by Malcolm Rose
‘And he did all this on his own?’
His friends exchanged a smile. ‘He didn’t take us, that’s for sure.’
‘Are you saying he met up with someone else?’
Another hesitation. ‘If he did, he never told us.’
Troy changed the topic. ‘Have any of you been unwell in the last week?’
All three shook their heads. ‘Nothing that kept us off the greens.’
SCENE 14
Thursday 8th May, Evening
This time, the car sped northward, straight past Shepford, on its way to Pickling. Receiving a message from Tight End Crime Central, Lexi groaned.
‘What is it?’
‘Exactly what we already know. Listen. Jon Drago Five is the drummer in a criminal group called Mercury Splash. We’ve listened to the music and concluded that he and his fellow musicians should be locked up immediately and permanently.’
Troy cringed. ‘That’s all we need. Police officers with a sense of humour.’
‘Sort of sense of humour. I’m not exactly rolling around uncontrollably.’
‘No. Nor me. Have our funny friends dug up anything else yet?’
‘He doesn’t have a police record. Not a known trouble-maker. They’re still working on it.’
‘Good.’
Lexi updated Jon Five’s entry on her spreadsheet and then summarized it aloud for her partner’s sake. ‘Jon Drago Five. Works with mercury. Easy access to mercury if he fiddles the figures. Drummer with Mercury Splash. He’s been to Pickling where, in Keaton Hathaway’s flat, we found a hair belonging to someone who’s been exposed to mercury. The hair matches Jon Drago Five’s for length and colour. He works in the Tight End area where one of our victims – Alyssa Bending – went before she got sick. With his group, he’s been to Shepford where another one of our victims lives – Miley Quist. She may well have gone to his gig. No obvious connection to Richard Featherstone.’
‘No obvious motive either,’ Troy muttered.
‘But is all that enough to commandeer a sample of his DNA?’ Answering her own question, Lexi said, ‘Borderline.’
Eager to advance the investigation, Troy said, ‘I reckon I could justify it.’
‘I’ll send it through to our funny friends up north and see if they’ll do it.’
Troy nodded.
‘Talking of justify,’ Lexi added, ‘that’s the name of the insect farm where Keaton Hathaway worked. The one we’re about to visit.’
‘Justify?’
‘Yeah. Short for Just Insects For You – or Just-i-f-y.’
Troy pulled a face. ‘What is it about this case? The Doom Merchant, Mercury Splash, and now insect breeders dreaming up a rib-tickling name.’
‘We’re bugged by comedians,’ Lexi replied with a smirk.
Troy squirmed in his seat. ‘Don’t you start.’
Justify was housed in a low but large wooden structure, built in a field to the west of Pickling. The owner, Yasmin Nadya One, seemed eager to show her visitors around. First, she took them into a warm and humid room, as big as a warehouse, where she grew twenty million mealworms in white plastic trays placed in a vast array of racks.
‘If you put them in wooden boxes,’ Yasmin said, ‘they’ll just eat their way through the wood.’
Troy peered into a tray and grimaced. The worms formed a wriggling mass around some pieces of potato.
Yasmin smiled at Troy’s expression. ‘They’re great. Not a pretty sight, perhaps, but very versatile.’ She put her hand into the tangle of live worms and stirred them around. ‘If you throw in some apple, they come out tasting of apple.’
Despite the stifling conditions, Troy shivered.
As an outer who loved her food, Lexi looked to be in heaven.
‘We’re very careful with feed,’ Yasmin told them. ‘If you let them feed on waste, poisons can build up in their bodies. Then they’d be useless for human consumption.’
‘Have you ever had a problem with mercury pollution?’ Troy asked.
‘No. We only use the best quality feed. No contamination whatsoever.’
‘It’s hot in here.’
‘That’s how the worms like it.’
‘Do you have mercury thermometers?’
‘No. It’s all controlled electronically these days.’
‘Any other sources of mercury?’
‘No, not that I’m aware of.’
Talking to Lexi, Troy said, ‘When you tell me that outers keep the fly population down, it’s not true. You’re making as many insects as you eat. You’re not just eating the nuisances out there.’ He nodded towards the exit.
‘You don’t want to eat what’s flying and crawling around all over the place. You don’t know where it’s been.’
Yasmin laughed. ‘She’s right. It’s like I just said. The ones outside might be tainted. Plenty of people do eat them, but there’s a risk. They might have been feasting on excrement. You wouldn’t really fancy popping that into your mouth, would you?’
‘I’ll stick with sausage and chocolate.’
‘But they contain insects as well. The law permits up to sixty insect fragments in one hundred grams of chocolate. And, as for sausages, you don’t know what …’
Troy put up his hand to stop Yasmin. ‘Lexi goes on and on about that – three times a day.’
Yasmin grinned. ‘Come on. I’ll show you the crickets in the next part of the building.’
Almost as soon as he walked through the door, Troy felt a scrunching noise under his foot.
Yasmin One shrugged. ‘You’ve stepped on a cricket making its bid for freedom. I won’t miss it much. I’ve got thirty million more in here.’
A loud high-pitched chirping filled the massive room. Large white pens were stacked from floor to ceiling. Peeping inside one of them, Troy and Lexi saw thousands of brown insects crawling madly all over each other.
‘I grow them on cardboard egg boxes. They hatch and live there for six weeks or so, stuffing themselves with pure grain, before I harvest them. They’re gassed, washed in hot water and ground or baked at the processing unit.’
‘This is the operation that Keaton Hathaway managed?’ asked Troy, raising his voice above the crickets’ shrill.
‘Yes. I’m really sorry to lose him.’
‘And you’re sure your crickets haven’t ever poisoned any of your customers – or your workers?’
‘I wouldn’t still be in business if they had,’ Yasmin replied. ‘I’d be shut down at the first hint of contamination – or if anyone complained.’
‘What did you think of Keaton?’
‘He was a nice man, slightly awkward with people. But …’
‘What?’
‘He was a major. He didn’t share our passion for insects.’
‘Slightly awkward,’ Troy repeated. ‘In what way?’
Yasmin shrugged. ‘I got the feeling he was happier with rocks and fossils than he was with living people. Or living insects for that matter. I don’t think it was because he was a major in a workplace dominated by outers. I’m sure that didn’t bother him. It’s just that he preferred dead things.’
‘Did you keep track of where he went, chasing rocks and fossils?’
She smiled. ‘Impossible. Anyway, he kept himself to himself. It would have felt like an intrusion to ask him what he was up to. But I bet he would have opened up if anyone around here shared his interests. But geology isn’t our thing.’ She shrugged again. ‘We’re all mad keen on biology and entomology instead.’
‘Well, how about his latest – his last – trip?’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’
‘Did he get on okay with the other men who work here? How about an outer with silvery hair, brown eyes, maybe taller than usual?’
Yasmin thought for a moment. ‘That doesn’t match anyone here but, yes, he was fine with everyone – in his own way. There was certainly no hostility. I like a happy, harmonious business and that’s what I’ve got.’
&nb
sp; ‘What about music? Do you know if he was into it?’
‘As I said, he kept himself to himself.’
‘So, you didn’t hear him mention a group called Mercury Splash?’
‘No.’
Troy nodded. ‘Thanks.’
‘Do you want to see the rest of the farm? Ants, termites, scorpions …’
Troy put up both hands. ‘I think we’ve seen enough and asked you all we needed to.’
The two detectives made their way back to Justify’s car park. With a sigh, Lexi did not hide her disappointment that they’d refused to finish the farm tour. Troy did his best to hide his relief.
SCENE 15
Thursday 8th May, Late evening
The car slowed as it negotiated the busy road that led to the electronics company called Switcher and, beyond it, to central Pickling. Both Troy and Lexi looked to the left where the security lights mounted on Pickling Prison’s walls dispelled the dusk.
‘We can stop here for a bit, if you like,’ Lexi said. ‘I don’t mind.’
Troy glanced at the illuminated prison and then turned his head away. ‘We’ve still got things to do. Important things.’
Lexi glanced sideways at him. ‘Okay. It’s up to you.’ She didn’t alter the car’s instructions and it continued towards Switcher.
Fifteen minutes later, the car turned left where two flattened squirrels lay dead in the road. It rolled gently down a drive to the company’s main entrance. Inside, the manager took Troy and Lexi to a secure storeroom at one corner of the building. Opening it with a code, she led them into the plain windowless chamber. Using a key attached to her uniform, she unlocked a cupboard that bore a hazard warning sign.
‘There you go,’ she pronounced. ‘Our stock of mercury. All safely stowed away according to chemical regulations. Double-locked.’
Troy nodded. ‘But it doesn’t just stay here. You bring it in and take it out to make switches with it. Have you ever lost any?’
‘Not a significant amount.’
Lexi pounced. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, no process can be one hundred per cent efficient,’ the outer replied. Smiling, she added, ‘When you eat a cricket cookie, you always lose the odd crumb.’
‘How much mercury has gone astray?’ Lexi asked bluntly.
‘A few milligrams with every operation. In terms of health and safety, an almost insignificant amount.’
‘Almost,’ Lexi repeated.
Troy interrupted. ‘What’s that noise?’
Above their heads, there was a faint scratching sound. It stopped as soon as they all began to listen.
The manager shook her head with annoyance. ‘Oh, there’s a squirrel farm across the way. It’s supposed to be secure but it isn’t. They’re crafty little creatures. They get everywhere around here. Quite a few that escape come in our direction. They make up almost all the road-kill. Some that get across the road find their way under our eves. They’re a nuisance. They nest in the roof space and chew wood, electric cables and insulation.’
‘Do they come down here – into the places where your people work?’ Troy asked.
‘I’ve never seen them, but one or two of my staff have reported sightings.’
Troy and Lexi exchanged a glance.
‘Does the farm supply squirrel meat for majors?’ said Troy.
‘Squirrel pies and that sort of thing.’ The manager grimaced. Pointing upwards she said, ‘Anyway, this latest batch had better make the most of it tonight.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the pest controller’s coming back in the morning. That’ll be the end of them – till the next lot of escapees look for lodgings.’
Troy nodded. ‘What time are they coming? The pest controllers, that is.’
‘Early. At first light, they said.’
‘We’ll be here,’ he replied.
In the warm night air outside Switcher, Troy said, ‘This could be making sense.’
Walking back towards the main road, Lexi replied, ‘Yeah. A few squirrels jaywalk across the street and take up residence at Switcher. They forage around the factory, pick up mercury and stagger back to the farm. They’re slaughtered before the mercury kills them and, hey presto, they end up in pies – which end up in majors.’
‘Thousands of squirrels go into thousands of pies and almost all of them are fine,’ Troy said, ‘because they’re made with unpolluted squirrels that haven’t left the farm. But maybe just a few squirrels have been in Switcher – where there’s some mercury on the loose – and they make a few contaminated pies. Like four in the last couple of weeks.’
‘That’d explain why there hasn’t been a mass poisoning.’
‘Exactly. Four poisoned pies get sent out to shops or restaurants and are eaten by four random majors.’
Lexi smiled. ‘Not a human multiple murderer but four pesky squirrels.’
‘It fits. A tidy explanation.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘I suppose analysing the stomach contents of our victims won’t help.’
‘No,’ Lexi replied. ‘If it’s food that caused the trouble, it will have gone through them before symptoms set in.’ She paused before adding, ‘But I need to look at concentrations of mercury in contaminated squirrels – and see if it’s enough to kill an adult major. I’m not going to wait till morning. There’s something I can do right now. I’m going to analyse some road-kill. They’ll have the equipment I need in Pickling Crime Central.’
‘I’d better tell my grandma I’m stuck here. She’ll be delighted. Then I’ll find a bed for the night.’
‘Yeah. You go and get some sleep. I’ve got some serious scraping to do.’ Lexi extracted a pair of latex gloves and a couple of evidence bags from her pocket.
SCENE 16
Thursday 8th May, Midnight
Troy stood across the road from Pickling Prison and trembled. He wasn’t cold. The night was mild and the southerly breeze was warm. Something about the quiet, grim building made him shudder. Troy’s sight had adjusted to the dark, so the glare from the security lamps stung his eyes. The brightness outside the prison suggested shadowiness within. It was the darkness behind the light that troubled him. He lingered, watching and wondering. Wondering what his father was doing and how he was coping.
Was Winston Goodhart asleep or lying restlessly on an uncomfortable bunk, thinking about his life, his wife and his son? How was he treated by the other prisoners? How was he treated by the guards? What was the food like? What colour was his hair now? Or had he gone bald? Did he have his head shaved? If he walked out right now, would Troy recognize him? How did he pass the time? Did he get to kick a ball around some exercise yard?
Troy remembered playing football with his dad – at least, playing with a football in the garden and a park. But perhaps Dad had done that only for his son’s sake. Perhaps Winston Goodhart didn’t like football. Troy sighed and stared for a moment at the ground. He didn’t even know if his own father liked football. He should know that – and a lot more.
He looked up again. Once this case was over, maybe he’d come back to Pickling. Maybe then he’d find the courage and forgiveness to visit prisoner Goodhart.
An hour after he trudged away, a grey squirrel nesting behind a cupboard in the prison kitchen bit through a cable and electrocuted itself. The live wire sparked and set fire to the animal’s dry bedding. The flames spread to the cupboard itself and the cooking oil inside. That was the start of a catastrophic chain of events.
A thin wisp of smoke rose from the rear of the prison and dispersed in the breeze. It seemed innocent, like the vapour trail of an aeroplane decorating the sky. No one outside took any notice. Inside, a smoke alarm sounded but, in the dead of night, the response was slow. When it came, it was too late. The kitchen was already ablaze and the flames were ready to spread.
SCENE 17
Friday 9th May, Dawn
As soon as Lexi saw Troy in the harsh morning sunlight outside Switcher, s
he shook her head. ‘Those squashed squirrels didn’t have a significant concentration of mercury in them.’
Troy shrugged. ‘That might still fit. Maybe some big fat tyre splatted them before they got here for a mercury meal.’
‘Yeah. It’s still a useful result. A background reading. Any poisoned squirrel would have to have a lot more than those two.’
‘A lot more and it’d be dead.’
‘Mercury takes a while to kill. It could live long enough to get into a pie,’ Lexi answered. ‘Anyway, I need samples from the live ones in the attic – to see if they’ve absorbed mercury.’
They both looked towards the main road. They could see the roof of the squirrel farm, flying a bright blue flag. A yellow van with a big black rat painted on the side announced the arrival of two pest controllers.
One of them walked over to the corner of the building where the infestation had been reported. She peered at the ground for a few moments and then called out, ‘It’s squirrels all right. I can see some droppings. Get the traps and bait them.’
Her mate yelled back, ‘I’m on it.’
The first pest controller went up to the detectives and said, ‘The droppings are distinctive. Like a brown rat’s but rounder, one-and-a-half to two centimetres.’
‘They’re clever,’ Troy said. ‘Must be difficult to catch.’
With a cheeky smile, she replied, ‘Hey, we’re outers. We can outwit any furry creature.’
‘And non-furry ones,’ Lexi replied, nudging her partner.
Outers were more evolved than majors. Over the years, they had lost some strength because they’d led the invention of tools – from axes to giant earthmovers – that took care of physically demanding tasks. They also became intelligent ahead of majors. Their brain size increased. Their women opted for motherhood later in life to maximize their careers, and their babies’ head sizes caused more and more difficulties during childbirth. Their population crashed. Then they invented something to solve that problem too. They outsourced their reproduction to an artificial womb where eggs were fertilized and infants were incubated. This proved so popular, the change became irreversible. Female outers lost the ability to carry a pregnancy.