As Tim and Ricky turned off the Fenland road and drew to a halt at the top of the track that led to Silverdale Farm and the outbuildings beyond, Josh Marriott suddenly emerged from the dense undergrowth that grew in the lea of the steep-banked dyke that abutted both road and track. As if responding to a cue, Jack Fovargue came sauntering across his ill-kept lawn to greet them all. The two men met a few feet ahead of the car in which the policemen were sitting.
Tim was watching them carefully. They appeared to exchange no words, which seemed a little odd. Fovargue caught Tim’s eye and smiled, inviting them to get out of the car with the same extravagant beckoning gesture that he’d employed when he’d ushered them into his kitchen the previous day. Marriott had kept his head down until that point, but now he raised it and grinned uncertainly. Tim had seen that look on other occasions: at once shifty, suspicious and conciliatory, it spelt form as plainly as if Marriott had had ‘old lag’ stamped across his forehead.
‘It might be worth checking Marriott out when we get back to the station,’ Ricky muttered, sotto voce.
‘Exactly what I was thinking. Come on, let’s see what they’ve got to show us – and keep an eye out for anything they might be trying to hide.’
‘Hello,’ said Jack Fovargue, as they joined him. ‘Bang on time, I see.’
‘Good morning, Mr Fovargue. We do try not to keep people waiting if we can help it.’
‘This is Josh Marriott,’ said Fovargue with a flourish, like an impresario introducing a prize-fighter. ‘Josh, this is DI Yates and… er… DC McFadden. Got to dash myself, I’m afraid. I’ll leave them in your capable hands.’
As if taking the introduction literally, Marriott extended a huge beefy paw. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said.
Tim nodded and took the outstretched hand, trying not to wince as Marriott crushed his fingers. Marriott released them as suddenly as he’d grabbed them. He didn’t offer to shake hands with Ricky.
‘Well, I’ll love you and leave you, then,’ said Fovargue, who was already nimbly hot-footing it back to the house.
There was a short but awkward silence. Marriott seemed to have no inkling of how to proceed beyond the most basic of social niceties.
‘It’s good of you to spare the time to show us round,’ Tim said at length.
‘Just following orders,’ said Marriott gruffly. Then, either remembering his manners or some previous instruction, he attempted another unconvincing smile. ‘Where do you want to start?’
Tim shrugged.
‘We’re in your hands,’ he said. ‘We’d like to see how all the businesses operate. If you want to show us them in the order that works best for you, that’ll be fine.’
‘I thought you was more interested in the vehicles?’
‘We’re certainly interested in the vehicles. But we’d like to get an understanding of how all the businesses work together.’
‘Why’s that, then?’
‘Mostly for routine purposes – we do our best to get a working knowledge of all the farms and businesses in our area, and we don’t know much about Mr Fovargue’s enterprises. But we are also concerned for his personal safety. As I’m sure you know, he was beaten up quite badly a couple of days ago. And then there’s our more general concern about farm vehicle security in South Lincolnshire at present. There have been several robberies of farm machinery and other agricultural vehicles – quads, in particular. We’re trying to help the owners of such vehicles tighten up on security. We wouldn’t want Mr Fovargue to become the next victim.’
‘Right.’ It was difficult to imagine how anyone could imbue a single syllable with such a lack of conviction.
There was another pause. Marriott seemed to be engrossed in thought.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve got it. We’ll start with the outside stuff first – the Dutch lights and the organic market garden. Then we can go inside to take a look at the vintage machinery and the soil appreciation stuff. I don’t know much about that, by the way. It’s Jack’s and Susie’s baby.’ Marriott sniffed. ‘Not exactly in my line. Then I can show you the tanker business. There’s just fields beyond that – nothing of interest for you there.’
‘That sounds like a good plan,’ said Tim cheerfully, wondering what Fovargue’s ‘line’ really was.
Without acknowledging Tim’s reply, Marriott began trudging up the track. Tim and Ricky followed. Marriott didn’t appear to be moving quickly, but he was taking long strides. They struggled to keep up with him.
He stopped at the first structures they encountered, a substantial row of Dutch lights, and slid open the door of the one nearest to them. One half of it was almost empty, containing only plastic pots of herbs arranged in rows on steel trestles. The other half contained tomato vines, strung from floor to ceiling. Most were heavy with fruit.
‘Looks like a good crop,’ said Tim. ‘Purple and yellow ones, as well as red. Are they unusual varieties?’
‘The proper word is ‘heritage’,’ said Marriott, over-accentuating the aspirate. He didn’t exactly sneer, but it was clear that his esteem for the cultivation of fancy plants pretty much matched his enthusiasm for soil appreciation. ‘They do quite well – people will pay through the nose for them. The tomatoes is just about all that’s left in here at this time of year. Earlier there’s lettuce and spring onions and that as well.’
Tim had been paying attention, but now his concentration drifted: he’d caught a glimpse of a young woman leaving through the rear door of the huge greenhouse.
‘How many staff work in this part of the business?’
‘They’re mostly casuals. Students in the summer, some older schoolchildren, mums with kids who want to earn a few quid. That sort of thing. They’ve mostly been laid off now. We’ve a couple of labourers who work the year round.’
‘Is that one of them?’ Tim pointed at the retreating back of the young woman.
Josh Marriott smiled sardonically.
‘Not her. She’s an eek-ologist, or some such. She’s from the university, doing some kind of project about the soil. Been in here collecting samples, I should think. Doesn’t get her hands dirty otherwise.’
‘That’s interesting,’ said Tim evenly. ‘How long is she here for?’
‘Until Christmas. Then she has to go back to school, write up whatever it is she’s been collecting stuff about.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Martha. Martha Johnson. D’you want to talk to her?’
‘Not especially.’
‘Well, we’ll probably run into her later on. She works in the Soil Appreciation shed. She’s taken over the little office in there. Dead cosy. She won’t stay out here for too long.’
Marriott led them back out the way they’d come. Beyond the Dutch lights were a dozen large raised beds, set out in groups of three on either side of the path.
‘Some of this stuff’s experimental,’ said Marriott. ‘Rare types of asparagus and herbs and that. Some of it’s just bog standard – Brussels and other greens. As you can see, some of them are part-empty now, but there’s usually summat growing all the year round. We sell vegetable boxes until just after Christmas.’
‘You don’t have any root crops?’
‘Yeah, we do. They’re right over there, nearest the boundary. They grow out in the fields. The taties have mostly been lifted now and we’ll be digging up the carrots soon, but the swedes and turnips stay in the ground until they’re needed. The cabbages, too.’
Marriott paused in front of a long, low outbuilding. ‘This is the shed where all the soil appreciation stuff goes on, if you’re interested. You want me to ask Martha Johnson to show you it?’
‘Perhaps on the way back,’ said Tim. They had now almost reached an area of flagged yard. It stood in front of another shed, bigger than the ‘soil appreciation’ one. There were farming implements arranged on the flagstones, laid out carefully, almost as if for a museum display.
‘This is where the vintage vehicles are renovated?’
‘Yep,’ said Marriott. ‘There’s some money in that. Stuff you see out here, people buy it as ornaments for their gardens. Small ploughs and water-pumps, that type of thing. The bigger things are inside.’ He pointed a grimy index-finger at the heavy double doors, which were closed.
‘May we take a look?’
The question seemed to worry Marriott.
‘If you want,’ he said. ‘There isn’t owt new in there, though – no quads and such. Has to be at least thirty years old. That’s according to the boss. There’s some as says twenty years is old enough for vintage, but he’s a bit of a stickler.’
‘We would like a quick look round, if that’s all right with you.’
‘Sure,’ said Marriott, scowling. ‘I’ll just get the key. It’s in the office. You can wait here. I shan’t be long.’
He headed back towards the soil appreciation shed. Ricky wandered on to the yard area and began to examine the farming implements.
‘Some of these were made much longer than thirty years ago,’ he said. ‘My granddad had a little plough like this that he’d made into a feature in his garden. He said it had belonged to his granddad originally.’
‘I think Marriott was talking about the motor vehicles when he said thirty years. They’re probably much easier to date than these tools. I doubt if the tools have brand-names or serial numbers, that type of thing. Many of them will have been made in local blacksmiths’ forges.’
‘None the worse for that, though,’ said Ricky. ‘Look how beautifully these ploughshares have been turned.’
Josh Marriott reappeared as suddenly as he’d left, clutching a knot of rope from which several keys were swinging. His mood seemed to have improved during his short absence.
‘Martha Johnson says she’ll stay until you’re ready to look at what she does in there. She was going to knock off early today, but not for any particular reason.’
‘We don’t want to hold her up...’
‘I wouldn’t worry about that. It won’t hurt her to do summat useful for a change.’
He selected a key and inserted it into the giant padlock that secured the iron bar on the shed door. The padlock yielded easily. Marriott turned, frowning, to a keypad set into the lintel.
‘Let’s hope I can remember the fucking code,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Boss keeps on changing it. It’s a right pain.’
Ponderously, he pressed four of the keys, so slowly that Tim feared that even if he had the correct code the device would time out. There was a clicking sound.
‘Got it!’ Marriott said triumphantly. He seized one of the tall brass handles set into the door and pulled. It glided noiselessly to his left. The door to the right then yielded just as effortlessly. He stepped into the shed and snapped on a series of lights. As Tim and Ricky followed him inside, the whole shed lit up, illuminated by several rows of ‘Chinese coolie hat’ light fittings.
It had been set up like a showroom. Each of the vehicles it contained had been restored as far as possible to its original condition. Some, presumably the best or the most valuable ones, had been set on plinths or had their rear wheels raised on jacks to display them to better effect. There were several tractors, two Land Rovers and an ancient combine harvester.
There was also an old cattle truck and some sheep trailers. Interspersed with the vehicles were some larger auxiliary tools – bigger ploughs than the ones outside, harrows, crop-spraying attachments and potato hoppers.
‘Wow!’ said Ricky. ‘This is fantastic!’
Tim wasn’t as interested in farming as his DC was, but he could still see how much loving care – not to mention hard cash – must have been put into this collection. A monster of a vehicle standing in the corner by the door took his eye. It was mostly concealed by a tarpaulin, but its long narrow chimney was a giveaway.
‘Is that a traction engine?’ he asked.
‘Yep. That’s not for sale, though. The boss likes it. He takes it to shows sometimes, as a draw for the kids. They come over to look at the engine and he gets them interested in the soil.’
‘There’s a beautiful old motorbike here,’ said Ricky, admiration and envy vying with each other as he spoke. ‘I think it’s a genuine BSA B32. They stopped making them in the 1950s.’
‘I didn’t know you knew so much about motorbikes,’ Tim said. ‘I’m impressed!’
‘Yes, well that one’s not for sale, either,’ said Marriott. ‘Boss likes it to run around on. It’s one of his hobbies, tinkering with it.’
‘But most of the rest of these vehicles are for sale, I take it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How do you sell them? Not many people can happen on this place by chance.’
‘They’re advertised to collectors in various ways: websites, newsletters, that type of thing. A lot of people as buys them get to know the boss and Susie through the soil appreciation business first. Purists, I think the word is: they don’t just want to look after the land, they want to break their backs doing it in the same way as our ancestors did.’ Marriott let out a snort of laughter. ‘Best of it is, our ancestors didn’t give a damn. Any shortcuts they could take, they would do. And who could blame them for that?’
It was by far the longest speech he’d made since they’d met him. It left Tim wondering why Josh Marriott wanted to work for Jack Fovargue at all: he seemed to feel nothing but derision for most of the principles that Fovargue held dear.
‘’Course,’ Marriott continued reflectively, ‘a lot of the old vehicles and tools is sourced to order. They pass through here quite quickly then. But some of this stuff has been here a good while.’
‘That’s a ferocious looking thing,’ said Ricky, pointing to a massive jack-hoe hanging on the wall. It had been mounted beside a rack containing maybe two dozen billhooks of different sizes. Further along, some pitchforks had also been fastened to the wall.
‘Yep, it’s a jack hoe. All the things with sharp blades are fixed up above where kids can’t reach them. We get kids looking round sometimes. Then there are the boss’s own, of course.’
Tim went deeper into the shed to take a closer look at the pitchforks.
‘Some of these look very old to me,’ he said. ‘I’d say they were nineteenth century.’
Josh Marriott shrugged. ‘Could be,’ he said laconically.
Tim had almost reached the back wall of the shed. The left-hand corner was darker than the rest of the building. Looking up, he saw that the bulbs had been removed from the four of the coolie-hat shades that would have illuminated the area.
There was a vehicle standing in that corner, pressed up against the back wall, as far against it as it could be. Like the traction engine, it was swathed in a black tarpaulin, but it was much smaller – probably a small car – and no part of it was protruding. Tim moved along a little further to take a closer look.
‘There’s nowt over there,’ Josh Marriott called after him hurriedly. ‘Just some bits and pieces for repairs.’
‘It’s quite dark here,’ Tim replied, trying to soothe the man by not showing that his curiosity had been aroused.
‘Lights in that bit must have gone. I’ll get them fixed,’ Josh said dismissively.
Tim decided not to mention that the four light bulbs had clearly been removed. He wouldn’t antagonise Josh by attempting to remove the tarpaulin himself, but he would ask what lay beneath it and see what kind of answer he could get.
‘What’s in the corner there?’
‘I told you, just some spare parts.’
‘It looks like a whole vehicle to me.’
‘It ain’t whole. It’s an old car that the boss uses for spares, that’s all. Half of it’s gone now.’
‘It looks to me as if there’s quite a lot of it left.’
‘From its shape it looks as if it might be an old Morris Minor,’ said Ricky, who had come to join Tim. ‘I’m surprised you can use them for spares for farm vehicles.’
Josh Marriott shrugged again.
‘Don’t ask me. Not my baby. I’ve got strict instructions to leave that as it is. Not that I’d be able to show it you, even if I wanted.’
‘Oh. Why’s that?’
Josh gestured triumphantly at the tarpaulin. ‘Padlocked,’ he said.
Tim moved a couple of steps closer to whatever had been packaged under the cover. It enabled him to see that the black canvas was indeed criss-crossed with several galvanised wire ropes. At all the main intersections of each of these padlocks had been fitted.
Tim decided not to press it. Instead, he met Marriott’s eye and grinned.
‘Quite a little Aladdin’s cave, this, isn’t it?’ he said jovially. Obviously relieved, Marriott nodded his head vigorously. ‘Bit of a crank, the boss,’ he said, as if in confidence. ‘But it’s all above board. You can take my word for that.’
‘I’m sure I can,’ said Tim seriously. He dared not look behind him, knowing that Ricky would be there, valiantly stifling a laugh.
‘Now, have we done in here?’ Marriott continued.
‘I think so. Is there anything else you’d like to see, DC MacFadyen?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Ricky, who, when he emerged into natural light again, had become very red in the face.