Deception

FOUR

Steven drove up to Scotland on Friday. The plan was to spend Saturday with Jenny and the others and then drive over to Blackbridge on Sunday where he would take a look around and maybe speak to a few people before travelling home again. When Saturday dawned with clear blue skies and unbroken sunshine, Steven persuaded Sue to let him take not only Jenny, but her children too, away for the day so that she and her husband could have some time to themselves — a pretty rare event these days. They could go up to Glasgow perhaps, do some shopping and have lunch somewhere nice.

Sue agreed, but only after insisting that she would make up a picnic for them and making sure that Steven had a note of her mobile phone number just in case anything went wrong. The good weather dictated he should take the three children off down the Solway coast where they could build sand castles, dig tunnels and do the things that families did at the beach.

He listened to the excited chatter of the children in the back of the car on the way down and was pleased to hear that Jenny had been accepted by the other two as their sister, the continual fighting testified to that. He himself was always careful to bring presents for all three children when he came to visit. He didn’t want to be the kind of father to Jenny who just appeared from time to time bearing gifts while opting out of all the hard parts of parenthood but to a certain extent this was what was happening and events were being dictated by circumstances. While this was the case, he would try to be a part — a pleasant one, of all three children’s lives. As for the future, he couldn’t see that far ahead. In fact, he couldn’t see much further than tomorrow morning when he would drive up to Blackbridge and start working again.

When evening came and the tide finally swept in to cover the sand pies and the ornate castle they had spent so long building, Steven and the three children stood in a line and watched in silence. A moment came when Jenny looked up at him and a lump came to his throat when he saw the sadness in her eyes. For a moment, just a fleeting moment, they were Lisa’s eyes. ‘Cheer up,’ he said softly. ‘There will be other days. I promise.’

Twenty minutes into the journey home and all three children fell asleep. Steven switched on the radio but kept it low. He managed to catch the news on Radio Scotland and heard the word, Blackbridge, mentioned. It sounded loud because he was sensitised to it after reading about it in the file he’d gone through so thoroughly. It was like hearing your own name spoken in a crowded room. Turning up the volume a little, he took in a report on an abortive attempt to damage the experimental crop on Peat Ridge Farm. Although the police had got there on time to prevent the planned arson attack, and no charges had subsequently been made, feelings were running high in the village and the farm owner had now decided to go ahead with plans to call in a private security firm.

There followed an interview with Ronald Lane, who spoke with a South African accent and insisted that the rule of law must be upheld. An unfortunate accent for that kind of assertion, thought Steven. This was followed by a ‘balancing’ interview featuring an inarticulate ramble from a villager about ‘them’ not really knowing if things were safe or not. The report ended and Steven turned off the radio. He adjusted his rear view mirror momentarily to take a look at the three in the back. They looked like sleeping cherubs, cheeks all rosy from their day in the sunshine.

Steven left at ten next morning amidst much waving and promises to be back soon but there was a last minute hitch when Robin decided that he must have left one of his toy spacemen in Steven’s car. A quick search of the back uncovered the missing astronaut, trapped down the back of the rear seat squab where his ray gun had been of little use. The sky grew progressively darker as he headed north and it started raining just after eleven, turning the dual carriageway into a series of spray curtains thrown up by heavy lorries. By twelve o’clock, when he entered Blackbridge, it was coming down in torrents.

Maybe it was the darkness or maybe it was the fact that it was raining heavily but Steven took an immediate dislike to the place. It seemed to have very little in the way of redeeming features; an ugly little village full of ugly houses in the middle of nowhere, although, in reality, it wasn’t that far from the capital. He felt it was the sort of place you would normally splash through in the car without even noticing. Two sweeps of the wipers and it would be gone.

Steven toured the streets slowly, taking in as much as he could and generally orientating himself with the actuality of what he’d studied on the map. He kept the said map sat on the seat beside him, referring to it from time to time to identify things. Finally he drove up the hill that separated Peat Ridge Farm from Crawhill Farm, crossing the bridge over the canal near the top where he thought about the three boys who’d had the canal adventure.

At the top of the road, he turned off into the track that would lead up to Peat Ridge Farm, just with the intention of turning his car round. Two men in yellow waterproofs stepped out in front of him. One had an Alsatian dog on a short lead, the other a mobile phone in his hand. Steven opened the car window, getting wet in the process.

‘What’s your business?’ rasped the one with the phone.

‘Just turning my car,’ replied Steven.

‘Don’t bloody do it here in future,’ snapped the man.

‘Gotcha,’ smiled Steven, noting the logo on the man’s poncho that said he belonged to, Sector 1 Security. He drove back down to the village. The rain was keeping everyone off the streets. He wasn’t going to learn anything by walking around today. He’d have to do his snooping indoors. That gave him a choice of two places. There was a grim looking pub at the East End of Main Street called the Castle Tavern and there was a small white-painted hotel in the middle called, The Blackbridge Arms.

The hotel had a number of official looking cars parked outside it so Steven concluded that this was where anyone from MAFF or the Scottish Executive would be. He was impressed that they were working on a Sunday, or maybe the English contingent was actually staying there, he considered. He knew that the risk of meeting anyone he knew or of seeing anyone that he recognised would be small but he decided not to take it anyway. Macmillan had said that this was to be an unofficial look around so he opted instead for the pub.

The Castle Tavern was as ugly and dirty on the inside as it was on the outside but it seemed popular: in fact, on a Sunday afternoon, it was crowded. His immediate thought on entering was that the atmosphere seemed positively aggressive but then he reminded himself that a Scots accent could make the Lord’s Prayer sound aggressive. There were simply a lot of men in the room, all of them apparently talking at the same time.

As he entered, he took in the layout of the place, noting that there were tables and chairs to the left of the door, all occupied and with several domino games in progress. There were two pool tables off to the right and a bank of electronic games machines sited along the long wall behind them; they were adding electronic noise to the general cacophony.

One of the men at the pool table turned as Steven entered and said in a deliberately loud voice, ‘Fuck, here’s another one o’ them.’ It made his friends laugh. It made Steven wonder what he was supposed to be. He made his way to the bar counter and saw the barman deliberately adopt a neutral expression. He asked for a beer and was served and charged without a word being exchanged.

Steven took a sip of his beer and looked about him, observing the beer slops on the plastic bar top, the uncleared tables, the thick blue tobacco fug in the air and the ring of cigarette butts on the floor around the bar. He heard the word ‘fuck’ so many times in its various forms in the first few minutes that he was reminded of an assertion in some recent radio programme that swearing was so much on the increase that soon all other words in the English language would become extinct. ‘Fuck’ would be the only word left for communication purposes. Information and ideas would be exchanged through the use of different inflections on it. The suggestion was being given a serious try-out by Sunday lunchtime drinkers in Blackbridge.

‘So, what paper are you with?’ asked a voice at his elbow.

Steven turned to find a short man with ginger hair and a moustache standing there. ‘I’m not,’ he replied. ‘I’m not a journalist.’

‘Sorry, I thought you must be one of the English stringers,’ said the man. ‘I’m Alex McColl, by the way. I’m covering the attack on the GM crop story for the Clarion.’

‘I heard there had been some kind of trouble,’ said Steven. ‘It was on the car radio.’

‘Not much of a story. The police got there before the buggers could set fire to the crop like they’d planned.’

‘You sound disappointed.’

‘One man’s misfortune is another’s front page story,’ said McColl. ‘You’re a stranger here; what line are you in?’

‘I’m a civil servant.’

‘Another one? Place is crawling with them. How come you’re not drinking with your mates up at the Arms?’

‘I’ve just arrived. I don’t know my way about yet. This was the first place I came to. How come you’re not there if it’s a story you’re after?’

‘I got seriously fed up banging my head against a brick wall. Getting the knickers off a nun would be easier than getting information out of that lot. The beer’s cheaper here too.’

A newcomer arrived at the bar beside them. ‘Bloody hell, it’s raining cats and dogs out there,’ a tall, gangling man complained, shaking the water from his thatch of dark hair and brushing it from the shoulders of his Berghaus jacket. Steven thought he spoke with an English accent but further exposure to it said it was educated Scots.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t young Jamie Brown of, The Scotsman,’ said McColl. ‘The paper for people who need a tyre lever to open their arse in the morning. Someone else who’s lost his way in the storm, I’ll be bound.’

‘Hello McColl,’ replied Brown pleasantly. ‘I suppose you’re here running a competition to find out if you’ve any readers who can actually spell, “genetically modified”. Wins a trip to Disneyland, does it?’

‘Ho, very droll,’ replied McColl. ‘That kind of joke in your column could well push your circulation up into double figures.’

‘In which case I will buy some proper toilet paper and stop using copies of the Clarion.’

‘Well, enough of this jolly banter,’ said McColl, buttoning up his jacket. ‘I’m off to see if I can coax a few quotes out of Thomas Rafferty, the people’s champion. They tell me he’s a piss artist so it shouldn’t be too difficult with a bottle of malt in my pocket.’

‘Good luck,’ said Brown sourly. ‘I’ve just come from there. That’s how I got soaked. I’ve been arguing with his minders for the last half hour.’

‘Minders?’ exclaimed McColl. ‘What the hell does Rafferty need minders for? It’s an organic farm he’s supposed to be setting up not a Swiss bank.’

Brown shrugged. ‘Good question, but there were two men in suits at Crawhill, insisting that, “Mr Rafferty had nothing to say to the press”.’

McColl left to go try his luck, leaving Steven and Brown at the bar. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ Steven offered.

‘Civil of you. I’ll have a whisky if that’s all right.’

Steven ordered the drink and watched Brown add a little water to it from a jug on the bar. The water in the jug made him think of the canal.

‘You’re English,’ said Brown. ‘Welcome to Blackbridge… twinned with Auschwitz,’ he whispered quietly.

‘It’s not exactly pretty, is it?’ answered Steven.

‘West Lothian does these places really well,’ said Brown. ‘It has lots of them.’

Steven said, ‘Your colleague was just bemoaning the fact that this GM business wasn’t much of a story.’

‘Well, it’s not exactly new, is it? It’s been happening all over the place down south but I suppose we have to cover it up here when it happens on our own doorstep.’ Brown looked about him before saying, sotto voce, ‘Mind you, I tend to think a few foreign elements getting into the gene pool round here might be a welcome development. Half these buggers look like they should be playing the banjo on some bridge.’

Steven hid a smile. He thought the barman might have heard but either didn’t understand or was pretending not to.

An argument at one of the tables was gathering momentum. Voices were getting louder by the second. The barman tried, ‘Order please, gentlemen!’ but to no avail. The table was now the centre of attention.

‘Ah’m tellin’ you, Lane has a perfect right to protect his property, any way he chooses,’ said one man loudly.

‘An’ ah’m tellin’ you, we’re all breathin’ in that GM crap he’s growin’ up there on Peat Ridge. He can bring in a’ the security guards he wants but it’s still no’ goin’ tae stop us torchin’ that shit!’

‘Christ, the man’s got a license. There’s nothin’ wrang wi’ the stuff he’s growin’ He wouldn’t have got the license if there was!’

‘What’s the bugger doin’ back here anyway? South African tosser,’ interjected another loud voice.

‘He was bloody born here! He’s got every right to be here! It was his faither’s place!’

‘But it was never good enough for mister university high and mighty while his old man was alive. He pissed off and left the old guy to work the place on his own ‘til it killed him. He should have fuckin’ stayed away.’

‘Gus is right,’ said yet another new voice. ‘Nobody seems to know what that bugger is growin’ up there and lots of us have got young kids. Christ knows what a’ they genes floatin’ aboot are doin’ tae them.’

‘Jesus! It’s oilseed rape, he’s growin’. You can see that for yersels. The only difference is that it’s resistant tae weed killers so it’s easier tae get a bigger yield. ’

‘So the bugger says.’

‘Even the government are no’ convinced o’ that.’

Steven and Brown watched and listened until one of the men in the group surrounding the main protagonists nudged those on either side of him and nodded in the direction of the bar. It was obvious he was warning them of the presence of strangers.

‘Woops,’ said Brown under his breath, turning away as attention swung towards him and Steven. Steven turned his shoulder a little as well and both men took a sip of their drink. The argument and threats continued but in quieter voices.

‘I might get a story out of this yet,’ murmured Brown. ‘Sounds like Lane’s dogs have arrived.’

‘They have,’ Steven confirmed. ‘I met one on my way here. Sector One Security was holding the lead. Mean anything to you?’

‘I’ve seen them around.’

A few minutes later, a youth, wearing leather jacket and jeans and holding a pool cue sidled across to them and stopped, facing them. Standing legs apart, he brought the cue to the horizontal and held it in both hands at arms’ length across his thighs. He said, ‘I hope you two aren’t thinking of printing anything you’ve heard here today, are you?’

‘Nope, ‘replied Steven quickly and truthfully and with an almost jaunty air. He did it to nullify the air of menace that the youth obviously hoped he was imparting.

‘Shouldn’t think so,’ drawled Brown, matter of factly.

The youth betrayed a look of puzzlement for a moment. He’d got the response he wanted but was finding it strangely unsatisfying. He’d been cheated of something but couldn’t think what it was. He moved off with Steven and Brown watching his back.

‘Marlon Brando,’ said Steven.

‘In, “On the Waterfront”,’ added Brown.

They turned back to their drinks. ‘You didn’t say what you were doing here?’ asked Brown.

‘I’m a civil servant.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Matters concerning the environment,’ said Steven vaguely.

‘Are you one of the people who’s going to decide whether Lane’s crop gets the red card or not?’

‘I’m not important enough to make that kind of decision. What do you think about it all?’ replied Steven.

‘If he’s really growing a crop the company weren’t licensed for then certainly I think a stop should be put to it. There’s no point in having a licensing system if the company’s going to get away with that sort of nonsense. But the trouble is it’s proving really hard to find out if he is or if he isn’t. You can never get anyone in authority to give you a straight answer to a simple question. I got fed up asking the local suits and briefcases so I tried phoning the lab that carried out the analysis, but I hit the same wall. Getting information out of them was like drawing teeth.’

‘If you say absolutely nothing to the press you can never get into trouble,’ said Steven. ‘It’s the way people look after their pensions in the civil service.’

‘Can I quote you on that?’ smiled Brown.

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘As for this organic farm business at Crawhill, it’s just too bizarre for words. I haven’t spoken to a soul in the village who believes that Thomas Rafferty is the least bit interested in organic farming — or any kind of farming come to that. By all accounts he’s a waster who’s been making a living out of hiring out farm machinery. For years his only other recorded interest has been in pissing large quantities of lager against the wall, so much so that I heard his wife left him recently.’

‘Maybe he’s thinking of selling up,’ suggested Steven. ‘Maybe he’s trying to turn the farm into a going concern to make it more attractive to prospective buyers?’

‘That’s possible, I suppose,’ said Brown thoughtfully. ‘In fact, I hadn’t thought of that angle. So why won’t he speak to the press? You’d think he’d want all the favourable publicity he could get. We’ve got a ready-made villain in Lane so Rafferty would seem well placed for the starring roll of organic-growing hero. And where do the minders come in?’

Steven shrugged. ‘Could be the Magnificent Seven,’ he said, ‘come to aid the poor peasant farmer?

‘There were only two.’

Steven gave Brown a sideways glance and saw that he was preoccupied, not stupid.

‘The first thing I’m going to do when I leave here is run a check to see if Crawhill has been put on the market,’ said Brown. ‘That was a good idea of yours. Would you like to be informed of the result?’

‘If you like,’ said Steven. He gave Brown his mobile telephone number.

‘If this works out, I’ll owe you a bottle of Scotch.’

Steven had had an even better idea but was keeping it to himself for the time being. It proposed that Rafferty had already sold the farm and was acting as some kind of front for the new owners. That might well explain the presence of the people Brown had described as minders but also begged the question as to why the new owners needed a front man at all. The obvious answer to that was that they didn’t want anyone to know who they were. Steven worked the idea through to a conclusion. Why not? Because… it would be embarrassing for them? Why embarrassing? Because… the new owners were not private buyers at all. They were… corporate buyers. They were… a commercial company. They were… a biotech company! A rival biotech company to Agrigene!

That would make a lot of sense, Steven thought as he continued to work on the hypothesis. They move in to the area and buy the farm next door to their competitor; then they manage to get an organic farm accreditation. It would give them the perfect basis for courting public sympathy while causing trouble for Agrigene and screwing up their experimental programme.’

‘What kind of a civil servant are you exactly?’ asked Brown.

‘A thirsty one,’ replied Steven.

Brown ordered two more drinks and Steven made vague noises about liasing with the new Scottish Parliament over environmental concerns. Inside, he was thinking that this theory about Crawhill might also explain where the protestors were getting the money from for lawyers and independent crop analysis. It didn’t explain however, how they had managed to get organic accreditation so easily or why the crop analysis they’d obtained was so scientifically vague,

‘So you’re with the MAFF people up here,’ said Brown. ‘Or are you with the new Scottish parliament lot?’

‘Neither really,’ replied Steven. ‘I’m here to assess if anything should cause concern to the Department of the Environment but I understand that MAFF have everything under control.’

‘You could have fooled me,’ said Brown.

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘You’ve just heard the local mood for yourself,’ said Brown with a nod to the table behind him. ‘The locals are planning civil war by the sound of it and MAFF and the Scottish Executive are sitting on their arses along the road, arguing the legal niceties over who’s responsible for what.’

‘But they must have had meetings with the community?’ said Steven.

‘One of their chaps gave a talk to the locals in the village hall saying that they were currently looking into discrepancies in the licensing agreement up at Lane’s place. That’s the last I heard.’

‘The legal wrangle’s still going on,’ said Steven.

‘I wish to God, they’d keep people informed,’ said Brown. ‘There’s nothing rumour likes better than a vacuum.’

Steven silently agreed.

The conversation was over but Brown was delayed in leaving by a man coming in through the doors of the pub and standing there as if about to make an announcement. As if by magic a hush fell on the place and the man in the doorway said, ‘The Ferguson boy’s dead. ‘Died this morning in St John’s Hospital. His mum and dad were with him, poor wee bugger.’

‘I thought he was holding his own,’ said one man. ‘I thought the three of them were.’

‘He developed a wound infection on top of everything else and it was just too much for him.’

‘Christ, it could hae been Eck,’ exclaimed a man at a table near Steven. ‘Ah’d better get hame and tell Mary.’ With that, he scraped back his chair, got to his feet and left.

‘His boy was one of the swimmers,’ explained one of the others. ‘Makes you think when something like that happens.’

‘It’s about time they did something about they bloody rats up there. They’re all over the bloody place.’

‘It’s the same all over the country, man. I saw it on breakfast TV. Somethin’ to do wi’ the weather getting warmer.’

‘Bloody global warmin’. If it’s no wan thing…’

‘They’re vicious little buggers too. I met the vet in the paper shop this morning and he was saying that he had a woman in last night from Gartside. Her Labrador puppy got himself bitten up by the canal. She was in a right state. If some guy hadn’t come along on his bike, the mutt could have been in real trouble. As it was, the guy managed to kill a couple of the buggers and help her get the dog home.

‘I can remember when Meg cornered one in the barn,’ said one of the other men, launching into a rat story.

‘I’ll have to go phone the boy’s death in,’ whispered Brown at Steven’s elbow. ‘I’ll let you know about Crawhill.’

Steven nodded and found himself alone but not for long. Alex McColl returned, looking less than pleased. ‘Couldn’t get near Rafferty,’ he complained. ‘You’d think he’d be looking for all the press coverage he could get right now,’ he added.

‘Your colleague was just saying that,’ said Steven. ‘Who stopped you?’

‘A couple of guys in suits. They were too polite for minders. Apart from that, they had an IQ bigger than their collar size. When I asked them who they were they told me they were, “Mr Rafferty’s business advisors”.’

‘Everyone’s got a fancy title, these days,’ said Steven.

‘Aye, no one shovels shit these days. It’s, excrement relocation officers, we have to deal with. What’s been happening here?’

Steven told him about the Ferguson boy’s death.

‘Well, that gives me something to file, I suppose,’ said McColl, looking pleased and getting out his notebook. He missed the look on Steven’s face when he said it.

‘There’s likely to be a pretty weepy funeral too if I’m not mistaken. I’ll get a snapper along for some graveside stuff. That should keep the wolf from the door for a bit.’

Steven swallowed hard and reminded himself that he was just here as an observer. Decking a gentleman of the press would not be a good idea… however satisfying it might be in the short term. He decided to leave.

‘You’ve not finished your drink,’ pointed out McColl.

‘I’ve had enough.’