Requiem (28 page)

‘Alistair Campbell,’ the big man grunted. He didn’t offer a hand, but dropped heavily back into his chair. ‘So? What’s to be done?’ he demanded, elbows thrust onto the table. Before they had the chance to take off their coats or sit down he persisted: ‘What are you proposin’?’

Daisy raised her eyebrows imperceptibly at Brayfield. She had met aggressive barn-storming types before.

As Daisy and Brayfield took chairs opposite each other on either side of Campbell, he threw yet more questions. Mrs Bell handed out cups of tea and retreated to the stove. Brayfield, who seemed unruffled by the verbal bludgeoning, calmly ran through a summary of the position, from the unhelpful response of the landowners to the evasiveness of Willis Bain.

Campbell swept all this aside with an impatient gesture. ‘That’s all very fine but where does it get the lad, eh? Where does it get him? Nowhere, that’s where!’ He spoke in a strong accent. ‘He will be in need of care an’ good food. That takes money.’ He indicated his sister. ‘Meg here canna’ work, canna’ leave him, so what’s to be done, eh?’

Brayfield looked to Daisy for help.

‘Well, there are two possible approaches, Mr Campbell,’ Daisy said cautiously. ‘First, we could use publicity, which is really all about shaming the opposition into coming to an arrangement – ’

‘But the money, what about the money?’

‘I was just getting to that, Mr Campbell. The idea is that the opposition would eventually decide that some sort of ex-gratia payment is preferable to having their names spread all over the papers the whole time.’

Campbell swivelled on his chair and raised his shoulders at his sister. Neither of them seemed overly impressed by the idea.

Daisy pressed on. ‘Another possibility is to go for a civil action in the courts, but I have to warn you that it could take years and an enormous amount of money, and even then – well, as things stand at present, it’s simply Adrian’s word against the managing agents’.’

Campbell gave her a truculent stare. ‘So you’re sayin’ we should sit back and do nothin’!’

‘I didn’t quite say that,’ Daisy explained patiently. ‘What I’m saying is that the chances of getting full damages are not good. First, there’s the problem of proving that the events happened as Adrian says they did, which means finding evidence that a chemical was sprayed on this particular section of forest on the day Adrian says the accident happened. Even if we managed to establish those events, in the absence of the aircraft operators and a precise identification of the chemical, we’d only have Willis Bain to go for, and the judge might decide that the company were only, say, fifty per cent liable, which means Adrian’s award would get marked down by a half.’ She took a sip of the dark tea.

‘And then there’s the matter of the permanence of Adrian’s disability,’ she went on. ‘If Adrian recovers, well, the claim would by definition hardly be worth pursuing. Unfortunately there’s only one way to find out if he’s going to recover, and that’s to wait and see. At least another six months, I would have thought. Just getting proceedings started can be a very expensive business, you see, so it’s hardly worth going to the trouble before then. One would hope to get legal aid, of course, but that’s very far from automatic in civil cases like this.’ She took another sip of tea to see if the brew improved with familiarity, but it didn’t.

‘Then,’ she continued, ‘just when you might reasonably think you were getting somewhere, you’d face the hardest part of all – persuading the medical experts to agree that the chemical, whatever it was, was indeed responsible for Adrian’s illness, and that his symptoms weren’t the result of something else altogether, something unconnected with the accident.’

A spark of complicity passed between Campbell and his sister. It was the briefest of glances, little more than a flicker, but the warning lights came on in Daisy’s brain.

‘What have the doctors said so far?’ she asked abruptly.

Campbell’s brows shot together and he grunted, a deep growl of a sound, and Daisy was reminded of a large bear.

It was Mrs Bell who answered. ‘When they first took him into the hospital – at the outset, it was, for two weeks – they said he would recover, that it was just a matter of time. Then, come September, when he was worse, they wanted him in Glasgow. He was there five weeks. He saw two, mebbe three of the specialists. At first they spoke of the chemical all the time, the likely nature of it. They seemed hopeful. They spoke about gettin’ him better. They were kind to Adrian, they couldna’ do enough for him. Then …’ She drew in her lips. ‘Then it changed. Adrian was given to other doctors, ones I’d never seen before, ones they never told me about. But even then I didna’ realize …’ She gave a short sigh. ‘I didna’ see that things had changed … Not until Adrian became distressed, not until … At first he wouldna’ talk to me. An’ when I asked the staff, they wouldna’ talk to me either. They tried to avoid me. It was as if – ’ She broke off suddenly and, looking down at the table, picked harshly at the edge of the formica with her work-stained nails. ‘Finally they took me into a room an’ told me that, although the chemical might have caused a problem at the start, there was no reason it should now, that Adrian should be better. They said the illness he had now was in his mind. They had a name for it. They called it school phobia. They said it was to do with the death of his father. They said I was – ’ She clamped her teeth onto her lower lip. ‘They
said
I might not realize it directly, but that I was overprotectin’ Adrian … that I was encouragin’ ma own son to be ill.’

Daisy felt the customary stab of anger that this sort of injustice never failed to arouse in her. She said what she could, telling Mrs Bell that for every doctor who thought like that there was another who was prepared to take chemical damage seriously, but that the science of toxicity was in its infancy, that it was an umbrella science covering an enormous spread of specialities and requiring large teams of scientists which few governments were prepared to fund.

‘They sent the education people around,’ Campbell announced with a sharp exclamation of contempt. ‘Tellin’ Meg here to get Adrian back to school or else. I gave them
or else
all right, I can tell you.’

Daisy thought: I bet you did.

‘An’ the rest – I saw them off too,’ Campbell scoffed with pride.

A small worm of alarm turned in Daisy’s stomach. ‘The rest?’

Mrs Bell answered: ‘The social services.’

‘Sheep,’ Campbell declared. ‘Followed the others like sheep.’

Mrs Bell said: ‘They wanted me to agree to Adrian goin’ back to hospital.’

‘What did you tell them?’

Campbell answered for her again, pointing with a dramatic gesture towards the front room. ‘That lad leaves here over ma dead body, that’s what I told them.’

‘Our doctor spoke for us,’ Mrs Bell explained quietly. ‘He’s known Adrian from birth.’

‘Over ma dead body,’ Campbell echoed, slapping his palm on the table.

‘And they accepted that, did they, Mrs Bell? Your doctor’s opinion?’

‘Aye, they seemed to. Although that hasna’ prevented them from returnin’ now an’ again. To see how Adrian is managin’ – that’s how they explain it.’

‘Pushin’ their noses in where they’re not wanted,’ Campbell rumbled menacingly.

Daisy exchanged a glance with Mrs Bell, and saw in her face the knowledge that, but for the actions of the local doctor, things might have gone very differently.

Campbell, leaning forward, stabbed a finger at Daisy. ‘Now this compensation business – what about these landowners, the folk makin’ the money? Surely in God’s name, they canna’ escape fault!’

‘They might be held liable for a small share of the blame,’ Daisy began carefully. ‘But even if everything was proved in our favour, they might well plead good faith and get away with it.’

Campbell gave a fierce jerk of his head. ‘What about the makers? The chemical people?’

‘We don’t know who they are,’ Daisy pointed out.

‘And if we did?’

‘If we did, it wouldn’t make that much difference.’

‘How can that be? They’re makin’ an’ sellin’ the stuff, are they not? Is that not negligent?’

‘Oh that we could take them on, Mr Campbell. But negligence – or anything else for that matter – would be impossibly difficult to prove, and they’d throw everything they’d got into it – ’

‘Och, it’s the money that talks, is it?’

‘Well, yes – I’m rather afraid it is.’

There was a pause. Mrs Bell brought the teapot round again.

Campbell sat back, stretching his arms forward and splaying his broad hands palms-down on the table. His anger seemed to have given way to a genuine if dogged concern. ‘So – his chances are na’ very good?’

‘At the moment, not brilliant,’ Daisy admitted. ‘Not unless we find more to go on.’

‘An’ this is what the lawyer people say, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘The experts, eh?’ He rolled the words round his mouth with contempt and Daisy thought that perhaps this wasn’t the time to admit to her qualifications.

‘I see, I see …’ Campbell said musingly. ‘So what must be done to start things movin’ along the right road?’

‘I suppose there are two – no, three – priorities,’ she said. ‘The first must be to get Adrian the best medical attention. We’re not talking about instant cures, I’m afraid, but there’s one specialist we usually recommend. I might be able to arrange for him to come up and see Adrian here.’ As she said it she wondered how she could swing the expense of getting Peasedale’s ally, Roper, to Scotland without Alan finding out. ‘After that, well, we’d need to establish the name of the operators – the flying people – and the chemical they used.’

‘Right,’ Campbell said briskly. ‘We canna’ arrive before we begin, eh?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You arrange the doctor, fine. The rest, you can leave it to me.’

Daisy looked at him uncertainly. ‘The rest?’

‘You said – we canna’ proceed until we have some facts, correct?’

‘Facts would certainly help – ’

‘Aye, an’ I’ll be the man to find them.’

Daisy gave a nervous smile. ‘And – er – how are you going to achieve that?’

Campbell stood up suddenly, pushing his chair back with a loud scraping noise. ‘People not so very far from here know the answers to the question, do they not?’

‘I expect they do,’ Daisy agreed, thinking of the Willis Bain manager on the next-door estate and wondering what sort of information-extraction methods Campbell could possibly have in mind. It occurred to her that having Campbell on their side was going to be a liability of the most massive kind. ‘But how exactly do you intend to persuade these people to tell you what you want to know, Mr Campbell?’

He didn’t reply but gave her a long cautionary stare, as if she should have known better than to ask.

From the sidelines Mrs Bell gave an anxious: ‘Alistair.’

‘An’ then?’ he exclaimed, twisting round to shoot her an angry glance. ‘They canna’ be so hard to find, these people. The flyin’ company, they might deny all knowledge. But the aeroplane Adrian saw in the forest there’ – he jabbed a finger in the direction of the hill – ‘that was real enough, was it not? An’ there was a man flyin’ it, was there not? They canna’ have vanished into the mist. They canna’ be so hard to find.’ He added ominously: ‘One way or another.’

‘We did make the fullest possible enquiries,’ Brayfield ventured, sounding mildly defensive. ‘Throughout Scotland.’

‘An’ then?’ Campbell retorted. ‘Scotland is not yet the centre of the planet, is it?’

Despite everything, Daisy found herself warming slightly to Mr Campbell. Whatever his shortcomings he couldn’t be accused of being a lily-liver. Having met enough apathy in her time to run even the most inefficient nationalized industry, this threat of red-blooded action made something of a change. It was unfortunate that it was going in such an aggressive and potentially damaging direction.

Plucking his jacket from the back of the chair, Campbell thrust himself into it as if he were about to go and take on the world that very instant.

Taking a card from her voluminous carpetbag, Daisy got up and followed him down the passage. ‘If you find anything out, you’ll let me know?’ she called.

He turned and, taking her card, read it slowly. ‘Aye,’ he said finally and, pushing the card deep into an inside pocket, opened the door.

Daisy followed him towards the gate. In flagrant violation of Alan’s policy guidelines, she said: ‘Don’t think we won’t give Adrian’s case our support, Mr Campbell, because we will. I just didn’t want you to think it was going to be easy.’

‘Aye … Nothin’s easy in this life.’ He stood firm against the wind, a rock in a stormy sea.

Daisy asked: ‘Is it far to Glen Ashard from here?’

Campbell turned his head and stared at her, the fierceness glittering in his eyes.

‘Not so far,’ he said.

Daisy would have asked more but a gust straight from the Arctic blasted up the lane and, with a quick farewell, she hurried back towards the shelter of the house.

But Campbell came after her. ‘You know Mackenzie then?’ he demanded, catching her at the door.

‘A little.’

‘You’ll be seein’ him while you’re here?’

‘I wish I was,’ Daisy said truthfully.

Campbell followed her into the hall, standing so close over her that she had to twist her head to look up at him. ‘That’s a regret,’ he said, ‘a real regret.’ He hesitated then seemed to make up his mind about something. ‘It’s the same sickness,’ he said.

That took a moment to sink in. ‘What is?’

‘Mrs Mackenzie. Her sickness. The same as young Adrian’s. There’s no doubt in ma mind.’

‘But she inhaled wood preservative.’

‘Mebbe. But she could have inhaled a lot more without the realization of it, could she not?’

‘Why do you think so?’

‘Och, the look of her!’ he exclaimed. ‘The features of the sickness.’

Daisy was doubtful but curious. ‘You’ve seen her? Alusha Mackenzie?’

He looked shifty. ‘Not close up, like I am to you, but close enough. She canna’ hardly walk. An’ thin – she’s no more than bones. Aye, it’s the same thing all right. There’s no doubt in ma mind.’