The Chosen Dead (Jenny Cooper 5) (9 page)

‘You needn’t worry, David. I shan’t embarrass you.’

‘Thank you.’ He seemed briefly grateful. ‘I’d appreciate that.’

Jenny pressed the buzzer at the mortuary door at 7 a.m., more in hope than expectation. To her surprise, the intercom was answered by a junior technician who said that Dr Kerr was already at work. He let her in, but as she sidestepped the gurneys cluttering the corridor and made for the door of the autopsy room, he appeared through the swing doors to the refrigeration unit and called after her. ‘You won’t want to go in there, Mrs Cooper.’

Jenny glanced through the observation pane and saw that a negative-pressure isolation tent constructed of several skins of clear polythene sheeting had been placed over the dissection table. Its electrically powered filters were designed to clean the air inside and ensure that no dangerous microorganisms harboured by the body could escape. Dr Kerr was at work inside it, wearing an all-in-one biohazard suit.

‘He won’t be long,’ the technician said. ‘He did the p-m last night but the lab came back asking for some more samples. You can wait in his office if you like.’

‘Thanks.’

He nodded, as if reassuring himself that she could be trusted, and returned to his task.

Jenny glanced back through the observation pane and saw Dr Kerr emerging from the tent with a number of steel flasks, which he placed into a refrigerated transport box. It was a procedure she hadn’t observed before and she found it unsettling. He looked up and saw her face. He waved a gloved hand then pointed, a gesture she took to mean that she should retreat to his office. She followed his advice.

More than usually aware of the warmth of the sickly sweet mortuary air, Jenny went to the office window and tried to open it. A safety catch had been fitted that allowed it to open outwards only a few inches from the frame. She pressed her face to the narrow gap and took in a deep breath. She had blithely wandered the hospital’s corridors for the past four years without ever questioning whether it was an altogether safe place to be, but now it felt alive with hidden dangers. For all his many failings, David was the most unflappable person she had ever known; for him to express concern there had to be a serious problem.

It was some minutes before Dr Kerr came through the door, carrying the strong chemical smell of the antiseptic with which he would have doused himself after the procedure.

‘Sorry about that. Takes a while to climb out of all the kit.’

‘Those were some serious precautions,’ Jenny said.

‘Very necessary, I’m afraid.’ His voice had lost its usual wry edge. ‘I was just going to call you. I wasn’t sure you’d been notified.’

‘I got word last night. The girl’s father is a colleague of my ex-husband’s.’

‘Mr Freeman. Of course. You knew Sophie?’

‘No, not really.’ It was partly true: they hadn’t spoken since her divorce. ‘Have you established a cause of death?’

‘It was meningitis.’

She felt oddly relieved. ‘My ex-husband implied there was concern it was something more sinister.’

Dr Kerr walked past her to his chair on the far side of the desk. Jenny noticed his eyes were bloodshot with fatigue. She could tell he had hardly slept.

‘That’s not an unreasonable word to use. According to her notes, from the onset of symptoms to death was only a little over eight hours. That’s remarkably quick in an otherwise healthy child. And one would certainly expect bacterial meningitis to respond to antibiotic treatment in some degree, but it seems that the drugs had no effect at all. The physicians certainly threw everything at it.’

‘I’m no expert, but I do know that meningitis is often fatal,’ Jenny said, hoping for some words of reassurance.

‘The lab started work yesterday afternoon, while Sophie was still alive,’ Dr Kerr said. ‘The aim was to identify the precise strain and work out the most effective drug regime. You may not know this, but the meningitis bacterium coats itself with a protein that prevents immune cells from attacking it. It’s very clever: a Trojan Horse, if you like. I’ve even heard an immunologist call it beautiful.’

‘Not a word I’d use.’

‘Nor me.’ He reached for his computer mouse and opened an email from colleagues in the path’ lab. It confirmed his suspicion. ‘They’re telling me none of the samples cultured have responded to any drug combinations. Cephalosporin, vancomycin, ampicillin – nothing’s worked. Of course it’s too early to say with certainty, but the concern is we’re dealing with an aggressive, drug-resistant strain.’

‘ “Aggressive” meaning what, precisely?’

‘One of the major symptoms of this strain is disseminated intravascular coagulation – it means the blood clots excessively, which perversely causes multiple haemorrhages. All the girl’s major organs were affected – liver, kidneys, brain. She had also developed grotesque swelling and gangrene in her limbs. It means either that the bacteria multiplied at an unprecedented rate, or that she remained asymptomatic until the disease was already far advanced. Neither possibility is particularly reassuring.’

‘But we’ve only seen this one case?’

‘So far.’

Jenny thought about what David had told her – his fear of drug-resistant organisms finding their way into the hospital through foreign patients.

‘Do you have any idea where she might have caught it? Wouldn’t you expect to see a cluster?’

‘Every outbreak has to start somewhere, Mrs Cooper. One of the mysteries of infectious disease is why we see a sudden flare-up then a die-off for no apparent reason. Many of us carry meningitis bacteria in our bodies benignly. The process of activation and mutation is little understood.’

‘But Sophie might have caught it from someone else.’

‘It would be foolish not to expect more cases.’

‘And the body – is it safe?’

‘As much as it can be. It’s stored in a biohazard body bag. My concern is far more for those who have been in immediate contact with her. I’m sure the Health Protection Agency is taking the appropriate steps.’ He gave an apologetic smile that said he had nothing more to give her.

Jenny pressed him on one final point. ‘Antibiotic resistance – that means this strain must have evolved defences, perhaps through not being properly treated in the past?’

‘Quite possibly.’

‘I need you to be honest with me – whatever your answer, I’ll treat it as off the record. Are we sure that all deaths caused by hospital infection are being recorded as such? There’s no management pressure to downplay a problem?’

‘If there’s an infection, I record it – you know that,’ Dr Kerr answered carefully. ‘Whether it’s drug-resistant is another matter. I’m not usually required to conduct a full-scale genetic analysis.’

Jenny nodded. ‘I understand.’

He had given a non-response, but she couldn’t have expected him to go further. Were he to have told her that deaths were being caused by potentially avoidable infection, he could find himself a witness in multiple civil actions against his employers. A few unguarded words could cost him his career.

Courteous as always, he showed her to the door, but as she started out, he said, ‘You won’t say anything to put me in an awkward situation, will you?’

She couldn’t recall a time when she had seen him appear so nervous. He was always the embodiment of calm.

‘You know me better than that.’

He gave a slow, considered nod. There was something else weighing on his mind. ‘Can you keep a confidence?’

‘Certainly.’

‘One of the senior managers called me last night – I shan’t give the name – and let it be known that rumours would be flying around this case. I was told in no uncertain terms not to contribute to them.’

Jenny made the customary call to the Freeman household from her office at a little after 9 a.m. Ed answered. She hadn’t heard his voice in over five years, yet it might have been five days. She remembered him as a naturally athletic man who had infuriated David by routinely beating him at squash. He had also shone as a neurosurgeon specializing in the treatment of brain tumours, while maintaining a sense of humour and a happy marriage to Fiona. Jenny had looked on their family as unfairly charmed.

‘Ed, it’s Jenny. Jenny Cooper. I’m so sorry about Sophie.’

‘Yes.’ He answered in the familiar monotone of the recently bereaved. ‘It doesn’t seem real.’

There were no words adequate for dealing with the sudden and unexpected loss of a child, and Jenny didn’t attempt to find any.

‘I’m only calling to say that I’ll be handling matters, if you’ve no objection.’

‘No, we’re glad it’s you. David called me this morning—’ The phrase seemed to hang, as if he had stopped himself from completing it.

Jenny said, ‘I know you won’t feel like talking now, but you know where to call.’

‘There is one thing . . .’

‘Go on.’

He hesitated. ‘You won’t let David take any heat, will you? It’s different for me – I’ve got Fiona to fall back on.’

‘I understand.’

‘Thank you,’ Ed said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

Jenny had barely set down the phone and begun to gather her thoughts when it rang again.

‘Jenny Cooper.’

‘Jenny, it’s Simon.’ The voice, which seemed to be coming from a moving car, belonged to Simon Moreton, an evermore-senior civil servant at the Ministry of Justice who, since the day of her appointment as coroner, had always made it his business to keep a watching brief on her affairs. Jenny’s mistake had been to flirt with him when they first crossed swords; and ever since he had convinced himself that they enjoyed slightly more than a merely professional relationship. ‘I’m making a few house calls in your neck of the woods today – mind if I pop round?’

She didn’t feel she was being offered any choice.

‘When should I expect you?’

She heard him exchange words with his driver.

‘I can be with you in ten minutes.’

‘That soon?’

‘Leaves you the rest of the day clear.’

‘I’ll be here.’

‘Excellent. Shall I bring coffee? I know – even better, why don’t I take you for breakfast? I insist. My treat, Jenny. My treat.’

She put down the phone with a sense of foreboding. Moreton was a man whose preferred way of doing business was over several leisurely glasses of wine at the table of an expensive restaurant. For him to have left London at dawn could only mean that he was sensing trouble.

S
IMON HAD INSISTED ON HAVING
them chauffeured the half-mile down the hill to the harbourside. Since his promotion to Director the previous year, he had use of a government Jaguar and was eager to show it off. Jenny had learned that it paid to humour him, so she pretended to admire the limousine and tolerated his gentle flirting. It was quiet at the docks on a weekday morning, and sitting at an outside table watching the seagulls lazily circle in the warm air, it was hard to remember that beyond the pleasant introductory chit-chat, lay a conversation about a young girl who had died horribly only hours before.

A civil servant who had been brought up in the old school, Moreton delayed revealing the true purpose of his visit while he sipped his coffee and complimented Jenny on how well she looked. It couldn’t have been true – after her early start she felt every one of her forty-six years – but his gentle flattery was hard to resist, and she began to feel herself relax. He had taken the trouble to study her recent cases and was full of praise for her sensitive handling of the death of a young mother killed by a police car in pursuit of an armed criminal. She didn’t tell him that she had felt furious with the jury for returning a verdict of accidental death rather than unlawful killing, but today, at least, she sensed that it was to her advantage to pretend to be the woman he had always hoped she would become: ‘one of us’.

He had ordered more coffee for them before he finally approached the point. ‘I thought you might be interested to hear that I had a call yesterday evening – from one of my colleagues in the Department of Health. She was rather exercised about a case on your patch.’

‘Sophie Freeman?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘That was quick. She wasn’t dead until eight o’clock.’

‘Anything infectious and deadly and the whole machine seems to swing into operation with alarming speed – about the only time it ever does.’

‘I’m impressed.’

He answered her with the questioning sideways look he often used to hint that he knew something that she might have presumed a secret.

Jenny remained inscrutable, telling herself not to let him get behind her guard.

‘The last thing anybody wants is an outbreak of meningitis,’ Moreton continued, ‘especially as it’s invariably the young who die. Curious. I’m told no one seems to know why that is.’

‘There are theories, I’m sure. Presumably the Health Protection Agency will be closing down her school and monitoring everyone who’s had contact with her?’

Moreton nodded. ‘And in this case, very discreetly. The media have been asked to stay away, and thankfully they seem to be complying.’

‘You don’t want the public to know?’