DR CHRIS COPPINGER considered himself a lucky man. Out of the three scientists who had set out from the Arctic Research Station on Svalbard four days previously, he was the only one still alive. This, they had told him, just before they released him from quarantine, was because he’d had the foresight to stay outside the hut where that poor Russian was spewing lethal germs into the room. Clever man, they said to him, after the tests came back negative. Good sense of self-preservation. A natural survivor. He decided not to mention that he had, albeit briefly, dashed inside the hut to light the fire for Dr Mackenzie.

The news that she, his fellow researcher, had died the previous day had come as a terrible shock to Chris Coppinger. He had really thought they would be able to save her. So much had been learned from dealing with the Ebola and Coronavirus outbreaks, surely critical care in developed countries like Britain was supposed to be on top of these things. So now, released from quarantine and given a week’s leave, Coppinger was on his way to Epsom to see Sheila’s next of kin. It was not a journey he relished, but in her dying hours in the Royal Free, Sheila Mackenzie had made this special request, that he should visit her baby niece, Roberta. So, naturally, that was exactly what he would do. Chris Coppinger, devoted to his research work in atmospheric chemistry and still unmarried at forty-two, had no idea what sort of a present you gave to an eighteen-month-old girl. So he simply went into the nearest toy shop and bought the first thing that caught his eye: a soft pink dinosaur. ‘Tyranno’, it said on the label attached to its floppy tail.

Just before Chessington he turned off the A3 and drove his hire car towards the sedate Surrey market town of Epsom. He had keyed the family’s address into the satnav, he had Classic FM playing on the car stereo, and now that the sun was starting to emerge from behind the clouds it almost felt like spring. It wasn’t until the next turn-off that he started to feel a headache pounding behind his temples. Thinking he could simply be dehydrated, he pulled over at the next corner shop and bought himself two bottles of Highland Spring mineral water. Sitting in the car with the door open, he drank them both in one go. Yet he still felt increasingly unwell. He undid a button on his shirt and checked himself in the mirror above the driver’s seat. Not good. He saw something approaching desperation in the face that stared back at him, and noticed it was shiny with sweat. In March. Something was wrong here.