Changelings

by Jo Bannister

  ‘Fine,’ said Shapiro glumly. ‘That gets us down to, oh, five or six hundred, and no guarantee he’s one of them. Or maybe he’s a she.’

  ‘Not according to Mary Wilson.’

  Shapiro elevated a gently ironic eyebrow. ‘Who’s been a detective – what? – four weeks?’

  ‘Who’s been browsing the PNC for similar episodes. All of them perpetrated by men.’

  He accepted the rebuke. ‘It’s getting time we heard from him. He’s shown us what he can do. He can think up a nasty, sneaky way of extorting money, and he can carry it out so slickly we’ve no idea who we’re looking for. If it really had been acid in the drum we’d have twenty-odd schoolgirls in hospital – all of them hurt, many of them scarred, some with their sight or even their lives in danger – and we’d be no closer to catching him than we are now.

  ‘So we know he’s a serious threat to this town. No one’s going to underestimate either what he can do or what he’s prepared to do. And we know nothing about him: we could flood the town with patrols and never be more than a minor inconvenience to him. He’s done enough. So what’s he waiting for? It’s been over three hours. Surely the time to hit us with his demands is while we’re reeling with shock, inundated with hysterical half-naked schoolgirls.’

  Liz gave a little rueful shrug. ‘Maybe he’s letting us stew first. He’s got us rattled: maybe he reckons that twelve hours to think about it, about what could have happened and what could happen next, is a good investment. By then this town could be scared enough for the money to start looking unimportant. Assuming money’s what it’s about.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘A sick joke? A power trip?’

  Shapiro shook his head. ‘One incident could have been, but two? That’s twice he’s risked being caught committing a serious offence. A joke he could have played by post or over the phone: that he took the risk of doing it in person suggests he has something to gain beyond mere satisfaction.

  ‘What worries me, Liz, is that he’s building up to something. Something unforgettable. What if next time it’s for real?’

  ‘Do you want me to get Donovan back?’ Liz asked quietly.

  Shapiro thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘If he isn’t fit it wouldn’t do us any good – he’ d just be sitting on the sidelines glowering. Besides, another pair of hands wouldn’t be much help right now. Let him have his holiday. If the situation deteriorates so much that we need him fit or otherwise, we can get him back here in a couple of hours. Leave it for now. Let him enjoy himself.

  ‘I think we should wrap things up too. If there were going to be any more developments tonight they’d have happened by now. First thing in the morning set up a meeting with the Mayor and Chief Executive of the council, the chairman of the Chamber of Trade – and since they were directly affected, Ms McKenna from Castle High and the manager of Sav-U-Mor. We can bring them up to date, tell them what we’d like them to do and get some feeling for whether they’re likely to do it. Get Mr Giles involved as well: if we’re going to catch this man the best chance is Uniform spotting him acting suspiciously.’

  But nothing that had happened so far suggested this was a man who went around acting suspiciously. So far the only proof of his existence was a wake of frightened people. And so far no one had been hurt. If that changed, fear would turn to panic and panic could cause more injuries even than acid.

  ‘I’ll be in by seven. Call if you need me sooner,’ said Liz. She collected her coat and left by the back stairs. The rain which had eased briefly during the afternoon was once again hammering out of a pitch-black sky. There had been no sun all day, now there was no moon. No illumination of any kind: not in the sky, in her head, or at the end of the tunnel. In spite of what Shapiro said she wished Donovan was here. A major crisis without the gloomy Irishman was like a pantomime without the dame.

  Whatever Shapiro thought, Donovan was not enjoying himself. Barely ten miles into the Castlemere Levels, the familiar vista of flat land and endless sky lost in the murk of scurrying rainstorms, with the surreal feeling of being suspended in water like a deep-sea diver, he’d decided to take a break from his holiday. He’d turned up a quiet backwater, moored Tara to the bank and gone to bed with his cough bottle and a hot whiskey. When the need arose Donovan could rough it with the best; but one of the advantages of living on a boat was that you didn’t have to abandon home comforts to have a change of scene. Tomorrow, when the rain stopped and the Philbert’s Remedy had knocked his cold on the head, would be soon enough to start having a good time.

  3

  The official organ of Castlemere society was the Castlemere Courier, but it came out on Thursdays. Until then, information about Monday’s events would have to rely on hearsay and jungle telegraph to get about. In a small town it’s a pretty reliable system: everyone at the meeting in the Town Hall on Tuesday morning knew what they were there to discuss.

  Superintendent Giles got the ball rolling. ‘Gentlemen, Ms McKenna, I don’t think I need tell you why we’ve asked for this meeting. Some of you were directly involved, and I imagine the rest have heard a fairly comprehensive story by now.

  ‘Just in case anyone got the embroidered version, I will recap on the facts. Someone adulterated a pot of supermarket yoghurt and the shower system at Castle High’s sports fields with coloured jelly and left notes indicating that he could as easily have used more dangerous contaminants. I want you all to be clear, nobody was hurt. But the obvious inference is that it could come to that.

  ‘We’re not yet sure what he wants. We’re assuming it’s money but he hasn’t said. Apart from the notes he left with the jelly, he hasn’t made contact. He will. One of the purposes of this meeting is so that we can discuss the possible responses before we’re under pressure for an instant decision.’

  There were hawks at the table, and there were doves. The Chief Executive of the Borough Council, who didn’t need re-electing, was a hawk; the Mayor was a dove. Mary McKenna was a hawk: she’d had thirty years’ practice at dealing with thugs and terrorists, even if most of them were children.

  Donald Chivers, chairman of the Castlemere Chamber of Trade, was a hawk. He knew that any ransom would come directly from his members’ tills or indirectly from his members’ rates. The Mayor might talk as if he had funds of his own but they were creamed off other people’s incomes. If Castlemere decided to pay blackmail the traders would pick up the lion’s share of the bill.

  Tony Woodall, under-manager at Sav-U-Mor, was a dove. He knew that cheap milk and the massive savings on own-brand products were entirely beside the point if he couldn’t keep his shelves stocked with consumer confidence.

  ‘No offence, Mr Woodall’, said Shapiro mildly, ‘but I’d have thought your manager – Mr Surtees, is it? – would have been here.’

  Woodall sucked in a breath. He was a man in his mid-thirties, stocky and athletic under the suit. ‘Mr Surtees had a fit of the vapours after the thing with the yoghurt and is off sick. I’m afraid I’m the best you’re going to get.’

  Shapiro wasn’t complaining. There was enough hysteria around the town without importing it into this meeting. The phones at Queen’s Street had been blocked for two hours last night by the parents, grandparents, uncles and some quite casual acquaintances of the children who’d gone home damp and tearful and not entirely sure what had happened to them. Some thought it really had been acid in the drum in the attic. Some of them had been hurried down to Accident & Emergency at Castle General, even though there wasn’t a mark on them, in case they’d suffered some subtle form of burning that would only become apparent later.

  ‘And the other purpose of this meeting,’ continued Superintendent Giles, ‘is to ask for your co-operation in controlling this situation and bringing it to a safe conclusion. There are things we can do to protect our fellow citizens, and you people can organize a lot of them. When you leave here, I’d like you to call meetings of your own staff, update them, and tell them what to be on the lookout f
or.’

  ‘Like what?’ demanded Chivers. ‘Speaking for my members, I think most of us would notice if somebody was going round tampering with the stock in plain sight. But we haven’t got eyes in the backs of our heads. Don’t think you can shift responsibility for stopping this man on to the traders. It’s a crime: preventing it is a police matter. Don’t think you can make us your scapegoats.’

  Shapiro thought the meeting was already getting out of hand. ‘Nobody’s looking for scapegoats, Mr Chivers. We want to stop this man, and then we’d like to find him. But he isn’t going to be pursuing his campaign at Queen’s Street, he’s going to be in your shops, in the council’s facilities, in public places. Like it or not, you people and your employees are more likely to encounter him than we are. We just want you to consider how you can minimize the damage he can do.’

  ‘I’ve done that,’ said the Mayor. ‘We can pay up.’

  ‘It may not be money he wants.’

  Chivers elevated a heavy eyebrow. ‘What else?’

  ‘It might be political. We might be pawns in a bigger game: animal rights, overseas aid, political prisoners, Free the Tamworth Two. Is anyone aware of anything controversial looming in this town? A new road planned over the last redoubt of the Lesser Spotted Godwit? We haven’t many trees to cut down, but how about orchids? – does someone want to build executive homes on top of some? Is a local business supplying aid and succour to one of the world’s less admirable governments? Or nothing of the sort, just something that could provoke strong feelings in someone who might react this way.’

  Put like that it sounded so vague he couldn’t imagine getting a useful response. And from the long silence it seemed he hadn’t managed to ring a single bell even very faintly. But as he went to move on, Mary McKenna said pensively, ‘There’s BioMed.’

  Shapiro should have thought of them himself. It was years now since there’d been any trouble at the laboratory, but it was still there in the quiet countryside of The Levels, still doing commercial research with a Home Office licence for animal experiments.

  It was burned down by animal rights activists in the mid-eighties. It was called BioMedical Technology then and did a lot of work for industry. After rebuilding the name was subtly altered and so was the thrust of the work. It may not have concerned itself exclusively with the development of medicines, but a good PR man made sure that was the bit that people knew about.

  ‘Have you heard something?’ asked Shapiro.

  McKenna shook her dark red hair. ‘But it’s a hardy perennial on the kids’ hate-list. There isn’t as much enthusiasm for stringing up the director as there was ten years ago but only because today’s bright, go-ahead teenager is more concerned with his grades than the morality of big business. I wouldn’t be amazed to see it hit again.’

  ‘Because of the animals?’

  ‘The animals; the rainforest; business here supporting corrupt regimes abroad. Don’t look at me like that, Superintendent, I’m not saying it is so – I’m saying that among idealistic students it is perceived as being so. And let’s be honest,’ she went on, warming to the subject in the face of the dismissive expressions around her, ‘there’s more than a grain of truth in it. We British are an ethical people until our principles start costing us money.’

  They were veering off the point; but it was useful background to Shapiro because what mattered on this occasion was not whether BioMed had skeletons in its cupboard but whether someone in an indignant frame of mind could think they had.

  Superintendent Giles intervened. He was a tall fair man, an officer of Liz Graham’s generation, and he had the unnerving knack of going straight to the heart of a matter. ‘An eco-warrior,’ he said crisply, ‘wouldn’t have contaminated the yoghurt. He’d have gone for the veal.’

  Liz was nodding. ‘So maybe it really is just about money. We haven’t heard from him because he doesn’t think we’re ready to pay yet.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ muttered His Worship the Mayor.

  ‘Let’s try and keep things in proportion,’ said Shapiro. ‘So far no one’s been hurt. That wasn’t luck, it’s how he planned it. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. But if he asks for money and doesn’t get it, that will change. A threat is only credible until it’s called and nothing happens.’

  Derek Dunstan had only been mayor for six months. He’d thought it would be about opening fetes, kissing bathing beauties and unveiling portraits of himself, and six months into the job they sprang this on him. All he could think of was the avalanche of complaints he was going to get if it all went wrong. ‘Surely we can agree,’ he said pompously, ‘that nothing is as important as safeguarding the citizens of this borough.’

  ‘We can agree on that,’ nodded Superintendent Giles. ‘The question is how we can do that most effectively. Will they be safer if we pay off this thug and let all the others know where to find us? If we hold out now, someone could get hurt. If we don’t, we could have a succession of similar incidents; and as Mr Shapiro says, it’s the nature of these things to become more violent. The people of Castlemere will be safer if we can deal with this once and for all.’

  ‘That’s easy to say now,’ said Woodall worriedly. ‘But can we hold the line if people start going down with botulism and seeing their skin peel off?’

  ‘Botulism?’ echoed Ms McKenna.

  Woodall nodded. ‘That was the secret ingredient in our yoghurt special. At least, it wasn’t, but that was the threat.’

  Shapiro was looking at the teacher, his grey eyes keen. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because commercial applications are being developed for the botulinum toxin. I’m a chemist,’ she explained to those of the gathering who were not old acquaintances, ‘I was reading something in the trade press. BioMed is involved.’

  It was probably a coincidence. There was no botulism in the yoghurt: anyone could have picked a toxin out of the dictionary, he didn’t need access to it. Still, it was reason enough for someone to visit BioMed.

  ‘Secrecy isn’t an issue,’ said Shapiro. ‘The incident at the school was so public there can’t be anyone left in town who hasn’t heard about it. But I’d like to discourage speculation. It would help if we could agree on our response to enquiries, and to refer anyone who wants more detail to my office.’

  There was a momentary pause but they were all happy with that. In a difficult situation it’s always nice to have someone to pass the buck to.

  ‘So finally,’ he said, ‘we need to decide how to respond to this threat. Pay or hold out. There are risks both ways. Mr Giles explained the police position: that terrorism has to be fought even if there are casualties. But we can’t stop you paying a ransom if you think it’s the right thing to do. Whatever you decide, we’ll keep trying to catch this man. But I can’t guarantee we’ll catch him before he does some harm.’

  There was some muttering around the table, an exchange of glances. Donald Chivers was the first to speak up. ‘Can we have a show of hands? – I think it would be more appropriate in the circumstances than a secret ballot.’ He stuck his own broad hand up in favour of fighting.

  So did Mary McKenna; so did Dick Travis, the council CE; and so, after a moment’s vacillation, did the Mayor.

  Tony Woodall shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s the right decision. I don’t think you have any idea what this man can do to us or how we’ll cope with the panic he’ll cause. But I’m not going to persuade you, am I? – and it’s important that the vote’s unanimous.’ He raised his own hand and made it so.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Shapiro, meaning it. ‘We’ll do all we can to make sure this doesn’t backfire on you.’ The meeting broke up. Nobody stayed for tea and biscuits.

  Liz drove out by the River Road to BioMed’s laboratories. Ostensibly the reason for her visit was to establish how difficult it would be for someone with malicious intent to obtain and handle samples of the toxin. It would be interesting to have the information, though events might prove it irrelevant. Unofficially i
t was an opportunity to size up the people working with the material. The threat could have come from anyone; but if his demands were resisted he had to be able to back them up with action. Which made someone with a background in pharmaceuticals a more credible suspect than someone with a library ticket and access to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  The facility was tucked so discreetly into the landscape you could pass it and never notice. Even if you spotted the corporate logo, down at knee-height beside the gravel drive, the same PR man who’d abbreviated the name had redesigned the badge with stalks of corn shooting out of it. Only when you turned down the drive and ran into enough security to defend the Pentagon did you begin to suspect that raising a better barley was not the prime function of the place.

  Liz ploughed patiently through the layers of security, answering some of her questions as she went. Nobody wandered in here under the guise of delivering a parcel. The systems were tight, efficient and practised – even producing her warrant card didn’t earn her a free pass. These people were serious about security, and whether they were more concerned with terrorists or industrial spies they’d done enough to deter both. Security can never be total: someone with enough incentive can always find a way in. But Liz had seen enough to know that illegal entry here would involve arms or explosives and have sirens wailing all over the site.

  The alternative was infiltration. A firm with this kind of security would certainly check out new employees. On the other hand, someone who was prepared to blackmail an entire town would have no scruples about pressurizing an individual scientist or technician. If the blackmailer had to be ready to prove his seriousness, and if botulism was his weapon of choice, and if BioMed was the only place he could get it, then coercing a member of staff seemed the likeliest way.

  It was an awful lot of ifs.

  Dr Black was not, at first sight, promising coercion material. Intimidating BioMed’s director would challenge a bull buffalo primed for the rut. He was very short and very broad, and appeared to have been carved by the same sculptor as the Rock of Gibraltar. He had dark, crinkly hair and black marbles for eyes, and he walked with the slight swagger of one who knows exactly how valuable his time is. But he greeted Liz affably and took her to his office.