‘Do you have a knife or scissors on you?’ asked Tally urgently.
Helga came up with a small pair of scissors and handed them over. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ she asked as she watched Tally make an opening in the shroud in the area of Altman’s upper thighs. She had to do it on both sides, causing Helga’s alarm to heighten, before she found what she was looking for.
‘They cut their way in to his femoral artery,’ said Tally, handing the scissors back and disguising the cuts in the shroud as best she could.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Helga, seeing that Tally seemed suddenly preoccupied.
‘I’m not sure...’ Tally answered vaguely. ‘I think Steven Dunbar may have some explaining to do...’
At that moment, Hans Weber returned. ‘All done?’
‘What was Marcus doing several hundred kilometres away in Kivu, Hans?’ asked Helga.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’
‘He didn’t tell you?’
Weber shook his head.
‘After telling everyone else he was going around Equateur Province making a final check that all was well?’
Weber looked away.
Tally said, ‘Maybe a check on his room will tell us more.’
‘I think that is best left to the proper authorities,’ snapped Weber.
‘Of course, Hans,’ said Helga, ‘perhaps you would remind the proper authorities that the living would like some attention too?’
‘I’m sure everything is in hand. Now, if you will excuse me, there is a lot to do.’
As Weber locked the door of the makeshift morgue and walked off, Helga turned to Tally and asked, ‘How did you know the killer targeted the femoral artery?’
‘Call it intuition,’ said Tally.
Tally and Helga walked slowly to their cars to face their challenging drives back to their respective areas. Tally noticed that Helga was clearly upset. ‘Are you going to be all right?’ she asked.
When Helga looked directly at her she could see that she wasn’t. Her eyes were showing a mixture of uncertainty, even fear.
‘There’s something very wrong here, isn’t there? Marcus murdered in Kivu, you knowing how he was killed before you looked for the injury, the look on Hans Weber’s face when we questioned him. He’s going to find the cuts you made in the shroud. What’s going on, Tally?’
‘This is not the place to talk, come over to my place tomorrow, I might know more by then.’
Twenty
‘Have you been given a date yet?’ Steven asked as soon as he snatched up the phone.
‘No,’ Tally replied, ‘Marcus Altman has a problem.’
‘What kind of a problem?’
‘Terminal, he’d dead... he was found five hundred miles from where he should have been... his femoral artery had been cut after his killers made a slow approach to it... involving many cuts... ring a bell?’
‘Oh my God.’
‘What the hell’s going on, Steven?’
Steven took a deep breath. ‘Altman’s name appeared on an intelligence services list, which I saw for the first time yesterday. MI6 think that he was as much involved as Phillipe Lagarde in the infiltration of organised crime into world aid organisations.’
‘And you didn’t tell me?’ exclaimed Tally.
‘I... made the decision not to tell you because... I wanted you to live. You and Altman got on and I wanted it to stay that way because if I had told you everything I knew, you wouldn’t have been able to disguise your true feelings.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Go on.’
Steven told Tally about the deliberate use of small implants to provide the means of spreading epidemic disease under the guise of vaccinating people. She was left speechless until she managed to splutter out, ‘But who in their right mind would do something like that?’
‘In this instance, a small group of Russians, mainly expats living in London but with homeland links. They are not insane, they have their reasons for doing it and it’s connected with money, but I haven’t figured out the details yet.’
Tally gave a deep sigh and, after a short pause, said, ‘That’s what happened to Monique’s family, isn’t it,’ she asked, ‘they were deliberately killed.’
‘I think so. Lagarde and co must have been testing out their latest way of spreading disease. They put small implants comprising Ebola virus in a tiny plastic shell under the skin of your friend’s loved ones. Three weeks later they turned up under the guise of care and concern and ruptured the implants using wireless technology.’
‘This is just all... I just can’t believe... I don’t know what to say.’
‘Exactly,’ said Steven, ‘do you honestly think you could have kept all that to yourself if I had told you? If Altman had suspected you were on to him, you would have been in great danger. As it is, he’s become a victim himself. It’s obvious the Chinese contingent are still pretty angry about what’s been going on.’
‘Do you think they’re some kind of vigilantes?’
‘No way,’ said Steven. ‘I’m still convinced it’s all about money. You said Altman was found several hundred miles away from where he should have been, where exactly?’
‘In an apartment, in the town of Beni up in Kivu Province.’
‘Kivu? And in a town that’s at the very heart of the latest outbreak of Ebola,’ said Steven, ‘pretty strong circumstantial evidence against him, wouldn’t you say?’
‘In the light of what you’ve just told me, yes, I suppose.’
‘How are the authorities dealing with this?’ asked Tally.
‘They don’t know yet.’
‘What!... Steven!’
‘I know, I know, I’m still trying to figure out what’s behind it all.’
‘But you can’t keep something like this to yourself.’
‘Tally, Tally, Tally,’ Steven pleaded, ‘it’s not as if nothing is being done. The intelligence communities of several countries are well aware of the infiltration of world-wide aid agencies — they know much more about it than I do; the information about Lagarde and now Altman came from them. They are dealing with it as a matter of global urgency: they know a clean-up is essential if public confidence is to be retained. It’s too late to stop the latest outbreak in DRC; it’s been caused by criminals hiding under the WHO banner, but if I can highlight what it’s all been about, it would be much more useful to those charged with bringing the crooks to justice and putting a stop to it all. I’m very close and that’s what the PM asked me to do, remember?’
‘Vaguely... something about intellectual input if I remember rightly...’
‘Some things have a habit of escalating,’ admitted Steven. ‘But the big test for you right now is to keep everything you’ve heard to yourself. You don’t know who’s a friend and who’s a foe; you must be all sweetness and light to everyone until you get on that plane home and please God, that will be soon.’
Just before Steven turned out his bedside light, a message came in on encrypted mail from the Home Office. The remaining patients in the Royal Free, suffering from Marburg disease, had died.
‘God bless,’ he murmured. ‘The perfect end to a bloody awful day...’
Recognising that falling asleep was now well-nigh impossible, he got up to make coffee on auto-pilot. He was about to switch on the TV to seek distraction, but then decided against. Distraction was always temporary and he was experiencing, in himself, signs of overload. There were just too many awful things going around in his head: he felt he was approaching some kind of tipping point and wherever that might lead.
Sitting with his head in his hands wouldn’t help, nor would howling at the moon, nor kicking the cat — he didn’t even have a cat... this last thought highlighted the ridiculousness of his train of thought and brought the suggestion of a smile to his lips. Self-pity and hopelessness had no place in his life, even when they were coming at him mob-handed, but Tally was right when she said he had to share what he knew. He would give himself another forty-eight hours.