The Mill on the Shore (23 page)

A grainy photograph in a later edition showed a line of volunteers in waders passing the distressed birds down a human chain to the bank. There, apparently, they were cleaned and cared for by the RSPCA in an animal rescue centre until they were fit to be released. Again, no figures were given for the number of birds which survived this treatment, though there was an interview with an RSPCA inspector who said that the incident would be a test for the new National Rivers Authority. ‘We expect them to find the culprit quickly and for a prosecution to follow,’ he said. ‘It’s in the spirit of the new act that the polluter should pay.’

‘It did hit the national press,’ Molly said. ‘I remember now. May ’91. We were on holiday with Jonathan, Mary and the kids in Suffolk and it rained all week. There were pictures of the rescue on the television news. Jonathan was very sniffy about the expert they got to comment.’

Jonathan, their son, was inclined to be sniffy about many things.

‘Yes!’ George said. ‘Then there was the piece in the business section of the
Observer
, speculating whether Mardon Wools would profit from the public’s sympathy for the swans, or whether its image would suffer through being associated with such a misfortune. Why didn’t we remember before?’

‘Old age I expect,’ Molly said cheerfully. ‘It was the picture which triggered my memory. And then the story went out of the news so quickly.’

In the local paper too, it seemed, the story had soon faded into oblivion, overtaken by news of more redundancies from the tannery and a visit by the Princess of Wales to open a new wing in the general hospital. It was not until the autumn of the same year that the case came to court and then it warranted only one column on an inside page. The swan population had recovered apparently, and without pictures of dead and dying birds the story had lost its impact. The case was brought by the National Rivers Authority under the Water Resources Act against a fast food restaurant and take-away outlet known as the Flying Fish. The owner had admitted emptying his fryers into the drainage system but claimed that he had not been aware that the oil would find its way into the river.

‘It could happen to anyone,’ he said.

The magistrate called for more education for local catering businesses and householders and ordered the owner of the Flying Fish to pay a five-hundred-pound fine.

That was the end of it. George and Molly split between them the work of checking intervening copies of the newspaper but there was no further reference to water pollution in the Marr, or dying swans.

‘Is that it then?’ Molly said. ‘ Is that the story Jimmy was working on?’

‘In a way,’ he said. ‘But don’t you see, there’s been a cover-up? The chap from the chip shop probably did flush waste cooking oil down his drains and it might have had some effect, but it didn’t cause the extensive damage to the birds reported in the paper. He was made a scapegoat. Otherwise why would Nick Lineham disappear to Africa and why would Jimmy Morrissey be so keen on getting hold of his notes? Lineham must have sampled the water near the outfall where the swans were feeding. He must have known who the real polluter was.’

‘You know too, don’t you?’ she said.

‘Oh, I know,’ he said, and he explained his suspicions to her in full, whispering to escape the disapproving gaze of the hornrimmed librarian. ‘ But I’ve no proof at all. And I still can’t quite believe that it had anything to do with Jimmy Morrissey’s death.’

They left the newspaper office and went out into the cold, grey afternoon.

‘We’ll walk, shall we?’ George said. He did not want to face Mardon’s unfathomable one-way system in the car and he thought the walk would clear his thoughts. He could see why Jimmy had dropped the story of the river’s pollution after Hannah’s death and why he had considered it important enough to take up again when he needed to restore his faith in himself. He could see where Aidan Moore fitted into it all. But he could not reconcile his knowledge of the people involved with cold-blooded murders. Molly too was silent. As she tried to make sense of George’s suspicions the man Cedric had described in the pub that morning came again fleetingly into her mind. She knew she had seen him, but had no idea where they had met.

The National Rivers Authority had a smart office in a small block on the other side of the river from the town centre, close to the houses where Grace Sharland lived. They crossed the Marr by a narrow footbridge and in the darkening gloom saw the white shapes of swans further upstream. George stopped for a moment to look at them and wondered if it was only in his imagination that they seemed unusually sluggish.

‘You won’t want me there while you talk to the Conservation Officer,’ Molly said suddenly. ‘I’ll see if Grace Sharland’s at home and try to surprise her with the information that we know she took Jimmy to the Linehams’ house.’ If anyone knows what was going on, she thought, it will be Grace. She’s the one who links it all together.

‘Won’t she be at work?’

‘I don’t know,’ Molly said. ‘ She finished early on the day I visited her before. Perhaps she works some sort of shift or flexitime.’

But he hardly seemed to be listening and she walked off without trying to explain that she felt Grace had been under so much strain that she might not even have been at work.

The NRA had the ground floor of the office block which was built of yellow, cheese-coloured stone with brightly painted fittings. It looked as if it had been made from a child’s construction kit. Inside there was the usual jungle of shiny-leaved plants and a secretary with a hang-dog expression who said that Sue wasn’t back yet actually from her meeting, but she definitely was expecting him and would he like to take a seat?

He sat. There was a low table with some newspapers and magazines and he picked up a recent copy of
Green Scenes.
He had stopped subscribing more than a year before and it seemed to him now that the publication was even more bland and undemanding than it had been then. There was a feature on birdwatching holidays, an article entitled: ‘A day in the life of an environmentally sensitive gamekeeper’ and an interview with the new secretary of state for the environment which concentrated on the interior decoration of his home and his love of King Charles spaniels. He thought Jimmy Morrissey must be turning in his grave. Had he seen these recent issues? George wondered. That alone would have provoked him to take a stand on the pollution question. He must have felt some responsibility for his brainchild’s decline into mediocrity.

The heavy outside door with its red, lollipop-shaped handles was swung open and a young woman came in. She was carrying a briefcase and a pile of files and seemed flustered. She exchanged a word with the secretary and joined him. ‘Mr Palmer-Jones!’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry to be late. Do come in!’

He followed her to her office, muttering that it was quite all right but the sight of her had depressed him. He had hoped for someone organized, someone who could give him the facts he needed in a clear and orderly way, and she gave only an impression of disorder with her rushing and her armful of tatty files and the mud on her shoes. And she seemed so young to him, hardly more than a child.

Perhaps because of that, when she sat behind her desk and asked him how she could help him, he told her the truth. He thought there would be no danger in telling her what he wanted. She seemed so young and inexperienced that she would not grasp the implication of it or see how serious a matter it was.

‘It’s rather sensitive,’ he said. ‘I’d like to ask some questions about Nicholas Lineham, your predecessor. I think it’s possible that he removed sensitive information from this office and kept it at home. Did you meet him before he went to Africa?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘ He only gave a month’s statutory notice and left even more quickly than that in the end because he had holiday owing to him. There was quite a gap before I started.’ She looked at him carefully. Her face was still flushed after hurrying to get there. ‘As I said on the phone, I know your reputation and I’m flattered that you think I can help but you do realize that I have to know what this is all about before I answer any more questions.’

He saw then that he had underestimated her.

‘It’s very complicated,’ he said slowly.

‘You’d better spell it out then,’ she said with some sarcasm, ‘ so I can understand.’

He felt awkward. This wasn’t going as he had planned.

‘Do you know why Mr Lineham left the authority so suddenly?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think there’s any mystery about it,’ she said. ‘He’d been interested in working in Africa for ages and the chance came up so he jumped at it.’

‘He was able to jump at it,’ George said, ‘because he was paid a considerable sum of money.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I believe he was working on a water pollution incident,’ George said. ‘He’d reached certain conclusions about the nature of the pollution, had probably identified the likely polluter. Somebody thought it would be more convenient if his findings weren’t made public. As you say, he’d always been fascinated by Africa but he was reluctant to give up the security of a permanent job with the NRA. Somebody gave him a little extra persuasion to go.’

‘I don’t understand why you’re interested. After all this time.’ He had her full attention. She looked out at him through a wildly permed fringe.

‘Jimmy Morrissey, the local naturalist, was writing his autobiography,’ George said. ‘I believe that he was approached with information about the pollution incident at the time it occurred but for a number of personal reasons he didn’t follow it up. Later he regretted it. It wasn’t a simple case, you see. There were implications of corruption. He wanted to use the autobiography to put the record straight, and, less altruistically, to signal his return to centre stage in conservation matters. I know that he went to the Linehams’ house and removed papers and records which had been kept there.’ He paused. ‘You may have seen on the news that since then Jimmy Morrissey has died. The police think he committed suicide but I don’t think that’s true. You see, all the notes and the draft autobiography have disappeared.’

‘You think he was murdered?’ she said calmly. He nodded, impressed. ‘How do you think I can help you?’

‘We need the information which Nick Lineham had put together to prepare his case. After all this time it’s the only way to track down the polluter.’

‘I don’t see how that’s possible if he took all the files away with him.’

‘The office is computerized. Wouldn’t a copy of all that material be kept on disc?’

‘It probably would now,’ she said. ‘But you have to realize that then the whole set-up was new. The NRA was working from a couple of rooms in the old water company building. Staff were still being appointed. I don’t think it was terribly efficient.’

‘Lineham must have had a boss,’ George said, ‘someone who would assign him work and follow up what he was doing.’

‘Oh he had a boss,’ she said. ‘ Of sorts. He was still here when I started. An old water company scientist by the name of Jack Clough was transferred to the NRA to get him out of the way. Or because someone owed him a favour. There wasn’t any other reason I could see for putting him in any position of responsibility.’ She pushed her fringe back from her eyes angrily. ‘He started drinking in his office at eleven in the morning, took three-hour lunch breaks in the Queen’s Head and was pissed as a fart by the time everyone else went home. He might have had a useful contribution to make when he was sober but I wouldn’t know. I never saw him in that state. He was persuaded to take early retirement six months after I started here.’

‘All the same,’ George said, ‘he might have had some idea what Lineham was up to. It would be worth talking to him.’

‘Perhaps it would have been,’ she said. ‘Though I doubt it. But he won’t be any use to you now. His liver finally admitted defeat and he died last year.’

‘There wouldn’t be any records which would have been passed on to the person taking over from him?’

She shook her head. ‘You must be joking. All they found in his filing cabinet were enough empty Scotch bottles to fill Sainsbury’s bottle bank.’

‘What about a secretary? Someone who did Lineham’s typing and filing and took messages for him. Would she be able to help?’

‘It’s certainly possible, Nick’s secretary is still working here. She’s been here longer than any of us. She started with the place. Just wait there and I’ll fetch her.’

She returned with a nervous, middle-aged woman who hovered uncertainly just inside the door.

‘Joyce, this is Mr Palmer-Jones,’ she said. ‘He’s doing some research but our records from the early days aren’t as good as they might be. We wondered if you might be able to help. Do you remember what Nick was working on just before he left?’

Joyce wanted to help them. She screwed up her face in concentration and muttered to herself but it was clear from the beginning that she would be no use. George had known many typists like her. They could type flawlessly the work set in front of them but would have no idea at the end what the letter was about or even if it made sense.

‘I’m sorry,’ Joyce said. ‘I’m really sorry.’ Then, wretchedly: ‘I think there was something with numbers on it. A printout had come from the lab. Nick was very excited about it and asked me to type it up for the file. I can picture a table of numbers on the paper but I can’t remember what it was about.’

When she had left the room George said, ‘ Does that mean anything to you?’

She shrugged. ‘ Not really. We send water samples to our own lab for analysis. If it’s too complex for them to deal with we have experts in local universities who help. But the lab copes with most things. I suppose that was what it was about.’

‘And if you discovered an unusual level of a toxic chemical in the water, what would be the procedure then?’

‘We’d try to trace where it came from.’

‘Is that easy?’

‘That depends on the chemical and the geographical area. Where there isn’t much industry you can do it almost by a process of elimination.’

He hesitated, then decided that he had taken her into his confidence so far that there was little to be lost by sharing his suspicions.