Deception

TWENTY TWO

‘You’d better try and get some sleep.’ suggested Steven.

‘No way,’ replied Brown. ‘The special edition of the Clarion will be out soon. I want to get to it before my editor does. That way, I just might have enough time to come up with an excuse before I end up covering society weddings for Scottish Field.’

‘Call me when you hear,’ said Steven. It seemed as if he had barely closed his eyes when Brown rang back, although it was now a quarter past seven. ‘It’s out,’ yelled Brown down the phone. ‘They’ve gone with the banner, LIARS! GOVERNMENT COVER-UP! Listen to this. “The Clarion’s ace reporter, Alex McColl, has uncovered a government plot to deceive the public by concealing the fact that rats in the Blackbridge area have undergone a behavioural change due to the presence of a genetically modified crop growing on Peat Ridge Farm. We can exclusively reveal that the death of local minister, Rev Thomas McNish was not due to drowning as stated in a post-mortem report released to the press but to a rat attack, which the authorities covered-up in order to prevent public panic. It is to be hoped that the Clarion’s timely campaign to curb the rat menace will prevent the nightmare problem of super-rats spreading to other areas of Scotland.” Then they announce a new campaign and begin with “An open message to the Scottish Executive.” It says, “STOP THE DITHERING AND STOP THE GM MENACE NOW!” Tell me this is a pile of crap?’

‘It’s a pile of crap’ said Steven quietly. ‘Childs and Leadbetter set him up.’

‘But why? To create a diversion?’ suggested Brown.

‘No,’ said Steven thoughtfully. ‘It’s not a diversion they want to create… it’s a full scale riot.’

‘But why?’

‘I think that’s been their objective all along,’ said Steven, now seeing what was behind it. ‘They’ve been poisoning public opinion in the village against the GM trial from the beginning, carefully nursing fear and suspicion at every turn so that the locals would eventually be persuaded to take matters into their own hands. This story is them lighting the fuse.’

‘So what’s going to happen now?’

‘It’s my guess that, when the local hot-heads read this, they are going to march on Peat Ridge and burn the whole lot to the ground and God help anyone who gets in their way.’

‘But how will that benefit, Childs and Leadbetter?’ asked Brown.

Everything was becoming clear in Steven’s head. He’d heard on various occasions that the two men spent their time taking measurements and sampling the soil on Crawhill. They hadn’t been doing that at all! They were explosive experts. He would now bet money that they had been planting incendiary devices at specific sites on the farm so that the fire on Peat Ridge would appear to spread to Crawhill. People would assume that the fire, aided by the prevailing west wind, would have spread naturally and the barn full of BSE material would go up in flames, leaving no evidence and therefore no embarrassing problem for the government. ‘The fire is going to spread to Crawhill,’ he replied.

‘Of course!’ said Brown. ‘They’re going to get rid of the stuff and any residual problem with the rats will be blamed on the GM crop. You’ve got to admit, it has a certain beauty.’

‘I’m going out there,’ said Steven.

‘I’ll have to see my editor first,’ said Brown. ‘I’ll stroke his fevered brow and join you as soon as I can. I’ll bring a photographer. I want some shots of the stuff in Rafferty’s barn. With a bit of luck we can end up screwing the lot of them, including “ace reporter”, Alex McColl. That’ll teach him to check his facts first. Where will you be?’

‘I’m going out to police headquarters first,’ said Steven. ‘I want to make sure they appreciate just what’s going to happen when Blackbridge reads the Clarion this morning. After that, I’ll just play it by ear.’

Steven skipped breakfast but had some coffee before heading out to Livingston to see Brewer.

‘So someone threw the good doctor to the wolves,’ said Brewer, referring to Levi, the police surgeon who’d put out the wrong cause of death report on McNish. ‘I think he might welcome a wee transfer to the Outer Hebrides after this morning’s headlines.

‘Shame,’ said Steven with total insincerity. ‘I came to check that you’ll be circling the wagons on Peat Ridge today?’

Brewer smiled and said, ‘So you were wrong about the GM crop being harmless after all, eh?’

‘No I wasn’t,’ said Steven flatly. ‘The Clarion reporter was set up. He was deliberately fed a load of nonsense and he fell for it. The paper published it and now everyone is going to believe the story, not least because they want to believe anything bad about GM crops. The real motive behind this was to provoke a public attack on the farm. I hope you can handle it.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Brewer. ‘But there’s been a gas explosion at Fernside and there’s an Orange march through Boxhall today. We’re going to be pretty stretched as it is. Still, with the help of our friends in the private sector over there we should be able to man the barricades if the natives start getting too restless.’

‘I’m going over there right now,’ said Steven. ‘I’ll keep you appraised of what’s happening.’

Steven drove over to Blackbridge, hoping that Brewer was taking things more seriously than he appeared to be. He himself had pointed out that dealing with yobs, who felt right was on their side was quite a different proposition from handling rowdy drunks. He sensed trouble in the air as soon as he arrived. It was not much after nine in the morning but a group of men had already gathered outside the Blackbridge Hotel and were shouting abuse at the officials they knew to be inside. He caught one shout of, ‘Lying bastards!’ as he drove past, not slowing much in case he became a target for their anger too. He drove right up to Peat Ridge Farm and spoke to the security men who stopped him as usual. ‘Have any police arrived yet?’ he asked them.

‘No. What would they be here for?’

‘You haven’t seen the Clarion this morning?’

Both men shook their heads.

‘There’s going to be trouble. Get your act together and warn the others. I’d better check if your boss has seen it.’ The men got clearance from the house for Steven to approach and he roared up the drive to come to a squealing halt outside.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Lane when he appeared at the door. ‘You’ve been watching too much television, my friend.’

‘So you haven’t seen the Clarion either,’ said Steven.

‘Comics are for children, pally,’ said Lane.

‘Well, some of the children are about to start playing with matches,’ said Steven. ‘The Clarion has just put you and the Agrigene crop in the frame for the deaths of Ian Ferguson and the Rev McNish. They’re blaming the problem with aggressive rats on Peat Ridge Farm.’

‘But that’s a bunch of crap!’ protested Lane.

‘Of course it is but it’s just appeared in their “comic” so who are the locals going to believe? You or the Clarion?’

‘Jesus, I’d better phone the police.’

‘I’ve just been to see them. I thought they’d be here by now. I’ve warned your security men: they didn’t know either. Maybe getting in a few more might be a good idea.’

Steven got back into his car and called Brewer to ask when a police presence might be expected.’

‘The whole bloody world’s gone crazy this morning!’ complained Brewer. ‘We’ve had calls from all over the county about incidents and accidents. I’ll get some bodies over there just as soon as I can. I just don’t know what the hell’s going on.’

I do, thought Steven as a slight shiver of apprehension ran down his spine. The police are being diverted away from Blackbridge. He started to drive back down into the village and was alarmed to see that crowd outside the hotel had more than doubled in size. One of the government officials was now standing on the small wall surrounding the car park, trying to reason with them but was obviously being shouted down.

Steven caught sight of Alex McColl with a young photographer in tow; they were lurking on the outer fringes like sharks circling a ship with a list. He drove on by and went round to Eve’s house, hoping he might get a chance to see her and explain about last night if Trish Rafferty hadn’t already filled her in on the details.

As he drew up across the road from the house, a man he took to be Eve’s father opened the door and strode angrily down the path, shaking off Eve’s attempts to stop him. He had what looked to Steven to be a rifle slung over his shoulder in its carrying case. Eve was distraught and in tears. Steven got out and she saw him there. She came running over to him and pleaded, ‘Please, you have to stop him! He says that Ronald Lane is responsible for Ian’s death. He’s going to kill him!’

‘Him and all the rest,’ said Steven. ‘It’s getting very ugly round there,’ he said, nodding in the direction of Main Street. ‘Lane has been warned and so have the guards up there. The police should be on the scene soon.’

‘God, this is awful,’ sighed Eve.

‘Did Trish tell you everything last night?’ Steven asked.

Eve nodded. ‘I’m sorry I was so rude to you,’ she said. ‘I see now that you had to bully her into telling you. What Tom Rafferty did was quite unforgivable.’

‘The plan is to destroy all evidence of it,’ said Steven. ‘Childs and Leadbetter want the locals to attack Peat Ridge and then fire to break out so that they can fake its spread to Crawhill. I think they’ve set incendiary devices so that the barn will burn to the ground whatever the Fire Brigade might do.’

‘I must warn Trish,’ said Eve, alarmed at the prospect. ‘She must get away from Crawhill. What are you going to do?’

‘Try to stop them,’ said Steven. ‘But first I’ll see if I can persuade your father that getting involved in any of this is a very bad idea.’

‘Thanks, Steven, I appreciate it.’

‘Where the hell are the police?’ asked Steven, looking at his watch. ‘They should be here by now. I hope Brewer isn’t playing this too cool.’

‘This could be them now,’ said Eve. She was looking at a dark blue Minibus that was just coming into Blackbridge.

Steven’s spirits rose at the thought of police officers spilling out of it to disperse the crowd outside the hotel but they suddenly fell again when he failed to see any police marking on the vehicle as it passed the end of the road on its way to Main Street. ‘Oh shit,’ he murmured. ‘It’s rent-a-mob. I should have thought of that.’

Eve’s mouth fell open. ‘They’re importing troublemakers?’ she said.

‘Looks like it.’

A second Minibus came into view and then a third. None of them were police vehicles. ‘You go and get Trish,’ said Steven. ‘I’ll warn Brewer and then go grab your father.’

Steven ran back to his car and called up Brewer on the radio. ‘We’ve got big trouble,’ he said. ‘Three busloads of Yobs-R-Us have just arrived and there’s no sign of your lot.’

‘My lads are all over the place,’ said Brewer. ‘And do you know what?’

‘They’ve been attending hoax calls,’ said Steven, suddenly sensing what Brewer was about to say.

Brewer took it personally. ‘Christ, we can’t ignore it when some guy phones in to report a car accident with two dead and three children lying injured,’ said Brewer. ‘Any more than we can ignore a jammed level crossing or a tree lying across a main road or any of the other shit that’s being phoned in.’

‘Well Blackbridge is no hoax, I promise you,’ said Steven with a feeling of great foreboding.

‘There’s one patrol car already on its way and I’ll be with you shortly,’ said Brewer.

‘Over and out,’ said Steven quietly as the sound of angry voices was carried on the air from Main Street. Eve had already set off for Crawhill; he assumed that she’d bring her back here for the time being. That would help him too, knowing that there were no innocent bystanders between him and Childs and Leadbetter if things got nasty and the smart money was riding on that possibility. In the meantime, his prime objective was to find Eve’s father and extract him from the mob.

Ironically, he could see that the arrival of rent-a-mob was going to make that a bit easier than it might otherwise have been. He would no longer be the only non-local in the crowd. There would however, be a number on men in the crowd who would know him from his visits to the Castle Tavern so he’d have to be careful all the same.

The suit he was wearing would mark him out straight away so he went to the boot of his car and brought out the sweat shirt, tracksuit bottoms, training shoes and woolly hat he’d worn on his night expedition to Peat Ridge Farm. He changed in the back of the car, put on a pair of sunglasses then set out for Main Street, hoping to blend in with the crowd. Fortuitously, he arrived almost at the same time as a police panda car pulled up opposite the hotel. All eyes turned to look at the occupants as they got out.

Steven noticed the look of apprehension that flitted across the policemen’s faces as they took in the size of the crowd and sensed its hostility, but then professionalism took over and they adopted stony expressions of authority. They made their way through to the front where two hapless officials in their shirtsleeves had been arguing with the crowd. Men in authority always imagined they could identify with the common man by taking off their jackets. One of the officers climbed up on to the wall and appealed for quiet. Steven looked around for Eve’s father couldn’t see him. What he did notice however, was that many of the out-of-towners were carrying hold-alls. This was an added worry.

‘I must ask you all to return to your homes immediately,’ shouted the officer, whose appeal for quiet had fallen on deaf ears.

‘Disperse and go back to your homes immed…’ The officer did not complete the sentence. A bottle smashed into his face, breaking his nose and shattering his front teeth. He fell from the wall into the arms of his partner who collapsed to the ground under the weight. A flurry of feet made sure that both officers were now out of the reckoning. The Rubicon had been crossed: there was now no going back.

The two government men were next to be attacked. One fell to the ground under a hail of blows; the other made it to the door of the hotel but only to find it locked. He too succumbed to the anger of the crowd and fell to the ground, curled up in a foetal position and squealing in pain as blows rained in on him. The anxious faces at the hotel windows disappeared as stones and bottles sailed through them to let in the sounds of the street. The panda car was bounced on its springs until its own momentum could be used to help overturn it to loud cheers. The spreading fuel puddle from its tank only acted as an invitation to a mob that was now feeding on its own evil. A match was thrown and the vehicle erupted into a ball of orange flame to the accompaniment of more loud cheers.

Throughout it all, Steven kept looking for Eve’s father. He was beginning to think that perhaps he wasn’t in the crowd after all when he caught sight of him with two men he recognised as regulars from the Castle. He had started to make his way through the throng towards them when one of the out-of-towners jumped up on to the bonnet of one of the civil service cars and used an electric megaphone to address the rest.

‘These bastards don’t give a toss for ordinary working folk,’ he yelled. ‘They come to our villages, set up their experiments, kill our kids and then tell us there’s fuck-all to worry about. It’s all perfectly safe!’ Encouraged by the cheers he continued, ‘Let’s show the bastards that we can look after our own. And do you know what?… They’re dead right. When we’re finished with their GM shite, there will be fuck-all to worry about!’

As the cheering subsided, the sound of a camera film wind-on caught the crowd’s attention. Steven saw that it was the young cameraman with McColl. You son, are a few frames short of a cassette, he thought.

‘No cameras!’ yelled the man on the bonnet of the car as if he were Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. The mob surrounded the hapless youth and his camera was taken from him, emptied, smashed and trampled underfoot. He and McColl were about to receive the same treatment when it was pointed out that the man with the photographer was from the Clarion. ‘He’s the one who broke the story!’ cried a voice. ‘He’s on our side!’ McColl and his sidekick were allowed to back away unharmed. They looked like pale, frightened rabbits, thought Steven.

The fired-up crowd started to move off up the hill leading to Peat Ridge Farm, an angry, amorphous amoeba, hell-bent on destroying anything in its path. Steven tried to keep his eye on Eve’s father but unfortunately he was walking near the front. It wasn’t going to be easy to cut him out of the herd from there.

He decided against trying to move up through the body of the mob and opted instead to fall back until there was enough room for him to move to the outside. He then ran up the flank and sidled in behind Ferguson. He sensed that it was the fact that he was carrying a gun that had put Ferguson up here in the vanguard. He didn’t strike Steven as being a natural trouble-seeker. If anything he seemed out of his depth but his grief and bitterness over the death of his son was being nurtured by the others. He clearly wasn’t a leader but had been adopted as a convenient figurehead.

Steven chose his moment and clicked Ferguson’s heels with his right foot, tripping him and sending him tumbling to the ground. He quickly stood over him, pretending to be helping him to his feet when in actual fact he had his thumb in a pressure point behind his ear, restricting blood supply to his brain and keeping him on the ground.

‘It’s his ankle,’ yelled Steven, without looking up. ‘On you go! We’ll catch up.’

Steven kept Ferguson on the ground, hiding his own face while the mob passed by on either side. When it seemed that it was all clear, he risked looking up. The two men from the Castle who had been flanking Ferguson were still standing there waiting for him. One of them recognised Steven immediately as they approached and said, ‘It’s that poncey civil servant bastard! He’s no wi’ us!’

Steven hit him once. It was a blow from his right fist that travelled barely eighteen inches but it caught the man just to the left of the point of his chin and jerked his head sharply up, causing him to lose consciousness and go down like a bag of cement. The other man, he hit twice; once in the solar plexus and once on the back of the neck as he doubled up. Steven left both of them lying in a heap and helped Ferguson to his feet to start frog marching him back to the village.

Ferguson started to protest loudly and Steven halted to spin him round and bring his face up close. ‘Now get this,’ he snarled. ‘I have had just about as much of Bonnie bloody Blackbridge as I can take. Ronald Lane had nothing to do with the death of your son and neither did the crop in his fields. The man who did is now dead so there is nothing you can do about it. Your daughter cares about you enough not to want you ending up spending the rest of your life in prison for killing an innocent man and I like your daughter so I’m helping her. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. You can walk home with me in civilised fashion or I can stick your rabbit gun up your backside and carry you in across my shoulders but going back, you most certainly are! Now, don’t waste my time. You choose!’

Ferguson started walking quietly beside Steven until they reached his home without further incident or comment. Steven was dismayed to find that Eve wasn’t there. He warned Ferguson to stay indoors and ran to his car to set off for Crawhill. He almost ran into Brewer’s car as he turned into Main Street and both men screeched to a halt. Steven got out and ran round to talk to Brewer through his open window. ‘The mob will be at Peat Ridge by now,’ he said. ‘There must be about a hundred of them and rent-a-mob were carrying hold-alls.

‘Two of my officers are down,’ said Brewer.

‘I saw it. There was nothing I could do. How many more have you got coming?’

‘Five pandas.’

‘Ten unarmed men?’ exclaimed Steven. ‘I suggest you call for several ambulances and the Fire Brigade… and maybe the Brigade of Ghurkhas while you’re at it.’

‘I’ll try talking to them,’ said Brewer.

Steven screwed up his face and said, ‘I won’t tell your insurance company you said that; they’d probably invoke the suicide clause in your policy.’

‘That bad, huh?’

‘The only way I’d talk to that crowd would be with an AK47 in my hands.’

‘I’ll have a look anyway,’ said Brewer. ‘After all, it’s my patch they’re crapping on.’

‘Be careful as you drive up the hill,’ said Steven. ‘I left a couple of them in the road. If they’re still lying there you could charge them with obstructing the police in the execution of their duty.’

Brewer roared off and Steven got back into his car. As he did so, a police panda car entered Blackbridge with blue light flashing. He waited until it had passed on its way to Peat Ridge before moving off. ‘Bon chance,’ he murmured.

Steven found the yard at Crawhill deserted when he drove in through the open gates. He checked the gun in his holster and decided on a head-on approach. He went up to the door of the farmhouse and knocked hard on it. There was no response. The only sound he could hear was coming from the mob over at Peat Ridge. As he listened at the door he heard a gun shot in the distance and the sound of a small explosion. The real trouble had started,

‘Eve! Trish!’ he called up at the windows of the house. ‘Are you in there?’

The house seemed deserted. He tried the door and found it locked. Where the hell were they? If they weren’t at Eve’s house and they weren’t here, where else could they possibly be? The possibility that they were being held prisoner by Childs and Leadbetter presented itself. Steven went round to the back of the house and broke a pane of glass in order to release the catch on the back door. He entered and moved cautiously through the ground floor rooms with his gun held at the ready. He then moved upstairs and carried out a similar search while the sounds of explosions from Peat Ridge emphasised the silence here at Crawhill. The house was empty.

Steven clattered back downstairs and left by the front door to run quickly round the sheds, searching for signs of life. He found nothing and that just left the barn itself. Could Eve and Trish be in it? A shiver ran up his spine as he acknowledged that Trish knew too much for Childs and Leadbetter to feel comfortable about her and so — whether they knew it or not — did Eve. It might be convenient for them to have the two women die in a tragic fire. He moved cautiously towards the tall doors, keeping an eye on the ground for any signs of trip wires or infra red devices, and found them — not unexpectedly — locked. He didn’t want to use his gun and have the sound of the shot ring out across the farm, so he ran back to one of the sheds and returned with a hammer. Two blows and the lock parted company with the door.

As he swung back one half of the door, it was suddenly framed by a huge sheet of orange flame coming from Peat Ridge and the air was filled with the smell of petrol. The oilseed rape was on fire. Steven pushed the door to again for a moment in order to look at the sky. He was in time to see through the trees the roof of Peat Ridge farmhouse erupting in sheets of flame. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he murmured as billows of black smoke from the fields started to drift in the breeze towards Crawhill.