Deception (30 page)

‘
Then what?’

‘
I guess you get psychopathic dogs just like you get psychopathic humans.’

‘
So the dog just went for them?’

‘
That’s what it looks like,’ said Steven.

‘
Poor buggers,’ said Brewer. ‘What a way to go.’

SEVENTEEN

Steven drove back to Edinburgh feeling low after telling Ann Binnie of her husband’s death and the circumstances surrounding it. It had been a harrowing experience and although Brewer had been prepared to do it – seeing it as an unpleasant but necessary part of his job - Steven had insisted, saying that he wanted to complete what he had set out to do on Ann’s behalf – find her husband.

Brewer had however, sent along a policewoman to accompany him and he had been glad of her support: he didn’t know Ann well and women in general were better at offering emotional support than men, whatever the politically correct might have to say about that. Ann and James had obviously been very close but they had had no children so there was no immediate family for her to turn to. The policewoman had managed to elicit from Ann the names of a couple of women in the village that she was friendly with and they were now offering her comfort and support.

Steven reflected that one small flat stone and a loose fuse holder were telling him that the stakes had been raised dramatically by Sigma 5 but it was hard to see why. He had the unnerving feeling that he was still missing something important in all of this. If Sigma 5 were prepared to commit murder in order to keep the secret of the rats why weren’t they doing anything effective about the problem itself? True, they had instigated the rat cull but that fell more into the public relations or grand gesture category than anything really positive.

Steven concluded reluctantly that Sigma 5 must be working to some alternative set of priorities but right now, he couldn’t see what they were. One conclusion he could reach however, was that, if Rafferty and James Binnie had been murdered as he strongly suspected they had, then the music box in his car had been no idle threat. He might well be the next serious target. He would have to be even more careful in future. The thought made him subconsciously check on the presence of the gun under his left arm. It felt cold, hard and, although he was loathe to admit it, reassuring.

But Steven could see that he wasn’t the only one at risk. He had already identified the Raffertys as the weak link in the Sigma 5 operation, the one that he and Jamie Brown were planning to concentrate on. Thomas was now dead but Trish was still alive. She would currently be hearing of her husband’s death from a police officer knocking on her door. Steven wondered if this would make it more or less likely that she might spill the beans about what had been going on in Blackbridge. He felt guilty about even thinking it but this might be a very good time for Eve to appear on the scene to offer sympathy and a shoulder to cry on to Trish Rafferty. It might also be a very good idea if he were to ask DCI Brewer to mount a discreet police guard on Trish, who was now the sole owner of Crawhill Farm. Considering that Childs and Leadbetter were the opposition, a discreet,
armed
guard might be even better.

Steven correctly anticipated that Eve would be at home: he remembered that she had afternoons off from the hotel – the gap between lunch and dinner. He called her to tell her what had happened but she already knew. ‘It’s all around the village,’ she said. ‘And poor James Binnie too, he was such a nice man. It’s so unfair. Everyone knew that Khan should have been put down ages ago. Poor Ann, I don’t know what she’ll do without him. They were everything to each other.’

Steven agreed with the sentiments then asked, ‘Are you working at the hotel tonight?’

‘Yes, you just caught me going out the door. Why?’

‘I thought Trish might need to see a friendly face.’

‘I did consider that,’ said Trish. ‘I actually phoned her yesterday and we arranged to meet next week for a pizza on my night off but maybe you’re right. Perhaps I should go round and see her. I don’t think she has anyone else.’

‘Just a thought,’ said Steven.

‘You’re all heart,’ said Eve, seeing what was behind the suggestion.

‘All right, I know it sounds callous,’ agreed Steven. ‘But I need all the help I can get right now and Trish is a potential source of information, I’m sure of it.’ Things are starting to heat up.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Not over the phone,’ said Steven. ‘Do you think you can manage to see Trish?’

‘In the circumstances I can probably get one of the other girls to cover for me tonight,’ said Eve.

‘Meet me after you’ve seen her? Suggested Steven.’

‘All right.’

‘Call me on the mobile and I’ll come and collect you.’

It occurred to Steven that it had been a while since he had heard from Jamie Brown. He thought he would re-establish contact and at the same time tell him about the deaths out at Blackbridge. Brown would be grateful for the tip off and keeping on the right side of the press was always a good idea. Knowing what they were up to was an even better one.

‘Sorry I haven’t been in touch,’ said Brown. ‘I’ve been having a go at the Scottish Executive but I’ve just run into one brick wall after another. It’s strange. It’s not the usual case of people keeping their mouths shut because they don’t want the press involved. I get the impression that they genuinely don’t know what’s going on. They’re more embarrassed than obstructive. I can’t even find out who authorised the use of the army for Christ’s sake! All I’ve been getting is, “There’s a job to be done and it’s being done.” End of story.

Steven sympathised and agreed that they’d have to accept that no official channels were open to them. He pointed out that Trish Rafferty was now their only hope of getting some inside information.’

‘Maybe I should go see her,’ suggested Brown. ‘Sympathise with her over the loss of her husband and ask about her plans for Crawhill now that Thomas is dead.’

‘That’s in hand,’ said Steven. ‘Maybe you could leave it for a couple of days?’

‘The Clarion won’t,’ said Brown.

‘The Clarion doesn’t know that Trish is mixed up in anything,’ said Steven. ‘They’ll just be covering a horrific story involving a killer dog and ruing the fact that they didn’t get any pictures to splash over their front page with their usual impeccable good taste. They’ll see her as the estranged wife of the deceased: they’ll be looking for a “My Agony” piece.

‘True but they might ask her about her future plans for Crawhill and that could be very relevant to the legal battle. It would be a bit of a blow to Pentangle and the opposition in general to the GM crop at Peat Ridge if she decided to pull out of the organic farm plan, wouldn’t it?’

‘Somehow I don’t think Trish will be pulling the strings at Crawhill any more than Thomas was,’ said Steven.

‘So you think that Childs and Leadbetter are running the show?’

‘Yes. I just wish I had a clearer idea what “the show” was and what kind of hold that pair had over Thomas Rafferty.’

‘So it wasn’t just that he wanted his wife back that made Rafferty come up with this organic farm business?’ said Brown.

‘No, Childs and Leadbetter were behind it from the beginning,’ admitted Steven. ‘He was scared of them.’

‘With their background, so am I,’ said Brown.

‘Maybe Gus Watson knows more that he’s letting on,’ said Steven. ‘I hear he’s out of hospital. It wasn’t as bad as we all first thought. He was dead lucky to get away with no real muscle damage.’

‘Want me to give him a try?’

‘Nothing to lose,’ said Steven. ‘You’ll be covering the story of Rafferty’s death so it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for you to interview the man who worked for him. Find out if he knows anything about Childs and Rafferty that we don’t.’

‘I’ll give it a go,’ said Brown. ‘And thanks for the tip off.’

Eve called at eleven and said that she’d just left Trish’s flat. Steven picked her up at the junction of Dorset Place with Merchiston Avenue. At that time the streets were quiet so they sat and talked for a while.

‘There’s a policeman on the door,’ was the first thing Trish said when she got in the car.

‘Good,’ said Steven.

Eve looked at him sideways.

‘It’ll give her a bit of peace from reporters, tonight at least,’ said Steven, deciding not to say anything about his fears for Trish for the moment. ‘How was she?’

‘Full of remorse,’ said Eve. ‘She feels responsible.’

‘For the dog attacking them?’

‘No, she had no more time for Khan than anyone else, but she seems to think that she might have been able to persuade Tom to have him put down if she’d still been with him.’

‘So she’s a heartbroken wife?’

‘I wouldn’t say that exactly,’ replied Eve cautiously. ‘I got the impression that she felt worse about James Binnie’s death than she did about Tom’s. She didn’t actually say that of course, but reading between the lines, that’s what I picked up.’

‘Interesting.’

‘And you were right; it was something more than Tom’s drinking that made her leave him,’ said Eve. ‘I got the feeling that it was that – whatever it was – rather than the fact that he was a piss-artist with the brain of a ferret that was stopping her grieving too deeply for Tom.’

‘But you didn’t get any inkling what it was?’

‘God help me, I did try winkling it out of her,’ said Eve. ‘See what you’ve turned me into?’

‘You’ve nothing to ashamed about,’ Steven assured her.

‘I thought I would say something nice about Tom, as you feel obliged to do at such times, but I really wanted to see how she’d react. I tried telling Trish that, despite all his drinking and being a bit lazy, Tom was basically a nice bloke. She looked at me strangely and said, “You don’t know what the bastard did.” I tried asking her what she meant but she changed the subject.’

‘Now that’s worth knowing,’ said Steven. ‘It fits in with what she said when I talked to her. She said that she had told ‘them’ everything in exchange for some kind of agreement where she’d be left alone and ‘he’ wouldn’t get into trouble.’

‘Sounds like she shopped her husband in return for some kind of assurance?’

‘That’s what we’ve been thinking all along’ agreed Steven. ‘But she managed to do a deal. Jesus!’

‘What does that tell you?’ asked Eve, puzzled at Steven’s reaction.

‘
If Trish Rafferty managed to do a deal with government over whatever Tom was mixed up in, we are talking something big and we are talking embarrassing on a mega scale. It’s
that
that they’re trying to cover up, not a problem stemming from the GM crop itself. It was something that Tom did but there has to be a connection with the GM crop and the rats’ behaviour at Blackbridge; there just has to be. What could Rafferty have done that was so bloody awful?’

‘Maybe he interfered with Ronald Lane’s crop in some way? Sabotaged it?’ suggested Eve.

‘Now that’s a good idea,’ agreed Steven. ‘But how would he go about doing that?’

‘Maybe he sprayed some kind of poison on it and it’s that that’s affecting the rats in the canal?’

‘
Right,’ said Steven. ‘But he couldn’t do that in any kind of systematic way. I mean he could hardly jump in a tractor and trundle up and down Peat Ridge Farm, spraying poison over the entire crop.’

‘I guess not,’ said Eve.

‘But maybe he interfered in some way with what Lane himself was spraying on the crop at Peat Ridge!’ exclaimed Steven, excited at the thought. ‘That would make much more sense. If he managed to tamper with the herbicides that they were using on Peat Ridge in some way, that might explain a lot!’

‘How would you go about proving that?’ asked Eve.

‘I think I just have,’ said Steven. He told her about his nocturnal visit to Peat Ridge Farm and of the chemical samples that he’d taken and sent off for analysis. ‘You see, I thought that maybe Agrigene were using unlicensed weedkillers. It could be that Tom Rafferty interfered with them.’

‘You didn’t ever work for Cadbury’s Milk Tray, did you?’ asked Eve.

Steven came back down to earth with a bump when he saw the one thing that didn’t fit. ‘But why would the government cover it up?’ he exclaimed. ‘That bit just doesn’t make sense. They wouldn’t have made a deal with Trish over something like that. They would have handed the whole thing over to the police.’

‘You’re right,’ agreed Eve. ‘It would just have been a case of one farmer doing the dirty on his neighbour . . . unless what he did was so awful that the government just couldn’t allow it to become public?’

‘Now what would come in to that category . . .?’ Steven wondered out loud.

‘Nerve gas? Radioactive material? Viruses? Killer bugs? Some awful carcinogenic compound that might affect the whole community?’ suggested Eve.

‘But where would someone like Rafferty get his hands on anything like that?’

‘You’re right,’ conceded Eve. ‘It’s not as if he used any kind of chemicals on his farm. He’s not grown anything for donkeys’ years. Apart from that, no one in their right mind would have trusted him with a tube of Smarties on his own, let alone a dangerous substance.’

‘I suppose he might have managed to get his hands on something in some kind of a behind-the-scenes black market deal,’ said Steven.

‘Possible I suppose,’ agreed Eve. ‘They say you can get your hands on anything you want if you know the right people.’

‘But why would they just leave the contaminated crop in the field?’ wondered Steven out loud.

‘Because the law has stopped them doing anything else?’ ventured Eve.

‘The law wouldn’t have got a look in if it had really been anything to do with any of the agents you mentioned,’ said Steven. ‘The whole area would have been sealed off and a massive decontamination exercise initiated. Instead we have the GM crop standing in the field, looking as pretty as a picture and guard patrols walking slowly round it. It’s almost as if Sigma 5 didn’t want the GM crop destroyed. They’d rather it was slowly discredited with rumour and innuendo . . .and all the time it sits there in the fields, waving gently, like a red rag to a bull, angering the community, the smell of it everywhere . . .’