Crisis

EIGHT

Bannerman decided that it was about time that he took a look at Stobmor, Achnagelloch’s neighbouring community. He ascertained that it boasted a hotel, then arranged by phone to have dinner there at eight o’clock. He left his own hotel at six and drove the seven miles over to Stobmor, leaving himself plenty of time to look round.

In many ways Stobmor was little different from Achnagelloch, although it did possess a small office block, an unimaginative concrete box with signs saying that it was the headquarters of the Dutch quarry company, Joop van Gelder. Further along the road Bannerman found the cottage hospital that MacLeod had mentioned although, at the moment, it seemed empty and showed no lights. There was a board outside giving emergency telephone numbers. In the main street he found the local job centre with a lighted window and looked at the cards for a while to see what was on offer in the area.

There were ten vacancies. There was a post for an electrician at the quarry — preferably with knowledge of electric motors. Three further jobs at the quarry were for labourers. There were openings for two security guards at the power station — ideally with a services background — and there was a lab technician’s job in the monitoring section. The remaining positions were for domestic help and for a shop assistant’s post in the local mini-market. There was one farm job on the board: it was for a sheep worker at Inverladdie.

As he walked the streets Bannerman passed the primary school with its child paintings stuck up proudly in the windows. Road safety appeared to have been the theme, with traffic lights and Zebra crossings well to the fore. One window was entirely taken over by a cardboard cut-out policeman holding up traffic with a hand that appeared to have sausages for fingers.

Bannerman noticed that there was no shortage of cars parked in the streets, many with registrations younger than three years old. He took this as a barometer of the prosperity of the town. The quarry and the power station had ensured full employment in the area. He wondered how long Inverladdie might have to wait before a man opted for a farm labourer’s wage instead of the more lucrative alternatives.

Bannerman’s theory of general prosperity seemed to be reinforced by the fact that the houses seemed well-cared for and the gardens tidy and meticulously tended. Many of the houses appeared to have undergone recent upgrading; their doors and windows had been replaced. This was a working community, well ordered and probably quite content, thought Bannerman. He made his way towards the Highland Lodge Hotel in Main Street and a dinner he was now ready for.

The dining-room of the hotel was empty when Bannerman went in, although he noticed that another table had been set for half a dozen people. It was cold in the room and he rubbed his hands together and shivered as he sat down and took the menu from the girl who had showed him in. Happily she took the hint and lit a butane gas fire that stood in front of the fireplace with its empty and cheerless grate. The butane burner made a noise like a propeller driven aircraft approaching from afar. It made Bannerman think of the war film, The Dambusters.

‘You’re not from round here,’ said the girl when she came back to hover, with her pad and pen at the ready.

‘Does that mean that local people wouldn’t dream of eating here?’ asked Bannerman, immediately regretting his mischief-making when he saw the girl blush deeply.

‘Oh no,’ she exclaimed. ‘I just meant that it was unusual to see a tourist at this time of year. Lots of people eat here, honestly.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Bannerman. ‘I’m sure it will be very nice.’

‘Mr van Gelder, himself, is giving a dinner party here later,’ said the girl, indicating to the set table.

‘A more than good enough recommendation I’m sure,’ said Bannerman, wishing that he hadn’t upset the girl in the first place and resolving to give her a big tip whatever the food was like. He guessed that she was a high-school girl making some money with an evening job. She had an openness and innocence about her that made him feel old.

‘Would you like a drink while you’re deciding?’ she asked.

‘I’d love a gin and tonic,’ replied Bannerman with a distant smile.

The meal proved far better than Bannerman had dared hope and was without doubt the best meal he had eaten since the one Shona MacLean had cooked. He found himself reluctant to leave the dining-room, which had warmed up considerably, and gladly accepted the offer of a second refill to his coffee cup to go with another cigarette. He was thinking about Shona MacLean when the all male dinner party arrived. He found that he recognized one of them. Jack Sproat, the owner of Inverladdie Farm was the second man to come into the room.

The newcomers were all laughing at something but the smile faded from Sproat’s face when he saw Bannerman sitting there. He detached himself from the party and came over.

‘I didn’t expect to find you here Doctor,’ he said.

‘I fancied a change,’ replied Bannerman, evenly.

‘How is your investigation going?’

‘It’s not really an investigation,’ replied Bannerman. ‘‘I’m just checking to see if anything was overlooked at the time.’

‘Who is your friend, John?’ asked a voice with a pronounced accent.

‘This is Dr Bannerman, Joop,’ replied Sproat. ‘He’s from the Medical Research Council. He’s looking into the deaths of my workers.’

‘Won’t you join us, Doctor?’ asked the man with the accent.

“Thank you but I’ve just eaten,’ replied Bannerman, looking at the smiling man with the short, cropped fair hair. Bannerman thought him to be in his early fifties, although he looked younger at first glance because of his good teeth and a smooth, slightly tanned skin. It was a complexion he associated with wealth.

‘Just for a drink perhaps?’

‘All right, thank you,’ replied Bannerman, and he got up to join the others.

‘I’m Joop van Gelder,’ said the smiling man, getting up to shake Bannerman’s hand and bring another seat for him. Bannerman was introduced to the others in turn. Two of the remaining men were Dutch; the other three local farmers and land-owners.

That was a terrible business at Inverladdie,’ said van Gelder. ‘Meningitis seems to be on the increase these days.’

‘I think Dr Bannerman believes my sheep killed them,’ interrupted Sproat. There was an embarrassing pause before the others laughed.

‘Surely not?’ said van Gelder, who hadn’t joined in the laughter.

The truth is that we don’t know where the bug came from Mr van Gelder, something my profession is always reluctant to admit. In the end we will probably call it a virus infection; we usually do in these cases, and then the public thinks how clever we are.’

The men laughed again and this time van Gelder joined them. ‘How refreshing to find a doctor who doesn’t take himself too seriously,’ he said. ‘We must have another drink.’

Bannerman declined this time, saying that he had to be going and that they must all be hungry. He wouldn’t delay them any longer. ‘I recommend the fish,’ he said, getting up from the table.

“Then I will have it on your recommendation,’ said van Gelder, getting up and shaking Bannerman’s hand again. ‘Nice to have met you Doctor.’

Bannerman turned to Sproat and asked, ‘If it’s all right with you, I’d like to visit Inverladdie again tomorrow?’

‘You’re welcome,’ said Sproat.

Bannerman had a night cap back in the bar of his hotel. The quarry worker he had met on the previous evening was sitting at the counter and he chatted to him for a while before going upstairs. He looked at his watch and dithered for a moment before deciding to phone Shona MacLean. She replied after the third ring and sounded sleepy.

‘Sorry, did I wake you?’

‘Oh it’s you!’ exclaimed Shona.

‘I thought I’d better check that you didn’t have any problems with the police?’

‘No, not at all. I called them when you left and told them about finding Lawrence’s body at the foot of the cliffs. They arranged for it to be taken back to the mainland.’

They treated it as an accident?’

‘I think so.’

‘‘I’ve told the people in London that it wasn’t.’

‘Good,’ said Shona. ‘He didn’t deserve to die like that. How is the investigation going?’

‘All right, I suppose,’ said Bannerman. ‘I had a talk with the local vet who seemed. thick.’

‘Thick?’

‘The more I think about it the curiouser it becomes. I’m the second investigator from the MRC who has been up here to ask him questions about the Scrapie outbreak at Inverladdie Farm where the men died and he still hasn’t twigged to what we’re getting at.’

‘Maybe he’s being deliberately obtuse?’

‘But why?’

‘Can’t help you there,’ said Shona.

The local GP was quick enough to figure it out. He’s a wily old bird. I liked him a lot. I think he twigged to some kind of Scrapie involvement from the first time he was called out to the patients.’

‘What’s the next move?’

Tomorrow I’m going to examine the land between Inverladdie Farm and the nuclear power station, to see if I can find any trace of a radiation leak having occurred.’

That sounds dangerous.’

‘It only sounds dangerous,’ said Bannerman. ‘Actually it involves little more than going for a walk with a torch-like thing in your hand.’

‘All the same, I think you should be very careful.’

‘‘I will,’ said Bannerman.

‘You will let me know how you get on?’

‘If you want me to,’ said Bannerman.

‘‘I do,’ said Shona.

Bannerman lay back on the pillow and reflected on how nice it had been to talk to Shona again and how good it was to know that they would be in touch again. All in all it hadn’t been a bad day. On the bedside table lay the Geiger counter that Angus MacLeod had loaned him for examining the boundary area tomorrow. He moved it slightly to one side and switched out the light. The room wasn’t completely in darkness; light from a street lamp across the way made patterns on the ceiling as it shone through the waving branches of a tree outside the window. He thought about Shona’s plea that he should be careful, and a cloud crossed his mind as he remembered the broken body of Lawrence Gill lying on the rocks.

Bannerman drove the Sierra as far up the Inverladdie Farm track as possible and then parked it out of the way of any vehicle that might want to pass. He had hoped for good weather but the fates had other ideas. There was a strong westerly wind and the sky promised rain in the not too distant future. Bannerman changed his shoes for his climbing boots and zipped himself into his shell jacket and waterproof trousers, before protecting his face with a woollen balaclava and pulling up his hood. He collected the rucksack containing MacLeod’s Geiger counter from the boot, before locking up the car and setting off up the east side of the glen. He was breathing hard by the time he reached the head of the glen and could see the power station away to his right.

Sproat had been correct about the terrain on this side of the glen. The ground fell away steeply and was riddled with cracks, gulleys and peat bog. It looked as if at some time in the past the ground had breathed deeply and caused a general upheaval in the landscape. This was not the kind of place to break an ankle in, he reminded himself as he went over slightly on his left one. He was going downhill but the effort required seemed greater than on the climb up the glen.

Although the power station was probably not more than a mile away, as the crow flew, the need for constant detour and climbing down into and up out of craters meant that Bannerman had covered nearly three times that distance before he reached the area around the perimeter fence. After a break of a few minutes to get his breath back, he had a cigarette in the shelter of a large rock before starting out to follow the line of the fence down to the railway track and beyond to the sea where he planned to begin his examination of the ground.

He got out the Geiger counter from his rucksack and checked the condition of its battery, despite having inserted a new one that morning. He turned the sensitivity switch on the side to B-CHECK. The needle rose well past the red minimum mark, so he turned the switch to its most sensitive setting to start a rough scan of the area. With his back to the sea, he crossed the single-track railway line leading to the quarry and began to walk slowly back up the line of the fence. He held the sensor in front of him and swung it slowly backwards and forwards to cover as wide an area as possible.

Apart from an occasional click from the instrument as it received natural radiation from the atmosphere the pointer hovered quietly on the base line. Bannerman pushed his hood back a little so as not to miss any sounds coming from the small speaker in the side of the instrument. Suddenly he heard a loud rasping sound, but it came from behind him. He turned round to see an inflatable boat, its bow bouncing over the waves, coming straight for the shore. Its outboard engine was buzzing angrily.

As he watched, Bannerman grew alarmed when he realized that he was the object of attention for the men on board. The three of them jumped out into the shallows below him and waded quickly to the shore to start running towards him. They were carrying automatic weapons. He soon found himself being gripped firmly on both sides by the arms.

‘What’s your game, then?’ demanded the third man who stood in front of him with sea-water dripping from his oilskins.

‘I think I might ask the same of you,’ said Bannerman, with more courage than he felt. ‘I am on Inverladdie Farm property and I have permission to be here.’

‘A smartarse, eh?’ sneered the man. ‘Let’s get him back.’

Bannerman protested loudly but he was manhandled down to the beach and forced into the boat. Once on the move, he sat quietly. The sound of the engine and the heavy sea made conversation impossible and, for the moment, there was no place else to go. He looked at the three men who seemed to be doing their best to ignore him. All were dressed in the same weatherproof uniforms with a badge above their left breast which said, SECURITY. Their boots were of the commando type which laced up well above their ankles. They sat with the butts of their automatic rifles on the wooden floor of the boat.

The boat traced a large circle out of Inverladdie territory and round to the back of the power station where it was brought in to a small bay. The man at the tiller left it to the last moment to cut the engine, with the result that the boat coasted on to the shingle by virtue of its own momentum and slid to a halt on the shore.

‘Get out!’ rasped the first man out to Bannerman.

Bannerman complied, introducing an air of resigned lethargy to his movements in an attempt to salvage his dignity.

‘Move!’ another man ordered, punctuating his request with the muzzle of his weapon in Bannerman’s back.

Bannerman was marched up the beach and through the gates of the station. He was directed into a long, low building and put in a room devoid of furnishings, save for a table and two chairs. One of the armed men remained in the room with him until a new face appeared. The newcomer was in his thirties, clean shaven and dressed in a dark suit with what looked to be a college tie. Judging from the stiffening of his guard when the man entered, Bannerman guessed that the new man might be in charge of security.

The man seated himself opposite Bannerman at the table and said, ‘Name?’

‘Who wants to know?’ replied Bannerman.

The man leaned across the table and said, ‘Me.’

‘And who are you?’ said Bannerman, evenly.

The man stared at Bannerman for a moment then brought out an ID wallet and put it down on the table in front of him.

Bannerman looked down at it and read that the bearer was ‘C. J. Mitchell, Head of Security.’

‘I’m Bannerman.’

‘First name?’

‘Ian.’

‘Well, Ian Bannerman,’ said Mitchell sitting back in his chair. ‘You are in trouble.’

‘One of us is,’ replied Bannerman.

Mitchell sized up Bannerman in silence for a few moments before saying, ‘What were you doing at the fence?’

‘I was on Inverladdie Farm property. I had permission to be there and what I was doing is none of your business.’

‘Is that where you left the Citroen?’ asked Mitchell.

‘What Citroen?’ asked Bannerman.

The 2CV with “Save the Whales” in the back window and “Nuclear Power No Thanks” along the back bumper. That’s what all you buggers drive isn’t it?’

‘Who exactly are “all us buggers”?’ asked Bannerman.

‘The club,’ Mitchell sneered. “The lentil eaters, the organic turnip heads, the gay, vegan, lesbian, whale saving, league against nuclear power brigade.’

‘Oh I see, you thought I was trying to blow up the station,’ said Bannerman, making the notion sound so ridiculous that Mitchell’s mouth quivered in anger. ‘I’ll ask you again, what were you doing by the fence?’

‘And I’ll tell you again, it’s none of your business,’ said Bannerman meeting the security man’s eyes with a level stare.

The impasse was broken by one of the men from the boat coming in and placing Bannerman’s Geiger counter on the table. ‘He had this with him, sir,’ the man announced before leaving.

‘Well, well, well,’ purred the security man. ‘What do you know, the boys’ own radiation monitoring kit. Just what the hell did you hope to find?’

‘‘I didn’t hope to find anything,’ replied Bannerman. ‘I wanted to know if there had been any leakage of radioactive material to the west of the station.’

The security man seemed intrigued. He leaned towards Bannerman and asked, ‘Why?’

‘That’s my business.’

‘Your business?’ said Mitchell, putting a different inflection on the word.

‘Yes.’

‘A journalist? Is that it? A crusading investigative journalist. Isn’t that what you scaremongering busy-bodies call yourselves? Is that it Bannerman?’

‘You really have a problem don’t you,’ said Bannerman, quietly. ‘Have you ever thought about a career more suited to your personality, say, lighthouse keeper in the Arctic Ocean?’

Without warning, Mitchell swung his fist at Bannerman and caught him high on his left cheek bone. The force of the blow knocked him backwards and his chair toppled over to send him sprawling to the floor.

Bannerman sat up slowly holding his hand to his face and breathing erratically, partly through surprise and partly through shock. Mitchell got up to stand over him. ‘Wait outside,’ he rasped to the guard by the door. The man, who Bannerman could see was uneasy about what he was witnessing, complied immediately.

‘What now?’ asked Bannerman. ‘Electrodes on my testicles?’

‘You lot make me sick,’ sneered Mitchell. ‘Get up.’

Bannerman got to his feet. He had recovered from the blow and was holding his temper firmly in check. He said, ‘I’d like to see the station manager please.’

‘He’s a busy man,’ said Mitchell.

‘So am I,’ said Bannerman. He enunciated every syllable with arctic coldness. ‘I am Dr Ian Bannerman, consultant pathologist at St Luke’s Hospital London, currently investigating the deaths of three local men at the request of the Medical Research Council and Her Majesty’s Government.’

Mitchell looked as if he was about to lay an egg. His eyes suggested his brain was asking his ears for a recap on what they’d just heard. ‘ID?’ he croaked.

Bannerman showed him identification.

Mitchell looked down at the table surface as if it were to blame for everything. ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’

‘Because I didn’t choose to,’ snapped Bannerman. ‘I was on private property when your men abducted me and brought me here. I pointed this out to them at the time and to you when I got here but you took no notice. Now get me the station manager.’

Mitchell left the room and Bannerman lit a cigarette. His fingers were trembling slightly.

Some ten minutes passed before the door opened and Bannerman was politely invited to follow one of the security men. He had suddenly become ‘sir’. He was taken to the main building of the power station and then by elevator to the top floor where he was shown into the station manager’s office. Mitchell was with the manager and Bannerman could see that the man had been fully briefed about what had happened.

‘Leave us, Mitchell,’ said the manager curtly and Mitchell walked past Bannerman with a small, uneasy smile.

‘My dear Doctor I don’t quite know what to say,’ said the station manager, coming round from behind his desk to usher Bannerman to a chair. ‘I’m John Rossman. I can only offer my most profuse apologies and ask you to understand some of the pressures my people have to cope with. Nuclear power stations are natural targets for every inadequate misfit in society who’s looking for a cause to crucify himself for. Constant vigilance is a must.’

‘Beating up anyone who comes within yards of your perimeter fence is a bit more than being vigilant,’ said Bannerman.

‘Well, yes but …’

‘And being against nuclear power doesn’t automatically make you an “inadequate misfit”.’

‘Well, no but we get so much negative publicity that perhaps we’re all just a bit paranoid in the industry. We are constantly portrayed as harbingers of danger rather than suppliers of cheap, clean power,’ said Rossman.

‘Perhaps,’ said Bannerman.

‘I understand you were monitoring the ground outside the west fence,’ said Rossman.

‘That’s right. I wanted to see if there had been a radiation leak in the recent past.’

‘But if there had been we would have …’

‘Covered it up like last time,’ interrupted Bannerman.

Rossman looked at Bannerman in silence for a long moment before saying, ‘‘I don’t think I understand what …’

‘My information came from the Cabinet Office,’ said Bannerman.

‘‘I see,’ said the manager, obviously wondering how to deal with him. He got up from his desk and walked over to a large map of the station which was mounted on the back wall of his office. ‘If I might ask you to join me, Doctor?’

Bannerman walked over to the map and Rossman pointed to an area on the east side of the station. He said, ‘We had a problem with a pipe carrying cooling water from the reactor suite. There was a crack in it and we suffered a slight loss of fluid before it was discovered.’

‘How slight?’

‘About a hundred gallons.’

‘How big an area was affected?’

‘We think not more than two hundred square metres,’ said the manager.

‘You think?’

‘You’ve seen the ground round here. It’s hard to say for sure.’

‘You seem pretty complacent about it,’ said Bannerman.

‘On the contrary,’ said Rossman. ‘We cordoned off an area twice that size and dug trenches along the perimeter. Contaminated earth was removed and constant monitoring of the area was maintained for several months after the incident. Apart from that Doctor, no one lives to the east of the station. There was never any danger to anyone.’

‘Then why cover it up?’ asked Bannerman.

Rossman adopted an exasperated air and said, ‘It wasn’t a question of covering anything up. We just didn’t publicize the affair and for the reasons I spoke of earlier. We would have been pilloried by those anxious to destroy the nuclear industry.’

‘Have there been other incidents that you didn’t publicize?’ asked Bannerman.

‘No. None at all. This station is perfectly safe, I assure you.’

‘Until a hundred gallons of radioactive cooling water goes for a walk,’ said Bannerman.

That is exactly the kind of scaremongering we can do without in this industry!’ said the manager, going slightly red in the face. ‘We provide a lot of jobs in the area. You should think twice before putting them in jeopardy with that kind of talk.’

‘What I said was the truth,’ said Bannerman. ‘Not scaremongering.’

‘It was a one-off incident,’ insisted the manager.

‘But it happened! You can’t dismiss it as if it never really had!’

‘‘I don’t think you fully understand the benefits that nuclear power can bring to our country Doctor,’ said Rossman.

‘Oh but I do,’ insisted Bannerman. ‘I understand the benefits perfectly. What really gets up my nose is your industry’s reluctance to face up to the problems. You pretend that there aren’t any. You maintain that accidents won’t happen when everyone else knows that they will. You keep generating waste that you can’t deal with because it’s going to be dangerous for thousands of years and the best you can do is bury it in holes in the ground and keep looking for more holes.’

‘It’s not like that at all,’ said Rossman.

‘I think it is,’ said Bannerman.

‘Then I think we must agree to differ,’ said Rossman.

Bannerman looked at his watch and said, ‘Time I was going.’

‘I will have someone drive you home,’ said the manager.

‘No you won’t!’ exclaimed Bannerman. ‘It took me three hours to get to the perimeter fence from Inverladdie, I’m not doing that hike all over again. I want to get on with monitoring the ground I was working on when your men got “vigilant”.’

‘But I’ve told you we’ve had no problem on that side of the station,’ said the manager.

That you know of,’ added Bannerman.

The manager took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll have Mitchell’s men take you back there.’

‘Good.’

‘I have also instructed Mitchell to make a personal apology to you before you leave.’

‘Thank you,’ said Bannerman.

Bannerman was led away from Rossman’s office by a security man who had been waiting outside the door. Half-way along the corridor he paused at a window to look down at the huge generating hall and the figures clad in white plastic suits tending to the machinery. The constant whine from the turbines seemed to pervade every part of the building, despite the extensive use of soundproof double glazing. There was a surgical cleanliness about the whole operation, no coal dust or oil or furnaces, just silent, invisible power sealed in concrete silos, its presence only advertised by the constant yellow and black radioactivity symbols.

Mitchell stood up when Bannerman was shown into his room. He had recovered his aplomb and his eyes were filled once again with self confidence. ‘‘I’m sorry for our little misunderstanding, Doctor,’ he said, ‘but I’m sure you appreciate just how careful we have to be.’ He held out his hand and said, ‘Shall we let bygones by bygones?’

The self-satisfied look on Mitchell’s face was too much for Bannerman. He swung his right fist in a short sharp hook to Mitchell’s jaw and the man went down like a sack of potatoes. ‘If we’re going to do that,’ he said, ‘then let’s start even.’

Mitchell sat on the floor holding his jaw with an expression of dazed bewilderment on his face. The security man who had brought Bannerman back moved in to grip Bannerman’s arms but Mitchell held up a hand. ‘Let him go,’ he said. ‘Take him where he wants to go.’

Once outside the fence, Bannerman cursed himself for his lack of self control. Of all the stupid things to do! You had to go and behave like a headstrong schoolboy! You had to throw away the moral high ground and hit him! You’re no better than he is! Why do you do these things Bannerman? Are you ever going to act your age? His self reproach was total; he couldn’t find one redeeming factor in his behaviour; he felt utterly disgusted with himself. He stubbed out his cigarette and got up from the boulder he had been sitting on. Perhaps if he threw himself into the job at hand he might block out some of the bad feelings.

During the course of the next three hours Bannerman moved up and down the ground between Inverladdie and the power station, meticulously scanning a two-metre wide strip each time. He was aware that he was being watched from the power station but no attempt was made to interfere with what he was doing. By the time he decided to call it a day his fingers were numb with cold and rain water had sought out several weak points in his waterproof clothing. He packed the Geiger counter back into his rucksack and set out on the long trek back. He had found no evidence of radioactive contamination of the soil at all.

Back at the hotel, Bannerman lowered himself gingerly into a hot bath and slipped slowly beneath the suds. He breathed a sigh of appreciation as the warm water covered him up to his chin and started to work on the aches and pains. The fact that he had achieved nothing positive for all his efforts did not help the recovery process, but the prospect of a hot meal and several whiskies to follow counteracted any notions of failure for the moment.

As he nursed his second glass of malt whisky in front of the fire in the bar, Bannerman wondered whether or not it would be worthwhile to continue examining the ground between Inverladdie and the power station. He had carried out a pretty exhaustive scan of the border strip — about sixty metres wide, he reckoned, but there were still other possibilities to take account of. He had gone for the obvious scenario of a leak occurring in the station and contamination spreading outside the wire through the soil but there were other possibilities.

Contamination could have occurred from the sea. The station would have discharge pipes which would empty into the sea. Officially the discharge would be monitored and kept within agreed and legally enforced limits of radioactivity but what if an accidental discharge of high level waste had gone into the sea? Conceivably the tide could have brought it back on to the shore along the Inverladdie coastal strip. Alternatively there could have been aerial contamination from a discharge of radioactive gas.

Bannerman decided that it was worth him checking out the coastal strip of Inverladdie because a two-metre scan along three hundred metres or so of beach should reveal any tide borne contamination. Checking for contamination from the air, however, was a different matter. A gas cloud could have come down anywhere and he couldn’t possibly hope to monitor the whole farm on his own.

His decision to examine the coastline at Inverladdie meant that he had sentenced himself to another hard day. He pondered on whether or not to have a day off before going back but decided that that would be giving in to his age. The landlord had agreed to dry off his wet clothing and boots, so he decided he would have one more whisky and then have an early night. As he went to the bar to get his drink the quarry worker he had come to know entered the bar and Bannerman bought him a drink.

As they sat down together at the fire the quarry man, now introduced as Colin Turnbull, said, The word is that you think the nuclear station had something to do with the meningitis deaths.’

‘Silly gossip,’ replied Bannerman, but he was unpleasantly surprised at how fast it had travelled. ‘I met your boss last night,’ he said. ‘He seemed a nice enough chap.’

‘Mr van Gelder? He’s OK and the job pays well. The only drawback is that there are no prospects.’

‘Why not?’ asked Bannerman.

‘Search me,’ replied Turnbull. “The company seems pretty enlightened in every other way, good pay, conditions, health care etc. but absolutely no prospects of promotion. Senior posts are strictly for the Dutch.’

‘Strange,’ said Bannerman.

‘I’m thinking of taking them to the Race Relations Board,’ smiled Turnbull.

Bannerman laughed and said, ‘What sort of post were you hoping for?’

‘I’ve been doing an Open University degree in geology. I should get my BA this summer. I was hoping for a job I could use it in but it’s no go.’

‘A pity,’ said Bannerman. ‘Maybe they’ll change their minds if you keep on at them.’

‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ agreed Turnbull. ‘I’ve been doing a bit of survey work on my own in the hope that I can impress them.’

That sounds exactly like the kind of initiative they couldn’t ignore,’ said Bannerman, draining his glass.

‘Can I get you another?’ asked Turnbull.

Bannerman shook his head and said that he was having an early night. He had another hard day ahead of him tomorrow. As he got up, Turnbull looked up at him and said, ‘‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this Doc but I think you should be a bit careful.’

The words chilled Bannerman. He looked at Turnbull and saw embarrassment more than threat in his eyes. ‘‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

The power station has local support. It provides a lot of jobs round here. Criticism isn’t welcome, if you get my meaning?’

‘I do,’ replied Bannerman. Thanks for the warning.’