His decision to examine the coastline at Inverladdie meant that he had sentenced himself to another hard day. He pondered on whether or not to have a day off before going back but decided that that would be giving in to his age. The landlord had agreed to dry off his wet clothing and boots, so he decided he would have one more whisky and then have an early night.
As they sat down together at the fire the quarry man, now introduced as Colin Turnbull, said, The word is that you think the nuclear station had something to do with the meningitis deaths.’
‘Silly gossip,’ replied Bannerman, but he was unpleasantly surprised at how fast it had travelled. ‘I met your boss last night,’ he said. ‘He seemed a nice enough chap.’
‘Mr van Gelder? He’s OK and the job pays well. The only drawback is that there are no prospects.’
‘Why not?’ asked Bannerman.
‘Search me,’ replied Turnbull. “The company seems pretty enlightened in every other way, good pay, conditions, health care etc. but absolutely no prospects of promotion. Senior posts are strictly for the Dutch.’
‘Strange,’ said Bannerman.
‘I’m thinking of taking them to the Race Relations Board,’ smiled Turnbull.
Bannerman laughed and said, ‘What sort of post were you hoping for?’
‘I’ve been doing an Open University degree in geology. I should get my BA this summer. I was hoping for a job I could use it in but it’s no go.’
‘A pity,’ said Bannerman. ‘Maybe they’ll change their minds if you keep on at them.’
‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ agreed Turnbull. ‘I’ve been doing a bit of survey work on my own in the hope that I can impress them.’
That sounds exactly like the kind of initiative they couldn’t ignore,’ said Bannerman, draining his glass.
‘Can I get you another?’ asked Turnbull.
Bannerman shook his head and said that he was having an early night. He had another hard day ahead of him tomorrow. As he got up, Turnbull looked up at him and said, ‘‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this Doc but I think you should be a bit careful.’
The words chilled Bannerman. He looked at Turnbull and saw embarrassment more than threat in his eyes. ‘‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
The power station has local support. It provides a lot of jobs round here. Criticism isn’t welcome, if you get my meaning?’
‘I do,’ replied Bannerman. Thanks for the warning.’
NINE
Despite the soothing effects of the whisky, Bannerman had a restless night, plagued by thoughts of the warning given to him by Turnbull and what he saw as the stupidity of his actions at the power station. He would not now be sorry to leave Achnagelloch. Whether or not he found evidence of contamination that day he was resolved to return to Edinburgh on the following day. There was nothing else to be done here for the moment. He felt sure that the only source of the rogue virus was in the experimental mice at the university.
The rain of the previous day had cleared away to leave a bright blue sky but looking nice was about as far as it went. It was bitterly cold and the wind was strong enough to make the chill factor a significant problem up on the exposed sides of the glen. The landlord had done a good job in drying out his clothing and had also offered to provide him with two thermos flasks, one filled with soup, the other with sweet coffee, an offer Bannerman readily accepted.
As a matter of courtesy Bannerman telephoned John Sproat at Inverladdie to ask for permission to spend another day on his land. It was granted without comment. Bannerman had half hoped for an offer of a rough terrain vehicle so that he would not have to trek all the way up the glen again, but this was not forthcoming. He steeled himself for the hike.
Although numbingly cold as expected, Bannerman found the going easier than the day before because the overnight plunge in temperature had caused the earth to freeze hard, providing a firmer footing than the slippery mud of yesterday. This was a positive advantage in climbing up to the head of the glen but on the descent over the rough, broken ground to the shore it presented a new danger in the form of ice filled gulleys and steep, slippery rock falls with little or no sure footing to be had.
Bannerman was relieved to make it to the railway line by the shore without causing himself any more injury than the bad bruising to his left knee caused when he had slipped and gone down heavily on it while negotiating one of the rock falls. He found a hollow to shelter in and had the soup from the Thermos, cupping both hands round the mug so as to make as much use of the heat as possible. The soup was followed by a Mars bar and a cigarette.
With his back against a rock, Bannerman propped his rucksack between his knees and got out the Geiger counter. MacLeod had also given him a few specimen containers which he could use to take soil samples back if necessary. He brought these out and stuffed them into one of his jacket pockets where they would be more readily accessible. He had already decided that the sensible thing to do would be to walk as far west along the shore as he intended to monitor and then turn round and carry out a slow sweep with the counter on the way back. That way he would have the wind behind him on the actual slow monitoring leg.
Making sure that all his zips and toggles were properly closed and tightened, he leaned forward, bowed his head and set off into the wind. He had barely gone a hundred metres when a sudden loud noise penetrated his hood and startled him so much that he lost his footing; he stumbled and fell to the ground. A freight train, which he hadn’t heard because of the wind, rolled past on the single-track line. Its driver looked out of the cab but did not acknowledge him.
Bannerman got slowly to his feet and watched the trucks trundle by. The train seemed to consist mainly of fuel wagons and empty hoppers on their way up to the quarry. Bannerman silently gave thanks that he hadn’t been walking on the line at the time. The locomotive would have hit him before he had heard it. He reached what he thought was a reasonable point to start working back from. If there had been any contamination of Inverladdie from the sea he would be bound to pick up signs of radioactivity in the four hundred metres or so of the shore that he planned to scan. He knelt down to take the lens cap off the Geiger counter’s sensor.
The cap was a bit tight because the cold had made the plastic hard and unyielding so he laid down the meter by his side while he wrestled with it. Suddenly the glass on the meter shattered and the whole box jumped up into the air. Bannerman looked at the instrument stupidly as if it had been subject to the attentions of a poltergeist. ‘What the …’ he exclaimed before realizing in a searing flash of panic what had really happened. A high velocity bullet had hit the Geiger counter! Someone had shot at him!
It seemed that his capacity to coordinate his limb movements was deserting him just when he needed it most. His arms and legs insisted on trying to behave independently as he half ran, half stumbled his way up the shore and over the railway line to tumble down into the first gulley that presented itself. It was his misfortune that it happened to have a puddle of water in the foot of it. There was a layer of ice on its surface but it gave way when he crashed down on it and he found himself kneeling in icy water. It was deep enough to cover his calf muscles and he felt them contract and threaten cramp in protest as he pressed his face to the muddy wall of his refuge.
As the seconds passed in silence, apart from the sound of his breathing, Bannerman became aware of the pain and discomfort afflicting him. These had been ignored as secondary considerations in his desperation to get out of sight of the gunman but now they screamed for his attention. He had come down heavily on his already bruised left knee and it was throbbing. Both his legs from the knees down had become numb with cold and his back was aching through holding himself against the wall of the gulley at an uncomfortable angle. He couldn’t stay like this for ever but, on the other hand, he would be a sitting target for the gunman if he broke cover.
Perhaps the gunman wasn’t there any more, thought Bannerman as what seemed like an eternity passed without any further shooting. His breathing quietened and he became aware of gulls wheeling above him in the wind. The analogy with vultures circling a dying man was inescapable, although he could only have been hiding for four or five minutes. His body was insisting that he move, so, very slowly, he edged himself up on the frozen mud wall and looked over the lip of the gulley. He was rewarded with a face full of grit as a bullet slammed into the ground less than a metre in front of him. He tumbled back down into the icy puddle and let out a cry of anguish as
