Crisis (45 page)

‘My fiancé, Peter,’ said Morag. ‘We met and fell in
love when I first went up to Scotland with Lawrence.’

Bannerman reckoned that Peter van Gelder had to
be at least ten years younger than Morag and he was
very handsome. ‘Really,’ he said.

‘We didn’t want any of this to happen,’ said Morag,
who was now sobbing. ‘It was a simple accident.
There was a leak of a chemical they use for treating
the quarry stone and it killed a few sheep. It all
stemmed from that, a tragic accident. That’s all it
was. The company would have been forced to close
down if the accident had been made public. There was so much resentment to their success among the
locals. Peter’s father would have been ruined and we
couldn’t have got married as we planned.’

Bannerman looked at Morag and shook his head.
‘Stupid, stupid, stupid,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ snapped Morag.

‘Will you tell her van Gelder, or shall I?’ asked
Bannerman.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said van
Gelder.

Bannerman turned back to Morag and said,
‘You’ve been used. The story about a chemical to
treat stone is rubbish. They’re using the quarry as
a dump for dangerous, illegal chemicals. The one
that killed the sheep workers and Colin Turnbull
was a powerful mutagen developed for biological
warfare.’

‘Tell him it isn’t true!’ demanded Morag.

‘He also murdered Lawrence Gill,’ continued
Bannerman, as he saw all the pieces start to fit.
‘He was the fair-haired man who pretended to be
Gill at Cairnish post office. He even tried to push me off the Tarmachan Ridge and the only person
who knew I was going there was you; I told you on
the phone the morning before I left. You must have
passed on that information to him.’

Bannerman could see by Morag’s expression that
he was right. ‘You were the one who told him where Lawrence Gill was going because you overheard the
conversation on the phone with Shona MacLean.’

‘But Peter just wanted to reason with Lawrence!’
protested Morag. ‘He just wanted a chance to explain
why I had switched the slides.’

‘The slides came from Creutzfeld Jakob patients?’
asked Bannerman.

Morag nodded.

‘Why?’

‘I knew that Lawrence would make the connection
with the official report of
Scrapie
in the sheep. All
the affected sheep had been destroyed so I thought
everyone would be keen to write it off as a freak acci
dent and that would be the end of it. Unfortunately
Lawrence found out about the switch.’

‘How?’

‘He overheard me talking to Peter on the phone.’

Bannerman stared at Morag in silence. ‘And now
Peter is going to kill us,’ he added.

Morag looked bemused. She turned to van Gelder.
‘Tell him this is nonsense,’ she pleaded.

‘I’m afraid the man has a lot more brains than you,
you stupid bitch,’ said van Gelder, matter-of-factly.

Morag looked stunned, as if she couldn’t believe
her ears. ‘But we love each other …’ she said
distantly.

‘Love?’ mocked van Gelder. ‘What do you think I
could possibly see in you, you dried up old bitch?
You were useful and now you are not. It’s as simple
as that.’

Toxic waste is big business Morag,’ said Bannerman.
‘Governments pay through the nose to get rid of it.
It’s an embarrassment and a political liability.’

Morag did not register having heard what
Bannerman had said. She was staring wide-eyed
and unblinking at van Gelder, the man who had just shattered all her dreams with one viciously unkind outburst. Van Gelder held her stare with an amused
smirk on his lips. Bannerman used the opportunity to
move his hands slowly along the bench behind him
until he felt his fingers wrap round the thin, wire bars
of a rat cage. He heard the rat scuttle about inside it
and hoped it wouldn’t go for his fingers.

‘And now the end is near, as Mr Sinatra would
say,’ smiled van Gelder.

‘I did everything for you,’ said Morag in a low
whisper. ‘I lied and cheated. I let you …’

“That was a treat,’ sneered van Gelder.

‘You bastard!’

Van Gelder raised the pistol higher when he
thought that Morag was going to rush at him, and she stopped. ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘But then you always
did have trouble relaxing …’

Bannerman sensed Morag tense beside him. ‘And how do you plan to dispose of our bodies?’ he asked
van Gelder.

‘I’m going to drive you both back up to Achnagelloch. You’ll be buried under a thousand tons of rock
on the next blasting day, along with Turnbull.’

‘Why did Turnbull die?’ asked Bannerman.

‘He was doing some stupid little geological survey
to impress us. Unfortunately he stumbled on to
a cave where that greedy old bastard Sproat had
hidden a pile of dead sheep because he was too mean
to bury them properly. It was Turnbull’s own fault for ignoring the warning signs to keep out of the area. He
must have contaminated himself when he examined
the sheep.’

Morag snatched a scalpel up from the bench and
started to move towards van Gelder. The look in her
eyes said that she was not to be reasoned with.

‘
Put it down!’ commanded van Gelder.

Morag kept moving towards him.

‘Drop it, you stupid bitch!’

The latest insult made Morag raise the scalpel
above her head and lunge at van Gelder. The
Dutchman fired and Morag was jerked backwards
by the impact of the bullet. She collapsed like a
discarded rag doll, a red stain spreading over the front of her white lab coat and an expression of surprise etched on her face.

‘And now you, Doctor,’ said van Gelder.

Bannerman swung the rat cage round and threw it hard at the Dutchman. It caught him on the face and knocked him over backwards, where he hit his head
off the wall and slid to the floor. The cage burst open
when it struck him and the rat was now perching on
his face, sniffing around his mouth and nostrils.

Bannerman saw that van Gelder still had hold of the gun; he was not totally unconscious. He was
groaning and lifted his left hand up lazily to brush the
rat off his face as if it were a playful kitten disturbing
his sleep on a sunny afternoon. Bannerman gambled
on making a bid to get the gun, and failed. He was
still a metre away when van Gelder opened his eyes
and levelled the gun at him. ‘You’ll pay for that,’
he grunted, his eyes red with anger. ‘I’ll blow your
bloody knees off first.’

There were four rat cages on the bench above
where van Gelder lay. Bannerman reached up and shoved the one nearest to him so that it pushed the others off the end and down on to van Gelder. The
Dutchman cursed and struggled to free his gun arm
from the tangle while Bannerman made a lunge for the door. It was locked. He turned to see van Gelder
getting to his feet. A rat was attacking his ankles. He
kicked it across the room.

There were half a dozen animal watering bottles on
the table next to the door. Bannerman started throw
ing them at van Gelder but the Dutchman avoided
them with ease and they smashed harmlessly off the
far wall. Van Gelder raised the gun and Bannerman
closed his eyes. He opened them again when he heard van Gelder let out a scream.

Morag Napier was on her feet behind him and she
had just plunged a full syringe of emulsified sheep brain into van Gelder’s back. Bannerman had never
seen such hatred in anyone’s eyes. It was clear that
hate was the only thing that was keeping Morag
Napier alive. Even as van Gelder hit the floor she kept
pushing the plunger of the syringe into his back.

When the entire contents had been injected into
the prone Dutchman she looked up briefly at
Bannerman and smiled enigmatically. It only lasted
a split second before her eyes glazed over and she
fell backwards to the floor.

Bannerman approached van Gelder’s body cautiously. He wasn’t quite sure whether he was dead
or not. It was possible that Morag had managed to
hit something vital with the needle and kill him or
it may just have been shock that had caused the
Dutchman to pass out. The gun was lying about half
a metre from van Gelder’s right hand. He reached
down slowly to pick it up. His fingers had almost touched the butt when van
Gelder’s hand shot out and clamped Bannerman’s
wrist in a grip of iron. One look at van Gelder
told Bannerman that he was totally deranged. He
deduced that the contents of the syringe must have
been injected directly into his spinal canal, giving the
agent immediate access to his brain. Van Gelder’s
eyes had a quality that filled him with fear. People
in this state could sometimes command superhu
man strength. Bannerman swung his foot round
and thumped it into van Gelder’s chest to pro
vide a firm base to pull his arm free. He did so
with difficulty and staggered backwards as he broke
away.

Van Gelder’s body jerked in muscle spasm as he tried to get to his feet. He writhed and scratched
himself as if plagued by an itch. Bannerman was
pleased to see that he no longer had an interest in the gun, but he backed away as van Gelder’s gaze
settled on him. He was appalled at the sight of the
Dutchman. What had been a handsome man a few minutes before was now a feral monster.

Bannerman’s plan was to circle round the bench
keeping van Gelder coming after him. If he kept
moving in a clockwise direction, as he was doing, he would come back to the spot where the gun lay
on the floor. He reckoned he could pick it up and fire
before the Dutchman reached him.

Van Gelder, or whoever the deranged creature in van Gelder’s body was, grew tired of edging for
wards and made a lunge at Bannerman. Bannerman moved easily out of range but stumbled over one of
the animal cages behind him on the floor. He fell
over backwards and lay spreadeagled and helpless.
Above him, van Gelder loomed into view. He threw
himself at Bannerman.

Bannerman felt his hand touch something metal on
the floor. He brought it round between van Gelder
and himself. It was the scalpel that Morag Napier had tried to attack van Gelder with earlier. The Dutchman
impaled himself on it.

Bannerman had to struggle to free himself from the
dead weight lying on top of him. The first thing he
did when he had finally got to his feet was to rush
to the sink and be sick. He sluiced cold water up
into his face again and again until the horrors of
the last few minutes stopped threatening his sanity.
When he could breathe evenly again he picked up
the telephone and called for help.

Bannerman enjoyed three days of rest and relaxation
with Shona in Edinburgh before Special Branch,
in the shape of Inspector Morris, called on him
again.

The scale of the operation took our breath away,’
admitted Morris. They were bringing the stuff in
by sea to the terminal at Inchmad. Ostensibly they
were loading road stone on to the ships but in reality
they were unloading toxic waste from the ships and
bringing it by rail up to the quarry in containers
disguised as fuel trucks. God knows what we’re
going to do with it all. We’re not even sure if we’ve
found all the underground dumps.’