Outside Chance (10 page)

‘Meet me at the pub – The Pig in a Poke – at nine-thirty, and I'll take you there.'

Ben looked at his watch. ‘Make it ten o'clock and it's a date. But can't you just give me directions?'

‘It's better this way,' Allerton said, and rang off.

Putting the receiver down Ben groaned, long and loud.

‘Oh God! I've done it again! Why does my mouth say yes, when my brain is shouting no?'

Mouse uncurled herself from her basket, gave herself a shake and silently left the room.

At ten o'clock in the morning The Pig in a Poke was not yet open and the car park was almost empty. It was raining as Ben parked next to a mud-splashed Volvo estate and he had to dodge the puddles as he ran across the tarmac to the paved seating area. He thought enviously of Mouse, whom he'd left curled up on the sofa, close to the wood-burning stove.

Allerton was waiting in corduroys and a waxed jacket, leaning against the wall under the overhang of the roof. He straightened up as Ben approached.

‘I wasn't sure you'd come.'

‘
I
wasn't sure I'd come,' Ben replied. ‘I'm not keen on these cloak-and-dagger tactics, they make me nervous.'

‘Yes, I'm sorry about that. We just wanted to make sure you turned up alone. We had the place trashed once, when we invited someone there in good faith. So you see, we're cautious now, and we don't take kindly to impostors.'

‘I could have someone following me, or I could be wired,' Ben suggested.

Allerton looked a bit taken aback.

‘Are you?'

‘No,' Ben said wearily. ‘Lead on.'

‘We'll take my car.' Allerton set off back across the car park.

‘Or we could take mine.'

‘No, it's all right. I'll drive. It's a bit tricky to find. Easier for me to drive than to keep giving you instructions.'

‘Look, hang on,' Ben caught hold of the ALSA man's arm and pulled him to a halt. ‘I offered to write an unbiased article; I didn't sign up for a magical mystery tour! I'm here, alone. Why can't you tell me where we're going?'

‘I told you. We got trashed. The whole place turned over and two of our members injured. We don't take chances any more. Besides, even if I were to tell you, you wouldn't know where it was. It's way out in the sticks.'

Ben scanned Allerton's face for a moment but could only detect an earnest anxiety; nothing sly or underhand. Reluctantly, he gestured to the man to continue and, shaking his head, followed.

The Volvo was almost as muddy inside as out, and it smelled strongly of wet dog. Henry Allerton removed a lead and a rather grubby
towel from the passenger seat, giving it a token brush-off with his hand before Ben got in.

‘Keeping pets doesn't come under “exploitation”, then,' Ben observed wryly.

‘My dogs stay with me out of choice, and I hardly have to force them to go for a walk,' Allerton said. ‘I do hope you're not going to be confrontational. You promised an open mind, remember?'

‘I'll try.'

From Wincanton, Allerton joined the A303 going east, hammering along it at great speed and staying on until just short of Andover, where he headed into the countryside. He then proceeded to work his way through a bewildering maze of single-track lanes, turning left, right and back on himself countless times.

‘Wouldn't it have been quicker to blindfold me?' Ben asked eventually, faintly amused.

‘I didn't think you'd stand for that,' Allerton said in all seriousness.

‘No, you're right. I wouldn't.'

The journey finished at the end of a long gravel track down which the vehicle lurched, wallowing in and out of a series of muddy puddles that stretched from hedge to hedge. They pulled up in a grassy hollow, in front of a green painted Nissen hut that had seen better days, parking beside an old VW camper van that was decorated with a rainbow and various stylised animals.

‘Greenpeace meets Disney,' Ben muttered, and Allerton shot him a suspicious look but said nothing.

The hollow was bounded by untidy hedges and
overhung by several large ash trees. Apart from the lane down which they had come, the only other access was by way of a gate in the back left-hand corner, beyond which another track wound off into the distance.

‘So who does this belong to? Is it rented, or are you squatting?'

‘It was falling down. The farmer who owns the land was grateful to have us do it up, in return for which we get it rent-free for a year.'

‘A farmer? Isn't that exploitation of animals on a grand scale? No, don't take offence – it's a fair question.'

‘You don't understand the issue here, do you? A.L.S.A. Action for the Liberation of Sport Animals. Making animals perform unnatural tasks in the name of entertainment. Farming doesn't come into it. Granted, a good few of our members are vegetarian – I am, myself – but farming can be seen as a regrettable necessity, provided it's carried out humanely; sport isn't.'

‘OK, you've made your point. I'll try not to ask any more stupid questions.'

He followed Allerton across to the door of the Nissen hut, where they were met by a young woman with a shock of frizzy pink hair and more visible body-piercings than Ben had ever seen on one person. The unseen ones, he didn't care to contemplate. Her clothes were eclectic and each article seemed to have been carefully chosen with the intention of not matching anything else.

‘Della, this is Ben, the journalist I told you about.'

Ben said ‘Hi,' and the pink frizz nodded.

Allerton gestured at the open doorway. ‘Shall we go in?'

The inside of the metal hut had been painted cream and at present it housed four people, to whom Ben raised a hand in friendly greeting.

The response was mixed. One smile, two raised hands and an unencouraging stare from a young man with dreadlocks and a nose stud.

Ben turned his attention to the building itself. The end wall nearest the door was lined with free-standing metal shelving and a row of desks ran down each side. Above them cork notice-boards bristled with pins attaching maps, memos, and calendars marked with equine and canine sporting features, details of hunting fixtures and notes such as
John Taylor's Circus arrives
–
Sherborne
. He moved to look more closely but Allerton blocked his way, shepherding him on.

The other end of the hut had been made more comfortable, with a couple of easy chairs, a sofa, a coffee table and a fridge and microwave. More cartoon animals looked down from the walls, some spouting slogans. They were beautifully painted, and Ben's eye was immediately drawn to them.

‘Who's the artist?' he asked, wandering down the hut to get a better look.

‘Della is,' Allerton said. ‘She's a trained illustrator.'

‘She's good.' Ben looked round. ‘So this is the nerve centre of the organisation. I must admit, I expected something a little more hi-tech. You have a website, so where are the computers? Where, for that matter, are the telephones?'

‘We haven't been here long but we'll have a telephone just as soon as BT get round to it. In the meantime we have mobiles, and I've got a laptop in the car.'

‘Where do you send your emails from? Or don't you?'

‘Mostly from home or the library.'

‘So at the moment you use this for . . .?'

‘We meet here, discuss strategy, organise fundraising, that sort of thing.'

‘How many of you are there?'

‘It fluctuates. Locally, I'd say somewhere between thirty and fifty. Nationwide, nearly four thousand paid-up members at the last count.'

Ben was surprised. It was far bigger than he had expected. He took a notepad from his pocket and unclipped its pencil.

‘So, how long has the group been operating?'

‘Five and a half years. Look, would you like a coffee?'

He accepted and settled himself into one of the armchairs. Coffee made, Allerton sank on to the saggy sofa opposite, where Della promptly joined him and the other four drifted closer to listen, ranging themselves on and around another smaller chair. Ben would have preferred to talk to Allerton in private but it was obviously not to be, so he tried to put the others out of his mind.

Over the next half-hour Ben learned far more than he wanted to know about ALSA, their origins, ideals and aims. A staunch supporter of animal welfare himself, he could not entirely condemn the group for their principles, but felt they were
pursuing them to a ridiculously radical degree. In his search for quotable material he argued the opposing view, and, although Henry Allerton seemed to understand what he was doing, Ben noticed that Bella and the others were regarding him with increasingly stormy expressions.

Eventually the owner of the dreadlocks could bear it no longer.

‘This is fuckin' stupid!' he exclaimed explosively, stepping towards Ben. ‘He's not going to give us a fair go. He's like all the fuckin' others and he'll sell us down the fuckin' river, just like they did!'

Ben gave the young man a cool stare, trying not to recoil from his rampant aggression, and Allerton stepped into the breach.

‘No, he won't. He's promised to be fair and I believe him. I told you, it was Ben who saved Seb in town yesterday.'

This reminder seemed to appease most of the group but Dreadlocks clearly preferred to see him as the enemy, for he continued to glower.

‘I still say it's a mistake. Especially
now
. We don't need some nosey bastard from the press poking round.'

Ben's ears pricked up.

‘Why does he say “especially now”?' he asked. ‘I should've thought you'd always want publicity.'

For the first time, Ben saw Allerton looking annoyed. He directed a furious glance at Dreadlocks.

‘Because he's an idiot,' he said shortly. ‘We have a . . . let's call it a project, in the planning stage. A campaign, if you will. It's not something
you need to know about, and if he'd kept his big mouth shut you probably never would have.'

‘But he didn't keep his mouth shut, did he? So tell me now,' Ben invited.

‘I'm sorry. I can't.'

Ben looked from Allerton to Dreadlocks, who had resumed his sullen scowl, and sighed. He was quite plainly going to get no further revelations from either.

‘OK. So tell me what you realistically hope to achieve in the long run.'

Happy to be back on safer ground, Allerton became expansive and it was some time before Ben was able to wind the interview up.

Once outside the Nissen hut Ben wandered away from Allerton, climbed a slight bank and stood looking out over the hedge to the adjacent farmland. Most of it was grassland, some fields occupied by cattle, some empty. He could see what he presumed to be the farmhouse on rising ground in the distance and, closer to hand, a cluster of ramshackle buildings including a low shed with a rusty, corrugated tin roof, a barn stacked half-full of hay and a couple of stables. He could just make out a single horse grazing in the field nearest the buildings, but it was wearing a green, New Zealand rug and he couldn't make out the colour of its coat.

Ben stared, his mind racing. It couldn't be that simple, could it? But then again, why not? A horse was a horse; it couldn't be hidden away in a dark corner: it needed to move around, to eat, drink and lie down. Dreadlocks had definitely been jumpy about something, but would
they have brought him here if that were indeed Cajun King?

The answer again was, why not? They could have no way of guessing that he knew anything about the kidnap. After all, apart from Eddie Truman himself, no one was supposed to know.

‘Are you coming? What are you doing?'

Ben turned to find Allerton approaching. He looked a little impatient but not particularly anxious.

‘Who does the horse belong to?' he asked.

‘What horse?'

‘The one in the field across there.' Ben pointed.

‘I've no idea. I didn't even know there was one.'

He sounded a bit testy. Ben had discovered that horses were a bit of a moot point in the ALSA philosophy. Making a beast carry a human for pleasure was definitely against their principles but, on the other hand, it could not be denied that horses seemed to enjoy associating with mankind. The ideal was, apparently, that they might be kept but not used for work, sport or entertainment.

‘What's the farmer's name?'

‘I don't think you need to know that,' Allerton said. ‘If he gets any grief he'll probably throw us out.'

Once again Dreadlocks stepped forward, all fired up.

‘I told you he'd be trouble. He's gonna start poking around. Remember what happened last time.'

‘Oh
please
. Put a sock in it!' Ben said, stepping off the bank to join Allerton.

Dreadlocks advanced threateningly but a sharp word from his comrade stopped him, and he contented himself with muttering obscenities under his breath as Ben passed.

‘I don't suppose you ever considered a career in the diplomatic service,' Allerton observed dryly.

‘I did say please,' Ben pointed out as they got into the Volvo.

When, having lurched back down the track, the vehicle reached the blessed smoothness of the tarmac once more, Ben kept his eyes peeled for informative road signs, but there was a distinct lack. In fact, they had travelled a couple of miles before he saw any at all, and then it was a rather confusing four-way job at a remote crossroad.

On the return journey Allerton seemed disinclined to talk and drove, if anything, even faster.

‘Is there something wrong?' Ben enquired as they reached the outskirts of Wincanton. ‘Was it something I said?'

He shook his head. ‘No. Not really. I was just wondering if Baz was right and it
was
a mistake to take you there. I don't blame you for being inquisitive – it's your job, after all. I blame myself for not thinking it through.'