Crisis

by Ken McClure

  ‘Sounds fine,’ agreed Bannerman, who was so tired after his drive that he would have taken a stable. ‘I’d like to go up right away if that’s all right.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said the man softly.

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’ll have to have Agnes make the room up first. We don’t get much in the way of passing trade at this time of year. Perhaps you’d like to wait in the bar?’

  Bannerman said that he would. He opened the door that the man pointed to and found himself in a small, smoky bar with a coal fire at one end. There were three men seated at the counter and a boy in his late teens was serving behind it. They looked at Bannerman as he entered. ‘It’s a rough night out there,’ said one of the men.

  ‘Certainly is,’ agreed Bannerman. The men looked to be local, two were wearing caps, one of whom was resting his elbow on a shepherd’s crook, the head of which had been carved out of horn. The third man was wearing dungarees and a woollen hat. He was considerably younger than the other two and smiled a welcome.

  ‘You’re English?’ said the younger man who had commented on the weather.

  “Fraid so,’ said Bannerman with a smile.

  The smile was returned. ‘We won’t hold it against you,’ said the man.

  ‘In that case perhaps I might buy you a drink?’ said Bannerman.

  All three opted for whisky. Bannerman invited the barman to join them and the boy said he’d have a beer. The ice had been broken and faces relaxed into smiles.

  ‘What brings you to Achnagelloch?’ asked the man with the crook.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ said Bannerman. ‘I’ve come to talk to the local health authorities … about the three men who died.’

  There was very little reaction from the men. One of them did shake his head and say. ‘Bad business, meningitis. My sister’s boy died of it.’

  ‘Did you know the men?’ Bannerman asked.

  ‘It’s a small place, most folks know everybody,’ said the man with the crook.

  ‘You look as if you work out on the hills yourself,’ said Bannerman.

  The man nodded.

  ‘You too?’ Bannerman asked the other man wearing a flat cap.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘How about you?’ Bannerman asked the younger man.

  ‘I’m in the quarry,’ replied the man.

  The quarry?’

  ‘The stone quarry.’

  ‘I didn’t realize there was a quarry near here,’ said Bannerman.

  There wasn’t until the Dutchman bought the Invergelloch estate. Everyone thought he was mad buying a barren wasteland, but next thing we know he’s got himself a licence to quarry road stone and is making a fortune.’

  ‘Bloody foreigners,’ grumbled one of the farm workers. The Scottish highlands have got more bloody Dutchmen in them than Amsterdam.’

  ‘I’m not complaining,’ said the quarry worker. ‘I’ve got a good job and one that doesn’t involve bloody sheep!’

  Bannerman smiled, and the quarry man warmed to his theme. He said, Tm telling you without a word of a lie, if you removed sheep as a topic of conversation from this town there would be a great silence.’

  ‘Get away with you!’ exclaimed one of the farm workers with a lazy swing of his arm, but there was no malice in it. The man’s face wore the smile of the old tolerating the foibles of the young.

  ‘Did the quarry bring many jobs?’ asked Bannerman.

  ‘About fifty,’ replied the quarryman, ‘between men from here and Stobmor.’

  ‘Coolies,’ said one of the shepherds. The Dutch keep all the cushy jobs for themselves. The workers are just coolies.’

  The quarryman shrugged but didn’t rise to the bait.

  ‘Are there many Dutchmen?’ asked Bannerman.

  Ten or twelve.’

  ‘Making a fat living out of Scotland,’ growled one of the others.

  ‘Maybe a Scotsman should have thought of it first?’ said the quarryman.

  The topic of the quarry died out and Bannerman asked the farm workers if they knew the farm where the three men had died. Maybe they even worked there themselves?

  Both men shook their heads. ‘We work the Liddell estate,’ said one. That’s well to the south of Inverladdie.’

  ‘I hear Inverladdie had trouble with Scrapie,’ said Bannerman. ‘Have you had any bother?’

  ‘No, touch wood,’ said the man with the crook. ‘We’re clear.’

  Bannerman watched to see if any tell-tale glances would pass between the two farmhands but saw none. He knew that sheep farmers were often reluctant to admit to the presence of Scrapie in their flocks.

  The landlord came into the bar and told Bannerman that his room was ready. ‘Would you be wanting anything to eat?’ he asked.

  Bannerman found his eyes straying to the dried tomato stain on the front of the man’s cardigan. ‘What have you got?’ he asked.

  ‘We could do you, bacon and eggs?’

  Bannerman fought off notions of homicide and was relieved to hear the man continue with alternatives. He ordered a steak and wished goodnight to his new-found companions in the bar before taking his bag upstairs. Bannerman noticed a distinctive smell as he climbed the stairs. It was the smell of small hotels all over the country, a mixture of dust, dampness and carpeting. He supposed that it had something to do with the fact that so many of these places had lain empty for quite long periods in their history. They had not been built as hotels of course, but had been large family houses at one time and had become too expensive to continue in that role. As a consequence, they had suffered neglect and decline, before eventually being rescued for sub-division or, as in the case of this one, conversion for use as a hotel. Bannerman suspected that during the times when such buildings had lain empty the cold and damp had crept into their floors and walls like ink spreading through blotting paper and had remained there ever since.

  His own room appeared to be warm enough, thanks to an electric radiator that had been turned on to FULL, but it was surface warmth, a cosmetic warmth. He sat on the bed and found it firm and comfortable. There was a picture hanging above it depicting a trawler with waves breaking over its bow, which held the caption, ‘Heading for Home’ written below it in ornate writing. A gust of wind drove rain hard into the window pane and made Bannerman smile. ‘What a bloody good idea,’ he murmured.

  The telephone rang and startled him. It was the owner announcing that his steak was ready.

  SEVEN

  Bannerman telephoned the Medical Research Council in the morning. It seemed to take an age before he was put through to Hugh Milne.

  ‘I tried calling you in Edinburgh; I was told you had gone north,’ said Milne.

  ‘Something awful has happened,’ said Bannerman. ‘Lawrence Gill has been murdered.’

  ‘Murdered?’ exclaimed Milne.

  ‘I don’t know who did it or why, but I do know that it had something to do with this brain disease business.’

  ‘But this is incredible. Why would anyone want to murder a pathologist who was simply trying to establish a cause of death?’

  Bannerman took a deep breath and said, 1 know it sounds stupid, but I’m convinced that someone or some …’ Bannerman searched for a word, ‘faction, does not want the true cause of death discovered.’ He told Milne about the brains having been removed from the cadavers in Edinburgh.

  ‘Where exactly are you?’ asked Milne.

  There wasn’t much point in staying in Edinburgh with no pathological material to work on, so I came up to Achnagelloch. I found out from Gill’s wife about the island he had run off to, so I tried to find him to ask about the missing brains. Instead I found him at the bottom of a cliff.’

  ‘I suppose there’s no chance it was an accident?’

  ‘None at all. Gill was hiding on the island because he knew someone was after him. He tried sending a parcel to you which I think contained the missing brains.’

  ‘But why send it to us when we had already seen the slides
he had prepared?’

  ‘I wish I knew.’

  There was a pause in the conversation. Bannerman guessed that Milne was having difficulty coming to terms with what he had heard. He suspected that the introduction of possible criminal involvement in what was thought to be a purely medical mystery was having the same unsettling effect on Milne as it was on himself. Both of them were getting out of their depth.

  Milne broke the silence, ‘Perhaps you should return to London immediately,’ he said. ‘There may be danger in pursuing the investigation.’

  ‘I’ve thought about that,’ said Bannerman, ‘but I’m here now, so I may as well ask around a bit. It would be a help though if Gill’s death were played down for the moment. I don’t want the newspapers making connections between Gill’s murder and the problems up here. I thought your colleague, Mr Allison, from the Prime Minister’s office might help in that direction.’

  ‘I’ll alert him. I’m sure he has no wish to see this develop into a media circus.’

  ‘I’m sure he hasn’t,’ agreed Bannerman with just the merest hint of sarcasm, thinking about the cover-up of the radiation leak at Invermaddoch.

  As a first step, Bannerman set out to find the vet’s surgery in Achnagelloch. He hadn’t bothered to ask at the hotel for directions because he thought the place small enough for him to find it on his own and he wanted to take a look at the town. He liked small towns; he liked their manageable proportions, the fact that you could see how everything worked and fitted together, unlike big cities which were anonymous places, their workings hidden inside bland concrete boxes.

  After twenty minutes of searching he admitted defeat and asked directions from a woman who was coming out of a shop, carrying bread and milk. The bell attached to the shop door jangled loudly as she closed it, obliging him to begin his question over again. ‘I’m looking for Mr Finlay, the vet,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me where his surgery is please?’

  The woman looked at Bannerman as if he had arrived from a strange planet. She stared at him so long without expression that he felt himself become embarrassed. The smile died on his lips.

  ‘You’re not from round here,’ said the woman.

  ‘No I’m not,’ agreed Bannerman, declining to add details.

  ‘Finlay lives in the old manse.’

  ‘The old manse.’

  The woman nodded as if this were enough.

  ‘How do I find the old manse?’ asked Bannerman.

  ‘Just outside the town,’ said the woman.

  This way?’ asked Bannerman, pointing with his finger to the east.

  The woman nodded and looked at him as if there were no other way out of town.

  ‘Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.’

  The old manse stood about a hundred metres back from the main road and was hidden from view by a stone wall which was topped by green lichen. Several yew trees formed a secondary screen and cast a shadow over the house. Bannerman walked up the drive to the dark building which looked as if it had been built to the design of a primary-school class drawing. It was a simple stone box, two storeys high with regularly placed windows, all the same size. The door was placed exactly in the middle and there was a single chimney in the centre of the roof. Outside, on a semi-circular apron of gravel, stood a Land Rover and a dark green Jaguar with a number plate on it that told Bannerman it was as new as it looked. He paused to admire the gleaming paintwork and the fat sports tyres. He rang the doorbell.

  The presence of the Land Rover had cheered Bannerman. It suggested that he had caught Finlay before he set out on his rounds. This was confirmed by a woman who answered the door, eating a piece of toast. She pressed her hand to her chest and gave an exaggerated swallow to empty her mouth before saying, ‘Excuse me, I’m just finishing my breakfast.’

  Bannerman asked if he might speak to Finlay. He was invited in and shown into a front room, where he stood looking at the pictures on the wall until he heard someone come into the room behind him.

  ‘You’re not from round here,’ said the short, balding man that Bannerman found before him. He had a fair, ruddy complexion and was running to fat despite the fact that Bannerman reckoned he could not have been more than thirty. His lips had a moist quality about them which Bannerman thought unpleasant in a man. He wore baggy corduroy trousers and a navy blue Guernsey sweater.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ agreed Bannerman, thinking that the next person to make that observation might well push him over the edge. He announced who he was and added, ‘‘I’m looking into the deaths of the three farm workers at Inverladdie.’

  ‘Most unfortunate,’ said Finlay. ‘Meningitis, I believe.’

  Bannerman nodded. ‘A particularly virulent form,’ he said, ‘hence our interest.’

  ‘How can I help?’ asked Finlay.

  ‘I understand that there was an outbreak of Scrapie on the farm where the men worked?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ agreed Finlay, quietly. His expression betrayed the fact that he was trying to work out the connection.

  ‘You made the diagnosis in the animals?’

  ‘Yes … I’m sorry, I don’t see what this has to do with …’

  Bannerman made a dismissive gesture with his hands and said, ‘At this stage I’m just gathering together all the facts I can about the dead men’s lives.’ He added what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

  ‘Again?’ asked Finlay with a suggestion of irritation.

  ‘I’m sorry?’’

  ‘A pathologist named Gill came to see me and asked the same sort of questions. I just don’t see what the Scrapie outbreak has to do with the deaths.’

  Bannerman thought it strange that a vet could not follow such a line of questioning with ease. He had been prepared to ask for Finlay’s discretion in not mentioning the possibility of a link between Scrapie and the deaths, but now it did not seem necessary. ‘Did you send brain samples from the sheep to the vet lab?’ he asked.

  ‘No I didn’t,’ said Finlay.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Banner-man, as pleasantly as he could ask that sort of question.

  ‘Because I didn’t have to. It was quite obvious what was wrong with the animals. I’ve seen it before. Apart from that, Scrapie is not a notifiable disease and it costs money to have lab tests done. The farmers don’t like it.’

  Bannerman nodded. ‘What exactly happened to the carcasses?’

  ‘They were buried on the farm in a lime pit.’

  ‘Immediately?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘Why on the farm?’

  ‘What do you mean, why?’

  ‘Why do it themselves? Isn’t it more usual to have renderers take carcasses away?’

  ‘Not any more,’ replied the vet. ‘Firms of renderers used to pay farmers for diseased carcasses and then prepare cattle feed from them, but since it was shown that that was how cows got BSE the government has put a stop to it. The firms now charge the farmers for taking the carcasses away. It’s cheaper to dispose of them themselves.’

  ‘Thanks for the information,’ said Bannerman.

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ said Finlay, coldly.

  ‘Have there been any further cases of Scrapie on local farms?’ asked Bannerman.

  ‘None.’

  ‘None that you’ve heard of?’

  ‘I keep my ear to the ground. If s hard to keep a secret in a small community like Achnagelloch. I would know if there had been any other animal problems.’

  ‘How about the nuclear power station? Have there been any problems with that?’

  Finlay smiled and said, ‘Of course. Every time a ewe aborts, a child coughs or a cake fails to rise in the oven, the station gets the blame. People are people and we all need something to blame for our misfortunes.’

  ‘So you haven’t come across any veterinary problems associated with it?’

  ‘None that I could ascribe to the station with any degree of certainty, but then that’s always the problem with radiation isn’t it?
You can’t see it, you can’t smell it and its effects take some time to show up. Usually by that time you can’t prove it any longer.’

  Bannerman sympathized with Finlay’s assessment. ‘One last question,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How do I get to Inverladdie Farm?’

  ‘Why do you want to go there?’ exclaimed Finlay.

  ‘I told you. I want to know everything about the dead men’s lives.’

  There doesn’t seem to be much point in wasting time on a sheep farm when …’

  ‘I’ve plenty of time, Mr Finlay,’ replied Bannerman, evenly.

  Finlay gave him directions and showed him to the door.

  ‘Nice car,’ said Bannerman, referring to the Jaguar.

  Finlay nodded and closed the door. Bannerman traced his finger lovingly along the line of the Jag as he passed and thought to himself that country vets must do a lot better than he had ever imagined.

  Bannerman had to run the gauntlet of two labrador puppies on his way down the drive. Finlay’s wife, who had been down to the mail box at the entrance, tried to control them with one hand while carrying newspapers and mail with the other. He smiled and made a fuss of them for a few moments before saying goodbye and walking back to the hotel where his car was parked in a small courtyard at the back. When he got there, he found his way barred by two men dressed in leather aprons; they were unloading metal beer canisters from a brewery lorry parked across the entrance. The kegs were being rolled across the cobbles and down a ramp to the hotel’s cellar.

  ‘They won’t be long,’ said the hotel owner, appearing at the back door of the hotel. ‘Do you want something while you’re waiting?’

  ‘Coffee,’ replied Bannerman. He left the car and went inside. He almost immediately regretted his decision when he was met by a woman armed with a vacuum cleaner. She was attacking the hall carpet and his feet had the temerity to be on it. He side-stepped into the lounge and closed the glass door in a vain attempt to escape the noise. A few minutes later, coffee appeared and the owner asked what his plans were for the day.