Requiem (49 page)

‘It’s something called Silveron ZXP. An organophos-phate.’

He frowned slightly. ‘Are you sure?’ There was a touch of condescension in his tone.

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she said, moving out of Jenny’s hearing. ‘Why?’

He went though the motions of considering her idea in more depth, but scepticism was still written large on his face. ‘It just seems a little unlikely,’ he said cautiously. ‘Just when Silveron’s about to get US approval, I mean.’ The surprise must have shown in her face because he said, not without satisfaction: ‘You didn’t realize?’

‘No,’ she said, adjusting to the fact that Simon seemed to know all about Silveron. ‘But then the EPA aren’t perfect,’ she said. ‘They’ve had it wrong before.’

‘They usually get it an awful lot righter than us, though, don’t they?’

‘You know a lot about Silveron,’ she said accusingly.

‘It’s Morton-Kreiger’s new baby. They seem to think it’s got a great future.’

‘Which means they think it’s going to make them a lot of money,’ she said waspishly. ‘Anyway, since when did a company’s opinion of its own product bear any relation to its safety?’

‘I could ask around,’ he said, putting on his magnanimous voice. ‘Shall I? There
was
something, I know – a problem on the production line …’

From Alan’s office came the sound of a chair leg scraping across lino. Unable to face a three-way discussion, Daisy led Simon outside and up the steps to the street. A fierce wind was blowing from King’s Cross, spiralling litter along the pavement. The front page of the
Sun
jammed against Daisy’s leg.

‘A problem?’ she prompted, kicking the newspaper aside.

‘It was a scare. Some workers on the production line. A temporary lapse in safety procedures, I think. But I’ll dig the cuttings out for you. Ask around. I’ve got to phone some people in the US anyway.’

‘They were sick, the workers – how sick? What sort of symptoms?’

He shrugged as if he couldn’t possibly be expected to know. ‘Must go.’ He pecked her on the cheek. Turning away, he hesitated and looked back. ‘Oh, I’m seeing them tomorrow – Morton-Kreiger. I’ll ask them what sort of safety margins it has, shall I?’

She laughed disbelievingly. ‘They’ll never tell you!’

‘You’d be surprised. They’re very PR conscious, very anxious to show environmentally willing.’

She called after him: ‘You won’t let on, will you?’

‘What? Who?’

‘Morton-Kreiger. You won’t tell them why you’re interested?’

Throwing her an offended look, he spread his hands as if the idea was too insulting to be worthy of consideration and hurried away.

She watched him go and wondered if it had been such a good idea to encourage questions. Much as she was desperate for information, any probing, particularly on the part of an environmental journalist, was likely to alert Morton-Kreiger to the possibility of attack.

Back in her office, she closed the door to deter another Alan-led offensive, and sank into her chair, overcome by a sudden despondency. Never having been asked for her resignation before, it took some getting used to. Had Alan really meant it? Had she really gone too far or asked too much? It wasn’t as if she’d asked Alan or Jenny to do anything she wouldn’t have gladly done herself.

She said: ‘Bugger it,’ to no one in particular and sat up with a jerk. On her desk was an update on Jenny’s investigations into Acorn’s flying activities. Though she had managed to locate several Davie Robertsons in the Inverness region, none of them was or ever had been employed as an aeroplane mechanic, nor knew of a Davie Robertson who was. Further enquiries with the local Health and Safety Executive and the military air controllers had also drawn a blank, at least as far as flying in the Loch Fyne area was concerned.

The other messages did not interest Daisy and her attention returned to the pesticide manual still open in front of her at the Silveron entry. She stared at it for a long moment, then reached for a pile of worldwide environmental literature that she hardly ever had time to read in detail, and went through some of the latest issues. Silveron did not rate a mention on anyone’s hit list: no warnings, no news of production-line sickness, no nothing. Abandoning the journals, she worked her way through the bulky contents of her in-tray. From somewhere near the top she pulled out the latest EarthForce bulletin, and there it was in the news section. Silveron ZXP. Sickness at the Aurora production plant in Aurora, Illinois; EarthForce making representations to the EPA; Morton-Kreiger tightening up their production-line safety procedures; a secondary toxicology study which, according to sources, was expected to show that Silveron came within statutory safety limits.

It was six p.m. and the cheap phone rate to the US didn’t start until eight, but she dialled Washington anyway. Paul

Erlinger greeted her with a cry of delight, as if she were a long lost friend and charged into an effusive stream of questions, before cutting himself ruthlessly short and getting down to business.

‘So what can I do for you?’

She told him she was interested in Silveron and what sort of damage it might be doing to people.

‘You read our bulletin, did you?’

‘I need more. The symptoms, the exposure, how those workers are doing. What
you
think.’

‘Listen, er …’ The line became muted as if he’d capped the phone. ‘Listen, can I call you later, at home maybe?’

She gave him the number and they fixed a time.

She took a bus home, stopping at the Patels’ to buy fish fingers, bananas and Greek yogurt. The flat was cold: she had left a window open. Her one pot plant had dropped most of its leaves, a victim of gross neglect. The mail consisted of three brown envelopes with windows. There were no messages on the answering machine.

She lit the gas fire and had a quick bath. The water hissed and spat in the tap, percussion to the hot tank’s strings section, which sobbed and sighed and gurgled as it refilled.

Lying in the bath, she closed her eyes and the questions swooped in on her, one on top of another.

Silveron. Morton-Kreiger. Within statutory limits. Secondary trials. Was it that safe? How could it be that safe?

And the workers, how sick had they been? Did they have the muscle wasting, the problems in absorbing food?

She thought, too, of Scotland and Nick Mackenzie. Where was he now? she wondered. What was he doing? He wouldn’t be in Scotland. He would have gone abroad, America, or a hot climate, the West Indies or Bahamas. Perhaps he was working again, perhaps he was beginning to pick up the pieces, but even as she nursed the thought forward, she remembered his heavy unfocused look during the inquiry, his uncharacteristic belligerence, and she wasn’t so sure.

The call came through on the dot of nine. ‘I’m sorry to have cut things short there,’ Paul Erlinger said immediately. ‘But I was with a journalist. Not known for his discretion – are they ever? Listen – is it safe to talk?’

‘Safe? What do you mean?’

‘I mean, is the line okay? Bug-free?’

The idea was so preposterous she almost laughed. ‘I don’t think Catch rates that sort of attention.’

‘You’d be surprised. Might be worth getting it checked out.’

She couldn’t see herself getting the idea past Alan. ‘I’m at home anyway,’ she reminded him.

He gave her the case histories of each of the Silveron workers, the numerous unexplained symptoms, the general malaise, the loss of weight, the single case of cancer which may or may not have been related to the Silveron exposure. Morton-Kreiger International were admitting absolutely nothing, but had tightened up their safety procedures at the plant ‘as a precautionary measure’. He told her about the back-up toxicology trial and how the results, which had been carefully leaked by MKI, would show that there was no cause for alarm.

‘And what do
you
think?’

A pause. He exhaled into the mouthpiece. ‘I think there’s a bad smell hanging around this one.’

‘Why do you think so?’

‘Just a feeling really. Hard to pin down, you know?’

‘Nothing definite then?’

‘Nothing
definite.’
There was something in his tone that suggested quite the opposite.

She felt a beat of excitement. ‘Come on, Paul! I need this, I need it badly! I think I have two victims here, maybe more.’

‘Look, Daisy, I wish I could tell you – but it’s not that simple. You see, we took a decision to keep this under wraps, at least until we could be sure of protecting our sources.’

‘So there
is
something!’

There was a silence interspersed with groans as if he were battling with his better judgement but quite enjoying the process. ‘Okay, okay. I’ll tell you this much – there could be hard evidence.’

‘What sort of evidence? You mean, more victims? Or –
God!
– are Morton-Kreiger covering something?’

He laughed, but it was only to give himself time. ‘Daisy, you’re a one-woman interrogation machine.’

‘Can I have this evidence?’

‘Whoa, whoa. We ain’t got it yet!’

‘When? When will you get it?’

‘Daisy, Daisy …’ He was objecting, but not that strongly. ‘Ask me again after the thirtieth.’

Ten days away.

‘You’re not coming over for the PAN conference?’ he asked. ‘Maybe I’ll have something by then.’

The Pesticide Action Network was a North American umbrella organization with which Catch attempted to keep close contact. Alan had considered sending himself to the conference in Boston but had decided against it, not on the grounds of expense, which did not anyway seem to pose such an insuperable problem where Alan’s foreign trips were concerned, but because of pressure of work, a barb that had been aimed in Daisy’s direction.

‘Maybe I will,’ she heard herself say.

‘Hey, but I can’t promise anything, Daisy. Don’t come specially, will you? I mean, I might have absolutely
nothing.’

‘I was thinking of coming anyway,’ she lied, trying to remember what she had in her savings account.

‘You were?’ He sounded pleased. ‘In the meantime, Daisy, take my advice, don’t leave anything lying around. You know what I mean?’

Involuntarily, she glanced around the room. Then, feeling faintly foolish at having caught herself taking the idea so seriously, she shook herself free and in her American-cop voice said: ‘Listen – suspicion’s my middle name.’

S
USAN WAITED FOR
the hotel doorman to dart across the pavement and set the revolving doors in motion before sweeping through. She was ten minutes late, but since that was exactly how late she’d intended to be, she did not hurry. Nothing, anyway, could add to the considerable flutter of nervousness already dancing in her stomach, a nervousness that was tinged with an odd kind of excitement, like wearing a revealing dress for the first time.

The bar was dimly lit in the American style, so that it was impossible to see anything until your eyes had got used to the gloom. She stopped inside the door to get her bearings. Almost immediately the figure of Schenker appeared out of the shadows and taking her lightly by the elbow, guided her to a booth and took her coat. She ordered a glass of champagne. He ordered a mineral water with ice and lemon to add to the one already in front of him.

‘Will you change your mind about lunch?’ he asked her smoothly. ‘The restaurant does a lovely
sole meunière.
Or there’s smoked salmon in the bar here. Or club sandwiches.’ He’d been polishing up on his culinary terms and social graces, she observed. The
sole meunière
was dished up far less obsequiously than before, and with the correct pronunciation.

‘I can’t, I’m afraid.’ In fact she had no other lunch appointment, but Schenker was not her idea of a scintillating lunch companion, and she wanted to be away and free of him the moment the business was over. ‘Another time perhaps.’

He asked her some dutiful questions about Camilla and how family life was surviving Tony’s appointment. Susan kept her answers polite but short. She had no wish to discuss her domestic arrangements with Schenker, and if he had any brains, he’d realize that too.

He seemed to cotton on at last because he changed the subject, saying: ‘And how’s the fund-raising going? You’ve been doing great things for Save the Children.’ He probably thought she was on the scrounge for more funds. This year alone she’d asked Morton-Kreiger for sponsorship for a major water project in India and to take fifty seats for a gala concert, and got both.

‘You know how it is,’ she said vaguely. ‘The Third World’s a bottomless pit.’

His small black eyes slid up to her face then away again several times. She could almost see him wondering why she’d asked for the meeting if it wasn’t to beg for funds. He reminded her of a cautious reptile, waiting motionless to catch passing morsels.

They progressed unenthusiastically over the economic news, the state of the agrochemical industry and other equally thrilling topics until, unable to bear the sheer frustration any longer, Susan fixed him with her best gaze and said: ‘Listen, something’s come up. And I think you might be able to help.’

The raisin-eyes flicked away then back again, looking flattered, wary and curious all at the same time. ‘Of course.’ He reached for some nuts from the bowl on the table.