by Ross Pennie
Hamish dropped his hand to his pocket. “Oh God. You’ll make me self-conscious. Forever.”
“No. Just let it be a reminder of me.”
Hamish felt his cheeks blush, his ears burn. “I . . . I wasn’t sure I should . . .”
“I’m so glad you did,” Ken said, taking Hamish’s hands. “But maybe I’ve got some convincing to do.” He glanced at the agenda open on his desk. “I’m clear until three. How about you?”
Hamish told him about his seminar from two until five.
Ken checked at his watch. “We’ve got almost two hours. Fantastic. My place?”
“You mean . . . Now?”
“Absolutely.”
Hamish shivered. Everything about this moment was bursting with freshness and uncertainty. “You’ll . . .” He stared again at the carpet. “You’ll have to show me the ropes.”
Ken laughed. “No ropes and no chains. No leather, either.” But when he sensed Hamish’s anxiety at being misunderstood, he added gently, “Don’t worry, Hamish. It’ll be my pleasure. And yours, too. I’ll see to that.” He pointed to the bulge in Hamish’s trousers. “Is that a box of condoms in your pocket?”
“No. I’m just . . . you know . . . happy to see you.”
Ken laughed. “Good one. We’ll pick some up on the way.”
CHAPTER 29
Zol sank deeper into his living-room sofa, losing himself in Eric Clapton’s chords. Max had returned to school; he couldn’t wait to show off his brand-new hand. Zol had wanted to insist he stay home after the trip to the doctor, but what good would that have done? Max was a normal boy — at least for now — and of course he wanted to be with his friends. After he’d skipped away from the car, Zol sat in the school parking lot with the engine running, gazing at the red-brick wall until the crossing guard waved him off the property.
Now the CD player throbbed an endless loop of “Tears in Heaven” into the living room. He’d cried uncontrollably at first, sharing Eric Clapton’s pain at the death of his son. Soon it would be Zol’s turn to know such grief. Finally his tears were spent, and his cheeks stung as they dried. He stared at the cold, dark artificiality of the logs in the unlit fireplace. He couldn’t imagine ever lighting it again.
A flicker of movement brushed the edge of his vision. He turned with a start to see Colleen standing in the living-room doorway. Worry and benevolence muted her face.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said, then quickly added, “Ermalinda let me in.” She opened her arms. “How are you, Zol?”
He paused the CD player and hauled himself off the sofa to accept her hug. His shoulders heaved as his sobbing started again.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
He gripped her tight and sensed the iron strength of her tiny frame. “You’ve been talking to Hamish?”
“No. Ermalinda called me. Said you were upset but she didn’t know why. Asked me to come over.”
“So you don’t know what happened?”
“Bad news?”
Zol released himself from the warmth of Colleen’s body and dropped onto the sofa. When she started to sit in the armchair he touched the cushion beside him and said, “Please . . .”
He rubbed his palms on his thighs and swallowed hard. Despite the tightness in his chest the story poured out of him. It felt good to get it out.
“But it sounds like there’s hope,” Colleen said when he’d finished. “If the doctor said kids don’t get CJD, it sounds like Max will be okay.”
“But this is a different sort of CJD — no one has ever seen it before. And if the Extendo-Tox lets the prions in and speeds them through the brain, then it won’t matter a damn that Max’s neurons are more plastic than an adult’s.”
“You mustn’t give up hope.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“When that airliner crashed into the Atlantic with Liam on board, I spent three days hoping, hoping, hoping he’d be the sole survivor. That someone would find him floating on a piece of wreckage in Peggy’s Cove.” She squeezed Zol’s arm. “I knew in my heart it was a ridiculous notion, but I felt I owed it to him. To give up hope was to abandon him to the icy waters.”
“But this is different. It wasn’t your . . .” Zol’s chest tightened. He could barely get out the words. “It wasn’t your fault that Liam died.”
She put her arm around his shoulders and drew in close. “Zol. It wasn’t your fault that Max got the Extendo-Tox. You tried to cancel it — you called two months in advance, for heaven’s sake. It isn’t your fault that Margolis’s bloody machine doesn’t take messages. And it wasn’t anyone’s fault that the doctor had a last-minute cancellation.” Her palm stroked its warmth into the back of his hand. “Zol. You have to keep going. You have to prove the case against the sausages and the Extendo-Tox. You have to stop anyone else from getting CJD.”
He closed his eyes and threw back his head. “I’m off the case. Trinnock said I’m fired if he finds me within a mile of the investigation.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Zol shrugged. “Trinnock’s got me on a short leash. Wants to see me every afternoon. Make certain I’m behaving myself. But screw it. I’m not going back to the office today just so he can look me over.”
“But you’ve got to tell him about Krooner’s pies and sausages.”
“The hell with it. He said I’m off the case.”
“Zol, that doesn’t sound like you. Besides, you didn’t go looking for the information about Krooner and the mink meat. Hamish dropped it in your lap. And now that you know about it, you have to go public with it.”
“I was going to tell him this afternoon.”
“So — what’s stopping you?”
“Not today.” Zol pointed to his face. “Look at me. I must look a wreck. I can’t face the office like this.”
“When Liam’s plane went down I wanted to hide in the house so no one would have to suffer the embarrassment of talking to me.”
“You? In hiding?”
She nodded. “For three days. And then I remembered a poem we studied in school. Robert Frost.”
“Robert Frost? You studied him? In South Africa?”
Colleen shrugged. “Of course.”
“And what did he say?”
“‘The best way out is always through.’”
“What?”
“‘The best way out is always through.’ Look, when you’re paddling in the Zambezi, and you’re suddenly up to your neck in crocodiles, you have to head for the closest riverbank, climb past all those teeth, and keep running until you’re safe and dry. Or die trying.”
At three thirty, as scheduled, Peter Trinnock waved Zol into his office. As Zol crossed the threshold, his gut tightened at the memory of yesterday’s televised encounter right here in front of the Chippendale desk. But that was nothing compared to the ache in his heart over Max and the Extendo-Tox. He felt as though some misalignment in the universe had thrown his life into chaos. The random motions of all the molecules that up to then had given him a life of privilege and contentment were now aligned on a malignant path.
Trinnock, myopic, squinted and lifted his spectacles from his desk. He rubbed at them with a tissue. “It’s been a bloody awful week,” he said. His breathing showed no sign of yesterday’s asthma. “My wife won’t go near a grocery store, so we’re down to rice and tinned corn. And the last of the four-pound Cheddar we bought in Balderson last summer.” He huffed steam onto his glasses and worked at a defiant smudge. “How about you and Max?”
Zol wished the man would put on his bloody glasses and stop that awful pig-like squinting. “We’re okay,” he said. “Still lots of meat in the freezer, but Max says he’s getting overdosed on pasta.”
A smile almost formed on Trinnock’s lips. Despite his brusqueness, he always had a soft spot for Max. What would he say when he found out about the Extendo-Tox injection?
“Look,” Trinnock said, hooking the bows of his glasses over his ears, “it�
��s safe to say we’ve both been distracted. Toronto and Ottawa raising hell on our turf, jockeying for butt-saving headlines. And the mayor and the minister furious about your horse feathers business.”
Zol locked his face in neutral and fixed on the stripes on Trinnock’s tie. That horse feathers thing was going to haunt him forever, stick to his reputation like porridge on a cast-iron pot. He held his breath while his fingers worried at the loonie in his pocket.
“It doesn’t help,” Trinnock continued, “that we haven’t heard a peep from the prion boys in Winnipeg.” He blew his nose and fired a look that said he expected a response. When Zol could only answer with a solemn nod, Trinnock straightened his glasses and said, “Well? There must be something new.”
Zol took a moment to organize the jumble of thoughts in his head, then described how he and Natasha had tracked the Streptococcus outbreak at Shalom Acres to its source — the strep-infected eczema on the hands of the personal support worker. “But,” he said to Trinnock’s approving nod, “the mayor isn’t happy. Tore a strip off me after yesterday’s TV spot, then blasted me for not getting the Shalom Acres thing settled a whole lot sooner.”
“Leave him to me,” Trinnock replied. “The mayor is paid for his bluster. It helps in the polling booths.”
Zol steeled himself again, knowing Trinnock’s good mood would evaporate as soon as he heard about Krooner’s sausages. “There’ve been some developments up in Campbellville you need to know about,” he said, feeling as if he’d just pulled the pin from a hand grenade. “Only came to light in the past few hours.”
Trinnock frowned and drew back. “Yes?”
“A small-time meat processor is . . . well, he’s mixing mink meat into his pork pies and sausages.” He told Trinnock about Hamish testing Krooner’s samples and visiting Krooner’s farm, then getting the Mustela results from the laboratory in Guelph.
Trinnock’s face turned ashen. Even his hands went grey. “Jesus wept.”
Zol was itching to spill his theory about the role of Extendo-Tox, but he held his tongue. Instead he said, “I need to talk to you about issuing some sort of press release before we get the prion results from the lab in Guelph.”
Trinnock dropped his spectacles onto the blotter. “Bloody hell.” He rubbed at his tiny, alien eyes. “What are we going to say? Sorry folks, the gourmet chocolates aren’t the culprit after all? It’s really a madman up in Campbellville who’s been spiking meat pies and sausages with contaminated mink meat?” Trinnock shook his head. “No goddamn press release. Not yet.”
“But we’ve got to stop people from eating any more of Krooner’s products.”
“You said you already cleared them from the shelves.”
“But just from the stores. What about people’s fridges? Maybe he sells through outlets we don’t know about.”
Trinnock replaced his glasses. “A few more hours aren’t going to make any difference. Not after all this time. We can’t issue another alert without a proper investigation. The public won’t stand us crying wolf again. And,” he said, slamming his desk with his palm, “we’ve got to bloody well do the investigating ourselves. Look what happened when we got sideswiped by Toronto.”
Zol did his best to keep a smirk off his face. “Am I back on the case?”
Trinnock peered over the top of his spectacles. “Looks like you were never off it.”
Zol cleared his throat. “I think the first priority is an inspection of Krooner’s place.”
“Good idea,” Trinnock said. “Have a look for yourself before we issue any press release.”
Both men glanced out the window. In about half an hour the November gloom would descend into night.
“Scout out the farm in the morning.” Trinnock raised a finger in warning. “Take a colleague with you. And don’t push it. The proof of the pudding will be finding prions in Krooner’s products. Are you sure Guelph is up to it?”
Zol nodded.
“Then as soon as we hear from them,” Trinnock said, “we’ll call the police.”
CHAPTER 30
At eight forty-five the next morning Zol hovered with Colleen in the vestibule at the health unit. He frowned at his watch and cinched his scarf against the blasts that roared through the outside door every time someone pulled it open.
Where was Natasha? There’d been no answer when he’d phoned her apartment a few minutes ago. She was supposed to meet them here at eight fifteen for the inspection of Krooner’s farm. It was Colleen’s idea to have both women accompany Zol. Safety in numbers, she’d insisted, and the presence of two females would make the mission appear more like a matter of public safety than the first step in a criminal prosecution.
They checked their watches a final time and shrugged in resignation, then headed for Colleen’s Mercedes.
Soon they were cruising north of the city on Highway Six, past the farms and fields that stretched to the horizon. The landscape undulated like a foreign state, a ramshackle republic of rolling hills blighted by bashed-up vehicles, twisted lawn chairs, and rusting appliances. Zol found it unsettling leaving the ordered hubbub of the brick-and-concrete city. Although farming country lacked the scars of the big-box stores and gaudy billboards, and looked pretty from a distance, the illusion stopped at the gates of the scrap-littered farmyards where pride of place took a back seat to expedience. To top it off, the biker gangs, chop shops, and rogue butchers like Lanny Krooner rendered the countryside no more secure than the dark alleys of the inner city.
Zol ran his fingers along the wood-grain panel covering the glove compartment of the Mercedes. Was he touching rosewood or something cooked up in a German chemical factory? He turned to Colleen. “It’s just not like Natasha,” he said.
Colleen looked thoughtful but not anxious. “As I said, there’s bound to be a good explanation. I don’t imagine there’s cause for worry.” She depressed the left-turn signal and guided the smooth-throated vehicle past a rusting jalopy.
“I’m not so sure. She’s got an incredible memory, and she’s never late.”
The GPS on the dashboard displayed the most efficient route, via Carlisle and Kilbride, to the Krooner farm. It projected an ETA of nine fifty. They’d be there in twenty minutes.
“I shall have you back in your office before you know it,” said Colleen. “And if there’s still no sign of her, I’ll ring my contact at the city police.”
A lump cramped the pit of Zol’s stomach. He shifted in his seat. “How do you think Krooner’s going to react when we close down his shop?”
“Depends on how much we tell him.”
He wondered how she could look so calm in the face of confronting a villain. “I wasn’t going to mention the mink meat.”
“Good thing,” she agreed.
“He’d just deny it.”
“It doesn’t matter if he denies it. We don’t want him going ballistic.” She touched her hand to her chest. “Hold your cards close. We must keep Krooner on the defensive, uncertain how much we know.”
Zol hauled a loonie from his pocket and weaved it through his right hand. “You’re right. Trinnock will be satisfied if we have a look at Krooner’s operation then serve the man with a temporary suspension of his operations.” Zol palmed the coin and mimed quotations marks with his fingers. “Pending further investigation.”
“You can shut him down? Just like that?” she asked, snapping her fingers.
“If he claims he isn’t slaughtering animals, and he’s processing meat that’s already been inspected by the feds or the province, and he’s just selling locally, then he comes under our jurisdiction.” Zol flicked the coin skyward with his thumb and grabbed it in mid-air. “And yes, I can shut him down.”
“Where do the feds come in?”
“They inspect all the kill floors preparing meat for transport out of province. They’re especially fussy about international shipments.”
“And the province?” Colleen’s face showed the studious look he’d noticed whenever her b
rain was storing information for future reference.
“It controls the smaller guys — slaughterhouses that don’t ship their products outside Ontario.”
“Quite the assortment of regulations — the health unit, the municipality, the province, the feds. It all sounds so cumbersome. Small operations could squeeze through the cracks between the jurisdictions.”
“Yeah. People are slaughtering animals on the sly all over the place,” he said. “Barns. Basements. You name it.” He recalled the headlines provoked by a Chinese restaurant in Toronto a year or two ago. “Even restaurants. Though they mostly just kill chickens.”
“What do you mean just chicken?” Colleen wrinkled her nose as if she were wondering about the integrity of her last chicken curry takeout. “It must be impossible to prove unless you catch them red-handed.”
“Inspectors don’t get paid enough to confront a bunch of knife-wielding yokels in a back room somewhere.”
Fifteen minutes later, after passing several road signs proudly proclaiming Niagara Escarpment Country, they pulled into the Krooner farm.
“Not sure I like the look of that,” said Zol, pointing to a black-and-yellow sign nailed to a tree: Private, Keep Out. A second sign said, Guard Dogs on Duty.
A white vinyl-sided farmhouse, a dormer window perched on the upper floor, sat at the end of the gravel driveway. A pickup truck, black and shiny, was parked out front. Extravagant silver script decorated its side panels: Escarpment Pride Fine Meats.
Zol cast his eyes over the extent of the Krooners’ operation: the mink sheds, the hog barn, a flat-roofed utility bungalow. Half a kilometre away, bordering a line of trees at the edge of the Escarpment, three mounds of earth jutted skyward, their peaks sharp as if freshly made.
Colleen glided the car to a stop behind the pickup. “Uh-oh,” she said, tipping her head in the direction of the yard to the right of the house, “look who’s on duty.”
Zol stiffened at the sight of a pair of Rottweilers. “What are they up to?”