NUMBER NINETEEN LINDEN Gardens, the home of Jane Ackroyd, sat at the end of a road of identical bow-fronted houses with pebbledash rendering and steep gables, distinguished from each other by the colourful paintwork of the mock-Tudor beams on the gable ends and the various sugary hues of the pebbledash.
Daisy walked up the path an hour late. There had been a morning meeting with Mrs Bell’s new lawyer in Glasgow which had overrun, a long call to Jenny in London to check on progress on the arrangements for the arrival of Alan Breck, and, as a final hurdle, a delay on the Glasgow shuttle. But then it was an achievement to have reached Dorking at all.
In Chelmsford the previous morning, Inspector Brent had kept her for over an hour, asking questions about insurance cover, business associates, and – his favourite expression – those who might wish her harm. He floated concepts that would have been quaint if they weren’t so unlikely – a spurned boyfriend? A disgruntled former employee? The possibility that there might have been an entirely different sort of villain didn’t seem to occur to him, and she hadn’t bothered to put him on the right track. At each mention of harm his gaze invariably travelled to her swollen and multicoloured eye until, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, he asked in his deathless style if it was possible that the circumstances surrounding her injury might have a pertinent bearing on the damage to the laboratory.
The insurance assessor kept her another half hour. Then it was back into Jenny’s car – borrowed again at six that morning – and a hasty drive to the Glasgow shuttle via Hertfordshire. She found the address given by Maynard in a parade of shops on the outskirts of St Albans. It was a print and duplicating shop which rented out accommodation addresses by the week. They did not keep a record of past transactions and, even if they had, would not have been prepared to reveal them.
From Glasgow she had taken a hire car to Loch Fyne and spent a challenging hour persuading Mrs Bell to dispense with Dermott and use a Glasgow lawyer named Munro, an expert on family law. A hurriedly arranged meeting with Munro followed, then, aided by some legal muscle from Munro, the three of them gained permission to go and see Adrian in hospital. They found him grey-faced, subdued, unresponsive to everything but the sight of Daisy’s black eye, which produced a stare of amazement. He hadn’t been able to say what drugs they were giving him, only that they made him sick. The physiotherapy was hurting him, he said, and he felt very weak.
Later in that long day, perched in her Glasgow hotel room Daisy tried a few press contacts to see if she could drum up some local interest in Adrian’s case. But she had underestimated the opposition: Munro called to tell her that Strathclyde Council had been granted an injunction banning all publicity. Such was the power vested in the authorities: the power to remove a child and the power to prevent the world from hearing about it.
Suddenly Monday was almost over, and Alan Breck’s call was only twenty-four hours away. Jenny, working alone and under pressure in the Catch office, had found a firm to cover security, had looked into flights and accommodation. But the media deal hung insecurely in the air. Simon wasn’t back, an opposition newspaper was showing only limited interest. No guaranteed coverage; no money. Daisy didn’t need telling that Alan Breck wouldn’t come for that.
The door of number nineteen was painted Cambridge-blue to match the gables. Bypassing the heavy Victorian-style brass knocker, Daisy pressed an electric bell set into a ceramic plate under a reproduction carriage lamp. At once a dog barked, a woman’s voice shouted ‘Quiet!’ and the door was pulled open by Jane Ackroyd in a dark blue suit with white-edged lapels and rows of chunky jewellery.
‘Oh, it’s you!’ she declared more in relief than irritation, holding on to the collar of a snapping Jack Russell. ‘I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.’ She peered closer as Daisy came into the hall. ‘Good God! What have you done to your face?’
‘A car hit me. Well, a car door.’
‘Oh,’ she murmured, already losing interest. She closed the door and released the Jack Russell which immediately jumped against Daisy’s leg and bared its teeth.
‘Listen,’ Jane Ackroyd said, dropping her voice conspiratorially, ‘I think you should know – I only told Peter a couple of hours ago. That you were coming. And he’s still a bit – well, unhappy.’
‘I thought it was his idea. I thought it was urgent. You said it was urgent.’
‘Oh, he’s keen, oh yes! Absolutely! It’s just – well, he wasn’t too happy to hear it was you that I’d phoned.’
Daisy didn’t attempt to hide her annoyance. ‘Perhaps I should go then?’
‘Oh no! Please don’t go.’ She gripped Daisy’s wrist, her jewellery jangling in agitation. ‘He’s talking about going to South America. Apparently they’re desperate for pilots – and not too worried about the state of one’s licence.’ She released Daisy’s wrist and took to twisting her rings. ‘He’ll get work, I’ve no doubt he will, but all those mountains. The bandits. No spare parts. No, I couldn’t stand it, I really couldn’t.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘He went back to the medical board to ask for a review, you know,’ she said, whispering again, ‘but they wouldn’t reconsider. It was that Scotland job, he’s sure of it. Never been the same since. When I saw your name in the paper and I realized you were with – what is it?’ She gestured forgetfulness. ‘The Campaign For …?’
‘Against Toxic Chemicals.’
‘Then I guessed you might know what to do. It’s a scandal.’ Her colourless eyes showed a pale outrage. ‘He was only doing his job. An absolute scandal.’
Through a closed door came the sound of a muffled cough and the energetic shaking of a newspaper. ‘You’d better come in …’ She led the way into a living room, small but grandly decorated, with a pale carpet and matching curtains, a chintz drop-arm sofa with extravagant gilded cords, silk-shaded standard lamps, and a fake open fire.
Duggan was sitting in a high-winged chair to the right of the fire, a newspaper on his knee and a cigarette dangling loosely from the fingers of one hand. Taking his time, he folded the paper, balanced the cigarette on the rim of an ashtray and lumbered to his feet. He was still dapper in a boy-flyer sort of way, but it seemed to Daisy that his blazer, resplendent with brass buttons, hung loosely on him, and that his cheeks had lost some of their fullness. His hair still sported its razor-line side parting, but his eyes were watery and his skin had a dry spongy quality to it.
He shook hands, but his gaze harboured old grievances and as soon as his sister had left the room he couldn’t resist taking a stab at her. ‘Someone hit you back, did they?’
‘Someone who couldn’t take the truth when he heard it,’ she smiled.
He sat down again, looking defensive.
Daisy asked after his health.
‘Bloody awful.’ By the way of illustration he gave a terrifying cough, the sort that anti-smoking campaigners would be glad to have broadcast to every schoolkid in the country. ‘But not so awful that they had the right to take my licence away.’ She noticed his hands were trembling.
‘What grounds did they give?’
‘No grounds. Don’t have to give grounds. Like bloody insurance companies.’
‘And you think your health was affected by chemicals?’
Resting his elbows on the chair-arms, he brought his cigarette in front of his mouth and regarded her through the spiral of smoke. ‘You lied to me,’ he said. ‘You said you were with some solicitors’ firm or other.’
‘Did I?’
‘You know bloody well you did.’
‘Perhaps I thought you’d be less than forthcoming if I said I was with Catch.’
‘Too right.’ He took another drag, sucking so hard that she could almost feel the smoke biting into his lungs. ‘Could have your licence revoked as well, perhaps?’ The thought appealed to him and he creased up his eyes with malicious amusement.
‘Maybe.’
It didn’t satisfy him. ‘Bloody cheek, you know. Bloody cheek. And those threats – ’ He stabbed a fin
ger at her, eyeing her down the length of it, like someone sighting along a rifle. ‘I don’t take kindly to threats, you know. Not on. Not on.’ His voice shook slightly.
‘You had important information. I needed to get it.’
‘Bloody cheek.’ But the venom had gone out of his voice.
He got up and poured himself a liberal glass of Scotch. ‘So what can you do for me?’ he demanded truculently.
‘Hard to say. What sort of thing did you have in mind?’
‘Why, compensation. It was that damned gunk I worked with, I’m sure of it. Felt off-colour ever since. That blighter Keen. Took no precautions, you know. Hired fools like Davie. Couldn’t read a label to save his life.’
‘When you say off-colour, what do you mean exactly?’
‘Well …’ He waved an impatient hand. ‘You know, low. Can’t bloody concentrate. Hands all over the place. Head feels woozy, that sort of thing.’
Putting down his drink, he reached for a packet of cigarettes and lit one, steadying one trembling hand against the other as he operated the lighter. Daisy could see that there might be difficulties in persuading a court that this trembling was purely the result of chemical exposure.
‘Any particular chemical you had in mind?’ she asked.
He gave a series of short coughs which he dampened greedily with a drink. ‘Pretty obvious,’ he declared sullenly. ‘That stuff you were so curious about – ’
‘Silveron.’
He wagged his cigarette in confirmation.
‘Did you come into direct contact with it then?’
‘When the wind was in the wrong direction.’ He glared morosely into space from under drooping eyelids. Then his eyes dipped back towards hers and his voice rolled on reminiscently: ‘Gunk slopped all over the place when we were filling the tanks, too. Couldn’t help it, not with that prehistoric equipment.’
‘And the spray, did it ever land on anyone else accidentally? I mean, that you know of?’
His mouth hardened. ‘What sort of question’s that?’
‘It’d help to know.’
‘I’d bet it would!’ he said in a voice suddenly vicious with injustice. ‘Trying to trap me, eh?’
Daisy, her patience already frail, stood up and said briskly: ‘Obviously I can’t be of help.’
‘So what d’you want me to say?’ he bellowed as she made for the door. ‘We’ve all made mistakes, for God’s sake. You show me a spray pilot and I’ll show you someone who’s made a cock-up!’
She paused at the door and looked back at him. He threw out an expansive arm, slopping his drink in the process. ‘What the hell difference does it make anyway?’
‘Everything,’ she said.
‘Christ Almighty!’ he spluttered. ‘I’m meant to incriminate myself, am I?’
‘No.’ She came back into the room. ‘Just tell it all to a newspaper.’
‘Just!’ His eyes darted imploringly around the room, as if seeking the sympathy of an invisible audience. ‘And that’s not incriminating myself?’
She sat down again. ‘You could stay anonymous.’
‘Ha. That’s what you say. The licensing department of the CAA would bloody know. I tell you, they’d soon bloody work it out.’ He snorted vaguely until, with a sideways glance, he said coolly: ‘And what’d be in it for me?’
‘We’d find the right lawyers and experts to help you fight your case. If that’s what you decided to do.’
He gave a non-committal grunt and eyed her leerily over his glass. Finally, after a last thoughtful glance, he chucked his cigarette onto the fake coals. ‘I did my best, you know. Never knowingly hurt a fly. Never.’ He looked up at her mournfully.
‘But there were cock-ups?’
He tensed and looked into his drink. For a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he drew in a slow breath, hissing it through his teeth. ‘The bloody guidance system … sometimes didn’t work. Or the flow line – that jammed once. Not my fault. It was the no-good ground staff. Bloody incompetent. Keen’s fault. Wouldn’t pay a decent rate.’ He reached slowly for a cigarette, spinning out the movement so that he could avoid looking into Daisy’s eyes. ‘One day …’ He hesitated and said with sudden anger: ‘Shit, I don’t know – ’
‘This is off the record,’ she murmured.
He risked a look at her and nodded unhappily. Perhaps he knew that what he was about to say wasn’t going to sound too good. Perhaps the memories had been bothering him for some time. He lit his cigarette and started to play with his lighter, swivelling it on the arm on his chair.
‘The time with the flow line. Bloody thing seized up. Then suddenly got going at the wrong moment.’ He held the cigarette in his fingers like a peashooter, drawing short puffs from it. ‘Doing a patch near a big house. Loch Fyne, it was. Thought I saw someone. Couldn’t be sure though. There was a horse. Saw that all right. And a hut, a stable. Thought I saw something else. Behind the horse. But then I had to turn away fast. Impossible to go back and see. Fairly sure they must have got a pretty good whiff though.’ He gave a joyless chuckle. ‘Surprised not to hear anything about it, if you really want to know. Thought all hell would break loose.’
‘And the other time?’
Baring his teeth, he sucked in his breath. ‘Think it was a boy.’ His fingers tightened on the lighter so that it stopped turning. ‘Not absolutely certain … Only saw him for a flash. Standing in this field at the end of the run, he was. So close couldn’t have missed him if I’d tried. Flew right over him.’ He grasped the lighter and squeezed it hard. ‘Turned back and took a look, but hard to see. Hidden behind the animals or something …’ He blinked rapidly. ‘Flew straight back to the strip, sent a telex to Keen telling him to stuff it. Told him that if I wasn’t given proper recce time I’d be off. Same bloody answer. He’d see to it. He was always seeing to things that never bloody happened.’ He glanced at her, gauging her reaction. ‘Felt bad about it,’ he said in a rough voice. ‘Just a kid. Often wondered if he was okay. But it was too late by then, wasn’t it? No good telling everyone. What good would that have done?’
Daisy spent a moment examining her hands. She said: ‘Can you remember what you had in the tanks that day?’
‘Yup. It was that stuff of yours,’ he offered gladly. ‘Silver-whatsit.’
He peered at her through the wreaths of smoke, his lids drooping knowingly. ‘Did I say the right thing?’
Jenny was waiting in the Catch office with good and bad news. The good news was that Simon was due back from Prague at any moment and that she’d managed to arrange a meeting in the editorial office of the Sunday Times for seven that evening. The bad news was that she’d got a price from a security firm for guarding Alan Breck and it wasn’t going to be cheap.
As bad news went, it could have been a lot worse. There was still something left in the Octek kitty.
Then Jenny showed her the day’s newspapers, and Daisy saw it was going to be worse after all. The story took up a quarter page in the tabloids, a more restrained side paragraph in the qualities. Charged. Bailed. In possession of drugs at his Highland castle. All the tabloids called it a castle, which suggested they had got the story from a wire service. In the absence of other facts, they had rehashed the usual history: Alusha, the financing of the laboratory, the fire.
She wondered: Can it be true? Then in the next instant: What the hell difference did it make anyway? They should leave him alone. He doesn’t deserve this.
It was nine before the Alan Breck deal was struck. Simon delayed the final agreement, worried by the apparent lack of documentation, throwing up what seemed to Daisy to be unnecessary obstacles. The offer wasn’t as good as she’d hoped – travel expenses and a ten-thousand-pound fee – but with foreign rights the money could double. Would it be enough? Would Alan Breck be hoping for more? And what about all his other expenses? She had the feeling he would be expecting her to find them, along with the cost of the security people.
The flat was cold when sh
e got in. As she bent down to light the fire something made her pause. She listened for a second or two. A sound, a gentle scraping, like a leaf on the window, except it hadn’t come from the window. The kitchen then? She went in. The kitchen window returned her reflection dustily, like a sheet of black metal. Outside it was very dark and, though she put an eye to the glass, she couldn’t make out anything in the small patch of paved garden below. Above, the yellow oblongs of lighted windows hung in the blackness.
Whatever the sound was, it had gone, or else it was lost in the ringing that was still buzzing like a run-down alarm clock in her ear. She switched on the kettle then heard the sound again.
It was more distinct this time, coming in clearly over the chiming in her ear, not so much a scraping as a scratching, emanating, so it seemed, from the main room. She crept soundlessly towards the door, but as she stepped into the room it stopped. She waited, cocking her good ear from side to side. For perhaps half a minute there was nothing but the murmurs of the street, the faint beat of reggae music from the flat below and the humming of the heating kettle. Then it sounded again, but so soft, so vague, so lost in the insistent caterwauling of her singing ear that she was no longer sure that it was inside the room. She crept into the centre of the room and stood still, preparing to wait it out.
When the scraping came again it was so sharp that it seemed to be very close by, and she started slightly. A grinding noise, as if someone were running his nails over a rough surface. She’d got the direction now – close by the kitchen door and lowish – but by the time she had inched forward the kettle was rumbling to the boil and if there was any other sound she missed it.
When the kettle had clicked off and grumbled into silence there was still nothing, and after another couple of minutes she gave up and went and made herself a coffee.
She unpacked her bag, hung up some clothes.
In the flat below the reggae music stopped and a door slammed.
She went to the chest to throw a jersey into the bottom drawer. As she leaned forward she caught a whiff of an acrid almost fetid smell.
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