Wilson pulled into the farmyard, where the mud wasn’t any more welcoming, and parked beside a silver BMW. Beyond that stood a new-looking Range Rover. The layout was that of a typical courtyard farmstead: a two-storey farmhouse, built of limestone with a flagstone roof, surrounded by farm buildings, including a barn, also of limestone with big wooden doors with flaking green paint, what looked like a garage built of corrugated steel, a pigsty, whose natives sounded happy to be rolling about in mud and worse, and a chicken coop so fortified that the local foxes had probably all slunk off with their tails between their legs.
The usual farm smells assailed Annie’s nostrils when she got out of the car. No doubt the pigs contributed a great deal to it, she thought. And to the mud. You never knew what you were squelching through when you walked across a farmyard. The rolling fields of rapeseed, which would blossom a glorious bright yellow in May, now looked brooding and threatening under a louring gunmetal sky. Very Wuthering Heights, Annie thought, though she knew that was miles away. Dark clouds lumbered overhead, unleashing shower after shower of rain, some heavy, some more like drizzle, and the wind whistled in the emptiness.
Annie had come prepared for a cold wet day in the country – it was only late March, after all – her jeans tucked into a pair of red wellies, flower-patterned plastic rain hat, woolly jumper under a waterproof jacket. Doug Wilson looked a little more professional in his Marks and Sparks suit, trilby and tan raincoat with epaulettes and belt. In fact, Annie thought, he looked a bit like a private detective from a fifties movie, except for the glasses. And when he took his hat off, he still looked like Daniel Radcliffe playing Harry Potter.
There was an arched porch over the entrance, where they removed their outer clothing. When Annie took off the rain hat, her chestnut hair tumbled around her shoulders. The blonde was all gone now; she had let her hair grow out and return to its natural colour. She could certainly testify that she had not had more fun as a blonde.
A tall, wiry man in his mid-fifties, with a fine head of grey hair and a light tan, answered the door. He was wearing jeans and a red V-neck sweater over a pale blue shirt. Despite the casual clothing, Annie thought he looked more like a business executive than a farmer. There was an aura of wealth and power about him that she had never associated with farmers before. ‘You must be the police,’ he said, before they could pull out their warrant cards. He held the door open and stood aside. ‘Are your coats wet? If so, please don’t hesitate to bring them indoors. We’ll soon dry them out.’
‘They’ll be fine,’ Annie said, rubbing her hands together, then reaching for her warrant card. ‘DI Cabbot and DC Wilson.’
‘I’m John Beddoes. Please, come in.’
Most farms Annie had visited – admittedly not very many – smelled of mouth-watering baking, of pastry, marzipan, cinnamon and cloves, but Beddoes’ place smelled of nothing but lemon-scented air-freshener.
‘I know you probably think this is a huge waste of your time,’ said Beddoes. ‘Not to mention a waste of police resources, but it’s not the first such crime we’ve had around here this past year or so.’
‘We’re aware of that, sir,’ said Annie. ‘That’s why we’re here.’
Beddoes led them through to a cosy sitting room. First he bade them sit down on a three-piece suite that definitely hadn’t come from DFS, then he called to his wife. ‘Pat? The police are here, love.’
Patricia Beddoes walked in. Wearing figure-hugging designer jeans, trainers and an orange T-shirt, she was an attractive, elegant woman, with expensively coiffed dark hair, a good ten years or more younger than her husband. Even though she had been on holiday in the sun, her tan looked fake, from a can, like the kind that the young women all showed off on Coronation Street. She still looked a little chilly and severe to Annie, too many sharp angles, but her welcoming smile was genuine enough, her handshake firm, and she immediately offered them tea. Annie and Wilson said yes. Neither had eaten breakfast yet. Outside, the rain poured down and the wind blew it hard against the windowpanes and on the parked cars and tin garage. It sounded like someone chucking handfuls of gravel.
‘Miserable weather, isn’t it?’ said John Beddoes. ‘And they say there’s more to come.’
Everyone was saying it had been the wettest March since records began, and Annie wasn’t about to argue with that. Apart from a few days earlier in the month, it hadn’t been all that warm, either. There was even snow forecast. And all this coming on the heels of a miserable winter, a particularly tough one for farmers, who had lost so many sheep in snowdrifts out on the moors. ‘I understand you were away on holiday?’ she said.
‘Yes. Mexico. You might think it an odd time for us to go away – if there ever is a good time for a farmer – but we don’t have any sheep or cattle, you see, so we have no need to worry about lambing or calving.’ He nodded towards the kitchen. ‘And Patricia needed a break.’
‘Very nice.’ Annie didn’t think most farmers could afford to go to Mexico, not given the way they always seemed to be complaining about low prices of dairy produce, prohibitive EU tariffs and whatnot, but then with all the cheap flights and bargain all-inclusive holidays, it probably wasn’t all that expensive these days. Not that Annie fancied the idea: a bunch of yobs in leopard-print swimming trunks, slathered in coconut sunblock and pissed on weak beer had about as much appeal for her as a wet Sunday in Wales, or Yorkshire, for that matter. ‘I understand you only just got back,’ she said.
‘Late last night. About half past eleven. We were supposed to arrive early in the morning, but the flight to New York was delayed and we missed our connection. Well… you know what it’s like. Stuck in the airport lounge all day.’
Annie had no idea, never having been in an airport lounge. ‘So that was when you found out?’
‘Yes. I noticed that the garage had been broken into right away and telephoned the police. I must say you lot are quick off the mark. Much quicker than you used to be. That uniformed chappie who came around last night seemed very sympathetic, too.’
‘PC Valentine?’ said Annie. ‘Yes, sir, he’s a very sensitive young man.’
‘So what’s being done?’ Beddoes asked.
‘We’ve got a description of the tractor out, sir – a green Deutz-Fahr Agrotron, if I’m not mistaken – and we’ve got people looking for it, keeping an eye open at ports and so on. We’ve been in touch with Customs & Excise. They have the details, description, number plate, engine serial number. Of course, the criminals will most likely have altered those by now, but sometimes they’re lazy, or they slip up. It’s our experience that most stolen farm equipment is shipped out of the country pretty sharpish.’
John Beddoes sighed. ‘It’s probably in bloody Albania by now, then. It’s worth a hundred K at least.’
His wife came in with a tea tray and served everyone. Annie could hear the radio in the kitchen. Ken Bruce playing golden oldies on Radio 2. ‘Runaway’. She knew the song but couldn’t remember who sang it.
‘I don’t suppose you have any idea exactly when the tractor went missing?’ Annie asked. Doug Wilson pushed his glasses up again and bent over his notebook.
Beddoes shook his head. ‘We were only gone a week. We’re not that big an operation, really, and it’s mostly arable. Some cereals, vegetables, potatoes. Rapeseed’s our biggest crop by far. We supply a specialist high-end oil-maker. As you probably noticed, we also have a few pigs and chickens to keep the local quality restaurants supplied. Free-range chickens, of course, when it’s possible. And the pigs are British Landrace. Excellent meat. So there really wasn’t much to do last week.’