‘What did he want?’ asked Steven of Brewer.
‘The cause of death for the Rev McNish,’ Brewer replied.
‘That’s what I came here to talk to you about,’ exclaimed Steven, suddenly alarmed. ‘I hope you stalled him.’
‘No, I gave him the official cause.’
‘Shit.’
‘Drowning.’
‘What?’
Brewer pushed a piece of paper over the desk in Steven’s direction. ‘It’s official. The PM report says so.’
Steven couldn’t believe his eyes when he read through the report, concluding in, ‘Death by drowning’. He looked at Brewer. ‘Have you spoken to Levi about this?’ he asked.
‘The good doctor has been hard to get hold of today. Ours is not to reason why,’ said Brewer.
‘Who leaned on him?’ asked Steven.
Brewer just shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ he said resignedly. ‘I just hope to God all you buggers know what you’re doing.’
THIRTEEN
Steven’s first thought was to go after Levi and demand to know why he had put a different cause of death on the PM report to the one he had already given orally to Brewer and himself at the city mortuary, but when he’d calmed down he decided against it. Doing that wasn’t going to solve anything and would just advertise his own involvement in the Blackbridge affair even more. He could certainly gain satisfaction from rattling Levi’s cage until the man admitted that he’d been leaned on but there really wasn’t any doubt about that. The real question was who had done the leaning? And he felt certain that Levi would not know the answer to that, just that the order had come down from on high.
Steven bit the bullet and accepted that he wasn’t going to get any closer to Sigma 5 by pursuing that course of action so there was no point in even considering it. Instead he simply tried to analyse the motives behind such a cover-up.
Clearly, Sigma 5 did not want the press to know about the rats’ involvement in McNish’s death — presumably because it did not want anyone making the connection between the GM experiment and the change in the rats’ behaviour — always assuming that there was a connection. The little niggling doubt came back again, the one that said that there was nothing at all wrong with the Agrigene crop: it was perfectly ordinary oilseed rape.
The actions of the opposition in all this however, were forcing him to consider that maybe there was something about the crop that he didn’t know, something that made the Agrigene oilseed rape different from all the other GM variants. Thinking along these lines made him conclude that he should have another talk with their technical manager, Phillip Grimble.
Steven was near enough to Peat Ridge Farm to act upon that thought immediately. He turned into the track leading up to the farm and as expected, was flagged down by security guards. He went through the ritual of showing his ID but this time he asked the one who was doing the phoning to find out if the Agrigene man as still there. He was.
‘Well, Doctor, I trust you have come to tell me that the authorities have finally admitted their blunder. They’ve agreed to pay us large amounts of compensation and we can stop paying all these guards out there forthwith?’ said Ronald Lane by way of greeting.
‘Not quite,’ said Steven. ‘That won’t be my decision I’m afraid. I’m just here to see fair play along the way. Actually I’d like a few words with Mr Grimble, if that’s possible?’
‘Words, words, words,’ sneered Lane. ‘We’re never short of words round here. It’s translating them into some kind of bloody action that seems to be the problem. You’ll find him in the office along there, planning our latest defence strategy,’ said Lane with a wry smile. He pointed to a door along the hallway. ‘If you don’t need me, Doctor, I have plenty to be getting on with.’
Steven said not and went off to find Grimble on his own. ‘He knocked and put his head round the door. ‘All right if I come in?’
Grimble looked up from the papers he was studying and said wearily, ‘Please. Any excuse to stop going through endless legal jargon is welcome.’
‘Problems?’
‘It’s the latest submission from Rafferty’s lawyers. ‘As far as I can make out, they are willing to concede that the ‘third genetic element’ in our crop is in fact, an antibiotic marker gene — as we’ve maintained all along. But now they are arguing that the insertion of such an element into the DNA of the plant has by definition altered the genetic makeup of the plant itself, thus constituting a third change, where only two were licensed. They plan to wheel out scientific experts to testify to this in court, if we ever get that far.’
‘So what will you do?’
‘Wheel out our scientific experts to point out that this is always the case with antibiotic markers and it’s completely irrelevant. If we’d hit a vital gene the plant wouldn’t have been able to grow. If we’d inserted it in any gene that was in any way at all important to the yield, it would have showed up in the nature of the mature plant and it hasn’t. What we have here is oilseed rape that can withstand the action of glyphosphate and glufosinate weed killers. Period.’ Grimble leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms in the air. ‘That’s the trouble with expert witnesses,’ he said. ‘If one says white it’s the easiest thing in the world to find another who’ll say black. Christ, this is like trying to swim in treacle!’ He rubbed the back of his head and brought his arms back down to rest on the desk. ‘I’m sorry, he said. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I’d like to know if Agrigene are growing the Peat Ridge oilseed rape anywhere else in the UK?’ asked Steven.
‘Yes, we’ve got four other trials running, one in Cambridge, one in Worcester and two in Leicestershire.’
‘The identical crop?’
‘Absolutely. All the seeds came from the same batch. We’re just trying out different herbicide regimes on them to assess crop yields. No one has been able to use glyphosphates and glufosinates at will before.’
‘Has any attempt been made by the authorities to stop the English trials?’ asked Steven.
‘Not by the authorities,’ said Grimble. ‘We’ve had a bit of bother with student protests and friends-of-the-turnip and such like but nothing like the legal shit we’ve been getting thrown at us up here.’
‘It strikes me that you could always bring evidence that your crop here is genetically identical to your English ones,’ suggested Steven.
‘I did think of that,’ said Grimble ruefully but frankly it could go either way. The fact that the authorities seem to have it in for us up here suggests that we might end up losing our English trials as well. I’ve decided to fight the Scottish Executive for the Peat Ridge crop on its own merits and argue every legal step of the way. I make no bones about it; I’m stalling for time. As long as the crop’s in the fields out there, our trial is proceeding.’
‘I wish you luck,’ said Steven. ‘And I mean that.’ He thanked Grimble for his help and set off for Edinburgh. It was now too late to get lunch anywhere so he picked up a sandwich at a shop in Colinton village and ate it in the nearby Park, sitting on a seat by the river.
What he had learned from Grimble suggested almost conclusively that there could not be anything specifically wrong with the Peat Ridge crop. Sigma 5 would know about the other Agrigene sites and, more importantly, that the crop growing in them was identical to the one in Peat Ridge. If they were really trying to cover up a connection between the experimental crop and a worrying effect on animal behaviour, they would have to have mounted some kind of dirty tricks campaign against the English trials as well.
Steven returned to his hotel and spent what remained of the afternoon making out an interim report for Sci-Med. Although his computer had been set to encrypt the message, he still hesitated before hitting the ‘send’ button and decided to mark it for Macmillan’s eyes only. Sci-Med was a relatively small operation and he thought he knew and trusted everyone in it but the government involvement in this affair was making him nervous. When people couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad, all sorts on pressures could come into play. Marking the message in such a way would not physically stop someone else at Sci-Med from opening it but the message would thereafter be marked with the date, time and staff code of the person who had opened it. It was that knowledge that would stop a third party even thinking about it.