Chapter 17 #2
‘Is this how simple your job really is?’ Jo wondered.
‘No! This is how good I am at it,’ was Bella’s retort. ‘I’m scanning the entire Wolff-Meyer house system for new viruses and making it invulnerable to everything that we have on our files at the moment.’
‘We? Who exactly is “we”?’
‘I have contractors, people I use on a regular basis.’
‘How is business going anyway?’ Jo asked.
‘Business is fantastic. I can hardly say yes to everything I’m offered.’
‘So why don’t you say no?’
‘It’s against my rules. Why do you think I’m sitting here at 10 p.m. doing this?’
‘To do me a favour?’
‘Well, yes, there’s that, but also, it needed to be done at some point before my big meeting in New York next month.
Companies are so wonderfully gullible about computers,’ she confided, ‘You just put the call in telling them: “we’ve heard about a systems breach, we’ll have to come over and run some extra maintenance,” and the business is yours.
Nice, long-running, reliable contracts is what I’m after and this one is a beauty. ’
‘So why risk it for me?’
Bella considered for a moment before replying.
‘Your computer being bugged got up my nose, I want to know if they’re doing it.
’ Then she added, ‘Plus, I want to find out if this company is as sinister as you think it is. And, it’ll really annoy Don if I help you get some amazing scoop he wishes his paper could have had.
Why don’t you go and work for Don, by the way? ’
‘On a daily? I’d be mad. I can barely put in the hours and keep my family together on a Sunday paper. Anyway, what’s happening in New York?’ Jo asked, watching the screen in front of her flicker, the words ‘still searching’ in a corner box.
‘I’m about to be offered some really good work over there, that’s what’s happening in New York,’ Bella told her.
‘But you’re not going to move, are you?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well… Don, his job, your work here, your fabulous home, your children in school… all the usual reasons.’
‘And if Don had been offered the spectacular New York career? Would you be saying the same things? Or would you be saying, “how wonderful, well done, you, when are you going?”’
‘You know I wouldn’t.’
‘No, I know you wouldn’t but other people would.’
‘So, you are going?’
‘I don’t know. We’re thinking about it – we being Don, me, and the children.
But I’m in that ambitious woman’s dilemma: if I take the opportunity, I’ll be working flat out and although it will be great, I’ll hardly see my family.
A big part of me will hate that, and they’ll resent it…
but if I don’t, I’ll always wish I had. But why do we do things?
Or think we want to do things? I’m questioning my motivation all the time. ’
‘Are you?’ Jo couldn’t help smiling. ‘You don’t strike me as the type of person who spends much time questioning herself.’
‘Don’t I?’ Bella seemed a little hurt at this.
‘I spend a lot of time questioning my motives. I wonder: do I want the work over there for the sake of the work alone? Or to impress people? What makes me happy? You know what I always say: behind every successful woman is a dad who’s not that impressed. ’
‘And what did you conclude?’ Jo was smiling at her.
‘We probably won’t do it.’
‘But you’re going for a meeting there next week.’
‘Ye-e-e-s,’ Bella paused, then confided, ‘Don’s coming too and we’re going to see some schools, but… who knows.’
Jo’s smile broadened: ‘You’re going, you total liar. You’re even lying to yourself.’
Bella seemed to be trying not to grin.
Meanwhile, Jo was trying to bat away the sudden sadness that even thinking about Bella moving away was bringing on. ‘Couldn’t you train Don up to work for you?’ she asked her.
‘I’m thinking about that. We might murder each other, though. I mean living together is one thing, working together is quite another.’
‘I suppose. How long is this thing going to take?’ Jo looked over to the screen again: it was still showing the ‘searching’ box.
‘Depends how much it finds. If there’s a lot of info on those subjects, it will take a while. Have a sip of wine, tell me how it’s going with you.’
‘It’s OK, life continues,’ Jo said. ‘The girls are really well; I spoke to them on the way over here. It’s turning into a quite an interesting week at work.’
‘Ah ah… about to get more interesting, hopefully. Now, remember, we’re on closed circuit TV, so don’t do anything too attention grabbing.’ Bella’s eyes were on the screen behind Jo, where a small box announced:
Pertussis outbreak: 164 items
Quintet trials: 467 items
Katie Theroux: 26 items
London and Middlesex Pathology Dept: 77 items
‘You’re going to be busy looking through all that,’ Bella said.
‘So how do I do this?’ Jo asked. ‘Click on the ones I’m interested in and see what comes up?’
‘Yeah, if a restricted access notice flashes up, tell me and I’ll see what I can do to circumnavigate.’ Bella’s voice had dropped low although they were certain the camera was visually spying on them only.
After trawling for a long time through the ‘Quintet trials’ files and not finding one single shred of anything she could even make sense of, Jo decided to try a different tack. She would scan through the smallest group of files, the Theroux ones. A list of 26 headings appeared before her.
They mainly seemed to concern the employment of a Joan Theroux. She scrolled on down. This didn’t relate to the first case of whooping cough at all. None of this seemed relevant.
Instruction of solicitors in employment tribunal brought against Ms J. Theroux
Hmm… obviously Joan had not had a happy time working for Wolff-Meyer. Sheer journalistic nosiness caused Jo to drag the mouse to the heading and click.
Immediately the words:
restricted access file. Password protected
flashed across the screen. Jo wouldn’t have bothered asking for help, she would have moved on down the list of results, except that Bella glanced over and told her: ‘Here, let me on for a few moments, I’ll try and open it.’
And Jo’s curiosity to watch how Bella did it took over.
Bella moved her chair in front of the screen and began working. It seemed to be a long and tortuous process.
‘What are you doing, exactly?’ Jo wanted to know.
‘Temporarily dismantling the restricted access program across as much of the network as I can.’
‘Can you do that?’
‘Of course, and it’s something I’d legitimately need to do if I was checking the spread of a virus.’
It occurred to Jo that there was something a little unsettling about using a computer virus as an excuse to find out about a human virus.
‘Right.’
‘Here we go… should open up for us now.’
And Jo was back in front of the screen scanning down the page.
Illness leave…
Blah, blah, blah. Joan was obviously fighting the company for the way she’d been treated when she was off. But this was so recent. Why were solicitors involved already? Blah, blah—
counterclaim…
she was accusing them of negligence… they were accusing her of negligence… Jo’s eyes hit on the words:
contamination with a laboratory-modified virus
She scrolled the paragraph up slowly to the top of the page.
hazardous working conditions… unsafe working practices
A few more moments’ reading and Jo realised what this was all about.
Joan Theroux seemed to have become infected with one of the viruses she was working on in the company’s research lab in Bedford.
But Wolff-Meyer was threatening her with legal proceedings, claiming that she had breached their health and safety guidelines.
Her lawyer was arguing that she had complied with all the guidelines but that lab practices weren’t safe and had caused her to become infected.
What the hell was the virus? Jo scrolled on through the paragraphs and paragraphs of information but it didn’t seem to be listed.
She brought out a notebook, to jot down some of the most important information: Joan’s name, address, all the dates she could find.
Joan Theroux lived in the village of Lower Stenton in Bedfordshire.
Jo knew with conviction she’d seen that address before, not so long ago.
With her heart thumping, she delved in her bag for her file of anonymous emails.
She took out the printout of the first email, the one about the first whooping cough case.
Katie Theroux – of Lower Stenton, Bedfordshire
The house and the street name were different. But this wasn’t a coincidence, was it?
It didn’t look like Joan was the girl’s mother, but she surely had to be a relative.
What if Joan had been infected with a laboratory-modified strain of whooping cough, and had then gone on to infect Katie?
Obviously, the strain was different enough to infect children even if they had been vaccinated.
‘That must be it,’ she said in a quiet voice, feeling the hair rise on the back of her neck.
‘Oh, good,’ Bella said, but Jo didn’t even hear her.
The anonymous emailer who had sent her the first name, who had told her to look into that first case, who had warned her not all whooping coughs were the same, had also given the hospital pathology lab as a clue.
And here, next in her queue were files on that lab. Obviously, she had to look there next.
All seventy-seven headings on the lab were in front of her now. She might as well start at the top and read her way down.
There was just a slight problem: ‘It’s still saying restricted access, Bella.’
‘Really? Must be under a different program.’
Bella battled for some time with settings.
‘Maybe I’ll have to go round there,’ Jo wondered out loud.
‘To the hospital? Jo, it’s coming up to midnight.’
‘Is it?’ This was something of a surprise to both of them. ‘Well… it’s a hospital, there’s always someone about in a hospital,’ Jo said hopefully.