed Grossart’s hands but he continued to sit on the floor for a few moments, rubbing his wrists. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’ he said. ‘There really was nothing we could do once the genie got out the bottle. We never meant to harm anyone — in fact, quite the reverse: we’re in the business of saving lives, not taking them. It was just one of those… unfortunate things.’

Steven’s eyes were dark with anger. ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t believe you. There was a whole lot you could have done in order to save lives, but that would have meant being punished for your greed and dishonesty, so you kept quiet. Lots of people died needlessly because we didn’t know where the wildcards were coming from. You could have told us but you didn’t.’

Grossart looked like a rabbit caught in headlights.

‘You knew what was happening out there. You knew people were going to die, and you let it happen. That knowledge makes it malice aforethought. You and your greedy bastard colleagues are going to be charged with murder.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Grossart as he got to his feet.

‘Clean yourself up while I call the police,’ said Steven. ‘Where are your wife and family?’

‘They’re at June’s mother’s. I had to tell her what had been going on.’

‘And she didn’t understand, either,’ said Steven sourly. ‘Get cleaned up.’

As Steven went over to the phone, Grossart got unsteadily to his feet. As he did, he lost his balance and fell backwards into the Christmas tree. He clutched at the branches but succeeded only in tearing at the wiring for the lights and pulling the tree over. Steven turned when he heard the crash and started towards Grossart to help him up. The cable Grossart was holding parted with the strain, and a spark from the shorting electrics caused the petrol vapour surrounding Grossart to explode into flame.

Steven staggered backwards and shielded his eyes as the wall of heat hit him. When he could bear to look again he found he was looking at Paul Grossart’s funeral pyre. He called the Fire Brigade and tried dousing the flames as best he could with an extinguisher he found in the kitchen. He managed to localise the fire to the bay-window area, but then the extinguisher ran out and he changed to using basins of water from the kitchen after disconnecting the electricity.

Although Grossart’s death was an accident, there would be awkward questions about how his clothes had come to be soaked in petrol, and the answers might well put Karen Doig in prison. Steven decided not to let that happen. Leaving the smouldering pyre to take its course for a moment, he went out to the garden shed and there found, as he hoped, several bits of garden machinery powered by petrol engines. He selected a heavy-duty chainsaw, brought it back into the house and laid it on the kitchen table, along with the red petrol can. He would leave the authorities to draw their own conclusions.

Steven called Macmillan to fill him in on what had happened.

‘You did well,’ said Macmillan gravely. ‘Pity about Grossart — I’d have preferred crucifixion for him. But there will be the others.’

‘Will there?’ asked Steven. The question was loaded with silent reference to past cover-ups by politicians in the so-called public interest.

‘I promise,’ said Macmillan. ‘There will be no backing-off. Sci-Med will go for broke over this. You have my word.’