Stevie got to her feet and looked through the small window in the door, out into the ward beyond. The lights were low, but she could see the closed doors of the side wards. She imagined the drawn sheets and the motionless swell beneath each one.
‘All of them?’
‘All that hadn’t been collected by their parents, or already died, yes.’
Stevie touched the glass. She felt an urge to open the doors and draw back the sheets, but stayed where she was.
‘Couldn’t you have taken them somewhere?’
‘Where?’
She turned to look at him.
‘I don’t know. The countryside?’
‘It would only have extended their deaths. It was better this way.’ The doctor sat up, dragging a hand across his face. His complexion had turned the grey of a riverbed after long months of drought. Stevie saw his features properly for the first time, and recognised the signs of the sweats on him. He asked, ‘Why are you here?’
‘I want to know what happened.’
‘No one knows.’ He yawned, and Stevie saw his teeth, the wet tongue and soft inside of his throat. ‘Sometimes viruses just appear.’ The doctor’s voice was cracked with grief and tiredness. There was a bottle of water on the table beside him. He poured a measure into a glass and took a small sip, as if he was unsure whether he would be able to hold it down. ‘I heard a theory, way back in the beginning when we had only just started to get seriously worried. An astrophysicist suggested that the virus might have been caused by space dust, brought in on a fallen asteroid. For some reason that still appeals to me. Outer space gave us life, now it brings us death.’
Falling stars and children dead beneath their sheets, the bodies laid together in the basement. For a moment the images in Stevie’s head threatened to overwhelm her. She gripped the armrest of the chair.
‘I want to know why Simon died.’
‘Why Simon died.’ Dr Ahumibe repeated her words as if they were in a foreign language he was in the early stages of learning. ‘There was no reason. It was just one of those things. Sad at the time . . . devastating . . . but now I think, lucky bastard, “to die upon the midnight with no pain”, and miss all of this.’
‘He was murdered.’
‘Is that why you’re here? Because you think someone killed Simon?’ The doctor opened a drawer and took out a clutch of white paper boxes. His hands were shaking but he stacked the boxes patiently on the desk, one on top of the other, concentrating on the task as if it was important to get their edges straight, their corners aligned. ‘Everyone liked Simon. No one would want to murder him.’ He looked up and met her eyes for the first time. ‘You must have loved him a lot, to still care.’
‘Don’t you care?’
‘I told you, I think he was lucky to go when he did. Simon always was lucky.’
‘According to Alexander Buchanan he wasn’t lucky at cards.’
‘Xander told you about that?’ Dr Ahumibe gave a sad, vague smile. ‘It seemed like a big deal at the time, thousands of pounds owing, criminal types creeping into the hospital in search of Dr Sharkey.’ He shook his head. ‘Simon used to say, “What’s life without a little danger?” It made me angry, but now I realise he was the only one of us who really knew how to live.’ He flicked a finger at the tower of boxes, toppling them across the desk. ‘A short life, but a merry one.’
From somewhere inside the hospital came the sound of screaming and running feet. Dr Ahumibe reached into his trouser pocket, took out a set of keys and pushed them to the edge of the desk.
‘Lock the door and turn out the light. People may be looking for drugs.’ He pulled off his white coat, his movements slow and awkward, as if the pockets had been weighted with stones. ‘It’s best no one knows I’m a doctor.’ He shoved the coat under his chair. ‘I can’t help them any more, and there are better ways to go than being beaten to death.’
Stevie turned the key and clicked off the room’s fluorescent light. The dusk was coming in, another day drawing to its close, with no clue of what tomorrow would bring. She wondered fleetingly where she would sleep that night. The sound of pounding footsteps built until they passed the office door and faded down the corridor. She waited until she was sure they were gone and then said, ‘I think Simon died because the revolutionary treatment you were peddling was a con.’
‘We never set out to deceive anyone.’ Dr Ahumibe shook his head. ‘All I ever wanted to be was a good doctor.’
He started to stack the boxes back into their neat piles.
Stevie said, ‘Tell me what happened.’
The doctor’s voice was Mogadon-calm. ‘It doesn’t matter any more. Nothing does.’
Stevie wanted to hurt him. To get a knife, cut through his bristled cheek and hear him scream. She got to her feet and swept a hand across his desk, knocking the boxes of pills to the floor.
‘All of these people, the ones who caught the sweats, they didn’t want to die, but no one could help them, no matter how hard they tried.
‘There were too few of us left to keep the children alive. I gave those who could drink a glass of orange juice, the others I injected, and then I walked from bed to bed and watched them fall asleep.’ He looked up at her, his eyes tunnel-black. ‘It was peaceful.’
‘If Simon had been here he might have helped to keep them alive.’ She wouldn’t think of the children, the bodies in the basement. ‘Simon’s death could have been avoided. Okay, he might have caught the sweats, but at least he would have had a chance, and who knows? He might have been immune like me.’ Stevie could feel all the emotion she had tamped down beginning to rise, treacherous, in her throat. ‘He might have been here now.’
Dr Ahumibe bent and calmly began to pick up the scattered pill packets. His movements were slow, like a pearl fisher diving deep against the tide.
‘When did you speak to Buchanan?’
Stevie sank back into the seat. The silk scarf she had wrapped around her face, in an attempt to mask the stink of the basement, was still strung around her neck. Even so, Stevie supposed the air smelt bad, but she had grown used to it. She slid off the scarf and wiped her eyes with it.
‘I don’t know. A few hours ago.’
‘I phoned him but he didn’t pick up. I thought maybe . . .’ Ahumibe shook his head. ‘Was he still uninfected?’
She blew her nose on the scarf’s hem.
‘He didn’t say.’
The doctor’s eyes met hers. ‘Some people live for up to three days, others go within hours. I should take these soon.’ Ahumibe glanced at the packs of pills. ‘Once the vomiting starts they’re less reliable.’
Stevie watched his trembling fingers, the tower of boxes growing.
‘The package I was to deliver to Mr Reah was a laptop. It contained data that proved your research was flawed.’
‘I know.’ Dr Ahumibe put the final box on the top of the pile. It looked like a miniature version of Simon’s apartment block, white and modernist. ‘Simon told me.’
‘Did you kill him?’
The doctor stared at the tower he had made and then retrieved the topmost box, opened it and slid out a blister pack. He dropped the empty box in the wastepaper basket, as if it was still important to be neat, and laid the slim pack on the desk.
‘Simon died of natural causes.’
‘Buchanan attended the autopsy. He said that he found evidence Simon had been injected with something shortly before his death.’
Dr Ahumibe looked up. Sweat prickled his brow but his eyes looked less drugged, sharper than before.
‘That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.’
‘Maybe not on its own, but Simon was about to give Mr Reah data that proved the treatment you had collaborated on was worthless. You and Buchanan both had a vested interest in stopping him.’