An Early Grave by Robert McCracken Read Free Book Online Page B

justice they administered in his homeland. No one would care; the actions of a few unscrupulous business men had caused the deaths of more than thirty people, mostly children. All done to make money by defrauding their customers and ultimately harming the consumer. He’d detected such chemicals as melamine, commonly used in manufacturing plastics but added illegally to powdered milk to increase the nitrogen concentration, used as a measure of the protein content in food. He’d uncovered instances where food processors had deliberately used horsemeat and pork in beef products, and where low grade chicken meat was passed off as organic produce. Drugs such as nitrofuran antibiotics, banned for use in rearing food-producing animals because they are carcinogens, and azo dyes, also carcinogens, used to kill parasites in fish: he detected all of them. Jian had investigated the companies involved and performed thousands of tests to detect the substances in food products to prevent them from reaching the shops and supermarkets. Consequently, he’d received a number of threats. Samples he’d collected were stolen from his lab, his wife verbally abused by strangers in the street, acid thrown on his car and his tyres slashed. He was simply doing his job and never imagined that his life could be at risk. He worked for his university and his government, and he expected that same government to protect him.
    Now that he’d given his presentation to the three hundred delegates in the Culture and Congress Centre on Europaplatz in Lucerne, he was going to enjoy the remainder of the conference on global food safety, and this evening he looked forward to the conference dinner. This was his first visit to Europe since he’d returned home to Qinhuangdao after his years at Oxford, first as an undergraduate, then a post-grad and finally two years working with his close friend Callum Armour as a post-doc. It all seemed like yesterday. He had hoped to see Callum at the conference, but a former colleague from Oxford had told him that Callum was no longer working in the field. He could understand why, after what happened to his wife, Tilly and their little daughter. It saddened him greatly. Callum had been his closest friend at Latimer College.
    He fancied a walk before going to the dinner, and after a shower and a change of clothes back at his hotel, he quickly checked his emails on his lap-top, replying to a couple and sending one to his wife Lihua, who was six months pregnant. Jian took the lift down to the lobby of the Grand Hotel National and headed for the exit leading to the lakeside, where he hoped to enjoy the cool evening air as he strolled towards the old town. The lobby was busy with new guests checking in and scores of conference attendees who were staying at the hotel.
    ‘Jian,’ a voice called from the lounge which opened onto the lobby. He looked across, smiled and gave a cursory wave to a bright-faced man in his thirties, with untidy blonde hair and wearing a checked shirt and blue jeans.
    ‘Come and join us for a drink.’
    He spoke in English with an accent unmistakably Dutch. Jian came over to the group of five people seated in comfortable, leather armchairs gathered around a coffee table. He smiled his polite smile, with a slight bow of his head. He was an acquaintance of them all: Doctor Koos van Leer, who had called him over and Pieter Schalke, both from a research institute in Wageningen, Dr Clarisse Junot, from Nantes, an attractive forty year-old veterinarian, Philip Weston, from York and Luca Davoli, from Rome, all workers in the field of contamination in food.
    Van Leer dragged another chair across the carpeted floor to their table. Jian sat down and ordered a cool beer from a waiter. The group hadn’t yet consumed sufficient alcohol to cast off the safe inclination to discuss only work, their thoughts centred on the content of today’s conference. Soon though, Jian’s plan to go for a walk disappeared under intense