As the cheering subsided, the sound of a camera film wind-on caught the crowd’s attention. Steven saw that it was the young cameraman with McColl. You son, are a few frames short of a cassette, he thought.
‘No cameras!’ yelled the man on the bonnet of the car as if he were Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. The mob surrounded the hapless youth and his camera was taken from him, emptied, smashed and trampled underfoot. He and McColl were about to receive the same treatment when it was pointed out that the man with the photographer was from the Clarion. ‘He’s the one who broke the story!’ cried a voice. ‘He’s on our side!’ McColl and his sidekick were allowed to back away unharmed. They looked like pale, frightened rabbits, thought Steven.
The fired-up crowd started to move off up the hill leading to Peat Ridge Farm, an angry, amorphous amoeba, hell-bent on destroying anything in its path. Steven tried to keep his eye on Eve’s father but unfortunately he was walking near the front. It wasn’t going to be easy to cut him out of the herd from there.
He decided against trying to move up through the body of the mob and opted instead to fall back until there was enough room for him to move to the outside. He then ran up the flank and sidled in behind Ferguson. He sensed that it was the fact that he was carrying a gun that had put Ferguson up here in the vanguard. He didn’t strike Steven as being a natural trouble-seeker. If anything he seemed out of his depth but his grief and bitterness over the death of his son was being nurtured by the others. He clearly wasn’t a leader but had been adopted as a convenient figurehead.
Steven chose his moment and clicked Ferguson’s heels with his right foot, tripping him and sending him tumbling to the ground. He quickly stood over him, pretending to be helping him to his feet when in actual fact he had his thumb in a pressure point behind his ear, restricting blood supply to his brain and keeping him on the ground.
‘It’s his ankle,’ yelled Steven, without looking up. ‘On you go! We’ll catch up.’
Steven kept Ferguson on the ground, hiding his own face while the mob passed by on either side. When it seemed that it was all clear, he risked looking up. The two men from the Castle who had been flanking Ferguson were still standing there waiting for him. One of them recognised Steven immediately as they approached and said, ‘It’s that poncey civil servant bastard! He’s no wi’ us!’
Steven hit him once. It was a blow from his right fist that travelled barely eighteen inches but it caught the man just to the left of the point of his chin and jerked his head sharply up, causing him to lose consciousness and go down like a bag of cement. The other man, he hit twice; once in the solar plexus and once on the back of the neck as he doubled up. Steven left both of them lying in a heap and helped Ferguson to his feet to start frog marching him back to the village.
Ferguson started to protest loudly and Steven halted to spin him round and bring his face up close. ‘Now get this,’ he snarled. ‘I have had just about as much of Bonnie bloody Blackbridge as I can take. Ronald Lane had nothing to do with the death of your son and neither did the crop in his fields. The man who did is now dead so there is nothing you can do about it. Your daughter cares about you enough not to want you ending up spending the rest of your life in prison for killing an innocent man and I like your daughter so I’m helping her. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. You can walk home with me in civilised fashion or I can stick your rabbit gun up your backside and carry you in across my shoulders but going back, you most certainly are! Now, don’t waste my time. You choose!’
Ferguson started walking quietly beside Steven until they reached his home without further incident or comment. Steven was dismayed to find that Eve wasn’t there. He warned Ferguson to stay indoors and ran to his car to set off for Crawhill. He almost ran into Brewer’s car as he turned into Main Street and both men screeched to a halt. Steven got out and ran round to talk to Brewer through his open window. ‘The mob will be at Peat Ridge by now,’ he said. ‘There must be about a hundred of them and rent-a-mob were carrying hold-alls.
‘Two of my officers are down,’ said Brewer.
‘I saw it. There was nothing I could do. How many more have you got coming?’
‘Five pandas.’
‘Ten unarmed men?’ exclaimed Steven. ‘I suggest you call for several ambulances and the Fire Brigade… and maybe the Brigade of Ghurkhas while you’re at it.’
‘I’ll try talking to them,’ said Brewer.
Steven screwed up his face and said, ‘I won’t tell your insurance company you said that; they’d probably invoke the suicide clause in your policy.’
‘That bad, huh?’
‘The only way I’d talk to that crowd would be with an AK47 in my hands.’
‘I’ll have a look anyway,’ said Brewer. ‘After all, it’s my patch they’re crapping on.’
‘Be careful as you drive up the hill,’ said Steven. ‘I left a couple of them in the road. If they’re still lying there you could charge them with obstructing the police in the execution of their duty.’
Brewer roared off and Steven got back into his car. As he did so, a police panda car entered Blackbridge with blue light flashing. He waited until it had passed on its way to Peat Ridge before moving off. ‘Bon chance,’ he murmured.
Steven found the yard at Crawhill deserted when he drove in through the open gates. He checked the gun in his holster and decided on a head-on approach. He went up to the door of the farmhouse and knocked hard on it. There was no response. The only sound he could hear was coming from the mob over at Peat Ridge. As he listened at the door he heard a gun shot in the distance and the sound of a small explosion. The real trouble had started,
‘Eve! Trish!’ he called up at the windows of the house. ‘Are you in there?’
The house seemed deserted. He tried the door and found it locked. Where the hell were they? If they weren’t at Eve’s house and they weren’t here, where else could they possibly be? The possibility that they were being held prisoner by Childs and Leadbetter presented itself. Steven went round to the back of the house and broke a pane of glass in order to release the catch on the back door. He entered and moved cautiously through the ground floor rooms with his gun held at the ready. He then moved upstairs and carried out a similar search while the sounds of explosions from Peat Ridge emphasised the silence here at Crawhill. The house was empty.
Steven clattered back downstairs and left by the front door to run quickly round the sheds, searching for signs of life. He found nothing and that just left the barn itself. Could Eve and Trish be in it? A shiver ran up his spine as he acknowledged that Trish knew too much for Childs and Leadbetter to feel comfortable about her and so — whether they knew it or not — did Eve. It might be convenient for them to have the two women die in a tragic fire. He moved cautiously towards the tall doors, keeping an eye on the ground for any signs of trip wires or infra red devices, and found them — not unexpectedly — locked. He didn’t want to use his gun and have the sound of the shot ring out across the farm, so he ran back to one of the sheds and returned with a hammer. Two blows and the lock parted company with the door.
As he swung back one half of the door, it was suddenly framed by a huge sheet of orange flame coming from Peat Ridge and the air was filled with the smell of petrol. The oilseed rape was on fire. Steven pushed the door to again for a moment in order to look at the sky. He was in time to see through the trees the roof of Peat Ridge farmhouse erupting in sheets of flame. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he murmured as billows of black smoke from the fields started to drift in the breeze towards Crawhill.