Glass arrows, p.1
Glass Arrows, page 1
Glass Arrows
1
Cambridgeshire, Sunday 1 April 2018
The call came Sunday evening. Emma and her husband Sam had been halfway through the traditional BBC ‘bodices and bonks’ drama, when the phone rang. Sam hit the pause button and picked up the receiver.
‘It’s for you,’ he said, and de-reclined his side of the sofa in order to fetch a fresh glass of wine from the kitchen while Emma took the call. On the big screen were two maidens with bosoms frozen in mid heave and a generously hirsute horseman leaning down from the saddle.
‘Hi, it’s Emma.’
‘And this is Kate, with the call you didn’t want to get.’
‘Oh Lord. Tell me it’s not foot and mouth. Or pheasants again.’
‘No, not foot and mouth nor Newcastle disease in pheasants again.’
‘Swine fever? Equine flu in Newmarket?’
‘How about I tell you what it is, rather than we go through the list of what it’s not? It’s bird flu in turkeys and possibly ducks. In Norfolk. We’ll be managing it from the Vet Office in Bury St Edmunds. Can you get yourself there by 8am tomorrow? The Regional Chief Vet will be expecting you and I’ll let your Director General know you’ve been taken off your usual beat.’
‘I was due to see the Minister of State about genetically modified maize on Tuesday. The DG’ll need to deputise someone to do that.’
‘I’ll let him know when we speak. Don’t you worry about that. It’s not your problem now. We’ll speak tomorrow when you get to Bury. There’s a bird table meeting scheduled for 11am. Do you know the vets at Bury?’
‘Not well. Anything I need to be aware of?’
‘No. Easy chaps to get on with. Speak tomorrow. Thanks, Emma,’ and Kate rang off.
*
Sam came back with his brimming glass of red and sat down again.
‘I assume you’d better not be drinking any more this evening if you’re off early tomorrow.’
‘At least I’ll be able to stay home for this emergency. It’s bird flu and I’m to be based in Bury. I will need to be off early though, so let’s watch the rest of this and then I’ll go and get everything sorted for the morning.’
‘Ok. Although I must say I’m beginning to lose interest. It’s all a bit predictable, isn’t it? There’ll be more heaving of bosoms that would fall out altogether if they weren’t fastened in with gaffer tape, followed by a nude male torso doing something energetic with bales of straw, and we’ll both sit here wondering how they’re going to cover the ensuing rash with make-up. Then all parties will run gaily through a field, ruining someone’s hay crop, before a lot of rumpy pumpy that flattens more grass than a band of rampaging badgers.’
‘You’re right,’ said Emma. ‘Working in agriculture does tend to ruin period drama, especially when you sit there pointing out the tramlines in fields supposedly sown by hand. Perhaps I’ll just go and look out my things for tomorrow.’
*
An early start was not Emma Knight’s idea of heaven, but they did happen often enough that the morning routine was well established. Sam got up early anyway, so an alarm was rarely necessary – just the determination to get up and get moving rather than roll over for another nap. She shook her short hair dry and fluffed it out with her fingers before adding the usual lick of mascara. A quick slide into smart dark trousers, white shirt and tweed jacket, and 6am saw Emma speeding (in every sense of the word) through the morning heavy goods vehicles en route to Felixstowe. The A14 to Bury St Edmunds was no more than normally busy but as her red BMW Z4 got its wheels in the HGV ruts and performed a wild wiggle across the carriageway, she reflected ruefully on the fact that responding to a bird flu emergency did not warrant blue lights, no matter how great the urgency, and sharpened her lookout for traffic cops.
*
Norfolk, same morning
In the kitchen of Riverside Hens, bijou smallholding by the River Ant, the proprietors were having their regular morning argument. Tina, making coffee, banged the kettle on the Aga with considerably more force than called for.
‘Did he cross our fields?’ she snapped.
Her husband, Nick, wished yet again that he’d never mentioned his evening encounter with their awkward neighbour.
‘Yes,’ he mumbled, and added, ‘I can’t see a way to stop him. He takes a shortcut from his shed to where he leaves his van. Short of raising our fences and electrifying them, there’s nothing we can do.’
‘You could ask him not to. You could point out that we are under animal health restrictions.’
‘Yes. And we know how well that went last time. All we got was a mouthful of foul language and a not very hidden threat.’
‘Well if you don’t, I will.’ Tina was still making coffee with unnecessary force and water sizzled on the hotplate as she poured it rather randomly from the kettle to the cafetière. ‘And if he threatens me, I’ll film him on my phone.’
Wondering if the insurance policy covered a phone tossed in the river, Nick forbore to comment further. He knew Tina’s fears for their hens were real, but he had a visceral fear for Tina herself, if their neighbour turned nasty.
*
When the disastrous 2001 foot and mouth outbreak exposed more than a few shortcomings in contingency planning for animal health emergencies, the manual had undergone a major rewrite. One change was Emma’s role – the Regional Operations Director. The ROD was plucked from their day job and dropped in at short notice to take overall responsibility locally for the emergency response. Emma had now carried out the role more times than anyone else, and had developed a methodology for quickly picking up the reins. First, get there early. Second, don’t piss off the lead vets; they have enough to deal with without a self-important administrator making waves. To Emma’s mind, the ROD was there to help and take up some of the burden, not to throw their weight around. Third, don’t dither.
*
The mobile rang just as she turned the corner by the sugar factory. It was Bill McNee, Chief Regional Vet.
‘Emma, I gather you’re our ROD for this one? I’m clearing my office for you.’
‘No, don’t do that,’ she interrupted. ‘Any spare office will be fine. I don’t need to disturb you. I’m only five minutes away, so you can bring me up to speed then. Just two things to be going on with. All I know is, it’s bird flu in turkeys. Do we know which strain yet? And which company?’
‘Strain not absolutely confirmed, but looks like it’s the nasty one. H5N1. And it’s Stalham Poultry. So, the route of infection is a bit of a mystery. They’re not admitting to any recent imports of live birds or fresh meat and there are no pools of infection on the near continent. We’ll catch up when you get here.’
*
Forty miles further north, Lukas was picking up dead birds in Shed Two and trying to hide his tears. No one expected a rough tough poultry farm worker to have a soft side and Lukas took good care to conceal it. But he’d been rearing these birds from poults and it broke his heart to find limp white bodies where yesterday there had been an energetic, greedy gabble. The armful of corpses went into the lidded skip, and Lukas went through to biosecurity to shower and change into his outdoor clothes. He hung the contaminated clothes on the dirty side of the changing room, then he sat for a moment, head in hands, breathing hot, dust-laden air and wondering where the disease had come from. He knew he had stuck to the rules. But had everyone? Who had brought the virus in?
He listed the regular workers and visitors to the farm in his mind. The management team? He hesitated, feeling that he should be able to exonerate them out of hand, but aware that he was uneasy about some of their attitudes. His fellow workers? He didn’t know any of them well, given they lived in company accommodation and he lived with his wife, but he did know their conditions were not good. Perhaps there was a lack of hygiene there? But on the other hand, none of them had travelled anywhere recently – were not allowed to travel anywhere. The conversation with his wife came back to mind, when he had voiced his concern about his fellow workers and she advised avoiding trouble. He sighed heavily, staring across at the bench with the white wellies beneath, not really noticing the blue box in the corner shadows that shouldn’t have been there.
The bang of the outer door being flung open disturbed his thoughts and he looked up as his assistant for the day came in.
‘Jonas,’ he said in Lithuanian. ‘All finished in Shed One? How was it in there today? Many dead?’
‘A few,’ Jonas replied. ‘Twenty, maybe thirty. I didn’t bother to count. I put them in the skip like you said.’ He looked at Lukas slightly contemptuously. ‘I don’t see why you care. It makes no difference to us whether they’re alive or dead. Maybe if they shut this place down, we can move somewhere better. There can’t be anywhere worse.’
Lukas looked at the floor. Guilt that he had taken no action about the conditions of the men around him bothered him. Especially as his inaction was driven by fear. Fear of losing the opportunity he had. Fear of threats to his wife. And also, an atavistic fear of authority, even here in England where they were supposed to be different. The worm of fear in his gut had coiled and hissed when he suggested to his wife that they report what he had seen to the police. It had only lain quiescent when he had concurred with her advice he keep his head down.
‘I know I’m lucky,’ said Lukas. ‘Lucky that I came here independently, and lucky that I have a different contract to you.’
‘Contract, what contract?’ sneered Jonas. ‘Oh, you mean the one that promised us work and a place to live, charged us a fortune to bring us here and said nothing about having to do what we’re told, when we’re told, or expect our families back home to pay the price? The one that keeps us in conditions worse than your precious turkeys, and provides bully boys from Vilnius to make sure we stay put? The one that confiscated our papers so we can’t go home even if we could afford to? The one…’ He fell silent as another door banged somewhere and voices were heard in the distance.
The two men waited in silence, then as Lukas started to speak, Jonas interrupted him.
‘Don’t worry. I’ve found a way out and a way to get my own back.’
*
The Defra disease management team swung into practised action within the day. The movement ban was in place by lunchtime. Police supervised access to the farm as the gassing chambers were brought on site and set up for action. Catching teams began the work of rounding up the remaining turkeys and discovered, as ever, that slim teenage turkeys were a lot more agile than oven-ready fat ones. Watching, with the welfare of his remaining birds in mind, even Lukas couldn’t avoid a grin. The catchers were rather more oven-ready than their prey, and increasingly mad grabs after fleet-of-foot, long-legged gabblers left several catchers face down in the sawdust. Lukas decided to stick around, in case bad temper spilled over into bad handling. Amid a lot of cursing the cull began.
*
The following morning began with an early briefing. Pete Willis, nominally Stalham site manager, was grinding his teeth over a pile of spreadsheets, the immaculate and imperturbable Mrs Pritchard at his elbow. If there was one thing calculated to rub his face in the fact that he was, as ever, just doing as he was told, it was the presence of the faultless factotum to his left. He rubbed coarse fingers through the hair he no longer had and sighed heavily. He was not normally visible at 6am, but he had his instructions from on high. Given the PR and financial disaster that resulted from a notifiable disease outbreak and a compulsory cull, the company didn’t want the already bad news to be worsened by stories of problems with the officials. Company Director Austen Collier was on standby to liaise with the Government Regional Operations Director, one Emma Knight. Pete had been given firm instructions that the company was to cooperate fully with the cull, hence his unusually early start and the even more unusual procedure of a staff briefing.
A man with large hands and large features, he stood at the front of his motley crew and sighed heavily again. His company overalls had the crispness that occasional wear permitted, while the workers in front of him were clad in rather scruffier and worn versions, clean but with logos wearing off or missing altogether, and with collars and cuffs fraying at the edges. It was a tight squeeze getting everyone into the site office and there was overspill into the corridor. He ran his eyes over the crowd, doing a quick head count. The six burly men in the catching team were tending to lurk towards the back in the fond belief they could hide their cigarettes from his view. The farm workers who would normally at this time of day be checking feed levels and monitoring environmental factors were perching on desks in the office. There should be three of those, but at the moment he could see only two. Then, of course, Mrs Pritchard, site office manager, brown hair in a tight French pleat, sensibly but smartly dressed in a trouser suit, taking this invasion in her stride but looking slightly daggers at anyone disturbing her immaculate piles of paper. The other two men were from head office. James Metcalfe was the health and safety man, currently glowering over folders of hazard assessments and accident reports. Stan Innes was biosecurity across the whole company, and in consequence his already long face, rendered yet longer by a straggly beard, was looking more than a little glum.
‘Right, let’s get started. We’ve two tasks in front of us. First, to make sure this blasted cull gets done and dusted as fast as possible. We don’t want any suggestion from Defra that we held things up. Then the sooner our sheds are empty, the sooner we can start the clean and disinfection and get ourselves up and running again.’
‘Once we have Defra sign off for that,’ interrupted Stan.
‘Yes I know. But the first step is speeding the cull up.’ Pete looked over at the catching teams, ill-shaven and many hiding half-smoked cigarettes in their fists. ‘I understand yesterday’s hold-up was with catching. We need to make sure that the gassing containers are used to capacity. What was the problem?’
The team leader Andrey spoke up. ‘Young birds,’ he said succinctly. ‘Young birds fast. Much fast than old birds. Take long to catch.’
‘Will more men help?’
‘Maybe two more. More than that just get in the way.’ His team members nodded. ‘Better help,’ he added. ‘Some fences.’ He was interrupted by one of the others and corrected himself. ‘Some hurdles, to help pen birds.’
‘Mrs Pritchard, will you see what you can source at short notice please? Liaise with Andrey. Lukas, do we have enough help on hand to empty the gassing containers after the birds are processed.’
‘Should do, once we have go-ahead from vets. But Jonas not here this morning. We’re one man down.’
‘Mrs Pritchard, get on the phone to the gangmaster and get them to send another man immediately. If Jonas shows up late I’ll deal with him, but we can’t afford to be short-handed today.
‘Ok, the Defra team will be on site shortly. The lorry to take the dead birds to the incinerator is only a few minutes away, so we can get going. Get them loaded as soon as they give the all-clear to enter the containers. Andrey, you should start catching and crating. James and Stan, we need a word before we meet up with the vets.’
*
Lukas’ team made the discovery. Turkeys weren’t the only things that had been culled.
2
0615, 4 April 2018
It was Lukas who raised the alarm. He’d been helping the gassing unit supervisor Joe check that the container was safe to enter and was the first to spot the human arm visible between crates full of dead turkeys. For a moment he froze in disbelief. Then he shouted for help in Lithuanian and while the words were obviously obscure, the need for assistance was not. Jim, the Defra vet, took one glance to see what the problem was, then reached for his phone and dialled 999. Lukas started hauling crates to one side to get at the body.
‘Police and ambulance please,’ he said, once through to the emergency services controller. ‘We’ve found a casualty in one of the gassing containers being used for the turkey cull at Stalham Poultry.
‘I’m through to the ambulance service. They want to know, is the casualty breathing?’ he called across.
Lukas was still struggling with crates, but he managed to get a hand on the casualty’s neck. ‘Don’t know. Don’t think so,’ he called back. ‘No beat.’ Then he added, ‘It’s Jonas,’ as Jim cut the connection.
‘They say start resuscitation as soon as we can and they have a paramedic on the way. They’ve notified the police on the gate, so they’ll be round shortly too. Is there a defibrillator?’
‘In the office.’ And while Joe ran for the office, Jim and Lukas pulled the body free from the crates and into the yard. Lukas noticed that Jonas was stiff and cold, his face dead white and his eyes closed. As they laid him down on the dirty concrete of the yard in his scruffy, stained overalls, Lukas placed his hand behind Jonas’ head to avoid it banging down. When he pulled his hand away, there was blood on it.
‘What about spine?’ asked Lukas with some anxiety.
‘I think we worry about that after we get a pulse and some respiration,’ said Jim shortly. ‘You blow and I’ll pump,’ he said to Lukas, and started pumping, with ‘Staying Alive’ playing in his head, as rehearsed in his first aid courses.
*
Pete Willis had barely begun his discussions with James and Stan when Joe burst into the office.
‘Casualty in the gassing chamber. Where’s your defib?’ he asked.
‘On the wall in the corridor,’ replied Mrs Pritchard, first to react. ‘I’ll show you.’
