Requiem
PRAISE FOR REQUIEM
‘A fat new thriller with a lively environmentalist heroine and some convincing villains; they produce chemical sprays whose deadly potential the authorities are suspiciously unwilling to admit …
Requiem
is sure to be as successful as her previous bestsellers’
D
AILY
T
ELEGRAPH
‘Once again Clare Francis has chosen an unusual and topical subject in her latest novel
Requiem
. She writes with passion about green issues. It is a large subject and her canvas is wide-ranging. Undoubtedly her most ambitious novel to date’
S
UNDAY
E
XPRESS
‘Entertaining … Clare Francis scores a double success, in getting serious content into what is clearly written as a popular book.
Requiem
has unmistakable bestseller intent, but genuine concern for the planet is equally present. The individual campaigner up against the powers-that-be is, with good reason, a character close to Clare Francis’s own heart’
O
BSERVER
‘It’s a campaigning thriller with as many characters as consciences. With passion Clare Francis launches her attack on corporations, conventional medicine, the eco-mafia. The effect is moving and the story great’
M
AIL ON
S
UNDAY
C
LARE
F
RANCIS
is the author of nine international bestselling thrillers and has also written three non-fiction books, about her voyages across the oceans of the world.
By the same author
Thrillers
Night Sky
Red Crystal
Wolf Winter
Crime
Deceit
Betrayal
A Dark Devotion
Keep Me Close
A Death Divided
Non-fiction
Come Hell or High Water
Come Wind or Weather
The Commanding Sea
PAN BOOKS
in association with
William Heinemann
First published 1991 by William Heinemann Ltd
First published by Pan Books 1992
This revised edition published 1994 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2008 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd
Pan Macmillan, 4 Crinan Street, London N1 9XW
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-330-46614-1 PDF
ISBN 978-0-330-46613-4 EPUB
Copyright © Clare Francis 1991, 1994
The right of Clare Francis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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I
T WAS JUST
after midnight when Nick slipped away from the house. The moon cast shards of pale light across the wide parkland and illuminated the beeches like giant white-sailed ships. The shadows were very deep, and he wondered if he would be able to find his way up through the glen. He’d never walked the glen in darkness before; usually he drove, and then in daylight with Alusha or Duncan, the estate manager, at his side. He could have done with Duncan’s special knowledge to guide him now, but Duncan had been told nothing of this little expedition: he wouldn’t approve.
From the post-and-wire fence marking the end of the park, rough pasture rose gently towards the dense woodland which covered the lower slopes of the hills. The direct route to the glen led diagonally across the pasture, but anxious to avoid the obvious paths, Nick struck off at a tangent, making for a dark mass of oak trees on the fringe of the woodland.
He paced himself for the long climb ahead. The shotgun in his hand felt awkward, absurd and rather obscene. He wasn’t sure why he’d brought it. Maybe because here, in what was possibly the safest place in the world, he still felt unsafe. Time had done nothing to alleviate the unease; if anything, it had increased it, and he needed the reassurance of the weight in his hand, even if the idea of ever firing the thing frightened him to death. He had no skill with the weapon. Duncan had given him some rudimentary tuition on pointing it in the right direction and not accidentally shooting friends in the backside, but even Duncan, with his boundless optimism, had given up hope of making a good shot of him. Alusha hated him even to pick up a gun. She would be far from happy if she knew he was carrying one now – and far from happy if she knew he was out here, playing cops and robbers in the middle of the night.
But he couldn’t have stayed away, the chances were too good. For a week the weather had been foul even by West Highland standards, with blustery westerlies, lowering clouds and almost continuous rain. Then early that evening the sky had cleared, the wind had died, and a brittle blue-washed moon had risen over the hills of Cowal. It was then that Duncan’s prediction had flashed into his mind, the prophecy that they would come after the rain, as soon as there was a touch of moon to light their way up the glen.
Almost as he thought it, the outline of the approaching woods became less distinct, blurring into the sky, and he saw that fingers of cloud were creeping across the moon from the west. Would the cloud be enough to put them off? The thought brought him a mixture of disappointment and relief. But it didn’t make him turn back; it was too late for that now.
On reaching the woods, he had intended to follow a small footpath that wound between a succession of overgrown dells and hazel thickets, but the darkness was so great that he lost the path almost as soon as he found it and was forced back to the pasture, to skirt the edge of the wood.
At first he had been conscious of few sounds except his own breathing and the soft squelch of his feet on the sodden ground, but now, close under the trees, the night came alive with faint rustlings and scratchings and suggestions of movement. He felt an absurd pride, as if the untouched forest, complete with its small unseen residents, was his very own creation. And in a sense it was. Duncan was forbidden to touch this part of the estate, apart from cutting the worst of the bracken and erecting protective fences around rare plants. Fallen trees rotted where they lay, saplings were left to compete for light in tangled thickets. In the early days this non-interference policy had driven Duncan mad but, despite dark mutterings, he had never actually quit. Nick liked to think that, after eight years, Duncan was beginning to see the point of it all.
The clouds slid past the moon and the trees sprang into relief again. Coming to the corner of the pasture, he re-entered the woods, taking the path that would lead him west towards the deep cut of the glen. Now the forest was mainly oak and sycamore with the occasional Scots pine, the trees high and well-spaced, so that the moon filtered down onto the ground in delicate droppings of light.
As he hurried on, the distant whisper of the river grew steadily until the rush of fast-falling water drowned all but the most distinct sounds.
A pale ribbon appeared through the trees: the track that ran up the glen in a long lazy loop from the house. Stopping just short of it, he crouched in the shadows and, glancing up and down the empty road, strained to hear over the gush and rumble of the water. He became aware of how ludicrous he must look, hiding there like an overgrown boy scout, and, whether from nerves or amusement, he chuckled aloud. The chuckle died in his throat as the shadows at the bend in the track shifted and sent his heart thudding against his ribs. The shadows quickly settled into the benign shapes of trees and shrubs, but after that nothing seemed remotely funny.
Once his heart was back under some sort of control, he tried to plan his next move. How would the men come? By car? If so, there was only one way they could get onto the track without driving past the house itself – something even they, brass-nerved as they were, wouldn’t dare. Some quarter of a mile down the glen a narrow overgrown track, hardly more than a wide path, ran off the main track towards the lochside road. Entry to this path was barred by a gate which Duncan had reinforced and locked with a massive padlock and chain. This hadn’t stopped their visitors from entering in the past of course; they’d merely used larger bolt cutters. Nor had a three-night stakeout by Duncan and the local constabulary – all two of them. The enemy had merely bypassed the gate and trailed up the glen on foot.