No backup had arrived yet, so Winsome took out her mobile and tried to call the station. No signal. It was after noon, so she also had to ring Terry and postpone lunch. She thought of going back to Garsley Farm, where she had got a phone connection – and Wythers had a landline – but as High Point looked deserted, and help should be on the way, she thought she would take a quick look around first. She didn’t expect any trouble. Most people were far more likely to try and lie their way out of compromising situations than use force against the police. Admit nothing and stick to your story seemed to be the code of most of the criminals Winsome had interviewed of late. Besides, she knew how to take care of herself.
She continued along the access road, turned down the drive and pulled up in the farmyard in front of the house. If anyone was at home, they would have heard her arrive.
The snow swirled around her as she walked up to the front door and knocked. Nobody answered. She waited, listening, hearing nothing but the wind howling around the buildings, snow blowing all around, her ears freezing. She knocked again. Still no answer. She tried the door, found it locked, and drew the line at breaking and entering. The wind was really gusting around the hollow now, and the snow was getting heavier. Winsome knew she would have to get out of here soon, before it started seriously drifting, or she’d never get back to Eastvale. She thought about Terry. He probably wouldn’t forgive her for standing him up, and she couldn’t blame him. She peered through the windows of the cottage. They were streaked and dirty. One of the curtain rods had come loose on one side and the moth-eaten curtain hung diagonally across, so she could look over it into the room. It was sparsely furnished, with a flagstone floor and a large empty fireplace. Dark and gloomy. No light showed, no signs of recent habitation at all. Perhaps Atherton, or whoever lived here, had done a bunk already?
Winsome walked over towards the barn. The outside pens were caked with animals’ faeces, which Winsome could smell despite the near-zero temperature. She wasn’t squeamish – growing up in rural Jamaica, you couldn’t afford to be – but she wasn’t an English farm girl, either, so the smell made her feel vaguely sick. The barn door wasn’t locked, and when she opened it, the smell was even worse: faeces first, but something else, something deep and rotten underlying it. She had no idea what it was. She felt for a light switch but couldn’t find one.
With some light coming in from outside, her eyes became used to the semi-dark, and she could make out a channel running along the centre of the barn, a hook dangling on a rope from an overhead rail that ran the length of the building, various pens that seemed somehow connected to the outside holding areas. It didn’t take her long to figure out that she was in a small abattoir. When she turned to head back to her car, she saw a man’s silhouette filling the doorway.
‘Can I help you?’
He didn’t completely block the doorway, but as long as he was standing there, Winsome knew she couldn’t get past him. Where was Gerry? Hadn’t her note been clear enough? Winsome cursed herself for a fool for not making a more ser-ious attempt to call for backup before heading into the hollow, but she had really thought the place was deserted. Where had he been? Deliberately hiding from her? Why? How had he turned up here so silently? Now she was well and truly stuck. Brazen it out, girl, she told herself. Something her mother had never advised her to do.
She took out her warrant card and held it out. He wasn’t close enough to read it, and he didn’t move from the doorway. ‘DS Jackman, Eastvale CID,’ she said. It wasn’t quite true, but she didn’t like the idea of using the word ‘homicide’ just at the moment. Remember, she told herself, you brought down ‘The Bull’. You’re famous for your drop kick that wasn’t a drop kick. But the man before her didn’t know about her fame, or he didn’t care. Either way, it was unnerving how he just stood there, so calm, so relaxed.
‘I take it you have a warrant for entering my property, then?’ he said, expression not changing.
Winsome noticed a slight Irish accent. Northern, she thought, not the Republic. ‘Not exactly.’
‘Not exactly means not at all, I guess. That’s a pity.’
‘Move away from the doorway and let me pass.’
He stood his ground and cocked his head to one side. ‘And if I don’t want to?’
‘I’m warning you,’ she said, with more confidence than she felt. ‘Interfering with a police officer in the performance of her duty is a serious offence.’
He laughed. ‘I haven’t interfered with you at all. Not yet. It’s trespassing, you know, what you’re doing. The Lord tells us to forgive others their trespasses, but I’m not exactly a religious man. In America a person can shoot someone for trespassing on his property.’
‘Not a police officer. And we’re not in America.’
‘That just means you ain’t got no gun,’ he drawled, in an imitation American accent.
He started to move towards her, but not before shutting the door and slipping a bolt home. He pulled a chain, which Winsome had missed, to switch on the lights. They revealed the abattoir in all its gruesome glory, the floor and channel coated in congealed blood and slippery bits of innards, what might have been a kidney or a piece of liver, bloodstains on the walls. She took it all in at a glance, then her eyes fixed on the man.
He looked like one of those wholesome farm boys from Minnesota or Wisconsin she had seen in American movies, wearing jeans and a checked shirt, a shock of blond hair almost covering his left eye. He ought to be chewing on a blade of straw, but he wasn’t. The smile on his lips and the menace in the eyes didn’t match, and as far as Winsome was concerned, he might as well have been wearing a leather face mask and carrying a chainsaw. He was large, broad-shouldered, muscular, and about the same height as Winsome, which was a bit over six foot.
He headed slowly towards a padlocked metal box, fixed to one of the side walls, not taking his eyes off her as he walked, like one of those trompe l’œil paintings that looked at you wherever you stood. Winsome took the opportunity to edge further away from him. When he got to the box and unlocked it Winsome now stood across the channel from him, a little closer to the door. She knew that she couldn’t simply make a dash for it, so she didn’t even bother trying. She could see only one slim chance. He opened the box and took out what she guessed to be the bolt gun.
‘It can be quick,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t have to be. It all depends on the animal.’
‘What did that mean to you at the time?’ Banks asked Michael Lane. ‘That Morgan had stolen the boss’s tractor?’
‘Mean?’
‘Yes. Why did it frighten you? It obviously did.’
‘Well, it was the way he said it, menacingly, like, and they knew I’d heard them, so I thought they’d be after me.’
‘But how did you know who the boss was? They didn’t name him, did they?’
‘I… no… I don’t think they did. It was all a bit of a blur, to be honest. I was running for my life.’
‘But you were quite clear earlier,’ Annie said. ‘Why should they care what you heard if you didn’t know who the boss was, or who they were?’
‘I was scared. I wasn’t thinking. For crying out loud, I thought they’d just shot Morgan and I was a witness. Do you seriously think I stood around to talk it over or think it out?’
‘Calm down, Michael,’ said Annie. ‘Who is the boss? Do you know?’
‘How could I?’
‘Indeed,’ said Banks. ‘That’s just what we’re wondering. Maybe it’s time to come clean and tell us everything you know. It’ll turn out better in the long run, believe me.’