Deception (7 page)

He had almost reached the clearing where he would leave the towpath to rejoin the road when he suddenly had the unpleasant feeling that he was not alone. At first it was only a feeling, although it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but then he heard rustling sounds coming from the hedgerow on the far side of the clearing. He kept moving, and then he was sure he heard someone say, ‘Ssh!’

In a way it was a relief to hear it. It told him that he was not the target of muggers or whoever was hiding there. They seemed to be waiting for him to pass, hoping to remain undetected. As he walked past and left the clearing to rejoin the road he caught a whiff of . . . something in the air. What was it? Something ordinary, an everyday substance that he couldn’t put a name to because it was out of context, then he realised what it was. It was petrol!

In an instant he knew what was going on. The people hiding in the hedgerow were lurking at the eastern edge of Peat Ridge Farm. It was obviously their intention to set fire to the GM crop growing there. He hurried down the road to his house and called the police before he did anything else. His wife, Ann, came out into the hall and looked at him as if her were mad. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

‘
It’s been quite an evening all in all,’ he replied, putting down the phone and trying to affect a smile. ‘I’ll have to dress this,’ he said, holding up the finger with the bloodstained hankie round it. ‘There’s going to be an attack on Ronald Lane’s place. There are some people hiding in a ditch up by the canal. They’ve got petrol with them.’

‘
Looks like you came to blows with them.’

‘
No, a rat did this,’ said Binnie. ‘This one.’ He held up the plastic bag containing the dead rat. ‘Pop it in the fridge, will you? There’s a love.’

‘
My God, it was never like this on, All Creatures Great and Small,’ said his wife.

‘
Whatever happened to cuddly kittens and robins with broken wings?’

‘
Maybe I should give Ronald Lane a call as well,’ said Binnie as an afterthought. ‘The police might not get there in time. As if to prove him wrong, the sound of a police siren reached them from the distance. ‘I’ll do it anyway’ said Binnie. ‘Lane should be aware of what’s going on. How was your sister, by the way?’

‘
Fine,’ replied Binnie’s bemused wife, as she watched him disappear out the door into the hall again. ‘She turned green and burst into flames last Thursday.’

‘
Good,’ came the reply from the hall as a preoccupied Binnie picked up the phone and dialled Lane’s number. He had no sooner passed on the warning to Lane than he thought he’d better tell Tom Rafferty as well. He would be wondering what all the commotion was about.

The male voice that answered did not belong to Rafferty. ‘Who wants him?’

‘
James Binnie, the vet.’

Rafferty came on the line and Binnie told him what was happening. ‘I think the police are going to get there on time,’ he said.

‘
Pity,’ said Rafferty.

‘
It’s about time you two resolved your differences,’ lectured Binnie. ‘The pair of you have split the village.’

‘
I was going to call you in the morning,’ said Rafferty ignoring what Binnie had said. ‘Khan’s not very well. I’d like you to take a look at him.’

‘
What’s the matter with him this time?’

‘
His behaviour’s getting worse,’ replied Rafferty. ‘He’s getting really vicious, even to me, if you know what I mean. He damn nearly took my hand off when I put down his food bowl this morning.’

Binnie smiled. ‘Khan has never exactly been Lassie, has he Tom?’ he said.

‘
I know he’s always been a bit of a handful, like,’ admitted Rafferty, ‘but Rotweilers aren’t meant to be lapdogs, are they? And it’s different now. He’s getting worse, I know he is.’

‘
He’s probably getting old and crotchety like the rest of us Tom. But no matter, I’ll pop over and take a look at him tomorrow. Good night.’

A man’s voice said something in the background that Binnie couldn’t quite make out – something about having had long enough, he thought - and the phone clattered down and went dead. Binnie looked at the receiver in his hand and said, ‘And good night to you, sweet prince.’

Binnie returned to the living room and was about to start explaining to his wife what had been going on when an explosion rent the air. They both rushed outside and saw an orange glow to the southwest. ‘There goes the petrol,’ said Binnie. ‘They must be destroying the evidence: they’ve not had time to pour it on Lane’s crop.’

I just hope no one got hurt,’ said Ann Binnie.

‘
Amen to that,’ said Binnie.

FOUR

Steven drove up to Scotland on Friday. The plan was to spend Saturday with Jenny and the others and then drive over to Blackbridge on Sunday where he would take a look around and maybe speak to a few people before travelling home again. When Saturday dawned with clear blue skies and unbroken sunshine, Steven persuaded Sue to let him take not only Jenny, but her children too, away for the day so that she and her husband could have some time to themselves – a pretty rare event these days. They could go up to Glasgow perhaps, do some shopping and have lunch somewhere nice.

Sue agreed, but only after insisting that she would make up a picnic for them and making sure that Steven had a note of her mobile phone number just in case anything went wrong. The good weather dictated he should take the three children off down the Solway coast where they could build sand castles, dig tunnels and do the things that families did at the beach.

He listened to the excited chatter of the children in the back of the car on the way down and was pleased to hear that Jenny had been accepted by the other two as their sister, the continual fighting testified to that. He himself was always careful to bring presents for all three children when he came to visit. He didn’t want to be the kind of father to Jenny who just appeared from time to time bearing gifts while opting out of all the hard parts of parenthood but to a certain extent this was what was happening and events were being dictated by circumstances. While this was the case, he would try to be a part – a pleasant one, of all three children’s lives. As for the future, he couldn’t see that far ahead. In fact, he couldn’t see much further than tomorrow morning when he would drive up to Blackbridge and start working again.

When evening came and the tide finally swept in to cover the sand pies and the ornate castle they had spent so long building, Steven and the three children stood in a line and watched in silence. A moment came when Jenny looked up at him and a lump came to his throat when he saw the sadness in her eyes. For a moment, just a fleeting moment, they were Lisa’s eyes. ‘Cheer up,’ he said softly. ‘There will be other days. I promise.’

Twenty minutes into the journey home and all three children fell asleep. Steven switched on the radio but kept it low. He managed to catch the news on Radio Scotland and heard the word, Blackbridge, mentioned. It sounded loud because he was sensitised to it after reading about it in the file he’d gone through so thoroughly. It was like hearing your own name spoken in a crowded room. Turning up the volume a little, he took in a report on an abortive attempt to damage the experimental crop on Peat Ridge Farm. Although the police had got there on time to prevent the planned arson attack, and no charges had subsequently been made, feelings were running high in the village and the farm owner had now decided to go ahead with plans to call in a private security firm.

There followed an interview with Ronald Lane, who spoke with a South African accent and insisted that the rule of law must be upheld. An unfortunate accent for that kind of assertion, thought Steven. This was followed by a ‘balancing’ interview featuring an inarticulate ramble from a villager about ‘them’ not really knowing if things were safe or not. The report ended and Steven turned off the radio. He adjusted his rear view mirror momentarily to take a look at the three in the back. They looked like sleeping cherubs, cheeks all rosy from their day in the sunshine.

Steven left at ten next morning amidst much waving and promises to be back soon but there was a last minute hitch when Robin decided that he must have left one of his toy spacemen in Steven’s car. A quick search of the back uncovered the missing astronaut, trapped down the back of the rear seat squab where his ray gun had been of little use. The sky grew progressively darker as he headed north and it started raining just after eleven, turning the dual carriageway into a series of spray curtains thrown up by heavy lorries. By twelve o’clock, when he entered Blackbridge, it was coming down in torrents.

Maybe it was the darkness or maybe it was the fact that it was raining heavily but Steven took an immediate dislike to the place. It seemed to have very little in the way of redeeming features; an ugly little village full of ugly houses in the middle of nowhere, although, in reality, it wasn’t that far from the capital. He felt it was the sort of place you would normally splash through in the car without even noticing. Two sweeps of the wipers and it would be gone.

Steven toured the streets slowly, taking in as much as he could and generally orientating himself with the actuality of what he’d studied on the map. He kept the said map sat on the seat beside him, referring to it from time to time to identify things. Finally he drove up the hill that separated Peat Ridge Farm from Crawhill Farm, crossing the bridge over the canal near the top where he thought about the three boys who’d had the canal adventure.

At the top of the road, he turned off into the track that would lead up to Peat Ridge Farm, just with the intention of turning his car round. Two men in yellow waterproofs stepped out in front of him. One had an Alsatian dog on a short lead, the other a mobile phone in his hand. Steven opened the car window, getting wet in the process.

‘
What’s your business?’ rasped the one with the phone.

‘
Just turning my car,’ replied Steven.

‘
Don’t bloody do it here in future,’ snapped the man.

‘
Gotcha,’ smiled Steven, noting the logo on the man’s poncho that said he belonged to, Sector 1 Security. He drove back down to the village. The rain was keeping everyone off the streets. He wasn’t going to learn anything by walking around today. He’d have to do his snooping indoors. That gave him a choice of two places. There was a grim looking pub at the East End of Main Street called the Castle Tavern and there was a small white-painted hotel in the middle called, The Blackbridge Arms.

The hotel had a number of official looking cars parked outside it so Steven concluded that this was where anyone from MAFF or the Scottish Executive would be. He was impressed that they were working on a Sunday, or maybe the English contingent was actually staying there, he considered. He knew that the risk of meeting anyone he knew or of seeing anyone that he recognised would be small but he decided not to take it anyway. Macmillan had said that this was to be an unofficial look around so he opted instead for the pub.

The Castle Tavern was as ugly and dirty on the inside as it was on the outside but it seemed popular: in fact, on a Sunday afternoon, it was crowded. His immediate thought on entering was that the atmosphere seemed positively aggressive but then he reminded himself that a Scots accent could make the Lord’s Prayer sound aggressive. There were simply a lot of men in the room, all of them apparently talking at the same time.

As he entered, he took in the layout of the place, noting that there were tables and chairs to the left of the door, all occupied and with several domino games in progress. There were two pool tables off to the right and a bank of electronic games machines sited along the long wall behind them; they were adding electronic noise to the general cacophony.

One of the men at the pool table turned as Steven entered and said in a deliberately loud voice, ‘Fuck, here’s another one o’ them.’ It made his friends laugh. It made Steven wonder what he was supposed to be. He made his way to the bar counter and saw the barman deliberately adopt a neutral expression. He asked for a beer and was served and charged without a word being exchanged.

Steven took a sip of his beer and looked about him, observing the beer slops on the plastic bar top, the uncleared tables, the thick blue tobacco fug in the air and the ring of cigarette butts on the floor around the bar. He heard the word ‘fuck’ so many times in its various forms in the first few minutes that he was reminded of an assertion in some recent radio programme that swearing was so much on the increase that soon all other words in the English language would become extinct. ‘Fuck’ would be the only word left for communication purposes. Information and ideas would be exchanged through the use of different inflections on it. The suggestion was being given a serious try-out by Sunday lunchtime drinkers in Blackbridge.

‘
So, what paper are
you
with?’ asked a voice at his elbow.

Steven turned to find a short man with ginger hair and a moustache standing there. ‘I’m not,’ he replied. ‘I’m not a journalist.’

‘
Sorry, I thought you must be one of the English stringers,’ said the man. ‘I’m Alex McColl, by the way. I’m covering the attack on the GM crop story for the Clarion.’

‘
I heard there had been some kind of trouble,’ said Steven. ‘It was on the car radio.’