Stevie heard the grumble of a car engine and saw a blue Fiat speeding along the main road. There was something about the Fiat that bothered her, but she wasn’t sure what. She asked, ‘What was Simon like as a boy?’
Alexander Buchanan paused for a moment, and then said, ‘Rather like he was as an adult: brave, inclined to recklessness, clever and – just as important – capable of applying himself. He had a silly sense of humour, but he was kind too, not a quality to be taken for granted in small boys. I joined the school as a day pupil when I was twelve. Simon was a boarder. Normally they looked down on us part-timers, but he took me under his wing. I lacked the charm to match Simon’s popularity, but for some reason he took a shine to me and that won me a grudging acceptance with the rest of the boys. Maybe that’s part of the reason I feel such an obligation to Simon now. I owed him a lot.’
Another car sped along the main road and Stevie realised what had bothered her about the blue Fiat. At this time of day the traffic should have been too heavy to allow cars to travel much above a crawl. Somewhere a door slammed. Stevie scanned the street but there was no one in sight. She slid down the driver’s seat, hiding her face in the dashboard’s shadows.
‘How convinced are you about your narcotics theory?’
‘I’m not convinced at all. It’s a working hypothesis, but without more evidence that’s all it is.’
‘But supposing you are right, how would Simon have taken whatever it was?’
‘Orally.’ There was the tiniest of pauses, the type that Stevie and Joanie had been trained to avoid when they joined the shopping channel. ‘Or by injection.’
The pause had told her what she wanted to know, but Stevie asked, ‘Was there evidence of an injection on Simon’s body?’
There was silence on the line again. Stevie could feel Buchanan trying to make up his mind whether to answer her or not. She already knew that he would. The chemist had been led too far for him to retreat now.
Buchanan let out a breath that was all acquiescence.
‘There was a puncture between his index and middle finger which might have been consistent with a needle piercing his skin.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘If Simon did kill himself, and I’m not saying he did, but if he did, he went to a lot of trouble to make it look like he died from natural causes. Who am I to undo his last wishes? Look.’ Buchanan became briskly efficient, as if suddenly realising he had given her all he could and had nothing left to bargain with. ‘I wish you’d let William collect the laptop. All I want to know is whether Simon committed suicide, and if so why.’
Surprise galvanised Stevie. She put her mobile on speaker, turned the key in the ignition and guided the car from its parking space.
‘I never mentioned what was in Simon’s package. What makes you think it contained a laptop?’
Buchanan’s answer was fast and bewildered in its innocence.
‘Dr Ahumibe told me. Perhaps he guessed.’
Stevie had been careful not to mention the laptop to Ahumibe. She said, ‘Thank you for your call, Dr Buchanan. I take it you’re still at the hospital?’
‘No, I’m at my lab. I’m part of the international collaboration trying to find an antidote for V5N6. It would be a great help if you could let me see the package. It may seem silly with so many other lives at stake, but I’m finding it hard to concentrate. I keep wondering if Simon killed himself and if he did, what could have made him so unhappy.’ The chemist spoke quickly, as if he was afraid she might suddenly cut the call. ‘If you don’t want to trust William, why not bring it here yourself? I promise it won’t leave your sight.’
‘Tell me where your lab is and I’ll think about it.’
Buchanan gave her an address, sounding suddenly weary. ‘I’ll be here for the foreseeable future. Where are you?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll know where to go, if I need you.’ Stevie might have been telling him to fuck off and die.
‘Please don’t hang . . .’
Stevie turned off her mobile and stabbed the address Derek had texted her into the satnav. Iqbal’s place lay on the opposite side of the river. She turned a corner, narrowly missing a taxi. She raised a hand in an apology that turned into a two-fingered salute when the driver pressed the horn and drew a finger across his throat.
‘Better men than you have threatened to kill me,’ Stevie whispered, though she had no evidence that they were better men at all.
The near-collision had shaken her and she drove slowly, keeping her eyes on the road, trying to work out what the conversation with Buchanan had revealed. One thing was clear. If the chemist’s hypothesis worked for suicide, then it also worked for murder. A sedative could easily be slipped into a drink; warnings about nightclub predators with a penchant for Rohypnol had taught her that. Once it had taken effect, all that the killer would have had to do was inject Simon with whatever poison they had chosen, and then sit at his bedside and make sure he didn’t wake up. It was a horrible image, the assassin waiting quietly in a chair by the bed, the murderer and victim caught in a pastiche of doctor and patient.
Turn left in one hundred yards, the chilly female voice of the satnav instructed. Stevie did as she was told, glad to surrender control to someone else, just for a moment.
Twenty-One
It said something about her own prejudices that she had expected Iqbal to be overweight, dressed in pizza-stained sweatpants and pale from too many hours at a computer keyboard. The man who answered the door was young and slender with dark, long-lashed eyes. Stevie felt suddenly, ridiculously, shy.
‘Iqbal?’ The young man nodded and Stevie said, ‘I’m Stephanie Flint, a friend of Derek’s, I mean PC Caniparoli. He said you’d be expecting me.’
‘Yes.’ He hesitated on the doorstep for a moment, as if wondering if their business could be conducted there, then stepped back and let her into the apartment.
‘Could you take off your shoes, please?’
A magazine was neatly positioned inside the door. Stevie unlaced her trainers and placed them on it.
Iqbal nodded at an empty coat rack. ‘You can hang your jacket there.’
Stevie started to unzip her tracksuit top but remembered that she was only wearing a thin vest and sports bra underneath.
‘It’s okay, I’ll keep it on.’
Iqbal made a helpless gesture with his hands, as if he were the minion of a giant corporation, charged with a regrettable duty.
‘I’d prefer it if you took it off, please.’
Instinct told Stevie that he wasn’t trying to get a better look at her breasts, but she asked, ‘Why?’
Iqbal gave an apologetic smile.
‘To avoid infection.’
Stevie shrugged off her jacket and put it on one of the pegs. Iqbal handed her a bottle of antibacterial gel. A blush was spreading across his cheeks, but Stevie guessed that he was tenacious, the kind of person who would follow through, even when it made him squirm inside. She washed her hands and made to give the bottle back, but he stepped away from her, neat as a ballroom dancer.
‘Can you wash up to your elbows, please?’ The nervous smile flashed across his face again. ‘It’s what hospitals tell visitors to do.’
Stevie did as he asked. The gel was cold, its chemical scent harsh in her nose and the back of her throat, as if it was also disinfecting the inside of her head.
‘I’ve already had it.’
‘The sweats?’
‘Yes.’
She passed him the gel and this time he took it from her.
‘Maybe you’re immune, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a carrier.’