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  Martin judged that a reasonable trade-off. ‘Fine. We will protect you as a source.’

  Brian held their eye contact for a second or two longer as he judged the value of the promise and then slid the envelope across the table.

  ‘In that case, this is all yours. I hope you can use it to do much good.’

  He stood and stuck out a stiff arm again for a parting handshake. With a thin, satisfied smile, he picked up his case and left.

  Martin sat again and opened the envelope, scanning the top sheets of the hundred or so it contained. This would need far greater in-depth scrutiny. He took out his phone from his apron pocket.

  ‘Vivienne,’ he said. ‘It’s Martin. We need to call an emergency meeting.’

  19

  The adrenaline rush of the plans set in place the previous evening was still surging as Martin strode through the sliding doors of the hospital’s spinal injuries unit and headed for the nurses’ station on the ward.

  ‘Hi, Suneeta!’ he called cheerily to the sister behind the desk as he stepped briskly towards the familiar bay.

  ‘Oh! Martin,’ she called after him and beckoned for him to come over.

  Martin made an exaggerated, extravagant spin turn back towards her and leaned on the desk with a broad grin.

  ‘Mrs Dawes has been a bit down today,’ said the sister warily.

  ‘Oh!’ His face dropped in concern. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Not as far as we know. The physio says she’s almost as good as new and occupational therapy are doing an assessment to make sure she has everything she needs for when she goes home, so she should be able to leave us by the weekend.’

  He looked puzzled. That was good news, wasn’t it?

  ‘Any idea what’s bothering her then?’

  The sister wrinkled her nose. ‘She won’t talk to us about it. I thought maybe she might tell you.’

  ‘OK.’ Martin turned to resume his journey to the bay, though without the same spring in his step.

  By the time the end bed of the bay came into view, though, he was all sunny disposition again – at least on the outside. Evelyn sat up in bed, not in her armchair, as she had been the last time he saw her. Her head stooped and her expression sagged, making her appear somehow much older overnight. She didn’t seem to notice him approaching, nor did she seem to care when she lifted her eyes wearily and realised he was there.

  ‘Hi, hi, hi Mrs Dawes! You’re looking wonderful today,’ he lied, bending to kiss her cheek. She was unmoved.

  He touched her hand. ‘I must apologise for not being able to come in to see you yesterday, but it turned into quite a day. I’ve so much to tell you and you will not believe what happened. I was on the phone until half past eleven last night talking to the people in London who are going to come up to help us out over the next couple of days and… anyway! How are you?’

  Martin tried not to make it too obvious that this was no casual polite request. She appeared gaunt and crushed. Even in the early days after the accident, when she treated him with thinly disguised disdain, her feisty spirit shone through. There was nothing behind those eyes anymore. She looked ready to give up.

  There was no point in his attempting to pretend he had seen nothing out of the ordinary. He was worried. This was more than ‘a bit down’.

  ‘What’s bothering you, Mrs Dawes? This isn’t like you. What’s happened? You can talk to me.’

  She said nothing but tilted her head slightly towards him and fixed him with sad, watery eyes for only a second before the effort of the gesture appeared too much and she slipped back into the same doleful pool of misery.

  Martin gently rubbed the back of her hand as it lay limply on the bed.

  ‘Please tell me what’s wrong, Mrs Dawes. I want to help.’

  He rubbed her hand again, as if attempting to gently coax it back into life, but spoke no more, giving her the space to consider his offer.

  Without moving, she said finally in a faint, croaky voice, ‘I don’t want to go home.’

  So that was it. He absorbed the announcement for a moment.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Evelyn appeared reluctant to explain. She wanted to tell him but was wrapped so tightly in the web of her darker thoughts of the last day or so that it was difficult to get the words out. She struggled to force her head free of her own binding and added: ‘I don’t want to be alone again.’

  The words pierced him. He saw her deepest fears and the low ebb they had taken her to, and it was heartbreaking. But why did she think she was going to be alone again?

  ‘You don’t need to be on your own, Mrs Dawes. I’ll be just across the road from you and I’ll be able to pop over every day for a cuppa and…’

  ‘You didn’t come yesterday,’ she said flatly.

  ‘No, no, that’s true,’ Martin admitted. Was that what had brought on her black mood? It had been practically impossible for him to break free for even an hour with the way the day had taken an unexpected turn but the guilt he felt about her being in this hospital bed in the first place stung him again.

  ‘I couldn’t be here yesterday for a whole bunch of reasons and I’m sorry about that but I would have called in if I could and when you’re back in your home and just across the road it’ll be so much easier for…’

  ‘Don’t pretend, Martin,’ she interrupted. ‘I know how it’s going to be. You only came to see me all this time because it made you feel better about causing the accident…’

  ‘Mrs Dawes, that’s not–‘

  ‘… and once they send me home, you’ll get back to your normal, interesting life and you’ll forget about me. You’ll be free of me.’

  ‘That’s not fair and it’s not true,’ he said, firmly, trying not to show how much her words had hurt. ‘I come to see you because we’re friends. I know we didn’t know each other before the accident but we do now and I’m not going to let that slide just because you’re not in the hospital. I want us to stay friends and I promise…’

  ‘You promised you were going to help me find my daughter. You haven’t lived up to that promise, have you? Why should I believe you again?’

  ‘I will find Tanya. I will.’ His voice cracked through the emotion now welling inside. ‘I can understand how much this means to you and I wasn’t just saying when I told you I would do all I could to bring your daughter to you again. If it’s at all possible, I’ll bring Tanya to you so that you can walk out of the hospital with her this weekend.’

  ‘Are you going to see Frank tomorrow then?’ She was angry now, confrontational.

  Martin sighed. ‘I can’t tomorrow.’ It pained him to make the admission and Evelyn tutted in an I-knew-it kind of way.

  ‘I’ll be at a press conference which is going to get national coverage tomorrow. We’re going to break a news story that will expose a cover-up in the corridors of power and could save thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people from being exposed to deadly contaminated waste. We might even be saving lives, so I’m sorry, Mrs Dawes, but tomorrow I’ll be doing something I have to do and I wouldn’t attempt to get out of it even if I could because it is so important – and not only to me. Some issues are much bigger than me and you but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you anymore. We’re friends now and that means friends for life. I will go to visit your ex-husband, but I’m afraid it will have to wait until Friday.’

  Martin glanced shiftily around the other patients in the bay, suddenly aware that he had raised his voice more than he intended to, but it had to be said. For all the sympathy he had for her feelings, Mrs Dawes had to be put straight. To suggest he didn’t care was going too far.

  She lowered her eyes, sheepishly. Martin had never given her a telling-off before and she had deserved it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he replied. Neither of them looked at the other.

  ‘I’m just scared,’ she said. ‘I’ve got used to the nurses talking to me every day and the
physio people and the domestics and they’re all so lovely to me. And I’ve got used to you coming to visit and chatting about your café and all the other bits and pieces and I’m scared that I’ll only have my telly for company again once I leave here. I don’t think I could stand that.’

  ‘I won’t let that happen.’ Martin leaned forward to enfold Evelyn in a reassuring hug. ‘I can’t promise to be there for you twenty-four hours a day, but I’ll never be further away than the end of the phone and there’s no reason why we can’t see each other every day. We can go to each other’s houses – I’d love to cook a meal for you sometimes – and there’s no reason why you can’t come to me at the café whenever you fancy. Some of my regulars are dying to meet you. They ask about how you are all the time.’

  They ended the embrace. Evelyn felt the dark mist clearing. She had been left with too much time to think and had not realised she had been painting herself into a corner. She saw that now.

  ‘So, you’ve got a big announcement to make tomorrow, have you?’

  Both of them were glad for the change of subject. Enough had been said. Martin lifted the top brown plastic bucket seat off the stack and brought it to the side of the bed.

  ‘That’s right. Big press conference. The people in London have got all the contacts and they say all the top media – TV, newspapers, radio – are going to be there. We’re going to tell them how we’ve got documentary evidence that tonnes and tonnes of highly dangerous chemical waste has been buried secretly at a derelict site in Sheffield over a period of twenty-odd years through the sixties, seventies and eighties and, you’ll never guess, it’s lying there in the ground where they’re planning to start building a huge new housing development! Right on top of all this incredibly toxic contaminated waste! We’re going to demand that all plans to develop the site are stopped immediately, pending a major inquiry to establish just how dangerous it would be to put people at risk by going ahead. Then we want to see an investigation take place to find out the extent of the official cover-up that must have been going on for years. We need to know how high up this goes. Historically, we have to be told who allowed the dumping to go ahead in the first place, why nobody has ordered that the site is made safe in the meantime and who, knowing that all this poison was lying just under the surface all these years, still gave the go-ahead for 1,200 houses to be built on top of it. Did the developers know? Was the council aware? This is absolutely huge, Mrs Dawes. It’s by far the biggest thing the Sheffield Environmental Action Network has ever been involved in and the implications are massive.’

  Martin paused. He had hardly drawn breath in his eagerness to hurry out the words that had been bursting for air all morning. He struggled to stop his emotions from bubbling over and choking his voice. He had to let her know how much this meant to him.

  ‘This is everything I’ve dreamed of becoming involved in. We all start out wanting to save the whole planet when we join an environmental organisation, change the world, but, for groups like ours, it’s not about coming up with a solution for all the world’s problems. It’s a matter of taking care of what happens on our own doorstep. That’s our responsibility. We save the planet one piece at a time. I’ve always said that if we all play a part, no matter how small, we all make the ultimate aim achievable and this is our time to make a real difference. This is our chance to change our corner of the world for the better and for ever.’

  Evelyn watched him like a proud parent. ‘Good for you,’ she beamed and shuffled to sit up straighter in bed, then added, ‘Do you know what, I think I’d like to get up now.’

  20

  The late morning press conference had come to an end almost an hour ago and now the offices of Sheffield City Council were in a state of pandemonium.

  One of the calls put to the media at that press conference had been a demand to find out who knew about the dumping of dangerous chemical waste on the site earmarked for a major new housing development. The media had, in turn, bombarded the council with calls demanding to be told how much they knew about it. At the council, however, top officials were chasing around in the frenzied hope of finding anyone who knew anything at all.

  Or would admit to it.

  Cranford Hardstaff knew plenty. He was just not saying.

  He was, in fact, not saying much of anything to anybody. He said very few words to his assistant, Colin Perkins, when he was informed for the third time that the communications manager had requested guidance in putting together the council’s response to the revelations of the press conference, but he had said enough to make it plain to Perkins that he would not take kindly to being asked for a fourth time.

  As he fielded yet another call from a senior council official asking for an urgent consultation with Hardstaff, Perkins wondered, not for the first time, if he really wanted to be the senior assistant in the office of the council leader anymore.

  Not only was Hardstaff in no mood to talk, he had hardly moved at all for the last twenty minutes. He slouched toad-like in his black leather executive chair behind the desk, his elbow leaning against the armrest as he gently rubbed his throbbing temple with a circular motion of his index finger. His eyes were fixed on the large TV screen mounted on the wall, waiting for the national news bulletin to end and for the local news programme to begin; smouldering, mulling, plotting, stoking his festering temper closer and closer to melting point.

  As far as he had been able to establish, he had not been personally implicated in the allegations made at the press conference and he was waiting to see if his name would be mentioned in the local TV report. He knew it might only be a matter of time anyway. Hardstaff had been sure to make it widely known that he was a champion of the Swarbrook Hill project because he wanted to harvest the maximum credit from it when the plans came to fruition. The media knew that. That was why they would surely come hunting for him. Even if he could steer clear of initial scrutiny for his involvement in the scandal, he might not be able to hold them off for long because they would surely demand that someone was held responsible. There had to be someone to blame. If they ever found out just how much he knew, they would not stop until they had his head on a stake.

  But if he could just hold them off for a while, be granted the chance to put out a response which hit the right levels of shocked concern along with a pledge of righteous determination to get to the bottom of such a serious matter, Hardstaff hoped he might yet avoid the worst of it.

  If he could just buy a little time, they might yet be able to palm off the blame on someone else. A high-ranking council official who has since died, maybe. That was always a sound tactic. The dead cannot put their side of the story.

  If he could just keep them from the full truth of how much he knew, make sure no one ever found out he had taken money from the developer on the guarantee that the project would pass through the council processes without anyone finding out just what lay below the ground on the site, he might yet avoid the worst of outcomes – disgrace, dismissal.

  Prison.

  For it to come to that, someone would have to talk. Helena Morrison and Yuvraj Patel would not talk. They had too much to lose because they were also in it too deep. Neither would the head of the development company give the game away and they were the only four people who knew the full extent of their private arrangement. Who else could denounce them?

  Unless. Hughes had not reported back yet to confirm that the honey trap had been sprung and Bestwick’s silence had been secured. He should have heard by now. If Bestwick really did have something on them then they had to guarantee that the danger had been neutralised. They had to keep his mouth shut.

  It had better have been done.

  But even that would not save the project now. It was dead. That was for certain. The minimum the council would be expected to do would be to put the brakes on it and that, alone, would kill the deal with the developer. There would be no way the planning approval request would even get as far as the order of business at the next meeting of the
planning committee, let alone that it would be granted. Hardstaff knew that Swarbrook Hill would not even be considered again until the full council established exactly what was under the ground on the development site and once they found that out – well, that really would be that.

  Hardstaff knew he would, if necessary, fight with the ferocity of a cornered tiger to keep himself out of prison but the rest – the money, his legacy, his name in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List – were gone.

  He had been so close he could taste it. The more he thought about it, the more his bitterness grew and the darker his mood became.

  His phone on the desk vibrated with an incoming call for the thousandth time in the last hour and, for the thousandth time, he refused to answer it.

  It was the head of the development company. Again. He, too, would be wanting someone to blame and that meant he would be blaming Hardstaff. Hardstaff was not in the mood to be yelled at.

  He glanced from the phone screen back to the TV. The opening titles for the local news bulletin were just finishing. Hardstaff reached for the remote control to take the volume off mute as the middle-aged male anchor with a sharp suit and easy smile was introducing himself.

  ‘First this afternoon, it has been alleged that the proposed site for a new one hundred and thirty million-pound housing project in Sheffield is a historical dumping ground for dangerous contaminated chemicals.’

  Hardstaff snarled. Top story. Hadn’t they got anything better?

  ‘Reporting for us at the hotel where a press conference to announce this discovery has been held this morning is Michelle Rogers. This all sounds pretty worrying, Michelle.’

  The camera switched to a young woman with a suitably grave expression who was holding a microphone at just below chin level. In the background was a row of chairs behind a table on a raised platform in a vast room, with rows of other chairs set in front of it to accommodate the nation’s media. The main event had plainly ended long ago, though several people could still be seen over her shoulder, tidying up discarded press releases.