‘It’s not that far,’ smiled Steven. ‘And I’d like to see a lot more of you.’
‘I’d like that too,’ said Leila. ‘But…’
‘But what?’
‘I think it only fair to warn you that I am thinking about going back to the States.’
‘Ah,’ sighed Steven. ‘Your career…’
‘It’s important to me and with Professor Devon dead the reason for my being here has gone.’
Steven took her hands and said, ‘Then I think my mission in life over the next few weeks will be to persuade you otherwise.’
Leila smiled and raised her glass. ‘Here’s to an interesting few weeks.’
‘How’s your spaghetti?’
‘Terrible.’
‘Mine too. Let’s go home.’
It rained all night and all through the next day. Steven had returned to his hotel and was making yet another attempt at writing up his report when Colonel Rose rang.
‘No joy, I’m afraid. No abnormally large orders have been placed with egg suppliers from their regular customers and no consignments have gone out to private individuals. We’ve checked all the large poultry firms and none of them has been approached directly to make supplies available.’
‘Shit,’ said Steven. ‘What the hell are they using?’
‘You don’t think they could have brought them in from abroad?’ asked Rose.
‘The logistics would be all wrong.’
‘Then I don’t know what to suggest.’
‘The only other alternative is that they managed to get the virus out of the country and are growing it up abroad.’
‘We’ve already alerted all our allies,’ said Rose, ‘as well as being extra vigilant at ports and airports.’
‘Have you had any luck with the people you arrested?’
‘We’ve come up with various links to small people involved in the red herring alert over an attack on Canary Wharf but no one we’ve picked up knows anything at all about a virus operation. There are a few more we’d like to pick up and hold but we’ve been told to cool it. The judiciary are on their high horse over the use of prevention of terrorism legislation.’
‘I saw that coming,’ said Steven. ‘How about the relatives of the three dead men, in Leicester?’
‘Usual story in all three cases. Disaffected Muslim youths feeling the world’s against them get sucked in to fundamentalism in their late teens and begin to see freedom fighting as a better alternative to the dole office as they get older. A couple of weeks at training camp under the guise of a holiday in the ‘old country’ — which they’d never actually seen in their lives before — and they’re ready to do whatever they’re told. Their families were kept in the dark or maybe it just suited them to maintain that.’
‘I suppose.’
‘I hear the vaccine has entered production?’
‘At least something’s going right,’ said Steven. ‘Let’s just hope it’ll be ready in time.’
‘Amen to that.’
Steven put down the phone and felt thoroughly depressed. It was just so easy to imagine large modern lab facilities somewhere abroad swinging into full Cambodia 5 production and being ready before the vaccine thanks to the head start they’d had. His mind however, kept straying back to the mill house. Why bother to set up a small operation up if the intention had always been to set up full scale production abroad? He was staring out of the window at the rain when Leila phoned. ‘What time will you be round tonight?’ she asked.
‘Any time you like.’
‘I’ll be at the lab until six thirty but I should still be home by seven. You can come and talk to me while I make dinner.’
Steven smiled as he switched off the phone. Leila’s plan to sleep for a week had been short-lived. She had taken only one day off before going back to work at the Crick. He was looking forward to seeing her but had to admit — as he saw the rain turn to sleet — that the prospect of an evening in a house heated by only a one bar electric fire was less than appealing let alone romantic. He resolved to do something about it. He would take along the makings of a fire. He would pick up logs and firelighters at one of the local filling stations where he’d seen them stacked by the door the last time he’d been in for petrol. Add a few rolled-up newspapers and some matches and they could have an evening in front of a roaring fire.
The sleet had stopped by the time Steven left to drive over to Leila’s place but the temperature had dropped sharply in the last hour and the roads had started to ice up. The attendant at the filling station told him that the authorities had been warned earlier about the likelihood of this but had been reluctant to send out grit spreaders, fearing that the rain would wash it all away and road grit cost money. Steven’s MGF might be a joy to drive on smooth, dry tarmac but could turn into a nightmare in adverse weather conditions. The fact that it sat so low on the road meant that the screen constantly had to be cleared of muck flung up by other vehicles and its quick response to brake and accelerator meant constant sideways twitching on slippery surfaces.
Steven was ultra cautious on the narrow roads leading over to Holt but it was still heart-in-mouth time on a number of occasions when black ice made its presence felt and a disagreement regarding direction of travel arose between driver and car. As he approached a narrow bridge spanning a river gorge, Steven slowed right down when he saw the flashing yellow lights of, presumably, a road gritting vehicle coming towards him. He pulled in to the side, as close to the verge as he dared, half tucked in behind the bridge parapet on his side of the road.
He was just beginning to take comfort from the fact that at least the road ahead would be freshly gritted when he saw that the snow-clearing blade on the front of the gritter had been lowered as it came on to the bridge: this made the vehicle so wide that it filled the entire width of the road: there wouldn’t be enough room for it to pass without scraping the side of his car. Fearing that the driver hadn’t seen him sitting there, Steven moved a little further over on to the verge, sounding his horn and flashing his lights. But to no avail. The vehicle kept coming.
Just as he made a fear-fuelled decision to get out of the car, the inside wheels of the MG slipped down into the unseen ditch they had been precariously perched over. The car pitched 45 degrees to the left and Steven fell back inside, his shoulders ending up on the passenger seat and his knees curled under the steering wheel. He had just started to elbow his way up into a position where he could see out again when the steel blade of the grit lorry hit the front of the MG, smashing its off-side headlight and scraping along the metal until it pushed the car completely over onto its side. The impact threw Steven violently back into the car.
Once again he fought in the confined space of the two-seater to get upright. The only way out of the car was through the driver’s door window which was now an escape hatch edged with broken glass above his head. When he finally managed to clear enough and poke his head out through it, he could see that the gritter had stopped some twenty metres away.
‘Stupid bastard!’ Steven yelled. ‘Are you blind?’
The gritter started to reverse slowly and Steven could see the driver looking back through the rear window of his cab. He was well wrapped up against the cold and was wearing noise-protector ear muffs. Steven continued to mutter abuse as he tried to clear the remainder of the broken glass away from the window frame before attempting to climb out. ‘Just what the fuck were you thinking of… The council’s insurance company is really going to love you…’
The words froze on Steven’s lips when he suddenly realised that the gritter was not going to stop. Fear gripped him and he stammered, ‘What the f…?’ as the grit hopper grew ever nearer until finally, its snow blade crunched into the MG. The impact appeared not to register with the JCB; it continued pushing the car backwards like a child’s toy with Steven inside, still struggling to push himself out through the driver’s window space but being thrown off balance at every attempt. He felt a sudden jerk as the car was forced up on to the bridge parapet. He had no idea what lay in the darkness below but he knew that he was just about to find out.