‘How do you mean, out of control? Why would he be out of control?’
‘It’s his last day, Pinkie. He quits the force at the end of his shift. And it’s been an emotional day for him. He lost his son.’
Pinkie frowned. ‘Lost his son?’
‘He died, Pinkie. The flu. Policemen’s kids are just as likely to get it as anyone else.’
‘Aw, shit.’ Pinkie focused on the distant pinpricks of red light, and now they signalled only grief. ‘That’s a shame, Mr Smith,’ he said. And meant it. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Keep following him, Pinkie. Do what you feel you have to. And keep me informed.’
Mr Smith hung up, and Pinkie felt unaccountably sad. He wondered how his own father might have felt if he had died of the flu when he was just a kid. If his father had known he existed. If he had known who his father was. His mother, he knew, would have been bereft.
Kids didn’t deserve to die. They hadn’t done enough bad things yet to deserve it. What harm had that poor little girl done anyone? None of it had been her fault, but she was the one that Mr Smith blamed. She’d got on his wrong side. And the wrong side of Mr Smith was not a good place to be.
Chapter Fifteen
Amy sat out on the metal balcony at the back of the apartment looking down on to the empty concourse below. It was cold, and she had a travelling rug wrapped around her shoulders to keep her warm. But the fresh air was good, and she had left the French windows open to let it blow through the top floor. The skull still smelled. And although she had wrapped it in several plastic bags and taken it down to the bottom landing, it had left an unpleasant odour lingering in the air.
She loved to sit out here on summer evenings, screened from the gaze of her neighbours by the wisteria she had trained to grow all around it. On long, lazy summer afternoons it was a sun trap, and in the evenings it was fanned by the cooling movement of the air. A delicious retreat from life, a place to forget.
Now the wisteria was naked and gnarled, providing no kind of a screen, and it was hard to believe that fresh growth would appear in the spring, cascades of lovely purple flowers falling all around the railings, drawing the first honeybees of the year in search of nectar. This was only her second winter since the accident, and that first year she had found November through March to be the hardest months. Cold days when you wanted to be out walking, striding out with the wind in your face, the cold sting of rain on your cheeks. Hurrying home for a bowl of hot soup, curtains drawn against the night, curled up on the settee with a good book and a glass of soft red wine.
And here she was, huddled bleakly in her wheelchair, cold and depressed and letting dark thoughts creep in to cloud her usual sunny disposition. Her heart bled for MacNeil, and wept for the memory of the young man who had died at the wheel of his car that fateful night just thirty months ago. The young man she was to have married. The young man whose baby she’d been carrying.
It had been just seven days since the test proved positive. They had already decided to marry, and so it was just one more reason for celebration. They couldn’t have been happier. Perhaps that’s why fate had dealt them such a cruel blow. They had dared to be so happy. Happier than anyone else they knew. Happiness had radiated from every pore. She had been so happy she glowed. She couldn’t stop smiling. Had anyone ever been happier in the history of the human race?
David had drunk only mineral water that night. He was driving, he said, and he had responsibilities now that he was to be a father. Amy had kept him company. She was pregnant. No alcohol for mum until after the baby was born. And then they could celebrate. Champagne to wet the baby’s head.
How ironic that it should have been a drunk driver whose car ploughed into the side of theirs at the junction. Straight through the traffic lights on red. Experts called to give evidence at the trial judged that he had been doing more than sixty. Even more ironic that he had walked away unscathed. In another three years he would be out of prison, with most of his life still ahead of him, able-bodied and fit. A job waiting for him in his father’s business. A forgiving family.
Amy found it difficult to forgive, but she had tried hard not to let it make her bitter. She had lost so much else, that to lose that core of sunshine that lit her personality would have plunged her into a dark world, depressed and defeated, and unable to face the challenges ahead. Challenges that would need all her reserves of courage and resolve and optimism.
But tonight she wasn’t sure how much deeper she could dig into those reserves. She grasped the controller on the arm of her wheelchair and manoeuvred herself back into the attic of the warehouse, closing the French windows behind her and drawing the curtains against the night. Time, she thought, for a glass of red wine to cheer herself up. She went to the kitchen and poured herself one. If only now she could curl up on the settee with a good book.
The electric motor whined as she crossed the floor to gaze for the umpteenth time at the little girl whose face she had recreated. She wasn’t sure about the hair. Something told her — instinct, the thing that MacNeil so hated when it came to analysis of evidence — that Lyn would suit her hair short. Not a bob cut. Something more primal — ragged and spiky. After all, a child from a developing country would not have had access to a stylist. And yet she had been here in London. Living here, perhaps. But not long enough, certainly, for a change of diet to affect her teeth. And there had been no surgery attempted to fix her lip.
Was she adopted? If so, who were her adoptive parents? Hadn’t they reported her missing? Questions, questions, questions. They had been rattling around her head all evening. An attempt, she recognised, to stop her dwelling on other things. But there had been no answers. Only flights of fancy. Speculation. Assumption. She knew no more now than she had this morning.
The phone rang and she crossed the room to answer it.
‘Amy, it’s Zoe.’
‘Hi, Zoe.’ Amy glanced at the time. It was after eleven. ‘You’re not still at the lab?’
‘Yep.’
‘You should have been home before the curfew.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m stuck here now, aren’t I? And it’s all your fault.’
Amy gasped her indignation. ‘My fault! How?’
‘You asked me to run a virology test on the bone marrow Dr Bennet recovered from the skeleton of the little girl.’
‘You’ve done a PCR test already?’
‘I did more than that.’ She sounded pleased with herself. ‘I recovered not only the virus, but the RNA coding.’
Amy experienced momentary confusion. ‘What? You mean you’re telling me she had the flu?’
‘She sure did. And the virus I recovered is definitely infectious. I mean, the pure RNA alone is still infectious. But the RNA and protein together, well, that’s sheer dynamite.’
‘Jesus, Zoe,’ Amy said, alarmed. ‘You should be working in a Level Three lab with infectious material like that.’
‘Yeah, probably.’ There was a hint of a yawn at the other end of the phone.
‘You don’t have lab three facilities there.’
‘Nope.’
‘But you used lab three precautions, right?’
‘Well, not exactly.’
‘Zoe!’ Amy was shocked. ‘You stupid idiot!’
‘Hey, keep your hair on, Amy. It’s cool. Honest. I know what I’m doing. I could have done it in my kitchen.’
Amy was furious. ‘Is Dr Bennet there?’
‘He’s got a couple of autopsies.’
‘Well, get him to call me as soon as he’s free.’
‘Aw, come on, Amy, you’ll get me into trouble.’
‘You should be in trouble, Zoe. You could infect yourself. You could infect everybody in the building.’