Ken McClure - The Lazarus Strain

‘Strangulation,’ repeated Steven, finding that the news that Leila had not been tortured was not so much a cause for relief as for puzzlement. He had been wrong again.

‘You look surprised,’ said Macmillan.

‘Ali was the kind of person who would have to make sure that what he was hearing was the truth. If he went to the trouble of seeking out Leila, he must have wanted to know something and he wouldn’t just have accepted what she told him.’

‘Unless he already knew from another source,’ said Macmillan.

‘In which case why seek her out?’

‘Good question.’

‘There’s something wrong here,’ said Steven.

‘About what?’

‘Everything,’ said Steven. ‘I’m going back to Norfolk.’

‘To do what?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Steven confessed. ‘But I need to be there. I need to walk around the scene of the crime if you like. Drive around the area. Hope something comes to mind that I’ve missed before. I’ll also be there to meet Leila’s brother when he arrives.’

‘Whatever you say,’ conceded Macmillan.

‘He’s due at the mortuary at twelve noon,’ said Frank Giles when Steven arrived in his office. ‘I’ll run you over.’

‘Thanks,’ said Steven. ‘I’ve been feeling guilty about not saying good bye to her properly.’

Giles nodded. ‘How’s the war against al-Qaeda going?’

‘We’re sitting with our fingers crossed,’ said Steven.

‘A comfort,’ said Giles. ‘A good time for me and the missus to take a holiday in Barbados then?’

‘We don’t think they’re going for a city centre attack any more but we’re still gambling on them using Cambodia 5 virus in some way. The good news is that the vaccine starts going out today. Of course, if it should turn out not to be a Cambodia 5 attack… we’ll all be left sitting in that well known creek without a paddle.’

‘And on that happy note,’ said Giles. ‘Maybe we should start out for the mortuary.’

It was raining on the drive over to the city mortuary and the two men sat in silence — apart from Giles’ occasional mutterings about roadworks and the state of the traffic. Steven sat as if mesmerised by the sweep of the wipers but he was deep in thought. He found it a perpetually annoying fact of life that it always seemed easier to predict other people’s reactions and responses to given situations than his own. Lisa, his wife, had put this down to him thinking about things on too many levels at once. ‘Not everyone’s playing chess with you,’ she had pointed out. ‘Not everyone in life has an ulterior motive.’

The trouble was that in his line of work they usually had and it was unavoidable that natural suspicion would spill over into his personal life, making him ‘think round all the angles’ as Macmillan put it. Sometimes it was a cross that was hard to bear. It would be so good, perhaps just on occasion, to be able to react spontaneously to events, to take things at face value, to give in and display natural emotion without going through some vetting process. Right now, he was going to say a final goodbye to Leila Martin, a woman he had had feelings for. He should feel sad… and he did. He needed to feel grief… and he did… but it was not unequivocal. A day’s driving around on his own, visiting all the old spots, had left him with lingering doubts and unanswered questions and he wished that this wasn’t the case.

Giles parked the car in the space marked for visitors outside the mortuary and they both went inside.

‘Hello, John boy,’ said Marjorie Ryman. ‘I see you haven’t found your way back to Waltons’ Mountain.’

‘Still looking, Elizabeth,’ said Steven. ‘Still looking.’

‘Dr Martin’s brother isn’t here yet. Would you like to take a dekko at the body first or will you wait?’

‘We’ll wait,’ said Giles quickly.

Fearing an uncomfortable silence about to develop, Steven told Giles that he’d go back out and wait in the car park. Giles nodded.

‘You could wait in my office,’ suggested Marjorie Ryman. ‘There’s a coffee machine…’

‘I’ll get some air,’ said Steven.

He had completed three slow laps of the car park with his hands deep in his pockets, seemingly having examined every cigarette butt lying there and flicked at every loose pebble with his toe, when he was joined by Marjorie Ryman at his elbow.

‘I’m sorry, John boy. Frank just told me that you and the deceased were friends. I didn’t know.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Steven.

‘I naturally assumed your interest in the case was professional. I’m so sorry.’

‘That’s okay. Really,’ said Steven. ‘You weren’t to know.’

At that moment, a dark Rover drew up. It was unmarked but might well have had ‘Official Government Vehicle’ stamped all over it. A tall man wearing a dark overcoat over a light coloured suit got out from the back and thanked the driver before listening for a few moments to details about a later pick-up. He straightened up and looked at the building. It wasn’t difficult to imagine what he was thinking, thought Steven, but there was already too much going on inside his own head for him to dwell too long on the pain of others. Marjorie Ryman had gone inside as soon as the car arrived leaving Steven the only other person in the car park.

‘Mr Martin?’ he said, straightening up and walking towards him.

‘Yes. And you?’

‘Steven Dunbar. I was a close friend of your sister while she was working at the Crick Institute.’

They shook hands. ‘You’re a scientist too?’ he asked with the same pleasant French accent that Leila had had.

‘Actually, no… I’m a doctor.’

They went inside to where Martin was introduced to Giles and Marjorie Ryman who both shook hands and offered their condolences.

‘If you’d care to come this way, Mr Martin,’ said Marjorie in subdued tones. ‘We can carry out the formal identification and then you can have some time alone with your sister if you’d like before we discuss arrangements for repatriation.’

The four of them trooped along a narrow corridor in single file to where Marjorie stopped outside a door and turned to Martin to ask, ‘Ready?’

Martin nodded and she opened the door.

They entered a small, square room where some attempt had been made to soften the reality of the building with paintings on the walls depicting pastoral scenes and alluding to the possibility of an afterlife. A simple crucifix sat on a semi circular table between candlesticks and purple drapes — hung albeit on an interior wall because the room had no windows. All attention was focused on the trolley that sat in the middle of the floor with a plain white sheet draped over the body that lay on it.

Marjory Ryman went to the head of the trolley and gripped the top of the sheet with both hands. She paused to give Martin a questioning look. Martin nodded and she lowered the sheet to reveal the head and shoulders of the deceased.

‘Is this your sister, Dr Leila Martin, sir?’ asked Giles.

Martin took two steps forward and looked at the dead woman. He nodded slowly and with great sadness. ‘Yes, this is Leila,’ he replied, a sob catching in his throat. ‘This is my sister.’

Steven swallowed and felt a lump come to his own throat as he waited for Martin to step back before moving forward to say his own goodbye. He made eye contact with Marjorie Ryman who gave him a small smile of encouragement tinged with residual guilt from the earlier misunderstanding. He bowed his head and closed his eyes for a moment, steeling himself to see Leila in death rather than the vibrant image of her he’d kept alive in his mind. When he opened his eyes his heart missed a beat and his stomach turned over as his subconscious railed against this latest outrage of fate. His voice sounded foreign, even to him, when he said, ‘This is not Leila Martin.’