Deception

TWENTY THREE

The barn was full of unlabelled plastic sacks, stacked in rows and piled up to the roof. He opened one with his pocket-knife and took out a handful of the granular material inside to examine it in his palm. Modern industrial technology could make the most horrific of substances appear innocuous. This was slaughtered cow, reduced to dried pellets by a rendering plant. He was about to leave again when he thought he heard something and turned round. ‘Eve?’ he called out. ‘Trish? Are you there?’

He thought he heard a muffled cry coming from — he knew not where. There did not seem to be any room for anyone to hide among the tightly packet rows. He called out and got a faint response again. Puzzled, he started moving the sacks nearest him, shifting them behind him so that he could make inroads into the mountain. The muffled cries got louder so he worked harder. He could now see that a narrow tunnel had been created through the bottom rows of the sacks. He got down on the floor of the barn and started to wriggle up through it.

He found Trish and Eve tied up and gagged and lying huddled together in fright in a tiny confined island of space among the sacks. The lack of air and the heavy smell made Steven himself feel nauseous as he pulled off the tape stuck across their mouths and struggled to undo their bonds. Both women tried to take deep breaths and immediately started to cough as the dust got to their lungs.

‘Childs and Leadbetter?’ Steven asked.

‘Eve gasped a brief confirmation as she continued to fight for breath. She turned and tried to help Trish back out along the tunnel with Steven reversing out first. There wasn’t much light coming in through the open door but Steven could see that Eve’s hair was wet with sweat and she was covered in the dust from the sacks. When they finally reached the door of the barn they immediately became aware of the heat coming from the fire at Peat Ridge. The air was already thick with smoke.

‘Is Dad over there?’ Eve asked.

‘He’s at home,’ said Steven.

Eve put her hand on Steven’s shoulder and squeezed it. She was saying thank you when a bullet embedded itself in the barn door.

‘Get down!’ yelled Steven.

Two more bullets came near in quick succession and Steven and the women, were forced to retreat into the barn again. Steven remained near the door, lying flat on the ground with his gun held in both hands, ready for any target that should present itself. He rolled quickly over to his right to try to get a better view and another bullet slammed into the wood, less than a foot from his head. He was well and truly pinned down.

He could now see that the shots were coming from two directions. This meant that he and the women couldn’t even think about making a run for it. They would be cut down in the crossfire before they had covered ten metres. The best he could force from the situation was a stalemate. As long as he had his gun, Childs and Leadbetter couldn’t afford to rush him. He pulled out his mobile phone and punched in Brewer’s number. There was no response. There was no signal in the barn. They were on their own.

Three minutes passed without a shot being fired so Steven decided it was time to check on the opposition’s presence. He rolled over three times in quick succession to the other side of the door opening and a bullet thudded into the door frame, sending splinters up into the air and telling him what he wanted to know. His new vantage point however, gave him sight of a small explosion which resulted in several trees catching fire about a hundred metres away. This was significant because the trees were on Crawhill Farm. The ‘spread’ of the fire had started.

Steven moved back a little: the last bullet had come dangerously close. It had missed him but he had felt it pass close to his head. He became aware of a diesel engine starting up and being revved hard. It sounded very near and his pulse rate rose as he realised that this could be a trump card for the opposition. His gun would be of little use against the bulldozer, he’d noticed in the yard. It was now coming towards them. He moved back a little and signalled that the women move as far back as they could. They backed into the tunnel in the sacks because there was nowhere else to go.

The yellow monster lumbered into view, its tracks churning up the earth as Steven looked desperately for an angle to get off a shot at its driver. It was impossible. The shovel of the vehicle was being held at a height that obscured the driver from view. Steven was expecting the vehicle to come straight into the barn and for Childs and Leadbetter to alight with guns blazing but it didn’t happen that way. Instead it halted outside the front doors and a few moments later he saw the barn doors start to close. He loosed off a shot at them but it was no more than a gesture. The wood was too thick to allow a bullet from a hand gun to penetrate.

The barn doors closed completely and the bulldozer outside revved up before moving in to nudge up against them. The engine died and Steven faced the fact that he and the women were now trapped inside. Childs and Leadbetter were back to pursuing their original plan. The barn was going to go up in flames, but now with three people inside instead of just Trish Rafferty. It would all be just a tragic accident, resulting from the riot at Peat Ridge.

There was no chance of getting out through the front door so Steven searched desperately for other options. He turned to Trish and asked, ‘You said that Tom didn’t repair this barn as he’d agreed to do, what’s wrong with it? Where are the weak spots?’

Trish looked as if she was living a nightmare, as indeed she was. ‘It was rotten along the bottom of the back wall,’ she said. ‘But … they fixed it when they found out that Tom hadn’t.’

Steven’s hopes were dashed.

‘After I told them what had been going on, the authorities inspected it and then sent men to stop the rats getting in,’ said Trish. ‘We’re going to die, aren’t we?’

Steven was reluctant to voice the affirmative that he felt. ‘No we’re not,’ he said, not entirely convincing himself, let alone Trish. ‘Did they completely renovate the barn?’ he asked.

‘No, they just plugged the gaps in the back wall.’

‘So maybe there’s a weakness higher up,’ said Steven, thinking out loud. He started to fight his way up through the mountain of sacks by throwing them one at a time behind him where he asked Trish and Eve to move them out of the way. By the time he had reached the narrow gap between the top of the sacks and the apex of the barn roof, he was finding the heat almost unbearable and the air foul but he was now committed to this course of action. There wasn’t going to be time to think of another one.

He turned and shouted back to the women that he was going to try to reach the back wall by crawling along the narrow tunnel formed by the ridge of the roof.

‘Be careful!’ yelled Eve before he started his wriggle along the top of the sack pile. The space was so narrow that he had to keep his arms stretched out in front of him all the time: there was no room to withdraw them.

There came a point when the space between the sacks and the roof became so narrow that he had to force himself through it, grazing his stomach on the sack stitching and raking his back along the roof ridge beam. But the pain was secondary to the knowledge that it would now be impossible to turn back. There was just no room to turn round and he couldn’t force himself backwards with the same strength as he could forwards. He was now committed to getting out… or dying in the attempt. There would be no in-between.

Steven reached the apex of the back wall where it met the roof and felt around it for any sign of weakness. It seemed depressingly solid. It took great effort but he managed to move one sack to his left back into the space behind him so that he could move a little to the side in order to test another joint. The heat and the bad air was now joined in tormenting him by sweat running into his eyes from the effort he was expending. The beam joints still seemed secure but when he hit his fist off a roof panel in giving vent to his frustration, he felt a weakness in it. He tried again and found a definite looseness where the fixing nails had rusted away. Christ! If only he had more room to manoeuvre.

Steven fought to make more space for himself to work in but the effort of moving sacks in such a confined space was bringing him dangerously close to complete exhaustion. He managed to give himself the thickness of one more sack by gripping the sack below his belly and rolling round on to his back so that he took the place of the sack. He then forced the sack — now on top of him — back into the space he had just crawled along. After all, he would not be going back that way.

After taking a few moments to recover he brought up his knees in an agonising contortion and managed to get the soles of his feet against the suspect roof panel. He pushed with all his might and it split away from its fixing nails to move upwards but only for about half a metre before it stopped.

Steven rested for a moment, taking pleasure in the fact that light was coming in and he could breathe in the outside air, although it was a long way from being fresh as the whole world, as far as he could see, was covered in thick smoke. He could now see that the roof panel had jammed because of a rusty metal fixing plate that was still holding fast despite its condition. There was no time for subtle strategy. The sound of one more explosion in the Blackbridge air was hardly going to matter any more. He pulled out his gun from the holster and fired twice at the plate. It flew off and the roof panel was now free to rise.

Steven replaced the gun in its holster and pulled himself up through the gap and out on to the roof of the barn where he paused to look around him although he realised that there couldn’t be much time left before Childs and Leadbetter set fire to the barn. He could see that several fires had broken out on Crawhill, all looking as if they had been the result of fire spreading from Peat Ridge.

He kept himself pressed flat against the roof as he tried to see where Childs and Leadbetter might be and finally caught sight of one of them — he couldn’t tell which one — about a hundred metres away and very near to the road between Peat Ridge and Crawhill.

He kept himself on the other side of the barn roof as he made his way up to the front of the building and looked down over the edge at the bulldozer, parked hard up against the front doors. For him this was now an advantage. The drop to earth would be daunting but a drop down on to the roof of the ‘dozer’s cab presented no real problem at all, providing that he wasn’t being lined up in a gun sight as he contemplated it.

Steven could see no sign of the opposition watching the barn and committed himself to rolling off the roof to hang by his fingers for a moment before dropping down on to the roof of the cab. It was then a simple enough manoeuvre to swing his body down into the cab to begin figuring out how to start up the vehicle. The dangling ignition key was a welcome sight. He turned it to the right and hit the green button with the flat of his hand. The engine roared into life and Steven looked skywards briefly in a gesture of thanks. He knew that he might only have seconds to do what he had to do. He crunched the gear stick into reverse and almost went through the cab’s screen as the vehicle lurched backwards.

There was no time to warn Eve and Trish what he planned. He was relying on them realising what the sound of the engine must mean. He pushed the stick forward into first and rammed the blade of the vehicle into the barn doors, splintering them like matches. He killed the engine and jumped down to yell to Eve and Trish that it was now safe to come out. They appeared at the door and Steven herded them quickly away from the barn in a crouching run, fearing some kind of incendiary explosion at any moment. The explosion didn’t come but the sound of nearby gunfire did and a bullet whined off an empty oil drum off to their left.

It was clear to Steven that Childs and Leadbetter had decided against a quick detonation of the barn in favour of at least one of them coming back to hunt them down. Eve and Trish had found a small hillock to crouch behind. Steven signalled to Eve that he was going to move off to the right in an attempt to come up on the flank of the opposition. Eve nodded that she understood and Steven rolled off to his right then sprinted into the cover of a pile of wooden crates. He glanced back and saw that Eve was trying to attract his attention. She was pointing at something.

Steven deduced that she must have caught a glimpse of someone coming towards them but out of his line of vision. He looked in the direction she was indicating and then saw that she was holding up the flat of her hand as if telling him to hold his horses. He remained crouching low, gun at the ready but conscious of the fact that he had already used up two shots. His eyes were fixed on Eve who still had the palm of her hand held up. Suddenly she dropped it and made a rapid pointing gesture.

Steven sprang to his feet, holding the gun in front of him in both hands, knees slightly bent. He saw Childs standing about twenty metres from him, preparing to fire at where the women were hiding. Childs managed to get one shot off before Steven fired at him, three times in quick succession. He did it coldly and without rancour but at the same time fully aware that he was settling a personal score. Jenny would never need to know what had happened here but what was more important, she would never have to see Childs’ face again, whether in a court of law or just by chance. All three bullets found their mark and Childs was dead before he even knew that Steven was anywhere near.

Steven remained on the alert, dropping again to one knee, bringing his weapon round in an arc, all the while trying to see where Leadbetter might be. There was no sign of him and no gunfire being directed at him. He concluded that Childs had come back on his own to deal with the three of them. Leadbetter must still be out on the farm somewhere.

Steven ran quickly over to where Childs was lying and prised his gun from his fingers before running back to join the women. He froze in his tracks when he saw that Eve was cradling Trish in her arms and sobbing quietly. ‘The bastard hit her,’ she said. ‘She’s dead.’

Steven could see that Trish Rafferty was indeed dead. ‘God, I’m so sorry,’ he said.

Trish looked up. ‘Who’s that coming?’ she asked. Steven spun round and dropped to one knee, levelling the gun at two figures who were running towards them through the smoke. He relaxed as he recognised the gangling figure of Jamie Brown.

‘Bloody hell! This place looks like Viet Nam!’ gasped Brown as he and the young, scared-looking photographer with him crouched down beside them. ‘Is the stuff still in the barn?’ asked Brown.

‘Yes, but you can’t risk going in there,’ insisted Steven. ‘It’s going to go up at any moment.

‘Just a couple of shots and a handful for the analyst,’ said Brown getting to his feet and urging the cameraman — who wasn’t so sure — to follow him.

‘Don’t do it!’ yelled Steven.

‘After the bollocking I got from the editor this morning, there’s no way I’m going back empty handed,’ Brown yelled back. The two of them disappeared from view and Steven looked anxiously after them. ‘Come on!.. Come on!’ he urged as the seconds ticked by.

The barn suddenly erupted in a sheet of yellow flame over a hundred feet high. A deafening roar filled their ears and a wall of heat hit Steven and Eve as they were blown off their feet. Steven cried out in anguish as he realised that there was no way that Jamie Brown or his companion could have survived the holocaust. He crawled away from the fire and the sickening smell of burning meat.

When they were far enough away Eve and Steven turned to look back at the inferno. It didn’t seem right to Steven to be crouching down at that particular moment, knowing that he was witnessing the cremation of Jamie Brown and his colleague. He stood up and gazed at the flames with a lump in his throat, ignoring Eve’s tugging at his leg.

After a few moments, he said quietly, ‘God bless you, Jamie Brown. You were one of life’s nicer people.’ He was still staring at the fire when Eve picked up the gun, which he’d left lying at his feet, and fired it. The noise broke the spell and he dropped to his knees in time to turn and see Leadbetter fall dead.

Leadbetter had been circling round behind them and Eve, who was sitting on the ground, had seen him appear through the bushes: he had been unaware of her presence. He had been concentrating on Steven’s back, preparing to shoot him, believing him to be on his own. Eve had fired first.

‘Thanks,’ said Steven, feeling dazed but aware that it sounded woefully inadequate.

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Eve. She sounded calm but Steven could see that her hands were shaking. He put his arms around her and held her close.

‘Please tell me it’s all over,’ said Eve, a sob catching in her throat.

‘It is. I promise.’ said Steven, rocking her gently and kissing her hair. After a long silence while they both looked at the flames and tried to come to terms with what had happened, Steven added, ‘and us? What about us?’

‘I don’t know,’ murmured Eve. ‘It would be so easy to fall in love with you. I’m half way there already but I’ve got a degree to get and a career to fashion and a life to live away from here. I don’t see how to fit in a serious relationship with a man who also has a daughter to consider. I’m not ready to end up pushing a shopping trolley round Tesco and wiping little noses. Does that sound awful?’

Steven smiled and shook his head. ‘No, my lady,’ he whispered. ‘You’re just telling it like it is.’

‘But I don’t want to be alone tonight,’ said Eve.

‘Then you won’t be. We’ll let tomorrow take care of itself.’

When the last siren had faded and darkness had descended on Blackbridge at the end of a very long day, silence returned. The only thing to remind people what had happened there that day was the smell that still hung in the air and the lingering smoke that obscured a view of the stars on an otherwise clear night. Childs and Leadbetter, the orchestrators of the whole sorry mess were dead but then so were Trish Rafferty, Jamie Brown and his cameraman, nineteen year old Kevin Miles, on only his third assignment. Ronald Lane had been blinded trying to defend his property, which had been razed to the ground. Brewer was in hospital with a broken arm and eight policemen, four security guards and ten ‘protestors’ had also been detained. The two senior civil servants — one from MAFF, the other from the Scottish Executive were currently in Intensive Care after the beating they’d taken and many others had been injured to a lesser degree by flying glass. The barn at Crawhill had burned with such ferocity that it and its contents were all but vaporised. Steven had never been so glad to leave any place in his entire life.

‘So what happens now?’ he asked John Macmillan as he sat in the offices of Sci-Med in London.

Macmillan seemed like a cat on hot bricks. Steven had sensed it as soon as he’d arrived after taking a few days off to visit Jenny and the others over in Norfolk. He watched him arrange the papers on his desk and then rearrange them.

‘Not very much, I’m afraid,’ said Macmillan.

‘You’re kidding,’ said Steven.

‘The official story is that these men, Childs and Leadbetter, were acting on their own initiative and went far beyond anything their brief had authorised them for.’

‘Acting on their own?’ exclaimed Steven. ‘You can’t possibly expect me to swallow that!’

‘Of course not,’ conceded Macmillan. ‘But proving it is another matter.’

‘So you’re going for the knighthood after all,’ said Steven angrily and then regretted it almost immediately.

‘It’s not that,’ said Macmillan with admirable calm, ‘I promise you. It’s just that I cannot afford the luxury of resentment or bitterness or even bad temper. I have to be pragmatic if Sci-Med is to survive and it must. I’ve done all the sums and I’ve decided that we can’t win. As I’ve said to you many times in the past, don’t get into a fight you can’t win.’

‘Why can’t we win?’

‘Childs and Leadbetter have been disowned — as I think we always knew they would be. Apart from that, they’re both dead. There will be nothing in writing that links them to any government department either in London or Edinburgh and the BSE cull material, which doesn’t exist any more was in any case being stored legally. On top of that, its connection to the rats’ behaviour is now little more than conjecture.’

Steven started to protest but Macmillan held up his hand and continued, ‘It could still be argued — and would be, I’m sure, that the problem was down to the GM crop, which no longer exists either.’

‘But we both know the truth!’ protested Steven.

‘Knowing is not enough. Defending a GM crop is not a tenable position for us to adopt in the current climate of popular opinion and that is what it would amount to.

‘Christ!’ said Steven, feeling helpless. ‘They’re going to get away with it. Isn’t that what you’re saying?’

‘That’s what usually happens, isn’t it?’ said Macmillan, leaning on his desk.

Steven got up to leave, shaking his head in disbelief but fearing that he might see that Macmillan was right when he’d had time to calm down. This only made it worse. As Steven reached the door, Macmillan said, ‘I got the letter about the knighthood this morning.’

‘And?’ asked Steven without turning around.

‘I declined.’