Crisis (19 page)

‘I’ll alert him. I’m sure he has no wish to see this
develop into a media circus.’

‘I’m sure he hasn’t,’ agreed Bannerman with just
the merest hint of sarcasm, thinking about the
cover-up of the radiation leak at Invermaddoch.

As a first step, Bannerman set out to find the vet’s
surgery in Achnagelloch. He hadn’t bothered to ask
at the hotel for directions because he thought the
place small enough for him to find it on his own
and he wanted to take a look at the town. He liked
small towns; he liked their manageable proportions,
the fact that you could see how everything worked and fitted together, unlike big cities which were
anonymous places, their workings hidden inside
bland concrete boxes.

After twenty minutes of searching he admitted
defeat and asked directions from a woman who was
coming out of a shop, carrying bread and milk. The
bell attached to the shop door jangled loudly as she closed it, obliging him to begin his question over
again. ‘I’m looking for Mr Finlay, the vet,’ he said.
‘Can you tell me where his surgery is please?’

The woman looked at Bannerman as if he had arrived from a strange planet. She stared at him so
long without expression that he felt himself become
embarrassed. The smile died on his lips.

‘You’re not from round here,’ said the woman.

‘No I’m not,’ agreed Bannerman, declining to add
details.

‘Finlay lives in the old manse.’

‘The old manse.’

The woman nodded as if this were enough.

‘How do I find the old manse?’ asked Bannerman.

‘Just outside the town,’ said the woman.

This way?’ asked Bannerman, pointing with his finger to the east.

The woman nodded and looked at him as if there
were no other way out of town.

‘
Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.’

The old manse stood about a hundred metres back
from the main road and was hidden from view by
a stone wall which was topped by green lichen. Several yew trees formed a secondary screen and cast a shadow over the house. Bannerman walked
up the drive to the dark building which looked as if
it had been built to the design of a primary-school
class drawing. It was a simple stone box, two storeys
high with regularly placed windows, all the same
size. The door was placed exactly in the middle
and there was a single chimney in the centre of the
roof. Outside, on a semi-circular apron of gravel,
stood a Land Rover and a dark green Jaguar with
a number plate on it that told Bannerman it was as
new as it looked. He paused to admire the gleaming
paintwork and the fat sports tyres. He rang the
doorbell.

The presence of the Land Rover had cheered Bannerman. It suggested that he had caught Finlay
before he set out on his rounds. This was confirmed by a woman who answered the door, eating a piece
of toast. She pressed her hand to her chest and
gave an exaggerated swallow to empty her mouth
before saying, ‘Excuse me, I’m just finishing my
breakfast.’

Bannerman asked if he might speak to Finlay. He
was invited in and shown into a front room, where he stood looking at the pictures on the wall until he
heard someone come into the room behind him.

‘You’re not from round here,’ said the short,
balding man that Bannerman found before him.
He had a fair, ruddy complexion and was running
to fat despite the fact that Bannerman reckoned he
could not have been more than thirty. His lips had a
moist quality about them which Bannerman thought
unpleasant in a man. He wore baggy corduroy
trousers and a navy blue Guernsey sweater.

‘No, I’m not,’ agreed Bannerman, thinking that
the next person to make that observation might well push him over the edge. He announced who he was
and added, ‘‘I’m looking into the deaths of the three
farm workers at Inverladdie.’

‘Most unfortunate,’ said Finlay. ‘Meningitis, I
believe.’

Bannerman nodded. ‘A particularly virulent form,’
he said, ‘hence our interest.’

‘How can I help?’ asked Finlay.

‘I understand that there was an outbreak of
Scrapie
on the farm where the men worked?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ agreed Finlay, quietly. His
expression betrayed the fact that he was trying to
work out the connection.

‘You made the diagnosis in the animals?’

‘Yes … I’m sorry, I don’t see what this has to do
with …’

Bannerman made a dismissive gesture with his
hands and said, ‘At this stage I’m just gathering
together all the facts I can about the dead men’s
lives.’ He added what he hoped was a reassur
ing smile.

‘Again?’ asked Finlay with a suggestion of irrita
tion.

‘
I’m sorry?’
’

‘
A pathologist named Gill came to see me and
asked the same sort of questions. I just don’t see
what the
Scrapie
outbreak has to do with the deaths.’

Bannerman thought it strange that a vet could not
follow such a line of questioning with ease. He had
been prepared to ask for Finlay’s discretion in not
mentioning the possibility of a link between
Scrapie
and the deaths, but now it did not seem necessary.
‘Did you send brain samples from the sheep to the
vet lab?’ he asked.

‘No I didn’t,’ said Finlay.

‘Why not?’ asked Banner-man, as pleasantly as he
could ask that sort of question.

‘Because I didn’t have to. It was quite obvious
what was wrong with the animals. I’ve seen it
before. Apart from that,
Scrapie
is not a notifiable
disease and it costs money to have lab tests done.
The farmers don’t like it.’

Bannerman nodded. ‘What exactly happened to
the carcasses?’

‘They were buried on the farm in a lime pit.’

‘Immediately?’

‘As far as I know.’

‘Why on the farm?’

‘What do you mean, why?’

‘Why do it themselves? Isn’t it more usual to have renderers take carcasses away?’

‘Not any more,’ replied the vet. ‘Firms of renderers
used to pay farmers for diseased carcasses and then
prepare cattle feed from them, but since it was shown
that that was how cows got BSE the government has
put a stop to it. The firms now charge the farmers for
taking the carcasses away. It’s cheaper to dispose of
them themselves.’

‘
Thanks for the information,’ said Bannerman.

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Finlay, coldly.

‘Have there been any further cases of
Scrapie
on
local farms?’ asked Bannerman.

‘None.’

‘None that you’ve heard of?’

‘I keep my ear to the ground. If s hard to keep
a secret in a small community like Achnagelloch.
I would know if there had been any other animal problems.’

‘How about the nuclear power station? Have there
been any problems with that?’

Finlay smiled and said, ‘Of course. Every time a
ewe aborts, a child coughs or a cake fails to rise
in the oven, the station gets the blame. People are people and we all need something to blame for our
misfortunes.’

‘So you haven’t come across any veterinary prob
lems associated with it?’

‘None that I could ascribe to the station with any degree of certainty, but then that’s always the prob
lem with radiation isn’t it? You can’t see it, you can’t
smell it and its effects take some time to show up. Usually by that time you can’t prove it any longer.’

Bannerman sympathized with Finlay’s assess
ment. ‘One last question,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘How do I get to Inverladdie Farm?’

‘Why do you want to go there?’ exclaimed Finlay.

‘I told you. I want to know everything about the
dead men’s lives.’

There doesn’t seem to be much point in wasting
time on a sheep farm when …’

‘I’ve plenty of time, Mr Finlay,’ replied Bannerman,
evenly.

Finlay gave him directions and showed him to
the door.

‘Nice car,’ said Bannerman, referring to the Jaguar.

Finlay nodded and closed the door. Bannerman
traced his finger lovingly along the line of the Jag as
he passed and thought to himself that country vets
must do a lot better than he had ever imagined.

Bannerman had to run the gauntlet of two labrador puppies on his way down the drive. Finlay’s wife,
who had been down to the mail box at the entrance,
tried to control them with one hand while carrying newspapers and mail with the other. He smiled and
made a fuss of them for a few moments before saying
goodbye and walking back to the hotel where his
car was parked in a small courtyard at the back.
When he got there, he found his way barred by
two men dressed in leather aprons; they were
unloading metal beer canisters from a brewery
lorry parked across the entrance. The kegs were
being rolled across the cobbles and down a ramp
to the hotel’s cellar.

‘They won’t be long,’ said the hotel owner, app
earing at the back door of the hotel. ‘Do you want
something while you’re waiting?’

‘Coffee,’ replied Bannerman. He left the car and went inside. He almost immediately regretted his
decision when he was met by a woman armed
with a vacuum cleaner. She was attacking the hall
carpet and his feet had the temerity to be on it. He
side-stepped into the lounge and closed the glass
door in a vain attempt to escape the noise. A few
minutes later, coffee appeared and the owner asked
what his plans were for the day.

‘I’m going up to Inverladdie Farm,’ replied
Bannerman. ‘After that
I’m
going to try having
a chat with the local GP.’

‘Angus MacLeod? A fine man,’ said the hotelier.
‘Some would say he’s getting a bit long in the tooth for the job, but I’m not one of them. The man has a
wealth of experience. He’s been our doctor for nearly
thirty years now.’

‘Really,’ said Bannerman, putting a possible age
of seventy on the man. In his book, doing the same
thing year in, year out did not amount to ‘a wealth
of experience’ but he kept his thoughts to himself. He finished his coffee and set off for Inverladdie.

There was a contractor’s van parked in front of the
whitewashed farmhouse. It bore the name of an
Inverness firm of heating engineers and, as if to
prove the point, there were several radiators of vary
ing size and a pile of copper piping stacked outside
the door. Next to that was a contractor’s skip piled
high with what looked like bits of old plumbing.

Bannerman picked his way through the jumble
and knocked on the door. There was no answer until
he had knocked a second time. A plump woman
in her early fifties with a shock of hair that could
not make up its mind whether it was fair or grey
appeared at the door; she was drying her hands
on a tea towel. The towel had ‘Great Bridges of
the World’ printed on it. Bannerman recognized the
Forth Bridge near the bottom.