Daisy held up a staying hand. ‘It may seem that way, but the point is …’
The barman arrived with Duggan’s refill and another low-alcohol lager. While she counted out the money coin by coin, she tried to think exactly what the point was. ‘The point is,’ she said finally, ‘that if Keen was substituting cheap chemicals then it was fraud.’
But Duggan wasn’t buying. ‘Even if he’d pulled a fast one, it would have netted him a hundred quid at the most. Don’t tell me they’re going to nail him on a hundred quid!’
‘They got Al Capone on a technicality.’
He sank slowly back in his chair, wrists draped over the arms, cigarette and drink in either hand. ‘You’re on the wrong track,’ he announced with finality. ‘Willis Bain delivered everything. It never came through Keen.’
‘Oh.’ Daisy looked disappointed. ‘It’d still be useful to have the name of the other pesticide.’
‘I never knew it.’
‘But surely – you must have seen a name?’
‘No. Does it matter?’
‘I told you – every detail helps.’
He shook his head, his cat-eyes watching her through the curling spirals of smoke. ‘Can’t remember.’
Can’t or won’t, Daisy thought grimly. She took a sip of lager while she considered the way forward. He wouldn’t take much more pressing, she sensed, or he’d clam up altogether. Letting the subject drop, on the other hand, would be to lose what might be her only opportunity.
There was a third option, she realized, something quite different. She let the idea grow and sharpen in her mind. She’d have to push hard to carry it off, and it wouldn’t be very pretty – and that was putting it mildly – but it might just work.
She put her drink down. ‘I need to know the name of that pesticide,’ she said.
He picked some tobacco off his lip. ‘I told you,’ he said with an impatient sigh, ‘I don’t remember.’
‘Or don’t want to? Listen, Mr Duggan, I don’t like to press you, but according to my information there were plenty of irregularities at Acorn Flying Systems, and they didn’t just involve Keen.’
He was very still, the drink and cigarette for once forgotten in his fingers. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that rules and regulations were broken all the way down the line and Keen wasn’t the only one responsible.’
His mouth twisted, his voice was hoarse. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘About notifications not getting sent out. About livestock getting sprayed. About flying hours being exceeded. Shall I go on?’ The excessive flying hours was a guess, but Duggan wasn’t arguing.
He jerked forward in his chair, his face louring across the table. ‘Who the hell are you? What the hell’s this about?’
‘Calm down, Mr Duggan. There’s no need to get angry. I’m sure it won’t be necessary to let this go any further, not if you can find a way to help me out.’ As she said it, she wondered if this was the way practised blackmailers generally put their demands across. ‘Just tell me the name of the pesticide, and we’ll forget about the livestock.’
She thought: But not about the people. She couldn’t make any promises on that. Which made her offer devious, even, if she were in the mood to be utterly scrupulous, dishonest. But remembering Alusha Mackenzie and Adrian Bell, she couldn’t feel too heart-stricken about that.
Duggan was rallying from the initial shock. ‘It’s not bloody true, all you’re saying,’ he declared belligerently. ‘Don’t know where you got these outrageous bloody ideas from – ’
‘Reliable sources.’
Duggan’s face contorted with something like fear. ‘Christ, you b—’ But the rest, which might have included the word bitch, was lost as he sat back in his chair and drained his drink at one go.
‘It’s a reasonable offer,’ she said.
‘Sounds like a bloody threat to me!’
‘Take it or leave it.’
‘But I don’t bloody remember the name!’
‘Try.’
His mouth was working hard and he looked as if he could cheerfully kill her, but he was thinking all right. ‘I don’t know – I don’t know,’ he said fretfully. ‘It never had a name, just some stupid code number. ZX-something. ZX … P. That was it. ZXP. No name. Well – it did have a name, but I only saw it once, about the second time we used the stuff. It was the day Keen actually deigned to come in. We couldn’t believe it – never saw the bastard normally. Turned up out of the blue, treating us like bloody lackeys … It was all his sodding fault that things went wrong, you know. He pushed us – ’
‘The pesticide,’ she interrupted.
He glared at her. ‘Yah, well … There it was on the sheet. With the code number.’
‘And a name.’
‘Yeah, but only that once. The girl, she just put ZXP on the job sheets after that. And like I said Davie and I weren’t into gunk names. We just got to call it “the old gunk” or “the new gunk”. And that was it. I only saw the name that once, for God’s sake.’ He lit a cigarette from the butt of his old one.
Her silence finally drove him forward, fumbling resentfully through the remnants of his memory. ‘I think it was some trade name or another. You know, one of those catchy made-up words. Something to do with forests. Leaves, needles, something like that …’ He waited expectantly as if Daisy could in some miraculous way pull the name out of thin air. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he grumbled, ‘it was last year – no one could remember that far back.’ He glanced at her to see if this little appeal was going to earn him a reprieve, then lurched on: ‘We had a lot of jobs that day. Too many. And Keen slapped on another. What could I say? If I’d caused trouble he’d simply have told me to get lost.’ He ran a hand through his hair so that it stood out over his ears like feathers. ‘White …’ he murmured for no apparent reason. ‘He was wearing white, Keen. Like a spivvy wop waiter. Top and bottom. White shoes too – I ask you! Standing there like some gift from God, ordering everyone around. Changing the schedule. Putting the wind up that stupid girl. Kept threatening us with financial disaster if we didn’t pull out the stops.’ Catching her expression he pulled himself back to the subject with bad grace. ‘Okay, okay.’ He shook his head, fretting at the problem. ‘White … It was something like that. Pale, anyway. No – glittery. Silver maybe. Yes …’ He flapped a hand. ‘That was it. Silver.’
‘Silver?’
‘The name. The gunk. Silver-something.’ He coughed, a loose rattle deep in his chest. ‘And that, I tell you, is all I bloody remember.’
He thought she had finished with him, but he was wrong. ‘You did several jobs around Loch Fyne, didn’t you?’ she asked.
He was very still, his eyes creased into a line of watchfulness. ‘A few.’
She described the approximate area of Adrian Bell’s house.
He shrugged. ‘Don’t remember.’
‘And the Fincharn Estate – you were up there, weren’t you?’
His face hardened. She could see him preparing a denial. Then his expression lightened abruptly and he laughed. ‘Barking up the wrong tree there, dear lady. Quite the wrong tree. Had an equipment failure that day. The job was aborted. Never did get to do it. Bad weather, no time.’ He sat back, blinking heavily, lips slack, ash spilling down the front of his jacket. ‘Quite the wrong tree,’ he said, and smiled.
Jenny flicked her eyes towards Alan’s open door, indicating that he was in or waiting to pounce, or both. Taking long light strides Daisy sped past the door and into her office. Plucking the Ministry of Agriculture’s pesticides manual off the shelf, she bent over the desk and started to thumb through its 400 pages and 3000 odd products. She started at the trade name index. Sickle, Sierra … Silvapron.
Then … something called Silveron ZXP.
ZXP. Silveron.
She checked it back to the main register. Insecticide for professional use only, it said. Manufactured by Morton-Kreiger (UK) Ltd. Registration number MAFF
05012.
The registration numbers were allocated historically, the latest products being awarded the highest numbers. The 05000 numbers were the latest and suggested recent registration. She looked for the previous year’s manual, searching her shelves and hunting through the most likely bumf dump, which was located on the floor in the corner. Nothing. In desperation she tiptoed to the door and mimed to Jenny. Jenny, looking innocent, pulled her copy off the shelf and sauntered over as if she were making for one of the filing cabinets.
Daisy winked her thanks and took the manual to her desk. It was as she thought: last year, no Silveron.
She went back to the current manual. Typically, the ministry in their infinite wisdom omitted to state the type of crops each product was actually approved for, and she had to go to The UK Pesticide Guide, a publication of the Crop Protection Council. Silveron wasn’t listed. She phoned the Council. Silveron had been approved too late for the last edition. But they had the details to hand. It was a broad-spectrum, contact organophosphorus insecticide. It was approved for use against aphids, weevils, midge, moth, thrips and numerous flies and beetles, for use on a wide range of fruit and vegetables. Forestry use was considered such a low-risk activity that it was not listed.
They gave her the label precautions by reference numbers, which she looked up in the back of the guide. Silveron, so the manufacturers advised, was not to be used by people who were under medical advice not to work with organophosphates (she’d yet to hear of anyone getting this advice until after the damage was done). Silveron was dangerous to bees and harmful to fish, livestock, game, wild birds and animals. It was harmful if swallowed, inhaled or put in contact with skin. Users were advised against breathing vapour or spray-mist. Protective clothing was to be worn.
This inventory, though chilling, was nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, if the consumer did but know it, it was typical for most chemicals in daily use on fruits and vegetables. What was almost as interesting were the omissions. No mention of special precautions or dangers, no directions to wear respirators when applying the stuff. In other words no one was treating Silveron like an especially dangerous chemical.
Neither was there any mention of approval for aerial application, she noticed. Which meant that Willis Bain had committed an offence in supplying the stuff to the flying company.
She felt a glimmer of hope. Getting warm, getting warm.
Forgetting the need to lie low, she gave a small whoop of triumph. Through the open door Jenny looked round and, catching the mood, laughed and raised a clenched fist in reply.
As Daisy hastily dialled Peasedale’s number, she became aware of Alan striding swiftly into her office, a half-eaten sandwich clutched in his hand.
‘Real progress, Alan,’ she cried as Peasedale’s number started ringing.
‘I need to speak to you,’ Alan said.
She gave him an unconcerned smile. ‘Of course. In a while? I’m rather—’ The number answered. ‘Peasedale? It’s me. Listen – I’ve got it. The pesticide in the Bell case.’
Alan thrust his face into her field of vision and mouthed an exaggerated ‘now’, repeating it several times, until his mouth moved like that of a newly landed fish.
Peasedale was making interested noises at the other end of the line. ‘Hold on,’ she told him and, capping the phone, promised Alan: ‘Soon. Really.’
‘And when’s that likely to be?’ He was squeezing his sandwich so tightly that the honey was oozing through the bread in dark glutinous patches.
‘But I’ve got the name of the pesticide.’
She might as well have been talking about the latest stationery order. ‘Ten minutes,’ Alan hissed.
Peasedale hadn’t heard of Silveron ZXP, but he promised to ask around and see if anyone else had. She also called an industrial chemist at an independent laboratory who agreed to do an analysis for her. It wouldn’t be free, of course, but he always managed to fiddle the hours to the minimum.
Finally, unable to find any more excuses, she made the excursion round the partition to Alan’s office.
Alan had trouble in beginning his speech. He opened his mouth several times before sighing: ‘For all the good our discussions do I sometimes wonder why we bother.’
‘Alan, I’m listening,’ she said, settling herself attentively in a chair. ‘I always listen.’
‘But you don’t bloody take any notice of what we agree.’ His voice cracked slightly.
‘Whatever it is, I’m sorry,’ Daisy said humbly.
‘You can be sorry all you like, but it doesn’t seem to make any bloody difference, does it? You disappear to Scotland, you abandon the presentation and leave me to face the trustees, then, just when I think maybe there’s a chance of getting back to normal – you know, working as a team again, which is how it’s meant to be in case you’d forgotten – you’re off again and I’m up until midnight, preparing for the next meeting that I know damn well you won’t turn up for.’
‘What meeting? I had no meeting …’
‘If you’d bothered to call in yesterday you might have found out about it. The EEC ban on Aldeb. The British Euro MPs asked for a quick briefing, which seemed a pretty reasonable request. I mean, that is what we’re meant to be here for, isn’t it, briefing people who have the power, and that sort of thing? So I said yes. I couldn’t very well refuse, could I? Even when I knew I wasn’t going to get a single iota of backup.’ He measured an iota between thumb and forefinger and held it up in front of his face. ‘Not an iota!’
There wasn’t a lot Daisy could say. ‘Alan, I would have been there if I’d known, you know I would.’
Alan raised his glasses and rubbed his hand angrily across his eyes. ‘It’s not good enough,’ he said.
‘No, I suppose not.’
He pushed the glasses back onto his nose with such ferocity that the impact made him blink. ‘I don’t think it’s going to pan out, Daisy. You might as well be working for a different organization. Sometimes I wonder if you’re with us at all. I mean – well, it’s just not going to work out, Daisy.’
An unpleasant little chill gripped Daisy’s stomach. ‘What are you saying, Alan?’
‘I’m saying that it’s hopeless, this doing your own thing. It’s not fair to me, it’s not fair to Catch.’ He pursed his lips and looked unhappy. Eventually he managed to spit it out. ‘I think you should think about resigning, Daisy. In fact’ – he gave a small shudder – ‘I know you should think about resigning.’
Daisy stared at him, totally taken aback.
‘But I’m just getting somewhere, Alan. Everything’s just beginning to happen. Identifying that pesticide is going to make all the difference to the Adrian Bell case.’
‘That’s it, Daisy. You’re getting somewhere. Not Catch. Not the campaign. And as for the Bell case – Daisy, how often have we discussed our policy on individual cases? Just tell me, how often?’
‘But, Alan – the case is going to expose all that’s wrong with pesticide control – ’
‘Is it?’ he said sharply. ‘That’s your opinion, Daisy. Not mine. Not the trustees’.’ Documenting the Bell case is fine and useful and good anecdotal stuff and all that. But a detailed investigation – I mean, tracking down the pilot, going to inquests, all that stuff – is not part of our strategy.’
‘But, Alan, we can’t just leave it! Blimey, you might as well walk away from a road accident!’
‘Daisy – ’ He clapped his hands to his face in a gesture of despair. ‘We’ve been through this before – how many times? It’s just not possible to take on every injustice in the whole damned world and fight it personally. We don’t have the resources.’
‘Well, I do.’
‘No you don’t, Daisy. You don’t!’ He stabbed a finger at her. ‘It’s Catch’s resources you’re using.’
‘Jesus, Alan!’ But for once she made the effort to pull herself up short. This wasn’t the time for a row, not when Alan was talking of her resigning and looking deadly s
erious when he said it.
A voice intruded, drifting over the partition from the outer office. Daisy recognized Simon’s unmistakably authoritative tones. It was a moment before she remembered that he’d arrived to take her across town to an Arts for the Earth auction at Bonham’s.
She said to Alan: ‘Listen, I hear what you’re saying, Alan. Really. But …’
‘There’s always a but, Daisy.’
‘Yes,’ she said momentarily defeated. ‘I suppose there is.’ She cast him a contrite look. ‘I don’t want to leave Catch, I really don’t. Blimey, this is my life, Alan.’
‘I think you’re in the wrong organization, Daisy. I think it’s as simple as that.’
Daisy took a moment to come up for air. ‘Listen …’ She waved in the general direction of the voices in the outer office. ‘Can we talk about this later?’
Alan didn’t reply but turned back to his desk with a dark expression. He was still exhaling sharply as Daisy closed the door.
Simon was propped on Jenny’s desk, chatting. He turned a smile on Daisy. ‘Ready?’
‘Can’t make it. Sorry.’ Another man, another apology.
He glanced at his watch, looking put out. ‘Oh?’
‘Something’s come up,’ she explained. ‘To be precise – the pesticide in the Bell case.’
‘Ah?’ A spark of interest. ‘What about it?’
‘Got the name,’ she announced, allowing some of her satisfaction to return.
‘And – ?’
‘It’s something called Silveron ZXP. An organophos-phate.’
He frowned slightly. ‘Are you sure?’ There was a touch of condescension in his tone.
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she said, moving out of Jenny’s hearing. ‘Why?’
He went though the motions of considering her idea in more depth, but scepticism was still written large on his face. ‘It just seems a little unlikely,’ he said cautiously. ‘Just when Silveron’s about to get US approval, I mean.’ The surprise must have shown in her face because he said, not without satisfaction: ‘You didn’t realize?’
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