Ken McClure - Deception

‘I got seriously fed up banging my head against a brick wall. Getting the knickers off a nun would be easier than getting information out of that lot. The beer’s cheaper here too.’

A newcomer arrived at the bar beside them. ‘Bloody hell, it’s raining cats and dogs out there,’ a tall, gangling man complained, shaking the water from his thatch of dark hair and brushing it from the shoulders of his Berghaus jacket. Steven thought he spoke with an English accent but further exposure to it said it was educated Scots.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t young Jamie Brown of, The Scotsman,’ said McColl. ‘The paper for people who need a tyre lever to open their arse in the morning. Someone else who’s lost his way in the storm, I’ll be bound.’

‘Hello McColl,’ replied Brown pleasantly. ‘I suppose you’re here running a competition to find out if you’ve any readers who can actually spell, “genetically modified”. Wins a trip to Disneyland, does it?’

‘Ho, very droll,’ replied McColl. ‘That kind of joke in your column could well push your circulation up into double figures.’

‘In which case I will buy some proper toilet paper and stop using copies of the Clarion.’

‘Well, enough of this jolly banter,’ said McColl, buttoning up his jacket. ‘I’m off to see if I can coax a few quotes out of Thomas Rafferty, the people’s champion. They tell me he’s a piss artist so it shouldn’t be too difficult with a bottle of malt in my pocket.’

‘Good luck,’ said Brown sourly. ‘I’ve just come from there. That’s how I got soaked. I’ve been arguing with his minders for the last half hour.’

‘Minders?’ exclaimed McColl. ‘What the hell does Rafferty need minders for? It’s an organic farm he’s supposed to be setting up not a Swiss bank.’

Brown shrugged. ‘Good question, but there were two men in suits at Crawhill, insisting that, “Mr Rafferty had nothing to say to the press”.’

McColl left to go try his luck, leaving Steven and Brown at the bar. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ Steven offered.

‘Civil of you. I’ll have a whisky if that’s all right.’

Steven ordered the drink and watched Brown add a little water to it from a jug on the bar. The water in the jug made him think of the canal.

‘You’re English,’ said Brown. ‘Welcome to Blackbridge... twinned with Auschwitz,’ he whispered quietly.

‘It’s not exactly pretty, is it?’ answered Steven.

‘West Lothian does these places really well,’ said Brown. ‘It has lots of them.’

Steven said, ‘Your colleague was just bemoaning the fact that this GM business wasn’t much of a story.’

‘Well, it’s not exactly new, is it? It’s been happening all over the place down south but I suppose we have to cover it up here when it happens on our own doorstep.’ Brown looked about him before saying, sotto voce , ‘Mind you, I tend to think a few foreign elements getting into the gene pool round here might be a welcome development. Half these buggers look like they should be playing the banjo on some bridge.’

Steven hid a smile. He thought the barman might have heard but either didn’t understand or was pretending not to.

An argument at one of the tables was gathering momentum. Voices were getting louder by the second. The barman tried, ‘Order please, gentlemen!’ but to no avail. The table was now the centre of attention.

‘Ah’m tellin’ you, Lane has a perfect right to protect his property, any way he chooses,’ said one man loudly.

‘An’ ah’m tellin’ you, we’re all breathin’ in that GM crap he’s growin’ up there on Peat Ridge. He can bring in a’ the security guards he wants but it’s still no’ goin’ tae stop us torchin’ that shit!’

‘Christ, the man’s got a license. There’s nothin’ wrang wi’ the stuff he’s growin’ He wouldn’t have got the license if there was!’

‘What’s the bugger doin’ back here anyway? South African tosser,’ interjected another loud voice.

‘He was bloody born here! He’s got every right to be here! It was his faither’s place!’

‘But it was never good enough for mister university high and mighty while his old man was alive. He pissed off and left the old guy to work the place on his own ‘til it killed him. He should have fuckin’ stayed away.’

‘Gus is right,’ said yet another new voice. ‘Nobody seems to know what that bugger is growin’ up there and lots of us have got young kids. Christ knows what a’ they genes floatin’ aboot are doin’ tae them.’

‘Jesus! It’s oilseed rape, he’s growin’. You can see that for yersels. The only difference is that it’s resistant tae weed killers so it’s easier tae get a bigger yield. ’

‘So the bugger says.’

‘Even the government are no’ convinced o’ that.’

Steven and Brown watched and listened until one of the men in the group surrounding the main protagonists nudged those on either side of him and nodded in the direction of the bar. It was obvious he was warning them of the presence of strangers.

‘Woops,’ said Brown under his breath, turning away as attention swung towards him and Steven. Steven turned his shoulder a little as well and both men took a sip of their drink. The argument and threats continued but in quieter voices.

‘I might get a story out of this yet,’ murmured Brown. ‘Sounds like Lane’s dogs have arrived.’

‘They have,’ Steven confirmed. ‘I met one on my way here. Sector One Security was holding the lead. Mean anything to you?’

‘I’ve seen them around.’

A few minutes later, a youth, wearing leather jacket and jeans and holding a pool cue sidled across to them and stopped, facing them. Standing legs apart, he brought the cue to the horizontal and held it in both hands at arms’ length across his thighs. He said, ‘I hope you two aren’t thinking of printing anything you’ve heard here today, are you?’

‘Nope, ‘replied Steven quickly and truthfully and with an almost jaunty air. He did it to nullify the air of menace that the youth obviously hoped he was imparting.

‘Shouldn’t think so,’ drawled Brown, matter of factly.

The youth betrayed a look of puzzlement for a moment. He’d got the response he wanted but was finding it strangely unsatisfying. He’d been cheated of something but couldn’t think what it was. He moved off with Steven and Brown watching his back.

‘Marlon Brando,’ said Steven.

‘In, “On the Waterfront”,’ added Brown.

They turned back to their drinks. ‘You didn’t say what you were doing here?’ asked Brown.

‘I’m a civil servant.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Matters concerning the environment,’ said Steven vaguely.

‘Are you one of the people who’s going to decide whether Lane’s crop gets the red card or not?’

‘I’m not important enough to make that kind of decision. What do you think about it all?’ replied Steven.

‘If he’s really growing a crop the company weren’t licensed for then certainly I think a stop should be put to it. There’s no point in having a licensing system if the company’s going to get away with that sort of nonsense. But the trouble is it’s proving really hard to find out if he is or if he isn’t. You can never get anyone in authority to give you a straight answer to a simple question. I got fed up asking the local suits and briefcases so I tried phoning the lab that carried out the analysis, but I hit the same wall. Getting information out of them was like drawing teeth.’

‘If you say absolutely nothing to the press you can never get into trouble,’ said Steven. ‘It’s the way people look after their pensions in the civil service.’

‘Can I quote you on that?’ smiled Brown.