Blood Substitute (4 page)

Patrick immediately crouched down, I followed suit and we stayed quite still for at least a minute. The breeze rustled though the grass, water trickled in a tiny rivulet near my feet, strange ribbon-like clouds sailed past the moon, but that was all.

‘It was probably a real one,' Patrick said under his breath and carried on walking.

In the moonlight the mire looked unworldly, the vivid green of the mosses defying the etiolating effect of the moonlight, appearing a sickly yellow. ‘Islands' with stunted trees growing on them that I had not noticed before stuck up like the petrified remains of giants that had been trapped in the bog.

We slithered down the steep section, far muddier than on the day of my visit as there had been more heavy rain, and set off on the final straight stretch. We were much closer to the mire now and there was the unmistakable sound of frogs croaking. Then, somewhere around to the right, a light flashed.

Again, Patrick stopped.

‘A military exercise on the firing ranges?' I breathed in his ear.

He shook his head and turned to whisper, ‘I reckon it was small and close by rather than large and far away. But we mustn't overplay this – there could well be someone living in the house, which might not have any electricity.'

We went on and reached the bend just before the bottom of the final slope. Patrick motioned to me to stay where I was and disappeared into the heavy shadow in the lee of a small rocky hillock that stood alone, almost a miniature tor on the right of the track. He seemed to be gone for rather a long time and then I heard a slight noise and he reappeared from the other side of it, beckoning to me.

We went the way he had returned, following a rough path and then left it to climb a higher grassy knoll, crawling the last part until we lay on our stomachs on the top. Below us and quite close by were the farm buildings. Moonlight only illuminated the byres on the right-hand side of the central yard; the rest was in virtual darkness and no details were visible. There were no lights at the front of the house. Patrick nudged me and we slid backwards and descended again, but in a different place, crossing the track, carrying on in the same direction and then finding ourselves on the banks of a ditch behind one of the outer walls of the barn on the opposite side of the yard. There was a lot of water in the ditch and it smelled terrible, almost certainly raw sewage.

Following the ditch, but in the opposite direction to the main entrance to the yard, we went slowly towards the rear of the house. Leaving the buildings behind us we deliberately stayed behind the cover of the wall of the little paddock and eventually arrived at a gateway. I peeped around a granite gatepost but could see no lights within the house from here either. Patrick signalled to me to stay put again and, cautiously, bending low and not moving in a direct line, he went forward, through a gap in the wall and towards the back door, finally going from my sight into shadow.

Ears tuned to the slightest suspicious sound – this place really gave me the shivers – I waited where I was. After a couple of minutes I saw a light inside the house, a flash as of a torch beam and realized that Patrick was inside. I went across to the open back door.

‘The place has been turned over,' Patrick reported, hearing my approach and coming to the doorway. ‘Not all that long ago either. Someone was living here all right, and quite comfortably too, despite using oil lamps and candles.'

‘We didn't hear or meet any other vehicles,' I said.

‘I would guess that whoever it was left at about the time we reached the village. There's a still warm cup of tea on the kitchen table.'

‘Were they taken away? Or did they manage to escape? Should we search in case someone's been attacked and hurt somewhere?'

I did not expect Patrick to be able to answer any of these questions and he made no attempt to. We put on crime-scene protective gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints or traces of our DNA and walked through the house towards the front door where Patrick called up the stairs. Silence. He went up them but, oddly, there was a door at the top. It was locked. Leaving that for the moment he came down again, opened the front door, which had not been forced, and we both went out into the yard. The paving by the door had been blown dry by the wind and there were no footprints. But there were several some yards away where there was a patch of mud and in it the tracks of what looked like two cars, both sets of tyres different but wide and probably fitted to four-wheel-drive vehicles. Walking to one side of them and well away from any potential evidence we crossed the yard towards the barn, both doors of which were ajar. There was a Land Rover inside, a new-looking Defender TD5.

‘Theft of this wasn't the name of the game then,' Patrick muttered. ‘They fetch a good price too.' He examined the tyres of the vehicle and securing arrangements on the barn doors, which lay on the ground having been jemmied out of the wood, the padlock still intact. ‘This made one set of tracks outside,' he concluded.

We followed the other tyre tracks for a short distance. They turned left from the yard and went in the direction of the gateway on to the moor. The gate was wide open.

‘They came this way too,' Patrick said, crouching down to look at the ground. ‘And such is the slope I reckon you could just ghost down here, making hardly any noise at all.'

We went back inside the house. Touching nothing, we searched for anyone who might be in the building but found nothing. There did not seem to be signs of a struggle even though a table had been overturned. Nothing was actually broken and although we made it a priority to look, we could find no bloodstains. Patrick, I knew, was itching to open cupboards and have a really good look around but the whole place was probably a crime scene so he had to contain himself. We were both keen to force the door at the top of the stairs – for all we knew someone might be up there – but had to observe protocol. Finally, after a few fruitless minutes, Patrick called the police. We were asked to wait at the property.

In order to search the house properly we had been forced to light one of the oil lamps. It had still been warm, as had another: further evidence of recent occupancy. They were not modern utilitarian ones but antiques. Other items of furniture suggested that they belonged to a person of taste. The one living room, where the table had been overturned, had an open fireplace but there were only cold ashes in the grate. The other room at the front had been used as a bedroom, blankets and other bedding folded up on a large old sofa covered by a patchwork quilt. A kitchen and storeroom of sorts were at the rear, the latter a muddle of boxes and packing cases, a suitcase dumped down in the doorway where anyone might fall over it.

‘You know, I reckon whoever lives here had only just got home,' Patrick said while we waited, eyeing the suitcase.

I went back outside and put my hand on the bonnet of the Land Rover. Like the lamps, it was still warm.

‘Whoever lives here must have only just come in and lit the lamps to see what he was doing,' I said, having related this information. ‘The ungodly had been waiting for him – I think we must assume it was a him – up on the hill with their engine and lights off and when they saw him arrive, pounced. But did they take him with them? Or did he manage to get away?'

The police arrived very swiftly – there is a prison in the vicinity after all – and, on Patrick's urging and after producing his SOCA warrant card, the door at the top of the stairs was forced. Nothing was up there but buckets standing on heavy-duty plastic sheeting spread over the floor of each room to keep any rain from the leaking roof from penetrating the ceilings downstairs.

‘Why put a door there and lock it though?' asked the man in charge, a sergeant from Tavistock.

‘The upstairs windows are rotten and by no means burglar-proof so it must have been a security measure,' Patrick told him. ‘Do you know who normally lives here?'

The other shook his head. ‘No, sir, I don't. And to be honest I'm not sure a crime's been committed even though it's obvious someone left in a hurry. No forced entry's been made – you said yourself that both front and back doors were unlocked. But I will make enquiries as to the identity of the occupant and get back to you. Until that's established …' He shook his head sadly.

Patrick looked grim but this was what we had half expected.

‘Tell me,' he said, as the police turned to leave. ‘Where does that track lead that starts at the gate there?'

‘Into a maze of other tracks, I shouldn't wonder, sir,' was the sergeant's reply. ‘Some passable by vehicles, most not. If you were lucky you might reach the Two Moors Way and end up near Ivybridge. The Ordnance Survey map will give proper details should you care to refer to it.'

‘This place has a bad reputation,' one of his colleagues put in.

‘In what way?' I asked, remembering the remark the man I had met had made about the farm having a violent history.

‘Apparently some woman servant was raped here by the farmer and threw herself in a cattle trough and drowned.'

‘When did that happen?'

‘Back in the sixteenth century, I was told.'

And, breathtakingly polite to the last, they left.

‘Folk round here certainly have long memories,' Patrick muttered.

F
or over an hour – until the batteries of both Patrick's little torch and another rechargeable one in the car had run out – we searched the vicinity for anyone who might be hurt or even unconscious and found nothing. I for one was haunted by what James Carrick had told us about the man he was assuming to be his father. Where there are criminal connections no one is safe. Few details of inter-gang warfare and the murders and maimings they generate reach the media. There is little public sympathy for the victims but often they are just that: victims; innocent family and friends of those who have gone decidedly wrong in life.

Was the man to whom I had spoken Archie Kennedy? I know that if the person who had named me as his next of kin had just been released from prison where he had served a sentence for involvement in serious crime – and been associated with heaven alone knows what other undetected offences if the truth were known – I would be cagey about identifying myself to a complete stranger who might be the tool of someone bent on settling old scores.

With only the moon to light our way now we went back to the farmhouse, closed both outer doors, secured the barn as best we could and started to walk back to the car. Tired and not a little depressed, neither of us spoke until we reached it.

‘I suggest we come back when it's light and try to follow the tracks of that vehicle,' Patrick said. ‘For all we know they beat him to a pulp, carted him off and threw him out somewhere on the high moor. But there's no justification for calling out the Dartmoor Rescue people.'

I said, ‘I think there would have been more evidence of that. Nothing was actually damaged indoors and there were no bloodstains. The way that suitcase was dumped down just off the kitchen suggests whoever arrived without warning burst in the front door while the person who lives there ran out the back.'

‘I really hope you're right,' was all Patrick said in reply.

The next day early summer recommenced with a bright sunny morning; small fluffy clouds sailing in a pale blue sky, the sunlight glittering on patches of surface water on the mires transforming the whole area into something that was almost idyllic, even the old farmstead assuming a quaintly fairytale identity below its rocky crag. Swallows swooped in and out of the ruined byres, lambs were playing chasing games over the broken-down walls of the old paddock, a buzzard took off from the top of a wind-blasted goat willow that was somehow still clinging to life and soared up into the blueness with its mewing call.

We had not yet contacted Carrick, feeling it preferable to present him with as complete a picture as possible. Part of our task this morning was to look over the farm in daylight and we were hopeful of finding clues that might tell us what had happened here.

It is illegal for unauthorized vehicles to venture off public roads on to the moor – which is a National Park – so Patrick had obtained permission from the park authorities. The police had already reported a possible disturbance the night before to them so all he had to do was quote the case number and clearance was readily given. We were asked to stay on tracks and it was emphasized that we went entirely at our own risk.

As we approached the house – on foot, having left the car outside the yard – nothing appeared to have changed. But it had, for although both doors of the house were still unlocked the Defender had gone from the barn. Its tyre tracks could be clearly discerned in the mud patch overlaying those made previously.

‘Did you get the registration?' I asked Patrick.

‘No, I was too busy looking for the owner,' he replied tersely. ‘Damn.'

‘They must have changed their minds about stealing it.'

‘Or whoever lives here came back and used it to get right away. I wonder if they took any possessions.'

I followed Patrick indoors and we both gazed at the suitcase, which was still across the storeroom doorway. It was quite a large one and scruffy, as though it had been battered around for some years on airport luggage reclaim conveyors. I went to pick it up to see how heavy it was but Patrick grabbed my hand.

‘What's wrong?'

‘Gut feelings. Why do I want someone from the Bomb Squad to give this thing the once-over?'

I took a couple of quick steps away from it. ‘
Really?
'

‘There's no TV here, not even one that runs off batteries. Yet I distinctly remember noticing a remote control in one of the front rooms somewhere.'

‘What else uses them other than music players?'

‘Entertainment systems generally. I'm not too sure about stand-alone radios.'