“NO,” SAID EDDIE. “You can’t return cheese.”
The customer, a young woman wearing a knitted hat, held out the offending parcel. “But smell it. Go on, smell it.”
Eddie took the cheese and sniffed it, watched by another, slightly amused customer. The woman in the knitted hat watched him, waiting for the confirmation of her complaint.
Eddie lowered the parcel. “But that’s how this cheese always smells. It’s called Pont l’Evêque. It’s French. French cheese smells. They like it that way.”
The woman snatched the parcel back from him and sniffed at it herself. “You’re telling me that this is how it’s meant to be? I bet that if I took a culture from it, it would show all sorts of things. There are European Union regulations about that sort of thing, you know. This cheese should be called salmonella.”
“It’s not called salmonella,” said Eddie. “It’s—”
“I know it’s not called that,” interjected the woman. “I said that’s what it should be called. Like Gorgonzola.”
Isabel had come up behind Eddie. She glanced at the cheese and whispered to him, “Take it back.”
Eddie cocked his head to listen to her, but then turned back to face the customer. “If you don’t like smelly cheese you should get something different. Cheddar, maybe.”
Isabel intervened. “I think we can do a refund,” she said. “Or we can give you another cheese. Have you tried this one? This is an Italian cheese, Grana, which is just like Parmesan, but much cheaper. Here, try a little bit.”
She cut a small piece of cheese from a block on the counter and handed it, on the knife, to the young woman. Eddie glowered, but the young woman, mollified, nodded enthusiastically. “I really like that,” she said. “And it doesn’t stink.” She threw a glance at Eddie as she made the last remark, and he blushed.
Eddie watched as Isabel cut the Grana for the young woman. From a corner of the shop, David McLean also watched, and when Isabel had finished attending to the customer he came forward to the counter.
“Isabel Dalhousie?”
Isabel was surprised to be addressed by name in the delicatessen, where she thought few people, other than the most regular of customers, knew who she was. “Yes.” It was guarded, as if she might assent now to be Isabel Dalhousie, but reserved the right to be somebody else if necessary.
David McLean fished for a card from his pocket and passed it over to her. “I wonder if we could possibly have a quick word,” he said, nodding in the direction of the coffee tables, none of which was occupied.
Isabel looked at the card. “We’re very busy,” she said. “And there are just two of us at the moment.”
Eddie, standing just behind her, interrupted. “That’s all right. I’ll cope.” He spoke with a sense of injured innocence; Isabel might refund cheese unnecessarily, against his better judgement, but he was not one to bear a grudge or be petty.
She looked at Eddie. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Isabel turned back to face David McLean. “As it happens, I’m ready for a coffee. Would you like one?”
“I’ll make them,” offered Eddie.
Isabel did not argue, but loosened her apron and went over to sit with David McLean at the table near the window. The lawyer waited courteously while she took a seat before lowering himself into a chair. She noted that, and the shoes he was wearing—expensive black brogues, highly polished.
“Your friend told me that you would be here,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind my coming to see you at work.”
“My friend?”
“At the house. Jamie. Your young musician.”
“I see.”
David McLean was resting his left hand on top of the table. Isabel noticed that there was a ring on the little finger, a signet ring, on which there was engraved in the gold a tiny ax. Isabel knew that this was the symbol of the clan McLean. Charlie McLean had told her that when she had seen the ax on his kilt pin. He took his hand off the table.
“I’ll come right to the point,” he said. “My firm acts for a pharmaceutical firm. They are not based here in Scotland—they are based abroad, in fact. But we represent their London lawyers in Scotland.”
Isabel hardly had to ask, but did; more to say something than to find out the answer. “The people who make the antibiotic that…”
“Yes,” said David McLean. “Precisely.”
He put his hand back on the table. The ring caught a shaft of sun coming through the window, and glinted briefly.
“As you know,” he went on, “there was a very unfortunate incident not all that long ago. The doctor in question was represented by somebody else in the proceedings before the medical authorities; we merely watched the situation for our own clients. Obviously they were very concerned about the reputation of their product.”
“Obviously.”
“Yes. People are very quick to blame manufacturers for things that go wrong. And this seems to apply particularly to those who manufacture drugs. That’s curious, isn’t it? Everybody wants new drugs to be made available, but nobody seems to want to accept the risk that goes with putting these things on the market. And it’s always the fault of the drug companies, isn’t it, when something goes wrong? Or that’s what the press implies.”
Isabel had forgotten about the coffee, but now it arrived. Eddie put two mugs on the table, glancing with distaste at the lawyer as he did so.
David McLean lifted the mug to his lips and sipped at the hot, milky liquid, looking at Isabel as he did so. It seemed to her that he was waiting for her to agree with him, with what he had just said.
She blew across the surface of her coffee to cool it. “Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised,” she said. “The pharmaceutical companies make very considerable profits. They are quite simply rich. People have never liked—”
He interrupted her, smiling as he spoke. “People have never liked the rich? I suppose you should understand that, Miss Dalhousie.”
She caught her breath, and she thought of saying to him, “That remark is unprofessional.” But she did not. He had unwittingly—perhaps—declared his hostility, but she did not want to engage. She looked over towards the counter, where Eddie was standing, dealing with a customer. Suddenly, she felt vulnerable. This stranger knew who she was; he had been to the house; he knew her personal circumstances. Or did he? Had he merely seen the house and concluded that anybody who lived in a large self-contained Victorian house in that street, in that part of town, must have money in the bank? It did not require any great skill to reach that conclusion.
“The point is that public understanding of the industry is less than impressive,” David McLean went on. “I take it that you know that the return on capital for the pharmaceutical industry in this country is about seventeen percent, which is very much in line with other large industries. And I take it that you know that one third of profits are put back into research and development—so that there can be new drugs at the end of the day.” He paused, watching her. “But that’s not the point of my visit. The point is that there’s a great deal of pointing of fingers and not a lot of solid information out there. Obviously my clients have to watch situations where their position is potentially under scrutiny.”
Isabel glanced at her watch—pointedly.
“All right,” he said. “I don’t want to keep you. This is my concern: you have been involving yourself, I understand, in this very unfortunate business of Dr. Marcus Moncrieff.”