EIGHTEEN

Polesford had gone to pot, there was no question about it.

The last ten, fifteen years, the old man had watched the town he loved turn into somewhere he barely recognised any more. Full of shops he didn’t feel welcome in, takeaways serving food he wouldn’t be caught dead eating, and people who didn’t seem to care that the place had become a shithole.

Back when his wife was still alive, there had been a proper butcher and an ironmonger, and the people who came to see the abbey and enjoy the countryside seemed to genuinely care about the town, to relish the time they spent there.

It was the people who had come from somewhere else, they were the problem, the start of it all. They were the rot that had set in. People who just wanted a bit of green around them, a reason to buy wellies, but buggered off every morning to work in Burton or Birmingham. They weren’t invested, that was the trouble. Yes, that was a good word for it, they didn’t have a stake in the place, not emotionally at any rate.

Now this terrible business with those girls.

That kind of thing would never have happened back when he was their age, or when his own children were teenagers, come to that.

He bent to let his terrier off the lead, watched him scamper into the trees.

However bad it got though, he still had the woods that backed on to his house to enjoy every day. That was the clincher, back when he and his wife had first bought the place. They’d both loved walking, and now, every time he took the dog out, he felt that small ache down in his stomach because she wasn’t at his side. These were their woods, always would be, however many noisy teenagers were tearing about on motorbikes or starting fires at night.

First thing every morning and last thing at night, ever since the dog was a puppy; him and her talking about their plans for the day. Then later on, looking back on how each of their days had gone. Now, it was mainly the dog he talked to.

He smiled, thinking that at least the dog never answered him back.

Said, ‘Sorry, love, only joking,’ to himself.

The dog came running out of the trees, panting. It sniffed the ground at the old man’s feet, then raced back into the bushes. Poor old bugger was almost as old as he was now, in dog years at any rate, but he still had plenty of zip in him. Still gave the squirrels in his back garden a hard time and went mad if he caught a whiff of a fox or a rabbit.

He walked on, and it seemed as if the day was growing brighter with every few steps, the sun coming up fast above the lines of sycamore and silver birch. At least it looked like they might be getting a bit of good weather today, help out those poor souls up to their armpits in the Anker.

He turned, looking for the dog behind him. He whistled and felt for one of the little bone-shaped chews he always kept in his pocket.

He’d meant what he’d said to that miserable sod at the police press thing the night before. The place would only go downhill a damn sight faster now. Yobbos piling off coaches to take pictures of the street where the girl was taken. Chattering about how terrible it must have been for everyone, then queuing up for fried chicken and making it hard for the people who actually lived here to get to the bar at the end of the day.

She would have wanted to move, if she’d still been alive. He’d thought that more than once. Much as his wife had loved the town, she would not have been able to bear it now, the place it had become. The supermarket and the beauty salons. The yelling in the streets come chucking-out time and the scrabble at the post office to cash the benefits cheques.

He turned, but there was still no sign of the dog.

Maybe he’d write another letter to the local paper. Not that they’d bothered printing his last one. It was a disgrace, because he knew what he was talking about and he wasn’t the only one who felt like this. He wanted his town back and what was wrong with that?

He could hear the dog yapping now, but it sounded a fair old distance away. He turned and walked back along the path, then cut into the trees. He gathered his overcoat a little tighter around him, pushed his scarf up to his throat. It was bright enough, but it was still bloody cold.

He whistled again, waited.

He shouted the dog’s name, once, twice, then cursed under his breath and started walking towards the noise.

Bloody rabbits . . .