Without warning, Mitchell swung his fist at Bannerman and caught him high on his left cheek bone. The force of the blow knocked him backwards and his chair toppled over to send him sprawling to the floor.
Bannerman sat up slowly holding his hand to his face and breathing erratically, partly through surprise and partly through shock. Mitchell got up to stand over him. ‘Wait outside,’ he rasped to the guard by the door. The man, who Bannerman could see was uneasy about what he was witnessing, complied immediately.
‘What now?’ asked Bannerman. ‘Electrodes on my testicles?’
‘You lot make me sick,’ sneered Mitchell. ‘Get up.’
Bannerman got to his feet. He had recovered from the blow and was holding his temper firmly in check. He said, ‘I’d like to see the station manager please.’
‘He’s a busy man,’ said Mitchell.
‘So am I,’ said Bannerman. He enunciated every syllable with arctic coldness. ‘I am Dr Ian Bannerman, consultant pathologist at St Luke’s Hospital London, currently investigating the deaths of three local men at the request of the Medical Research Council and Her Majesty’s Government.’
Mitchell looked as if he was about to lay an egg. His eyes suggested his brain was asking his ears for a recap on what they’d just heard. ‘ID?’ he croaked.
Bannerman showed him identification.
Mitchell looked down at the table surface as if it were to blame for everything. ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’
‘Because I didn’t choose to,’ snapped Bannerman. ‘I was on private property when your men abducted me and brought me here. I pointed this out to them at the time and to you when I got here but you took no notice. Now get me the station manager.’
Mitchell left the room and Bannerman lit a cigarette. His fingers were trembling slightly.
Some ten minutes passed before the door opened and Bannerman was politely invited to follow one of the security men. He had suddenly become ‘sir’. He was taken to the main building of the power station and then by elevator to the top floor where he was shown into the station manager’s office. Mitchell was with the manager and Bannerman could see that the man had been fully briefed about what had happened.
‘Leave us, Mitchell,’ said the manager curtly and Mitchell walked past Bannerman with a small, uneasy smile.
‘My dear Doctor I don’t quite know what to say,’ said the station manager, coming round from behind his desk to usher Bannerman to a chair. ‘I’m John Rossman. I can only offer my most profuse apologies and ask you to understand some of the pressures my people have to cope with. Nuclear power stations are natural targets for every inadequate misfit in society who’s looking for a cause to crucify himself for. Constant vigilance is a must.’
‘Beating up anyone who comes within yards of your perimeter fence is a bit more than being vigilant,’ said Bannerman.
‘Well, yes but …’
‘And being against nuclear power doesn’t automatically make you an “inadequate misfit”.’
‘Well, no but we get so much negative publicity that perhaps we’re all just a bit paranoid in the industry. We are constantly portrayed as harbingers of danger rather than suppliers of cheap, clean power,’ said Rossman.
‘Perhaps,’ said Bannerman.
‘I understand you were monitoring the ground outside the west fence,’ said Rossman.
‘That’s right. I wanted to see if there had been a radiation leak in the recent past.’
‘But if there had been we would have …’
‘Covered it up like last time,’ interrupted Bannerman.
Rossman looked at Bannerman in silence for a long moment before saying, ‘‘I don’t think I understand what …’
‘My information came from the Cabinet Office,’ said Bannerman.
‘‘I see,’ said the manager, obviously wondering how to deal with him. He got up from his desk and walked over to a large map of the station which was mounted on the back wall of his office. ‘If I might ask you to join me, Doctor?’
Bannerman walked over to the map and Rossman pointed to an area on the east side of the station. He said, ‘We had a problem with a pipe carrying cooling water from the reactor suite. There was a crack in it and we suffered a slight loss of fluid before it was discovered.’
‘How slight?’
‘About a hundred gallons.’
‘How big an area was affected?’
‘We think not more than two hundred square metres,’ said the manager.
‘You think?’
‘You’ve seen the ground round here. It’s hard to say for sure.’
‘You seem pretty complacent about it,’ said Bannerman.
‘On the contrary,’ said Rossman. ‘We cordoned off an area twice that size and dug trenches along the perimeter. Contaminated earth was removed and constant monitoring of the area was maintained for several months after the incident. Apart from that Doctor, no one lives to the east of the station. There was never any danger to anyone.’
‘Then why cover it up?’ asked Bannerman.
Rossman adopted an exasperated air and said, ‘It wasn’t a question of covering anything up. We just didn’t publicize the affair and for the reasons I spoke of earlier. We would have been pilloried by those anxious to destroy the nuclear industry.’
‘Have there been other incidents that you didn’t publicize?’ asked Bannerman.
‘No. None at all. This station is perfectly safe, I assure you.’
‘Until a hundred gallons of radioactive cooling water goes for a walk,’ said Bannerman.
That is exactly the kind of scaremongering we can do without in this industry!’ said the manager, going slightly red in the face. ‘We provide a lot of jobs in the area. You should think twice before putting them in jeopardy with that kind of talk.’
‘What I said was the truth,’ said Bannerman. ‘Not scaremongering.’
‘It was a one-off incident,’ insisted the manager.
‘But it happened! You can’t dismiss it as if it never really had!’
‘‘I don’t think you fully understand the benefits that nuclear power can bring to our country Doctor,’ said Rossman.
‘Oh but I do,’ insisted Bannerman. ‘I understand the benefits perfectly. What really gets up my nose is your industry’s reluctance to face up to the problems. You pretend that there aren’t any. You maintain that accidents won’t happen when everyone else knows that they will. You keep generating waste that you can’t deal with because it’s going to be dangerous for thousands of years and the best you can do is bury it in holes in the ground and keep looking for more holes.’
‘It’s not like that at all,’ said Rossman.
‘I think it is,’ said Bannerman.
‘Then I think we must agree to differ,’ said Rossman.
Bannerman looked at his watch and said, ‘Time I was going.’
‘I will have someone drive you home,’ said the manager.
‘No you won’t!’ exclaimed Bannerman. ‘It took me three hours to get to the perimeter fence from Inverladdie, I’m not doing that hike all over again. I want to get on with monitoring the ground I was working on when your men got “vigilant”.’
‘But I’ve told you we’ve had no problem on that side of the station,’ said the manager.
That you know of,’ added Bannerman.
The manager took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll have Mitchell’s men take you back there.’
‘Good.’
‘I have also instructed Mitchell to make a personal apology to you before you leave.’
‘Thank you,’ said Bannerman.
Bannerman was led away from Rossman’s office by a security man who had been waiting outside the door. Half-way along the corridor he paused at a window to look down at the huge generating hall and the figures clad in white plastic suits tending to the machinery. The constant whine from the turbines seemed to pervade every part of the building, despite the extensive use of soundproof double glazing. There was a surgical cleanliness about the whole operation, no coal dust or oil or furnaces, just silent, invisible power sealed in concrete silos, its presence only advertised by the constant yellow and black radioactivity symbols.