Black Dog

11

‘Where to next, then?’ said Cooper.

‘What’s up with you? Eaten too much cheese at lunch?’

‘I’m fine. Where to next?’

‘Thorpe Farm,’ said Fry, consulting the map.

‘That’s one of the smallholdings. There’s another one at the end of the same lane. Bents Farm. We’d better make sure we don’t miss it out.’

Cooper had to wait while two women on horseback passed them, the horses walking slowly and elegantly, their muscled hindquarters shining with good health. The riders nodded a greeting and looked down into the car to study them, as if motorists were unusual in Moorhay. Someone appeared at the door of the bar at the Drover, wedged it open and propped a blackboard outside. From the tiny shop and post office came the sound of laughter.

Across the road, a workman was playing a transistor radio as he repointed the wall of a cottage. An old lady emerged from the open doorway to speak to him on his ladder, probably asking him if he wanted a cup of tea. She saw the Toyota and said something else to the workman, who turned round to look. Cooper had already visited the old lady, who had seemed to know more about everyone in the village than was good for her. But she had known nothing about Laura Vernon. Nothing at all.

It seemed to Cooper that there was more life about the village of Moorhay today than ever before when he had been there previously. It was as if the murder of Laura Vernon had given it a new vitality, had brought its inhabitants together in the face of adversity. Or maybe it had just given them something to talk about.

He turned the Toyota confidently into a rutted lane overshadowed by trees, with a tall border of grass growing up the middle that brushed along the underside of the car. The trees were mostly beech, with some huge horse chestnuts creating a dense canopy overhead. In the autumn, the children of the village would be drawn to this track with their sticks and stones to knock down the conkers.

‘Who lives out here, then?’ said Fry. ‘I suppose it’s your Auntie Alice or something, is it? It’s bound to be someone who greets you like the prodigal son. Some second cousin or other. Have your mother and father got big families? Inbreeding affects the brain, you know.’

‘I don’t know these places,’ said Cooper.

Within a few yards of leaving the road the track took a turn and they were reduced to a crawl to protect the suspension. Already they might as well have been miles from the village. The trees completely cut off their view of houses that were only a couple of hundred yards away. It was a very old patch of woodland they were driving through, and Cooper could see it was not managed, as a woodland should be to remain healthy. Many dead branches and boughs brought down by winter gales lay rotting among the remaining beeches. They were covered in lichen and clumps of white fungi, and the bracken and ferns were chest-high. Parts of the stone wall in front of the wood had collapsed, and a makeshift post and wire fence used to block the gaps had long since given up the battle. A handsome cock pheasant walking along the edge of the wood paused with one foot in the air, its claws frozen in surprise. The greens, reds and golds of its plumage were vibrant and iridescent, and for a moment Cooper wanted to stop the car and reach out for the bird. But it suddenly burst into a run and dodged and weaved its way back into the dense undergrowth, its tail extended straight out behind it.

The pheasant had started a train of thought for Cooper about poachers, and he turned towards Fry to mention it. But he realized that she hadn’t even noticed the bird.

‘There are no signs,’ she complained, frowning out of the window, as if the AA had failed her.

‘There don’t need to be,’ said Cooper. ‘Everyone in Moorhay will know that Thorpe and Bents Farms are this way.’ And though the thought inspired by the bird stayed with him, he decided to keep it to himself for a while.

Soon the trees gave way to a view up the slope of the hill. The land here was largely rough grass. It was divided by stone walls, then divided again by strands of electrified fencing. A hundred yards up the slope was a jumble of makeshift buildings — wooden hen huts and sheds, a row of breezeblock pig sties. Two old railway carriages stood rotting in the corner of one paddock, and an ex-Army Nissen hut with an arched corrugated-iron roof stretched the full width of one field.

A rich smell drifted through the open windows of the car — mud and soiled straw, and the odours of animals of all kinds. Somewhere there was certainly a fully operating dung heap. There seemed to be poultry everywhere — in the fields, on the track, perched on the roofs of the buildings. There were red hens and speckled grey hens, a variety of ducks and a dozen large white geese which immediately waddled towards the car, honking an aggressive warning at the intruders. Their noise started dogs barking somewhere in the midst of the shanty town, and a goat could be heard bleating from one of the sheds as Cooper drove up to a gate across the track.

He waited for Fry to get out and open the gate. This was, after all, the usual practice for the passenger on a gated road. But he saw she needed coaching.

‘Would you open the gate for me?’ he said.

‘Are those things safe?’

‘What, the geese? You just have to show them you’re not frightened of them.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

Fry struggled with the wooden gate, which was tied to its post with a length of baling twine and at the other end hung on only by its top hinge. But at last the car was through.

‘Are you sure anybody actually lives up here?’ said Fry. ‘Where’s the farmhouse?’

‘Well, though they’re called farms, these places, they’re really just bits left over from the days of the old cottagers, when everyone had their own plot of land, with a cow and a pig. They’re the bits that the bigger farms haven’t swallowed up yet, and the developers haven’t got round to buying up for housing. There’ll be a cottage somewhere. They’ll know we’re here, with all this noise.’

Cooper pulled up against the back wall of the Nissen hut. There was a rickety garage next to it, where a white Japanese pick-up truck was parked with a metal grille across the back. Enormous clumps of brambles grew over a wall which ran up to a range of low stone buildings that seemed to be growing out of the hillside.

‘Do you want to take this one?’ he said. ‘I’ll drive on up to Bents Farm and pick you up again on the way back down.’

‘Fine.’

Fry got out and hesitated, looking at the threatening geese.

‘Take no notice. Remember, you’re not frightened of them,’ said Cooper as the Toyota bumped away.

Fry took a deep breath and began to walk up the slope towards the cluster of buildings. The geese immediately fell into formation behind her, hissing and honking and darting at her ankles with their long beaks. One of them pulled itself up to its full height and beat its wings angrily.

Fry fixed her gaze on the buildings ahead. They looked neglected and badly in need of repair. There were slates missing from the roofs and a gable wall of one of the outbuildings had bulged and slipped into an unnatural shape like something out of a Salvador Dali painting.

After a few steps, she realized she was walking on an uneven flagged path, the stone flags almost invisible under creeping dandelions and thistles. A trickle of water ran on to the path from a broken drainage pipe protruding from a stone wall. Where the water gathered on the dusty ground, it was stained red, as if it had run through rusted iron.

Fry cursed out loud as she tripped over the edge of a sunken flag. Behind her trooped the geese, still honking in outrage at being ignored. They made a strange procession as they approached the buildings.

‘Not exactly on undercover operations, then?’ said a voice.

An old man was leaning on a fork on the other side of the wall. He was standing in a paddock that had been converted into a large vegetable patch. His red-checked work shirt was open at his chest to reveal wiry grey hairs, and his sleeves were rolled up over plump arms. Ancient trousers that had once been brown were barely held together at the waist and sagged alarmingly over his crotch. They were pushed awkwardly into black wellingtons. His face was red, and there were irregular bald patches on his scalp that were turning dangerously pink.

In the corner of the paddock was a small lean-to building like an old outside privy, with an adjoining fuel store converted to a tool shed. On a wooden chair in front of the door sat a second old man. He had a stick propped in front of him, wedged between his knees, with its end dug into a patch of earth. His cuffs were rolled back over his long, thin wrists, and he had a sharp knife in one hand, with which he was trimming cabbages.

‘Do you gentlemen live here?’ asked Fry

‘Gentlemen, is it?’ said the man with the fork. ‘Are you a gentleman, Sam?’

The thin one laughed, flicking the knife so that it caught the sun, its blade sticky with liquid from the stems of the cabbages.

‘Are you the owner, sir?’ Fry asked the first old man, raising her voice above the continuing noise of the geese.

‘Hang on a minute,’ he said. ‘Let me turn the siren off.’

He thrust his fork deep into the ground with a heave of his shoulder, and walked to the wall. Then he picked up two clumps of weeds with balls of dry earth sticking to their roots. He hurled them one after the other at the geese, shouting at the top of his voice.

Fry thought the sounds he was making could easily be some local dialect descended directly from the Ancient Scandinavian of the Viking invaders. But probably they were just noises. The geese, at least, understood him, and turned and waddled away back down the track to wait for the next intruder. Without the geese, it was quieter, but not silent. There was a continual background clucking and muttering of poultry, a dog barking, the grunting of a pig. And, not far away, the yelling of the goat.

‘I’m Wilford Cutts. This is my place. Over there’s my pal Sam.’

Sam waved the knife again and slashed at another stem. It severed in one clean blow, and the trimmed cabbage was dropped into a bucket.

‘Sam Beeley,’ he called.

‘Are you police? I suppose you’re asking about that lass,’ said Wilford. ‘The Mount girl.’

‘Laura Vernon, yes.’

‘I saw the lass about sometimes, I suppose. Is that what you want to know?’

‘Were you in the vicinity of the Baulk on Saturday night or Sunday morning?’

‘Ah. Sam’ll have to tell you what I did Saturday night. I can’t rightly remember.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I’m quite fond of a drink, you see. At my age, it only takes a couple of pints and the old brain goes a bit. Do you know what I mean? Ah, probably not.’

‘Where do you go drinking?’

‘Where? There’s only one place round here, lass. The Drover. As for Sunday morning, well, I’m always here. All this lot to see to, you know. It takes a while.’

‘Feeding the animals.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Do you live here alone, Mr Cutts?’

‘Alone? Well, you’d hardly call it that, would you?’ he said, turning to look across the jumble of buildings, where any sort of animal could have been lurking for all Fry knew.

She turned at the sound of an engine, and saw a battered blue Transit van struggling up the track. As it reached the gateway, a bent little man in a tweed jacket and a cloth cap got out of the driver’s seat to wrestle with the gate. He, too, took no notice of the geese.

‘I’ll have to leave you to it for a bit,’ said Wilford. ‘I’ve got a customer.’

He walked off, waving to the driver of the van until they had manoeuvred the vehicle against the end of one of the wooden hen huts. Both men went into the hut with bundles of sacks from the van.

‘Stop and have a chat, lass,’ said Sam. ‘It’ll make a change. Wilford can get to be a bit of a boring old bugger after a while.’

‘Have you known Mr Cutts for long?’ she asked.

‘As long as I can remember. Mind you, my memory’s not what it was, so he could be a complete stranger.’

Sam began to laugh, his chest wheezing painfully and his false teeth clicking. Fry winced as he raised a thin hand to straighten his cap and the blade of the knife came dangerously close to his eyes.

‘My family came down from Yorkshire when I was very small,’ he said, when a fit of coughing had passed. ‘We went to live at Eyam. My old dad went to work in the lead mines, and I followed him down there, as lads did in those days. Wilford was the son of one of my dad’s mates. We worked on the picking table together with a few other lads, then moved on to be jig operators. That’s the way it went in those days, you know. You moved in small circles, just a few families and people that you knew. None of this wandering about that everyone seems to do now.’

Fry’s attention strayed around the smallholding, her eyes wide in amazement at the ramshackle constructions and makeshift fencing. She was wondering whether the way the animals were kept was strictly legal. She made a mental note to look up the appropriate regulations when she got back to the station.

‘You’ve been friends an awfully long time then,’ she said vaguely.

‘Sixty years, or a bit more. It was before the war, when we met.’

‘That’d be the Second World War, I suppose.’

Sam peered at her to see if she was making fun of him, but seemed to realize that she was not even born until nearly thirty years after the war was over.

‘Aye, I suppose there have been a few other wars since then,’ he conceded. ‘We joined up together as well, for a bit. Royal Engineers, of course. They were right glad to get miners. They welcomed us with open arms. We went over to France on D-Day and stayed there till the end.’ He chuckled. ‘It brings back a few memories still, does that.’

‘Really?’

‘French tarts,’ said Sam.

‘What?’

The old man chortled. ‘That’s what I remember mostly now. All the rest of it has pretty well gone, all the bad bits. But I remember the tarts in France. We were a long way behind the Front, of course. Rebuilding bridges, that sort of thing. Those French towns and villages were full of girls. And they were right glad to see a few Tommies, I can tell you. We had a high old time. Me and Harry, that was. Wilford didn’t approve, of course.’

‘Harry?’

‘Harry Dickinson,’ said Sam. ‘You might have heard of him. Here’s your mate.’

Fry turned and saw Cooper’s Toyota coming back down the track, turning in by the Nissen hut. He parked behind the Transit and leaned out of the window.

‘There was no one at home up the lane,’ he said.

‘You’re Sergeant Cooper’s lad, aren’t you?’ said Sam.

‘Jesus,’ said Fry.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I know you, sir.’

‘Sam Beeley.’

The goat’s bellow was suddenly deafeningly near.

‘She’s out again,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll have to tell Wilford.’

‘What’s the matter with it?’ asked Fry. ‘Is it ill?’

‘In season,’ said Sam, as if they were talking about a vegetable that was sometimes unavailable.

‘Will she be going to the billy, then?’ asked Cooper.

‘She’s off tonight. A bloke up Bamford way is taking her. He has a billy of his own.’

There was a clattering of hooves, and a brown and white head topped by a pair of horns appeared briefly over the roof of the outhouse before the goat dropped nimbly into the paddock and skittered off into the deep grass at the far end.

‘Bugger,’ said Sam. ‘She’ll eat all the cabbages before we can cut them.’

‘Do you want a hand to catch her?’ suggested Cooper, getting out of the Toyota.

‘No, no. We’d never get near her. Wilford will fetch her back — she comes to him. She’s only a goatling, and she’s a bit wild. He calls her Jenny.’

‘Mr Beeley was telling me about when he first met Mr Cutts,’ said Fry, anxious that the interview was drifting far away from her. ‘Their fathers knew each other and they worked together, is that right?’

‘Of course, we all had jobs to go into then,’ said Sam. ‘Local jobs. There were always jobs in the mines then, or the quarries. It’s different for the young ones round here now, I suppose. The lad here will tell you that.’

Fry noticed that Sam didn’t doubt for a moment that she was from out of the area and knew nothing about it, while Ben Cooper would understand. Since she had been in Moorhay, she felt as though her lack of local origins had been pushed into her face, quite unconsciously and without malice, but very effectively. She had been treated politely by people at every property they had visited, but none of them had looked at her with the unspoken recognition and sense of mutual understanding with which they had looked at Ben Cooper when they realized who he was.

‘It’s been different round here for a long time now, Mr Beeley,’ said Cooper.

‘I suppose it has, lad. I suppose it has. But, like I told you, my memory’s not that good. I remember the war, but not much since, if you know what I mean.’

From the hut where Wilford and his visitor had disappeared, a great cacophony of cackling and screeching erupted, accompanied by the flapping of scores of wings.

‘What are they doing in there?’ asked Fry.

‘That bloke with the van is buying some of Wilford’s birds, see,’ said Sam, as if it was perfectly obvious. ‘Wilford left them inside today, those young Marans. But they’re a bit active. It’s better if you can move them at night — they don’t give you as much trouble then.’

‘It sounds horrendous.’

‘They’re good layers, them Marans,’ said Sam.

‘Mr Beeley, did you know Laura Vernon?’

‘I know the family. Comers-in, aren’t they? Half the village seem to be comers-in these days. They’ve only been there a year or two, at the Mount. They walked in the pub one night, you know, when they first arrived. Eh, you should have seen their faces. They never thought they’d be mixing with the hoi polloi like us. But they couldn’t walk straight out again, so they had to sit there and drink their gin and tonics like a right pair of southern pillocks.’

‘They’re from Nottingham, I believe.’

‘Aye.’

Sam shifted his feet in the dry earth. One of them seemed to stick and move suddenly sideways, as if he had lost control of it through cramp. His shoe clanged against the side of an enamel bowl half full of water, left there for the geese, presumably.

‘Mr Beeley, we’re asking everybody what they might have seen in the area of the Baulk at about the time Laura Vernon was killed,’ said Fry.

‘Oh, you want my alibi, eh?’

‘No, that wasn’t what I asked for, sir.’

Sam chuckled. ‘Only I don’t go in much for running after young girls these days. It’s my legs, you see. Got them both bust once, in the mine. They mended, but they were never right after that. Now that I’m getting older, they don’t work too well at all.’

‘Were you in the area on Saturday night?’ asked Fry. ‘Or Sunday morning?’

‘What’s that accent?’ asked Sam, cocking his head and scratching his ear with the knife. ‘You Welsh, or what?’

‘I’m from the Black Country.’

‘Eh?’

‘Birmingham,’ snapped Fry.

‘Ah. I’ve never been there. Wouldn’t want to, either.’

‘Saturday night, Mr Beeley?’

‘Saturday night? Well, I’d be in the Drover till about eleven o’clock, with Wilford. It was a bit busy that night. Tourists, you know, in the summer. B & B people. A lot of cars about too.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t live far from the pub. I can just about walk that far. And we do tend to have a few drinks on a Saturday. No driving to do, you know.’

‘There were tourists in the pub. Strangers to the village, then.’

‘Full of them,’ said Sam.

Wilford and the van driver emerged from the hut, tugging at several bulging sacks. A cloud of dark feathers drifted out of the hut behind them, settling on their shoulders and sticking in their hair. From the sacks came a steady complaint of trapped birds and an occasional rustle of feathers. The two men were sweating and dishevelled and breathing hard. Wilford was very red in the face and giving a series of faint, gasping laughs. The little man from the van looked wild-eyed, even frightened by his experience in the hut.

‘Sunday morning,’ said Sam. ‘Well, I don’t get up too early these days. But I was dressed by about half past ten, when my son came to collect me. That’s Davey. Him and his wife always take me for Sunday dinner at their place in Edendale.’

‘Do you come up here much to help Mr Cutts?’ asked Cooper.

‘I’m not much use to him really. But I have to find something to fill my time.’

‘Does he have any other help?’

‘A lad or two, that he pays a few bob for the heavy work. And Harry comes up here too, to help.’

‘Harry Dickinson again?’

‘Yes, that Harry. You’ll know him,’ he said to Cooper.

The sacks thudded one after another into the back of the Transit, and the driver clambered in and began to coast back down the track. No money seemed to have changed hands between the two men.

‘Give us a hand here, Sam,’ called Wilford. ‘We’ve got one that’s badly. Broke its legs on the wire, I reckon.’

‘Goat’s out again, Wilford.’

‘She’ll wait.’

Sam limped over towards the hut, and Wilford tossed him a hen that had been hanging upside down from his hand, its wings outspread, its beak gaping and panting. Fry had never seen a hen so close before, and was startled to see the thin red sliver of flesh that protruded from its beak, like the darting tongue of a snake. The bird had soiled itself, and the soft feathers round its anus were stained yellow. Fry swallowed, swearing never to eat an egg again.

‘Sam’s a dab hand at this,’ said Wilford cheerfully. ‘He doesn’t look to have much strength in his wrists, does he? But it’s all in the technique, see.’

‘It’s just practice and a bit of a knack,’ said Sam, taking a firm grip on the bird. He tucked its body under his armpit, folding its wings closed and pressing it tight against his side. Then he closed the fingers of his right hand around the hen’s scrawny neck and pushed his thumb hard into its throat. He twisted and pulled suddenly. There was a faint crack and the bird’s eyes went dull. The wings beat desperately, their dying strength defeating Sam Beeley’s efforts to hold it still as they flapped wildly, releasing a spray of pinion feathers that drifted on to his trousers and boots. The bird’s legs kicked frantically and its tail lifted to eject another spurt of yellow. Then its claws relaxed and hung downwards, pointing limply at the ground with pitiful finality.

‘You’ve killed it,’ said Fry, astonished.

The two old men laughed, and she was amazed to see Cooper smiling too.

‘It’s called putting them out of their misery,’ said Sam. ‘If you do it right, and do it quick, they feel no pain.’

‘It’s disgusting,’ said Fry. ‘It’s revolting.’

‘I suppose,’ said Sam, holding out the limp bird towards her, ‘that you won’t want to take it home for your tea then.’

Fry took a step back as a dribble of saliva ran out of the bird’s gaping beak and dripped into the dust. Its scaly legs looked cold and reptilian where they were gripped in Sam’s bony fingers.

‘No?’

‘Never mind. I’ll take it in for Connie,’ said Wilford.

Cooper and Fry got back into the car. Fry wound up her window to keep out the musty smell of dried poultry droppings drifting from the door of the shed. The two old men stood watching them turn round, and Sam gave them a small, cheerful wave.

When they reached the bottom of the track, another van was turning in.