I sighed. There was some kind of liquid draining from the dead dog on to my clothes. I could feel ants crawl up my sleeves. A fat fly buzzed insanely around my head. ‘I’ll explain later.’
‘Sooner rather than later. He called again and he seems furious, demanded to speak to you. He has another job for us but he wants you on the phone when he calls again at. . well, in less than an hour from now. Can you get here?’
‘I’ll be there,’ I said simply and rang off.
We found space among the crates, buckets and tools in the crowded back for the dog and I closed the door with all the reverence I could muster. When I got in myself I noticed several bluebottles had made it into the car. Gemma reversed down the hill like she’d been driving backwards all her life, stuffed the back half of the car into the track-side weeds by the barn at the bottom and cranked the wheel around with furious efficiency before propelling us back towards the Hollow.
Digging a hole large and deep enough to bury the dog turned out to be surprisingly hard work. We dug the grave on the side of the slope, away from the springs, taking turns with the only spade. The ground was wet and heavy. When we had laid the dead animal at the bottom Gemma picked up the spade and without ceremony began the task of backfilling. I went off to wash my hands at the spring. By the time I got back she had nearly finished.
‘Thanks for doing that. Can you go now, please?’ she asked without looking at me.
I ignored the request. ‘Do you ever go to those woods?’
‘Of course I do. I go mushroom picking there for a start.’
‘But it’s private property? Blackfield owns it?’
‘Yeah, they own it, so what. Blackfield’s a complete bastard and wants no one near his property, he doesn’t give a shit for the few mushrooms I take away. Perhaps he got a few threatening letters or something when he started up that business with the containers and that’s what turned him into a paranoid antisocial bastard, that’s my most charitable theory anyway. We had words about me collecting wild herbs and mushrooms around there before he started with the containers though.’
‘And you do that at night?’ I was thinking about ‘the old witch snooping at night’.
‘Yes, some plants are best collected after nightfall. Or so it says in some of my old herbals and I have no reason to doubt it. Anyway, I like walking at night, it’s peaceful.’
Albert Barrington hadn’t found it so peaceful, though you could argue he’d found peace in the end. ‘Blackfield, is he the big guy with a shaved head? Dresses like a Hollywood mercenary?’
‘That’s Tony’s son Jim. I think you’ll find it’s him who’s in charge now. He went off for a few years, no interest in farming whatsoever. Can’t blame him, he saw his parents work themselves into the ground for no reward. Mind you, if he’d stayed they wouldn’t have been so shorthanded in the first place. Small mixed farm. Mad Cow Disease, Foot and Mouth, it doesn’t take much, the margins are so small. Then Tony’s wife died, cancer I think, not sure, the Big C’s still only whispered around here. Jim came back, took over, got rid of the last animals. I think Blackfield senior never recovered from losing his wife. Apparently he still keeps three chickens and only talks to them. Sounds like depression if you ask me. And when he looks out the window he sees a sea of containers rusting in his fields. Cheerful. You met his son then.’
‘Yes. He’s a charmer. Do you think he’s the one who killed your dog?’
‘Don’t know. Probably. Didn’t I ask you to go a while back?’ She looked a tired pointy-hatted pixie now, gazing past me, unfocused.
‘All right. Look, I’ll leave you my number.’ I made her accept one of my cards. Then I looked around. ‘You’ve got a phone, I take it?’
She snorted. ‘Dream on. They refused to give me a land line since none of this,’ she waved her arms in an irritable gesture, ‘amounts to a permanent abode. And you can’t get a mobile signal down here.’
That explained why Annis had had trouble getting hold of me. ‘How do you conduct business?’
‘Look, I get by, okay? Perhaps we could discuss my communication problems at some other point in the future? The distant future?’
‘Right. Take care.’ I didn’t want to leave, even though I wasn’t wanted, even though I was very much wanted elsewhere. ‘Perhaps you really should get a noisier gun.’
As I rode back towards Larkhall and the London Road I thought I could hear another motorcycle engine behind me but I didn’t see any vehicles, though I kept looking over my shoulder. Then the sound was drowned out by the drone of a microlight plane flying lazy circles under the clouds.
Chapter Thirteen
I stared at the cordless handset I had carried round the house since my arrival, waiting for the hated electronic warble that would announce the dreaded call.
‘Am I failing Jill? And Louis? Am I doing it all wrong?’ I asked Annis.
She buried her hands deep in the pockets of her jeans and shrugged heavily. ‘If he managed to intercept you before you even got to the police station then you were right, he knows what you’re doing and probably has you watched. I’m not sure we can do much about it. You can try and give your tail the slip but that doesn’t mean you can keep police involvement hidden from him. The police might cock it up just as easily as we could and he might kill the boy in revenge or to avoid detection. If Louis has seen his face he’s probably doomed anyway. He’s not going to be allowed to give the police a detailed description of his kipnapper after he’s released. And you have to consider the possibility that he’s dead already.’ She patted me on the arm in a gesture that was meant to be sympathetic but made me feel worse. There, there. ‘I’ll make us a nice pot of tea, how about that?’ she said in a creaky Miss Marple parody, but I had to admit that the British panacea for all ills and crises was just what I wanted right now. I never got it.
Just as soon as Annis had left the room the phone trilled in my hand and my stomach muscles contracted into an aching mess.
‘Honeysett.’
‘I’m disappointed in the kind of service you run, Honeysett. I expect more when I hire staff. So listen closely, shithead, and don’t interrupt, here’s how you can make good your earlier cock-up, though I’m still not completely convinced you aren’t trying to pull a fast one. But then again, I can’t believe you would jeopardize a boy’s health like that.’ His distorted, tinny voice sounded as inhuman and robotic as ever. I found it impossible to picture Louis’s kidnapper; he remained a shadow attached to a sound that emanated from this piece of plastic I held against my ear.
‘How is the boy, how is Louis?’
‘Bored and whining and annoying as fuck but he’ll be all right if you do what you’re told. So listen carefully. Write this down because I won’t tell you again: Rufus Connabear, at Restharrow, near Monkton Farleigh.’
‘Hang on, I need to find a pen.’
‘Don’t fuck about, I haven’t got time to spell it for you!’ he shouted down the phone as I scrabbled around for a biro. ‘Connabear. Retired businessman, and very comfortably retired he must be. He has to have more dosh than sense because he spent an awful lot of it on rare stamps. And I have it on good authority that he owns something very rare indeed, a Penny Black. The world’s first ever stamp. Worth an absolute fucking fortune and he keeps it at home instead of the bank where it belongs, so you can see he’s a nerd, an anorak, a stamp-collecting loser who deserves what’s coming to him. Which is you. Because you shall relieve old Rufus of the Penny Black.’
Even I had heard of the famous stamp. After all, it was from Bath that the first ever postage stamp, printed in black ink and then costing one penny, was sent in 1840, every school kid probably knew that. I wondered just how many shiny pennies it was worth now.