The track beside it stretches away into the darkness, towards a cluster of large agricultural buildings, a faint glimmer of lights twinkling between them.
This is it...
She turns onto the track, accelerating. Can’t afford to be any later than she already is. But she’s barely gone a hundred yards before someone flashes their headlights at her.
Sally slows.
A hatchback sits in the entrance to a field — dark blue, with no number plates, windscreen wipers sweeping from side-to-side in the rain.
She stops in front of it, palms damp against the steering wheel, trying to calm her breathing as a large man, dressed all in black, climbs out of the hatchback and marches over. Not quite as big as Four was, but every bit as menacing in his dull-blue mask. Only this one has the number three on it.
Sally pulls on her sunglasses again, flips up her hood, and buzzes her window down.
He stoops and stares inside. ‘You looking for someone?’
‘I... Foxglove. Foxglove.’
He holds out his hand. ‘You want to make a deposit.’ Not a question, a statement.
Which makes no sense at all — she’s already given Becky to the man with the gun. ‘A deposit?’
Three shakes his head. ‘You don’t bid cash, you make a deposit and bid on account. You get back anything you don’t spend at the end, less a handling fee. Now: do you want to make a deposit?’
‘Yes! Yes, I want to make a deposit.’ She leans over, grabs the rucksack from the passenger footwell and holds it out to him. It doesn’t weigh as much as it should, given what’s in it. ‘Sixty-five thousand pounds in twenties. They’re nonconsecutive. I took them out over the course of about...’
But he’s not listening, he’s carrying the rucksack around to the hatchback’s boot. A clunk, and the tailgate swings up, bringing on the internal light. He’s got some sort of machine on the parcel shelf and one-by-one he feeds the blocks of cash into it, making notes as he goes. Then he takes something from the boot, thumps the tailgate shut, and marches over to the Shogun again. Tosses whatever it is in through the window. ‘Put that on.’
It’s a mask — green and scaly, with sharp teeth and red eyes, a snout that has flames coming out of the nostrils, all rendered in thin plastic. Slightly better quality than the sort of thing you can buy from a petrol station at Halloween, but not much. She slips it on and tightens the elastic, so it’s secure against her wig, adjusting the mask until she can see out properly.
‘Your name is “Dragon”. You do not tell anyone your real name. You do not ask them their real names. You share no personal details at all. If you do, you will be disciplined. Do you understand?’
Her voice sounds strange in her ears, deeper, more echoey. ‘I understand.’
‘You have sixty-three thousand, three hundred and seventy-five pounds to spend on the item, or items of your choice.’
‘But I gave you—’
‘Two and a half percent handling fee.’ He turns and thumps away through the rain, shaking his head. ‘Bloody newbies.’ Climbs into his car and clunks the door shut.
She looks at Dragon’s face in the rear-view mirror. Then pulls up her hoodie again, leaving fake blonde curls hanging down over her chest. Nods at her reflection.
Dragon looks back at her. ‘You can do this.’
Because what other choice does she have?
Sally puts the Shogun into drive again, headlights picking out fields of stubble and dirt on either side of the track as she goes past — all the way to the end, where it opens out into a courtyard flanked by two large metal barns with a dark farmhouse lurking at the far end. The only light comes from a handful of dim yellow fittings, fixed to the barns’ corrugated walls.
About a dozen cars are parked between the two agricultural buildings, four-by-fours, hatchbacks, estates, a new-ish Audi... All of them stripped of their number plates, except for a tatty old Jaguar.
Sally parks next to the Audi. Takes a deep breath. And steps out onto the rain-slicked concrete. The smell of sour straw and animal waste taints the air.
Muffled voices ooze through the walls of the building on the right, where a sub-door lies open — inset into a much larger sliding one.
Another big figure, dressed all in black and a dull-blue mask, stands in front of it. Tall and broad with the number two slashed across her face. Her voice is every bit as hard and aggressive as the other Numbers. ‘You’re late.’
‘Sorry. It took longer than I thought because—’
‘You’re late again, you get disciplined.’ Two sticks out her hand as Sally hurries over. ‘Car keys.’
‘What?’
‘Give me your car keys!’ Jabbing her hand forward again. ‘No one leaves till everyone leaves.’
‘Oh. I see. Yes.’ Sally digs her keys out and drops them into Two’s gloved palm.
‘Now: inside.’
‘Yes. Sorry.’ She swallows, straightens her shoulders, and ducks through the door.
Warm air wafts over her, bringing with it the soft vanilla scent of cattle and the pungent brown stink of dung. Inside, the cattle court is one big open-plan space with a raised walkway down the middle, each side divided into three large pens by chest-height metal barriers. All lit from above by twin rows of buzzing strip lights.
Chunks of agricultural machinery crowd the pens on the right, but the ones on the left have been cleared down to the straw-covered floor — a stack of pallets and a dozen large round bales of haylage, wrapped in pale green plastic, lined up along one wall.
The only animals in here are people.
Eleven of them, standing in a group, none of them talking to any of the others. Mostly men, going by the clothes, all wearing masks: a rat, pig, goat, tiger, horse, chicken, monkey, rabbit, dog, some sort of lizard, and a bull. The only one of them that looks as nervous as she feels is Chicken — fat and fidgety in mud-scuffed jeans and a tatty tweed jacket. He plays with the buttons on it, twisting them in his pudgy fingers.
Two Numbers stand off to the side, talking in voices too faint to make out... Sally freezes. The bigger one is Four: the thug from the standing stone. He’s talking to someone a good foot-and-a-bit shorter than him, with a number five on his mask, Shorter, maybe, but there’s something about Five that makes the pit of Sally’s stomach crawl.
She sticks to the side of the pen furthest away from them, making her way through the gap in the barriers toward the gathering of animal masks. No one says anything, or even nods a greeting, but they turn to stare at her with their immobile plastic faces and hollow eyes. Most of their masks look a lot more expensive than hers did in the mirror, all except for muddy fidgeting Chicken.
Sally joins them, making the gathering an even dozen.
Twelve little animals, all in a row...
She wraps her arms around herself, steam rising from her damp hoodie.
A warm, confident voice booms out across the cattle court. ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’
Almost as one, they turn their gaze from her to the walkway. Standing up straight. Eager. Like dogs awaiting titbits from their master.
There’s a man on the walkway, dressed in a black leather jacket, black leather gloves, a grey hoodie and a featureless grey mask. No number. He’s got a roll of clear plastic sheeting tucked under one arm and when he gets halfway down the walkway he props it up against the guardrail. ‘Now that Dragon is here, we can begin.’
Everyone shuffles forward.
That voice — it’s the man from the derelict cottage. The one who took Becky. The one with the gun. The Auctioneer.
He throws his arms wide, mask tilted towards the ceiling as he bellows it out: ‘WELCOME TO THE LIVESTOCK MART!’