Jason Farleigh sat on a bench in the bar with a younger man who was clearly his son, their backs against the wall. The sleeves of the older Farleigh’s faded cotton shirt were rolled up tight, exposing weather-burned forearms that might also have hidden a deal of grime. Everything about him appeared frayed, from his stiff hair to his greying stubble, his limp collar to the pockets of the smock he wore, even in this heat. His eyes suggested a temper to match; they were old even for his fifty-odd years and stared straight ahead, pugnacious, discouraging any form of interruption. Beside him the son sat with eyes downcast as though afraid of what he might find if ever he looked up.
Despite the warning in Farleigh’s manner, Harry had to risk it. ‘Mr Farleigh? My name’s Jones, Harry Jones. I’m hoping you might be able to help me.’
The old eyes, filled with caution that ebbed into suspicion, locked onto their target slowly as if taking aim. He said nothing.
‘My apologies for interrupting, rude of me when you’re relaxing. Look, can I get you gentlemen a drink? Least I can do.’ Harry produced a crisp red £50 note from his emergency supply in his wallet and hovered expectantly, dangling the bait.
The farmer eyed it, ran a tongue around his lips. ‘Since you’re offering. I’ll have a large whisky,’ he muttered in a broad Dorset accent, downing the remnants of his half-pint of bitter and staring at the cast on Harry’s arm. ‘Peter here will get ’em in, don’t want no spillage, do we?’
Harry handed over the note and pulled up a stool so that only a low table separated them. Peter gathered up the empty glasses and disappeared.
‘I’m looking for a man named Findlay Francis,’ Harry began, pushing his phone with its image across the sticky varnish.
Farleigh looked at the image, sucked a tooth as though looking for scraps but offered no other reaction.
‘I’m told you might have given him some help. Some informal help. He was a very private man.’
‘Private is as private does.’
‘Yes, of course. He came down here to get on with his work, to do his writing.’
‘What’s this man to you?’
‘He was a friend of my father. And I’m down here with his daughter. No one’s seen him for many months.’
‘Like you said, if your man was private. No crime in that.’
Harry sighed inside. This old bugger was going to take some breaking down. The son returned with the drinks, old man Farleigh’s whisky and half-pints for himself and Harry. He glanced at the photo of Fat Finn and lingered on it, but a glance from his father warned him off. He placed the substantial amount of change in a pile near to Harry. Harry pushed it into no-man’s-land between them, as if it were waiting for further business to be transacted.
Old man Farleigh picked up his glass, inspected the contents as though he might have been given a short measure. He looked across the rim of the glass at Harry, provocative, mean, then he downed the whisky in a single gulp.
‘It’s very important,’ Harry pressed.
‘So’s my peace and quiet.’
‘Mr Farleigh, I’ve already apologized for disturbing you once. Where I come from, once is enough,’ Harry said, meeting the challenge but not raising his voice. ‘But since you’ve already finished your drink I think the least I can do is get you another.’ Without taking his eyes from the other man he produced another £50 note from his wallet and laid it on the pile of change. ‘Peter, would you mind getting your father another?’
The son didn’t move, waiting for the sign, like a collie. Then his father gave the slightest hint of a nod and the younger man disappeared once again.
‘We don’t much care for strangers sticking their noses into private business in these parts,’ the farmer muttered.
‘I understand. And, whatever your business with Mr Findlay, it will stay private so far as I’m concerned.’
‘I didn’t say I had any.’
‘You must have met him. He drinks here. Not the busiest of pubs in the world.’
The farmer stared. ‘Don’t take much notice of others.’
‘You own much of the land around these parts, so of course you do. I’ll bet you a half-pint to another fifty-pound note’ – he produced yet another and placed it on the pile – ‘that you see everything that burrows or bleats or barks. This is your world, Mr Farleigh. So I’m not surprised you’re so protective of it. I don’t want to disturb it.’
‘How do I know that? You could be anyone. A snooper, a . . .’
‘The police? Or Revenue and Customs come to dig away in your backyard? Someone from the council come to see if you’ve got the right planning approval for every little shed or stable, a taxman come to see if your accounts have got more holes in them than your stock fence?’
The farmer’s stare was bitter. Harry looked around the bar and saw a copy of the Daily Express abandoned on a nearby table. He retrieved it and opened it at page five. His own photo stared back at him above a lurid report. He pushed the newspaper into Far leigh’s hand.
‘You this bugger?’ the farmer said as he finished reading.
‘Arrested. Not charged. And, before you ask, I didn’t do it. But either way I’m not likely to be running off telling tales out of school, am I? All I want is to find out where Mr Francis is.’
The son was back with more whisky. And more change. The pile of money was growing. Harry took yet another note from his wallet, making sure Farleigh could see that it was his last, and placed that along with the rest. ‘For the next round, too.’
Still there was silence.
‘Look, Findlay Francis comes along, asks you for a very quiet place where he can hole up for a couple of months every year, do his work, visit his daughter in London, no questions asked and, most importantly for him,no questions answered. I’m guessing you did a deal with him, in cash, like you’ve always done in these parts, and I’m pretty sure he would have been generous. Paid for your silence. I understand your reluctance – it’s the decent thing to do – but let me assure you there’s nothing Mr Francis would like more than to speak with me right now.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘Because I think something’s happened to him.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Why do you think he was hiding? Somebody didn’t like him very much.’
The son began to shift uncomfortably on his bench. ‘We don’t want no trouble,’ he bleated.
‘Trouble doesn’t wait for an invitation.’
‘But he said we wouldn’t—’
‘Shut your face, you little prick!’ the father spat.
The son’s face churned in pain as if he’d been physically slapped and retreated inside his skin.
The father leaned across the table towards Harry so that his words would be incapable of misinterpretation. Flecks of contempt swam in his eye. ‘You’re trouble, Mr Harry Jones, and I don’t remember no one inviting you, either. So why don’t you crawl off back under whatever rock you calls home and leave us folk in peace.’
Harry had wasted his time. He sighed and reached out to scoop up the money on the table but Old Man Farleigh was ahead of him, his large farmer’s hand with its walnut knuckles and broken, dirty nails smacking down possessively on the pile of change. ‘Let’s call it my consultancy fee, shall we?’
‘Let’s not. You haven’t given me anything.’
‘But I don’t suppose a chap in your position’s in much mind to go calling the police. I did warn you not to go sticking your nose into other folk’s business.’ He smiled, coldly, then turned to his son. ‘You go get the pickup while I take a slash. I think our evening here’s done.’ He disappeared into the rear of the pub while his son, not wanting to be left alone with Harry, scuttled out the other way.
Harry gave it thirty seconds, then followed the father. In many parts of the world they call such facilities rest rooms or comfort stations; this was neither. It was a bare, bleak room with scratched paintwork and an old porcelain urinal that dominated one entire wall. A single stall with a crooked door was at one end next to a basin that appeared to have been recycled from a tip. The place stank of stale urine, and the farmer stood at the urinal adding to the stench while scratching a new graffito with his thumbnail on the wall alongside a host of others. He stared in total indifference at Harry.
‘I think we have unfinished business,’ Harry said quietly.
‘I have.’ The farmer went back to it.
‘Don’t let’s fall out, there’s no need.’
‘What’s that you say?’ Farleigh said, turning to Harry. He was still pissing. It streamed close to Harry’s shoes.
‘I wish you hadn’t done that.’
‘Who d’you think you are, the one-armed bandit?’ the farmer sneered. His words were slow, with a slight slur; the last whisky had done for him.
When he was finished he shook himself and zipped up his trousers. ‘You reckon you’re man enough for me, then?’
‘Oh, I think so,’ Harry said, taking a small step forward.
That was when the farmer took a swing at him, putting all his bulk behind the blow, but it was too well telegraphed. Harry swayed back just far enough for the clenched fist to miss. The farmer swore and swung again with his other hand, a long looping hook that, when it missed, spun him round. Harry was now behind him. He shoved Farleigh face first against the wall, hooked his cast around his neck and grabbed the middle finger of his left hand, wrenching it up over his shoulder and bending it back fiercely. The farmer screamed in shock and pain.
At that moment the door swung open and Peter stood, staring, hesitating.
‘Get him, you useless bastard!’ the father cried.
Yet still the son hesitated, looking at his father, then back over his shoulder to see if there were someone else he might summon to help. And Harry twisted the father’s finger once more. It wouldn’t take much more to break it. In agony the father sank to his knees.
‘You sure we can’t do a deal here?’ Harry said. ‘You keep kneeling in your own piss much longer and those trousers of yours will be ruined. Not to mention your finger.’ He gave it another savage jerk.
‘There – there was a man who looked a lot like the one you’re after,’ Old Man Farleigh gasped, his teeth gritted against the pain. ‘Wanted a place to think, so he said.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Said he’d do the place up a bit. It needed work.’
‘What place?’
But Farleigh struggled, tried to release himself. Harry’s voice went cold as he leaned his weight on the finger and brought it to breaking point. ‘My trouble is, Mr Farleigh, I get very impatient. It’s a fault, I know.’
It was Farleigh’s resistance rather than his finger that was broken. He gave a huge sob of despair and his body sagged in submission. Harry let him go. He fell sobbing to the floor, almost into the filthy water.
‘The old keeper’s cottage,’ Peter whispered, aghast at the sight of his father. ‘We don’t have no keepers no more; no one ever goes up there, not in years.’
‘So when did you last see him?’
‘Last September. When he usually arrived. Some times he’d borrow our old Land Rover. Carry his supplies, fresh gas canisters, that sort of thing. Then he’d pay for its annual service. That’s always in September, once the harvest were done.’
‘And where is this keeper’s cottage?’
‘’Bout half a mile down the Burton Bradstock road, up in the old wood. Just past what’s left of the oak that got done by lightning a couple of years back.’
‘Then I shall go and visit him.’
‘He won’t be there.’
‘I just hope you’re right.’
The father straightened, clutching his hand in pain. ‘I think you bloody broke it.’
‘No, I didn’t. It’ll only feel like that for a couple of days. Believe me, if I’d wanted to break it you’d have known all about it.’
‘Dad, shall I call the police?’
‘Why not, after all?’ Harry interrupted. ‘We can meet them at the back of your farm. The way you like other people’s money I’m guessing – what? Holiday lets without planning permission? A little illicit asbestos dumping or a bloody great hole filled with old tyres? Something like that. I’m up for it if you are.’
The father snarled and swore at him but kept his eyes lowered.
‘Keep the change. You’ll need it to clean yourself up,’ Harry said as he pushed past the son and disappeared out of the door.
They said goodnight at the top of the leaning stairs. The girls’ room was to the right, Harry’s to the far left. Abby threw her arms around Harry. ‘Thank you,’ she breathed in his ear, kissing both cheeks.
‘For what?’
‘For being a very special sort of man. For taking care of that darling deer.’ A brave smile. ‘For whatever happens tomorrow.’
He had told them only some of what had taken place with the Farleighs, that they’d given him a few good clues they could follow up in the morning. He didn’t want to raise their hopes, he had too many fears of what they might find.
‘And for taking care of us,’ Abby whispered, giving him a hug that squeezed the breath from him before heading for her bedroom.
It was Jemma’s turn, reaching up to kiss him, on the lips, the old elm floor creaking beneath her feet as she stretched. No words. Just a strange look. Then she, too, was gone.
Harry was woken from his bed of lumps by a noise. It was as dark as a coal seam in the room with only starlight for company, but he wasn’t alone; he heard the noise again. A creaking joist from outside. Slowly the door opened, an inch, then more, casting a pale light onto the bedroom floor. He saw Jemma’s unmistakable profile. She crept in, on tiptoe, closed the door behind her, shutting out the light once more and finding the edge of the bed by touch. She reached for his hand.
‘I saw a new side of you today, Harry,’ she said, her voice so low he daren’t breathe for fear of missing it. ‘I’m so used to chasing after you, trying to keep pace, feeling so bloody miserable when I fail. But this afternoon, in that lane, you stopped for a while. To deal with the deer.’
‘Someone had to.’
‘It’s easier to love you when I don’t have to run.’
He nodded in the darkness. How often had he heard that before?
‘At times you seem to drag all the cares of the world behind you. It gets messy. That’s not easy for a girl to deal with.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘But this afternoon, with that poor creature, I was so glad it was you. Not anyone else.’
He wasn’t sure where this was headed, stayed silent.
‘Harry, I wanted you to give me space because there were some things I needed to find out. About myself.’
‘And did you, Jemma?’
‘I think so. But, Harry, I couldn’t find the answers to those questions on my own.’ The tremble in her voice told him all that the words did not.
‘I didn’t assume you’d stay at home every night knitting, Jem.’
‘I don’t knit.’
‘I know.’
‘You . . . didn’t mind?’
‘Of course I minded, particularly when I saw you dancing out of the cinema hand in hand with Steve.’
‘You followed me?’
‘No, I was just passing. Coincidence.’
‘But I didn’t think we believed in—’
‘You know, every time I use that word I feel like I’ve swallowed old fish guts. Yes, but that’s all it was, coincidence. Seeing you with your old flame. Do you remember you once told me you only ever went out with him for one thing?’
It was her turn to stay silent.
‘Mad as bloody hell I was when I saw you. But then I got drunk, and while I got drunk I got to thinking. I’d asked you to share our bed with another man. My father. I guess I can understand you wanting to get your own back.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Whatever it was like, so long as it’s over I can deal with it.’
‘The gentle Jones.’
‘No, the very practical Jones. I want you, Jem, and there’s a price we all have to pay for what we want.’
‘What price do you want me to pay, Harry?’
‘Help me finish what I’m doing.’
‘Kicking open coffins?’
‘That sounds a bit graphic.’
‘It’s what it feels like.’
‘It’s too important for me not to do it and too important for us not to do it together. I think we’re getting close, near the end. Then we can get back to the real world of you and me.’
‘We don’t have to wait, Harry.’ She leaned forward, searching for his lips.
‘What will Abby think?’
She smiled even as she was kissing him. ‘Oh, I know what Abby thinks. She told me she’d kill me if I came back before breakfast.’