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.Eyes front again, he was surprised to see broadleaf trees moving in under his port wing.The gust must be stronger than he’d thought.He compensated, touching the rudder once and again, only to find that either he’d overdone it or else the crosswind had dropped suddenly, because he was too far into the conifers now.Cursing, he eased the Porter back on line, only for the same thing to happen again.He was weaving about like a bloody amateur.Not a moment too soon, the end of the plantation loomed up and vanished beneath.He switched off the spray and swivelled his head back.No change: the spray continued to course lavishly from the atomizers.He felt a vicious choking anger.Swearing loud and long, he flicked the switch rapidly back and forth, kicking the heel of his hand against it, then leant down and rapidly rotated the control valve beside his feet until, quite suddenly, the indicator light went off and, an instant later, the trail of vapour finally thinned and died.He looked up.Christ! He was almost over the parkland; the big house was not far ahead to port.Instinctively he took the Porter into a tight turn to starboard, rapidly gaining height to clear the rising ground beneath.He twisted in his seat to press his face against the Perspex and look back towards the park.Nothing.Thank God.No sheep.No small figure, face upturned, like that child the other week.The relief left him exhausted.He knew exactly what he was going to do now: give up and return to base.And he knew precisely what he was going to do once he got there: telephone Keen.Rehearsing the exact combination of expletives kept him occupied all the way home.The buzzing hung languorously in the air, faded, then got louder again.Rona, unseen by her mistress, sidled silently back towards the stable and, blowing loudly in Alusha’s ear, gave her a terrible fright.‘That’s it!’ Alusha exclaimed, stepping off the bucket.She made a grab for Rona’s bridle, but the mare was too quick for her and danced away.Alusha held out some sugar.‘Come on, you greedy pig.’The pony, despite her uncharacteristic nervousness, couldn’t resist the sugar and within a minute Alusha had caught her and hitched her to the ring on the stable wall.‘And here you stay until I’ve finished.’The soft drone grew louder again.Alusha shaded her eyes and looked up but, seeing nothing, returned to her brush and her pot and dabbed some more green fluid on the door frame.For some reason the smell of the stuff suddenly clutched at her throat.It was incredibly strong, like ammonia or worse.She clamped a hand over her mouth and nose and tried not to breathe, but the stuff seeped into her nose and throat.She staggered off the bucket and retreated onto the apron.She coughed, and the act of coughing made her pull a deep draught of air into her lungs.Air that wasn’t air; air that was sharp and burning.Inexplicably, the fumes seemed to have followed her across the apron.By the time she had raised her collar over her mouth, it was too late.The acrid vapour was eating at her lungs, her eyes were streaming, her head was weaving violently.She tried to find her way back to the stable.She was dimly aware of noise, of a clattering of hooves and sounds of alarm from Rona.But the collision, when it came, caught her by surprise.One moment she was groping her way back towards the stable, the next moment the bulk of Rona’s hindquarters was barrelling into her, a solid weight that cannoned into her shoulder and toppled her over.Her head didn’t hit the concrete terribly hard – in fact, the impact was more like a hard knock than a solid thud – but it was enough to send her sliding into a grey land somewhere between panic and nightmare, a land in which her eyes saw nothing, in which every breath drew her deeper into some terrible darkness.Chapter 5FIFTEEN COLUMN-INCHES.Daisy pasted up the fourth and final cutting, already worn and ageing from the cutting agency’s tardy service, and held the finished montage at arm’s length.Not bad if one overlooked the origin of the stories – the Newbury Chronicle, the Reading News and such like – and imagined that the items had appeared in the national dailies.Alice Knowles’ demonstration hadn’t merited the attention of the nation, not in print, not on radio or TV.Nor had it, apparently, justified the undivided concentration of the journalists who’d covered it.One described Aldeb as a fumigant instead of a fungicide, while another talked vaguely about the dangers of processing potatoes as if the Knowleses ran a chip factory instead of a farm.All in all, the coverage was no better or worse than she’d expected.The street door banged as someone arrived and Daisy heard the unmistakable sound of Alan clearing his throat, something he did so regularly first thing in the morning that she suspected him of being a secret smoker.Not that she dared say so; Alan wasn’t too good with jokes.She heard him enter the cubicle next door and shuffle around, the rubber soles of his shoes squelching softly on the lino-tiled floor.Catch didn’t run to carpets or other such luxuries.Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t have run to an office near King’s Cross either, but the place had been let to them by a sympathetic developer at a peppercorn rent.Situated in the rambling basement of an Edwardian house due for demolition in a couple of years’ time, with high barred windows and woefully little daylight, it was not the ideal workplace, and certainly not in winter when, for lack of central heating, they had to suffer the fumes of mobile gas heaters, an expedient which did little for their corporate image let alone their lungs.Alan appeared round the door and, sorting through the mail, dropped a batch onto Daisy’s desk.‘Can we have a talk some time?’ he said.‘Now, if you like.’He hesitated as if he’d rather have put the moment off, then sank into the chair beside her desk.Alan, dark and slightly built with the stoic tenacity of the seasoned campaigner, had come to Catch by way of Greenpeace, the anti-fur campaign Lynx and, for a brief time ten years before, his own environmentally friendly cleaning products company which had folded after six months, a victim of being ahead of its time.Picking up a bulldog grip, he started operating the jaws.‘The Knowles case.What exactly are we recommending to the Committee?’Daisy was on her guard.The two of them had discussed this only the previous afternoon.Alan was well aware of her views on the subject, so this could only be the opening gambit in an attempt to shift her.‘We’re going to recommend full backing for the Knowleses, in their legal action and whatever else is needed,’ she reminded him.Alan closed the bulldog grip on his finger, screwed up his mouth in mild pain.Withdrawing the finger, he examined it carefully
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