The Mill on the Shore (24 page)

‘Do you remember a court case in the autumn, three years ago? A chip-shop owner was prosecuted for discharging cooking oil into the River Marr.’

‘I remember reading about it when I arrived. It happened in the interim between me and Nick.’

‘Did anything about it seem unusual?’

‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘I got a transcript of the case because it was one of the first prosecutions to be taken under the new act. I thought at the time that the prosecution solicitor was guilty of dreadful exaggeration. He didn’t give any figures but he gave the impression that all the wildlife on the River Marr was at risk. One discharge of cooking oil wouldn’t have caused all that damage. Not on its own.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what I thought.’

‘You think there was something else in the water?’ she demanded. ‘Something that Nick had discovered? But he was shipped off to Africa before he could make a fuss.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think it happened rather like that.’

‘But what was the other pollutant?’ she asked. ‘Where did it come from?’

He paused again.

‘Is there anything used in the manufacture of knitwear which could be the culprit?’ he asked.

She looked up sharply. ‘ You’re thinking of Mardon Wools?’

He nodded.

‘That would put the cat among the pigeons, wouldn’t it?’ she said. ‘ Mardon Wools killing off the bird which is internationally recognized as their logo. Especially after they’ve spent thousands on giving themselves a green image.’

‘It would certainly give the company a motive for covering up the incident,’ George agreed. ‘ Is there anything used in the manufacturing process which could be to blame?’

‘I’m not sure without checking,’ she said. ‘But I can look it up.’ She took down a number of reference books from the aluminium shelves against the wall and spread them on the desk around her. George waited impatiently. He wished he could help but knew he would only get in the way. She worked quickly, moving from one book to another, flicking through the pages and writing notes in a fast, tight script.

‘That’s it!’ she said at last, closing all the books with a flourish. ‘There’s a knitwear drying agent called tetrachloroethylene, known as TCE. Used for dry cleaning too. The maximum amount allowed in water for human consumption is 10 microgrammes per litre.’

‘What would its effect be on the swans?’

‘It would act as a degreaser – rather like the cooking oil, I suppose. It would cause the birds to look bedraggled, make them lose their waterproofing, become less resistant to cold and disease.’

‘Is there any way of finding out if Mardon Wools uses this chemical?’ he said.

‘I could ask them.’

‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea at this stage. Not yet.’

‘I could do a discreet investigation,’ she said. ‘ Take some samples from their outflow. Make it seem like a routine visit.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘ Why don’t you do that?’

He stood to go, but hesitated. ‘We found a dead swan on the shore near Markham Mill yesterday,’ he said. ‘It would be interesting to find out if that’s just a coincidence, or if there’s been a recent, perhaps more minor, contamination of the river.’

‘I’ll check,’ she said. ‘You can leave it to me.’

He left her office quite confident that he could.

When Molly walked down the street to Grace Sharland’s home it was dark enough for the lights to be on in all the houses but most of the curtains were still not drawn. Even from a distance she could see that the visit would not be wasted. The light was on in the first-floor sitting room and as she drew nearer she saw the silhouettes of two people in the room. Grace and an older man.

They stood facing each other and although the double glazing prevented Molly hearing what was being said they were obviously in the middle of a heated argument. With the light behind them Molly could see every gesture: Grace’s mouth open to scream, the man, who with his sandy red hair must surely have been her father, shaking his head in an elaborate mime of impatience. Even if they had not been so preoccupied they would not have made out Molly in the dusk and when she rang the door bell they were shocked and stood still for a moment, caught like a photograph, framed, and when the door swung open Molly could see him, standing on the stairs behind her.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ Molly said lamely. ‘I was just passing …’

‘Come in!’ Grace said desperately. ‘Come in. I was going to phone you anyway. There’s something you need to know.’ Then, with an air of defiance: ‘Father, this is Mrs Palmer-Jones. I explained that she’d been to see me.’

‘I don’t think this is a good idea, Grace,’ he said quietly. He wore an open-necked shirt, a jersey and jeans and looked too young, Molly thought, to be retired.

‘I bet you don’t,’ she said, beside herself with emotion. ‘I bet you don’t.’

‘If you’re busy I could always come back,’ Molly said but she did not move.

‘Grace!’ the man pleaded. ‘Think about this. Think what you’re doing.’

‘I’ve thought of nothing else all night,’ she said, ‘since I heard that Aidan Moore was drowned. If I’d spoken out before it might never have happened.’

He said nothing. He must have realized that he would not persuade her. He turned and walked back up the stairs followed by Grace and Molly. After the fury of the argument the silence was shocking. They sat on the richly coloured chairs, staring at each other, unsure where to start.

Grace breathed deeply and tried to regain control. ‘ Did you know that my father is a director of Mardon Wools?’ she said at last.

Molly nodded.

‘Not active any more,’ he said sharply.

‘The power behind the throne,’ she said.

She paused and started again more calmly. ‘When you were here last I told you that I felt Jimmy had used me.’

‘Yes,’ Molly said. ‘I remember.’

‘That feeling had nothing to do with the fact that he fancied himself in love with me,’ Grace said. ‘He wanted to know about Mardon Wools and Father.’

‘And Nick,’ Molly said. ‘ I expect he was interested in Nick too.’

‘Oh,’ Grace said bitterly, ‘that was a bonus. He hadn’t realized I’d been engaged to Nick until I told him. He must have thought Christmas had come early that day. It gave him a connection, you see, between the NRA and my father. That was what he was looking for all along.’

Sharland leaned forward with his hands on his knees. ‘It’s not as bad as it seems,’ he said. ‘ There was no damage done. Not really. It was a lot of fuss about nothing.’

‘Father!’ Grace screamed and Molly thought this must be a rerun of the argument she had witnessed through the window. ‘Two men have died. That’s not a fuss about nothing.’

‘Accidents,’ he said. ‘Or suicide. That’s what the coroner thought.’

‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ she shouted. ‘Take your head out of the sand.’

There was another silence. Grace got up and jerked the curtains together then returned to her seat. They waited for her to speak.

‘You’ll have to tell someone,’ she shouted at her father. The hysteria had gone and she spoke with a quiet intensity, willing him to agree with her. ‘There’ll be no peace for either of us if you try to keep it to yourself.’ Then, when there was no response: ‘If you don’t talk about it I’ll go to the police myself.’

Molly intervened diffidently. ‘It might look better, Mr Sharland, if it came from you.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose I can see that.’ He turned to his daughter. ‘I wanted the business to be a success for you,’ he said. ‘It was a sort of security. It was all I had to pass on to you.’

‘Don’t give me that crap,’ she said. ‘You always were an ambitious bastard, Dad. You always were a fighter.’

‘No,’ he protested. ‘Really. I thought all the bad publicity would reflect on you. I’ve only ever thought of your happiness.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ she said, ‘and you know it. Were you thinking of my happiness when you broke up my engagement?’

‘He wasn’t worth it,’ Sharland said. ‘ He wasn’t good enough for you. If he’d cared for you it wouldn’t have been possible to buy him off.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘ I don’t suppose he was much good, but that’s not why you did it, is it, Dad? You sent him to the other side of the world to save your bloody business. Don’t expect me to thank you for that.’

There was another hostile silence.

‘I’m afraid I’m a little confused,’ Molly said. ‘I don’t want to interfere, but perhaps you could explain …’

‘Go on,’ Grace said bitterly. ‘Why don’t you do that, Dad? I could do with some explanation myself.’

He sat still for a moment and then started speaking. His voice was detached and formal. He might have been presenting a report to shareholders.

‘At the end of the eighties the company decided that it needed a new image,’ he said. ‘We were known for quality but there was a danger, we felt, that as our customers got older we would lose a share of a potential growing market. Younger people were more affluent during that time of boom and we needed to attract them and still maintain our reputation for quality. We employed a new designer, Cathy Morrissey. Her work was bold and innovative. Perhaps even more importantly her husband was a famous conservationist and her name had just the image we wanted. It represented concern for the environment, value for money, commitment to our customers. The new range was successful right from the start.’

He paused and collected his thoughts. ‘In 1989 we decided to take the concept further and a major sponsorship deal with one of the big wildlife charities was arranged. It was heavily promoted. There was a television and poster campaign. Again Cathy designed the clothes in the new range.’

He looked at Molly. ‘This is all background to the incident which Grace thinks I should make public but it explains why we took it so seriously at the time. We had invested thousands of pounds in advertising and donations to wildlife charities in promoting Mardon Wools as a concerned and environmentally sensitive company.’

‘Yes,’ Molly said. ‘I see that.’

‘Then there was an unfortunate accident,’ he said. ‘An individual error led to a quantity of degreasing agent being released into the river. The timing could not have been worse. We had just signed a new contract with the International Wildlife Fund. Exposure would not only have been an embarrassment to us, but to them.’

‘Did they ever know about the pollution?’ Molly asked.

‘Of course not,’ he said, shocked. ‘What use would there be in telling them?’

‘Besides,’ Grace added, ‘they might have pulled out of the deal, mightn’t they? That would never have done. Someone could have started asking why.’

He seemed annoyed by the interruption and returned to his lecture. ‘The timing was unfortunate for a second reason. It coincided with water privatization. The press was full of scare stories that the NRA would not be able to regulate the industry adequately. Any story of pollution would have been headline news. Our claim to be an environmentally friendly company would have made us an even greater target.’

‘I understand that,’ Molly said. ‘ What did you do about the spill?’

‘Nothing at first,’ Sharland said. ‘Phil Cairns, our managing director, made sure that the leak into the river was stopped as soon as we discovered what was going on. He’s a sound man, Phil. And we tried to limit the news of it to as few people in the works as possible. But none of us thought it would cause much damage.’

‘Only there was damage, wasn’t there, Dad?’ Grace said. ‘And it couldn’t have been worse. It wasn’t just a few fish floating to the surface. Nothing as unobtrusive as that. It was the famous Mardon swans. And perhaps you know, Mrs Palmer-Jones, that the swan’s embroidered on every garment that leaves the factory, and when the punters come in their coaches to look round the works it’s the swans that they really want to see. So it was bloody embarrassing all round.’

‘It was dreadful,’ Sharland said. ‘Not just embarrassing. I hated to see the swans like that, in such distress. I was as moved as everyone else. But by that time the damage had been done. It would have done nothing to save the swans to make our responsibility public.’

‘You must have known you’d be found out eventually,’ Molly said quietly.

‘No,’ he said. ‘ Perhaps it was naive but really I never thought we’d be discovered. I should have known, I suppose, that the NRA would have sophisticated sampling techniques though it was a new body and we didn’t know how it would operate. No, I thought if we kept our heads down, we’d get away with it. There’d been an incident the month before when the cooking oil had been blamed. I hoped, I suppose, that no one would look any further than that.’

‘But Nick looked further than that, didn’t he, Dad?’ Grace said. ‘Nick, the comprehensive boy who you’d never had a good word for. He tested the river water and found traces of TCE – twice the amount considered safe for human consumption. And then he came to the factory and in a bore hole there he found massive readings.’

‘What happened then?’ Molly asked.

‘Lineham came to the factory and spoke to Phil Cairns,’ Sharland said. ‘ He wanted to check that we’d stopped the leak. It wasn’t easy for Phil. He’s well known locally as something of a conservationist. If the thing had been made public it would have been a personal embarrassment for him besides the damage to the company.’

‘So that’s why you did it, Dad, is it?’ Grace said, her voice loaded with sarcasm. ‘ Out of the kindness of your heart. To stop poor old Phil Cairns being publicly humiliated. Nothing to do, I suppose, with profit, with selling more over-priced sweaters.’

‘The factory employs more than a hundred people,’ he said, provoked at last to anger. ‘I had a responsibility to them too. The town’s not as prosperous as it was. Where would they all find work?’

‘What
did
you do?’ Molly asked.

‘I had the lad in and talked to him,’ Sharland said. ‘It wasn’t hard to make him see sense. Grace had told me that he’d been approached by those people in Africa and he was keen on the idea of working there. She thought it was love that kept him here …’ His sarcasm matched hers. ‘But love had nothing to do with it. He was a working-class lad with no security behind him. Bright, but even graduates aren’t guaranteed a job these days. He didn’t want to leave the NRA with no money to fall back on.’