Chapter One – Deadly Protocol

Friday, 18 June: 11.45am British Summer Time

The smell was faint but unmistakable. Ronnie had smelt it once before and never wanted to smell it again. Burning flesh.

She could taste it, too. Just like last time, when a father-of-three with ninety per cent burns was wheeled in on the last day of her ER rotation. He looked like a side of beef – and dripped like one. The guy never stood a chance.

Ronnie was desperate to run but she knew she couldn’t. Doctors don’t turn tail.

On the far side of the gleaming designer kitchen was an open doorway, leading into a cavernous conservatory that housed a swimming pool. The smell was much stronger here and Ronnie breathed through her mouth to stay in control.

Then she saw the blood, splattered in flecks across the tiles by the shallow end. There must have been a hell of a fight; a dark red trail of it stretched from the poolside to a sauna.

A mop was pushed through the wooden handle on the sauna door and wedged up against an old-fashioned mechanical time switch on the wall, stopping the heater inside from switching off. The temperature gauge read 110 degrees Centigrade. Ronnie pulled out the mop and the ratchet began counting down to zero – tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. Then she took a deep breath and forced herself to open the door.

A blast of heat smacked her in the face, followed by a wave of nausea. It started in her bowels but moved up through her stomach to reach her throat in seconds.

Inside, the brightest star in the world of cancer research was roasting on the electric heater that stood along one side of the sauna chamber. Professor Hasely Stone lay naked on his arched back, his head flopped down towards her, his salt-and-pepper hair singed. There was an intermittent fizzing sound, like bacon frying in a pan.

Stone had been dead for some time. The left side of his skull was caved in and congealed blood trailed from his nose across the cheek of his tanned face all the way to his ear. And the stench. The revolting, stomach-churning stench. It invaded every crevice of Ronnie’s nose, mouth, and palate.

The eyes that had seduced her a few short hours ago now stared straight at her, lifeless and wide open. It took all of her willpower to wrench her gaze away. Only then did she see the crude graffiti looming above her on the opposite wall. B U P! B U P! B U P! sprayed in white letters a foot high.

Ronnie ran out and collapsed by the pool, her hand over her mouth as she gagged and retched. Somehow, she stopped herself from throwing up and stumbled into the kitchen, where she grabbed a landline phone off the counter and dialled 911.

‘The number you have dialled has not been recognised.’

Stupid. The Brits used 999, didn’t they? She hung up and began to redial but stopped and put the handset down before the call connected.

She picked the phone up again and this time pressed the right keys, only to find herself disconnecting the call and dropping the handset once more. Now her brain wouldn’t even let her fingers pick up the phone, let alone dial the number.

For a few seconds, Ronnie didn’t know why. Then she understood. Completely. If she were found here, she’d be finished. It was that simple.

Dr Veronica Ackerman couldn’t let that happen. She’d escaped a tough start in the poorest zip code of Boston, Massachusetts, to win a coveted post here in London at one of the world’s top cancer research facilities. Now she was gripped by a growing certainty that she had to get out of here fast or she’d be saying goodbye to the Lipman Institute within a week.

Mrs Hasely Stone would see to that, as soon as she found out Ronnie had slept with her husband last night. The Lipman was based at St Agatha’s University Hospital, where Angela Stone was a professor of neurosurgery and almost as significant a figure there as her husband. Ronnie’s days at Aggies would be numbered, for sure.

A random image flashed into her brain. Stone pulling a condom out of its crinkled little packet after they’d stumbled onto the bed.

Another image. Angela Stone, with a piercing stare, walking towards Ronnie down a dark hospital corridor.

Then a third. Those eyes and the fizzing sound and the tick-tick-tick-tick.

The eyes shook her back to the here and now. There was nothing she could do for Stone, was there? Of course not. But there was something she could do for herself.

She had to work fast. In the kitchen, she found a packet of hand wipes and a box of bright green nitrile gloves; the brand used by the hospital. Ronnie put on two of the gloves, pulled out a wipe and ran upstairs to the bedroom. She cleaned anything she might have touched there and began to tidy her side of the bed.

She stopped short. A strand of her long, black hair lay across the pillow. Ronnie checked for others – none she could see – and took the hair into the bathroom. The condom packet was floating in the toilet bowl and its translucent rubber contents submerged below.

Ronnie dropped the hair into the bowl and pulled the handle. When the rush of water subsided, the condom and the hair were gone but the packet was still there. She fished it out, wrapped it in tissue and stuffed it in her pocket.

She wiped every surface in the bathroom. Not that she could recall coming in here, but there was a lot she couldn’t remember about last night. Not even whether they’d had sex; alcohol made women so horny but men so useless.

Finally, she went back into the bedroom and finished tucking in the sheets so it looked like Stone had spent the night alone. Now she just had to go downstairs, remove any trace of her presence there and get the hell out.

The doorbell rang.