Deception (35 page)

‘
Seems a reasonable complaint. Out of interest, did he ever talk to Childs and Leadbetter about the problem?’

‘
He did,’ said Brown. ‘He says they just weren’t interested.’

‘
Surprise, surprise,’ murmured Steven, pleased to get even more confirmation that Childs and Leadbetter had no real interest in the financial state of Crawhill Farm. ‘Did Gus have anything to say about our “venture capitalists”?’

‘
Just that they’re no farmers. “Wouldn’t know a cow from a unicorn,” was what he said, so he couldn’t see where the expertise to run an organic farm was going to come from.’

‘
I hear Trish Rafferty’s coming back to Crawhill tomorrow,’ said Steven. ‘We’ll see what develops then.’

‘
That should be interesting,’ agreed Brown.

Steven sat in his car about fifty metres from the Blackbridge Hotel, waiting for Eve who was late – it had already gone quarter past ten and he was beginning wonder if anything was wrong when she finally appeared, looking harassed.

‘
Sorry I’m late,’ she apologised. ‘We’ve been rushed off our feet this evening. One of the girls has gone down with flu and we’ve been really busy.’

‘
No problem,’ said Steven. ‘What shall we do?’

‘
I could do with a drink,’ said Eve. ‘We could drive over to Livingston?’

They drove the short distance to Livingston and found a hotel bar that wasn’t too crowded. ‘So what’s wrong?’ asked Eve, reading Steven’s general demeanour.

He told her what had happened to Jenny.

‘
Childs and the other one were in the hotel bar tonight!’ said Eve. ‘The bastards! Have you told the police?’

Steven told her why not.

‘
You must have been out of your mind with worry,’ said Eve.

‘
I’ve had better days,’ agreed Steven with masterly understatement.

‘
They really don’t want you snooping around, do they?’ said Eve in her attempt at matching it. ‘Are you any closer to knowing why?’

‘
If anything, I’m further away,’ Steven confessed. He told Eve about the lab report on the chemicals and the rat.

‘
But if it’s not the weed-killer and it’s not the GM crop itself, what else can it be?’ exclaimed Eve.

‘
Trish Rafferty knows,’ said Steven.

‘
I’ll have another go at her tomorrow when she comes home,’ promised Trish.

TWENTY

Early on Monday morning, Steven drove over to Livingston Police Headquarters to speak with Brewer. He was feeling uneasy about Trish Rafferty coming back to Crawhill and was concerned about how safe she would be in the circumstances. The bargain she’d struck with the powers-that-be had not done her husband much good in the end and he feared that she might be seen as a dangerous loose end to leave lying around, despite her role as informant in the first place. Childs’ abortive visit to her flat on Saturday night had just added to his unease. With her husband now dead, his immunity from retribution was no longer an influencing factor in how she would behave.

‘
What would you like us to do?’ asked Brewer.

‘
Establish a presence at Crawhill,’ said Steven. ‘Just let Childs and Leadbetter know that you are around. You could use their destruction of evidence as a pretext for having your forensic people go over Khan’s shed again, anything you like as long as there are officers on the premises for today at least.’

‘
And then what?’

‘
Let’s play it by ear.’

Steven drove over to Blackbridge, not that he had anything specific to do there this morning. He just wanted to be there and get a feel for things, as if doing so might encourage inspiration to strike. As he drove along Main Street he saw Ann Binnie coming out of the Post Office and stopped to speak to her.

‘
James is being cremated tomorrow,’ she told him. ‘Perhaps you’d care to be there?’

‘
Of course,’ said Steven. ‘I liked him a lot.’

‘
Ten o’clock at Mortonhall in Edinburgh. Do you know it?’

‘
I’ll find it,’ replied Steven.

‘
James made me promise that I’d have him cremated if he was the first to go,’ said Ann. ‘He said that after a life spent in agricultural Scotland, he would have seen more than enough of cold, wet earth and a bit of heat would be very welcome.’ Ann smiled but her eyes didn’t. Steven sensed that, like Eleanor Rigby, she was wearing the face that she kept in a jar by the door. He wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how. He simply said that he’d see her tomorrow and said good-morning.

He stopped a little further along the street to read a notice, tied with string to a lamppost. It was an appeal for the return of a lost dog. ‘Patch’ was being sorely missed by his two young owners, Alan and Ailsa, aged three and five, and a reward was being offered for information leading to the dog’s return. A bad photocopy of a photograph of the two young children was incorporated. He silently wished them luck then walked on past the hotel where highly polished cars belonging to the warring factions of Whitehall and the Scottish Executive filled the car park and spilled out on to the road. The imagery in his head was of hot air and balloons.

At the top of the hill between Crawhill and Peat Ridge, he saw that the barriers across the towpath were still in place but from the bridge he could see no sign of the white-clad marksmen he’d seen last time. He decided that he would walk out along the path anyway and ducked under the tape to start heading east with a cool wind behind him. As he passed along the southern edge of Crawhill, he saw a white Volkswagen Polo drive into the yard in front of the house and a female figure get out. The distance was too great to see her features clearly but he felt fairly sure that it was Trish Rafferty arriving home. A man who had been working on a piece of machinery and whom he suspected must be standing in for Gus Watson, got up and went to greet her. They shook hands and spoke briefly before Trish disappeared inside the house and the man returned to lying under the machine. It was starting to rain and Steven did not envy him his job.

He was about to turn back when he thought he caught sight of a movement in the undergrowth on the other side of the canal. When he stopped and looked closely at the spot he couldn’t see anything, but he was sure enough to start feeling nervous. It happened again: the grass moved and Steven dropped to one knee, his hand moving to the holster under his left arm. The grass moved again and this time he heard a whimpering sound. He relaxed when he realised that no one was stalking him. The long grass was concealing an animal in trouble.

Steven went back to the bridge to gain access to the other bank. There was no towpath on that side of the canal and therefore no direct access to it from the bridge so he had to climb up on to the parapet and drop down the two metres or so into the long grass. He just had to hope that it wasn’t obscuring anything nasty like a rabbit hole or broken glass. He landed safely and started to make his way cautiously through the undergrowth to where he’d heard the noise coming from.

He had barely taken five steps before stopping in his tracks when he caught the glint of metal in the grass in front of him. He knelt down cautiously and found an animal trap lying directly in front of him. It was set and had a spring in it that could have made quite a mess of his foot had he strayed into it. He noted that it was of a type deemed illegal in the UK but had hardly time to ponder this when he caught sight of another one lying off to his right . . . and yet another behind him to the left. This one had a dead rabbit in it. He was walking through a veritable minefield of animal traps and snares. There were far too many to have been set by any poacher. It had to be part of the rat cull operation.

Steven looked around for a suitable stick to use as a probe and saw one about three metres away. He moved cautiously towards it, his eyes glued to the ground ahead, pausing to separate the long grass with his hands where necessary. He felt happier with the stick in his hand, which he continually swept in an arc in front of him before risking further progress. In the next twenty metres or so he came across four more traps. Two had dead rats in them, one another rabbit and the fourth the source of the whimpering, a small white dog.

The dog, a King Charles spaniel, had his right front paw caught in a large spring-mounted trap. From his bedraggled appearance and the damage to the surrounding area on his leg where wet fur had merged with dried, encrusted blood, Steven could see that the beast had been struggling for some time. It was no great test of deductive power to work out that his name was, Patch and that he’d been there overnight.

‘
Well, you’ve got yourself into a fine mess, haven’t you?’ murmured Steven as he cleared an area round about the dog where he could squat down and set about freeing it. He could see that its leg had been broken by the impact of the hammer bar on the trap. ‘You’re going to need a vet, old son . . . and the bad news is that there isn’t one locally any more . . .Easy does it . . . There we are . . . Steven freed the dog and stopped him trying to stand up on his damaged limb. He looked around for twigs and found what he was looking for within easy reach. It wasn’t often that he found his expertise in field medicine called upon but right now he was going to fashion a splint for Patch.

Whether it was the fact that he was thinking about the last time he’d had to tend to an injured colleague and the mission that they’d been on at the time or whether his nerves were strung like piano wire after the events of the last forty-eight hours, Steven reacted like lightning when a hand touched his shoulder. His assailant had barely time to utter a word before Steven had hammered his left elbow back into his stomach, spun round to bring the edge of his right hand down into the side of the man’s neck and was on top of him, pinning him to the ground and holding the barrel of his automatic at the side of his head.

‘
Jesus,’ said the man. ‘Was it something I said?’

Steven took in the fact that the man beneath him was wearing camouflage fatigues and a military beret. When he had relaxed enough to look up he saw that four other soldiers had joined them. One of them, with lieutenant’s pips on his shoulders moved to the front.

‘
Who the hell are you?’ he asked.

‘
I might ask you the same question,’ said Steven. He realised that every eye was on the gun in his hand. He got to his feet and put it back in its holster before getting out his ID and showing it to the officer.

‘
Doctor
Dunbar?’ exclaimed the man. ‘Ye gods, if that was an example of your bedside manner, I hope you don’t do house calls.’ He turned to the soldier sitting on the ground, rubbing his neck and asked, ‘All right Kincaid?’

‘
Yes, boss,’ replied the soldier.

‘
Our job is to clear the entire area of wild animals,’ said the lieutenant, who now introduced himself as Lt Adrian Venture. ‘I thought you would have known that,’ he said with a glance at Steven’s ID as he handed it back.

‘
I knew about the rat cull with .22 rifles. No one told me about the traps.’

‘
I think they wanted it kept low key, and for obvious reasons’ said Venture with a nod to the traps. ‘Efficiency wins over legality. Didn’t want the save-the-squirrel mob fucking up things if you know what I mean?’

Steven nodded. ‘I guess young Patch here didn’t know about it either,’ he said, looking down at the dog, which one of the soldiers was comforting.

‘
Sorry about that,’ said Venture. ‘It’s the sort of operation where you get . . .’

‘
Collateral damage,’ completed Steven. He turned to the soldier he’d felled and said, ‘Maybe I should take a look at your neck, soldier?’

The soldier backed away.

‘
He is a doctor,’ said Venture.

‘
Bet you don’t get too many complaints down your surgery,’ said the man and the ensuing laughter took any remaining tension out of the atmosphere. Steven examined the man and pronounced to his and everyone else’s relief that no lasting damage had been done. He turned back to Venture and pointed out that it was still the time of the school holidays in the area. There was a risk of youngsters making the same mistake that Patch had made. If that happened, the shit really would hit the fan.

‘
I see what you mean,’ agreed Venture. ‘We can’t put up notices advertising the traps but we could make it more difficult to reach this bank, perhaps put wire up on the parapet?’

‘
Good idea,’ said Steven. ‘Who’s in charge of this operation by the way?’ he asked.

‘
I’ve no idea,’ replied Venture. ‘Ours is not to reason why . . .’

Steven approached the soldier who was cradling the dog in his arms and asked Venture if the man might be allowed to assist him while he reset the dog’s leg and applied a makeshift splint to it. It would be an easier operation with someone else holding the animal. Venture readily agreed and it was done quickly, although not without a communal wince from the onlookers. Venture asked about the dog and Steven told him about the poster in the village. The soldier looked worried but Steven assured him that the owners needn’t know just how the animal had come to have its leg broken. ‘I’m sure they’ll just be delighted to have him back.’