When the break came, it came so suddenly that it caught Ludo off-guard, but that was probably just as well. Exhausted after yet another long day traipsing around the countryside, Ludo and Nipper were in another country pub, in another set of substandard rooms with no minibar, a shower that spat at you, a mattress like to break your fucking back, in fact no nothing. Ludo was so pissed off with this situation now, so done with it, that his patience was just about at an end.
Then Nipper knocked at Ludo’s door.
‘Come the fuck in!’ yelled Ludo, trying out the TV for the Six O’Clock News; the picture kept breaking up. He switched it off, threw the remote across the room.
‘We got a break,’ said Nipper, coming over to the bed Ludo was reclining on.
‘Yeah, what?’ Ludo rubbed his aching spine. ‘I got a break, I tell you. My back is broken from sleeping on this goddamned thing here that passes for a bed.’
‘One of the postmen. A temp. Couldn’t get shit out of the usual guys, they were tight as a drum, but this one didn’t care. Says a new girl answered the door to him once at Beechwood Farm.’
‘That place? Looks in shit order?’
‘That’s the one. He’s never seen her there before and chatting in the sorting office he said no one else knew her either. Blonde. Brown eyes. Right age for our one. Says she’s scarred up somethin’ scary. And that fits too. She was bleedin’ when she got out of the tank. Tough bitch, no doubt about it.’
Ludo swung his legs off the bed. ‘Nothin’ a bullet between the eyes won’t sort out. Beechwood Farm, you say.’
‘I do.’
‘Tomorrow morning then.’