“What do you mean, ”when they let him‘?“

“He’s been threatened,” Vincent said simply. “People helping him have died. Car crashes, unexplained deaths, accidents…” He turned to Reeve. “Only four or five, you understand. Not yet an epidemic.”

They were winding down country lanes barely the width of two cars. The sun had gone down.

Vincent put the heater on. “It may just be coincidence,” he said, “that BSE started to appear around the same time that MAFF was telling farmers to protect against warble fly in their cattle by rubbing on an organophosphorus treatment. What some of us would like to know is whether OPs can cause prions to mutate.”

“So these OP chemicals are to blame?”

“Nobody knows. It sometimes seems to me hardly anybody wants to know. I mean, imagine the embarrassment if it turned out a government directive had started the whole thing off. Imagine the claims for compensation that would be put in by the farmers suffering from OP poisoning. Imagine the cost to the agrichemical industry if they had to withdraw products, carry out expensive tests… maybe even pay compensation. We’re talking about a worldwide industry. The whole farming world is hooked on pesticides of one kind or another. And on the other side of the coin, if pesticides had to be withdrawn, and new ones created and tested, there’d be a gap of years-and in those years yields would decrease, pests would multiply, farms would go out of business, the cost of every foodstuff in the supermarket would rocket. You can see where that would lead: economic disaster.” He looked at Reeve again. “Maybe they’re right to try and stop us. What are a few lives when measured against an economic disaster of those proportions?”

Reeve shivered, digging deeper into his coat. He felt exhausted, lack of sleep and jet lag hitting him hard. “Who’s trying to stop you?”

“Could be any or all of them.”

“CWC?”

“Co-World Chemicals has a lot to lose. Its worldwide market share is worth billions of dollars annually. They’ve also got a very persuasive lobby which keeps the majority of farmers and governments on their side. Sweetened, as you might say.”

Reeve nodded, getting his meaning. “So there’s a cover-up going on.”

“To my mind undoubtedly, but then I would say that. I was suddenly fired from my job, a job I thought I was good at. When I began to be persuaded that the feed-cake explanation just wasn’t on, I spoke twice about it in public, sent out a single press release-and next thing I knew my job was being ”phased out.“”

“I thought the National Farmers’ Union was supposed to be on the side of farmers.”

“It is on the side of farmers-or at least, it’s on the side of the majority of them, the ones with their heads in the sand.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re nearly there.”

Reeve had half-thought he was going to be returned to the railroad station, meeting over. But, if anything, the landscape had grown less populous. They turned up a track and arrived at a high mesh gate topped with razor wire. A fence of similar height, similarly protected, stretched off either side. There were warning notices on the gate, picked out by the 4x4’s headlights, but nothing to say what the fence and razor wire were protecting.

When Reeve followed Vincent out of the Subaru, a smell hit the back of his throat and he nearly gagged. It lay heavy in the air; the smell of dead flesh.

“We have to walk around the perimeter to get a good look,” Vincent said. He turned on his flashlight. “It’s a good job of invisible landscaping. You’d really have to be keen before you got to see what’s inside.”

“There’s something I might as well ask you,” Reeve said. “God knows I’ve asked everyone else. Does the word Agrippa mean anything?”

“Of course,” Vincent said casually. “It’s a small R and D company, American-based.”

“My brother had the word written on a scrap of paper.”

“Maybe he was looking into Agrippa. The company is at the forefront of genetic mutation.”

“Meaning what exactly?” Reeve recalled something Fliss Hornby had said: Jim had been reading up on genetic patents.

“Meaning they take something and alter its genetic code, to try to make a better product. ”Better‘ being their description, not mine.“

“You mean like cotton?”

“Yes, Agrippa doesn’t have the patent on genetically engineered cotton. But the company is working on crops-trying for better yields and resistance to pests, trying to create strains that can be grown in hostile environments.” Vincent paused. “Imagine if you could plant wheat in the Sahara.”

“But if you produced resistant strains, that would do away with the need for pesticides, wouldn’t it?”

Vincent smiled. “Nature has a way of finding its way around these defenses. Still, there are some out there who would agree with you. That’s why CWC is spending millions on research.”

“CWC?”

“Didn’t I say? Agrippa is a subsidiary of Co-World Chemicals. Come on, this way.”

They followed the fence up a steep rise and down into a valley, then climbed again.

“We can see from here,” Vincent said. He switched off his flashlight.

It was a single large building, with trucks parked outside, illuminated by floodlights. Men in protective clothing, some wearing masks, wheeled trolleys between the trucks and the building. A tall thin chimney belched out acrid smoke.

“An incinerator?” Reeve guessed.

“Industrial-strength. It could melt a ship’s hull.”

“And they’re burning infected cattle?”

Vincent nodded.

“Did you bring Jim here?”

“Yes.”

“To make a point?”

“Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.”

“You should never tell a journalist that.”

Vincent smiled. “Burning the cattle isn’t going to make it go away, Mr. Reeve. That’s what your brother understood. There are other journalists like him in other countries. I’d guess each one is a marked man or woman. If BSE gets to humans, it’s called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Believe me, you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.”

But Reeve could picture himself syringing a strain of it into the arm of whoever had killed his brother.

There were other neurodegenerative diseases, too-motoneuron disease, multiple sclerosis-and they were all on the increase. Their conversation on the way back to the farm was all one-way, and all bad news. The more Josh Vincent talked, the more zeal-ous he became and the angrier and more frustrated he sounded.

“But what can you do?” Reeve asked at one point.

“Reexamine all pesticides, carry out tests on them. Use less of them. Turn farms into organic cooperatives. There are answers, but they’re not simple overnight panaceas.”

They parked in the farmyard again. The dog came out bark-ing. The lamb trotted over towards them. Reeve followed Vincent into the kitchen. Once inside the door, they took off their boots. The young woman was still at the sink beneath the window. She smiled and wiped her hands, coming forward to be in-troduced.

“Jilly Palmer,” said Vincent, “this is Gordon Reeve.”

They shook hands. “Pleased to meet you,” she said. She had a flushed complexion and a long braid of chestnut-colored hair. Her face was sharp, with angular cheekbones and a wry twist to her lips. Her clothes were loose, practical.

“Supper’s ready when you are,” she said.

“I’ll just show Gordon his room first,” Vincent said. He saw the surprise in Reeve’s face. “You can’t get back to London to-night. No trains.”

Reeve looked at Jilly Palmer. “I’m sorry if I-”

“No trouble,” she said. “We’ve a bedroom going spare, and Josh here made the supper. All I had to do was warm it through.”

“Where’s Bill?” Vincent asked.

“Young Farmers‘. He’ll be back around ten.”

“Don’t be daft,” said Vincent, “pubs don’t shut till eleven.”

He sounded very different in this company: more relaxed, enjoying the warmth of the kitchen and normal conversation. But all that did, in Reeve’s eyes, was show how much strain the man was under the rest of the time, and how much this whole conspiracy had affected him.