Guiding the conversation gently back onto the right track, she ventured: ‘This source of yours – he never gave you his name?’
Paul lowered his voice theatrically. ‘He calls himself Alan Breck.’
‘But it’s not his real name?’
‘I doubt it. When he wrote us, he put it in quotes. I assume he’s a Robert Louis Stevenson fan. It’s a while since I read Kidnapped – like twenty years. I don’t even remember if Alan Breck was a good guy.’
‘And you’ve no idea who he really is?’
‘Nope.’ The waiter cleared the dishes and gave them dessert menus. Paul made a point of waiting for the waiter to go before continuing in the same confidential tones: ‘But he has to be with Morton-Kreiger or TroChem – that was the laboratory Morton-Kreiger used to carry out the official toxicology trials on Silveron. It’s just possible he could be with the Environmental Protection Agency, I suppose, but somehow I don’t think so. We have our contacts there and – well, we’d have heard if they had something that hot on a big one like Silveron.’
‘Why don’t they have any suspicions? It seems incredible.’
‘Not incredible – oh no. Not when the EPA have just had their funding cut, not when they only have the manufacturer’s data to go on.’
‘What will it take then, for the EPA to start an investigation?’
He spread his hands. ‘Alan Breck’s data, maybe.’
‘That would be enough?’
‘You bet. More than enough.’ He picked up the menu. ‘You want a dessert?’
She shook her head. With an obvious effort of will, he pushed the menu aside.
‘He didn’t send you the data itself?’ she asked.
‘No, I think he wanted to see if we’d treat the information seriously first.’ He signalled the waiter for the tab.
‘Why didn’t he send it direct to the EPA?’
‘Listen, the EPA’s a government agency. They’d want names, dates, sworn affidavits – I mean, a heavy deal. And this guy may be in a real hot spot. Going public could lay him open to serious trouble. By sending the stuff through us he gets to lie low while we get to put ten times the political pressure on the EPA than he could ever achieve solo.’ He paid the bill and they made their way to the door.
Outside, the heat closed around them like a blanket. The air was very still and a heavy bronze light hung over the street, as if there were a storm coming.
The EarthForce office was five blocks away, a broad red-brick converted warehouse on three storeys, between a used-furniture store and a Lebanese deli. The windows were heavily barred, the door faced with sheet metal.
‘We take no chances,’ Paul explained as he tapped a pass code into the security panel. ‘A break-in would be seriously bad news.’
‘You have a lot of break-ins round here?’
‘Sure.’
‘The drug problem?’
Paul led the way in and closed the door. ‘Addicts? Oh, they’re a problem, sure – but not so much for us. No cash here, you see, no valuables.’
‘But you still get burgled?’
‘You bet we do,’ he said mysteriously. ‘We’ve had a few kids try to hack their way through the windows – you know, just to show that no place in the neighbourhood is beyond their skills. But that’s amateur stuff.’ He paused, squeezing the suspense dry. ‘No, we’ve had two professional break-ins in the last two years, and both times we’ve asked ourselves, now why would they bother?’
He led the way up the stairs, panting slightly, climbing crabwise so as not to lose a moment’s conversation time. ‘And we always came to the same unpleasant conclusion.’
‘And what was that?’
‘They came to get their secrets back,’ he said with dramatic emphasis. ‘Oh, they made it look like it was robbery – you know, spread everything around – but when we came to do an inventory, it was very particular kinds of documents that were missing. Since the first robbery we’ve made duplicates of all the important stuff and stored them in a secret hideaway.’
She followed him into the offices of EarthForce’s Land Pollution Division. The layout was open-plan, the decor hi-tech rustic, with bare brick, tropical plants and six Meccano-style work stations.
Paul led the way to his work station and dragged over a second chair.
‘So what exactly was taken?’ she asked, sitting down.
‘When I tell you that the Mafia controls the land-dumping industry in this country, you might be able to guess. All our hard-won evidence on illegal dumping – names, places, chemicals which got in the wrong barrels, chemicals which disappeared between destinations – you can imagine. Oh, and some major case files on river pollution – information which was going to nail some big companies. Companies who obviously had friends in all the right places. Pretty weird stuff, huh?’
It could only happen in America, she decided, the links with organized crime, the break-ins.
Paul, far from being disturbed by these incidents, seemed to relish them. ‘We decided we were flattered by so much attention,’ he announced. ‘It meant we were on the right track.’
At last he seemed to remember what she had come for and, assuming a sudden seriousness, pushed himself to his feet and reached up to the shelves above the desk. The shelves had the usual lines of books, files and journals, but unlike the Catch shelves, everything was scrupulously organized so that journals were in sequence and files coded with coloured labels. ‘I’ve got the case histories here.’ He reached past the files and pulled down an unused pack of six A4-sized padded envelopes held together by a broad paper band and still in their cellophane wrapping. ‘The ones I told you about on the phone – people who’re all – or were until they got sick – workers on the Silveron production line in Aurora, Illinois. They were sent to us by Burt, the local physician. He’s got no doubts about the cause of their troubles.’
‘He can prove it?’
‘That’s the damnedest thing – nothing shows up in tests. Nothing significant, that is. The victims just feel and look like hell. One guy did develop a fatal case of cancer, like I said, but that happened so quickly that Burt thinks that the malignancy must have been brewing for some time, and was just accelerated by the chemical exposure.’ He peered into the bundle of envelopes, levering their necks open with his fingers to view the contents. Finding the one he wanted, he pulled it out from between the rest.
‘But these people, they lost weight?’
‘Like they were starvation victims. And they got headaches, and sick to their stomachs. Some can’t eat. Some have bad pain.’ He indicated the packet of unused envelopes and grinned. ‘My little hiding place. I don’t leave this stuff in here at night of course. It goes in the safe.’ He pulled a slim sheaf of papers out of the envelope. ‘I thought of taking the stuff home every night, but it’d be no safer. I mean, I might get mugged.’ He laughed at the thought.
Daisy couldn’t help thinking that this obsession with secrecy and persecution was rather overplayed.
The bundle of papers was slim, perhaps ten sheets in all. Paul peeled off the first two and put them on one side. Gesturing her to draw her chair closer, he placed the rest in front of her. It was a report from the physician, Burt, containing a summary of his findings, backed up by the individual case histories of eight people, five male, three female, all workers at the Aurora Chemical Works, Aurora, Illinois. The symptoms were there: profound fatigue, severe weight loss, non-specific often agonizing pain, loss of memory and concentration, anxiety and depression. Not every patient had every symptom, but most had the fatigue and weight loss though, confusingly and perversely, one had actually put on weight. All had developed acute sensitivities to chemicals to the point where they had to stay away from even the mildest household products. All but two had also developed severe food allergies and were following restricted diets.
‘We talked to Burt several times now,’ Paul commented. ‘He’s pessimistic on the prognosis. He says the condition appears to be untreatab
le, and that these people don’t seem to recover. In fact, four have steadily deteriorated. He thinks the chemical has long-term effects on the immune system, though he can’t prove it. Nothing shows in the tests – at least not in the tests he has available to him.’
She read the cases through once again, slowly. When she’d finished, Paul took the report and, with a small flourish, handed her the two pages that he’d put on one side. It was the letter from Alan Breck.
The letter began with: You don’t need to know who I am, and launched into a summary of what she had already read, listing the ailments of the Silveron workforce, and urging EarthForce to contact Burt the physician direct for detailed case histories. Morton-Kreiger had been given the facts not once but several times, the writer went on, but had continued to deny the problem. Only recently they had promised to tighten safety procedures on the production line, but the point was, there had never been anything wrong with the procedures in the first place. They had been checked at an early stage and found to be well structured and well implemented. Morton-Kreiger may have gone through with some cosmetic changes in the safety procedures in the last month, but that wouldn’t achieve very much. The real point was, if Silveron could do this to chemical workers who were reasonably well protected, then what damage was it going to do the millions of people who’d handle the product once it got on sale?
But it was the postscript that put everything else in the shade. There is also something seriously wrong with the original toxicology data. Some of it was faked. I have the evidence. She looked up at Paul Erlinger.
‘Dynamite, huh?’ He took the letter back and fingered it reverentially.
Daisy tried to keep a sense of caution. ‘How could it be faked?’
‘Easy. Make up the results.’
‘And Morton-Kreiger would do that?’
He made doubtful noises. ‘Could be, but it was Tro-Chem who did the testing. They’re a so-called independent, but since most of their shares are owned by the agrochemical industry, they’re not what you or I would call independent.’
‘But why would they want to fix the results?’
‘Who knows? Found themselves in deep shit? Maybe they’d set their price too low and had to cut corners, maybe they wanted to please the client.’
‘Faked …’ Daisy’s mind worked quickly through the implications. If it could be proved, there had to be a good chance of winning a UK ban. There might even be a chance of bringing Adrian Bell’s case to court with Morton-Kreiger in the defendant’s seat, if not in the UK, where courts were notoriously resistant to the idea of chemical illness, then here in the States. Then, with a great leap of imagination, she saw possibilities for press campaigns, for bringing fresh attention to the Mackenzie case.
‘Your case histories,’ Paul interrupted. ‘It’d be interesting to compare.’
Daisy, pulling her thoughts back into shape, said hastily, ‘Of course,’ and dug into her bag for the slim folder that contained Adrian Bell and Alusha Mackenzie’s stories, with those of the two less serious cases that had been reported by the union man, Brayfield.
Paul swung back in his chair, reading fast. ‘Mackenzie … Isn’t that Nick Mackenzie’s wife? Didn’t I hear something about this?’
Daisy was silent.
‘Jeese, but I read about it,’ Paul exclaimed almost immediately. ‘She killed herself, didn’t she? Just terrible. But I didn’t hear anything about a chemical hit.’
‘It wasn’t suicide,’ Daisy said defensively. ‘It was an accident. And as for the spraying, the story just didn’t come out at the time.’
He caught her tone. ‘Oh,’ he said carefully. ‘Right. Right.’ He watched her for a moment, gauging whether it was safe to continue. ‘Has he brought charges, Nick Mackenzie? If anyone has the resources, he’s sure the one to do it. I hope you’ve got him set up right.’
‘Set up?’ she asked stiffly.
‘I mean, in with the right advice. Legal, specialist …’
‘Yes.’ She couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth; or maybe she couldn’t bring herself to admit to it. ‘But I don’t think he’ll go ahead. I think he’s …’
‘Not interested?’
‘Not convinced,’ she murmured. ‘He thinks it was something else.’
‘That’s the way it goes.’ Paul heaved himself forward in his chair and read the case history again, adding almost to himself: ‘And I guess he’s got troubles enough.’
‘Troubles enough?’ A faint squeeze in Daisy’s chest.
‘Well … you know.’ Putting his hand up to his mouth, he spread his palm and made a fluttering gesture.
She chose not to understand.
‘Drink troubles.’
‘Old history,’ she corrected him, feeling combative.
Paul pulled down his mouth, looking doubtful. After a moment’s consideration, he rotated himself out of his revolving chair, went to another desk and scooped up a newspaper. Searching through it, he folded a page open and positioned it in front of Daisy.
He didn’t have to point out the item. There was a large photograph. The pose of the three faces was fashionably disdainful, the juxtaposition carefully contrived, the lighting arranged to eradicate signs of age, but the face in the centre was unmistakably that of Nick Mackenzie. For some reason the reproduction had made his eyes unusually pale, almost white, so that they stood out in a disturbing way, like something out of a sci-fi film poster.
The headline was also large. Amazon No-show Threat. And the story: Lead singer Nick Mackenzie’s health problems had caused the cancellation of a concert in Philadelphia. Disappointed fans had almost started a riot. The tour organizer was quoted as saying that Mr Mackenzie had been suffering from a recurrent chest infection which had necessitated heavy medication, but that he had now recovered and that the last two dates would most definitely go ahead. But the writer of the piece clearly thought otherwise. He reported that the lead singer’s troubles had started in Chicago, where he seemed to be having trouble not only with his voice, but in remembering the words of his own songs. He’d made it into the second half, but only just. He’d looked unsteady on his feet and at one stage had almost tripped over.
‘Maybe I was reading too much into it,’ Paul suggested kindly. ‘I mean, maybe it was just the flu.’
The rest of the piece was equally disastrous. There was the inevitable mention of tragic circumstances, the raking over of Alusha Mackenzie’s death, then, most damning of all, a mention of Nick’s former problems with alcohol. Clearly the reporter had few doubts as to the real cause of his so-called illness.
Daisy folded the paper with elaborate slowness. It hurt, and what surprised her was just how much it hurt. She felt a weight of responsibility. More than that, she felt angry at Nick Mackenzie for having shut her out. That’s the real trouble, she thought: I believe that I could have saved him from this, if only he’d had faith in what I was doing.
But could she? People in trouble, people with habits they couldn’t break, generally had a built-in resistance to being saved.
‘So when are you seeing Alan Breck?’
She caught Paul by surprise, so that he didn’t have time to prepare his lie and it came out on a false and guilty note. ‘Eh … soon. I’m not too sure when.’
‘You said the end of the month.’
‘I did?’
‘Paul, that’s why I came.’
‘Well – ’ He fought it, looking unhappy, then, catching her expression, gestured defeat. ‘Okay – it’s Sunday. Look, I would have told you but – well, I promised not to tell anyone. And what am I doing now? I’m telling you! But, listen, I don’t even know if he’ll show. We fixed it weeks ago when he called to check I’d got his letter. I haven’t heard from him since.’ He threw open his hands. ‘He may not show.’
‘But I can come along?’
‘Listen, I wish you could, I wish you could.’
‘I’ll be quiet as a mouse!’
He fell back in his chair, h
is hands clamped over the dome of his stomach, and stared at her for a long moment. Then he gave a groan of half-hearted disapproval. He had agreed.
He picked her up from her hotel in the Adams-Morgan district shortly after breakfast, and they drove out over the Potomac, heading, she thought, south-west. The sky was hazy and bleached, the colour already leached out by the sun. It was going to be another hot day. The car had no air-conditioning and even as they passed the turn-off for the Arlington Cemetery, rivulets of sweat dribbled down Paul’s cheeks and onto his neck.
They stayed on the main highway for over an hour until, just short of a place called Culpeper, Paul slowed the car and peered ahead, looking for landmarks. Sighting a turn-off, he gave a grunt of recognition and a moment later they pulled off the road and stopped in front of an Italian wayside restaurant advertising Budweiser and home-baked pizzas.
The interior was dark and chill and, at first glance, empty. A waitress led them towards a booth. From the ceiling Pavarotti was belting out a Neapolitan love song.
As they sat down Daisy was the first to spot the lone figure seated in a far booth, a silhouette set against the brilliant light of the window. Paul went over and held a murmured conversation. After a time he beckoned her over. Alan Breck had turned up.
He was in his mid- to late-thirties, with dark limp hair, pale skin, anxious eyes magnified by metal-rimmed spectacles and nervous hands that flittered and settled constantly. Daisy sat opposite him, next to Paul. He viewed the two of them with apprehension. Perhaps he’d hoped they wouldn’t come. Perhaps he’d almost not come himself. Did he, too, have a persecution complex? Did he, like Paul, believe that he’d stepped into some sort of spy thriller where an all-powerful ‘they’ were watching his every move?
He did not volunteer his name. Paul launched straight into a speech of thanks and appreciation, sprinkled with reassurances. But though he radiated confidence and professionalism, this did nothing to impress their friend who, looking increasingly uneasy, tried to interrupt a couple of times until, in a final burst of desperation, he held up a staying hand.
Requiem Page 40