Deception Read Online Free PDF Page A

formed Scottish parliament now held jurisdiction over matters agricultural through its newly formed Ministry for Rural Affairs but it had been the Ministry of Agriculture Food and Fisheries (MAFF), answering to the Westminster parliament, which had granted the licence. There was also confusion over who held executive sway over major matters concerning health and safety.
    ‘ All I need,’ sighed Steven. ‘A bloody civil service squabble in the middle of a grey area.’
    He examined the map of the village and surrounding area supplied by Miss Roberts and noted that the farms were indeed very close. The prevailing west wind in that part of the world might well constitute a problem but even then, a theoretical one, he thought. The idea of large-scale gene transfer through natural pollination was much more remote than the tabloid newspapers would have people believe. It was however, too late for cogent argument on this subject, he conceded. Public opinion had clearly perceived a danger in the genetic modification of food sources so the matter of who was right and who was wrong had become largely irrelevant. ‘Don’t waste your time concentrating on what should be,’ was something he remembered from his early training, ‘concentrate on what is .’
    He gleaned very little in the way of extra information from the supplied copies of solicitors’ letters. All were couched in the cold, unemotional jargon of legal prose and said no more than they absolutely had to. He looked to the background reports on the two farmers for some more colour.
    Ronald Lane was a fifty-three year old, who had returned to Blackbridge from South Africa, where he had been an estate manager for many years. He had come home after inheriting Peat Ridge farm from his late father. He had trained in the early sixties at Edinburgh’s School of Agriculture but had apparently fallen out with his father at the time over what he saw as old-fashioned farming methods being used on Peat Ridge. The pair had never been reconciled and Lane junior had gone off to seek his fortune abroad.
    He was said to be generally disliked in the village since his homecoming, being seen as ‘uppity’ and an outsider, despite his roots, and as a consequence, kept himself very much to himself. He had remained unmarried and lived alone apart from his housekeeper, a local woman named, Agnes Fraser.
    Thomas Rafferty of Crawhill Farm had lived all his forty-eight years in the village, having left school at sixteen to join his father and brother in working on Crawhill Farm. Although he had had to work hard when his father – a notoriously stern man - had been alive, he and his brother, Sean, had preferred to spend most of their time in the pub after the old man’s demise. Consequently, the farm had been allowed to go into decline.
    Sean however, had been shrewd enough to see that there was a market for the hire of heavy farm machinery in the area. He had persuaded his brother that they should invest what remained of their capital in the purchase of agricultural machinery and set up a plant hire business. The idea blossomed into a business success and Rafferty’s Plant Hire had provided both brothers with a comfortable income for many years, which they had not seen fit to augment with the bother of doing any actual farming. Crawhill had been allowed to lie fallow.
    Sean had died in 1991 and Thomas had bought out his widow’s share, leaving him and his wife, Trish as the sole proprietors of the plant hire business. Without Sean’s business acumen however, the plant hire business had not being doing so well of late. Thomas had not recognised the need to invest in new machinery or keep up expensive maintenance schedules on the old stuff. He preferred to make do with what they had and keep it going on a shoestring budget, using second hand spares and a succession of poorly paid mechanics to fit them.
    It had come as a surprise to everyone when Thomas Rafferty announced that he was planning