ELEVEN

With Jenny still at the hospital, and the children staying with her mother, Daniel had no option other than to have Drew with him in the cab all day on Friday. However, if he’d thought it would be any hardship to the lad, he’d have been wrong; Drew loved every minute of it. In turn, Daniel found his enthusiasm infectious and his chatter helped pass the time.

Back at Maidstone Farm at the end of the day, Daniel saw Jenny’s Land Rover parked outside the house, and after hosing the truck down, he told Drew to wait for him and went to see if she was about.

The door was open, so he rapped on it and leaned into the cool kitchen. Jenny was standing at the sink with her back to him, apparently staring into space. She jumped when Daniel spoke her name, and turned round quickly.

‘How is he?’ Daniel asked. She had wet hair and wore no make-up, the dark shadows beneath her eyes accentuating the natural paleness of her skin. He thought she looked exhausted.

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know – they don’t know, really. It’s a case of wait and see. I’ve just come home for a bath and a change of clothes. I was beginning to feel dirty. But now I’m here  . . .’

‘You don’t want to go back,’ Daniel supplied.

‘Is that dreadful? It’s so peaceful here, and I just want to go upstairs, open the windows wide, pull the curtains and sleep for hours and hours.’

‘Then do it. You can’t spend your life at the hospital. Gavin’s been there for a couple of months already; he might be there for another two – you just don’t know. Nobody will blame you for taking some time out. They’ll call you if there’s any change.’

‘It’s those bloody monitors bleeping. I sit and stare at them for hours and watch the squiggly lines and the readings going up and down, but I don’t even know what most of them are for. Every now and then someone’ll come in and check the drip, or read his notes, and then just go away again. I sit, I watch, I drink tea, I worry, and occasionally I fall asleep. And the monitors just go on bleeping.’

‘Go on,’ Daniel said firmly. ‘Go upstairs and get some rest. Go back in the morning.’

Jenny sighed. ‘I don’t know  . . .’

‘Do it.’

‘OK.’ Halfway to the door she paused. ‘By the way, why are you soaking wet?’

‘Ah. Drew was helping me hose the lorry down and things got a little out of hand.’

‘Drew? Of course,’ she said remembering. ‘Look, if I stay, will you have dinner with me? You and Drew, I mean? Mum’s taking the kids to the pictures and they’ll be staying at hers.’

Daniel hesitated, an image of Amanda’s suspicious face in his mind’s eye. Something else to warn Drew not to talk about. Yada yada yada  . . .

‘It’d only be salad and stuff, but I’d like the company,’ Jenny said. ‘Or maybe you had something planned?’

‘Only a ride – if Sue can find something suitable for Drew.’ Daniel came to a decision. ‘Thanks. We’d love to come. Now go and get your head down. We’ll come about eight.’

There was no sign of Drew and Taz when Daniel emerged into the sunlight again, but he found them in the drivers’ room, in company with Dek Edwards. Edwards was sitting on the worktop in the kitchen area, a can of beer in his hand, whilst Drew was on the sofa, drinking a glass of juice, with Taz on the floor at his feet. The dog had his chin on the boy’s knee and Drew was rubbing him behind his ears.

As soon as Daniel arrived, Dek swallowed the last of his beer, crushed the can and left the room, nodding to Daniel and raising a hand to the boy as he went.

Daniel stepped aside to let him pass, then looked at his son in surprise.

‘What was that all about?’

‘Oh, nothing. We were just talking. He’s quite nice.’

‘Dek is?’ Daniel struggled to keep the disbelief from his voice. ‘What did you talk about?’

‘Oh, just stuff. He was asking me where I live – normally, I mean – and he wanted to know about you, what you did before you came here and stuff. Yeah, yeah, I know. I didn’t tell him anything. I just said you’d been driving lorries in Devon.’

‘What else?’

Drew shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Nothing important. Wasn’t I supposed to talk to him? You didn’t say.’

‘No, you’re OK. I just wondered. He doesn’t usually talk much, that’s all. Now – what d’you say we go down to the stables and see if Sue can find you something to ride?’

‘OK, cool. Can Taz come?’

‘Absolutely. You just try stopping him!’

Used to riding the moorland ponies belonging to Daniel’s friend on Dartmoor, Drew was tickled pink to be given what he termed a ‘real horse’ to ride, and one, moreover, that was taller than the horse Daniel himself was riding.

Sue had come up trumps for Drew with Alfie, a piebald cob of some fifteen hands and three inches, which, she assured Daniel, was as safe as houses. In a very short time, they were both mounted and heading out along the track that led to the ridge.

Daniel had been using his evening rides to get a feel for the land, exploring a new area each time. On this occasion, when he topped the ridge, he rode straight over and down the other side, enjoying the low golden sunlight, the movement of the horse beneath him and the company of his son.

Above them, a family group of five buzzards was circling, calling with their distinctive mewing cry, trying to scare their prey into revealing movement. Daniel pointed them out to Drew, who was developing a great interest in birds of prey, although owls were his favourites.

Taz circled the horses at a distance of a few yards, sometimes following, sometimes alongside, apparently convinced that he was in charge of keeping them together.

Topping the brow of another rise, Daniel was about to suggest that they follow the track right-handed along the ridge when Drew pointed to a large building at the other end of the field they were facing.

‘Do you think there might be barn owls in that barn?’ he asked eagerly.

‘It’s possible, I guess.’

‘Could we go and look? Please?’

Daniel hesitated, consulting his watch. ‘OK. But then we must turn back. I told Jenny we’d be with her about eight.’ He looked at the grassy headland. ‘Fancy a canter?’

Drew nodded and within moments they were galloping, Piper keeping up effortlessly with Alfie’s more laboured, ground-thumping action, but, for Drew, the cob could do no wrong and when they pulled up in the barnyard, his eyes were shining with pride for his mount.

‘He can really go, can’t he, Dad?’ he demanded, patting the cob’s sweaty black-and-white neck.

‘Like the wind,’ Daniel agreed. ‘And your riding is coming on in leaps and bounds.’

Drew didn’t reply, but his glowing smile was reward enough.

Daniel turned his attention to the building ahead of them. It was a huge structure, metal-framed, with breeze-block walls and a roof of corrugated sheeting. The big sliding doors were closed but not padlocked, and after they had tied the horses to a rail beside a water trough, Daniel and Drew went to investigate.

Daniel laid his hands on one of the heavy iron doors and, with surprisingly little effort, rolled it back a couple of feet. Drew immediately stepped through the gap, eyes darting to the shadowy heights of the inside. Daniel followed more slowly, noting the well-greased rollers at the top and base of the door.

‘I can’t actually see any owls yet,’ Drew reported from his position a third of the way down the building. ‘But you have to look out for droppings and pellets. That’s how you can tell if they’ve been there.’

In the cool gloom of the interior, Daniel could see that, under a layer of dirt and hayseed, the barn had a concrete floor and had at one time been used for storing hay and straw. Now it was less than a quarter full, and what bales remained looked and smelled musty and were stacked in tiers against the walls to each side of the building, producing an effect something like stage seating. The space in between was littered with farm rubbish – plastic sacks, corrugated sheeting, quantities of fencing posts, rolls of wire and a rusty wheelbarrow, amongst other not instantly identifiable detritus.

‘Have you found any owl pellets?’ Daniel asked his son, who was by this time diligently scanning the ground beneath the lofty metal cross-beams. Taz, uninterested in owls, was quartering the hay-strewn floor, snuffling excitedly as he hunted for rats.

‘Not  . . . as  . . . such,’ Drew said in the slow way he had when he was playing for more time. ‘But it’s just the kind of place where you’d expect to find them. Pellets are what they regurgitate when they’ve finished eating, you know.’

Daniel was pleased that the boy had such an interest in nature. In his own youth, he had run wild in the countryside of Dorset, spending long hours in the company of a local gamekeeper. He was thankful that Drew had taken after him rather than his trend-obsessed mother.

Unwilling to spoil his fun by hurrying him, Daniel stepped on to the first line of bales and sat on the second, noticing thoughtfully that the surface of the hay was soiled and gritty. Below him, Taz was pushing eagerly at the piled-up rubbish with his nose, his tail up and waving. Daniel recognized the signs.

‘You found something, Taz?’

The dog stopped his rummaging and looked up.

‘Whatcha got, lad?’

With a whine of excitement, Taz pawed at a sheet of corrugated iron. Afraid that he might hurt himself on the sharp edges, Daniel went down to help.

To move the iron sheet, he first had to clear its surface of much of the rubbish piled on top, and, as he did so, it occurred to him that the arrangement wasn’t as random as it had initially appeared. The roofing panels sounded hollow as he stepped on them, and the reason for this was that they had been laid on several lengths of four-by-two timber to cover a void below.

Just as interested now as the shepherd, Daniel heaved one of them aside to reveal the corner of a concrete-lined pit some four feet deep. Taz immediately dropped down into the hole and disappeared under the remaining sheeting.

‘Taz, no!’ Daniel said sharply, and after a moment the dog reappeared, sniffing his way along the edge of the pit. ‘Come on, out,’ he commanded, and Taz stood back and then leapt upwards. A helping hand in his collar and the shepherd was safely at ground level again.

‘What’ve you found?’ Drew came over to have a look, watching with interest while Daniel slid the remaining iron sheets aside to reveal the whole of the sunken area. ‘What is it? Aw, that’s gross!’

It wasn’t difficult to see what had prompted the boy’s reaction. The pit was some fifteen feet square and its concrete base was littered with the carcasses of what looked like upwards of twenty brown rats.

Drew stepped closer, drawn by a kind of horrified fascination – what Daniel and his colleagues had called ‘car crash syndrome’.

‘How did they die? Did they fall in?’

‘No. I imagine they were killed by dogs,’ Daniel replied, putting an arm round the boy’s shoulders. Drew had seen the evidence – he wasn’t about to lie to him. If he looked more closely, he would see the walls of the pit were smeared and spattered with blood. He glanced down at Drew to make sure the boy wasn’t too upset, but he seemed instead to be full of morbid curiosity.

‘Did someone put them in there?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Wow! Where would anyone find that many rats?’

‘I don’t know, Drew.’ Daniel took his mobile phone from his pocket and activated the camera facility, taking several shots of the pit and the inside of the barn.

‘Are you going to report it?’

‘I shall certainly tell someone.’

‘Is it illegal to kill rats, then?’

‘Not as such,’ Daniel told him. ‘But when it’s done like this it’s usually for gambling, and then it is illegal.’

‘And it’s cruel to the rats, isn’t it?’ Drew said, and Daniel remembered a time when the boy had yearned for a pet rat. Amanda, predictably, had refused point blank.

‘It could be cruel to the dogs, too, in a pit like this. Rats are vicious when they’re cornered – and who can blame them? Terriers are incredibly quick, but that many rats could pose a threat to a dog if they turned on it. I’ve seen a terrier blinded by a single rat bite.’

‘Did you arrest the owner?’

‘No, he was a farmer. The dog was ratting in his barn,’ Daniel told him. ‘Rats are vermin and have to be controlled, otherwise they’ll overrun a place. Ratting with terriers is kinder than poison and much safer if there are other animals around, but this is different.’

Putting the phone away, he started to pull the roofing sheets back over the pit, and after a moment Drew joined in. When they left the barn, it looked much as they had found it.

‘Did you find any pellets, after all?’ Daniel asked as he pulled the sliding door shut behind them.

‘No. I don’t think it’s the kind of barn owls like much,’ Drew stated with resignation.

Drew and Jenny hit it off straight away, and before long the boy had regaled her with the gory details of their discovery in the barn.

‘That sounds like the big breeze-block barn on Colt’s Hill,’ Jenny said, reaching into the oven with a gloved hand to give the jacket potatoes a squeeze. ‘I haven’t been out there for ages. It’s mainly used for storing farm machinery and hay. There should be around a thousand bales in there from last year. It was a mild winter, and I didn’t use as much as sometimes. If it’s still good, I ought to sell it.’

Daniel raised an eyebrow. ‘I think you might find someone has helped themselves. There’s only a few hundred left, I’d say. I didn’t see any farm machinery, either.’

Jenny straightened up, frowning.

‘Well, there wasn’t a lot, because we sold a fair bit when we got rid of the stock, but there should be an old tractor and trailer, and – if I remember rightly – a muck spreader.’

Daniel shook his head. ‘Didn’t see anything like that, I’m afraid. Closest thing was a wheelbarrow, and that was rusty.’

‘Oh no!’ Jenny moaned. ‘I thought it was remote enough to be safe, right out there.’

‘Not these days, with aerial views of practically the whole world available for all to see on the internet,’ Daniel said sadly.

‘It was padlocked, but I suppose if they want to get in, they just take a crowbar to it.’

‘Yeah, there was no sign of a padlock. What was the pit used for? It looked too shallow to be an inspection pit.’

‘I don’t remember a pit,’ Jenny replied helplessly. ‘Unless Gavin had it put in for some reason. He was doing some work on one of the barns earlier this year – I remember him saying – but I’m afraid I didn’t take much notice.’

‘Well, you should report the missing machinery, and it wouldn’t do any harm to mention the pit and the rats. Not that they’ll do a lot, I imagine, but at least it’ll be on record.’

‘I suppose so,’ she said, looking depressed.

‘I didn’t find any owls,’ Drew told her. ‘I think the barn may have been too big. Owls like low, dark places.’

‘Then you should look in the one at the top of Coppice Field. That’s old and dark and practically falling down; I should think it must be absolutely stuffed with owls!’ Jenny told him.

Drew chuckled and began chattering animatedly about the solitary hunting habits of barn owls. Daniel watched him fondly, grateful for the change of subject. Jenny’s remark about her husband had set his thoughts on an unwelcome tack, and one that he had far rather not discuss with her at this juncture.

Later, when the meal was over and Drew was playing happily with a computer game belonging to Jenny’s son, Harry, Daniel asked if he might use the office computer the next morning.

‘Of course.’ Jenny looked enquiringly at him over the rim of her coffee cup. ‘Are you looking for something specific?’

‘Not really. Discrepancies, I suppose. I thought it would be a good opportunity, as Boyd isn’t working tomorrow. I see Reg is doing his shift.’

‘Yes, Taylor’s away. Gone off to Ireland for the weekend. God knows why. Dek’s gone, too. Blokey bonding or something. I assume they’ll get plastered, though why they have to go to Ireland to do that, I don’t know. It was Holland last time. I must be paying them too much!’

‘Holland?’ Daniel’s ears pricked up. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I think so. Yes, I’m certain because Taylor was talking about getting the ferry from Harwich to the Hook. Why? Does it mean something to you?’

‘It might. Or it might be pure coincidence. I’ll let you know when I find out.’

‘Normally, I wouldn’t let you get away with that, but just at the moment I’m too tired even to be curious,’ Jenny said. ‘Drew’s a nice lad,’ she added softly, nodding in the direction of the boy, who was totally absorbed in his computer game on the other side of the room. ‘It’s a shame he’s here now, when my lot are with Mum. Any other time you could have left him with me while you were working. It would have been good for Harry to have some company for a change.’

‘Yeah, that would’ve been nice, although Drew was as happy as Larry in the lorry with me today. He said he’d like to drive a truck himself when he grows up. Good job the novelty will soon wear off, or I’d be even more in the doghouse with Amanda!’

‘So, why did she bring him all the way here, when she knew you were working?’ Jenny asked curiously. ‘Not that I mind, but couldn’t he have gone to another relative?’

Daniel shook his head. ‘Amanda’s an only child. Her father’s dead and her mother lives in the south of France. Besides, she likes to make things difficult for me, if she can, to prove that I’m not fit to look after him.’

‘Well, what about your family? Your mother? Couldn’t she have asked her?’

‘No, she wouldn’t do that. The thing is, my mother’s never actually met Amanda.’ Although he knew it was odd, saying it out loud made it seem extraordinary. From the look on her face, Jenny plainly thought so too.

‘Let me get this straight. Your mother has never met your wife? That’s unbelievable! Didn’t you invite her to the wedding?’

‘Yes, of course I did, but she didn’t come.’

‘But why?’

‘Because most of my friends were cops – even Amanda was working at HQ, in a civilian capacity – and my mother hates anything to do with the police because of my father. You see, he left us when I was eight. Just walked out one day, after fifteen years of marriage, and went back to his first love – the police force. Mum never forgave him – never even spoke his name again, in my hearing anyway; he became “that man” whenever anyone mentioned him. And then, when I told her I was joining up, too, we had an almighty row and she more or less told me to get out and not come back.’

‘But she didn’t mean it,’ Jenny said. ‘It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing, I’m sure. We all say things we don’t mean when we’re upset.’

Daniel shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t wait around to find out. I was mad, too. I packed my bags that night and left the next day.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘But you’ve been back since, surely?’

‘Oh yes, of course, but it’s always – well, difficult. There’s an atmosphere.’

‘And what about Drew? Please tell me she’s met her grandson?’

‘Of course. A couple of times. Not for a year or two, though. To be honest, I don’t often go down there. It upsets her too much.’

‘Says who?’

‘Penny. My sister. She still lives in the village.’

Jenny made an exasperated sound.

‘What?’ Daniel demanded.

‘Phone her,’ she told him. ‘Your mum, I mean. Take it from me – whatever she may say, she’s a mother and she wants to hear from you. I mean, what if something happened to her? How would you feel? You have to sort this out, Daniel. Life’s too short. I mean, look at me and Gavin.’

‘Mm. I know.’

‘Well, do it. There,’ she said with a half-embarrassed smile. ‘I’ve done my bossy bit. Another coffee?’