Stop them dead, p.31
Stop Them Dead, page 31
He turned away in shock, as Katy, pale and distraught, jumped up from her chair beside the bed, then stared at his face. ‘So, what did happen to your face? Who hit you?’
He shrugged it off – ‘It’s a long story, but it’s fine, honestly.’
‘You need to get it cleaned up and dressed.’
‘Guess I’m in the right place for that,’ he joked grimly.
Katy hugged him tearfully. ‘Thank God you’re here.’
‘Sorry it took so long. Where’s Dr Shah? I need to speak to him urgently.’
‘He wants to speak to us,’ she said ominously. ‘He said he’d be back around now.’
‘What – what does he want to – to speak about?’
Before she could answer, the curtains parted and a very solemn Anish Shah, in scrubs, stethoscope hanging from his neck, looking exhausted as usual, came in and closed the curtains behind him. Chris clocked the nervous twitch in his right eye.
‘Mr and Mrs Fairfax, we need to have a conversation. I’d rather do it in private and not in front of your daughter. Shall we go into the Relatives Room, we can be private in there.’
They followed him out and into the small, brightly coloured room where last night they’d slept, intermittently, on the camp beds. These were now folded up and leaning against a wall, beneath a sign taped to the wall requesting masks be worn, and another sign, with coloured balloons, offering counselling services. There were four plastic chairs around a tiny table. Dr Shah gestured for them to sit and did so himself.
Then he leaned across towards them, his hands clasped suppliantly together, his expression grim. ‘We have the result back from the Hospital for Tropical Diseases. It’s not good news, I’m afraid. It’s not good news at all.’ He looked at them both with eyes that were, for a moment, like those of a frightened animal. ‘There’s no easy way to tell you this – I’m afraid your daughter does have rabies.’
Even though it was the news Chris and Katy had been primed for, she let out a wail of shock. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. She – she can’t have, it’s not possible.’
‘It is survivable, Dr Shah,’ Chris said. ‘I’ve seen the video on YouTube. Becky Adams from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When she was fifteen she was bitten by a rabid bat she’d tried to free from inside a church. Her brilliant doctor, Rodney Willoughby, came up with an experimental treatment that no one had ever tried before and saved her life.’ He looked challengingly at Dr Shah. ‘Do you know anything about that?’
‘I do, Mr Fairfax, I found that same video,’ Shah replied calmly. ‘What he did is known as the Milwaukee Protocol. I came off an hour-long phone call with Dr Willoughby a few minutes ago. There’s good news and bad news.’
92
Wednesday 31 March
‘There’s good news and bad news,’ Norman Potting said to the assembled company at the morning briefing.
‘Good news is you’ve won the lottery – bad news it’s only ten quid,’ Jack Alexander said.
The DS looked at him for a moment. ‘You’ve more chance of being killed by a goat falling on you than winning the lottery, Jack. I prefer to spend my money wisely – on quality beer.’ He paused for a moment. ‘As a result of Long Acre Farm featuring on the Polish lorry driver’s documentation, visiting that farm has been put on ice until we are ready to hit both at the same time. Me and Velvet spoke to a local PC who had happened to call on them a couple of weeks ago because of complaints and disturbances with vehicles. He told us they were both run by very rough people, wouldn’t you say?’ He looked at Wilde questioningly.
She grimaced and looked around the team. ‘I’d say so, yes. Unless you’re a fan of either Terry Jim or his son, Dallas. They have the same tailor that a lot of bullies seem to favour – baggy tracksuit bottoms, trainers and bare chests with tattooed arms. And both of them seem to have learned only one phrase from all their English lessons at school. Fuck off.’
There were several chuckles.
‘Is that the good or the bad news, Norman?’ Polly Sweeney asked.
Potting gave a sly smile. ‘Actually, Polly, that’s the bad news. The good news is I had a phone call, just ten minutes ago, from a young lady. Gave her name as Darcy Jim – said she’s Terry Jim’s daughter – stepdaughter actually – and I think she might be quite interesting to us.’
‘In what way, Norman?’ Grace asked. He was still fretting and distracted by the news Tom Cartwright had given him yesterday, on rabies, and was waiting a further update from him.
‘She told me she was never happy about her mum taking up with Jim – that was about a decade or so ago. They’re always arguing, even turning into physical fights. And he treats the staff and the animals even worse. She’s seen him kick and beat them and she’s sick of it. Now here’s the interesting bit.’ He paused and gave a knowing smile. ‘Darcy says she became friends with two young women who worked in the kennels at Appletree Farm, and enjoyed helping them out – mucking out the kennels, feeding the dogs, that sort of thing – but like her, they were both unhappy at the condition the dogs were kept in, as well as being concerned where many of them came from.’
Potting turned and gave a nod at one of the whiteboards behind him, on which were the association charts for Terry Jim, Appletree and Long Acre farms. ‘One of the employees at Appletree Farm is Rosalind Esche. We know from Polly’s informant and our subsequent enquiries that she has disappeared – apparently after going to complain to Jim about the state of the kennels and the treatment of the dogs. Another name, Lyndsey Cheetham, who Darcy Jim just confirmed to me was her and Rosalind’s friend and colleague, died in a mysterious car crash – as we now understand, possibly on her way to meet Polly. I’m only a humble detective, but can’t say it looks good to me.’
‘Do we have any intel on Darcy Jim, Norman?’ Grace asked.
‘We do. Her passion is riding those things that jump over fences and fart.’
‘Horses, Norman?’ Polly Sweeney interjected. ‘Ponies?’
‘Yeah, that kind of stuff.’
Grace said, frowning, ‘So why did she call?’
‘Turns out she hasn’t seen Lyndsey or Rosalind and is extremely worried,’ Potting said.
‘Are you sure she is who she says she is, Norman?’ Branson quizzed. ‘I’ve been reading up the intel on Terry Jim, and he’s a pretty manipulative guy. He wouldn’t hesitate to use members of his family to send us off down blind alleys.’
‘I’m not sure, Glenn, no. But . . .’ Potting tapped his nose. ‘Know what I’m saying?’
‘Is she willing to come in and give a statement?’ Grace asked.
‘I don’t know, chief. She sounded nervous when I spoke to her. I think I would too if Terry Jim was my stepfather.’
‘Doesn’t exactly speak volumes about her mother either. So why did she call at all? What did she tell you that we don’t already know?’ Grace asked.
Potting gave him a look, one Grace knew well from all the years of his regular Thursday night poker games with colleagues. That supremely confident expression of someone who was certain he held an unbeatable hand – four aces or even higher. Someone who was about to scoop the very large pot but didn’t want to look smug about it.
‘Ms Jim – Darcy – said that when she went into the kennels last Thursday, which would be March 25th, seven French bulldogs – five puppies and two adult dogs, a male and a bitch – which had a potential collective value of tens of thousands of pounds had appeared there, without any explanation.’
For an instant, everyone in the room was silent.
‘And then,’ Grace said. ‘Let me guess. She saw the news later about the murder of Tim Ruddle and the theft of the dogs and put two and two together and came up with seven? Am I close to the mark?’
Potting curled his hand into the shape of a gun and pointed it at his boss. Squinting, he pulled an imaginary trigger with his forefinger. ‘Bang on, chief. She’d been chatting about it with the two girls and now they have disappeared she’s worried her stepdad overheard, and she’s concerned something terrible has happened, knowing what he might be capable of. But she also said that Rosalind did have the habit of going off comms when she was in a new relationship so maybe that’s it. She really doesn’t know what to think.’
Moments later, Roy Grace’s phone rang. It was Mark Taylor. ‘Target is on the move, sir.’
‘Keep eyes on him, Mark. Report to me wherever he goes and especially if he leaves his vehicle and goes into one of the parks. But no intervention unless, obviously, one of your officers feels a life is in danger – but I don’t think that’s his MO.’
‘Understood, boss, yes-yes.’
93
Wednesday 31 March
Chris Fairfax was woken by excruciating cramp in his right hamstring. He stared, disoriented for some moments, around the brightly coloured room. At the bunch of toys in a pen in the corner. His watch showed 8.40 a.m.
Slowly, wincing and massaging his leg, he remembered, at some point during the long night, Katy coming in to join him on one of the camp beds in the Relatives Room. He’d been too exhausted to undress or brush his teeth or anything else. Now, the conversation last night with Dr Shah was coming back to him. The young doctor staring at them both solemnly. He had a kind face but there was a sadness in his eyes, as if he’d suffered a personal tragedy at some point in his life.
‘This good news I’m going to give you from my conversation with Dr Willoughby in Wisconsin is that, through his pioneering work, a number of unvaccinated people around the globe who had contracted rabies, a virus previously thought to be incurable, have survived.’ But despite the positive message he was conveying, Chris had seen nothing in his demeanour to signal any real optimism.
‘The first unvaccinated person in the world to survive rabies was this fifteen-year-old girl, in Milwaukee, Becky Adams. Her life was saved at her local hospital, by Dr Willoughby, a paediatrician who had never dealt with a rabies patient before. This was because there had never been a rabies patient in his area of the US before. He devised an experiment which has been named, as you know, as the Milwaukee Protocol. It worked, Becky survived and is the mother of two children today, living a completely normal life.’
Katy had said, ‘So, we have a way forward, right, with this protocol, Dr Shah?’
The registrar had looked back at her nervously. ‘I wish I could say with confidence that we do, Mrs Fairfax. But I’m not going to lie to you or get your hopes up falsely. Becky Adams did survive rabies. If you believe in miracles, you could put it down to an act of God. But if, like me, you prefer to believe in the power of medicine, then I would suggest it was Dr Willoughby who saved Becky’s life. That’s the good news.’
‘And the bad?’ Chris remembered Katy asking.
‘I’m afraid there are a lot of risks with this procedure. Since Becky Adams’s diagnosis in 2004, there have been over one hundred rabies cases confirmed in the United States. The Milwaukee Protocol treatment has been used on them all, but the survival rate is approximately twenty per cent. By survival rate I mean the patients who were completely cured and returned to a normal life. The virus is savage in the way it attacks the brain and the central nervous system, and some victims who survive are left with severe brain damage – in pretty much a vegetative state with no quality of life as we know it. The ones who die during the treatment do so either from cardiac arrest or multiple organ failure – part of the havoc the virus wreaks with general functioning of human bodies. I need you both to understand the risks.’
As he reflected on Shah’s words last night, Chris’s hamstring cramped up again. He bent and rubbed it vigorously, then hobbled around the room, feeling the pain slowly subsiding. There was a warbling sound from his phone; he looked at it and saw a ton of texts, messages and emails, which he didn’t bother to look at. They didn’t matter. Only one thing mattered right now, Bluebell.
Then the cramp took another savage bite into his muscle and he doubled up, rubbing it vigorously again. Maybe take a walk down the corridor, he figured. But as he reached the door, it opened.
It was Dr Shah, looking, Chris thought, battle weary. For a moment, panic spiralled through him as he feared the worst.
‘Good morning, Mr Fairfax, I’m sorry to disturb you.’
‘It’s OK – what – what news – how is Bluebell?’
The registrar hesitated for a moment. ‘Dr Pallant and I have been here all night, having online discussions with Dr Willoughby and two of his colleagues, and making sure if we are going to go with the Milwaukee Protocol on Bluebell, we fully understand all we need to do.’
‘If you are going to go with it?’ Chris asked. ‘There’s no alternative is there, right?’
‘That is correct,’ Shah said meekly, his eyes looking sadder than ever.
Moments later, Katy came into the room, her face tight and pasty, her hair a tangled mess. Chris, standing unsteadily, hugged her.
She said nothing but pressed her tearful face against his neck.
Then Dr Pallant, solemn-faced, came in. His cream shirt was rumpled, the top button undone and his tie at half-mast. His eyes looked tired and there was a day’s growth of stubble on his chin. All his self-importance seemed to have gone, too.
Ushering them to sit, he joined them, and sat, hunched on his chair, his eyes darting from Katy to Chris and back repeatedly, fingers interlocked tightly. ‘Mr and Mrs Fairfax, Dr Shah has put you in the picture. We are in a very difficult situation as, I know you understand, this disease is not something any of the staff have experience with.’
‘I read that someone died of it in Scotland in 2002 after being bitten by a bat?’ Chris said.
‘That’s correct,’ the consultant said. ‘That appears to have been the only case contracted in the British Isles in the last hundred years. So, now Bluebell has had her diagnosis confirmed, it’s a question of what options are open to us. Dr Shah and I have been on calls pretty much all night to Dr Willoughby and his team in Wisconsin, and also to Professor Solomon in Liverpool here, and two other British experts who’ve made studies on rabies, and we feel there is just one way forward but it carries a big risk.’
‘Dr Pallant, if Bluebell was your daughter, what would you do?’ Katy asked pointedly. ‘Wouldn’t you try anything?’
‘I would, yes, no question.’
‘I’ve been googling rabies victims, during the night,’ Katy said. ‘Some of the videos on YouTube. It’s horrific. In their final stages they’re restrained with cords around their wrists and legs, thrashing about in their beds, frothing at the mouth. They look in agony.’
Pallant nodded bleakly. ‘I don’t want to put you through more distress than you are already suffering, but—’
‘But?’ Katy prompted.
‘There’s no easy way to say this and I want to be honest with you. The terminal stage of rabies is very distressing, both to the patients and their loved ones.’
‘Why?’ Chris said. ‘Can you explain what’s going on when the disease progresses?’
Pallant and Shah exchanged a look. The registrar responded. ‘Like other viruses, the rabies one has what I can only describe as some kind of intelligence. It’s smart, cunning, which is what makes it so difficult to contain. By the time symptoms appear, it’s too late for vaccination, and the virus is already at work destroying its host and programming the host’s brain to pass it on to other victims.’
Katy asked, ‘How – how does it know to do this?’
‘It’s like – it’s evil,’ Chris said.
Pallant nodded. ‘Those were the words Dr Willoughby used when we last spoke to him, an hour ago. He said, in reference to the virus, that the older he gets, the more he believes in the concept of pure evil, a malign intelligence.’
‘In what sense?’ Chris asked.
‘Well,’ he shrugged. ‘In addition to secretly planting itself in the brain, the next thing it does is attack the parts of the nervous system that allow humans to swallow, and the respiratory system, making it harder for them to breathe and impossible to drink. It makes its victims febrile, dehydrated and thirsty, so that although they crave water, they become too scared to drink because they know they cannot swallow. They become fearful that the water – or whatever fluid – will choke them. Then, in the final stages, it urges the victim to bite anyone it can, to pass the virus on.’
Chris and Katy stared at him for some moments in stunned silence. Finally, Katy said, ‘And what stage is Bluebell at?’
‘From Dr Willoughby’s assessment on what we’ve told him, she has two to four days left to live, if we do nothing.’
‘But we’re not going to do nothing, are we?’ Katy said.
‘With your consent,’ Pallant said, looking at each of them in turn, ‘we would like to try the Milwaukee Protocol on Bluebell. But you do need to understand the risks. That it could kill her.’
Chris looked at Pallant, then at his wife, then Shah, before looking back at the consultant. ‘She is going to die if we do nothing, right?’
‘Yes,’ Pallant said heavily. ‘I’m afraid she is.’
‘Within a few days?’ Chris asked as if for confirmation.
‘And your proposed treatment might kill her, perhaps more quickly than letting nature take its course, but it could save her life?’ Katy asked, squeezing Chris’s hand so tightly she was crushing it.
‘Correct, Mrs Fairfax. I know it’s not a great choice.’
‘It’s not a choice at all,’ Chris said. He looked at Katy and she nodded. ‘Do it, just please do it.’
94
Wednesday 31 March
Straight after the morning briefing ended, Roy Grace hurried out of the conference room. As he strode down the corridor towards his office, Mark Taylor phoned him.
‘Boss,’ the surveillance DS said. ‘Target has just confronted a young woman with a baby in Wild Park, and made off with her dog while she was lifting the baby out of the pushchair. A small, black dog, with a curly coat – one of my team thinks it is a shih-poo.’
