Deception

TWELVE

Steven’s phone rang as he was driving back to his hotel. It was Jamie Brown. ‘Where are you?’ asked Brown.

‘In town. Why?’

‘Can we meet? I’ve come up with something on Childs and Leadbetter.’

Brown was calling from his paper’s offices on North Bridge. They arranged to meet approximately halfway between them, in Bennett’s Bar at Tollcross. Brown got there first: Steven found him standing at the bar with a whisky in front of him. The place was rapidly filling up with after-work drinkers.

‘Did you hear what happened at the Ferguson boy’s funeral?’ asked Brown.

Steven said that he had and agreed that it must have been a nightmare for the parents.

‘The paper’s going to back-pedal on the theatricals as much as possible for the family’s sake,’ said Brown. ‘We’ll have to report the subsequent aquatic adventures of the minister but we’re going to play down his behaviour in the cemetery, drunken sod.’

Steven nodded.

‘Christ knows what the Clarion will do with it. Jeff, my photographer, says they had two snappers there, using big lenses. If they got a shot of the rat on the coffin, McColl will find some way of using it.’

‘Surely not?’

‘Want a bet?’

‘No,’ replied Steven, remembering what McColl was like. ‘You said you had something on Childs and Leadbetter?’

‘I told you I didn’t think they fitted the bill as venture capitalists. I know it’s the fashion to go to the gym these days but these two look as if they live in it. Come to think of it, you don't look too much like a couch potato yourself.’

Steven waved away the comment. ‘Go on.’

‘I had our researchers check on a possible military background for either or both of them and they came up trumps. Both were commissioned in the Royal Engineers and both served nine years. Childs from ’87 until ’96 and Leadbetter from ’88 until ’97.’

‘Well done,’ said Steven. He felt slightly disturbed at the news but tried to make light of it. ‘So they can build bridges or maybe they were REME accountants,’ he said.

Brown looked at him slyly and put on a Japanese accent borrowed from a Bond film. ‘Not ordinary accountants, Bondo-San, but Ninja… chartered accountants!’

‘There’s more?’

‘Both men have gaps in their service record,’ said Brown. ‘Childs disappears between ’89 and ’91, Leadbetter between ’90 and ’94. Mean anything?’

Steven knew damn well what it meant but he wasn’t sure if Brown did and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to tell him.

‘It should,’ continued Brown. ‘There’s a similar gap in yours.’

Steven looked at him with an expression set in stone.

‘Nothing personal,’ said Brown quickly. ‘And nothing I’ll ever use. I just thought as the folks were checking military records they could take a look at who was on my side.’

‘So we were all seconded to Special Forces,’ said Steven.

‘Except me, of course,’ added Brown facetiously. ‘I’ve got flat feet and an intense dislike of anything that goes bang. Orders are something I give to Chinese take-aways so I guess I’m more suited to being… oh, I suppose, something like a venture capitalist?’

Steven found it hard not to smile. Brown had done well in following up his suspicions. He said so.

‘So all we have to discover now is why our peasant piss-artist, our would-be organic son of the soil, has two ex SAS men as business associates.’

Steven decided that he liked Brown. He was clearly much brighter than he’d given him credit for at the outset. It was time to trust him and give a little back.

‘The stakes have risen,’ he said. ‘This thing is much bigger than I imagined. It’s not some little dirty trick by one company on another. Her Majesty’s Government, or some part of it, is mixed up in it. They’re definitely the ones pulling strings in the background.’

‘Jesus,’ said Brown. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Steven truthfully.

‘Christ,’ said Brown. ‘Does this mean that Childs and Leadbetter are not employed as mercenaries? That they’re actually still working for HM government?’

‘Could be,’ agreed Steven.

‘Not a happy thought,’ said Brown.

‘The operation has the code name, Sigma 5, but I wouldn’t start asking too many questions about it if I were you. Apart from unpleasant things that might happen, you’ll get nowhere, just like I did. It has all the hallmarks of being set up as a covert operation so that no one person will ever be held accountable. No paperwork will be kept and no one in power will ever admit to knowing anything at all about it. If anyone at the sharp end hits trouble they’ll be entirely on their own.’

‘But this is Tony’s World,’ said Brown sarcastically. ‘This just cannot be. Tony wouldn’t allow it.’

‘Tony will know nothing about it,’ said Steven. ‘The “need to know basis” can work both ways. Some things never change. Politicians only think they run the country.’

‘That’s certainly true of the Jock parliament,’ said Brown. ‘Just as well, mind you. They couldn’t run a raffle or even spell it in some cases. So where do we go from here?’

‘As I see it, there are two weak links in the operation,’ said Steven, ‘and they’re both called, Rafferty.’

‘You managed to talk to Trish Rafferty, then?’

‘She’s living here in Edinburgh, in a flat in Dorset Place. I was on my way back from her place when you phoned. She’s definitely in on it. She let something slip when she thought I was one of the Sigma 5 lot.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Something about her having told them things in exchange for them not bothering her again and him not getting into trouble.’

‘Her husband?’

‘A fair assumption.’

‘Do you think she can be persuaded to talk more about it?’

Steven shook his head. ‘She struck me as an intelligent, strong-willed woman who wouldn’t go back on her word unless she had reason to believe that someone had crossed her.’

‘So we concentrate on Tom for the moment?’

‘I think so.’

‘That leaves us with the problem of our two ‘venture capitalists’,’ said Brown. ‘They do a fair impression of being attached at the hip to our hop-loving friend. Mind you, the mere idea of tangling with these two is going to save me a fortune on All-Bran. Any ideas?’

‘I’ve an awful feeling that the next move may come from them,’ said Steven. ‘If Childs and Leadbetter are who you say they are, they will have reported my visit and questioning of Rafferty at Crawhill Farm.’

‘So what. You had every right to be there and to question him. You’re on official Sci-Med business.’

Steven told him about Sci-Med being warned off and Brown let out a low whistle. ‘It’s that big?’ he murmured.

‘I thought I was managing to keep a pretty low profile but apparently not. When I went to Crawhill and flashed my ID, I was actually knocking on the door of Sigma 5. I suspect that Trish Rafferty reported my visit too,’ said Steven thinking of her standing at the window with the telephone in her hand.

‘I see what you mean by ‘their move’,’ agreed Brown. ‘Any idea what it will be?’

‘I can’t see it at the moment,’ said Steven thoughtfully.

‘I’m going back to the office,’ said Brown. ‘I’m going to write all this down and leave it in a safe place, then I’m going to write you a letter on Scotsman-headed paper, saying that we know all about Sigma 5 and that if you should be the subject of any “tragic accident” we are going to shake the tree until all the apples fall down. Carry it with you.’

Steven smiled, uncomfortable as always with melodrama but still seeing the sense in what Brown was saying. Publicity was to covert operations as garlic was to a vampire.

‘I’ll pop it in to your hotel.’

Steven had just got out the bath when his phone rang. It was Detective Chief Inspector Brewer. ‘I’ve got something here that might interest you.’

‘Where’s here?’

‘The City Mortuary.’

Steven wrote down the directions he was given and dressed quickly. He drove over to the old town where darkness, dirt and history conspired with a late evening mist to produce an atmosphere appropriate to the nature of his visit. He found the unprepossessing building of the City Mortuary a few minutes after leaving the car and rang the bell. It was answered by an attendant, dressed in white overalls topped by an over-large plastic apron, which came right down to the floor, almost but not quite obscuring the toes of his Wellington boots. The man sniffed loudly and scratched his stubbly chin as he examined Steven’s ID before stepping back to let him come inside to bright lights and the smell of formaldehyde. There was something about mortuary attendants… thought Steven, but what it was he had no wish to pursue for the moment. He heard Brewer’s voice and followed the sound.

‘Ah, Dr Dunbar, I thought you’d be interested in hearing what Dr Levi here has to say about the Rev. McNish,’ said Brewer. Steven had walked into the PM room where the duty pathologist had just finished work on the body of a badly mutilated male corpse. He nodded to an attendant who started threading a suture needle to begin sewing up the long primary incision that extended from throat to navel.

Levi, a small man, wearing heavy square rimmed glasses, which seemed all wrong for his pear-shaped face, stripped off his gloves and tossed them into a pedal bin with an air of finality. The metal lid of the bin fell with a clang like a cymbal being hit by a percussionist at the end of a performance. It was obviously something he’d done many times before. It reminded Steven of a story that said Fred Astaire could walk across stage, throw down a cigarette butt and stamp it out without breaking stride.

‘This man did not drown,’ said Levi. ‘He died from blood loss resulting from biting injuries: the tooth patterns on these injuries are consistent with rat bites. This is the one that actually did it.’

‘Levi waved the attendant out of the way and pointed to teeth marks on the side of McNish’s neck. ‘Carotid artery. I hope for his sake that this was one of the earlier bites otherwise…’ He looked down at the horrific injuries over McNish’s body. ‘Well, let’s say, he didn’t have the easiest of passages from this life to the next.’

‘So the rats got him,’ said Brewer. ‘What do you make of that?’

‘Interesting,’ murmured Steven, still looking down at the corpse as if unable to take his eyes away.

‘Perhaps you know more about what’s happening up at Blackbridge than I do, Doctor?’ said Brewer.

‘No, but somebody does.’

Brewer looked at Steven as if not knowing whether to believe him or not. ‘This GM crop business wouldn’t have anything to do with it, would it?’

‘I don’t see how,’ replied Steven guardedly.

‘Maybe it’s like they say. There are just too many unknowns connected with something like that. They should have done more work in the lab before they started putting the stuff out into open fields.’

‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ said Steven but he was wondering just how many other people were going to leap to exactly the same one.

‘Of course not,’ said Brewer sourly.

‘Otherwise it could be a recipe for disaster,’ added Steven, looking directly at Brewer so that he fully understood what he meant.’

‘Frankly, Doctor,’ said Brewer, ‘There are times when I’m tempted to torch the bloody stuff myself.’

Steven drove back to the hotel and, despite having bathed a few hours earlier, took a shower in order to free himself of the lingering smell of formaldehyde. He hated the foetid sweetness of it and the images it conjured up. The smell went but the image of McNish’s body stayed with him despite the best efforts of three gin and tonics. The rats at Blackbridge had actually killed a man — maybe two people if you counted Ian Ferguson as well. That was some behavioural change. True it wasn’t known just how much provocation there had been, at least not in the case of McNish. It was possible that he had fallen into the canal in his drunken state and provoked them in some way, just as it was possible that the Ferguson boy might have stood on one, but it was a worry all the same. Something would have to be done.

Just what that something would be was taken out of everyone’s hands next morning when the Clarion story appeared, confirming Jamie Brown’s worst fears about what McColl might do. The paper had used a funeral photograph on its front page. As predicted by Brown, it was the one of the rat sitting on top of Ian Ferguson’s coffin with McNish looking on with eyes like a homicidal maniac in the background. The headline screamed, ‘THIS SCANDAL HAS TO STOP’. The story was angled as a crusade against what the paper saw as the disgrace of an ever-increasing rat population in the Union Canal while the authorities did little or nothing at all about it. Yesterday one of these, ‘filthy creatures’ had defiled the funeral of Blackbridge teenager, Ian Ferguson, bringing unnecessary pain and anguish to his grieving family.

‘Not that your shitty little rag isn’t doing exactly that…’ murmured Steven as he read on.

The paper extended its heart-felt sympathy to the Fergusons and promised to keep up pressure on ‘the guilty ones’ until something was done and no one else would have to go through the hell they’d been through.

Steven felt like vomiting at the hypocrisy but at least the Clarion hadn’t cottoned on to the change of behaviour angle. That was a blessing, he thought. A campaign against increasing rat numbers would probably result in a local rat cull and right now, that sounded just fine. The paper went on to complain about the continuing strength of feeling against the GM crop trial in Blackbridge and deplored the authorities’ lack of progress in sorting it out. They called for intervention at ministerial level and demanded that the relevant ministers return from their ‘endless’ holiday to take charge. They went on to list the ministers concerned from both the Westminster and Scottish parliaments and gave details of their salaries and the length of the summer vacation and even where they were currently sunning themselves. ‘We want organ grinders dealing with the situation, not monkeys,’ demanded the Clarion. ‘There are enough of them to start a zoo!’

Jamie Brown turned up at the hotel just as Steven was preparing to drive out to Blackbridge. He handed over the letter that he’d promised and Steven put it in his inside pocket with a nod of thanks.

‘You’ve seen McColl’s piece?’

Steven nodded.

‘Makes you wonder about the human race, huh?’

‘Despair would be a better word,’ said Steven.

‘What are your plans?’

‘I think I’ll have another word with Eve Ferguson. She’s a friend of Trish Rafferty’s. Maybe Trish said something to her or maybe just dropped a clue about what’s been going on. I’ll see if I can jog her memory. You?’

‘I’ve been told to ask the authorities what they plan to do about the rat problem now that it’s been highlighted by our friend, McColl. Do you have any idea what they’ll do?’

‘They can’t use poison because it would mean contaminating the entire canal and killing off everything in it so that leaves mounting some kind of cull using firearms.’

‘How successful would that be?’

‘Not very,’ said Steven. ‘But don’t quote me on that. It’s the gesture that’s all-important in this instance. The powers-that-be will just want to be seen doing something in order to get McColl off their backs.’

‘If I didn’t know you better, Doctor, I’d say you were a cynic.’

‘I prefer realist,’ said Steven.

‘Me too but it’s a lost cause. Every time I hear Barbra Streisand singing, ‘People’, I want to throw up.’

They parted company and Steven reflected on the one thing that he had not shared with Brown, the information about the change in the rats’ behaviour and its possible link to the GM crop. His main reason for driving over to Blackbridge that morning was not to speak with Eve — although he intended to do that too — but to ask James Binnie if he’d heard anything back from the vet school yet about the PM examination on the rat.

‘I’m afraid James is out on his rounds,’ said Ann Binnie when she opened the door to him.

‘I feared he might be,’ Steven confessed. ‘Maybe you can tell me if he’s heard anything back from the university?’

Ann Binnie shook her head. ‘I’m pretty sure he didn’t get anything in the mail this morning,’ she said. ‘If he had, I’m sure he would have said. Why don’t I get him to call you as soon as he hears?’

Steven left his mobile phone number and thanked her, declining her kind offer of coffee. He walked along the street to the Blackbridge Arms and looked at his watch. It wasn’t quite lunchtime. Perhaps he could snatch a word with Eve before the rush started. He went into the bar and asked for a half of lager. He sipped it slowly until Eve noticed him standing there as she was passing between the kitchen and the dining room.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Staying for lunch?’

‘No, I actually wanted to see you. Do you have a minute?’

Eve looked doubtful and looked up at the clock over the bar. It was five to twelve. ‘Lunch starts in five minutes,’ she said.

‘Five minutes will be fine.’

Eve took off her apron and put on a jacket.

‘I went to see Trish Rafferty,’ Steven said as they started to walk.

‘Was she very angry with me?’

‘She doesn’t know anything about your involvement,’ said Steven. ‘She mistook me for someone else. She thought I’d come to see her for another reason entirely.’

‘I don’t think I understand. What other reason?’

‘Now that’s something I’d really like to know,’ said Steven. ‘Trish Rafferty is mixed up in this GM scandal business in some way but she saw through me before she said too much.’

‘Trish? Involved? You’re joking.’

‘I’m certain. She said enough to make me sure of that.’

‘So where do I come into all this?’ asked Eve.

‘I’d like you to think back to your last conversation with her just to see if you can remember her saying anything — anything at all, that you might have thought sounded odd at the time but probably dismissed as something you didn’t pick up properly. Anything at all.’

‘I don’t think I remember anything like that,’ said Eve. ‘I’ve only seen her twice since she left.’

‘And you noticed nothing strange about her at all. She wasn’t worried or secretive? She didn’t seem nervous?’

Eve shrugged. ‘In truth I suppose she was all of these things to a certain extent but as she had just left her husband I didn’t think there was anything strange or unusual about it. It was a big step to take after all these years.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I do remember thinking at one point that she might have had another man on the go. It wasn’t anything she said. It was more an air of…’ Trish searched for the right word. ‘Guilt, I think. Yes, that was it. She struck me as having an air of guilt about her.’

‘Could that have been about leaving her husband?’

‘No, she didn’t say too much about that, come to think of it, but when she did speak about Tom it was as if she seemed relieved to be away from him, not feeling guilty.’

‘Good,’ said Steven. ‘I couldn’t persuade you to visit her again, could I? This is important.’

Eve’s eyes widened. She asked, ‘Just what would I be getting into?’

‘She just might confide in you what she was feeling guilty about whereas she wouldn’t dream of telling me.’

‘And then I betray her to you?’

‘You tell me if it’s something you think might concern me. If it turns out to be another bloke or she’s fiddling her tax return or even if she turns out to be the Brighton trunk murderer, I don’t want to know. Bargain?’

Eve looked anxiously at her watch. ‘I must go.’

‘Will you do it?’

Eve looked very uncertain. ‘I really don’t know,’ she said. ‘God, I must go.’

‘Have dinner with me tonight?’

‘I’m working.’

‘Tomorrow?’

Eve thought for a moment before saying. ‘All right. Pick me up here at seven thirty.’

Steven drove over to police headquarters in Livingston to see Brewer. He had just got out of his car when he saw Alex McColl coming out the building. He quickly ducked back in and pretended to be looking for something in the glove compartment until McColl had got into his own car and driven off.

‘What did he want?’ asked Steven of Brewer.

‘The cause of death for the Rev McNish,’ Brewer replied.

‘That’s what I came here to talk to you about,’ exclaimed Steven, suddenly alarmed. ‘I hope you stalled him.’

‘No, I gave him the official cause.’

‘Shit.’

‘Drowning.’

‘What?’

Brewer pushed a piece of paper over the desk in Steven’s direction. ‘It’s official. The PM report says so.’

Steven couldn’t believe his eyes when he read through the report, concluding in, ‘Death by drowning’. He looked at Brewer. ‘Have you spoken to Levi about this?’ he asked.

‘The good doctor has been hard to get hold of today. Ours is not to reason why,’ said Brewer.

‘Who leaned on him?’ asked Steven.

Brewer just shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ he said resignedly. ‘I just hope to God all you buggers know what you’re doing.’