Horseflesh

in the morning. I was half-cut – spilled coffee all over the keyboard but it was only an old Asus thing. I checked the news – read the latest food update – it raged on but told me nothing I didn’t already know. Politicians blamed retailers, FSA blamed the EU, the UK blamed foreigners. And I was about to go to bed when I decided to Google something else. I’d like to say ‘then it hit me’ but it didn’t, not then. Because what I found didn’t seem to have anything to do with our horsemeat tests. It wasn’t real, wasn’t something tangible. In my head I’d drawn a blank.

  Some blank.

  15.

  Brinkley was a no-show on the Saturday – we’d decided to work the afternoon to dig into some of the new arrivals, frankly we were hoping to find something that broke the hypothesis we’d already formed. Looking for an anomaly, something that showed the initial results were a fluke. We had the footy on the radio: I think QPR had just scored and Oates was out for a pee.

  I told you about my microscope fetish. You don’t use it for the DNA that’s all microanalysis gear, very high-tech, plus some software (not Monica, some off-the-shelf stuff). But I was curious about our horses, our four horses. I mean, it couldn’t possibly be, to cover such a wide variety of food from so many different countries. I was interested to actually see them, close up. It’s a biologist’s thing – we have to see things in minute detail, the cells and microorganisms – to see movement, to see life. Then we understand things. At least that was the plan.

  We’d nicknamed the four groups Tom, Dick, Harry and Jane. There was no pattern to where they’d been found – all four had turned up in the UK, the last three also in France and Germany, the first and third in Italy, but that may just have been the fact we had fewer samples from there. I started with Tom – strangely we always dealt with them in the order you say them. Funny, huh?

  At first things looked fine – I won’t go into detail but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Just basic tissue cells. Looked like muscle, but difficult to tell. Dick likewise showed nothing untoward, nor Harry or Jane. I’d skimmed through at low magnification: not sure what I hoped to find – something obvious or nothing at all.

  I turned up the res. (sorry – resolution). The power was incredible – that first one I got as a kid was maybe a hundred times. This was eighteen-hundred. I looked at Tom again and still nothing: all quiet. I thought the same of Dick at first but then I noticed something odd: the cell was moving slightly. Now this thing was dead remember, dead dead dead. But it moved, and it was quite frantic. Then suddenly one cell pushed up against another and ‘pop’ – the two merged. Wow! Won’t bore you but this is not what dead cells do. It was alive – and destructive. I looked back at the slide with Tom on it – it wasn’t doing the same. I moved on to Harry. Nothing. I carried on looking, lost. QPR got a second. Oates noisily sat down at his desk. I blinked: one of Harry’s cells seemed to have got smaller. Had it? I looked up, then back. Definitely!

  The scope’s a clever gadget and has a record function: I looked up and played it back on the laptop screen.

  “Oates! Look at this!” It was definitely growing smaller. He strolled over.

  “Bloody hell – that’s odd.”

  “Odder than four horses covering the whole of Europe?”

  “That’s got to be a wrong result. Remember what Sherlock Holmes said?” he was a big fan.

  “When you have eliminated the impossible whatever you’re left with, however improbable, is the answer.”

  “Okay, so what’s the improbable answer, then?”

  “Dunno,” he answered.

  “I’ll record them all and see if they all do the same.”

  “To prove what?” asked Oates.

  “To prove if they all do the same thing.”

  “And meanwhile that lot’s not going anywhere,” he nodded towards the freezer. “First Brinkley wimps out, now you. Tsk! Good job I’ve got my internet.”

  16.

  I recorded each sample over a thirty-minute period, running through fifty or so new samples alongside Oates who moaned throughout.

  “We won’t find out what this is all about you know. It’ll just get interesting when they’ll whisk the results off somewhere else and we’ll get reminded of our duty to Queen and country not to tell a living soul. Just like at the end of Raider of the Lost Ark”

  “And do you?” I asked.

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you stick to your duty and not tell anyone what we do?” I’d wondered: I did, I took my job seriously no matter how stupid and pointless it seemed at times. Wasn’t sure about Oates though.

  “I most certainly do, sir. And how dare you suggest otherwise.” Couldn’t tell if he was serious or just winding me up. Never found out. You always think there’ll be time.

  I went to view the videos.

  “Jesus! Come here!” I shouted. It was amazing: all four cells did something different, different but equally inexplicable.

  The Tom cells broke up when played on fast-forward, the speed was staggering. When I looked back at the sample it was taken from the meat was rotting – but it couldn’t be, it had been frozen at minus thirty-two degrees. For the same reason Dick shouldn’t have been active at all but it was: the cells collided and one absorbed the other: I’d never seen anything like it! My heart was racing and I was sweating. Harry’s were the ones which just grew smaller, then vanished. Again I looked at the mega sample and found it to be rotting. What in hell was going on? Were they all like this, and if so what effect might they have on whoever ate them?

  Finally Jane – I clocked ‘fast-forward’ and watched. Here I recognised the pattern: the cells were dying, the nucleus was becoming transparent, the whole being eaten from within.

  “Bloody hell,” said Oates over my shoulder. Four cells, four different behaviours. Decay, aggressive absorption, shrinkage and death. We had no idea what was going on. We sat down. QPR won three-one.

  17.

  I went home and drank. Oates said now he wasn’t feeling too clever either. I’d cancelled my visit to Bristol, Lianne making it very clear she didn’t want to speak to me, so it was just me and a deep-pan pepperoni. Besides, something was niggling. Something I’d read, but I couldn’t remember what.

  I watched crap on telly, then a film – one of the Godfather’s, all-purpose bloke-film standby. Halfway through Mum texted: ‘You didn’t call today. Me and your Dad are ill, can you come over tomorrow? x’ I nearly phoned but you can guess that I didn’t.

  Watched the news: more of the same; voting process announced for new Pope, Russian meteor analysed, mystery bug strikes hospital, killer claims innocence. My mind was a blur. Started watching ‘Match of the Day’ then found myself on the iPad Googling again. Four horses, four horses…And then there it was. Decay, aggressive absorption, shrinkage and death.

  And all I could think was ‘sweet Jesus, no’.

  18.

  Don’t worry - I’m back! Had a drink too if I’m honest. It’s…what is it? Monday, afternoon – no, evening. I think it’s because I’m nearing the end – of the story, that is. It’s been helping me to go back and think – look at things again and I suppose to forget for a while where I am and what might be about to happen. Isn’t that what stories are supposed to be about, when you cut through the messages and moralising they’re basically escapism. Get away from the trials and tribulations of every day life. The death, the disease and…No I’m getting ahead of myself there, assuming you haven’t already figured it out. Not long now.

  I slept very badly – more nightmares. I was being chased by four horses, all different colours. One was red, one black, one white and one a pale green. I woke up drenched in sweat and tried to call Oates but there was no answer. Even tried to call Brinkley – told you I was distressed. I needed to do some more tests – I desperately wanted to prove something, or disprove something. I went in on the Sunday morning – all very quiet. Put the radio on for company and for some reason it was on Radio Four so there was lots of talking
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  You see when we test we test for something, something specific. All this time we’d been testing for horse DNA because that was the suspicion. And of course we found it, because the meat was essentially horse in most cases. Like I said before, not just traces of the stuff, but huge chunks of it. And that just didn’t make sense if there were only four horses. But we didn’t test for other stuff: I mean there could have been lamb, pork – a few labs had started doing this by this time and indeed there was other stuff in there too. But I guarantee no one else was running the same test I was – not that Sunday morning and I doubt since. And it’s not one you would ever tell people about. Because if you did it would cause a panic. And if the results were positive, well…

  Test-wise it’s just another set of results. I got the target pattern off the database – default, nothing special. It would be sufficient, I wasn’t bothered what sort. Radio debate was all doom and gloom – I remember wondering if Mum was listening. The hospital story had escalated big time – two hundred and fifty seriously ill, a few deaths – but of course the horsemeat story wouldn’t go away. And a series of violent crimes overnight – funny how they come in spates, I thought.

  Decay, aggression, shrinkage, death. Somewhere in my head a red light was flashing.

  Went to make a drink, had to go upstairs to the machines. Got