Blood Born

Chapter 25

24  Elementary

"You good?"  Eric asked, as he carefully extricated himself from the old Alfa.  The benefits of a life in academia:  a used car and a bad back!  He was in a field somewhere north of Ashington.  The weather was clear, at least, so the area near the five-bar gate hadn't been too difficult to traverse.

The gentleman who stood where his car had stopped shook his head, and replied tersely, "It's fucking midnight, man!  How can I be 'good'?"  Evidently, he wasn't happy to be of service, as the phrase goes.  He was a large chap, wearing a lab coat over a black tracksuit, and he was gnawing on a Marathon bar.  Eric looked him up and down.  Chocolate was about as close as this fellow ever came to a real marathon, despite his attire.

The night air was chilly.  "I can't believe I'm helping you with this fucking crap.  The machine takes a while to warm up, so we have at least an hour to go."  The man was obviously not inclined to be conversational.  They started walking toward a large trailer, with doors and illuminated windows in it.

The man, whose name was Drew, was an employee of an environmental services company that surveyed potentially polluted areas, such as the disused open cast mine they were standing over.  Drew glanced back at Eric.  "We've been here a month:  sampling all over this place.  You know what we've found?"

Eric shook his head.

"Fuck all!"  Drew spat.

Eric was confused.  "That's good isn't it?"  Surely the absence of pollutants was a positive.

The bigger man shook his head and took another chomp of chocolate.  "Hell no!  Not when we get paid on commission for every 'environmentally significant' result we find, to quote the bullshit contract.  If we don't have a confirmed spectrum, we don't get any bonus.  It's supposed to motivate us to be as diligent as possible, but there's only so much fucking camping I can put up with without a holiday in the south of France.  Me missus is pissed off at me for taking this job as it is."

The night sky was clear, and they were in completely empty terrain.  Eric looked up at the stars that were so often invisible to modern mankind.  "It's nice out here - you must like it."

The man stopped walking and glared at him.  "If you wanna take the piss…"

"No!"  Eric interjected, "No - I'm not mocking you.  I really appreciate this, I just like the night sky."  He lowered his voice a touch.  "Your supervisor is a friend of mine, and she said you'd be OK with this."

The man stomped for a few more steps.  "Yeah, she called.  We actually didn't have any samples to process tonight, so I was hoping for some real sleep, but I'm here aren't I?"

Eric followed him.

"I'll get you a bottle of whisky," Eric offered.  The man just grunted.

It took two hours for the spectroscopy results to come in.  Eric read them well enough, but had to get some pointers from his yawning, reluctant helper.

"That's your problem, right there," the technician pointed out, just to speed matters up.  "You better have a licence for this fucking crap, or I'm calling the police," he added in a regretful tone.  "You know I have to submit the results of every sample we run - even done as a favour."

Eric produced his university ID.  "They do," he tried, knowing that his visit there was anything but official.  Essentially, he was asking Drew to destroy a record.

The tech peered at it.  "What kind of whisky?"  He asked as he studied the card.

"Single malt?"  Eric suggested.

The man smiled.  "Aye, that might work, but I'll tell you what would really cut the mustard…"

Eric eyed him carefully.  "What?"  He asked, warily.

The large, unshaven bloke grinned at him and pointed at the piece of metal, inside the tin can, inside the plastic bag, inside a sealed hazardous materials pouch bearing the corporate logo of his employer.  "Access to that for gaseous sampling - we're surveying the Chapelcross site in June.  That's just the kinda shit they'd wank themselves silly over.  Maybe the missus will let me off if I can swing her a trip to Hawaii."