They spent another hour at the refuge, going over the case with Inspector Rennison before leaving for the hospital. It was his patch, so they left him in charge.
‘A good man, Rennison; not terribly quick but he gets there in the end. Any response to the APB yet, Strachan?’
‘Nothing so far, sir, but all the stations have a description of Johnstone.’
‘Did you send it to the port authorities and the railways too?’
‘Of course, sir.’
As they walked down the corridor of the fourth floor of Shanghai General, the constable guarding the room was standing at the door looking inside.
Doctor McLeod was next to him, shaking his head. ‘If you’ve come to interview the patient, I’m afraid you’re too late. She suffered a massive myocardial infarction. There was nothing we could do.’
Strachan looked bewildered. ‘But she, you said she…’
‘She had a heart attack; the stress of her injuries was too much for her body.’
‘Did she say anything before she died, Doctor?’
‘She kept mumbling the same words over and over again in English. ‘Let the game begin.’ Makes me wonder if she hadn’t been reading Ben Hur or something like that.’
Danilov peered inside the room. The curtains were drawn and it was lit by a single bedside light. A nurse had pulled the covers over the woman’s head. All Danilov could see was the outline of the shape of a body beneath the white cotton sheet, like a child playing at being a ghost. ‘Anything else, Doctor?’
The man shook his head.
‘Make sure Dr Fang is informed. She needs to be autopsied by him as soon as possible.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘This case has taken a turn for the worse, Strachan. We’ve just lost our best witness, the only one who could have told us what happened to her.’