No Holds Barred (24 page)

He was out of the car as he spoke, pulling a small rucksack after him. Beside the lane, the corrugated iron fence stood a good eight feet tall, with two strands of barbed wire above that.

William came to stand beside Daniel, looking up.

‘So, tell me again how we get in?'

‘I put my hands together, you step in them and I boost you up. You should clear the top, easy.'

William gave him a sideways look. ‘You are kidding, right?'

‘Of course I am. Just along here there's a panel that's loose at the bottom. It's come away from the next one just enough to let a person slide through. Here it is.' He caught hold of the iron sheeting at its bottom corner and, with an effort, pulled it away from its neighbour, bending it up a little.

‘That's handy. I wonder how that happened  . . .' William said with another sideways look.

Daniel shrugged. ‘Can't imagine. Lucky for us, though, eh?' He had spent an industrious half-hour after dark the previous evening, removing the rivets. ‘Now, are you going first or am I?'

William stood back. ‘Be my guest,' he offered.

‘Chicken!' Daniel murmured.

A couple of minutes later, they both stood inside the perimeter fence, surveying the mountains of scrap before them. Daniel removed a copy of the aerial photo from his pocket and oriented it so that their current position was closest to him. They were at the furthest side of the premises from the gate, and their target area was only a few yards away as the crow flew.

‘Let's just hope they haven't changed the layout since this was taken,' he said, low-voiced, and then pointed down a scrap-formed alleyway to their left. ‘Should be down there and to the right.'

He swung the backpack into position and then set off, with William on his heels. As they turned the first corner, William grabbed Daniel's arm and pointed upwards to where the unblinking eye of a CCTV camera stared down at them.

Daniel disengaged himself.

‘They're off, remember? That's why we're here,' he said softly.

‘Are you sure? They might have a generator or something.'

‘If they have, we'll soon find out,' Daniel told him.

‘How?' William looked up at the camera.

‘Because somebody will come looking for us. Now you've given them a close-up of your mug, let's keep going, shall we?'

A couple of paces on, Daniel paused, looking at a torn black bin bag that had snagged on the handle of a rusting garden roller.

‘Actually  . . . If I lifted you up, do you think you could drape that artistically over the camera? Try and make it look as though it's blown there. Just as a precaution for the return journey.'

‘Now you're talking. Artistic is my forte,' William said grandly. ‘Lift away.'

With the lens safely out of commission, it took only a couple of minutes to bring them to the spot where, according to William's aerial photo, the circular feature was situated, and, as they expected, there was no sign of any structure at all. The mound of scrap metal that confronted them was just a continuation of the piles that adjoined it, although Daniel noticed a preponderance of decommissioned white goods: washing machines, cookers, dishwashers and tumble dryers. He pointed this out to William.

‘That's clever,' he said.

‘Because people are less likely to be interested in those, you mean? So there's less danger of anyone moving them.'

‘Exactly. Old cars, sheet metal, wire and oil drums, people could conceivably want parts of, but old ovens? No good to anyone. I reckon we've found our spot.'

‘Now we just need to find how to get in.'

William looked at the pile of rusting metal helplessly.

‘Is that all?'

‘It's not quite as hopeless as it seems,' Daniel replied. ‘They're not going to want to shift a load of junk every time they need to get into their den, so we look for something large that's still fairly movable.'

‘Like the shell of a transit van?'

Daniel followed his gaze. ‘
Just
like the shell of a van.'

‘But it's got no wheels  . . .'

‘No. Well spotted,' Daniel said, gazing thoughtfully at the wreck, which had a massive dent in the front corner of its roof and a previous owner's business name imperfectly concealed by a coat of white paint. Items from the overflowing scrap pile had spilled on to the roof. ‘I wonder  . . .'

Moving to the back of it, he inspected the area around the handle and lock. ‘Bingo!' he said softly.

‘What?' William was at his shoulder. ‘What are you looking at?'

‘See here?' Daniel pointed. ‘This door has been reinforced. Most doors can be opened in a few seconds by someone with a screwdriver and a couple of brain cells, but not this one. The lock has steel plating round it.'

‘But couldn't that have been done
before
it was scrapped?'

‘It could,' Daniel agreed. ‘And it might well have been. Either way, it's ideal for their purposes. I'm betting, if we could see inside, we'd find they've modified the sidewall to make a way through.'

‘What? You mean, this is the entrance to their building? They actually walk through the van to get to it?'

‘That's what I'm thinking. Clever, isn't it?'

‘So, what now? Can you pick the lock?'

‘Possibly, given long enough, but if they've gone to this much trouble, I'm thinking there's every possibility it's alarmed. No. As this is the only real candidate, we'll stick to our original plan and set up our own little spy camera.'

‘Will it take long?' William was looking distinctly uneasy.

‘Not too long. Nerves bothering you, Mr Faulkner?'

‘It's all right for you. I'm not used to this sort of thing.'

‘Wishing you'd stayed at home?' Daniel asked, removing the tiny camera and its fittings from his backpack.

‘Not at all,' William replied stoutly. ‘What kind of a range has that thing got?'

Daniel pursed his lips. ‘They say fifty metres tops, but I'd say that's probably pushing it. If I can get it high enough, we should get a signal outside in the lane.'

‘You mean you've got to sit in the lane every evening just on the off chance that someone uses the entrance – even supposing it
is
the entrance,' he added pessimistically.

‘What I'm really interested in is an actual fight, and that's more likely to be a Friday or Saturday night,' Daniel said, noting that William hadn't included himself in the proposed watch. The thirst for involvement was apparently wearing off.

Positioning the camera securely took several minutes, and William's nerves didn't improve. More than once he took his mobile from his pocket and checked the display. From other parts of the premises there came vehicle noise and the occasional sounds of voices. When Daniel finally pronounced himself satisfied and clambered back to ground level, William was clearly in a fever to be off.

‘Is that it?'

‘Well, I thought while we're here, I might have a quick look for those other buildings we saw on the aerial shots.'

‘You
are
kidding, right?'

‘You're welcome to go back, if you want,' Daniel said mildly.

‘No, no. In for a penny  . . .' William said. ‘Which way?'

‘I've highlighted them on this photo,' Daniel said, taking his A4 printout once more, ‘And I reckon they should be just the other side of this lot.' He indicated the wall of scrap curving away from beyond the transit van.

‘Isn't that getting a bit close to Boyd Central?' William asked, peering at the picture over Daniel's arm.

‘We'll just have to be extra quiet, won't we?' he replied with a wink.

It seemed that luck was with them. As they rounded the end of the sloping bank of metal, they were confronted by a compound bounded by a multi-strand barbed-wire fence on which hung notices, every few feet, warning of the danger of moving machinery inside. Inside the fence were stacked rolls of wire netting and sheets of corrugated iron, forming an effective screen, and, some way beyond those, the bulk of the metal compactor.

‘If you held the wire apart, I might just slip through,' he suggested to William.

‘Do you think that's a good idea? What if someone comes?'

‘That's all right. I've got you as a lookout.'

‘I don't know  . . .'

‘I'll be quick,' Daniel promised. ‘I just want to see what's behind those convenient piles of fencing material. According to our photo, it should be the missing buildings.'

Moments later, his assumptions were confirmed. The two single-storey prefab buildings stood parallel to each other, about twelve feet wide and some thirty feet long. Each had a door at one end, and the only windows were narrow elongated panes, high under the eaves. Unable to see in, even on tiptoe, Daniel took a small camera from his backpack and holding it near the glass of each window, pressed the shutter, fervently hoping that his hunch as to the buildings' purpose was correct and there would be no humans inside.

As he put the camera away, Daniel heard a low whistle and became aware of the sound of an approaching engine.

A quad bike. Ricky.

Cursing under his breath, he dropped down to crouch behind the concealing wall of stacked iron sheets, hoping William had kept his head and also found somewhere to hide. Had they been seen somehow, or was it just a precautionary tour of the site?

A scrabbling noise to his left made him whip round, ready for action, and he came face to face with William, on hands and knees, looking dusty and dishevelled.

They both waited, listening, as the quad bike came bucketing along the rutted dirt track towards the compound, circled round the fence and away down another alleyway.

As its engine noise receded, Daniel straightened up and held out a helping hand towards William.

‘You look a little ruffled, my friend,' he observed, as he hauled him to his feet. ‘How did you get through the fence?'

‘I went under,' William said. ‘I find there are some advantages to being the shape of an anorexic stick insect, after all!'

Daniel laughed.

‘Shall we go home?'

‘
Please
. I've decided I quite like being a looker-on, after all.'

On their way out, they paused long enough to uncover the Boyds' CCTV camera once more, before slipping out through the gap in the fence and into the lane.

‘Job done,' Daniel stated, throwing his backpack into the car and getting in after it. ‘Now I just need to see if it works.'

It did. The image on his laptop screen was clearer than he had hoped for, although for the moment it showed nothing more than the closed rear door of the transit and part of the scrap pile.

William leaned over to see.

‘What happens if it's after dark?' he wanted to know.

‘That's when the night vision function kicks in. Won't be a great picture, but hopefully enough to identify faces.'

Taking his camera from the backpack, he took the flashcard out and slid it into a dock on the side of the computer. A few taps on the touchpad later, several rather dark thumbnail images appeared on the screen. Choosing the least obscure, he brought it up to full-screen size. The flash had reflected on the window glass, but it was just possible to make out one or two details.

‘What's that? It looks a bit like a gym?' William said, head on one side.

‘It is, in a way,' Daniel said grimly. ‘A gym for dogs. A treadmill for endurance training. A hanging tyre to improve jaw strength and grip. I can't make out what that other thing is. but it's a copybook set-up for training fighting dogs.'

‘So, we were right.'

‘Unfortunately, yes.' Daniel snapped the laptop shut. ‘Shall we go?'

William already had the engine going.

When Daniel got out of his camp bed just after midnight to get a drink of water, he glanced out of the window of William's bedsit and looked down at the moonlit courtyard below. There were only two parking spaces in the quadrangle, both reserved by day for veterinary emergencies, but now they were both filled. Even from above, Daniel recognized Ivor Symmonds' estate car in one, while the other was filled by the rectangular roof of a dark-coloured van.

He was about to turn away when the courtyard was flooded with light from a security lamp, and two men emerged from the doorway immediately below his window. Without further ado, they got into the van, backed and turned it and drove away.

Daniel waited. A minute or two later, a silver-haired man appeared, turned to lock the door and then got into the car.

As its red tail lights disappeared out towards the road, Daniel looked down at Taz, who was lying watching him from a blanket at the foot of the camp bed.

‘Well, well. What business do you think our friend Ivor could possibly have had with Norman and Taylor Boyd so late at night, eh, lad?'

Taz lifted his head and fixed him with an intent gaze.

‘Yup, I think you're right,' Daniel agreed, ruffling the fur on the dog's head. ‘I have my suspicions, but, whatever it was, it's a fair bet they were up to no good.'

SIXTEEN

‘
T
his belong to anyone?' Dek held out a small leather collar upon which several ominous dark stains could be seen.

Across the room, Reg looked up from his paper and the colour left his face.

Dek had arrived late in the drivers' room that Friday morning, with the aim, Daniel instantly suspected, of making just such an impressive entrance.

‘Looks like it belongs to a small dog,' Boyd suggested, clearly enjoying the moment. ‘Say – a Jack Russell, or something. Didn't you used to have a Jack Russell, Reg? Whatever happened to it? Ah, yes, I remember. You lost it. Very careless, I always thought.'

Dek laughed with Boyd, but Macca had the grace to look a little uncomfortable.