In the courtyard outside the window the light was fading. Terry smiled sadly into the gloom.
It was just like Hugh to do something as brilliant as that; to bring him here, to this perfect river, to show him how to cast a fly. If ever he had a son, he’d want to do exactly the same thing. Thirteen would be about the right age. He could visualise a younger version of himself: tall and spare, hazel eyes, curly brown hair.
He’d try to give the boy a childhood as happy as his own. They were always busy, always into new “projects”. He could picture the ever-expanding mural on the wall he’d painted with Hugh along a whitewashed passage outside the kitchen. Then there were wildlife walks, jigsaws, model aeroplanes, Meccano models. The kitchen windowsill was lined with runner beans in jam jars, carrots in saucers, even – very briefly – a formicarium, although Marjorie directed that one firmly outside, saying she didn’t intend to be picking ants out of the sugar bowl.
In the end, though, what had really captivated him was the night sky. Removed as they were from major towns there was no light pollution and on cloudless nights Terry would be out there in the garden with Hugh’s old binoculars, gazing at the moon and planets. Before long he’d started to devour books on astronomy. On one particular night Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and Venus were all up there, strung out in a line across the sky, and he had a vivid mental picture of the whirling disc of dust and gas from which the whole solar system had condensed. That, more than anything, had set him on the path of his present career.
He looked down into the foam-laced bottom of his glass, remembering how proud Hugh and Marjorie had been when he was awarded his Physics degree. Barely six months later Hugh had died of cancer. By that time Terry had moved nearer, to Newcastle University, for his doctoral studies. A frail Marjorie saw him get his Ph.D. in Astrophysics before she, too, was taken from him. Parenthood had come too late in life for Hugh and Marjorie.
For Terry this was much more than a fishing destination; it was a place of pilgrimage. To defile it in this way was like kicking over their gravestones.
He took a deep breath and turned away from the window. In the morning he would go the factory himself and get some answers.
CHAPTER 2
It was only a faint cry and at first he thought it was a lamb. He heard it again, coming from somewhere up ahead, but the river curved to the right and his view was obscured by the bank. He quickened his pace, listening carefully, and rounded the bend. There was something at the water’s edge. It looked like a bundle of clothes, swelling and subsiding as each slow ripple washed up on the bank. Then he saw the hand.
He hurried forward, a tightness in his chest. But as he got closer the fingers of that outstretched hand curled and opened again. A low moan issued from the bundle.
The man was lying on his side in a foetal position. He was wearing thigh waders, which were covered in mud, and his jacket had come up around his head, which was why the heap had looked so formless. Terry dropped to his knees, drew the collar down and winced. The face was badly bruised. There was a lump on the forehead on which the skin had split; it was bleeding, but not too much. One eye was closing rapidly; the other was fixed on him in terror.
“It’s all right; I’m going to help you. I’ll phone for an ambulance.”
He straightened up, took out his phone, then muttered a curse; there was no reception here. The man was trying to say something.
“Get back… factory.”
Terry frowned. It wasn’t a good idea to move an injured man but he had been lying partly in the water and he was soaking. He wasn’t young, either; he needed to be taken to somewhere warm and dry where he could get treatment quickly. Moving could be the best thing for him.
The man resolved his dilemma by making a painful attempt to get to his hands and knees. Terry stepped in. “Hang on,” he said. “Just lie back a moment while I get these off.”
Gently he removed the thigh waders then helped the man slowly to his feet. He was holding his ribs and his teeth had started to chatter. He pointed with a shaking hand to a small crate lying on its side on the bank. There were several small bottles in it, some of them smashed. He must have been taking samples just downstream of the factory.
“Never mind that,” Terry said crisply. “Let’s get you sorted.”
He hooked an arm around him, feeling the cold damp of his clothes and the shivers running in waves through his body. The village had to be the best part of a mile back; the factory would certainly be closer. They faced up-river and began to hobble along the bank.
The small metal bridge came into view. They struggled over it and along the side of a high wire fence. Looking to see where the gate might be, Terry realized there was more to the factory than you could see from the river. The building had been extended at the back so that it formed three sides of a square with a central yard, presumably for loading and unloading. Evidently they’d been spotted because one of the gates to this area opened and two security men hurried out. Dogs barked from somewhere inside the compound.
“It’s Mr. Loomis!” one shouted to the other. And then to Terry, “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I found him by the river.”
“Michael, phone Dr. Saunders. And get Jenny Davies down here right away. Jenny’s the First Aid,” he said to Terry.
“I think he may need more than that.”
“We’ll see in a moment.”
They assisted the injured man to a glass-walled security office at the side of the yard, where they settled him into a chair. The man called Michael returned, putting his radio back into a holster on his belt.
“Jenny’s coming.” He turned to Terry. “Thank you for bringing him in, sir. There’s no need for you to hang around. We can look after him now.”
“Who’s Dr. Saunders?” Terry asked.
“He’s Mr. Loomis’s supervisor.”
“Well, if it’s all the same to you I’ll hang on here and have a word with him.”
The man shrugged. “As you wish. He’s on his way now.”
A large woman – presumably Jenny, the First Aid Officer – came bustling into the office. Terry stepped outside to give them more room. A few moments later a tall man wearing a white coat came out of the old section of the building, hurried across the yard, and stood in the doorway. Terry listened to the conversation.
“Good heavens! Look what they’ve done to him! Have you called an ambulance?”
“Not yet, sir. We were waiting for you.”
“What do you think, Jenny?”
“Definitely. He needs to be looked at properly.”
“I’ll call them, Dr. Saunders.”
“Thank you, Michael.”
“By the way, sir, there’s somebody outside waiting to see you. He was the one brought him in.”
The man emerged and saw Terry, apparently for the first time. He extended a hand.
“Trevor Saunders,” he said. “And you are…?”
Terry gripped the hand briefly. “Terry McKinley.”
In the office the woman was saying, “Take it easy now, Mr. Loomis. Ambulance is on its way. You’re going to be all right.”
“I gather you brought Henry in?”
“Yes, he wasn’t all that far from here. I found him half in and half out of the river.”
Saunders cocked his head slightly. “You don’t sound like a local man to me.”
Terry fished in his wallet and handed over his university ID card. Saunders studied it, then handed it back.
“Department of Physics, University of Liverpool,” he said. “So what are you doing in these parts, Dr. McKinley?”
“I was on my way back from a conference at Cardiff. Came down to have a look at the river.”
“I see. Well, we’re most grateful to you. I do hope this hasn’t spoiled your day.”
Terry ignored the note of finality.
“What do you think happened to Mr. Loomis?”
“I don’t know, we’ll have to wait until he can tell
us. We’ll inform the police, of course.”
“Dr. Saunders, let’s be frank. I know this river well; it’s one of the loveliest natural brown trout rivers in the whole of Wales. I come here straight from the conference and when I get here I find everything’s dead. The annual fishing competition’s been cancelled because there are no fish to catch. And why? Because there’s so much ammonia in this river you can smell it from the bank. You’re the only factory within miles and you have a man out collecting water samples so it’s not hard to guess who’s responsible. Now I may only be an outsider but I’d still like to know how you can stand by and let something like that happen.”
For several seconds they held each other’s gaze. Then Saunders said, “Come with me.” He turned to one of the security men. “We’ll be in my office. I’ll bring him down when we’ve finished.”
Terry looked around him as he followed Saunders up a flight of stairs and along a short corridor. The interior seemed quite modern; evidently these people had only preserved the shell of the original building. Saunders opened a door, on which a small black-on-white plaque read “Environmental Control Officer”, and they entered the room. It was filled with natural light from a large window behind the desk. Saunders indicated a chair but before sitting down himself he drew a large ledger off a shelf. He cradled it in his hands as he dropped into a leather swivel chair behind the desk.
“Dr. McKinley, you brought Mr. Loomis in, so you deserve some answers. But you’re wrong about what’s happened. You’re a physicist, I’m a chemist; we’re both used to looking at data and drawing conclusions. That’s all I’m going to ask you to do now.”
Terry nodded cautiously. “Alright.”
Saunders placed the ledger on the desk and flicked over a few pages, then turned it around for Terry to see.
“We had an Anti-Pollution Officer here from the Environment Agency. I’m going to show you what I showed him. It’s part of my job to keep detailed records of everything we discharge from this factory. The analysis is done on a daily basis.”
Terry looked at a tabular print-out. Down the left-hand side was a long list of substances: elements, like aluminium, calcium, magnesium, silver, antimony, arsenic, mercury, nickel; salts, such as sulphates, fluorides, nitrates, nitrites; and organic compounds that he wasn’t familiar with, like tetrachloromethane, trihalomethanes, atrazine, and bromacil. His eyes wandered to the columns, where a series of figures appeared to list the measured levels and the permissible levels.
Saunders reached into a desk drawer and brought out a thin sheaf of papers.
“Now this is the analysis performed on samples collected from the river by the Anti-Pollution Officer.” He ran a finger down the columns. “Let me draw your attention to the figures for ammonia. In the river they measured 50 milligrams per litre. That is a grossly polluting level and explains the state of the river. But look at the figures for ammonia in our effluent. They’re less than one hundredth of that level. You can turn to any date you like: since this factory was established we have never exceeded permissible levels.”
Terry lifted an eyebrow. “Well, something’s done it.”
“Indeed it has. The obvious candidate would be sewage, but look at the BOD.” He placed a finger on the Environment Agency report.
“What’s BOD?”
“Biochemical Oxygen Demand. It’s a way of measuring material that removes oxygen from the water as it’s broken down. Sewage is one such material, so if there is a lot of sewage present then we would expect a high BOD. But these figures show that the BOD was pretty well within normal limits, so whatever caused the ammonia to rise, it wasn’t dumping of sewage.” Saunders sat back in his chair. “What we put into the river,” he gestured at the factory analysis, “is perfectly compatible with aquatic life. What’s in there, most definitely isn’t, but it’s not coming from us. The Environment Agency reached the same conclusion.” He detached a sheet of paper from the sheaf he’d taken from the drawer and pushed it towards Terry. “This is their report. They gave us a clean bill of health.”
Terry scanned the letter. It looked genuine enough. Examining the figures had drawn him into scientific mode, and his anger and indignation had abated. He studied the man who was facing him calmly across the desk. The fact remained: ammonia was an industrial pollutant and this was the only factory for miles. He must be missing something.
“What do you make here, Dr. Saunders?”
“Circuit boards. Specialised ones for extreme conditions: high temperature, high humidity, that sort of thing. Mainly for industrial control systems.”
“And you use ammonia in the processing?”
“Yes, in some of the cleaning cycles. That’s why we have to be so careful about waste treatment.”
“But the Environment Agency has to rely on your figures for what’s in the effluent, doesn’t it?”
Saunders’ eyes narrowed fractionally
“No, it doesn’t. Agency staff made an independent analysis of our effluent. Their results agreed with ours.”
Terry sat back and for a while they contemplated each other. Saunders broke the silence.
“We know very well how it looks. We’re confident of our processing but people still think we’re responsible. Why do you think poor old Loomis was attacked out there? Feelings are running high locally, particularly about the loss of the competition.”
“What I can’t understand is why anyone allowed a factory to be set up here in the first place. It’s such an environmentally sensitive site.”
“Oh, the Council welcomed it, so did the Environment Agency. There was a factory here before we came, you know. The building was derelict and the soil was seriously polluted with heavy metals. In time all that would have leached into the river. They couldn’t afford to clean up the site. We did it for them. It was part of the deal.”
“But it would only take one spill from you...”
“It just can’t happen. The analyses you see here,” Saunders tapped a finger on the big ledger, “are performed on the water in holding tanks, prior to any discharge from them. If we ever found that the water wasn’t up to spec it wouldn’t be discharged. Our treatment is state-of-the-art so that’s never happened.” He leaned forward. “I could dip a beaker into those tanks and drink it. You haven’t been cleared by security or I’d take you down there and do it for you now.”
Terry gave a non-committal grunt. “Tell me, did the Environment Agency analyse the water upstream of the factory?”
“Of course. The analysis was very similar upstream and downstream. And as you said before, there aren’t any other factories upstream of here.”
“So if your factory isn’t responsible, what was your man – your Mr. Loomis – doing out on the river today?”
“Dr. McKinley, environmental control is my job. None of us are happy about what’s happened to that river, least of all me. I asked the Environment Agency to look into it but they’re fairly stretched and frankly I’m not expecting miracles. I sent Loomis out so we could make a few measurements of our own.”
“Who do you think attacked him?”
He opened his hands. “Who knows? People in the village are upset and some of them may be tempted to have a go. So far as they’re concerned any member of our staff is fair game. It could have been the Anti-Pollution Officer from the Environment Agency out there this morning and they’d have targeted him too, because they think we’re all in cahoots. They may not even be from the village. Word travels fast. That sort of rent-a-mob will turn up wherever there’s a prospect of violence – football riots, animal rights, it’s all the same to them.”
The brief two-tone blast of a siren floated up to them.
“Sounds like the ambulance,” Saunders said. “Henry will be in good hands now.”
“Well, I hope he’ll be okay.” Terry got up.
Saunders stood too. “I’ll see you out.”
“Just one more thing. How would you feel if I collected some samples of my own – from the
river, I mean? I may get an opinion from some of my contacts in the university.”
“You’re a free agent, Dr. McKinley; you don’t need permission from me. Watch out for those lunatics, that’s all.”
CHAPTER 3
Terry returned to the river that afternoon. Swinging from one hand was a pair of green thigh waders. He hadn’t brought his own because the local rivers were always fished from the bank, but Daffydd had found these for him. In the other hand he carried an old milk crate in which nine of the twelve compartments were occupied by small glass bottles. They were empties from various mixers, which had been consumed at the bar and were awaiting collection. He’d rinsed them out and peeled off the glossy top surface of the labels. Each bottle had a tightly fitting screw cap, which made them ideal for his purposes. The bottles clinked musically as he strode along the bank.
He would start upstream of the factory. It wasn’t a wide river but it varied greatly in both depth and speed of flow from one place to another. He didn’t know if this would affect its composition so to be on the safe side he’d take three equally spaced samples across its full width. Then he’d do the same at the factory and finish up with another set of three downstream from that. Analysing those should reveal exactly what this factory was doing to the river.
Fifteen minutes later he was sitting on the bank, pulling on the thigh waders. He took three of the bottles and entered the water. Almost immediately he sensed the cold, even through the waders. He trod carefully, feeling for rocks. It was deeper than it looked and before long he was up to mid-thigh, the air in the waders buoying him up, the flow heavy against his legs. As he moved he scanned the width of the river until he judged he was in the right place. He unscrewed the cap on the first bottle, rinsed it in the river and took a sample. Then he shook his head, emptied the bottle and took the sample again, this time upstream to avoid the clouds of silt he was stirring up with every step. Using a ballpoint he wrote “U” on the remaining traces of label: “U” for upstream.
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