‘Apart from the fact that the beans are imported,’ put in Spigett.
‘Of course. Well, you could argue that they might have come from areas that were subject to fall-out due to thermo-nuclear tests; but it is extremely unlikely.’
‘Nevertheless, a check should be made,’ said the Director.
‘Quite!’ said Seff. ‘Bui let’s assume for the moment that I am right. Well, it’s obvious that the beans can’t have been subject to contamination by natural ores. And of course the third possible source of radiation — a reactor — is a ridiculous proposition; can’t you imagine people solemnly shovelling beans into a pile at Calder Hall, cooking them inside it, and then putting them in cans?
‘Then there’s another thing — quite a different thing altogether.’ At this point he was dividing his attention mostly between Heatherfield. and Spigett. ‘We assess the effective lifetime of any radioactive substance by referring to its half-life. That’s because it keeps reducing its level of radiation by half all the time. Well, if you tried to express its total life, it would be rather like the old-picture-on-the-biscuit-tin problem — you know; on the actual tin there is a picture of a biscuit tin; so on the picture of the biscuit tin there is a picture of a picture of a biscuit tin, and so on to infinity. Eventually, of course, the pictures get so small that you can neither see them nor print them, but theoretically they are there:
‘You get the idea? The half-life, then, of strontium-90 is in the region of thirty years. That means that after this time its radiation has been reduced to half of what it was at the beginning. Quite a long time, you see. That’s why fall-out from nuclear weapons is so dangerous — not only because it is particularly strong but because it is being shoved into the atmosphere a great deal quicker than it is wearing itself out.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘Well, what about the humble bean? It can only contain a tiny amount of metal oxide — not enough to hurt anyone if it should happen to become radioactive. And its half-life, I think, would probably be pretty short. Further, if something had been deposited on it before it reached the tin, surely it would be washed off in the processing.
‘But there are other things inside the can besides the beans. There’s usually some juice of some sort. Well, supposing something in that juice was capable of dissolving some component of the can so that some of it was transferred to the juice itself?’
‘You mean,’ put in Gatt, ‘the tin-plate on the inside of the tin?’
‘Yes, or some kind of coating. If that coating were radioactive, the food would now be contaminated. Do you agree so far?’
Gatt smiled. ‘It’s vintage Seff,’ he said.
‘Very well,’ agreed the Director. ‘Tins it is. But just to make sure we’ll also check on the origin of the beans. Manson, have you started the tests on the sample consignment of the product?’
‘They’d doing it now.’
‘Good. Let me know as soon as you get results.’ He paused. ‘I must say,’ he added, ‘it seems strange that such mundane and insignificant little objects as baked beans could have been at the bottom of all this.’
‘They may be mundane and insignificant,’ said Spigett indignantly, ‘but they’re big money.’
The Director had made his first diplomatic blunder.
After the meeting had broken up for lunch, the Director cornered Seff privately. Seff was on the defensive: he knew something was coming.
‘You realise,’ said Hargreaves, ‘that you should never have handed over that capsule of cobalt-60 to Manson, up at Marsdowne? He said just now that he personally brought it here in the shielded truck.’
‘That’s right; he did.’
‘Couldn’t you have sent Selgate?’
‘I needed him at the plant.’
‘Did Manson sign for the cobalt?’
‘I expect so.’
‘But you don’t know?’
Seff was becoming irritable. ‘Manson and I work as a team, Sir Robert. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
The Director put a friendly hand on his arm. ‘Of course, Jack. But what I’m trying to show you is that you can’t take chances — even with Manson, or myself, or Gatt. It might conceivably look as if you were a little bit casual about such things.’
Seff stiffened. He was angry now, and his next words came out like ice-cubes. ‘You didn’t say anything a few minutes ago, Sir Robert, when Manson brought it up at the meeting.’
‘Exactly,’ said the Director. ‘And, don’t forget; it was Manson who brought it up.’
Seff stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘I don’t see—’ His face tautened. ‘I would have been far more inclined to place a sinister interpretation on it if Gatt had said it.’
‘Why?’
‘Why!’ He turned away. ‘I can think of at least one good reason.’
Hargreaves spoke gently. ‘Jack, don’t you think we should leave personal matters out of this?’
‘Can one leave personal matters out of it? Can the others?’
Hargreaves moved over to the window, so that Seff was forced to look directly at him. ‘Well, if you mean what I think you mean I don’t agree with it, Seff. In any event, I can promise you one thing: so long as I am Director of the Commission, no personal issue is going to affect my judgment. So for heaven’s sake let’s try to be civilised about it. I only warned you with reference to Manson’s remark because you were technically at fault in failing to issue the radio-isotope officially, and you cannot afford to leave yourself open. None of us can. Am I right?’
Seff permitted himself a grim little smile. ‘Let’s go to lunch, Sir Robert.’
The oddest friendship imaginable had sprung up between Gatt and Spigett. For by the time lunch was over they obviously enjoyed each other’s company hugely — one a Fellow of Trinity Cambridge and the other an ex-barrow-boy from the Elephant and Castle. Even Kate, who was used to practically anything, was a little startled as they stepped out of the lift together, both rocking with laughter.
‘So this bloke,’ Spigett was saying, ‘pays for the haddock — a real whopper, by the way! — and. asks the fishmonger if he wouldn’t mind keeping it on the counter with all the other fishes, until he gets back from the rest of his shopping, see. About an hour later the bloke comes back, suddenly snatches the haddock and runs like hell down the Old Kent Road. Pandemonium! Everybody starts chasing him and shouting “Stop, thief” and the police join in too — all except the wretched fishmonger. Well, eventually the coppers drag the man back to the fish-shop with a triumphant flourish, whereupon the fishmonger, in a still, small voice, says: “It’s his fish!” ’ Spigett laughed uproarously at his own story, and Gatt found himself laughing almost as much, partly because Spigett looked so incredibly funny. ‘Oh, we used to get up to some larks in those days, I can tell you!’ They had reached Hargreaves’ office now, the first to arrive; and there, rotating at a leisurely pace, was the celebrated fan. It was one of those big affairs that are more often seen in the East. It looked curiously out of place in the Director’s very modern office.