by steve higgs
‘Mother.’ I called down the phone through gritted teeth. ‘Mother.’ Still no answer. ‘MOTHER!’
Finally, she came back onto the phone, still shouting something about me to John. ‘Darling, I’ll be on the next flight home…’
I managed to cut her off, ‘Mother I am not a bloody prostitute. I am a private investigator. My client is a person with a case I am going to solve. For goodness sake.' She opened her mouth to speak again. ‘I have to go, mum. I will call you this evening.'
I disconnected the call and savagely stabbed the button that would silence the phone in case it should ring again.
The Farmer. Wednesday, November 9th 1412hrs
Kieron Fallon was waiting patiently next to my car, trying not to watch me while also keeping an eye on what I was doing.
Now that I was finished with my call, he tapped politely on the window. I opened the door and got out. ‘Sorry, Miss, this is private property. Do you have business here?’
‘Mr. Fallon, yes?' I offered him my hand.
‘Oh, goodness, no. I'm the farm manager, Gordon. Mr. Fallon is a young chap. I'm afraid you won't get to see him without an appointment though.' The man's dog was leaning forward to sniff my leg. It looked as dirty as the owner. I moved away slightly.
‘Mr. Fallon is expecting me. Please tell him Amanda Harper is here.'
Gordon looked slightly taken aback as if the idea that a woman might have business was preposterous. He was smiling at me like he was waiting for the punchline. Fortunately, the real Kieron Fallon emerged from the farmhouse. He was expecting a woman to visit and here I was.
Of course, I didn’t know it was Kieron until he arrived and thrust out his hand. ‘Hi, Amanda. Thank you for coming so quickly.’ He turned to Gordon who was still standing where he had been, the dog next to his feet still looking up at me. ‘I’ll take it from here, Gordon. Thank you.’ He said it in a positive way that sounded like he was praising Gordon for coming to see who I was, while also making it clear that the task was done, and he probably had other work to attend to.
Gordon was slow to respond though and clearly unhappy that he was being dismissed. ‘I don't think you've got time to be socialising, Mr. Fallon.'
Kieron turned to face the older man, evidently less than happy with his attitude. ‘Thank you, Gordon. I’ll take it from here.’ He repeated, this time with more force.
Gordon spun on his heel and strode away. The dirty dog lingered for a moment but soon realised his master was gone and went after him.
Kieron turned back to me. ‘Sorry about Gordon. I got him with the farm when I bought it. I thought I was getting a real asset with his years of experience. Now I don't know how to get rid of him.'
‘Is he a problem?’ I asked.
‘Sort of.' Kieron started walking back toward the farm buildings, indicating that I should walk with him. ‘He has been here forever and knows that he knows everything. To start with, I thought I couldn't manage without him and made the mistake of saying it once. Now he argues with me about everything new I want to try. Drives me nuts.'
Kieron Fallon had a two-day stubble going beneath his almost black hair. His hair had been cut in the last week or less and complimented his tan skin. He sure was pretty. He had wide shoulders that tapered to a small waist, he was a shade over six feet tall and he had a smile that would light up a room. He had flashed it at me in greeting when he first walked over, and I almost had to grab the car to keep myself upright. He had the cutest dimples in his cheeks. Now he was walking away from me and I was looking at his muscular butt.
What is wrong with me?
I was behaving like a teenage girl, my hormones running unchecked. Had it really been that long since I got some? I did some mental maths and conceded that it had, in fact, been a while. It explained, to some extent, why I was drooling at the man-candy farmer.
At least that was what I was telling myself.
Kieron kept walking but turned his torso so he was looking back at me a few steps behind him. He slowed his pace so I could catch up but as he did so he pulled out his phone. ‘I will let Richard and Glen know that you are here. I doubt Glen will visit, but it would be wrong to assume.’ We had crossed the muddy apron of concrete that joined the farm buildings and were heading into a brick-built house that looked a hundred years old or more. The entrance door was low, Kieron had to duck as he went in. He had touched his phone and was speaking into it as I closed the door behind me.
He was talking to Glen, I had heard him say the name, but the conversation was brief. ‘Can I offer you a drink? Tea perhaps?’ He asked as he stuffed the phone into a back pocket.
‘Yes, thank you.’ Tea sounded good. It had been cooler out than I expected. It felt cooler here than it had in Rochester now that I thought about it. Was that normal? Was the countryside cooler than the city?
Kieron took a pace to the left and called through a doorway. A moment later, the yummy farmer’s wife appeared. I hadn’t noticed the ring on his finger, but it was obvious now that the heavily pregnant woman was waddling through the doorway and I remembered that he had mentioned his wife on the phone earlier.
‘Lara this is Amanda Harper. She will be investigating the recent problems for us.’ He said, his face still carrying the perfect smile that seemed to be permanent and his tone suggested that my arrival was the best thing ever.
‘Right.’ Mrs yummy farmer replied. ‘You hired a cute, busty blonde to catch an alien that is poisoning our livelihood and probably plans to steal my baby. Of course, you did.’ Clearly hiring me had not been her idea.
‘If we don’t solve this, love, there will be no farm.’ He chided gently. ‘Now be a love and make some tea, will you?’
She about-faced in the doorway and muttered something that sounded like it began with an F as she disappeared back through it.
Seemingly oblivious to his wife's mood, Kieron smiled brightly at me and indicated I should take a seat at the table and chairs arranged like a boardroom in what was a farmhouse dining-room setting.
‘Glen and Richard will be along soon. I doubt they will mind if I get started though.' He powered up a laptop. ‘I have some photographs to show you.' He said, swivelling the screen toward me. What I saw was pictures of crop circles taken from the viewpoint of someone standing inside them. Despite the close-up view, they could not be mistaken for something else. We talked about them until the tea arrived, Kieron's wife coming back through the same doorway with a mug in each hand just as two men and a lady came through the front door.
I recognised Glen and guessed correctly that the couple with him was Richard and his wife. She was introduced as Michelle and like Kieron's wife, she was pregnant, though not so far along.
‘I suppose more tea is required.’ Lara snipped as she went back out the kitchen door again. I wanted to feel sorry for her, but she was being a bit of a B**** in my opinion. I bleeped it out in my head because I didn’t want to think about how tough it might be to be pregnant.
Richard’s wife rushed after her, leaving the men to talk with me. I wasn’t sure what this said about the emancipation of the housewife, but it was probably not a good thing.
The men all shook hands like old friends and then first Glen and then Richard shook hands with me. Glen had recovered his composure and tried to apologise for being upset earlier. I think he realised that it was unnecessary as he was saying the words and he trailed off, apologised again and took a seat at the table.
I took a seat as well and handed out a business card to each man. Like Kieron, Richard was in his early thirties and attractive in a burly way. I wondered if the baby his wife carried would be their first.
‘I was just telling Amanda about the crop circles.’ Kieron told his colleagues. ‘It’s the milk we need to talk about though.’
I interrupted him. ‘If I may, I would like to learn some more about all of you and about your farms please.’ I had flipped my notepad open once more and had my pen poised. The three chaps looked at each other, each of them
waiting for someone to start speaking. ‘Do you want to go first, Kieron?’ I prompted.
‘Sure. Richard and I went to university together in Cambridge where we studied agriculture and business. We bought the farms six years ago when first one, then the other came up for sale. At the time, the third farm, that’s Larson Farm to the west, was owned and run by Sven Larson. Richard and I had a plan for a large cooperative of farms, but old Sven wasn’t interested. We set up between ourselves and were able to secure a contract with one of the major supermarket chains for the supply of milk. We had borrowed up to our eyeballs, so it was a relief to finally be making a profit I can tell you.’
‘Then Sven fell ill toward the end of last year and called us to say he was selling the farm and moving back to Sweden. We really wanted to buy it, the geography of it being so close to ours means that we can share manpower and equipment to achieve economy of scale with our overhead.’
Richard picked up the story, ‘By making our business lean we were able to compete with other suppliers to win the contract. With another farm also producing, we could start making a healthy return. That was the original business model Kieron and I had worked out while still at Uni.’
‘We couldn't afford the farm though.' Kieron said, taking over again. ‘The banks just wouldn't lend us any more despite the strength of our predicted figures. It was heartbreaking.'
‘So, we put out an advert.’ Said Richard. Next thing we knew, Glen and Tamara called us and the rest, as they say, is history.’
‘We bought the farm in January and moved here in February.’ Said Glen, joining in for the first time. ‘It was Tamara’s dream to live in the countryside.’
‘What did you do before this?’ I asked him.
‘I was a farmer in Kenya. Or rather, I grew up on a farm in Kenya, but it was confiscated under one of Mugabe’s land acts when I was twenty-three. My father suffered a heart attack and died six weeks after the farm was taken from him. It had been in his family for six generations. I think he died of sadness. Mother had died two years before that, so I left Kenya behind, disgusted that a ruler could do that to his people and came here. Like Kieron and Richard, I had to borrow a lot from the bank, but Tamara had money and she had a house in Knightsbridge which she sold. The money from that bought the farm and the loans covered the set-up costs to buy new equipment.’
Kieron started speaking again, ‘With the milk no longer fit for sale, we will be owned by the banks in a matter of a few weeks unless we can find out what is causing it.’
I checked my notes, trying to be methodical. ‘Tell me about your partners, please. Michelle and Lara. Where did you meet them, how long have you been married? That sort of thing.'
Kieron pointed to Richard so he would go first. ‘We met them at a bar in Rochester. Kieron and I had just been into the bank to discuss more funds and been rejected again. This was in December when the farm was up for sale. We had met with Glen about a week before that, so we were getting excited about what the next year would hold. Anyway, the bank had turned us down, so we were drowning our sorrows instead. Ten minutes later these two girls walked in, came and sat next to us at the bar and we hit it off straight away.'
‘Are you married?’ It seemed like fast work if they were, but I had already seen the ring on Kieron’s hand and could see one on Richard’s now.
‘I proposed when Lara fell pregnant. We set the date for May, but Michelle announced that she was pregnant in late April, so we changed it to a double wedding.’ He talked about it with great happiness I noted. If he was this happy, what was with his wife?
‘Tell me about the milk, please.’
‘What about the alien your wife saw last night?’ Asked Richard. ‘She called Michelle.’ Richard continued. ‘I had already gone up to bed. But I heard the phone call and heard Michelle go out. I didn’t think anything of it until she told me about it this morning. I figured she was checking on the livestock or something.’
Kieron started telling the tale from his aspect. Lara had gone to get the cat in, the first thing he knew about it was when she started screaming. He ran to the door in time to see the moonlight glint off something as it vanished into the dark field opposite the farmhouse. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he called the police because his wife was borderline hysterical.
The police took their sweet time in his words. However, they showed up eventually. Two of them in a squad car, a man and a woman. They took a statement but didn’t seem interested. When he found the footprint this morning, two different officers came. They seemed equally bored and detached, just going through the motions.
At that point, I interrupted to say, ‘I need to see the footprint. I want to get a cast of it.'
Kieron turned to look out the window. ‘It will get dark soon. It creeps up on us around here. We should go now.’ He stood and pushed back his chair. ‘Do you have a kit to make the cast?’
‘In my car.’
As we walked toward the door, the wives emerged from the kitchen again. Lara held four mugs of tea, two in each hand. ‘Where are you going?’ She demanded to know. ‘I just made tea. Because you bloody told me to.’ She snapped.
‘We won’t be a minute, love.’ Kieron said, his tone imploring her to stay calm. I slipped out the door as he went over to her. Making my way to my car I could hear a heated discussion coming from inside. Kieron was not doing well.
Directly across the yard from the farmhouse was the milking shed. It was very much the same design as the one at Glen's farm. To its left, was a field that now had crazy alien spotters hanging over its fence. Kieron caught up to Richard, Glen and me before we made it across the yard and led the way to the footprint.
‘Sorry about that.’ He said, referring to his wife’s outburst. ‘Late stages of pregnancy, everything’s hard now.’ No one said anything in reply.
The footprint was twice the size of mine and had been made by a boot, which is to say it was not the print of a bare foot. The boot though had three distinct toes, evenly spaced at the front and a fourth at the back. It was distinctly alien.
As I turned toward my car I said, ‘I'll get my kit.' From the fence, the alien spotters were calling out to let them see it. I wondered how they had heard about it in the first place. It was something I would need to ask.
The kit was something Tempest had at the office. It was plaster of paris in a measured quantity with the bottle that contained the correct amount of water required to make the powder into the gloop I required. It came with a disposable plastic beaker. I had watched forensics guys use the police-issue equivalent at crime scenes in the past but had never touched one myself. This was a cheap version, but it would do the trick.
By the time I got back to the guys, I had the mix in the beaker and ready to pour. It would only be enough for a thin layer as the footprint was so big. I just hoped it wouldn’t be so thin it broke when I took it out later.
While I poured the white mixture into the hole, I asked the chaps to begin telling me about the milk. Richard started by explaining how his farmhands had called him to his milking shed one morning. His milk was glowing. He had called Kieron and Glen over to his farm just so they could see it. It was so extraordinary. The milk was discarded. He was disappointed, but they thought nothing of it until it happened again the next day. Now it was a serious problem. They had called the older farm hands in and then they had called the local dairy cooperative administrator and then a representative from the farmer’s union and none of them had any explanation, even an outlandish one, for the softly glowing milk.
The milk had been ditched again and equipment cleaned again and the next day it had happened yet again. The day after that it was Glen’s milk as well and two days later all three of them were suffering.
Vets were called, the cattle inspected and given a clean bill of health. Their feed was discarded and replaced but nothing they did made any difference – the milk still came out of the cows with a luminescent green tinge.
‘I think we
have to sell.’ Glen said when Richard finished speaking. He was almost begging the other two. ‘If we quit now, we will still get a fair price. Hang on much longer and we will be in so much debt the banks will already own us.’
It was Kieron that responded first. ‘I’m not moving, Glen. I’m not quitting. I have made a home here. Lara has a baby coming and this is where our little boy or girl will be raised.’
‘Not if you go bankrupt first.’ Glen snapped back.
Richard was trying to keep the peace. 'He has a point, Kieron. I know you don't want to sell. But we might have no choice soon. If we default on our loans, what then?'
We got onto talking finance, because, according to Richard, they were weeks from going bankrupt. We had walked back to the farmhouse and taken our seats again. The two pregnant wives drifted back to join us but mostly kept quiet, whether through disinterest or through the knowledge that their opinion was not wanted I couldn't tell. It had been cool out and I really quite fancied a hot cup of tea but I was damned if I was going to ask for one as the last round had gone cold before we returned.
While I listened and asked questions, I also noticed an odd dynamic at the table. The two wives had made a point of avoiding sitting near to Glen. Was it racism I was witnessing? Did they just want to not be near the bereaved man? Once I had noticed something was amiss, I couldn't help but see it. They wouldn't look at him, and when he asked a question or raised a point, neither one would engage with him. The husbands seemed unaware or oblivious. I kept my mouth shut and watched. Maybe it would be important later.
Maybe it was nothing.
The conversation reached a natural lull. It was Lara that filled the void. ‘Tell her about the lights.’
I looked around the table at their faces. ‘What lights?’
Alien Quest. Wednesday, November 9th 1637hrs
After two hours, the sun was dipping, and the farmers were anxious to get on with daily tasks they had been putting off. Richard had already made his excuses and left a few minutes ago when it became clear we were wrapping up. I had several pages of notes but no clue what to do with them. There were no obvious leads, but there were a few persons of interest I could talk to. At Kieron's begging, I was going to get straight on it. He was by far the keenest of the three to engage my services. It felt like the other two would have dismissed me if they could but didn't want to argue with Kieron. I believed them though when they claimed to be going bankrupt. Oddly, no one talked about the death of Glen's wife this morning as if they did not consider it to be connected.