A Lovely Way to Burn

Book 0: Plague Times Trilogy

by Louise Welsh

Genres: Literary Fiction; Thrillers

Synopsis

As heard on BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime It doesn't look like murder in a city full of death. A pandemic called 'The Sweats' is sweeping the globe. London is a city in crisis. Hospitals begin to fill with the dead and dying, but Stevie Flint is convinced that the sudden death of her boyfriend Dr Simon Sharkey was not from natural causes. As roads out of London become gridlocked with people fleeing infection, Stevie's search for Simon's killers takes her in the opposite direction, into the depths of the dying city and a race with death. A Lovely Way to Burn is the first outbreak in the Plague Times trilogy. Chilling, tense and completely compelling, it's Louise Welsh writing at the height of her powers.

Release date: March 20, 2014

Publisher: John Murray

Print pages: 369

Sample

Eight

Stevie turned off the laptop, pulled on clean underwear, a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, took the telephone through to the sitting room and phoned the TV station, hoping to God it wasn’t Rachel who was producing the show that night.

‘Hello?’

Rachel had recently abandoned the mockney accent she had cultivated for years and reverted back to the clear, well-formed vowels of public school and Oxford. Her hello hung in the air like a challenge.

‘Rachel, it’s me, I’m sorry I didn’t ring earlier but . . .’ Stevie paused, unsure of what to say.

‘But you know I run a relaxed ship and that it’s easy come easy go around here?’

‘I asked Joanie to call you. My boyfriend died and I’ve been throwing up for the past few days.’

There was a pause on the line, and then Rachel said, ‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.’

‘I don’t any more. I found him dead in his bed on Wednesday.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Rachel’s voice was surprisingly gentle. ‘I had a cousin who accidentally took an overdose at a party. My sister and I found her the following morning. It was horrible.’

‘It wasn’t drugs. He was a doctor.’

‘Either way it’s a tragedy.’

Rachel’s tone suggested that doctors were far from being above suspicion.

‘He didn’t do drugs.’ Stevie wasn’t sure why she was so anxious to labour the point. ‘The police think it was something called sudden adult death syndrome. You go to sleep and never wake up.’

Rachel sighed. ‘I was about to send someone round to check on you.’

‘To check on me?’

‘You live on your own, you phoned in sick and then we heard nothing, complete radio silence. I got young Precious to phone, but you didn’t pick up. I was worried.’

‘I’m touched.’ Stevie silently cursed Joanie. She was probably off on one of the short-lived romantic adventures that had become a feature of her life since her Derek’s defection.

‘I’m genuinely sorry to hear about your boyfriend, Stevie,’ Rachel continued. ‘Believe me I wouldn’t do this if I had any choice, but you’re on shift tonight.’

Stevie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She had calculated the consequences of walking out on her job so many times that the urge to tell Shop TV to shove it automatically conjured the aura of unpaid bills and lawyers’ letters. But proximity to death had made her reckless. She opened her eyes.

‘Rachel, Simon died. I found him. I don’t think I can go on live television and pretend to be wet about whatever crap it is we’re punting tonight. Cut me bit of slack, just this once, please.’

‘I would love to, believe me I sympathise. I’ll never forget finding my cousin Charlotte, it took me years to get over it. I’m not sure my sister ever recovered, but we’re three presenters down, including Joanie who’s in hospital.’

The guilt that had sat on Stevie since she had discovered Simon screwed itself tighter in her stomach.

‘What’s wrong with Joanie?’

‘The same thing that’s wrong with the rest of them, only more so, sickness, vomiting, diarrhoea, high fever, hot and cold sweats. Don’t you watch the news?’

‘I told you, I was sick. I thought it was the shock of finding Simon.’

‘The great washed and unwashed of London are going down with the lurgy, as are a good portion of Paris, New York and anywhere else you care to mention. People have died. That’s why I was going to send someone round to check on you. I was worried you might have shuffled off this mortal coil.’

For the first time Stevie thought she could detect a note of panic beneath Rachel’s posh bonhomie. She walked to the window. The parade of shops in the street below looked as busy as ever. Rachel had a reputation for exaggerating, but she wouldn’t lie about Joanie being in hospital.

‘Do you think that might have been what got your boy?’ the producer asked.

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Rachel that Simon hadn’t been her boy, not really, but Stevie merely said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘If you can get here for seven, I’ll get Precious to go over the briefings with you, and you can go on at eight.’

‘I look like shit.’

‘We’ll all look like shit by then. I’m covering for Brian, and then doing my own gig tonight. Put your trust in make-up, darling. You’ll look a million dollars by the time you go on.’ Now that everything had been settled, the producer was back to her usual brisk self. ‘I’ll email you the product line-up so you’re not entirely in the dark when you arrive. We’ve got some top-notch stuff.’

Rachel always described their merchandise as ‘top-notch stuff’. Joanie, whose father and grandfather had worked the markets, called it swag.

Stevie asked, ‘Which hospital is Joanie in?’

‘I’m not sure, hang on.’ Rachel had a muffled exchange with someone and then came back on the line. ‘St Thomas’s. She’s in intensive care, but I’d keep away if I were you. This thing seems to be catching and we can’t afford to lose another presenter.’

‘You forget I’ve already had it.’

‘That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re immune. My cousin Charlotte thought she was immune. Look where it got her.’

Eighteen

A wind was rising and Stevie could hear the cord of the window blind tap, tap, tapping against the pane. She had kicked the covers off in the night and a chill had crept into her bedroom and across her body. She reached out blindly and pulled the covers up. Tap, tap, tap, the sound of plastic hitting against glass. She knew she should get up and close the window before the storm arrived and rain blew in, but she was wearier than the dead, and sleep kept towing her under. Tap, tap, tap. Stevie looked towards the sound. The blinds were raised, the window closed. Simon stood on the other side of the pane, his face pale and slack, his index finger tapping against the glass.

He mouthed, ‘Let me in.’

Stevie made to move, but then she remembered that he was dead and floating miraculously outside her third-floor window.

‘No!’

Stevie’s head shot up. She was still in her car outside the police station. Tap, tap, tap. She looked groggily at the passenger-side window and came face to face with a young woman.

‘It’s my Nan.’ The woman’s voice was muffled, her features absurdly close. ‘She’s not well.’

Stevie rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. The woman was still tapping on the window, an insistent rhythm. Her short nails had been tipped with French-polished falsies, a few of which remained.

‘You’ve got to help me.’

The stranger’s pupils were tiny. She was strung out, though whether it was from fear or something more chemical, Stevie couldn’t be sure. She lowered the window an inch.

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘I don’t know, do I? I’m not a doctor. She needs to go to hospital.’

It was a scam, Stevie was almost certain of it, but a small sliver of doubt niggled at her. She took her bag from the well of the passenger seat. There were three tens and a twenty tucked inside her purse. She slid the tens free and posted them through the gap in the window to the woman.

‘Take a taxi.’

‘The lifts are off. I need help to get her down the stairs.’

The key was still in the ignition. Stevie started the engine.

‘Ask a neighbour.’

‘None of those bastards will help me.’

The woman had tucked the money into the pocket of her jeans. Her fingers were back at the window, not tapping this time, squeezing through the gap, trying to force the glass down.

‘Let go.’ Stevie pressed the button to raise the window again, but the woman’s hands were in the way and it refused to close. She looked around for something to swat them with. All she could find was the ice scraper that had sat in the pocket of the driver’s door since last winter. She waved it at the woman. ‘I’m telling you to fuck off.’

‘Language.’ The woman was laughing now, a crazy sound, cutting through the dawn, but her fingers were persistent and the window shifted a little beneath their pressure. Stevie rapped the invading knuckles with the ice scraper and the woman shouted, ‘That fucking hurt.’

Stevie took off the handbrake and let the Mini roll slowly back, but the woman was tenacious.

‘Don’t be like that.’ She hung on, laughing more wildly now, as if this were some game between the two of them. ‘You’ll have me hand off.’

‘Let go.’

Stevie rapped at the fingertips again with the scraper, harder this time, and saw one of the false nails detach and land on the passenger seat.

‘Stop it.’ The woman laughed. ‘It hurts.’

And then suddenly a second pair of hands was inserting itself between the car roof and the window, trying to prise them wider apart. Stevie couldn’t see the person’s face, just a stretch of T-shirt and tracksuit bottom, a Nike logo. These hands were broader, with patches of hair on their fingers. The window started to give. The woman fell back laughing, leaving the man to it.

‘You’re for it now,’ she hooted. ‘Boots will get you. You should have ran me over.’

Stevie put the car in gear and drove towards the road. There was a bellow of pain, a sound of something dragging and a scream of protest from the whey-faced woman, but Stevie kept her eyes on the view ahead, and her foot on the accelerator.

When she glanced through the side window a mile or so down the road, she saw familiar streets through a smear of blood. It was only a smear, Stevie reassured herself; much less than there would have been had she severed one of the man’s fingers. She kept the window down the fraction she had already lowered it, letting the cool air hit her face, hoping it would be enough to keep her awake until she got home.

 

The pavements had the blighted look they took on after a heavy weekend, littered with the remnants of fast-food feasts and stained with piss and pakora sauce. Stevie stopped at a red light and a cleaner carrying a bucket and mop crossed the road. The cleaner’s hair was concealed beneath a dark blue headscarf, her clothes covered by a neat tabard. It was hard to believe there could be anything seriously amiss in a city where such women went calmly about their business.

The traffic lights flashed and then shifted to green. Stevie drove on slowly. There were other cars on the road now and she rolled the window open wider. This was one of the intersections of the day, when too-early-to-work businessmen and women crossed paths with the last of the staggering-home crew; the time when those easing themselves into the day, the early-morning joggers and sippy-cup-coffee crew, shared the streets with night workers and the beginning-to-come-down-from-whatever-had-kept-them-up-all-night crowd.

Stevie felt her eyes grow heavy and turned on the car radio. A farming programme was on, the presenter interviewing a scientist about the likelihood of the virus crossing species. We all remember the panic surrounding the H1N1 virus commonly known as bird flu. The fear then was that the illness would pass from birds to humans. Are you worried that this current virus, which has been christened V5N6, might infect cattle and other livestock?

Stevie turned off the radio and stopped in front of another red light. A shoal of cyclists slid to a halt around her car. For the first time in ages she noticed the variety of the people, the assortment of skin colour and styles that had secretly delighted her when she moved to London. A pink-faced man in a business suit and cycling helmet put a hand on the roof of the Mini and leant insolently against it. Some other day she might have unlocked the handbrake and rolled gently forward just for the pleasure of seeing him wobble, but instead she gazed at the miracle of him: his crumpled fawn suit; the red sock revealed by his rolled-up trouser leg. She glanced up at his face and saw a white cotton mask stretched across his mouth and nose.

On the other side of the road the proprietor of a Turkish café flung a bucket of hot, soapy water across the pavement in front of his shop and began sweeping it into the gutter. Shelf stackers were busy unpacking boxes inside the Tesco Metro. The sun was fully up now. The warmth of it on her face seemed to soothe her grazes. The lights changed again. Stevie let the cyclists dash ahead. She kept her eyes on the road, reached a hand into the glove compartment, found her sunglasses and put them on.

It was as if morning had recalibrated the world. Everything looked so normal that, if it weren’t for her bruises, she would find it hard to believe the episode in the car park or her conversation with Derek had taken place. A bus stopped to let early-morning commuters aboard and Stevie glanced in her wing mirror, beyond the smear of blood, checking that she was free to overtake. Something on the passenger seat caught her eye. She passed the bus and then took a tissue, lifted the false fingernail from the seat and dropped it out of the window.

She hated Derek’s cynicism, his description of people as the scum of the earth, but suddenly she felt as if the wakening streets around her were an illusion that might be peeled back any time, to reveal another, shadow world that could suddenly drag you under without a by-your-leave.

‘You’re well out of it, Joanie,’ she whispered. ‘Well out of it.’

But she wished she had asked Derek how it had been; if Joanie had suffered, or if she had slipped away without the panic of knowing that it was the end.

Eleven

Stevie washed her hands with the antibacterial gel from the dispenser in the corridor and pulled at the door to the children’s ward. It refused to open. She tried pushing and then pulled again, but it stood firm against her.

‘What did you expect me to do, Simon?’ she muttered beneath her breath. ‘Use a battering ram?’

There was a security pad on the wall, similar to the one she swiped her identity card on at the television station. She thought again of Simon’s letter, his appeal to her ingenuity. But she was powerless against locks and electronic alarms.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor behind her. Stevie could tell it was a man by the confident length of his stride and the flat sound his shoes made against the floor. She took a step backwards, fished out the small handbag she had slipped into her satchel with the laptop and started rummaging in it. When the stranger was almost upon her, she tipped the bag’s contents, a jumble of receipts, pens, card wallet, purse and cosmetics, on to the floor.

‘Damn.’ The case of an Yves Saint Laurent lipstick had cracked when it hit the ground, and her curse wasn’t entirely an act. Stevie crouched and started gathering up the muddle of stuff. ‘I’m sorry.’ She had hoped the newcomer might bend and help her pick up the spilled contents, but she could feel him standing behind her. Stevie glanced up and saw a tall, broad-shouldered man in a white coat staring down at her. His brown eyes were shielded by glasses, but his stiff posture was as impatient as a clicking finger.

‘I’m sorry.’ She got to her feet, apologising again. ‘You’re in a hurry.’ Stevie read the name card pinned to his lapel as she stood up: Dr Ahumibe. The doctor’s expression was stern, but his eyes did a quick flit, down, then up her body. Stevie smiled, forcing herself not to show too many teeth. Face-to-face selling required more subtlety than the brash, late-night TV pitches she was used to giving. ‘Can you tell me where to find Mr Reah, please? I was meant to meet him after his rounds, but I seem to have lost my bearings.’

Dr Ahumibe closed his eyes for a second. His expression was tight, like that of a man who knew he was reaching the end of his tether, but was determined to stay in control.

‘I’m sorry,’ Stevie said again. ‘It’s a big hospital, easy to get lost.’

The doctor opened his eyes. He swiped the door and ushered her into the ward.

‘Are you a close colleague of Mr Reah?’ His voice was deep and upper class, touched with a hint of an accent she couldn’t quite identify.

‘No.’ The question startled her.

‘A friend?’

‘We haven’t met before.’

‘That’s good.’ He took off his glasses and dragged a hand across his face. Stevie’s calves felt tight, the way they did after a long run, and some instinct told her to turn around and walk away, but she stayed where she was. The doctor replaced his glasses. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that Mr Reah is dead.’

‘Dead?’ Stevie repeated the word, as if saying it would make death more real. ‘When?’

‘Yesterday.’

The edges of the ward seemed to sharpen. She saw the grey floor, the doors to the private patients’ rooms, the nurses’ station midway down the corridor, everything sure and distinct.

‘Was it an accident?’

‘No, it wasn’t an accident. But it was sudden.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m sorry, but you’ll appreciate we’re working at full capacity. The ward is two doctors down and the hospital as a whole is facing a massive challenge. Perhaps I can point you towards someone else who can help you?’

Stevie took a step backwards. The smell of the hospital was in her nostrils; the scent of her illness filtered through a chemical wash, harsh and sweet.

‘No, it’s fine, thanks.’

She turned to go but there must have been something furtive about the way she moved, because the doctor gripped her by the wrist, keeping her there.

‘Are you a journalist?’

Stevie wondered why the presence of a journalist would spook him. She forced another smile. ‘No.’ There was a move she had learnt in self-defence classes when she was a student – a chop to the attacker’s forearm, designed to hit a nerve and release his grasp – but force was always the last resort. She lowered her voice and whispered, ‘Let go of my arm. You’re hurting me.’

‘It’s not acceptable for people like you to go wandering around in search of an angle or a scoop, or whatever it is you call it.’ The doctor kept his voice low, but his words were like bullets. ‘This is a hospital. The children on this ward are extremely sick. Some of them are dying. Is that a big enough story for you?’

A piece of spittle had landed on Stevie’s cheek. She resisted the urge to wipe it away.

‘You’ve a good instinct for professions. I used to be a journalist but I haven’t worked as one for quite a while. My name is Stephanie Flint. I was Simon Sharkey’s girlfriend. He asked me to deliver something to Mr Reah.’

The doctor let go of her arm, as if her skin had suddenly scalded him, but a note of suspicion still coloured his voice.

‘Simon never mentioned you.’

‘We hadn’t been going out for very long.’

‘So why the subterfuge?’

‘Simon probably thought it wasn’t your business who he went out with.’

The doctor touched her arm.

‘That’s not what I meant. Why didn’t you tell me who you are?’ His anger had vanished and his voice was gentle.

Stevie couldn’t tell him about the letter from beyond the dead, the trouble Simon had gone to, hiding the laptop in her loft, the resolution she had made to follow his instructions.

‘Simon was insistent that I deliver the package to Mr Reah personally. I didn’t realise I had to introduce myself.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘I don’t know.’

Ahumibe was still staring at Stevie as if she was a ghost. His face was gaunt, but there was a hint of flesh around his jowls that suggested he might recently have lost weight. He sighed and she saw him making an effort to return to himself.

‘I would have got in touch to pass on my condolences to you, if I’d known.’ He shook his head. ‘Simon always joked that he was married to medicine. Are you organising the funeral?’

‘No, a cousin is taking care of his estate.’

His estate. Stevie didn’t think she had ever used the phrase before. It sounded like an expression lifted from a Victorian novel, not anything that could be relevant to her.

‘I see.’ The doctor gave her a weary smile and she saw that he was handsome. ‘I’m John Ahumibe. I was a friend of Simon’s. Whatever this package is, if it’s hospital property then it must be returned. I can make sure that it finds the right home.’

Stevie drew the bag closer to her.

‘That’s kind of you, but Simon was insistent that it went to Mr Reah personally.’

Dr Ahumibe’s voice was patient. ‘Sadly that is no longer possible.’

‘Then I’ll pass it to his executor. She can decide what to do next.’

Dr Ahumibe gave a swift look down the ward.

‘Come with me.’ He touched Stevie’s elbow and led her into a small office off the main ward, shutting the door. The room was clean and white, but it appeared that whoever occupied it had been suddenly called away; papers were splayed across the desk, a half-drunk cup of coffee abandoned beside them.

Stevie asked, ‘Was this Mr Reah’s office?’

‘Mr Reah generally wrote up his notes in here, but the room wasn’t for his exclusive use. We’re pushed for space, like everywhere else in the hospital.’ He gave a rueful, upside-down smile. ‘Everywhere else in the city.’

‘What did he die of?’

Dr Ahumibe put his hands in the pockets of his white coat and leant against the desk, staring down at his shoes.

‘I don’t know.’ He raised his head and looked at Stevie. ‘Nobody knows, but people are dying from it. Hospitals might not be the healthiest places to be right now.’

‘Are they ever?’ She meant it as a joke, but her voice broke on the final word. ‘Sorry.’ Stevie massaged her temples with her fingertips, wishing she could stop apologising. ‘It’s been a long day.’ She thought of Joanie in intensive care, remembered the man falling from the Underground escalator and the old lady saying, ‘He’s got the sickness.’ She asked, ‘How serious is it?’

‘No one’s sure yet.’ Dr Ahumibe pulled out a chair from beneath the desk. ‘Sit down.’ She sat and he squatted level with her, scrutinising her face. ‘You’re pale. Do you feel feverish?’

‘I’m fine.’ No one had stood so close to her for days. Not since Joanie had greeted her with a kiss before they last went on air. ‘I saw an accident on the way here and I’m a bit hospital-phobic, that’s all.’ The doctor smelt like Simon, Stevie realised, the same scent of soap and long hospital hours. ‘Plus I’ve been indoors for the last few days. I came down with something after I found Simon. It laid me out. I think I’m still recovering.’

She pulled away from him and Dr Ahumibe sank into another chair, his feet planted wide apart, body hunched forwards, his brown eyes still fixed on hers. His hair was black and neatly shorn, showing the shape of his skull, the swell of the back of his head.

‘You found him?’

‘Yes.’

She thought he was going to ask her about it, but he said, ‘It’s hard to believe.’ His skin looked muddy with tiredness.

‘I know.’ She had seen Simon’s body with her own eyes, but it seemed impossible that the flesh which had held her flesh was easing into decay. No, she reminded herself, the decay had been stalled. His body was in a freezer somewhere, awaiting a post mortem. Dr Ahumibe’s brow puckered with deliberate concentration or concern, she wasn’t sure which.

‘Tell me your symptoms.’

Stevie listed the horrors that had pursued her. The doctor nodded from time to time, as if to show she was confirming what he already knew. When she had finished he said, ‘And you feel okay now?’

‘A little weak, prone to queasiness, but basically fine.’

He nodded, his face closed and careful.

‘It’s good to meet a survivor.’

‘Surely only people who are already weak are in real danger.’ The words made her sound like a eugenicist and she added, ‘I mean old and very young people, or people who are already ill.’

‘Mr Reah was a hale-and-hearty fifty-five.’ The doctor clasped his hands together.

‘And Simon? Is that what killed him?’

Dr Ahumibe looked away from her, towards a small window high on the exterior wall and a glimpse of blue sky. Stevie followed his gaze and thought how like a prison cell the room was.

‘No. From what I heard, Simon died of something else.’ He ran a hand across his skull. ‘Simon and I had known each other a long time. We worked together here, and as part of the same small team in private practice. That’s why I was surprised he hadn’t mentioned you. Whatever it was he wanted you deliver to Mr Reah, he would have trusted me with it, now that Malcolm’s gone.’

Stevie hesitated. Simon’s letter was insistent that she trust no one except Reah. But Reah was dead and Dr John Ahumibe had a tired, anxious air that made her want to confide in him. Behind her a door opened.

‘You’re needed on the ward.’ The nurse who had entered was dark and pretty, with black hair that looked as if it would break into a riot of curls, were it not besieged by a barricade of pins.

Ahumibe gave her a small nod and got to his feet.

‘Two seconds.’ He looked at Stevie, his eyes mild and unreadable. ‘Why not open the package here and make up your mind once you’ve seen what’s in it?’

Dr Ahumibe had the sort of voice designed to soothe frightened patients, or to gently break bad news, but the reasonableness of it recalled Simon’s letter. He had told her not to entrust the laptop to anyone else, no matter how polite, kind or authoritative. Stevie slung her satchel over her shoulder.

‘I’ll phone if it’s anything belonging to the hospital.’

The nurse was stil. . .