Paul stared out of the window. He knew she was right, that it was an understandable slip of the tongue under the circumstances, and yet he couldn’t prevent himself saying the one thing which had been preying on his mind for some time: ‘So, what if Stephen were here? Would it still be me that you wanted?’
There was a brief silence. Kate leaned over to him, hugging him sideways on. But she couldn’t look at him.
‘Paul . . . how can I answer that? Surely it doesn’t matter now? What’s important is you and me. And figuring out how we get out of this without getting seriously hurt, or killed. I don’t think this is the time to worry about our relationship. But, for what it’s worth, I’m so glad you’re here. And I really, really want us to be together. I don’t want anyone else.’
Paul leaned down and kissed the top of her head. ‘I know. I’m sorry. It all feels so overwhelming at the moment, that’s all. I know I’m not helping matters by saying things like that.’
‘It’s OK.’
They hugged again and Paul closed his eyes. Kate was warm; she felt so right in his arms. He had never been the hearts and flowers type; never been a romantic who believed that certain people were meant to be together. An ex-girlfriend had, at first, tried to persuade him that fate had introduced them, that they were two halves of a whole, twin souls who would be forever entwined. Then she cheated on him and left him. Since then, he hadn’t gone looking for love, and he certainly didn’t believe in destiny. But meeting Kate . . . well, it did feel like that. He couldn’t imagine life without her now.
‘You’re still trembling,’ he said.
Her voice was quiet when she replied, speaking close to his ear. ‘I can see him, Paul. Dr Gaunt. His face. And I feel like he’s watching me.’ She squeezed him tighter. ‘He’s still out there somewhere. I know it, and it terrifies me.’
Kate went into the petrol station to buy a bottle of water, leaving Paul in the car. He thought about when she had called him Stephen. It had hurt, made jealousy flare up inside. But he believed her when she said she wanted him. He also knew that if he thought about it too much, it would drive him insane.
Wanting to fill the silence, he turned on the engine and switched on the radio.
‘Police investigating the murder of pensioner Jean Bainbridge are looking to question a man and a woman who were last seen in Cannock Chase. They are known to be armed, having stolen a gun, and may be dangerous. The man is described as . . .’
Paul switched off the radio just before Kate got back to the car. There was no point giving her even more to worry about.
Dr Clive Gaunt punched the code number into the panel and waited for the door to slide open. As he stepped inside he felt that familiar tingle, the thrill he got from his toes to the few hairs remaining on his scalp. It happened whenever he entered this cool, brightly-lit room. Only he and one other were allowed in here. This was his space, where his life’s work resided, where his most treasured possessions dwelled in suspended animation, waiting to be brought to life.
He walked around, running a gloved finger over the dull metal surfaces of the freezer units, surrounded by state of the art lab equipment. He didn’t need to label the units; he knew by memory what was in each one. When he closed his eyes he could see inside – no, more than that. In his mind’s eye he could picture the viruses as magnified by an electron microscope. So beautiful. For example, the human papillamovirus, like a bright cluster of sea anemones swimming in a warm sea. Or the herpes viruses, each like some exotic flower, their capsids blooming in vivid colour. HIV was another favourite, bringing to mind an alien species from the dark edges of the universe.
His father had collected fine wines, and when Clive was a boy, Gaunt senior would very occasionally allow him to accompany him into the wine cellar. He wasn’t allowed to speak during these worshipful visits, which usually happened on a Sunday, when father would return from church (or rather, his post-church visit to the pub). ‘Come with me,’ he’d say, and he would lead Clive down the stairs and switch on the low-hanging light. The bottles, shining darkly in the dimness, were racked from floor to ceiling. His father would trace their labels with his finger, pick them up and cradle them, murmur sweet nothings before replacing them. On very special occasions, a bottle would be taken upstairs, opened, sniffed, savoured, sipped. And Clive would sometimes be allowed a small glass, given a clip round the ear if he didn’t pull an adequately appreciative face as he tasted it.
When his father died, he sold off the entire collection and had the cellar of their huge country house converted. He wondered what Father would say if he’d known what the great fortune he had left his only child would be used for; or if he’d known that one day his house would be the headquarters of the British cell of a worldwide network of very special scientific researchers; that what was once his wine cellar would house what was arguably the world’s finest collection of viruses, rivalled only by those of Ryu Koizumi in Japan and Charles Mangold in Utah. Though Koizumi was merely a rich collector – he didn’t do anything with his viruses – and Mangold had become a recluse since the demise of his business. Years before, when his father was still alive and Gaunt was not so wealthy, Mangold – who had run a pharma company in Utah – had been a useful ally, secretly funding much of the research that went on behind the scenes at the CRU.
Gaunt sat down in a chair that allowed him full view of his collection, and rubbed his aching knees. He was an old man now, a long way past his physical prime. Over the last few years he had developed a sense of time running out, his brain getting slower, his memory less reliable, his bones stiffer. After years of slow, painstaking research, this sense of life’s hourglass running empty had spurred him on, made him work harder and faster. Now, at seventy-eight years old, he was exhausted. But – thank science! – he was almost there now. He could see the finishing line. Could taste victory.
He sometimes dreamt of writing an autobiography to tell the full story of his life and work. How the chattering classes would gasp. It was a shame that the world would die without hearing the truth.
After the frustrations of his early life as a scientist, when he worked for the Ministry of Defence, the Cold Research Unit, where he had led the lab team, had allowed him to do what he loved most: experimenting with viruses new and old. Under cover of the official research into the common cold – tedious snot-studying work which he left mostly to the junior virologists – Gaunt had pursued his true passion, work that had begun in that glorious post-war period before being stamped on by meddling politicians.
His international contacts, made during those MoD days, had given Gaunt both the impetus and the means to pursue his virological passions. Although his chief private benefactor, dear old Mangold, would have had a fit if he’d known that Gaunt in fact had two paymasters. If Gaunt ever revealed the truth about the involvement of the British Government in his activities, it would have given conspiracy theorists multiple orgasms and caused an international scandal.
But those days were long behind him. He’d had no contact with the secret services or the MoD for years, and he had fallen out with Mangold. For a decade and a half, since the fire that destroyed the CRU, he had been on his own, living off the money his father – who had conveniently died shortly before the destruction of the CRU – had begrudgingly left him. He had built his own lab, filling it with state of the art equipment. And this freedom, far from the prying eyes of do-gooders like Leonard Bainbridge, had allowed Gaunt to make great strides. Sometimes he even amazed himself with his own genius.
He stood up and strolled proudly around the chamber. In these cabinets, below the ground in an English country house, were some of the most dangerous and hazardous organisms on earth. Here was stored the variola virus, which caused smallpox, last seen rampaging through Somalia in 1977. After the initial symptoms – vomiting, fever, delirium – it turned the body into a patchwork of lesions before it destroyed the immune