Peter Robinson - Before the poison

‘Animals?’

‘Yes. They produced cattle cakes doctored with anthrax. They were going to drop them over Germany to poison the food supply.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Us, I mean.’

‘Good Lord. That’s crazy. And terrible.’

‘As it turned out, we discovered that cattle are suspicious of new types of food and unlikely to take the bait, so we scrapped that plan. Anyway, there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth at the Brotherton farm. It was dealt with very quickly by the military and hushed up. It never spread beyond the one farm, which is almost unheard of in foot-and-mouth.’

‘How could they get to it that quickly?’

‘They couldn’t unless they knew it had happened.’

‘So you think they caused it?’

‘It seems a logical explanation. And I’m not even sure it was foot-and-mouth. It could have been anthrax. That could also have been what killed Nat Bunting. But that’s just speculation on my part.’

‘What else could have happened to him?’

I shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe they actually injected him with anthrax or dysentery and he died, like Ronald Maddison did in 1953 in the sarin experiments. They may even have been playing around with antidotes, vaccinations against these diseases they thought the Nazis were going to unleash. Or maybe, as I said, he came into contact with something by accident, got too close, and they simply buried the body under the lime kiln.’

‘And put quicklime on it?’

‘There wouldn’t be much point. Most people have the wrong idea about using quicklime to get rid of bodies. Quicklime burns the skin it comes into contact with, yes, if you add water, but afterwards it tends to dry out the tissues and cause mummification. Hardly getting rid of the evidence! Anyway, they used it on Brotherton’s cows, mostly because it would kill anthrax spores or foot-and-mouth, but I should imagine the lime kiln was just a handy place to hide a body. As for the full story, what Nat was doing up there, what really happened to him, I doubt we’ll ever know it. I do know that Nat was apparently obsessed with joining up, but no one would have him because of his physical and mental handicaps. Maybe he saw the unit at Kilnsgate and went to ask if he could join up with them. Maybe they had a place for him. I don’t like to think they simply plucked people out of the landscape and shot them full of dysentery or typhus, but if they did, then Nat Bunting was probably a safe bet. There wouldn’t be much of a hue and cry over him. It didn’t even make the papers.’

‘But that’s terrible.’

‘Terrible things happen in war. Look at what Grace witnessed at the chateau in Normandy and, later, in the camps. Look at some of the stories that have come out about Japanese and German medical experiments on POWs and concentration camp victims. Do you think we were that much better?’

‘I do like to think so. Yes. To be honest, it’s sickening to think we were brought down to that level, too. I mean, trying to give cows anthrax or foot-and-mouth is one thing, but…’

‘I’m not saying that was the case. Just that it’s possible. I certainly think they were responsible for the foot-and-mouth outbreak, or whatever it was, at Brotherton’s farm – it doesn’t make any sense otherwise – and however he met his end, Nat Bunting certainly didn’t bury himself. I suppose it’s possible that he got sick and crawled off to die there and his body just got covered up by the elements over time.’

‘Surely there must have been others involved in these experiments?’

‘Probably. Volunteers, or prisoners from the nearby POW camp. But Nat was the one who died, and for whatever reasons nobody else spoke out.’

‘Couldn’t it just have been some wandering maniac?’

‘How many of those are there? Realistically? Besides, Kilnsgate, including the lime kiln, was cordoned off by barbed wire and armed guards when it happened. Wilf said the kids found a gap, which may have been how Nat got in, too, but a wandering maniac as well?’

Heather ran her finger around the rim of her wineglass. ‘Does this have anything to do with what happened later? With Grace Fox and her husband?’

‘I think it does,’ I said.

‘Tell me.’

‘Over dinner.’ I got up to check on the lasagne. It was done and only needed to rest for ten minutes while I made the salad.

‘Bastard,’ Heather said, following me into the kitchen. ‘Making me wait like this.’

She leaned back against the fridge, and I had to open the door to take out the lettuce. As I approached, she didn’t move, just cocked her head sideways and pouted at me. I flashed back on that first dinner here, with Derek and Charlotte, how Heather had got drunk and almost made a pass in exactly the same place. This time I leaned forward and kissed her, and she responded. A lot had changed. I gently eased her out of the way and opened the fridge. ‘You don’t have to bug me while I’m putting dinner together, you know,’ I said. ‘You’re perfectly welcome to go and sit in front of the fire, sip your wine, listen to the music and contemplate life.’

‘Well, I can see exactly how much you missed me,’ Heather said, with a mock pout, and left the kitchen.

It didn’t take me long to throw the salad together, and by then the lasagne was ready to cut and serve. I carried the plates through to the dining-room table and Heather came up to join me. The wine and fresh glasses were already there. I poured us each another glass. Susan Graham was singing ‘ Les Nuits d’Ete ’ in the background. It all made for a very sensual atmosphere.

‘Now will you please tell me what you found out?’ Heather said. ‘I promise I’ll just eat my dinner and I won’t interrupt. Promise.’ She cut off a corner of lasagne and put it in her mouth.

‘I found Billy Strang easily enough,’ I said. ‘Fit as a fiddle, he seems. As a matter of fact, he’d just come back from playing tennis. Apparently there’s a young widow at the club he’s chasing.’

‘A dirty old man, then?’

‘No more than I am. Much older, though.’

Heather laughed. ‘And was it all worthwhile? Leaving me here in freezing Yorkshire while you went gallivanting off to parts exotic? And warm.’

I thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘I wasn’t sure for a while – it seemed to knock all my theories for six – but yes, I think it was.’ I told her about the Porton Down connection and what Billy had said about seeing Ernest Fox there, the letter, the job offer and all.

When I had come to the end of that part of the story, Heather paused and said, ‘I see what you mean about it all tying together with Kilnsgate during the war, in a way, though there was no real practical connection, was there?’

‘Except for Ernest’s involvement,’ I said. ‘I should imagine Grace heard rumours, had her suspicions. She was very strong on war crimes. I remember Sam Porter telling me how she got along with Laura Knight like a house on fire. That was the artist who painted a series of scenes from the Nuremberg trials. Anyway, Grace would probably have heard about Nat Bunting and the foot-and-mouth, most likely from Hetty, though she probably didn’t put two and two together until she talked to Billy.’

‘So not only does she have to leave her lover, but her husband’s going off to make nerve gas and give people anthrax. Is that why she did it?’

‘That was the first thing I thought when I heard Billy’s story. It changed all my suppositions.’

‘Yes, I remember that crazy theory you dreamed up about Ernest Fox being a paedophile.’

I recalled how I had felt the moment after I had expounded my paedophile theory to Billy Strang, and he had told me how far off beam it was. The ground had opened up under my feet. ‘Even though I was wrong, it wasn’t any more crazy than the story about him going to Porton Down to work on chemical weapons,’ I said. ‘It was certainly a possibility worth considering. I knew there was something. I was just searching for some sort of revelation about Ernest Fox, something that would make Grace need to kill him and not end up being entirely unsympathetic. You have to admit, if he were a paedophile, that would certainly be the case. Perhaps if he were going to be a merchant of death, it would be, too. It made sense that Billy had come back to see Grace and tell her something important like that.’