‘Didn’t think you psychologists believed in normal.’ Brian leant on a nearby desk.
‘If it looks like a turkey, walks like a turkey and sounds like a turkey, chances are, Brian, it’s a turkey.’
‘You sound angry, Dr Langley.’
‘If what these men did doesn’t make you angry, then you’re a bloody . . . turkey!’
Any further protest was cut short by the DI. ‘Brian, do something useful and get Mia copies of the latest statements.’
The DC got up with slow resignation and, ignoring the DI’s instruction, he headed outside, already dialling a number on his white — non-issue — smartphone.
Jayne smiled an apology at Mia. ‘He’s probably phoning his Federation rep.’
‘On his own phone?’
‘I’ll get the statements for you.’ Gemma bounced off.
Jayne continued, ‘Re the missing offender — the bottom line is his family are keeping shtum and no one here has any idea where he is and, to be honest, no one seems to care.’
‘Register him with the national misper bureau, will you? I’ve got another three lads missing in Leeds and we need to start making connections.’
Mia took the proffered file off Gemma. ‘I’ll go through these back at the hotel.’
As she left the porta-cabin she heard Brian say, ‘That’s what she said.’ When he saw it was Mia walking down the steps he added, ‘Got to go!’
He looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Mia stood on the steps. ‘I hope that’s not police business you’re discussing on your personal phone, DC Nowells.’
‘What I discuss and where is no business of yours, Doctor Langley.’
Mia wondered if he’d add ‘and as you’re not actually one of us, you can go fuck yourself!’ He didn’t. He just gave her a knowing grin, as though he knew far more than her. Mia felt the urge to push him up against the yard wall, take off a stiletto and hold the heel against his eye as she told him what a fucking waste of skin he was and the sooner he retired the better it would be for everyone. She’d need to call into that garage to buy more wine.
The next morning she returned to the porta-cabin with a mild hangover and a rueful smile.
‘Sorry about yesterday, Jayne.’ She glanced over to where Brian was sitting, his face still thunderous.
‘No sweat. He brings it on himself.’
‘I’d like to get your turkey feather DNA’d. Would that be possible?’
‘Budgets are tight — no more forensic-fishing expeditions allowed.’
‘I’ll leave it with you, but if we can forensically link these two crime scenes, West Yorkshire could end up sharing some of your costs.’
‘I’ll certainly ask. You off?’
‘Back to Leeds. I spend my whole life in a car or hotel room these days! Email me any updates.’
‘Will do — safe journey.’
‘Bye!’ Gemma smiled at Mia’s retreating back.
CHAPTER SIX
The higher one walks up a mountain, the wider the horizon.
Mountain View was an accurate if uninspiring name for the beautiful farmhouse in the Brecon Beacons. It was surrounded by fifty acres of pasture and numerous stone outbuildings. The huge kitchen, when combined with the boot and utility rooms, was four or five times the size of Ellie’s current ground floor. The solid limestone floors were heated, the worktops were granite and the in-built appliances were all top-of-the-range. The large winter sitting room, with its inglenook log burner, was cosy compared to the summer sitting room, which was an expanse of glass that ran the length of the house. Ellie was sitting in one of the wicker armchairs. Christ, these views are fantastic; I can’t believe all this could be mine.
The four bedrooms all had stunning views and ensuites. At least no one will have to queue for the bathroom, she thought. There’ll be no excuse for not being out on the yard first thing. Listen to that silence.
Barry, the estate agent, was spectacularly good-looking, but oozed the type of smug confidence that came with such self-knowledge. He’d been happy to let her wander about on her own with no hard sell, but joined her as she finally settled in the summer lounge.
‘So, Miss Grant, how do you like the property?’
‘It’s ideal, Barry.’ She gave the agent a big grin. ‘I’ll take it!’
He grinned back. ‘That’s great! You don’t need to think about it some more or discuss it with anyone?’
‘No,’ she returned her gaze to the mountains, ‘but we do need to talk about the price.’
‘What were you thinking?’
‘Eight hundred and fifty.’
‘That’s a full hundred grand below asking.’
‘Is this a holiday home?’
‘A house is a house, Miss Grant.’
‘But this one’s spare? I can see it’s not currently lived in.’
‘That’s hardly relevant—’
‘I’ll go to nine if they leave all the furniture and complete within twenty-eight days.’
‘Let me call the vendor.’ Barry took his gold-encased smartphone into the neglected garden. He was back in less than five minutes.
‘It appears to be a deal! Do you fancy a celebratory drink?’ Barry’s smile had moved from affable to flirtatious.
Ellie hesitated. She’d never been asked out before, by anyone, and Barry would be a spectacular start. But she’d turned up in a brand new Discovery and just paid £900,000, cash, for a house, without having to ask anyone’s opinion, so of course he’s going to play the gigolo. There’ll be a lot more of this now . . . not ever knowing if people are just friendly because of the money — but I can’t miss what I’ve never had.
‘No, thanks, Barry.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Places to be, people to see.’
It’s all about the animals. Not me — the animals.
Within eight weeks of her meeting with Dot, Ellie had moved into Mountain View. She decided not to sell her mother’s house; instead offering to rent it out to workers at her old shelter at a greatly reduced rate.
She would have preferred to let them use it for free, but that would’ve raised too many questions. Instead she’d told them she was helping an ageing uncle in the Beacons with his small sheep farm. No one questioned her. No one really cared. There was a card, but no party; even though she’d worked at the shelter for over ten years. Not that she’d expected one. They were all too busy. The animals always came first — which was how it should be.
As soon as Ellie had moved in and settled her own animals, she phoned the local Job Centre to list two vacancies.
Wanted. Two single people (not advertising for a couple — they might gang up on me) to help establish a new animal sanctuary in the heart of the Brecon Beacons. Must have a love of, and experience with, small and large animals. Excellent accommodation plus living wage offered to right applicants. Must be hardworking, honest and reliable.
She squirmed as she dictated the second H-word to the woman at the Job Centre.
‘Sounds exciting,’ the woman said. ‘I’m sure there’ll be lots of applicants!’
There were six.
Ellie felt it only fair to interview everyone who applied, but two thirds of the interviewees were just too young. They were appalled by the hours.
What the fuck’s wrong with 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. — it’s a standard working day!
And the isolation.
So it’s a five mile walk to the nearest pub and a twenty-five mile drive to the nearest club — they should be too tired for drinking and dancing!
‘You’ve got be kidding’ became the verbal and non-verbal reaction from the first four.
Craig was the penultimate candidate. An intelligent young man in his early twenties, fresh out of the Royal Agricultural College.
‘So, Craig. Why do you want to come and work at Mountain View?’
‘Honest answer?’
‘Please.’
‘I’m from round here but my family’s got no land, and i
t’s been hard getting any sort of permanent position without more experience. I’ve got qualifications in husbandry and land-management coming out my ears but nowhere to practise them, so not much of a practical track record — it’s become a sort of chicken and egg scenario.’
‘But you’re not worried about the isolation, living out here in the middle of nowhere?’
‘God, no! I love the mountains; their beauty, their complete lack of respect for us humans and our idiotic behaviour.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’m a member of Brecon Mountain Rescue. My first ever callout was to some idiot who thought it’d be a good idea to walk up a mountain in flip flops. He skidded on some scree and smashed his ankle. Will I still be able to do that type of rescue work?’
‘I don’t see why not, but our work comes first. If we’re all needed here, here is where we’ll have to be.’
‘Fair enough, but I’d like to keep my hand in, if I can.’
Mick was three times Craig’s age, nearer sixty than fifty. He was a hard, wiry man, who’d spent his whole life working on farms and had all the experience Craig lacked. He handed Ellie a dog-eared CV that someone else had obviously typed.
I don’t care if he’s illiterate. Don’t care if he’s not much of a talker — prefer it — as long as he’s reliable, hardworking and experienced.
The crumpled paper testified to all these things.
‘I see you’ve not been in full-time work for some years, Mick?’
‘No. Just seasonal stuff. Lambing, shearing, bit of hay making and fence mending.’
‘Why is that? Aren’t you up to full-time work?’
‘Up to it — just can’t find it.’
‘So why did you leave’ she glanced down at the CV, ‘Grange Estates?’
‘It left me.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Foot and mouth. Farmer shot himself and the son sold the land to a Chinky millionaire who turned it into a golf course.’
‘So where are you living now?’
‘Council flat.’
‘You’d want to move in here full-time then?’
‘I was told the job came with accommodation.’
‘It does — do you want to see it?’
Mick gave a small shrug, but followed Ellie upstairs.
As he stood at the panoramic window, which took up most of the outside wall, Ellie watched water pool in the man’s already watery grey eyes.
This was the third time in his life that Mick had shed a tear. The first had been at his mother’s funeral when he was six, and the last had been as he stood and watched the cows he’d looked after for thirty years, bulldozed into a huge pyre and burnt, their legs pointing up to the sky like fingers.
‘You all right?’ Ellie put a hand on his shoulder.
He nodded, keeping his face turned to the mountains. ‘You offering me the job?’
‘Yes. If you want it.’
‘I want it.’
Mick and Craig were like chalk and cheese but, as they worked on converting and developing the outbuildings, they grew to respect each other’s experiences and tolerate each other’s shortcomings.
‘So, what do you think of our new boss?’ Craig was footing a ladder while Mick cleared out some guttering.
‘Don’t hold an opinion.’
‘Really? She strikes me as a bit scary.’
Mick looked down. ‘Scary?’
‘Perhaps not scary — intense, maybe.’
Mick shook his head.
‘Do you think you’ll stay?’
‘Nowhere else to go.’
‘Do you know what I think?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want to know?’
‘No.’
‘She’s . . . a paradox . . . she can afford to buy this place, and pay us well, but then insists on all this recycling and making-do, when it would be so much easier, quicker, to just buy new stuff. Like this bloody guttering — it doesn’t need clearing, it needs replacing!’
‘If you say so.’
‘So, where are you from?’
‘Builth.’
‘Did you like it?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘My neighbours were crackheads.’
‘Blimey!’
‘That’s one word for it.’
When not helping Mick, Craig could be found working the land, while Mick was always surrounded by animals. But, by the time the buildings were finished, Mick had joined Brecon Mountain Rescue.
During the day, Ellie helped with the effort to make Mountain View ready for its first arrivals, but she spent her evenings trawling the internet. Her modest laptop had been accessorised with a mini-satellite dish, to give a consistent signal, and she found herself glued to the small screen. She had first-hand experience of just how cruel people could be, but was learning just how useless officialdom was at dealing with them.
‘Fucking eighty hours! Eighty fucking hours fucking community service for operating a dog-fighting ring!’ Ellie’s anger bounced around the kitchen, reverberating off the exposed oak rafters.
Mick winced at the explosion of bad language emanating from such a small woman.
‘Eighty thousand hours isn’t going to put right what those bastards did!’
Toby, Hamish and Lulu had grown used to these nightly eruptions of emotion and quickly retreated to the cosy silence of the winter lounge; the cats preferred the boot room. MacAwesome, however, stretched his wings and squawked disapproval from his new perch near the large American fridge.
‘When I think of the pain and suffering they caused . . . it makes my blood boil.’
‘You don’t say.’ Mick took a sip of post-dinner whisky.
‘You need to take care, Ellie.’ Craig was becoming as pragmatic as Mick. ‘Your blood’s spending so much time at boiling point it’s likely to evaporate. And it’s not as though you can do anything more than we’re already doing — picking up the pieces.’
Ellie picked up the laptop and retreated to her master suite. They both heard her mutter, ‘Wanna bet?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Indifference is the essence of inhumanity.
Mia was going through some surprising replies from the four NCA regions. The detective sergeants had treated her email with a thoroughness she found heartening. They had passed on her request for information to both serious and organised crime teams and the heads of force CIDs. It was gratifying to see what the NCA logo could achieve.
There appeared to be a growing and nationwide propensity for random acts of savage violence. In Wales, a professional show jumper had been blinded in the right eye by unknown men for an unknown reason. The weapon of choice had been a riding whip. Whether that was because it had been the nearest thing to hand or a considered statement, she couldn’t tell from the short email. In Oxford, a professor working with primates had been tortured and his chimps kidnapped before he was abandoned in a hospital car park. In London, a young woman had been handcuffed to a radiator, for no discernible reason, and left to die. She had only been saved when a demolition team had done a walk-through looking for squatters before blowing the place up. But the most recent case was in Somerset, where a member of the local hunt had himself been hunted and shot. This was where Mia started.
She was shown into the drawing room of a large stone farmhouse, where a middle-aged man was sitting in a wheelchair by the open French doors. His right leg was raised and encased in plaster from ankle to thigh. Introductions were made and tea refused.
‘So, Charles, tell me what happened.’
‘I’ve already told the police everything.’
‘Humour me.’ Mia gave her most flirtatious smile.
‘Some bastard spiked my drink.’
‘At your local?’
‘Yes! I’ve said all this to the police — they wrote it all down!’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I set off home — walking, I don’t drink and drive — but I collapsed in the
car park. The next thing I know some cretin’s blowing a hunting horn in my ear and I’m bollock-naked out on the moors …’ He gazed out into the garden, but Mia’s silence forced him to continue. ‘At first I thought it was some sort of practical joke . . . but then — crack! Someone shot at me. The bullet was that close it flicked soil into my eye. As I got up, another landed inches from me . . . then another, so I started to run. The bastards chased me for hours.’
‘Like a fox.’
‘Yes, like a bloody fox! I’m not stupid — I know what they were trying to do!’
‘They? There was more than one?’
‘Must have been. The bullets kept coming from different directions and too fast for it to be the same person.’
‘Then what?’
‘One hit me. The bastard’s shattered my knee.’ Charles looked down and stroked his cast. ‘The doc says I’ll walk again but it’ll not bend enough for me to ride — certainly not a horse and maybe not even my quad.’
‘You think it was deliberate — that they chose your knee?’
‘They were marksmen all right. Kept me moving with bullets just inches from my heels or inches in front or to the side of me, which is pretty damn impressive on a moving target in the dark.’
‘They were well equipped then?’
‘Must have had infra-red sights.’
‘Your statement says you were on a road by that time.’
‘That’s where they chose to bring me down.’
‘But you think their intention was to maim, not kill?’
‘They could have killed me at any time. I’m ex-military . . . seen action, but I don’t mind telling you . . . I’ve never been so shit scared.’
‘A bit like a fox.’
Charles refused to make eye contact.
‘And then one of them called an ambulance and told them where to find you?’
‘But they left it hours. I lay there in utter agony before passing out from blood loss and hypothermia.’ His look dared her to mention a fox.
‘Who do you think was responsible?’
‘Bloody obvious — hunt sabs!’
‘They’ve certainly moved on from laying false aniseed trails and blowing horns.’
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