No Holds Barred (17 page)

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.'