Chemical Secret
Tim Vicary
Oxford Bookworms LibraryLevel 3
A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Written for Learners of English by Tim Vicary.
The job was too good. There had to be a problem – and there was.
John Duncan was an honest man, but he needed money. He had children to look after. He was ready to do anything, and his bosses knew it.
They gave him the job because he couldn’t say no; he couldn’t afford to be honest. And the job was like a poison inside him. It changed him and blinded him, so that he couldn’t see the real poison – until it was too late.
TIM VICARY
Chemical Secret
CHEMICAL SECRET
There are two ways of committing a crime. You can do it with your eyes open, or you can do it with your eyes closed. Not many of us intend to do wrong, but almost all of us close our eyes to certain kinds of crime.
But what is a crime? Is it something that the law tells us is wrong, or something that we know in our hearts is wrong? There are many kinds of crime – crimes of greed, of violence, of anger and hate. But there are also less obvious crimes – the ones that we commit against the world: against the sky, the sea, the land. They are the crimes that we commit against the future and against our children – by closing our eyes and pretending that we cannot see.
John Duncan is a biologist. When he took the job at the chemical factory, he thought he was protecting his children. He wanted to buy them the good things of life: a big house, a boat, exciting holidays … But what kind of future was he buying them?
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ISBN 978 0 19 479112 0
A complete recording of this Bookworms edition of Chemical Secret is available on audio CD ISBN 978 0 19 479093 2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Illustrated by: Chris Koelle
Word count (main text): 10,150 words
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e-Book first published 2012
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A new start
�Mr Duncan? Come in please. Mr Wilson will see you now.’
�Thank you.’ John Duncan stood up and walked nervously towards the door. He was a tall, thin man, about