Requiem

by Clare Francis

  Fully approved. Which meant that, unless Willis Bain were lying through their teeth, they had used fenitrothion.

  Daisy went through the bundle once more before turning to her messages. Peasedale, she saw, had called again. Like Alan, he had been trying to get hold of her for the last two days. The reminders to call him, penned in block letters on yellow stickers, sat in silent rebuke on the body of the phone.

  ‘Fenitrothion,’ she said immediately Peasedale answered. ‘Could it possibly have been involved in the Bell and Mackenzie cases?’

  ‘Listen, it’s appalling – Nick Mackenzie’s wife.’ Peasedale’s usual tone of scientific detachment had escaped him and he spoke almost plaintively, interspersing his words with sudden sighs. ‘Appalling. Was anything being done for the poor woman? I mean was there any follow-up? Was she under a competent toxicologist? I can’t get it out of my mind. I keep thinking about her. Do they know exactly how she died? Was it the effects of some treatment she was getting? I have this awful feeling that maybe I missed something, that maybe I didn’t look into it closely enough.’

  Daisy told him what he wanted to hear. ‘It wasn’t you. There wasn’t anything you could have done.’

  ‘Do they know exactly how she died?’ Peasedale repeated.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she lied, remembering only too vividly the minute details that Simon had relayed to her from the Sunday Times news desk, and, by remembering, experienced some of the initial horror all over again.

  ‘You haven’t been in touch?’ Peasedale asked.

  ‘Hardly.’

  Picking up the warning note in her voice, he retreated. ‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t be the right moment.’

  ‘No. Now how about fenitrothion?’

  ‘Fenitrothion?’ he repeated blankly.

  ‘Could it have done this sort of damage?’

  There was a silence. She could almost see him sitting there in his lab, perched on his stool like a stork on a chimney pot. ‘My first instinct is no. But let me have a think about it, will you? A day or two? I’d really like to stick with this one. I mean – I’d like to feel that I’d done my utmost. You know.’

  Daisy knew. It was all about making oneself feel better about something one felt bad about.

  ‘And Adrian Bell,’ she said. ‘It could well be the same stuff. When can you and Roper get up there?’

  ‘If you can fly us, I think we could make it this weekend.’

  Return flights plus car hire plus meals. She wondered what part of the expense budget could be expanded to absorb it.

  Ringing off, she managed to keep out of Alan’s way for another five minutes, but it couldn’t last. She heard him come off the phone, leave his office to chat to Jenny and then, with the inevitability of a parent coming in search of an unruly child, he was at her door and sidling in.

  He sat at the side of her desk and gave her a sympathetic but cautious smile. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Fine,’ she said looking back at her work.

  ‘Listen, the Mackenzie case – you have to look on it as just one of those things.’

  Alan took pride in being able to rationalize everything, to take the cool dispassionate stance, to learn and grow, as he liked to put it.

  When she didn’t respond, he tried: ‘These things happen.’

  But Daisy wasn’t in the mood for banalities. ‘They do, do they?’

  ‘You mustn’t take it personally.’

  She sat back in her chair. ‘Sure.’ She heard the sarcasm in her voice but was unable to suppress it. ‘I could always pretend I’d done a good job.’

  ‘That’s not fair. You couldn’t have done any more than you did, not when the Mackenzies had shut you out.’

  ‘But I should have realized.’

  ‘Realized what?’

  ‘That it couldn’t possibly have been Reldane.’

  ‘But how could you?’

  ‘Jeese, it was blindingly obvious, Alan. Or should have been, if I’d had a fraction of my brain in gear.’

  ‘Okay, let’s say you should have guessed,’ said Alan, at his most conciliatory. ‘But would the Mackenzies have listened? Even if you’d had some evidence to back you up? I doubt it. I get the impression Nick Mackenzie had made up his mind about what happened and wasn’t about to change it, not for anybody. And even if you had persuaded him to listen, d’you think it would have made any difference? I mean, to what happened. I really don’t think so.’

  She was ready to accept that he might be right, but at the same time she wasn’t ready to let the matter go that easily. She was still feeling too angry with herself. She needed time to come to terms with what had happened in her own time, at her own pace.

  ‘It might have made a difference,’ she said unrelentingly.

  ‘Come on, Daisy. If someone had found out what it was that affected her, assuming it was a chemical – ’

  ‘What do you mean, assuming?’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ He held up a hand to signal his unconditional withdrawal. ‘Okay, so it was a chemical, and if we’d known which one, maybe it would have changed things … But we never knew, did we? And we never will, either.’

  Daisy picked up some papers and shuffled them noisily. ‘Maybe we won’t,’ she said evasively. ‘But then, maybe we will.’ She could feel Alan staring at her, trying to work out what that statement might mean in terms of her own involvement.

  ‘Well … It would be good to know, of course,’ he said dubiously. ‘But the cause and effect would be hard to prove. After the event, I mean.’

  Perhaps it was the sleepless nights, but she was too tired to argue any more. She dropped the papers back onto the desk with a plop. ‘Just so long as Adrian Bell doesn’t go the same way.’

  Alan looked suitably horrified at the thought. ‘Of course not. We must do all we can.’

  ‘Then you’ll agree to Catch stumping up the cost for Peasedale and Roper to go and see him?’

  Resentment sprang into Alan’s eyes, as if he suspected her of having led the entire conversation up to this neat little trap. ‘Can’t Adrian come down to London?’ he suggested weakly. She shook her head.

  Alan was not graceful in defeat – he pulled a succession of unhappy faces – but he did at least recognize defeat when he saw it. ‘Okay,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ll swing it somehow. But just this once, Daisy.’

  ‘Thanks, Alan.’

  He grunted and made a hasty retreat. Daisy sat for a moment, staring at the wall, letting the last of her emotions subside. Then, turning with relief towards more positive thoughts, she lifted the phone and called Simon. He wasn’t at home, but the Sunday Times seemed to think he was somewhere on the editorial floor. While she held, she allowed an indulgent vision to slide into her mind, a picture of herself in Simon’s flat having a hot bath and a glass of wine while Simon got dinner and listened to her troubles.

  He was sounding rushed when he finally answered. ‘Preelection hysteria,’ he explained. ‘The latest poll just put Labour five points ahead.’

  She made her little plea – or maybe it was a cry for help.

  ‘Dinner?’ he echoed, and there was a sudden distance in his voice. She could almost see him calculating the time and effort it would take to shop and prepare the food and cook it. ‘I won’t finish till late, but I suppose I could pick something up from the Indian,’ he suggested eventually, making no attempt to conceal the reluctance in his voice.

  The thought of a featureless curry of unknown origin did not enthrall Daisy, but tonight she’d have been happy with a can of beans so long as it was cooked by someone else. ‘That sounds fine.’

  ‘The fridge is rather bare,’ he mentioned. ‘I can pick up some milk, but we’ll still need bread. And I think I’m out of fruit …’ He left the observation hanging in the air, awaiting suggestions. But her suggestions box, like the fridge, was bare, and when she failed to answer he rang off, sounding aggrieved.

  Daisy reflected that Simon had many qualifications for the New Man –
he related well to women, he made lists, pushed shopping trolleys, cooked adventurous Sunday lunches, consulted her religiously over film and theatre bookings – but this was one occasion when Daisy wished she could trade some of this refurbished masculinity for a burst of wild old-fashioned initiative, even – dare she say it – protectiveness.

  It was late, but, unable to summon the energy to leave, she flicked half-heartedly through her mail. Alice Knowles had sent the latest news of her case, adding a note to say that despite the recent setbacks – she had been refused legal aid – she was still determined to go ahead with the legal action, come what may. Doubtless Alan would think Daisy had secretly been encouraging her, which she had not, but then there was nothing Daisy could say on the subject of the Knowles case that didn’t bring scepticism into Alan’s eyes.

  The next note was from Peasedale’s assistant, saying that the latest blood samples from the Lincolnshire farmer’s wife suffering suspected Aldeb contamination still hadn’t arrived. Daisy read the note with disbelief. This was the third time the arrangements had gone wrong, despite the most thorough preparations. When the farmer had replied to her advertisement in the farming magazine, Daisy had persuaded him to agree to a monthly monitoring programme for his wife’s blood, whereby Peasedale would measure the samples for enzyme, hormone and liver-function levels. But with the samples continually getting held up, it was making a nonsense of the whole programme. The farmer’s wife was called Ruth and she answered the phone in her habitually subdued manner, with a soft almost apologetic greeting.

  ‘What happened to the blood sample, Ruth?’

  There was a pause and she heard Ruth inhale a couple of times as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to speak. ‘I think you should talk to my husband,’ she whispered finally.

  ‘But why? What’s happened, Ruth? Is there something wrong?’

  Another pause, longer this time. ‘Well … it’s … I can’t say.’

  ‘Ruth – ’

  She gave a small sigh. ‘He thinks it would be best not to go on.’

  ‘Why, Ruth? Just tell me why.’

  ‘They said it would …’ Then she exclaimed, ‘No – sorry! I can’t – sorry!’ and hung up.

  Daisy slumped back in her chair. What had Ruth meant by ‘they said’? Who was they – a doctor? An advisor? And what was it they’d said? What could have put Ruth and her husband off a straightforward medical investigation? Daisy couldn’t begin to imagine – not just now anyway – and for the moment she gave up trying.

  The advertisement stirred memories of another reply, and she called out to Jenny in the outer office: ‘Jen, that funny man, Maynard, he hasn’t been back, has he?’

  Jenny appeared in the doorway. ‘Not since the last time, when was it …’ She pursed up her deep-purple mouth. ‘Ooh, November, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No phone calls?’

  ‘Nah – I’d ’ave told yer.’ Jenny had a habit of lapsing into a Cockney accent: something to do with her new boyfriend. ‘No, ’e seemed quite ’appy with all the bumph.’

  ‘And he didn’t ask any odd questions?’

  ‘Nope, not a dicky bird.’

  ‘Not especially nosy?’

  Jenny squawked: ‘You think he’s a spy, don’t you!’ In her delight, her Cockney had momentarily disappeared.

  ‘No, no. I just thought he was – odd.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t do anyfing exciting. I checked – remember? No secret mikes under me desk.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Daisy clasped her fingers to her temples and shook her head. ‘Just going nuts, Jen. Just getting paranoid.’

  ‘Go home. Go on. You look half dead.’

  She finally left the office at seven, glad to have the car for once, but not so glad at the realization that she’d forgotten to feed the meter. A parking ticket fluttered triumphantly from the wiper. Another sixteen quid up the spout, and little hope of getting it back on expenses.

  Simon’s bathroom was sparkling white with down-lights in the ceiling and a scorching hot towel rail and pukka tiles and a bath with a sloping back so you could fall asleep in it without getting a sudden snort of water up your nostrils. She poured the water so hot that it took her five minutes to get in but only two minutes to fall asleep. She woke when the flat door slammed and Simon called her name.

  ‘I found some bread,’ he called through. ‘It’s only granary, I’m afraid. Oh, and some mangy old bananas.’

  ‘Sounds okay to me.’

  ‘Didn’t bother with curry though. Thought we could cook Sunday’s chicken a bit early. You’ll approve – it’s organic – though what that means nowadays is anybody’s guess.’

  ‘Corn-fed, antibiotic-free?’ she suggested.

  ‘You’ll be lucky.’

  ‘Colonically irrigated perhaps?’ She climbed out of the bath and reached for a towel.

  He appeared at the door wearing a disparaging smile. ‘Wrong,’ he corrected her. ‘Only free of continuously fed antibiotics. As the law stands at present there’s nothing to stop the breeders feeding the birds the odd dose of antibiotics on a curative basis. And no guarantee that the birds are even free-range. It’s a big con.’

  ‘Why bother to buy it then?’

  He regarded her carefully. ‘You look washed out,’ he remarked.

  Maybe it was the sympathy, maybe it was a psychosomatic response, but she shivered violently. She wrapped the towel tighter round herself. ‘I think I’m getting flu.’

  She might as well have announced a case of yellow fever. Simon stepped smartly backwards, looking alarmed. ‘God, I’m due to go to Madrid on Monday. The EEC conference.’ Reading her expression, he rearranged his response and put on a solicitous face. ‘Can I get you something?’

  ‘Food’ll do fine.’

  He retreated to the kitchen. ‘Then it can’t be flu,’ he called, not bothering to disguise the relief in his voice. ‘You wouldn’t be hungry if it was flu.’

  ‘Just starvation then.’

  She dressed and found Simon stuffing the bird with a mixture of crushed garlic, herbs and mushrooms. He had a bottle of Pernod out, not her favourite beverage, and she went in search of some white wine.

  ‘Is the paper going to run anything more on Alusha Mackenzie?’ she asked, pulling out a bottle.

  ‘Not that one,’ Simon cried in horror. He reached past her and grasped another bottle. ‘This one. Nice and dry. The other one’s an ’85.’ She wasn’t sure which honoured guest he kept the special vintages for, but it didn’t seem to be her.

  ‘The Mackenzie story,’ she prompted.

  ‘Oh? Nothing, I don’t think. Someone floated an idea for an in-depth piece on pesticides, but the editor killed it.’

  Someone floated an idea, but not him. ‘You didn’t push for it?’

  ‘Well – no.’ He looked mildly defensive. Wiping his hands, he reached for his favourite corkscrew and began to work energetically on the cork.

  ‘But why not? And why did the editor kill it?’

  ‘You know why, Daisy. Not enough to go on. I mean …’ He gave her his favourite let’s-face-the-facts look. ‘She killed herself, and while that’s a tragedy it’s not a story.’ He pulled the cork with a plop.

  ‘But you can’t say she killed herself!’

  ‘A river. A freezing night. A sick woman. It doesn’t take a lot of working out.’

  ‘That’s making one helluva lot of judgements, for Christ’s sake, one helluva lot of assumptions. God – how would you feel if you were sick and weak and you fell and died and the obituaries all marked you down as a suicide?’

  ‘Fell? Daisy, you don’t fall into rivers accidentally.’

  She paced the kitchen. ‘Sure you do. Sure you do. It happens all the time. People trip, they fall …’

  ‘And if it’s a poky little river, they climb out again.’

  She threw out her hands. ‘And what happens if people hit their heads and get knocked unconscious?’

  Wiping the neck of the bottle w
ith a professional polish, he poured a glass and thrust it into her hand as a doctor might force a palliative on a hysterical patient.

  She took a long swig. ‘You’re totally pre-judging the issue,’ she said. ‘Branding someone who can’t defend herself.’

  ‘I’m not branding anyone with anything.’

  ‘Oh yes you are! You’re saying she killed herself and, whatever people say, suicide’s still the ultimate crime – selfish and cowardly and messy.’

  Simon poured some cooking wine over the chicken and looked vaguely in the direction of the oven. ‘There are worse things.’

  ‘Like?’

  He shrugged and, opening a cupboard, rummaged through a collection of herbs.

  ‘Like?’ she repeated harshly, feeling ugly and combative.

  He selected a jar of marjoram and shook a dusting over the chicken. ‘Like, well – being dishonest. Being a drug peddler. I don’t know.’

  She downed the rest of her wine and reached for a refill. ‘There’s no comparison. None at all. This woman’s dead, and most of her death can be laid at the door of the stuff that poisoned her. You can’t even begin to relate it to stealing or drugs.’

  Simon gave the chicken a pat, as if the bird at least could be relied on to appreciate a sound argument. Then, waiting for Daisy to move aside, he bent over the oven and absorbed himself with the temperature control.

  Daisy resumed her pacing, taking the length of the kitchen in five heartfelt strides.

  Simon stood up from the oven, and said suddenly: ‘She was doped.’

  Daisy stopped dead. ‘What do you mean doped?’

  ‘They found drugs in her body.’

  Daisy stood still, trying to make sense of it. And yet the sense was clear. He could only mean one sort of drug, otherwise he would have put it differently. But, needing to hear it in cold words, she asked all the same.

  ‘Morphine or heroin or another derivative,’ Simon said.

  ‘Perhaps it was for pain. Perhaps it was prescribed.’