Ken McClure - Crisis

The newcomers were all laughing at something but the smile faded from Sproat’s face when he saw Bannerman sitting there. He detached himself from the party and came over.

‘I didn’t expect to find you here Doctor,’ he said.

‘I fancied a change,’ replied Bannerman, evenly.

‘How is your investigation going?’

‘It’s not really an investigation,’ replied Bannerman. ‘‘I’m just checking to see if anything was overlooked at the time.’

‘Who is your friend, John?’ asked a voice with a pronounced accent.

‘This is Dr Bannerman, Joop,’ replied Sproat. ‘He’s from the Medical Research Council. He’s looking into the deaths of my workers.’

‘Won’t you join us, Doctor?’ asked the man with the accent.

“Thank you but I’ve just eaten,’ replied Bannerman, looking at the smiling man with the short, cropped fair hair. Bannerman thought him to be in his early fifties, although he looked younger at first glance because of his good teeth and a smooth, slightly tanned skin. It was a complexion he associated with wealth.

‘Just for a drink perhaps?’

‘All right, thank you,’ replied Bannerman, and he got up to join the others.

‘I’m Joop van Gelder,’ said the smiling man, getting up to shake Bannerman’s hand and bring another seat for him. Bannerman was introduced to the others in turn. Two of the remaining men were Dutch; the other three local farmers and land-owners.

That was a terrible business at Inverladdie,’ said van Gelder. ‘Meningitis seems to be on the increase these days.’

‘I think Dr Bannerman believes my sheep killed them,’ interrupted Sproat. There was an embarrassing pause before the others laughed.

‘Surely not?’ said van Gelder, who hadn’t joined in the laughter.

The truth is that we don’t know where the bug came from Mr van Gelder, something my profession is always reluctant to admit. In the end we will probably call it a virus infection; we usually do in these cases, and then the public thinks how clever we are.’

The men laughed again and this time van Gelder joined them. ‘How refreshing to find a doctor who doesn’t take himself too seriously,’ he said. ‘We must have another drink.’

Bannerman declined this time, saying that he had to be going and that they must all be hungry. He wouldn’t delay them any longer. ‘I recommend the fish,’ he said, getting up from the table.

“Then I will have it on your recommendation,’ said van Gelder, getting up and shaking Bannerman’s hand again. ‘Nice to have met you Doctor.’

Bannerman turned to Sproat and asked, ‘If it’s all right with you, I’d like to visit Inverladdie again tomorrow?’

‘You’re welcome,’ said Sproat.

Bannerman had a night cap back in the bar of his hotel. The quarry worker he had met on the previous evening was sitting at the counter and he chatted to him for a while before going upstairs. He looked at his watch and dithered for a moment before deciding to phone Shona MacLean. She replied after the third ring and sounded sleepy.

‘Sorry, did I wake you?’

‘Oh it’s you!’ exclaimed Shona.

‘I thought I’d better check that you didn’t have any problems with the police?’

‘No, not at all. I called them when you left and told them about finding Lawrence’s body at the foot of the cliffs. They arranged for it to be taken back to the mainland.’

They treated it as an accident?’

‘I think so.’

‘‘I’ve told the people in London that it wasn’t.’

‘Good,’ said Shona. ‘He didn’t deserve to die like that. How is the investigation going?’

‘All right, I suppose,’ said Bannerman. ‘I had a talk with the local vet who seemed. thick.’

‘Thick?’

‘The more I think about it the curiouser it becomes. I’m the second investigator from the MRC who has been up here to ask him questions about the Scrapie outbreak at Inverladdie Farm where the men died and he still hasn’t twigged to what we’re getting at.’

‘Maybe he’s being deliberately obtuse?’

‘But why?’

‘Can’t help you there,’ said Shona.

The local GP was quick enough to figure it out. He’s a wily old bird. I liked him a lot. I think he twigged to some kind of Scrapie involvement from the first time he was called out to the patients.’

‘What’s the next move?’

Tomorrow I’m going to examine the land between Inverladdie Farm and the nuclear power station, to see if I can find any trace of a radiation leak having occurred.’

That sounds dangerous.’

‘It only sounds dangerous,’ said Bannerman. ‘Actually it involves little more than going for a walk with a torch-like thing in your hand.’

‘All the same, I think you should be very careful.’

‘‘I will,’ said Bannerman.

‘You will let me know how you get on?’

‘If you want me to,’ said Bannerman.

‘‘I do,’ said Shona.

Bannerman lay back on the pillow and reflected on how nice it had been to talk to Shona again and how good it was to know that they would be in touch again. All in all it hadn’t been a bad day. On the bedside table lay the Geiger counter that Angus MacLeod had loaned him for examining the boundary area tomorrow. He moved it slightly to one side and switched out the light. The room wasn’t completely in darkness; light from a street lamp across the way made patterns on the ceiling as it shone through the waving branches of a tree outside the window. He thought about Shona’s plea that he should be careful, and a cloud crossed his mind as he remembered the broken body of Lawrence Gill lying on the rocks.

Bannerman drove the Sierra as far up the Inverladdie Farm track as possible and then parked it out of the way of any vehicle that might want to pass. He had hoped for good weather but the fates had other ideas. There was a strong westerly wind and the sky promised rain in the not too distant future. Bannerman changed his shoes for his climbing boots and zipped himself into his shell jacket and waterproof trousers, before protecting his face with a woollen balaclava and pulling up his hood. He collected the rucksack containing MacLeod’s Geiger counter from the boot, before locking up the car and setting off up the east side of the glen. He was breathing hard by the time he reached the head of the glen and could see the power station away to his right.

Sproat had been correct about the terrain on this side of the glen. The ground fell away steeply and was riddled with cracks, gulleys and peat bog. It looked as if at some time in the past the ground had breathed deeply and caused a general upheaval in the landscape. This was not the kind of place to break an ankle in, he reminded himself as he went over slightly on his left one. He was going downhill but the effort required seemed greater than on the climb up the glen.

Although the power station was probably not more than a mile away, as the crow flew, the need for constant detour and climbing down into and up out of craters meant that Bannerman had covered nearly three times that distance before he reached the area around the perimeter fence. After a break of a few minutes to get his breath back, he had a cigarette in the shelter of a large rock before starting out to follow the line of the fence down to the railway track and beyond to the sea where he planned to begin his examination of the ground.

He got out the Geiger counter from his rucksack and checked the condition of its battery, despite having inserted a new one that morning. He turned the sensitivity switch on the side to B-CHECK. The needle rose well past the red minimum mark, so he turned the switch to its most sensitive setting to start a rough scan of the area. With his back to the sea, he crossed the single-track railway line leading to the quarry and began to walk slowly back up the line of the fence. He held the sensor in front of him and swung it slowly backwards and forwards to cover as wide an area as possible.