WEDNESDAY
For the next couple of days it was almost like old times. The way that they were cut off from the outside world reminded Katie of their time in Antarctica, but with the difference that they could be together openly. They cooked together, talked for hours, walked in the woods. In the evening they played cards or watched Netflix or gazed at the stars together.
It was almost as if they were on holiday, except for the constant background hum of anxiety. With every day that passed and with every temperature reading that was normal, Katie was more certain that she hadn’t got bird flu. Tarquin had come through unscathed too. But the news about Claudia wasn’t good – she was now critically ill – and Katie was living in fear that her work on the virus might have led to someone’s death.
It was the sixth day and the news was that Claudia was for now stable, though her condition remained critical. After lunch, the weather kept Katie and Justin indoors. Rain was lashing the windows and the line of the Welsh coast had disappeared.
They were in the sitting room. Justin was working on his laptop. Katie was reading about the quest for the Holy Grail in the copy of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur that Caspar had lent her.
She wanted to know why Gawain had failed in the quest. He was King Arthur’s nephew, the son of his sister, an important character and a fascinating, if flawed, one. He had initiated the quest for the Grail and that had led to the break-up of the Round Table and ultimately to Arthur’s death and the end of the kingdom. She could imagine the sort of person he was: charismatic, larger than life. He embarked on the quest in the hope of chivalric adventures – defending ladies, slaughtering foes – and of worldly glory. He hadn’t understood that the rewards would not be of this world and that he was too sinful to be allowed into the presence of the Grail. It was a sad story and she thought of what Caspar had said about the ways in which scientific researchers were like the knights of the quest. It was a romantic notion, but wasn’t there some truth in it? It was so hard to achieve anything worthwhile. There were so many disappointments and frustrations, so many dead ends, so many times when something should have worked and didn’t. You had to push on regardless, and that was just what Claudia hadn’t been able to do.
Katie’s phone rang and it was her brother, Paul, calling from Shanghai. They chatted and she spoke to her nephews. She was smiling as she hung up. Paul was a big wheel in a bank and the father of two, but with her he was still the cheeky younger brother. That never changed. They got on well now, but when they were little they had sometimes fought like cat and dog. And now he was getting his come-uppance! Those little boys were just as naughty as he’d been at their age.
She went back to her book. She had reached the part about the last battle, which had been triggered by the queen’s adultery with Launcelot. There was an awful lot of smiting, and running people through with swords. Launcelot killed two of Gawain’s brothers by mistake – that kind of thing seemed to happen a lot in the legends – and Gawain swore vengeance. Launcelot hadn’t wanted to fight him, but Gawain forced his hand, and died of his wounds.
In spite of the power of the narrative, she found her attention wandering. Something was tugging at her memory – something to do with Paul, but also something to do with what had been happening here at Debussy Point.
She was on the verge of pinning it down, when Justin broke into her thoughts.
“Do you think they’ll ever get to the bottom of what happened to Gemma Braithwaite?”
Oh, and now it’s gone, whatever it was. She sighed and put her book to one side.
“I’ve wondered about that too,” she said.
“Funny business altogether. What do you think she was doing in the Cat 3 malaria lab that night?”
Katie shook her head. “It’s a mystery. Gemma had no business being there. She only had clearance because she was on the list of first responders.”
“Do you think that was when she was infected?”
“It does seem the most likely thing.” She hesitated. “It even crossed my mind that she might have done it on purpose.”
“Suicide by mosquito?”
Katie shook her head. “Yeah, but I can’t believe it. It would be such a bizarre thing to do. And it’s a sin, isn’t it, in the Catholic church? Gemma was a lapsed Catholic, but it isn’t easy to escape something that’s been part of you from childhood.”
“Did the security staff remember seeing her that night?”
“No one saw her. She didn’t check into the building, and she wasn’t issued with a lone-worker alarm.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t actually her.”
Katie thought that over. “You mean it might have been someone who got hold of Gemma’s key card and knew her code?”
“Someone who wanted access to the lab but didn’t want to use their own ID. Tell me, Katie, how easy would it be to steal mosquitoes infected with malaria without anyone realizing that they’d gone?”
“I’d have to check with Maddie or Tarquin. I think that once the mosquitoes are infected they keep pretty close tabs on them. They’d keep a record of how many they’ve got of those. But they don’t count the ones in the insectary. There’s no need.”
“So someone could take some from the insectary to replace the infected ones and no one would know that there were any missing.”
“You mean someone might have taken infected mosquitoes in order to give Gemma malaria? But that’s horrible. No, no –”
Justin put up a hand. “OK, but let’s just run with it anyway. If she had been bitten by a mosquito recently, wouldn’t they have discovered that when they carried out the post-mortem?”
“Not necessarily. The bite could easily have had time to heal by then. She might have been infected as much as a fortnight before she died.”
“OK. Let’s say someone had got hold of infected mosquitoes. How would that work? Presumably they’re most active at night like they are in the wild?”
Katie nodded. “So it would have to be someone pretty close to her. Someone who had access to her cottage and her bedroom.” A thought struck her. “Oh no, surely not! No! Not Bill!”
“He’s the guy in charge of the malaria lab, right?”
“He was in a relationship with Gemma. But he really loved her. I’m sure he did.”
“Hold your horses. Why would Bill go into his own lab in the dead of night using Gemma’s ID? He had a perfect right to be there. If he wanted to pinch some mosquitoes he could just choose a Saturday or an evening when he knew the others wouldn’t be there.”
Katie thought of the evening she had found Bill in Gemma’s cottage, and his search for evidence that she was having an affair. He had told her that he was sure someone had been in there and that things had been moved. And Katie herself had seen a light in there one night after Gemma had been taken ill.
She told Justin what Bill had said and what she had seen. “What if Bill was right and there was another man – maybe someone who was married and Gemma was threatening to tell his wife?”
Justin looked dubious. “In this day and age? Would someone really commit murder for that? It’s not even as if this was a spur of the moment thing. A lot of planning must have gone into it.”
No, not a spur of the moment thing. Just as the attempt to kill Katie by pushing her into the sea had not been a spur of the moment thing. Again Katie was struggling to make a connection and again, yes, something to do with Paul. Something Paul had said? No...
And then she knew what had been nagging at her. It was the way Caspar had looked at her when he had realized that her undercover role was to investigate Claudia’s results. There had been surprise, yes, but also an expression that was strangely familiar. It was exactly how her brother used to look when they were children and she’d got the blame for something he’d done: a look of mingled relief and triumph. Relief that it was Claudia Katie had come to Debussy Point to expose? And then... triumph because he’d pulled one over on her? Because he’d got away with it? But with what?
Her thoughts went back to the one and only occasion when she had met Gemma before the day they had discovered her in the cottage; the brusqueness in Gemma’s voice when she spoke to Caspar, even though he was senior to her. Katie had suspected then that there was something between them. She’d assumed it was in the past, but what if it wasn’t? What if it had still been going on? Maddie had been adamant that Caspar wasn’t having an affair with Gemma, but what if she’d been wrong? Katie saw again the imperious expression on Gemma’s face – and, yes, it came back to her now: Gemma was scratching! Was that because she had been bitten?
“Oh my goodness!”
“What is it?” Justin asked.
“No, wait, let me think!”
She played back in her mind Caspar’s account of what had happened in the village. Now that she thought about it, it didn’t fit with what Gemma had actually said. The disease spreading – that was what she was worried about, but according to Caspar, it already had spread when she got to the village, and there was nothing to be done about it. But Katie only had Caspar’s word for what had gone on there. Everyone in the village was dead. The interpreter too had died, and now with Gemma gone, Caspar was the only survivor. There was no one to contradict his story.
She had been spellbound by Caspar’s charm and charisma, almost hypnotized into accepting what he said, and flattered by his confiding in her. What a fool she had been.
She laid it out for Justin, watching his reaction as she took him through it step by step. “It all stacks up,” she concluded.
He looked doubtful.
“You’re not convinced?” she asked.
“It’s not that, but suppose you’re right? What are you going to do? Go to the police? Is there any real evidence? I mean, even if he was having an affair with Gemma, that doesn’t prove anything. I don’t see how it could be brought home to him.”
He was right. Katie slumped in her chair. A conviction based on her interpretation of an expression on Caspar’s face would count for nothing. Had Caspar committed the perfect crime?
Then her eye fell on the copy of Le Morte d’Arthur open on the table next to her. There might be a way after all.
* * *
She walked straight into Caspar’s office without knocking.
He was sitting at his desk and looked up, startled. He smiled and got to his feet. “Hey, Katie, it’s great to see you! And I’ve just had some good news. There’s been a slight improvement in Claudia’s condition.”
That was indeed wonderful news, but Katie couldn’t allow herself to be deflected. “Great, but that’s not why I’m here, Caspar.”
She sat down opposite him and placed the copy of Le Morte d’Arthur on his desk. A paper marker was sticking out of it.
Caspar opened his mouth to speak and closed it again when he saw the expression on her face. He sat down. His face was wary. “What’s this all about?”
“Nemesis, I suppose you could call it,” she said. She opened the book at the marker. A flattened mosquito was stuck to the page. “This book that you lent me – you lent it to Gemma first, didn’t you? I saw it in her bedroom. Did you retrieve it yourself, or did Gemma’s sister see your name in it and give it back to you? It doesn’t matter. I can see exactly what must happened. Can’t you? The book was open on the bedside table. Gemma saw the mosquito land on it and she clapped the book shut. Of course she had no way of knowing that the mosquito was infected with malaria.”
If she had had any doubts at all, they were dispelled by the shock on his face. He reached for the book, but she snatched it away.
“Oh, no you don’t. What do you think the forensic scientists will find when they test this mosquito? I think they’ll find that it’s infected with malaria, don’t you? It could only have come from the Cat 3 lab. So, tell me, Caspar, how many mosquitoes did you take?”
He stared at her and she thought he was going to brazen it out. He shrugged.
“Five.”
“Five! How could you have taken that risk? Did you think about who else might be infected? Or didn’t you care, as long as Gemma was one of them?”
He shook his head. “No, no. It was Gemma having that cottage and being away from everyone else that made it possible.”
“What if one of us had visited Gemma while one of them was still active? What about Bill? You did know about Bill?”
“Oh, I knew about Bill. She made no attempt to hide it. That was a calculated risk. I picked a night when I knew he wouldn’t be there.”
“When was it? When did you do it?”
“It was the Monday, the day after you arrived.”
Katie’s blood ran cold. Her first day at the lab, the restless night that had followed, the dream about mosquitoes? She had woken with a start, certain that there was one in her room.
“Look,” he said impatiently. “It was safe. Or safe enough. In that temperature, the mosquitoes couldn’t have lived long enough to make it to the main house.”
“One of them did! I heard it in my bedroom. I might have caught malaria!”
“Oh, really?” he said in a tone of scientific detachment. “One of them made it all the way over to the main house? That’s interesting. I wouldn’t thought that was possible.”
She felt an absurd impulse to say, I thought you were my friend. Instead she said, “But why? Why did you do it?”
“It was either that or remain under the heel of that –” he sought for a word, “that harpy! We’d had an affair while we were out in the DRC. I wanted to end it, but I couldn’t. Not with what she had on me. And that wasn’t all. She demanded the best accommodation on the island, all kinds of preferential treatment. Believe me, there would have been no end to it. And the worst of it was that she was a phony – you found that out for yourself. She was a disgrace to the scientific community. She must have suspected what was going on with Claudia, but all she cared about was the results; she was out for herself right down the line.”
His disgust about that was genuine, Katie realized. That was the strange thing.
“But why?” she said. “What did you do? How could she have that kind of hold over you? Out there in the DRC, was it you that froze, that failed to act?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. Neither of us lost our head. But we’d been to that village on an earlier occasion, when it was only the boy that was sick. If I’d called it in, we’d have had to stay there, and even though it might have been nothing, we’d have been quarantined and it would have jeopardized our research. With hindsight, obviously, I’d have done things differently. Mind you, I still don’t think I did anything wrong. It was a judgment call and he didn’t seem as sick as all that. And then when our interpreter died, it didn’t seem necessary to, well...” He shrugged.
She finished his sentence. “It didn’t seem necessary to own up.” She remembered something Lyle had once said: “It’s not the crime that gets you; it’s the cover-up.” How true that was. Had Caspar committed a crime? No, not exactly that, but selfishly he had put his research interests first; he’d made a catastrophic error of judgment and as a result a horrible disease had got a hold. Scores of people had died, and that might not have happened if quarantine restrictions had been put in place earlier.
“And Gemma was the only one who knew,” Katie said. “She was your assistant at the time.”
His face broke into a smile – the smile she had liked so much. “You have to admit, it was a brilliant idea. It so nearly came off. Even now, well, I’m wondering. I’ve looked into your history. Your career as a researcher crashed and burned. You’ve had some bad breaks, but that could all change. I could be a good friend to you, Katie.”
Her mouth fell open. She was literally lost for words.
Caspar read her expression and shrugged. “Suit yourself. But let me point out that we’re all alone here, and when you come to think of it, do you really have any evidence? One squashed mosquito doesn’t really amount to much, does it?”
“Well, actually, I do. Now.”
She took her mobile phone out of her pocket and showed it to him. The line was open.
His reaction was so immediate that she was taken unawares. He sprang to his feet. In a flash he was round the desk. He put both hands flat on her chest and pushed. She toppled off her chair and went sprawling. He snatched a set of keys off the desk and then he was out of the door.