‘No,’ I said, because it was pointless to pretend.
Christine glanced up at her lover, then back at me. ‘Tom didn’t tell you?’
‘No.’
‘And Mattie … ?’ I shook my head. You could see that it hurt her almost as much as the story I had just told. ‘She didn’t talk about me?’
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘But she missed you.’
‘Yes, I missed her, too.’She caught her breath. ‘But I don’t think she ever understood. Maybe it’s not understandable.’ But then that wasn’t mine to comment on.
‘I think Miss Wolfe might find it helpful to know what happened, Chris,’said Veronica, watching me over her lover’s head. And I wondered if that was the way a man would have put it, or if somehow their womanliness made it all different.
And so it was that I learnt the story of the Shepherd marriage: a modern little morality tale of sex and circumstance, starting with an errant conjunction of sperm and egg cementing a relationship which would otherwise have gone the way of all flesh. But they were young (she at teacher training college, he a post-graduate), unsure about abortion and under fierce parental pressure. The way she told it, it was hard to know whether they gave in or simply gave up.
The early years were a struggle because of money, with Shepherd chasing fewer and fewer government research jobs, and by the time things got easier and he’d become the development officer for the Vandamed livestock division, the emotional fault lines were beginning to reopen between them.
The relationship had never been successful sexually, although she’d done a good job of hiding it, even from herself. But as Mattie grew older and Christine could no longer hide behind the excuses of maternal exhaustion, it became impossible to ignore any longer. Although, as she told it, it wasn’t quite that simple. When was it ever?
‘There’s one thing you should know. Veronica didn’t break up my marriage. Tom and I did that for ourselves. And he was as much to blame as I was. Yes, I could have been a more responsive wife. But I never refused him. And if he hadn’t left, then I’d probably still be there now.’
‘He left you?’ Among all the mud Mattie had slung at her father that one hadn’t been mentioned.
‘I don’t mean he packed a bag and walked out. But from the way he behaved he might as well have done.’She was angry now and the emotion sculpted her face in memory of her daughter. ‘I suppose I should have seen it coming. From the start he’d always been more interested in his work than in me. I think that’s why he was able to block it all out for so long. Maybe that’s why I didn’t mind. It made things easier in some ways. But after Mattie was born he’d always found time for the family. Until he got the London job.’
‘Head of research.’She laughed bitterly. ‘Everything he’d ever wanted. Maybe that was the problem. Sometimes I think he was scared he wasn’t up to it—there were others better qualified. I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t work at all, maybe it was me. Whatever it was, he just closed down completely. Never came home, hardly even saw Mattie or me. He seemed to lose all interest in the idea of having a family. He gave up sex long before I did, spent more nights sleeping in the laboratory than he did with me. And when we did see each other all we did was row. I stayed for as long as I could. But in the end there was nothing to preserve anyway. That’s when I met Veronica.’
She broke off. I waited. After a while Veronica touched her hair ever so lightly just to tell her we were still there. Christine moved her head into the caress, like a blind person moving towards sound. Their intimacy was almost painful to watch. I wondered where they had met and how quickly they had both known. And, of course, there were other things I wondered but knew that I would never ask.
‘And Mattie?’ I asked quietly.
‘I would have taken Mattie if I could,’she said angrily, with a voice still steeped in guilt. ‘But she was already blaming me for Tom being away all the time, and I didn’t know how to tell her. Anyway, by then I was in such trouble she would have been in a worse state coming with me. I was only gone two weeks. No, not two weeks. Thirteen days. Thirteen days compared with thirteen years.’She smiled grimly. ‘Nobody seemed to notice that discrepancy. But then they were all men. By the time we got to court Vandamed had had lawyers and private detectives crawling all over us. We didn’t stand a chance. But then we didn’t have much of a case, anyway, since Mattie said loud and clear that she wanted to stay with her father. I dare say it was her way of punishing me for what I’d done.’
And I think she was probably right. Having your mother leave home for another man is one thing, but—well, put it this way, I couldn’t imagine it ever, let alone at thirteen. No wonder Mattie had tumbled so eagerly into the long grass with her sexy gardener. At that age you’d need to do something drastic to convince yourself it wasn’t hereditary.
‘What about after the court case? Did you make any attempt to get Mattie back?’
She sighed. ‘I went to the school once to try and see her. But they refused. I think it was on Tom’s instructions.’
No, actually. But why hurt her more by telling her the truth. ‘And you never tried to snatch her?’
And for the first time she laughed. ‘Can you imagine anyone trying to snatch Mattie? Is that what he told you?’ I half nodded. ‘Well, he wouldn’t be the only one who sees me as some kind of threat to civilization. Poor Tom.’
Poor maybe, but not that stupid, surely? How sexually undermined could a man be? ‘Disturbed and unstable.’ It was beginning to feel more like a self-portrait than a description of his unfaithful wife. Maybe the death threats had got to him more than he was willing to admit. Poor Tom. Poor Mattie. Poor Christine. It was just another of those stories where everybody gets hurt. Even before one of them climbs into a booby-trapped car. A vicious, stubborn image. Still, at least it reminded me why I was there.
When it came to her husband’s work with animals, however, Christine Shepherd knew next to nothing. And when I tried to find out what Mattie’s feelings on that subject had been, I drew an even greater blank. Tom Shepherd had stopped talking about such things the best part of two years ago. And as far as she remembered, she and Mattie had stopped asking. That was the problem. She did, though, have a suggestion.
‘You could always talk to his bosses? If, that is, they’ll talk to you.’
They offered me coffee, but I didn’t stay. It seemed to me they needed their own company more than they needed mine.
CHAPTER TEN Have You Seen the Little Piggies?
For a city-dweller I was spending altogether too much time in the country. But then a girl has to go where the work is, and, according to his London secretary, Vandamed’s managing director was spending most of his time at their East Suffolk headquarters. East Suffolk—hardly the most glamorous place for a multinational, but then what did I know? Presumably real estate was cheaper in the country. And presumably if you went that far out nobody could see what you were doing to the animals.
The journey ought to have been a breeze. The instructions I had got from the secretary got me as far as Framlingham, but from there things began to get difficult. After I had passed the pet food factory on the way out of the village for a third time, it struck me maybe she had meant right but said left. I tried it. Right took me out of town, where at least I could no longer smell the pet food so strongly. After a few miles the air was sweeter, the surroundings prettier, the roads smaller. And I was lost.
Above the hedgerow on a slight hill I spotted a sign in the distance. Maybe it would say ‘Vandamed—this way.’ I speeded up and took the corner. Bad idea, really.
Ahead of me a tilted farm truck blocked the lane, its offside wheels caught fast in mud, the driver’s window crushed into the hedgerow. The real problem, however, was not the truck, but what was escaping from it. The bolts holding the tailboard in place had obviously jolted free on impact. Either that or the pigs had picked the locks. The effect was the same. They were everywhere, a great bristling herd of them surging and snort
ing out of the darkness of the truck down the ramp and on to the lane, filling it instantly with their bulk.
Interesting animals, pigs. You don’t usually come across that many of them all in one place. In fact the only time I had ever really seen them before (apart from vintage Pasolini, or in between two slices of bread) was in fields, where distance gives them a particular, reassuring perspective. Move closer and they’re altogether more alarming.
I thought about reversing, but with a couple of them already pushing by me and more on their way it seemed wiser to wait for them to pass. They were moving fast and although I was narrower than the truck, it was still a tight squeeze. The car rocked as three tried to get past the driver’s side together, taking part of the wing mirror with them. I opened the window to yell at them to stop.
‘Turn off your bloody engine.’ The voice came from somewhere behind me. I did as I was told. The car was completely surrounded now, juddering to and fro with the force of a couple of hundredweight of meat, and the scrape of tough skin against bodywork. If I could hear them I could also smell them. What do they say about pigs being clean animals really? Bullshit. I rolled up the window, but the smell rolled in with me.
Behind me, in my mirror, I saw a second truck backing its way into the lane, effectively blocking the pigs’ exit. The man who had called to me was standing in the ditch guiding it in with hand signals, slapping the side when he wanted it to stop. Then he scurried to the back and let down the hinges. The tailboard fell into the lane, nearly making minced meat out of a particularly large porker careering towards it. The man, who was almost as wide as the pig itself, rapped the animal smartly on the flank with a small stick. Against the odds it seemed to placate rather than enrage the animal, and it scampered up into the dark belly of the truck, squealing loudly. So much for the great escape. The others followed mindlessly, battering against each other (and me) in their stampede. I stopped counting after twenty. I was glad I was inside the car.
When they were safely locked in, the farmer turned his attention to me. I opened the door of the car and glanced down at the bodywork. No obvious scratches, just a hell of a lot of grime and mud. When I looked up at him, he was grinning. ‘It needed a wash, anyway. Country life, eh?’
‘Excuse me, but I’d call it more of a public nuisance. Those pigs were out of control,’ I said, but the indignation sounded tight-arsed in my London accent.
‘Well, excuse me, but if you hadn’t come round that corner like a bat out of hell those pigs would still be sitting in the truck, good as gold. City buggers. Why do you think we’ve got a country code?’
And when had I last read it? I thought about ranting some more, but decided it wasn’t worth the energy. He pulled the sleeve of his jacket down, spat on it, then rubbed the paintwork. ‘There you go. Right as rain with a wet cloth.’ We sort of knew we were both in the wrong.
‘Big animals,’ I muttered looking back at the cloud of dust wafting up from the back of the truck.
‘Yep,’ he said, happy to chat now I had withdrawn all threat of damages. ‘Big and beautiful.’
‘Bit nervy, though, aren’t they?’
‘Yeah, well, they know where they’s going. Not stupid animals, pigs.’
‘No,’ I said, thinking otherwise. ‘I wonder if you could help me. I’m looking for the headquarters of the drug company, Vandamed. I was told it was around this way’.
And he looked at me in a way which made it clear that he now knew why I had almost run into his pigs. Women drivers. ‘Vandamed? You’n just driven straight past it.’
Not that it was that obvious from the road. I’m not an expert on the headquarters of multinationals, so all I can tell you about Vandamed was that it covered a lot of ground and every inch of it was well protected. It was about a hundred yards off the road. Razor wire lined the perimeter wall, and the gates were about as inviting as an entrance to a detention centre, which was probably where they had recruited their security staff from.
The problem, it appeared, was that the appointment I said I had was not registered on the guard’s security computer. This was an even bigger problem since it was clear that the computer and the guard had a big thing going between them. I tried suggesting that he circumvent the power of the beast by ringing the managing director’s office direct, but he didn’t take kindly to being told how to do his job, and made it clear that this was the cue for my exit line.
I went like a lamb. That way he had no reason to check where I was going. Not that I had any kind of plan, certainly not one that took into account a couple of kilometres of razor wire, but as sometimes happens at such times, lady luck indulged me with a little sisterly solidarity.
I had parked my car out of sight near the main road and was walking back to the gates when a BMW passed me and schmoozed up to the main entrance. The security guard, recognizing sovereign power, rushed out to greet it. With regal magnanimity the back window on the driver’s side slid down for a word of greeting to the unworthy one. So busy were they preserving the status quo that they never noticed powerless little me slide round the back of the security hut and into the compound.
I covered the first hundred yards doubled up and running, keeping to the edge. Then, when it was safe, I cut across to the tarmac road which ran through the centre of the complex. From there I thought myself into the role of your regular research scientist and hoped the body posture would follow. Not that I met anyone to challenge me. In fact, the place seemed remarkably quiet.
The problem was that I had absolutely no idea what I was looking for. Just another private eye in search of a game plan. If I waited long enough maybe it would find me.
I smelt them before I heard them. The stench of sweet decay and defecation. It was becoming almost familiar. I stood like the Bisto kid trying to work out the direction of the scent, but it was the noise that gave them away, a cross between squealing and grunting, coming from the edge of the compound in among some trees. As I got closer, I saw two buildings. The first was a vicious concrete construction, with no windows at all. The other, from where the noise came, was joined to the first by a short brick corridor. It looked like an old farm building, low slung with a row of tiny dormer openings, more like portholes, high up in the eaves. I hoisted myself up via some faulty pointing on the outside brickwork, and managed to get my head above a window just long enough to take in a vision of some serious factory farming.
Below me, lit by artificial lights, were lines of open concrete compartments with heavy galvanized iron gates, and crammed together in each of them several huge pigs, snorting and grumbling, their noses buried in long troughs of food. The sight was more surreal than horrific, but then I was on the outside. I tried to invert it, to imagine people rather than animals in similar conditions. But the only images that came to mind were the Nazi trains to the camps, and all the animal rights leafl ets in the world couldn’t bring those two things together. I wondered what Ben Maringo would have said to convince me, but by that time my left foot was already beginning to slide and I needed all my concentration to get back down the wall without breaking a leg.
‘I should be careful. They’re very particular about their privacy,’ the voice said as I hit the earth with less grace than I would have liked. I whirled round to see a man in a suit standing about fifty yards away from me, just as a shriek of alarm bells went off all around us. ‘As we are, I’m afraid,’ he shouted, making a face at the noise. ‘Electronically triggered. There’re sensors round the window frames. It s one of the reasons we ask guests to check in at the main gate. It’s easier on the security guards that way.’
When they arrived, they were more out of breath than I was, but the uniforms looked good, and they had a numerical advantage over me. The man in the suit waved them away, explaining that the alarm was faulty. They seemed satisfied, though one of them, the computer freak, kept looking back over his shoulder, obviously recognizing me from ten minutes before. One up to Vandamed. Believe me, not all security guards have that long
a memory.
The man in the suit offered me his outstretched hand. ‘Miss Wolfe, I presume? Alan Grafton, head of Vandamed livestock research division.’
‘Pleased to meet you. Is that the livestock you ’re researching?’ I said, gesturing to the building I’d just fallen off.
He nodded. ‘AAR. The pigs are part of the final trial.’
‘AAR?’
‘Our new performance enhancer. It would have been on the guided tour if you’d waited. Would you like to see more now, or would you prefer some coffee?’
It’s important to recognize when you’ve just been outwitted, if only to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Alan Grafton and I got on famously as we sauntered back across the compound towards the main office. He even apologized for the behaviour at the gate, but then four days after a bomb … well, I would obviously appreciate that security precautions had been stepped up. I said I understood. He shook his head.
‘My God, poor Tom. I can’t tell you how devastated we all are. She was such a lovely child.’
‘You knew her?’
‘Not really. But when Tom worked here he used to bring her in occasionally. She was younger then, of course. But very bright.’ Yes, indeed. Very bright. ‘I gather … well, I gather you were there—’
‘Yes. I was.’
He nodded, but didn’t say anything, which I appreciated. We had reached the main building. We took the lift up to the third floor. The doors opened on to some very nice interior decorating, the kind of thing that pigs just wouldn’t appreciate. ‘Marion Ellroy,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘Vandamed’s managing director. He and Tom have known each other for a long time. He asked to see you.’
The door to the main office was open. He was sitting at his desk with a commanding view over the compound, but got up immediately we came in. He was a tall man with a broad face and a good head of hair, greying in all the right places. Not unattractive if you liked that sort of thing, and well packaged, in a suit blending eighties fl air with Savile Row sobriety. In a word, distinguished; the very model of a modern British plutocrat. So it was a surprise when he turned out to be American.