V
Margaret sat in someone’s office staring at the shadows on the walls. A lamp on the desk burned a pool of light into a white blotter. Beyond it, only the shapes and shadows of the monsters that stalked her imagination moved in the darkness. Her body felt as if someone had been pounding at it with clenched fists. Her head ached and her eyes stung.
Tracking down Steve’s ex-wife had not been as simple as she had expected. Martha and her new husband were out to dinner somewhere, leaving Danni in the care of a teenage babysitter who gave Margaret a cellphone number. But the cellphone was turned off, and Margaret had been forced to call the babysitter back for the name of the restaurant. The girl said she would have to call home and find out, and that she would call back. In spite of Margaret stressing the urgency of the situation, it was twenty minutes before the babysitter returned the call, saying that her home line had been engaged.
When, eventually, Margaret got through to the restaurant, it was the husband who came to the phone. The banker. He took some convincing that this was not one of Steve’s practical jokes. Apparently there had been several. Margaret inwardly cursed Steve and his juvenile sense of humour but still was unable to resist a tiny, sad smile. She assured the banker that this was no practical joke.
Then Martha had come to the phone, truculent and ready to be difficult. How serious could it be? Did Margaret know how long it would take her to get there from West Virginia? And it was far too late to be dragging a young child out of her bed.
Margaret, patience strained to the limit, had said simply, ‘Martha, it might be the last time Danni gets to see her father. There’s a very strong chance he could be dead by the time you get here.’
And the silence at the other end of the line had stretched out for an eternity. Finally, in a very small voice, Martha had said, ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
There was a knock at the door and a wedge of yellow light fell in from the corridor as it opened. Margaret looked up expectantly and saw the silhouette of Felipe Mendez standing in the open doorway. He looked almost like a caricature of himself, tousled hair, creased and rumpled overcoat, a battered briefcase hanging from the end of his arm. She heard, rather than saw, his smile. ‘People who sit in the dark, my dear, are generally trying to hide from something,’ he said.
‘Life,’ Margaret said. ‘Or maybe it’s death.’
‘What’s the news?’
‘Temperature’s still creeping up. Lot of fluid in the lungs now. He’s very fevered. They’re pinning everything on this rimantadine.’
‘Ah, yes, the antiviral stuff. Unproven.’
Margaret nodded. He stepped in and closed the door behind him, placing his case on her desk and drawing up a chair. As he sat down, his face fell into the circle of reflected light from the desk and she saw him clearly for the first time. He looked tired, older somehow. She could smell the cigar smoke clinging to his clothes. He said, ‘I didn’t get word until I was back in Conroe. This is the earliest I could make it.’ He sighed. ‘At the very least, we might learn more about what it is that has triggered the virus.’
Margaret glanced at him. It was such a cold and unfeeling thing to say. And yet, what else did she expect? Steve meant nothing to Mendez. His concern was to try to find out what had made the virus active, in order that they could prevent it happening to thousands of others. Live or die, Steve gave him a case study.
‘The trouble is,’ Mendez said, ‘although we know exactly what he has eaten and drunk during his time in isolation, there were nearly forty-eight hours prior to that in which he could have consumed any number of things.’
‘Didn’t you ask him?’
‘Of course. The night he was admitted.’ He stroked his goatee thoughtfully. ‘He was very helpful. Went through everything he could remember.’ He exhaled deeply. ‘Unfortunately, the memory is a very unreliable thing. Often faulty. And as you know, my dear, science is only too exact. However, the more data we have to work with the more we can narrow our search.’ He laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘From a speck of dust in the Milky Way, perhaps to something the size of a pebble.’ He smiled grimly. ‘You look weary, my dear.’
‘I could sleep for a week — if my nightmares would only give me peace.’
‘Ah, yes, the waking kind. They’re the worst. You can’t just open your eyes and leave them behind.’
‘Can’t close your eyes and lose them either.’
A uniformed nurse knocked and opened the door. ‘That’s Major Cardiff’s wife and daughter at front reception,’ she said.
Margaret stood up immediately. ‘I’ll be right there.’ She looked sadly at Mendez. ‘He wanted to see his little girl, in case it would be for the last time.’
Margaret had been unaware of creating expectations in her mind, but Martha still took her by surprise. She was not what she had been expecting at all. A strikingly good-looking woman, tall and elegant, she had a thick mane of shiny, black hair. Her face was madeup for her night out, elaborate eye colour and a slash of red lipstick, although Margaret could see that she was pale now beneath the powder. She still wore her long red evening dress beneath a man’s overcoat that had been placed over her shoulders for warmth.
Danni, wrapped and swaddled in quilted anorak and scarf, stood clinging sleepily to her mother’s legs, tired and bewildered. The banker stood behind them, at a discreet distance, in dinner jacket and silk scarf. He was shorter than Steve, heavier, and losing his hair. And there was no magic in his eyes. Margaret fleetingly wondered what it was about him that had made Martha choose him over Steve. Could it really have been as simple and as mercenary as his bank balance? Perhaps it was the smell of money he brought home on his clothes, instead of the smell of death.
‘How is he?’ Martha asked.
‘Not good,’ Margaret said. ‘I’m not sure that you’ll be able to see him now, even through the glass.’
Martha frowned. ‘What do you mean, through the glass?’
‘He’s in isolation. Only properly protected medical staff are allowed any contact with him.’
Martha shook her head, as if this was something preposterous. ‘Well, what on earth’s wrong with him?’
‘He cut himself during autopsy and contracted a viral infection.’
Danni’s sleepy little voice interrupted the interrogation. ‘Mommy, where’s Daddy?’
‘In a minute, honey.’ There was irritation in Martha’s voice. She said to Margaret, ‘But you’re treating him, right? I mean, if it’s just a virus…’
‘AIDS is caused by a virus, Mrs. Muller.’
‘Yeah, and so’s the common cold. I’m not an idiot, Dr. Campbell. What kind of virus are we talking about here?’
An alarm sounded in the corridor, a repetitive monotone wail that sent shivers of chilling apprehension coursing through Margaret’s veins. She turned toward the uniformed nurse who had been standing by. ‘That’s the emergency alarm in two hundred,’ the nurse said in a hushed voice.
‘Oh, God,’ Margaret whispered. ‘Let us through. Fast.’
Martha snatched Danni into her arms. ‘I’ll wait here,’ the banker called after them, but no one was listening to him.
They followed the nurse through the maze of corridors, stopping only to let electronic doors swing open as the nurse waved her ID at the readers on the wall. The reception area was in a state of pandemonium. The alarm was louder here, almost deafening.