Obviously sometimes, just for the novelty value, the vehicle really is stolen.
We agreed it might be worth checking out the farm in Essex so we called Nightingale to let him know. He told us to be careful.
‘Yes, Dad,’ said Lesley but only after Nightingale had hung up.
So, with my trusty native guide by my side, I started up the Asbo and set course for the dark heart of Essex,
We got off the M11 at junction 7 and sat behind a caravan for about half an hour, which gave us plenty of time to weigh up the alternative joys of fresh farm produce and/or cheap warehousing space. It was enough to push even me into taking a risky overtaking opportunity that caused Lesley to clutch the handhold and swear under her breath.
‘What do you expect to find?’ asked Lesley once her grip had unclenched.
‘Don’t know,’ I said. ‘But Nightingale is right, the Faceless Man’s just a criminal. He makes mistakes. We only need to keep chipping away at this network he’s built. Sooner or later we’re going to find a crack we can exploit and then, crash, we can bring the whole thing down.’
‘Or some farmer’s had his van stolen,’ said Lesley.
‘Or that.’
What I hate most about the country is that it’s so hard to tell what anything is before you get there. Dutifully following the satnav we headed down a series of narrowing country lanes until we suddenly came to a halt in front of a metal five-bar gate. Beyond that was a muddy yard surrounded on three sides by an old brick barn, a building that looked like a warehouse that had been redressed for a post-apocalyptic dystopia and what appeared to be a pebble-dashed council bungalow uprooted from some northern housing estate by a tornado to come crashing down in the wilds of Essex. For all I knew, it could have been anything from a pig farm to a really down at heel outdoors activity centre.
‘You’re rural,’ I said to Lesley. ‘Do we park here and go in, or do we open the gate and drive in?’
‘Park here,’ she said. ‘That way no one can escape while they think we’re not looking.’
‘The farmer’s not going to like it if he comes tooling up in a tractor and he can’t get in,’ I said.
‘He’ll get over it,’ she said. ‘Farmers are always pissed off about something.’
I looked at the farmyard. I was still wearing my DM 1461 shoes which were not my best, but not what I wanted to get agricultural waste products on, either. But sometimes successful policing involves making a sacrifice.
We climbed out of the Asbo into the hot sunlight. The air had that dried shit smell that I’ve been reliably informed indicates either muck spreading or a music festival. But not at this farm, I decided. Even I could see that there didn’t seem to be enough actual livestock aftermath in the yard.
‘He could be a cereal farmer,’ said Lesley when I pointed this out.
The dilapidated grey concrete barn was open to the elements at both ends. An ancient Land Rover was parked half inside, its bonnet propped open to reveal a rusted engine. Behind it there were strange concrete troughs and the spiky torture-chamber shapes of agricultural equipment. Beyond that, a rectangle of pale blue sky. The brick barn was older, sturdier and better maintained, its main front door firmly closed and padlocked.
The bungalow was blind, with grimy net curtains. Set down by its tornado at an off angle to the yard, it was also backwards, with what was obviously the back door facing us — although Lesley said this was standard for farms. ‘Nobody uses the front door except to hang out washing,’ she said.
I tapped on the back door and then the kitchen window.
‘Hello,’ I called. ‘It’s the police, is anyone home?’
Somewhere in the distance I thought I might have heard a dog barking.
There were two rutted tracks in the grey dust leading left and right out of the yard. We took the right one because it looked like it curled around the side of the bungalow. It did, and Lesley had been right about the washing. A rough square lawn was fenced in by knee-high metal railings and sported a rotary clothesline and a scattering of sun-faded plastic toys. A rusty green metal swing stood in another corner and would no doubt have squeaked mournfully in the wind had the seat not been missing. Probably removed by someone who got fed up with it squeaking mournfully. What was unmistakably the front door of the house was painted a mottled blue and was wedged shut when I gave it an experimental shove.
‘Could they be out in the fields?’ I asked.
‘There’d still be a car in the yard,’ said Lesley. ‘Although the farmer might be working and the wife in town.’
‘If there is a wife,’ I said.
‘No sign of the Transit van,’ she said. ‘Want to break in?’
She didn’t sound enthusiastic. Farmers meant shotguns, legal and illegal, and a loose interpretation of the common law when it came to self-defence.
There were what might have been fresh tyre marks leading away further up the track. I stared in that direction and thought I could see what looked like a roofline poking up from behind a rise in the ground.
‘Let’s check up here first,’ I said.
We headed up the track until we topped the rise and found ourselves looking down at a pair of wooden storage sheds new enough for the pine planking to still be bright yellow and smell of Ronseal. They were windowless and had gabled roofs surfaced with black felt.
‘Did you hear that?’ asked Lesley.
‘What?’
‘Dogs,’ she said. ‘Barking.’
I listened, but all I could hear was the wind and something making a belching squawk that I assumed was a bird.
‘Nope,’ I said.
We followed the track down the rise until we reached the first shed. Now, the closest I’ve ever got to DIY is arresting shoplifters in B amp;Q but even I know green wood when I’m right up close and can see where it is warping out of shape. Some of the planks in the walls here had peeled offthe frame. I looked closer and found that there were no nails. The planks had been held in place with wooden plugs. When I checked the door, I saw that the hinges were wooden and that there were no locks, only a crude wooden latch.
Lesley reached out to open the door.
‘Wait,’ I told her, and she hesitated. ‘Dogs,’ I said.
‘Dogs?’ asked Lesley.
I did a three-sixty and found what I was looking for behind me on the opposite side of the tracks — a bare slender tree with thin branches within arm’s reach. I crossed over and tried to break the smallest I could get — a branch the thickness and length of a pool cue. It didn’t come easy, and the cold bark scraped my hands as I yanked it off the tree, peeling a strip of bark away from the main trunk along with it.
Nightingale had said that the younger and greener the stick the better. I brandished it at Lesley.
‘Dogs,’ I said.
I walked back to the first shed and used the far end of my stick to lift the latch and a convenient fork of twigs near the top to hook the handle and pull it open.
‘Oh,’ said Lesley. ‘Dogs.’
She let me enter the shed first. Without windows it should have been pitch black, but the warped planks had opened long thin gaps of daylight in the walls. Equipment racks lined the shelves, all constructed of the same green wood and arranged like bunk beds in a barracks. The shelves were empty, but judging by their depth they’d been built to store something less than half a metre deep and from their vertical spacing not more than the same in height. The units were sturdy and massively over-engineered, so whatever they had been storing, it had been heavy,