Sitting in his armchair to eat his lunch in the cool of his lounge, Alan paused with his sandwich halfway to his mouth. His laptop was balanced on his lap, and he needed to concentrate while he tweaked his search query, honing it to perfection. He typed with his right hand, while with his left he held the sandwich quivering in mid-air.
Satisfied, he hit the return key and took a bite of sandwich as the results of his search flashed onto the laptop’s screen. This looks good. Hardly tasting his food, Alan selected the most promising link and opened it in a new tab.
The article was one long block of densely packed text, but he skimmed and scanned each paragraph as fast as he could.
“Lead sulphide,” he mumbled through his half-chewed mouthful. “Commonly found in mining spoil heaps with sulphides of zinc and copper.” He swallowed, his throat tight. Without taking his eyes from the screen, he placed his sandwich on the plate that sat on the small table beside his chair. “Arsenic sulphide may also be present and is extremely toxic.”
Marjorie was right about the arsenic, he thought. No wonder Craig was having the soil tested.
But one source wasn’t enough; he had to find more.
Returning to his search, he chose a link that led to a PDF document: an abstract of an academic study. The level of detail forced him to read every paragraph twice, and there were a few terms he didn’t understand, but even so, he could glean enough information to make the effort worthwhile. Within a few minutes, he’d learned that some forms of arsenic were more soluble than others, and that the amount in circulation might be linked to the pH of the soil. But what did that mean for the local spoil heaps? The soil must be acidic, he thought. There are rhododendrons, and they like acid soil. He read on, but the report delved into advanced methods of chemical analysis and electron microscopy. This is no use, he told himself. It’s over my head. And then he saw it:
Arsenic concentrations in the samples from the areas around the abandoned mines exceeded the guideline safe values by between one and five orders of magnitude.
He read it again. “Five times the safe level,” he whispered. “Five.”
Alan scanned the report again, grasping at fragments of meaning. The study was based on the neighbouring county of Cornwall, but the principles would surely be the same. The parallels were all too clear. On his own doorstep, an environmental tragedy had unfolded in slow motion. Aided by a natural spring and the acidic soil, arsenic compounds had leached out from the spoil heaps, little by little, contaminating the ground and the water that ran through it. Then the site had been left undisturbed for decades; plenty of time for the contaminated groundwater to carry its deadly cargo of toxins through the gently sloping fields along the valley. Arsenic, and who knew what else, had accumulated in the old reservoir, rendering it lifeless. Only a few sturdy reeds had been tough enough to creep into the sludge in the settlement tank, but the water itself might well have been toxic enough to poison Marjorie’s cat.
But how far had the contamination spread? Had it already seeped across the entire stretch of land that Craig had earmarked for development? And did Craig know about the potential glitch in his plans before Mortimer was attacked?
He must’ve had some idea about it, Alan decided. He’d already arranged for Martin and Jess to carry out the survey.
A hard ball of anxiety formed in Alan’s stomach, and he almost set his laptop aside. But he needed to know more. Working quickly, he found the Ordnance Survey website and located an online map of the local area. It took only a minute to find the spoil heaps, and trailing his finger across the screen, he traced a path over the contours.
The land Marjorie inherited will definitely be contaminated, he thought. Does she know?
Alan sat back. Marjorie had known about the contamination of the water; she claimed that she’d discussed it with Mortimer. But what did that mean?
He recalled how angry Craig had been when he’d found out that Mortimer had remembered Marjorie in his will. But it wasn’t the cottage itself that infuriated him, Alan remembered. It was the land.
That had to be important. Perhaps Marjorie’s inheritance was larger than he’d assumed. She owned the land between her cottage and the reservoir, but how far did her newly acquired domain stretch out on either side? I should’ve asked her, Alan told himself. It’s damned frustrating not to have all the facts. He chewed at the inside of his cheek. He’d uncovered a significant clue, but he wasn’t sure how the contaminated land could be tied to the attack on Mortimer. It wasn’t as if the problem could be solved by taking the old man out of the picture. Surely, a clean-up operation would take months, years. So how did this new information fit in with what they’d already found out?
I have to tell Dan, he thought. He’ll want to know straight away. Alan hurried to his landline and called Dan’s mobile, but it went straight to voicemail. “Damn.”
Alan hung up without leaving a message, then he headed for the door. A handful of seconds later, he hammered on Dan’s front door, but there was no reply.
Typical, Alan thought. Never around when you need him. Alan cast a final glance at The Old Shop, then he headed for home. He’d call later. But first, he’d make a mug of tea, and have another stab at researching the toxins left behind by abandoned mines. Something told him that there’d be a great deal of material to wade through.