He thought he could see why Jim had taken on the story, why he would have run with it where others might have given up: because of people like Josh Vincent, scared and running and innocent.

His room was small and cold, but the blankets were plenti-ful. He took off his coat and hung it on a hook on the back of the door, hoping it would dry. His dark pullover was damp, too, so he peeled it off. The rest of him could dry in the kitchen. He found the bathroom and washed his hands and face in scalding water, then looked at himself in the mirror. The image of him injecting BSE into a tapped human vein was still there in the back of his mind. It had given him an idea-not something he could put into use just yet, but something he might need all the same…

In the kitchen the table had been laid for two. Jilly said she’d already eaten. She left them to it and closed the door after her.

“She never misses Coronation Street,” Vincent explained. “Lives out here, but has to get her fix of Lancashire grime.” He used oven mitts to lift the casserole from the oven. It was half full, but a substantial half. There was a lemonade bottle on the table and two glasses. Vincent unscrewed the cap and poured carefully. “Bill’s home brew,” he explained. “I think he only drinks down the pub to remind himself how good his own stuff tastes.”

The beer was light brown, with a head that disappeared quickly. “Cheers,” said Josh Vincent.

“Cheers,” said Reeve.

They ate in silence, hungrily, and chewed on home-baked bread. Towards the end of the meal, Vincent asked a few questions about Reeve-what he did, where he lived. He said he loved the Highlands and Islands, and wanted to hear all about Reeve’s survival courses. Reeve kept the description simple, leaving out more than he put in. He could see Vincent wasn’t really listening; his mind was elsewhere.

“Can I ask you something?” Vincent said finally.

“Sure.”

“How far did Jim get? I mean, did he find out anything we could use?”

“I told you, his disks disappeared. All I have are his written notes from London.”

“Can I see them?”

Reeve nodded and fetched them. Vincent read in silence for a while, except to point out where he himself had contributed a detail or a quote. Then he sat up.

“He’s been in touch with Marie Villambard.” He showed Reeve the sheet of paper. The letters MV were capitalized and underlined at the top. They hadn’t meant anything to Reeve or to Fliss Hornby.

“Who’s she?”

“A French journalist; she works for an ecology magazine-Le Monde Vert, I think it’s called. ”Green World.“ Sounds like they were working together.”

“She hasn’t tried contacting him in London.” There’d been no letters from France, and Fliss hadn’t intercepted any calls.

“Maybe he told her he’d be in touch when he got back from San Diego.”

“Josh, why did my brother go to San Diego?”

“To talk to Co-World Chemicals.” Vincent blinked. “I thought you knew that.”

“You’re the first person to say it outright.”

“He was going to try and speak to some of their research scientists.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because of the experiment they had carried out.” Vincent put down the notes. “They tried to reproduce BSE the way it had flared up in the UK, using identical procedures after consultations with MAFF. They brought in sheep infected with scrapie and rendered them down, taking the exact same shortcuts as were used in the mideighties. Then they mixed the feed to-gether and fed it to calves and mature cattle.”

“And?”

“And nothing. They didn’t exactly trumpet the results. Four years on, the cattle were one hundred percent fit.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They’ve got other experiments ongoing. They’ve got consultant neurologists and world-class psychiatrists working on American farmers who show signs of neurodegenerative disease. Bringing in the psychiatrists is a nice touch: it makes everyone think maybe we’re dealing with psychosomatic hysteria, that the so-called disease is actually a product of the human mind and nothing at all to do with what we spray on our crops and stuff into and onto our animals.” He paused. “You want any more casserole?”

Reeve shook his head.

“The beef’s fine, honestly,” Vincent said, smiling encouragement. “Reared organically.”

“I’m sure,” said Reeve. “But I’m full up, thanks.”

Well, it was 85 percent truth.

After breakfast, Josh Vincent drove Reeve to the station.

“Can I contact you on the farm?” Reeve asked.

Vincent shook his head. “I’ll only be there another day or so. Is there somewhere I can contact you?”

Reeve wrote down his home phone number. “If I’m not there, my wife can take a message. Josh, you haven’t said why you’re hiding.”

“What?”

“All these precautions. You haven’t said why.”

Vincent looked up and down the empty platform. “They tampered with my car, too. Remember I told you about the farmer?”

“The one who’s been campaigning against OPs?”

“Yes. A vet was helping him, but then the vet died in a car crash. His vehicle went out of control and hit a wall; no explanation, nothing wrong with the car. I had a similar crash. My car stopped responding. I hit a tree rather than a wall, and crawled out alive. No garage could find any fault in the car.” Vincent was staring into the distance. “Then they bugged the telephone in my office, and later I found they’d bugged my home telephone, too. I think they opened my mail and resealed the envelopes. I know they were watching me. Don’t ask me who they were, that I don’t know. I could speculate though. MI5 maybe, Special Branch, or the chemical companies. Could have been any of those, could have been someone else entirely. So”-he sighed and dug his hands into his Barbour pockets-“I keep moving.”

“A running target’s the hardest kind to hit,” Reeve agreed.

“Do you speak from experience?”

“Literally,” said Reeve as the train pulled in.

Back in London, Reeve returned to the apartment. Fliss had left a note wondering if he’d gone for good. He scribbled on the bottom of it “Maybe this time” and put the note back on the table. He had to retrieve his bag and his car and then head home. But first he wanted to check something. He found the page of Jim’s notes, the one headed MV. On the back were four two-digit numbers. He’d suspected they were the combination of some kind of safe, but now he knew differently. He found a screwdriver in the kitchen drawer and opened up the telephone: apparatus and handset both. He couldn’t find any bugs, so he replaced the screws and returned the screwdriver to its drawer. He got the code for France from the telephone book and made the call. A long single tone told him he’d reached a French telephone.

An answering machine, a rapid message in a woman’s voice. Reeve left a short message in his rusty French, giving his telephone number in Scotland. He didn’t mention Jim’s fate. He just said he was his brother. This was called “preparing someone for bad news.” He sat and thought about what Josh Vincent had told him. Something had been telling Reeve it couldn’t just be about cows. It was laughable, unbelievable. But Josh Vincent had made it both believable and scary, because it affected everyone on the planet-everyone who had to eat. But Reeve still didn’t think it was just about cows, or pesticides, or coverups. There was more to it than that. He felt it in his bones.

He made another call, to Joan, preparing her for his return. Then he gave the rest of the flat a once-over and locked the door behind him.

An engineer was checking the telephone junction box outside. The man watched Reeve go, then lifted the tape out from the recorder and replaced it with a fresh one. Returning to his van, he wound back the tape and replayed it. A thirteen-digit number, followed by a woman’s voice in French. He plugged a digital decoder into the tape machine, then wound back the tape and played it again. This time, each beep of the dialed number came up as a digit on the decoder’s readout. The engineer wrote down the number and picked up his cell phone.