I took my briefcase with me and walked smartly in through the garden gate. ‘Lovely garden. You’ve done wonders.’she looked up at me and her face softened with pity, but being British she assumed she hadn’t let it show. ‘This must be what—only your second spring? You must have really green fingers.’
Her pleasure eclipsed her curiosity just for a moment. ‘Yes, well, they had let it go to seed rather. We put new soil in and I feed it regularly. Er … I’m sorry, do I—’
‘Gillian Porter. Vandamed personnel.’ I stuck out my hand in that confident manner born of two-hundred-pounds-a-day training courses. ‘We haven’t met. But I know all about you and your husband. Er … you must excuse my face. I was in a car accident recently. Lucky I’m here at all.’
‘Oh, you poor thing. But you mustn’t worry. I hardly noticed it.’
‘Thank you. I’m here to see Mr. Clapton, really. Is he around?’
‘Yes, he’s in the house, reading.’
‘Good. I tried to call but there’s a fault at the exchange, and as I was passing near this way anyway … Well … We’ve started up a new pension leisure scheme, and I thought you’d both like to hear about it. There’s an opening offer of a Mediterranean cruise. Special company rates. Limited places. Mr Ellroy was keen that you and Mr Clapton should have first refusal.’
‘Oh, I say, that sounds wonderful.’
‘How is he, Mrs Clapton?’ I said, dropping my voice to the concerned, confidential level.
She shook her head and the halo of efficient optimism shed a little glitter. ‘Well, you know. Better than he was. But still not his old self. I think it’s affected his confidence as much as his health.’
‘I understand. Well, if I could just check a few details with you before we go in, that way I won’t have to bother him.’ I smiled. So did she. We were getting on famously. But then I was having such a good day I just wanted to share it with everybody.
I pulled out my note pad and jotted everything down. And amid the facts it came so naturally, the odd sizzling little snippet of information. Well, you could see she was a bit lonely really, just her and the garden. They hadn’t been here long enough to make friends. Only fifteen months since the heart attack, and although, as she said, he was better physically, in other ways he was a changed man, keeping himself to himself. Still, they couldn’t grumble. Vandamed had been more than generous. And continued to be so. The pension was really most extraordinary. Above and beyond … and very much appreciated. Of course, it had been as much of a shock to the company as to him. Maurice had been such a healthy man. There had been some heart trouble in the family, but way back and he had always been careful. Liked his food, but watched his diet and had done a fair amount of exercise. Came with the job, really. Being a company vet meant you were always on the move. Especially since the big pig trials started. He’d been involved right from the beginning, overseeing the feed distribution, checking the animals, making sure they were healthy. Tom Shepherd’s right hand man, really. An important job. Quite stressful. Maybe that had been part of the problem.
Of course, the terrible news about Mattie Shepherd and now about Tom hadn’t done his recovery any good. They had been good friends till Shepherd had been promoted to London, just after Maurice’s heart attack. They had worked closely together on the trials and got on well. He used to call him James, after Herriot’s vet. They would go fishing at weekends. And she had sometimes had the little girl over for tea. Didn’t get on so well with the mother. Seemed a bit of an outsider, really. Sweet child though, if a little lonely. They had both missed her since they’d moved.
‘But Dr Shepherd kept in touch, didn’t he?’
‘Oh, yes, yes. He visited Maurice last autumn—October I think it was. Then …’she paused. Well, so would I in her shoes.
‘What about since his daughter’s death? I know he found it difficult to talk to other people. We were quite concerned about him actually, rather hoped he might get in touch with Mr Clapton, just to get it off his chest a bit. Old friends, that kind of thing …’
‘Yes, Well, yes, he did ring. Last week, I believe.’
‘I see. Do you remember when?’
‘No, well, I can’t remember the exact day.’ Interesting, since she clearly could. ‘I mean I answered the phone, but he didn’t want to talk to me. Maurice said he was awfully depressed. He was quite worried about him. I believed he—’
‘Myra?’ the front windows had been open and voices do carry in the spring air. ‘Myra? Who are you chattering to out there?’
Women caught gossiping in the sunshine. And why not? We exchanged a small conspiratorial smile. And then she led me inside.
CHAPTER NINETEEN Positively 4th Street
Given its size the house felt surprisingly poky inside. The back windows of the lounge where Maurice was sitting reading the newspapers looked out on to a rolling garden. More lawn, fewer flowers this time, ringed by fruit trees, but still a lot of work for just one gardener. And inside the room—well, I could waste your time with a lot of description, but if you’re anything like me, now we’re on the move you’ll be impatient for substance rather than scene setting. On the other hand Maurice Clapton may be a late arrival but he sure as hell is an important character and it might help you to know what he looks like.
Not happy to see me, that much was clear immediately. And not as gullible as his wife when it came to the Mediterranean cruise story either. But until she could be prevailed upon to get the tea, we both had to keep up some sort of pretence. Luckily I had come prepared. She padded out to the kitchen clutching a sheaf of brochures with promises of home-made jam and scones. It would only take her ten minutes. I had the time, didn’t I? Well, every plot needs at least one traditional woman to keep the home fires burning. I thanked her and watched her go. Then turned my attention to him.
He was a little older than her, stocky but not fat. And he had the kind of face that might have been called upon to play Father Christmas at children’s parties. Ironic, really. I tried to imagine him and Tom Shepherd sitting in silent companionship by the river-bank waiting for the fish to bite. A friendship built on the carcasses of animals. And later of humans.
We sat staring at each other. Either he already knew everything about me, in which case I didn’t stand a chance, or Vandamed had only told him what he needed to know. From the few trailing threads of the plot I had hold of, my money was on the latter. If he was who I thought he was, it would be important to them to keep him feeling safe and secure. And as far away from the action as possible. I cleared my throat. Come on, Hannah. On with the moustache and dark glasses. It’s just another part of the job, pretending to be people you aren’t. And in this case the better you do it the more satisfaction you’ll get.
I gave him a wry smile. ‘I’m sorry for the pretence, Mr Clapton. But I needed a good excuse. Marion Ellroy sent me.’ I fished out my card and flashed it at him. He glanced at it: ‘Gillian Porter, Security Supervisor, Vandamed’. Looked good. So it should, it had cost enough. ‘I used to work with Marion in Texas. He brought me over just after Mattie Shepherd’s death.’so my accent wasn’t perfect, but a man with his Suffolk drawl probably only had Dallas to go on. He also had his mind on other things. Right from the start he was nervous as a kitten. It was a pleasure to see. ‘It’s just we’ve … er … well, we’ve run into a little trouble with Tom’s estate.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘Apparently the police have found some documents. Nothing serious. But they’re obviously on the look-out for any possible animal rights tie-in and … well, we gather that one of them makes mention of certain problems with the original pig feed.’
‘I thought they said that Tom had cleared everything out of his study before he … before he died.’
‘Yes, well, that’s what we believed. But something seems to have got overlooked. It was dated January last year, I gather. A week or so after you went into hospital. Marion thinks it was probably the draft of some kind of m
emo that never got sent. We haven’t seen it yet, but obviously we’d like to know what it might have said, just to be prepared.’
He snorted. ‘Well, if it’s the feed it’ll be about the dust and the dangers of lung ingestion. But I don’t understand why Tom should have written it then. I mean he told me he talked to Ellroy about all this the day after he saw me in hospital.’
‘Well, they may have got the date wrong. Do you think it might mention you or just the animals?’
‘My Lord, I don’t know. I suppose it could do. But why should he write it at all? I mean by then it had been sorted out. He said Ellroy had promised to authorize the changes in the feed production immediately. That was the only reason that Tom agreed to leave the project and take the London job.’
Inside my shoes my toes were positively curling up with pleasure. I shrugged. ‘You don’t think he might have written it for his own protection, a kind of insurance, in case anything came out later?’
Clapton shook his head. ‘He would have told me. Or sent me a copy, as he did with the other one.’
Brain orgasm. Even more exciting when you can’t show you’re having one. I nodded sagely. ‘Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. In which case we’ve got nothing to worry about.’
I gave him a big smile. Corporate security regained. He, however, was still worried. In fact he looked positively distraught, not a good sign for a man with his heart condition. But did I care?
‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I mean Marion swore to me I wouldn’t be bothered again. That now Tom—well, that that was an end to it.’
‘And so it is.’ I watched his face close down even further. Time for me to change shape. Not as impressive as a morphing video, but a lot cheaper. I stood up and walked to the back windows. ‘You’re going to have a fine crop of roses this summer, Maurice,’ I said in a voice that had never been anywhere near the Mason-Dixon line. ‘Just like the ones you sent to Mattie’s funeral.’ I turned. ‘Did you ask for roses specifically or did the florist choose? Actually I’m not sure that Marion Ellroy would have approved of you sending them. Bit of a give-away, really, with that message. It’s the sort of thing the police check, you know, even do routine follow-up interviews. But you’ll be all right. I took the card off the bouquet. So now it’s just you and me who know.’
‘I don’t understand … ’ But, of course, when he thought about it he began to. His face went a funny colour. ‘Who are you?’
I put a hand into my left pocket and handed it across. ‘Sorry. Must have given you the wrong one earlier. Name’s Hannah Wolfe. I’m investigating Mattie Shepherd’s death and her father’s part in the AAR cover-up.’
For just a second I thought I was going to lose my primary witness to an act of nature. Or rather nature helped by a little product enhancer. He stood up and put his hand over his heart. ‘Get out of here,’ he said hoarsely. I shook my head.
From the kitchen Myra shouted out, ‘Did you call, Maurice?’ I let the silence grow. ‘Maurice?’
‘It’s up to you,’ I said quietly at last. ‘I don’t care who I tell.’
He stared at me. And it was clear from his eyes that he’d been waiting for me in his nightmares. He just hadn’t known what shape I would take. ‘No,’ he said, raising his voice to meet hers. ‘No, Myra. It’s fine.’
Then he sat down heavily. ‘I don’t have anything to say.’
‘Sure you do,’ I said cheerfully. ‘I tell you what. I’ll make it easy. I’ll start, then you pick up where I leave off. OK?’
How much of this do you need to hear? I suppose that depends how far you got without me.
Like all good stories you need the background to understand the action. After I had talked to Maringo, I had dug a little deeper into the patent system of drug manufacture. He’d been right. In Vandamed’s case time was running out. The development of AAR had already taken a while, even before Shepherd was brought in on it. He’d got things moving, but then there had been clinical trials and the extended farming ones. Even if it got its expected government approval—which technically could happen any time—it would still only leave them six years as the sole marketers. That was enough, of course. In that time they could get back their costs and start the profits rolling in; profits which, in Marion Ellroy’s multinational Utopia, would no doubt help find a cure for cancer and all other major diseases not yet bought up by the drug companies. On the other hand Vandamed wouldn’t want to leave it any later. No sir.
So you’ll appreciate the importance of the timing when fifteen months ago Maurice Clapton collapsed in his humble cottage and was rushed to hospital with a major heart attack. On its own, of course, a heart attack is just Nature’s way of telling a man he’s eating too many chips. But in this case there was more to it. For anyone bright and willing enough to look. And, as everyone in this story agrees, Tom Shepherd was that kind of scientist. After his friend’s heart attack he started doing a little digging around. And as soon as Clapton came out of intensive care, Shepherd talked to him about what he’d found.
What they discussed was the possibility that the drug in the pigs’ feed might somehow be ingested into the lungs of those administering it. By his wife’s admission Clapton had been very involved in the practical side of the trials. And according to Maringo’s sources the consistency of the feed as it was then produced did give off considerable dust. Easy to breathe in. One of the farmers, a man called Peter Blake, had suffered heart palpitations earlier the year before. Nothing serious, but Shepherd had heard about it, and well, Shepherd was an honourable scientist …
So he went to the bosses. Whatever he said obviously put the fear of failure into them, which was to prove worse than the fear of God. Most likely he would have recommended the cessation of the trials and a return to the drawing board. But, of course, that was something they didn’t want to hear. So they reached a compromise. Ellroy agreed to an immediate overhaul of the feed to reduce its dust percentage. And Shepherd … well, Shepherd allowed himself to be satisfied. In more ways than one. He came out of the meeting with the promise of promotion to head of research, and a little gift for the vet who had helped him along the way—an early retirement package the like of which would make your mouth water (if, that is, you knew about it, which one suspects the rest of the employees did not). Not exactly being bought off. Just rewards for services given, and silence assured.
So Shepherd went off to London, and Clapton to Beamish Drive. But despite, or maybe because of, the rewards Shepherd was not a happy man. According to his wife this was the time when Dr Jekyll became Mr Hyde, a man obsessed, not able to talk to anyone about anything. Guilt at the small print of his pact with the devil?Or just the exhaustion of trying to do two jobs at the same time, the one he now had and the one he was too worried about to give up completely?
Meanwhile back in the country the dust level had been reduced and the trials were progressing very nicely, thank you. Well, except for the odd little vagary of country living. Over the next eight months Tom Sheperd kept his ear to the ground and by autumn, what with the odd dog keeling over, his scientist’s nose was twitching again. Which meant it was time for another chat with his friend and confidant, the vet.
Not bad for someone who isn’t even a pretty face, eh? Except from here on out it was all a little bit sketchier …
‘So what exactly did Shepherd say when he came to see you last October, Mr Clapton?’
The trouble was I had done so much of the talking that he had grown used to his own silence. He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen Tom Shepherd since he visited me in hospital over a year ago.’
‘Oh, come on, Maurice. Don’t insult me. I already know he was here.’
‘Says who?’
From the kitchen doorway Myra chose this minute to call out with requests for milk and sugar. I let her voice waft between us before gracefully declining either. I smiled at him sweetly. ‘It was just a short chat. Gossip, really.’
He scowled. From the bosom of the family. ‘He just came for a visit, that’s all. A friendly call.’
‘So he didn’t say anything about Malcolm Jones’s farm dog?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Of course, on paper there was nothing immediately suspicious about that death, was there? I mean I gather she was almost twelve years old and well past her prime. But the same couldn’t be said for Edward Brayton’s house dog, could it? I mean according to your colleague in Fram-lingham she was just playing in the yard one moment, dead the next. He was very puzzled about it. Told me that himself. Still, he’s only a local vet, isn’t he? Doesn’t have your depth of knowledge and experience. Yours and Tom Shepherd’s.’
I waited. Eventually he looked up at me. And we both knew it was over. I didn’t even need to mention the hounds in the Otley Hunt stables. ‘It was the dogs that gave it away, wasn’t it, Maurice?’ He stared at me, then nodded abruptly.
‘Except, of course, this time it had nothing to do with the feed.’
‘No,’ he said almost too quietly for me to hear.
‘Because the dogs hadn’t eaten the feed. They’d eaten the trial pig meat, hadn’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘And they weren’t the only ones. So had some of the farmers. And so had you.’ I saw it in his eyes, but I also needed to hear it from his mouth. ‘Hadn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he said softly.
‘I’m interested why you didn’t tell Tom Shepherd that back in January.’
He was flustered. But then it wasn’t an easy one to answer. ‘I … I didn’t think it was relevant. I mean I wasn’t the only one. Lots of us were doing it.’
‘Absolutely. You and Peter Blake, to name but two. Of course, officially you shouldn’t have touched it. Officially it should either have gone to the dogs or the knacker’s yard. But if you had told him then, you might not have qualified for that handsome medical handshake of yours. Not to mention the even more handsome pension.’