Requiem (16 page)

Cramm shook his head. ‘No one we haven’t tried.’

‘Keep at it,’ Schenker said in the tone of a scoutmaster. ‘This is still a number-one priority and I don’t want anyone to forget it.’

Privately Schenker had already written Aldeb off in the US. That didn’t mean that the battle wasn’t to be fought to the bitter end, almost irrespective of cost. Not only was it a matter of principle to continue the fight, but it was essential to keep the environmentalists at bay and their resources stretched to the limit, if only to keep their attention from straying to other products.

Schenker had had plenty of time to get used to the idea of losing Aldeb in the US. The filing of the original EPA case, the unsuccessful appeal and the move for a rehearing had taken four years. Time enough to make contingency plans, salvage whatever could be salvaged, and divert remaining stocks of Aldeb elsewhere. Very sensibly, the poorer countries weren’t so hysterical about overinflated cancer risks. They only cared about feeding their people. Schenker often reminded himself about the enormous contribution that agrochemicals made to the developing world. It made him feel his job was worthwhile.

After a few more side bends, a couple of toe touches and a number of deep breaths, Schenker returned briskly to his desk. ‘Globally, we’re still okay, are we?’

Cramm nodded. ‘No change.’

‘No more nasty surprises then.’

‘I don’t think so. Though that campaigning group Catch are trying to dredge something up.’

‘Something?’ There was reproof in his tone; he disliked inexactitude.

‘They’re advertising in farming magazines for people who’ve supposedly been affected by Aldeb.’

‘Can they do that?’

Cramm shrugged. ‘Nothing to stop them.’

‘I’m surprised it’s allowed. And how are these people meant to know they’ve been harmed by Aldeb?’

‘Presumably they’ll be self-diagnosed.’

Schenker raised an eyebrow. ‘Self-deluded.’

‘One interesting thing though,’ Cramm offered with the tiny degree of dramatic emphasis he sometimes allowed himself. ‘Catch advertised anonymously.’

‘And that’s allowed, too, is it?’

‘Apparently.’

Schenker sighed in wonder at the magnanimity of English law. ‘This secrecy, they’re frightened of attention or what?’

‘I think they’ve finally realized that farmers aren’t great fans of radical lefties, and won’t have anything to do with them if they announce themselves.’

‘So what sort of a response have they had?’

‘We don’t know that.’

‘And do we know what they’re planning to do with this information once – if – they get it?’

‘More media stories, presumably. Like the one on the potato farmers in Berkshire – they’ve been trying to push that as an Aldeb-caused-cancer story to the nationals.’

‘And how are they getting on?’

‘Nothing’s appeared yet. But we’re keeping an eye on it.’

Schenker pondered for a moment. It was all very well keeping a watch on the activities of these people, but that didn’t stop them scoring heavily and without warning, as he knew to his cost.

‘Where does Catch’s money come from?’

‘Membership. Fifteen thousand, fairly static.’

Schenker turned his palms up and gestured amazement. ‘In admin terms, that must cost them almost as much as it brings in. Sure there’s nothing else?’

‘Unlikely. It’s a shoestring operation. Just data-gathering and media pressurization. Nothing more ambitious.’

Schenker wasn’t entirely convinced. ‘Keep tabs on their financial situation, will you?’ He pointed a long slow finger at Cramm, his favourite way of emphasizing a point. ‘Lack of cash – that’s the key to that lot.’

He sat back in the soft leather of his chair. It was time to move on.

‘Silveron okay?’ he asked Cramm, adding with heavy irony: ‘No problems with the EPA on that, I trust?’

Cramm gave his small tight laugh. ‘No.’

‘And we’re ready to go?’

‘We’re ready to go,’ Cramm echoed.

Silveron, a new broad-spectrum pesticide, promised to be very profitable. Which was just as well because it had taken six years and sixty million dollars to develop, cash the division needed to pull back in a hurry. Silveron was Schenker’s baby. He’d been in at the start of its development, had rooted for it all the way along the line, had overseen its progress.

‘Any more feedback on UK performance?’ Silveron was already on the UK market under a restricted licence, which allowed limited use for a period of two years, prior to the grant of a full licence.

‘Just the normal sort of thing.’

‘What does that mean?’ snapped Schenker. Statements needed quantifying, tying down, putting in context.

‘There’s been a small amount of negative feedback, but according to Marketing it’s nothing – statistically insignificant.’

‘They’re sure?’

‘They’re sure.’

‘Anything else?’ Schenker asked.

A slight pause, then: ‘Miss Kershaw called.’

Schenker felt a touch of alarm. ‘Here? For me?’

‘Oh no.’ Cramm gave an astonished smile. ‘Gracious, no. My home. Last night.’

‘What did she want?’

‘It was just a friendly call, to keep in touch.’

Schenker’s fears were far from allayed. ‘She didn’t want anything?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘She didn’t mention Driscoll?’

‘Oh no. She wouldn’t do that.’ Cramm sounded very sure. ‘No, I only mention it because I thought we might like to ask her to the opening of the Newcastle plant.’

Schenker was very still. Had Cramm gone mad? ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ he said coldly.

The very thought of Miss Kershaw made him uneasy – but then he felt uneasy about women at the best of times. He had always found them difficult and disturbingly unpredictable, and his brief marriage and unpleasant divorce ten years before had done everything to confirm his opinion. When he was forced to deal with them now, it was cautiously.

Angela Kershaw was the most difficult kind of female, pretty and vivacious, a combination which, in his limited experience, was likely to make her doubly unpredictable.

She’d first turned up at a cocktail party during a clean water conference in Birmingham some weeks before, an event partly sponsored by Morton-Kreiger. He gathered from Cramm that she was employed on a stand there, one of the army of pretty girls who made the rounds of motor shows and exhibitions, demonstrating products and attracting business. No one seemed to know how she had come to be invited to Morton-Kreiger’s party but, whoever brought her, it was Cramm who introduced her to Driscoll and asked her to join them for dinner. To Schenker, she seemed indistinguishable from dozens of other rather silly young women, with her identikit smile, bright makeup and inane conversation interspersed with gasps of girlish laughter, but to his amazement the evening was an enormous success. The minister had been transfixed by her, almost embarrassingly so.

Schenker had quickly forgotten about her until a month later, when Cramm mentioned that she would be in Paris during the European conference. Schenker’s first reaction had been alarm.

‘What? Who invited her?’

‘She’s working there,’ Cramm had replied.

‘I don’t think we need concern ourselves with her.’

‘But it would be a pity, wouldn’t it, not to repeat the other evening? I mean, when she’s going to be there anyway, in Paris, and the minister has a free evening. I know he’d enjoy seeing her again.’

There was something in the way Cramm said this that made Schenker pause. He was not always terribly perceptive about these things, but his imagination weaved inexorably towards an inescapable and disturbing conclusion.

‘God – has she been seeing Driscoll?’

Cramm’s impassive expression didn’t falter. ‘I really couldn’t say.’

This, doubtless, was the truth, although it left too much unsaid. Schenker hesitated. He hated having to voice these things openly, but it was necessary to be clear. ‘Has Driscoll said he’d like to see her?’

‘Not in so many words, no, but …’ His shrug was an answer in itself.

Schenker felt resentment, distaste and a sense of opportunity in about equal measures, but opportunity, based as it was on Driscoll’s burgeoning political career, won the day.

In the event Cramm’s arrangements for the evening were discreet, though there were few arrangements that could be discreet enough for Schenker. They had gone to a château on the Marne near Epernay. To make up a tidy foursome, a second girl was found to accompany Schenker. Everyone arrived separately, the Kershaw girl registered as Mrs Smith, the dinner was held in a private room, the party remained sober, nobody attracted attention, and when it came to leaving the next morning, the cars arrived on time. Driscoll seemed delighted. Schenker was not so easily satisfied – he took up a couple of minor administrative details with Cramm later – but all in all the project could be judged to have achieved its objectives.

But invite Angela Kershaw to Newcastle for an official event? With the local press all over the place? Cramm was losing his sense of proportion.

Schenker said: ‘No, Peter. Not Newcastle.’

‘Oh,’ said Cramm, lifting his voice slightly in unspoken dissatisfaction. ‘A private dinner, then?’

‘If you like.’

‘A celebration in London perhaps? Shall I arrange it?’

Schenker shuffled the papers on his desk, suddenly impatient to be rid of these disconcerting trivialities and get on with the real business of the day. ‘Do as you think fit,’ he said curtly, waving Cramm away. ‘But don’t bother me with the details.’

‘Y
OU SHOULD BE
pleased, Mr Mackenzie. It’s good news.’ The doctor gave a professional smile, the sort designed to inspire, reassure and subtly reassert authority all at the same time.

Something dark and painful pulled at Nick’s stomach, a lurking unvoiced anger. He did his best to suppress it: after all this man, a consultant physician named Plumb, meant well – all of them meant well – yet their habit of reducing everything to platitudes, of exuding this misplaced confidence, baffled and exasperated him.

‘I wouldn’t have called it good news,’ Nick said evenly.

Plumb angled his head politely to one side.

‘What you’re saying is that you don’t know what’s wrong,’ Nick said.

There was a pause. The juddering roar of accelerating traffic rose from the Marylebone Road below, reverberating through the room. The toxicologist sitting on Plumb’s right, imported from a university especially for the meeting, studied his hands.

‘We’re saying that we believe there’s nothing physically wrong with your wife,’ Plumb explained gently.

‘That you know of.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Was it worth creating antagonism? Nick debated for a moment, then repeated quietly: ‘Nothing wrong with her that you know of.’

‘Mr Mackenzie’ – Plumb gave a look of understanding and compassion – ‘we have very sophisticated tests nowadays. Your wife’s been through all we can think of – and a few more. If there’d been anything seriously wrong, we would have found it, believe me.’

‘But chemicals don’t always show up in tests, do they?’ Nick said.

The toxicologist blinked into life. ‘It depends on the type of chemical, the dosage and how soon after the event you can run a test. And of course it helps to know what you’re looking for. Then you know which tests to run.’

‘And we’ve run all the obvious tests,’ Plumb said in his plodding delivery. ‘Several times. But with no trace of chemicals or chemical damage.’

Arguing technical points with this man was like playing tennis without a racquet: it was difficult to return even the most basic shot. Like all specialists, he was paid to have an opinion, and he wasn’t about to admit that there might be the occasional yawning chasm in his knowledge, that, just possibly, he might simply be wrong. Nick rubbed a hand over his eyes. He felt dreadfully tired.

Aware that he was repeating himself for perhaps the twentieth time, he said wearily: ‘My wife was overcome by fumes. She inhaled a large quantity of dangerous chemicals. You can’t possibly say they had no effect.’

Plumb put on a serious but kindly face. ‘Mr Mackenzie, your worries are very understandable, but this particular chemical that your wife inhaled, the wood preservative …’

‘Reldane.’

‘… Yes – Reldane – has no known harmful effects. Isn’t that so, Blair?’

The toxicologist tore his eyes away from his hands. ‘As wood preservers go, it’s pretty benign really.’

Nick tried to remember what the people from Catch had told him over the phone. ‘But that’s not absolutely certain, is it?’ he said. ‘I understand that the research is fairly thin.’

Plumb frowned at that. ‘But Reldane’s been passed for use by the safety people. It must have been. It wouldn’t be allowed on the market otherwise, would it, Blair?’ He flung a glance at the toxicologist.

‘But I’m told that means very little,’ Nick said before Blair had a chance to come in. ‘The testing was done years ago. It could well be out of date.’

Plumb drew a deep breath. ‘But there’s no scientific basis for saying it’s dangerous. No hard evidence to suggest it has any long-term effects. Quite the contrary. Isn’t that correct, Blair?’