Catch Your Death (2 page)

Sampson said, ‘What is she? Chinese? Thai?’

She reminded him of a girl he’d met in Bangkok. He wondered idly if that girl’s family were still looking for her or if they’d given up by now. If they even cared.

‘
Vietnamese, actually. Her name’s Lien. Twenty-three years old, resident of Hanoi. Doesn’t speak a single word of English – oh, except “please”. “Please, please, please.” She said that quite a few times, before she lost the ability to speak. I wonder what promises they made to her at the other end? A new life in England: a good job, a flat, a washing machine and a colour TV...?’

Sampson peered at Lien through the one-way glass.

‘
What is it? Bird flu?’ he asked.

Gaunt, who wore a doctor’s white coat and spoke with an upper-middle class English accent, took off his glasses and sucked on them. Finally, he said, ‘No. This is something new.’ He smiled. ‘It’s very impressive, actually. I have to hand it to our friends in Asia these days. Sars. Avian flu. Both very impressive. But this one’s even better.’

‘
It’s fatal?’

The doctor laughed. ‘Oh yes. Infinitely more so than Avian flu.’

John Sampson looked at Lien again. She had tried, while they were talking, to pick up the glass of water that sat beside the tissue box, but she had knocked that over too. Water dribbled down the side of the cabinet and pooled on the floor.

‘
I’d like to talk to her.’

‘
I’m afraid that’s not possible. She’s extremely contagious. She’d just have to breathe in your direction and you’d catch it.’

‘
Shame.’ Sampson would have liked to find out how the girl was feeling.

‘
Want to see exactly how contagious this is?’

Gaunt gestured for Sampson to follow him. They walked a little way down the harsh, bright corridor, beneath fluorescent strip lights that flickered occasionally, and stopped in front of another small room with one-way glass. A second woman, this one Caucasian, with bleached hair and dirty roots, sat on the edge of the bed. She looked miserable and confused. Not as far gone as Lien, but she had a red nose, pink eyes, and she held a box of tissues in her lap.

Sampson waited for the doctor to explain.

‘
She’s a prostitute. Serbian, picked up in Kings Cross and brought here last night. She was clean – no viruses, no problems, remarkably healthy for a woman of her profession. Probably hasn’t been on the streets long. How old do you think she is? About sixteen?’

Sampson nodded slowly. The girl was beautiful. He pictured himself holding her, sitting with her as she died. She would explain what her pain and suffering and fear felt like. He would stroke her dirty hair as she breathed her last breath.

Gaunt said, ‘We put her in a room with Lien for twenty seconds. They didn’t touch or even speak to one another. She started showing symptoms eight hours later. But she herself isn’t contagious yet. You can talk to her if you want.’

Sampson raised his eyebrows.

The doctor drummed his fingers on the glass and the girl looked up. A gold chain, bearing a locket, hung around her neck. Beneath the sickness, she looked angry and defiant. Her mouth moved but they couldn’t hear what she was saying. Maybe she was pleading. Or spitting words of fury. Whatever, her words were as futile as her hopes.

‘
This is the most remarkable thing about this virus,’ the doctor said, ignoring the girl. ‘It has a safe period. For fifteen hours, the carrier isn’t contagious, even though they start to exhibit symptoms. My Asian contact told me they wanted to develop a virus that would be safe to work with for short periods. With this strain, the carrier can be safely transported to a far off place, just like Lien here. Could be useful in war. Like a time bomb. And it suits our aims perfectly.’

Sampson nodded, not taking his eyes off the young prostitute. ‘So the people who were on the plane with Lien will be fine.’

Gaunt continued talking. Something about how close they were to completing their plans. Sampson tuned him out and continued to watch the girl sniffling on the bunk. He was waiting for the doctor to shut up and open the door, so he could talk to her and find out the answers to his questions. After that, when she became contagious and he had to leave her, he would find out what job the doctor had for him.

Who would he want killed this time?

CHAPTER 2

2006

London was just as she remembered it. Grey, oppressive skies, even in summer, people rushing from place to place, avoiding one another’s eyes, locked into their own personal spaces. The music they used to isolate themselves came from an iPod these days rather than a Walkman, those little white earbuds replacing the orange foam ones she used to wear when she lived here, and the litter on the streets carried different brand names. But apart from that, it was like stepping into a time warp. Even the teenagers wore the same clothes she’d worn twenty years ago. Punk and goth were fashionable again. Bleak fashions for a bleak city.

It was so good to be back.

Kate Maddox felt an urgent tug at her arm and looked down into a pair of wide blue eyes – eyes like her own, Vernon always said. Had always said. “His mother’s eyes and his father’s nose.” She hoped that was all Jack had inherited from his dad. Other attributes mother and son shared were dark brown hair; Kate’s long and wavy, falling over her shoulders; and Jack’s cropped close, but in exactly the same shade of chestnut; freckles across the bridge of the nose which were only really visible in summer, and an infectious, easy laugh. Like Kate, Jack would probably be tall and slim when he grew up. She was secretly pleased that he would one day, hopefully, tower over the short-legged, bull-necked Vernon.

‘
Mum, Mum, Mum, look – there’s that robot I was telling you about.’

Jack was pointing towards a shop window – Hamleys, she realised, the giant toy shop that she had once dragged her own parents around – and a white toy robot lumbering around in the window. She only had the vaguest recollection of Jack telling her about this robot, but it was clear that it had been occupying his thoughts recently. It was amazing how, in the midst of upheaval, he could still fixate on such things. Actually, it was reassuring. Although she hadn’t yet explained to this six-year-old exactly how different things were going to be from now on. She’d been putting it off.

‘
Can we have a look? Please?’

‘
Okay.’

She allowed herself to be led over to the window where Jack pressed his palm against the glass and watched the white and silver robot as it performed a number of tricks. ‘It’s so cool,’ he breathed.

‘
Hmm.’

He gazed up at her. ‘I’d be really happy if I had one.’

She smiled at his disingenuous turn of phrase, then caught herself and frowned. ‘I think it’s probably too expensive.’

Jack squinted at the price tag. ‘It’s eighty pounds. How much is that in dollars?’

‘
Too much.’

She sensed him deflate and felt a blow of guilt, then annoyance at her own guilt. £80 was too much for a toy, although she and Vernon had both bought Jack a lot of expensive gifts recently. Guilt gifts. Competitive gifts. Most of those toys were still in Boston, in Jack’s cluttered bedroom with the Red Sox pennants and bedspread and posters covering every inch of the walls.

The robot’s eyes flashed red and Jack squealed with laughter. ‘Cool. I can’t wait to tell Tyler about this.’

Tyler was Jack’s best friend. Hearing his name brought back that feeling of guilt with a vengeance. Was she a bad mother? What would Jack say and do when she told him? She looked at the robot and at Jack’s rapt expression as he watched it; and then she decided to infringe the first rule of parenthood: never back down once you’ve already said no.

‘
I guess you have been a good boy recently.’

Thirty minutes later they were in McDonalds in Leicester Square – another treat for Jack, who wasn’t normally allowed to go in such unhealthy and additive-laden places, and every other kid in the place was gazing enviously at the white robot.

Jack cradled it on his lap while he ate his burger with one hand, Kate trying to be relaxed at the sight of the sauce threatening to drip at any moment. The bloody robot was nearly as big as her son and now they were going to have to lug it round with them. What had she been thinking? She’d let her guilt get the better of her.

‘
I’m going to call him Billy,’ Jack announced solemnly. ‘Billy, this is my mum.’

The robot bleeped on cue.

‘
Pleased to meet you, Billy,’ Kate said, forking a piece of tomato.

‘
Mum, where does the Queen live?’

‘
Nearby, in Buckingham Palace.’

‘
Billy and I would like to visit her.’

‘
I’m sure she’d be fascinated to meet Billy, but I don’t think the Queen allows visitors.’

Jack thought about this. ‘Is it because I’m American?’

‘
You’re half British.’

‘
Which half?’

‘
The best half.’

‘
Daddy said that most British people are stuck up and have dirty teeth, like that man over there.’

The man Jack was referring to, who did indeed have teeth that looked like they’d fall out in shock if a toothbrush ever went near them, looked angrily over, and Kate shrunk down in her plastic seat.

‘
Jack, shush.’ Most British people were stuck up? That was the most hypocritical thing Vernon had ever come out with – he was the bloody snob in the family. He was the one who refused to fly economy because of the hoi polloi. He was the one who didn’t have a single acquaintance without an Ivy League education.

‘
Are my teeth American?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
What about Billy’s?’

‘
I don’t think he’s got teeth. But if he did, they’d be made in China like the rest of him.’

‘
Mum, what do robots eat?’

She grabbed one of his french fries and held it up. ‘Microchips?’

They both giggled, and the man with the mossy teeth gave them an equally dirty look.

‘
Come on, we ought to get going. I’m tired and I need a bath.’

‘
Are we going back to the hotel?’

‘
Yup.’

‘
Mum.’

‘
Yes?’

‘
I don’t have to have a bath, do I?’

‘
It depends how good you are between now and bedtime.’

They left the restaurant and joined the throng outside. With Kate holding her son’s hand, they edged their way through a crowd gathered around a juggler.

As they reached the kerb she spotted a taxi with its orange light showing it was available, and stuck her arm in the air, but another man, a businessman with a phone stapled to his ear grabbed it first. The cab crawled away – traffic didn’t speed in this part of London, where gridlock had become something else for tourists to write home about – and she cursed under her breath. She looked around for another cab.

And saw a ghost.

CHAPTER 3

‘
Stephen!’

Life is full of moments like this – snap decisions, taken unconsciously, and when people ask, later, “Why did you do that?” the only honest reply is, “I don’t know.” The sole explanation she could think of was that, in that moment, she was flung back in time to a night when she thought she’d died and gone to hell. When she’d walked in despair through the grounds of the Cold Research Unit and searched for her lover.

And if she’d seen him then, she would have called out his name, like she did now.

But he didn’t react.

The man on the other side of the road didn’t flinch or alter his expression. He just stood there, drinking from a Starbucks cup, staring into the middle-distance and frowning. He wore a grey pinstriped jacket and faded blue jeans. His hair needed a cut and flopped over the rim of his glasses. Staring at him, she recognised the same traces of age she’d noticed in the mirror: the crow’s feet, the lines at the side of the mouth that held a history of smiles, the lines on the forehead that mapped a legacy of sadness. When the wind ruffled his hair she noticed that it was receding, just a little. But it was definitely him. Even though it couldn’t have been.

Kate felt as if she’d just been punched in the solar plexus, breathless as the night the Centre caught fire. The people and the traffic around her blurred. Only Stephen stayed in focus. He began to walk away, dropping his coffee cup into a rubbish bin, and moving off quickly.

‘
Mum, are we looking for a taxi?’

‘
Yes. I…come on.’

‘
Where are we going?’

She didn’t answer. She escorted Jack across the road and followed the man who looked so like Stephen, but who couldn’t be Stephen, because he had been killed in the fire that night. He made his way up a quieter street towards Shaftesbury Avenue.

‘
Mum, why are you walking so quickly?’

‘
I’m in a hurry.’

Jack whined. ‘But I’m tired. My legs hurt.’

She should have stopped then, stuck to her original plan – a taxi back to the hotel, a hot bath, let Jack watch the kids’ channel on the hotel TV. This was insane. Stephen was dead. He’d been dead for sixteen years. This was just a guy who looked like him, a doppelganger. Isn’t everyone supposed to have a double somewhere? Or maybe she was just imagining the likeness, fulfilling a fantasy that Stephen was still alive. She hadn’t seen him for sixteen years, so how could she say this man looked just like him?