Best Served Cold
David J. Gatward
Weirdstone Publishing
Best Served Cold
by
David J. Gatward
Copyright © 2020 by David J. Gatward
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Author’s Note
Untitled
About David J. Gatward
Also by David J. Gatward
To Mum and Dad
Grimm: nickname for a dour and forbidding individual, from Old High German grim [meaning] ‘stern’, ‘severe’.
From a Germanic personal name, grima, [meaning] ‘mask’.
(www.ancestory.co.uk)
Chapter One
John ‘Beef’ Capstick had the temper of a bull with a sore head and the build and face to match. He was the kind of farmer all the others avoided, and who took pride in the fact that they did.
Living out beyond Gayle at the upper end of Wensleydale, deep in the shadow of Dodd Fell, John ran the farm which had been left to him by his less than dear old dad over a decade ago. Drowning in debt, and yet somehow managing to stay just outside the clutches of the bank, John hated his life but knew nothing else. The farm’s tumbledown house, and its surrounding outbuildings, stood grey and dark, as though forever damp and dejected, crumbling slowly into the earth, dying a slow death born not only of neglect but good, honest meanness. They reflected John’s life daily and he’d long ago decided to do nothing to change it.
None of this was John’s fault though, or at least that was what he told himself, and anyone within earshot, piling the blame onto his father, shouting at the ghost of a man he’d grown up hating, and yet never been brave nor courageous enough to stand up to or just simply move away from. But this was the dales so where the hell was he supposed to have moved away to anyway? He’d grown up on the farm, knew nothing else but farming, and his blood was in the soil in more ways than most, spilt not just from thorn and nail and angry hoof, but the hard slap of a calloused hand across the face, a leather belt across the back of his legs, a thrown rock or branch.
The wounds on the outside healed, but the ones inside just festered, and John grew up to be a moody child, an angry teenager, and finally a rage-filled adult. He never wondered what his mum would’ve thought of the man her baby had become, because he’d never known her, and that was the one thing his dad had reminded him of daily.
‘You killed her, lad, you hear? Took her from me the day you were born! And nowt good’s come about from having you instead of her, that’s for sure. Should’ve been you, not her, you hear? Not her!’
Lad was about as close to calling him by a name as his dad ever got, though usually he went with something more coarse, spitting the words at him like bullets as he ordered his son out onto the farm to work in all weathers, one hand cracking him hard across the back of the head, the other holding the bottle he loved more than his own flesh and blood. And the worse the weather was the harder his father had driven him, hoofing John out into the thickest snow and the hardest rain, never caring as to whether his only son was actually kitted out well enough to not come back half drowned or frozen to death or, on the sunnier days, burned to the bone.
John had ended up being called Beef at school, not just because everyone had a nickname, nor indeed because of how he’d seemed to grow at twice the rate of his peers, but because that was usually all he had ever had for lunch. But it was never the good stuff, just a few slabs of corned beef from a tin, dropped in a Tupperware box, with a couple of slices of bread. He had to prepare it himself after all, and if he took anything else, his dad would get angry, call him a thief, belt him one.
Unable to take his frustrations out on his dad, a man whose arms were corded with thick twists of muscle, and whom he’d once seen punch a cow in the head just to get it to move out of the way, John looked to easier targets.
The dogs chained in the yard soon realised that the boy from the house had sharper toes than the man and they would avoid him, baring their teeth and more than willing to sink them into him if he got too close. But sheep and their lambs, the few cattle in the lower field, the chickens, they got the brunt of it. And so did the kids at school.
Bullying had come to John as naturally as breathing. But then in his father he’d had the best teacher he could have ever asked for. John was bigger than most, and they all teased him because of his clothes, and the stink that followed him from the farm to the classroom. He wasn’t the only farmer’s kid by any stretch, but he was the only one who had reeked to high heaven of it. And kids were cruel, but he was crueller, and some, to protect themselves, lined up behind him, if only to be out of the way of his fists.
If happy days had ever truly existed for John, then those days at school had been as close to such as he could ever imagine, prowling the playground with his little gang of warriors, picking on anyone and everyone, taunting people and teasing them. Making sure they were always scared. And they were, because he had tales to tell of the things he had done on his farm, terrible things that would churn the stomach of anyone unfortunate enough to be close enough to listen. Some of the stories were true, others not so much, but the effect was the same, and John relished the power it gave him. Horror stories were his currency, and he was generous.
Then school came to an end, people grew up, and what John gave out came back tenfold. Because those kids in the playground pushed too far often grow into adults who just won’t put up with it any more. Not that John cared, because out on the farm he was still the biggest and the meanest, and he had enough targets on which to take out his frustrations. And those who had hid behind him, they’d continued to do so, together keeping their own little underground economy going, never concerning themselves with what folk thought, happy to screw over another if it meant easy money, cheap booze, and a laugh at someone else’s expense.
And now, years later, the fact that it was the weekend meant nothing to John; it was not a thing to celebrate. The heat from the July sun was just something else to swear at, days off were a luxury he’d never known, and the only respite would be the homebrew he drank most evenings while watching television. It wasn’t the best of lives, but it was his life and the only one he knew how to live.
John was up early, like every other day regardless of how hungover he felt. Kicking open the back door to stare at the yard in front of him gave him no sense of worth, just a deadness deep inside which sunk deeper by the day, a lead weight out
of view stretching down and down into the darkness of himself.
The yard itself was a mess and a faint mist hung in the air stinking of rot and decay. It was a rich smell, and sweet, and it reached into John’s throat and made him cough. So he spat it out, dark green phlegm spattering in the mud.
Against the wall of one of the outbuildings, a coil of barbed wire had somehow managed to spring itself open and now sat in a pile of shit-covered straw John hadn’t bothered to clean up for months.
A tractor rusted in the corner, a couple of sorry-looking hens roosting on it, staring their tiny, cold black eyes at him with a meanness John had always suspected hens harboured deep down in their souls. They were evil birds, he was sure of it, and he hated them.
Pulling on his worn and tired wellington boots, which were covered in a painful rash of patches usually used on bike inner tubes, John kicked a stone up and out from the muck in front of him, grabbed it, and hurled it at the birds. They had already moved by the time it arrived to clatter against the tractor, and John swore, wishing he’d hit one, but glad that he hadn’t, because buying more hens was something he could be doing without. Unless of course La’ll – little – Nick, had managed to nab a few from down the dale. He was good at that was La’ll Nick, being a sneaky little bastard with the build of a starved pixie. And down dale too many town houses with a couple of chickens in their gardens had lost birds to his deft hands.
John chuckled to himself, the act of it causing him to cough. He’d bumped into Nick the day before during a trip into Hawes. Nick had managed to pass on to Harry a few crates of beer he’d nabbed from a delivery truck he’d seen outside a pub a few weeks ago. He’d waited for the usual noise about it to die down, then called John and said he had some going spare. Good stuff, too, and John had enjoyed far too many of them the previous night. But free booze was there to be enjoyed, wasn’t it? And he couldn’t help but enjoy it more knowing that someone else had paid for it.
The rest of the yard was a confused mess of half empty fertiliser bags, orange bailer twine, farming implements, and broken fencing. But John didn’t see any of it because it had never looked any different and it was all that he had ever known. So he strode out from the house and into the day, wiping his nose on the back of his left hand still grubby from the day before, remembering halfway across the yard that the task he’d set for himself was to take the one working tractor on the farm, hitch a trailer to it, then drive up into the steep fields on the fell behind the house and bring in the hay bales he’d done the week before. There had been rain since, so they were probably ruined, but John didn’t really care. The animals would eat the hay or starve.
Turning back to the house, John quickly grabbed himself a half-eaten pie from the fridge, filled a grubby old lemonade bottle with water, then headed back outside. Which was when an arm hooked itself around his neck, a kick to the back of his knees took his legs out from under him, and John found himself on suspended in the air just enough to start choking. He struggled against the vice-like grip under his chin, his hands clawing uselessly at the arm which had him. Violent swearing and curses, threaded with saliva, caught in his throat, then his vision grew fuzzy, his head started to swim, and a few seconds later his world fell to a thick darkness.
When John came to, he was on his back and staring up at a blurry sky. He tried to move but seemed to be stuck hard under something. As his vision cleared, he discovered then that he was lying on grass, his body jammed under the wheel of his own double-axle trailer. Then pain hit him, and he realised that not only was he jammed, but that his right arm, which was stuck fully under the wheel of the trailer, was clearly broken.
What the hell had happened? Why couldn’t he remember driving up into the field? After all, that had been his plan, but he had no recollection of it, just the farmyard, a tightness round his throat, a suffocating darkness . . .
A hot stab of pain from his arm shot through John’s body and he roared, swore, and tried to free himself, but it was no good. His arm was stuck fast and, by the look of it, crushed flat.
John looked to his left and saw the rear of his old tractor, a David Brown with little if any of its original white paint showing thanks to years of rust.
He had to do something, get out from under the trailer, get to the doctors, John thought. Farm accidents were more common than most people realised, and he’d been pretty lucky down the years, unlike a fair few folk in the dales. Tragic tales all of them, with families mourning for years after.
A shadow revealed itself from behind the rear wheels of the tractor.
John stared up at it, brow furrowed as a field ploughed deep, confusion ripping a bloody tear through his mind.
‘What the bloody hell . . .?’
John’s words caught in his throat not because of what was in front of him now, but who was in front of him. Well, it just didn’t make any sense. And there was something odd about this shadow’s face, like there was paint on it, but perhaps that was just the early morning sun pricking his eyes.
The shadow said nothing, just stared down at John from behind narrow, mean eyes set in a face laced with beads of sweat, which rolled earthward like spilled diamonds.
John continued to stare, unable to find the words he needed. And when he eventually did, his voice was a thing cracked with panic.
‘Well don’t just stand there doin’ nowt!’ John spat, tugging at his arm, trying to roll away. ‘Get me out of here! Come on! Help me! Do something!’
The shadow cocked its head to one side, stared just a little longer at John as his swearing grew louder and more panic-fuelled, then turned back to the tractor and disappeared from view.
‘Hey! I was talking to you!’ John called out. ‘My bloody arm’s broken! Get me out of here!’
A creaking, ratcheting sound clanked from the tractor and John’s voice snapped in two. He recognised it all too well: a hand-break being released.
For a moment nothing happened. John lay in the grass, his arm in agony, his body trapped. The tractor sat motionless, the trailer waiting expectantly behind it. The sun burned down and the air, John noticed, was rich and sweet with the scent of cut grass, the aroma of summer burning its way to a still distant autumn. Sheep called to each other on the fells around him. It was, in many ways, a beautiful dales day, the kind that at points in his life had almost made John feel that being alive wasn’t too bad after all.
When gravity took hold of the tractor, John’s scream tore through the air, scattering a flock of pigeons resting just away from him in a tree sat in the middle of the field. The first trailer wheel rolled painful slow over his arm and then onto his chest, crushing the life out of him as shattered ribs burst through his lungs, blood spraying out of his mouth, his nose. The second trailer wheel, thanks to the tractor veering to the right just a little, came at John’s head. Not that he saw it, or perhaps he did, not that anyone would ever know. It eased itself over his skull, just above his jaw, flattening bone and brain, and sending the dying memories of a troubled, broken, mean-spirited man to bleed into the soil for one final time.
Far off, the sheep continued to call, as a killer carried out one final task before heading home in the sunshine.
Chapter Two
DCI Harry Grimm, having been in the dales for just over three weeks now, was, quite to his own amazement – and his body’s very apparent, noisy and painful disapproval – out on a run. And on a Monday of all days. What the hell was wrong with him?
There were better ways to start the week Harry was sure, but here he was, out in the cool early morning air, blowing like a dying steam train, the heat already burning up his face from the exertion.
Harry could count numerous reasons for him being out to pound the lanes, from needing to wake up after a bad night’s sleep, to giving himself something else to focus on beyond being a police officer, but the main reason, the one which really pushed his sagging, wobbly arse out of his bed and into the day, was that he was pretty sure he was on his way to being a bi
t of a fat bastard.
After waking early that morning, and having decided a couple of weeks back that if he was going to be in the dales for a while, then he was going to make the most of it. He’d also been enthusiastically pushed into getting back into shape by Jenny Blades, one of the local detective constables, a young woman who was as fit as a mountain goat. She’d even helped him pick out a new pair of trainers. And every time he’d worn them since, Harry had felt rather like an aging pensioner in a new sportscar; they were too bright, too shiny, and promised speed he was pretty damned sure he would never achieve, and if he did, well it would be horrendously dangerous and undoubtedly end in calamity, blood and broken bones.
The morning was gun-metal grey, and despite the promise of sun later in the day, the early hours were working well to give an entirely different impression. The air was cool and moist and stung a little against the back of Harry’s throat as he sucked it down into his lungs. Graceful his running style was not, of that he was very sure, but he was out and moving and that meant he was at the very least going further than if he was just sat on his bed back in the hotel eating biscuits for no reason other than the fact that there were there.
Best Served Cold: A DCI Harry Grimm Novel Page 1