The prongs sank deep into the skin just below his ribs.
He squealed, looked down, shocked, releasing her left arm.
She jerked her body; temporarily stunned by her attack, he fell sideways, bloody tines emerging from his shirt.
He began to scream.
Sliding on the oily floor, she wriggled away, struggling to her feet.
Men were pouring into the shed now, looking around to find the source of the shouting. They had seen her by now. She ran to the opposite corner, grabbed the handle of the door there, and yanked.
Locked.
Somebody laughed.
She turned, and saw three men approaching. One was the man she had kneed in the groin. Now he was holding a knife.
‘I am a police officer,’ she said. ‘Kent Police.’
Her suit was ripped, bloody and covered with oil.
‘I am a police officer,’ she said again.
‘Hey,’ said the wounded man. ‘Help me.’
They ignored him, closing in on her. The man waved the knife, closer now, deadly serious, face nervous. It was large, with a serrated top; the kind of weapon designed to do as much damage on the way out as on the way in. She thought of the wound in Najiba’s neck.
‘Police,’ she said again.
It made no difference. Like the man she had interrogated, it was as if they had so little to lose. She was literally cornered. She weighed the men up, trying to figure out which of them would be the weakest. Knife Man was in the middle; the others on either side were young and fit-looking.
And then she was suddenly so tired of it all. Exhausted. It was taking so long. It took so little to kill someone with a blade. She had witnessed it in London, the lives of people slipping away in no time.
What a fuck-up she was. Too impulsive. Always shooting her mouth off without thinking. And now she was going to die because of it. She had wanted so badly to find the people who had killed Freya Brindley; now they were going to kill her instead.
The man with the blade stepped forward. The other men encouraged him. ‘Go on. Do it.’
He lifted it high; he had done it before, she realised. This was the man who had killed Najiba. He was going to kill her in the same way.
‘Please,’ she said, crying.
And then she heard another voice. ‘Stop.’
The men looked round.
‘What the bloody hell do you think you are doing?’
Connie Reed, in jeans and grubby sweatshirt, standing at the open door, hands on her hips.
‘Run, Connie! Call the police,’ Cupidi shouted. Or tried to. Her voice was barely a croak.
‘Step away from her.’
‘Don’t get involved, Connie. They’re armed and dangerous.’
‘Get back.’
And amazingly, sheepishly, the men did as they were told.
‘Wow,’ said Cupidi, her voice cracking. ‘You bloody star.’ She breathed in for what felt like the first time in minutes. She laughed. ‘How do you bloody do that?’
But when she looked around, she realised something was very wrong.
The men looked vaguely concerned, not frightened by what was about to happen to them. She looked from Connie Reed to the men and back again and it suddenly dawned on her. She had been doubly stupid.
That’s why these men had been in Connie Reed’s field.
‘Catch hold of her,’ said Reed calmly. ‘But do it carefully, for God’s sake. Don’t leave any more marks.’
Connie Reed was the gangmaster; it was she who had been working with Freya Brindley. And presumably she who had killed Freya.
The man on the ground groaned, more loudly now. ‘I’m bleeding,’ he complained. ‘Help me.’
The three men surrounding her closed in.
She backed away.
‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Think about what you’re doing.’
When they grabbed both arms, the agony was unbearable. She screamed loudly until a hand was placed over her face.
Something happens when you know you’re beaten. The struggle goes out of you. The agony of her arm was enough to sap her will. Someone was stuffing a rough oily cloth into her mouth; she could no longer speak. One on each shoulder, one at her feet, they lifted her and took her out into the July sunshine. She howled from the pain, but it was muted by her gag to a whine.
As her head lolled sideways she saw workers from the orchard standing around, staring, sullen and silent. Frightened. Some still had buckets strapped to their fronts. They were young and old, men and women. The man who had spoken to her in the field was there. She thought she recognised the girl she had seen, too; maybe she was the girl Zoë had met, out in the fields.
She stared at Cupidi, eyes wide and frightened. Poor young girl.
‘Get them out of here,’ said Connie Reed evenly. ‘Take them far away. Everyone needs to be gone before the next shift comes in.’
And, silently, the hidden people started to move. Nobody was supposed to know they were here. Cupidi pushed at the cloth in her mouth with her tongue but couldn’t get it to budge.
Connie Reed led the way out of the yard. The three men followed, carrying Cupidi, past the barn they had caught her in, towards the smaller sheds she had seen before. Eventually material started to emerge from behind her teeth. It was dry and coarse. A man swung his arm round to push it back inside.
‘Careful. You’ve hurt her enough already.’
Finally Cupidi spat the cloth out.
‘In here.’
Reed led the way into the second apple store; the one that had been empty.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. ‘You killed Freya Brindley, didn’t you?’
‘Who?’ Reed looked puzzled. ‘No.’
‘Hilary Keen. Her real name was Freya Brindley.’
Reed paused. ‘Oh. I didn’t know that.’
The men dropped her onto the hard floor.
‘I said, careful,’ said Reed, irritated.
Bruises would add to the record on her body.
‘Who else knows about Hilary Keen?’ Reed asked.
‘So you did kill her?’
‘Who else knew?’
‘We were closing in on it,’ said Cupidi. ‘You’d do better to give yourself up now.’
Connie looked at her, frowning for a second. The floor of the apple shed was rough but cool. It felt good to lie still for a while.
‘I rather doubt it,’ Connie Reed said eventually. ‘Otherwise it wouldn’t just be you here. There would be a whole team. You’re on your own.’
Cupidi smiled. ‘You don’t know that, though. You don’t know, do you? They might be just around the corner.’
‘Yes. They might.’
‘Why did you kill her?’
‘No comment.’
‘How? I’m curious.’
‘Killed the cat,’ said Connie.
‘What about Salem? Drowned in cow shit. And Najiba? Stabbed to death.’
The men shuffled. Connie turned to the men who stood around, obediently waiting for their next order. ‘Go,’ she said brusquely. ‘Clear up here. We’ll pay off the contract. It’s useless now. Get the workers out of here.’
‘What about Rasa Petrauska? Did she know she was being used by you? What was it? Some cute matchmaking agency, to get legitimate workers pregnant so illegitimate ones can stay?’
She should shut up. Connie Reed was ignoring her, anyway. ‘Get everybody as far away from here as you can,’ she was saying. ‘Get them out of the county.’
‘Where?’ asked the man who had stolen her handbag.
‘Doesn’t matter. Get them out,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll give you money. You all need to disappear for a while. Clean out the houses thoroughly. Make sure they leave nothing behind, no documents, no phones, nothing.’
The men nodded.
‘We’re taking a massive loss on all this, you realise,’ she said, turning to Cupidi and shaking her head.
‘Nice job. Living off the back of people who can’t argue back.’
‘I’m not living off the back of anybody,’ said Connie Reed. ‘Don’t you understand? These people want the work. They beg me for it. I’m the one putting myself out to find them paid jobs. I’m the one taking all the risks here for them.’
‘You’re practically a saint.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Connie Reed. ‘I’m not the one voting for the greedy politicians’ parties who make these people illegal. I’m not the nationalist building walls. “England for the English.” I’m the one struggling to give them a fair fucking crack of the whip. And the farms round here…’ She waved her arms. ‘Do you think half of this would survive if it wasn’t for people like this? The harder you people clamp down on them, the more they have to exist like this. What do you expect them to live off?’
‘I had no idea you were a social worker.’
‘I don’t find you funny.’
‘I don’t find me funny,’ Cupidi said exhaustedly. ‘Nobody does.’
Connie Reed stepped towards the door. It didn’t seem worth trying to beat her to it. She was too tired, but she had figured it all out, at least. She was relieved that Reed hadn’t ordered her men to kill her right here. Maybe she wasn’t going to kill her after all. She was a police officer; nobody would kill a police officer. She would lock her up for long enough to get away.
‘Who was Salem? Someone who stood up to you? Somebody who didn’t like what he saw you were doing?’
Reed didn’t answer. It would be OK, being locked in here. She could make a noise; someone would find her.
Reed took one last look at Cupidi before she closed the door. Cupidi met her eyes, but there was nothing to see in them, and then the room was suddenly black. Cupidi heard Reed turning a handle on the outside, sealing it.
What about oxygen?
The room was quite big; surely there was plenty of air in here. She could survive several hours. That would be enough time for her to get out.
Wouldn’t it?
They were just making sure they had time to get away. Probably.
She relaxed. She would find something and start banging on the metal soon. It would be OK.
And then came a gentle whirr, and a cool breeze hit her face from the vents above. It felt nice; soothing.
And then she realised it wasn’t air. She had not been thinking straight. What had the farmer said? They stored apples in here; they pumped in nitrogen to preserve them.
Nitrogen would replace the oxygen in the room.
She was going to suffocate. Panic cleared her mind, focusing her. She had been so stupid. It was suddenly clear how Freya Brindley had been killed; she had been asphyxiated in nitrogen. It would not have looked abnormal in Brindley’s blood.
Atomic number 7, she thought, obscurely. The commonest element in the universe. That’s why the pathologist had not been able to find out what killed her.
How could she think so coldly, so plainly, at a time like this, she wondered, when she was already starting slowly to die?