by Helen Peters
Where were the police? It was so frustrating that Jasmine thought she might explode. The poor sheep had been bundled into a lorry and carted off to who knew where, and she and Dad were just standing in an empty field, waiting.
She couldn’t get the image out of her head of poor little Lucky and all the other ewes and lambs, crammed into a lorry by a gang of criminals and hurtled around the countryside, thrown against the sides of the vehicle as it sped around corners, their poor hooves skidding about on the metal floor.
What if they were injured? They might break their legs. It was all too horrible to think about, yet she couldn’t seem to stop.
She paced up and down the verge. Vehicles went by on the main road in the distance, but not a single one came up the lane.
Eventually she saw headlights turn off the main road, and a police car approached, driving very fast.
“Finally,” she said, turning to Dad. “They’re here.”
Dad shook his head as though he was waking up from a trance. The car stopped in the gateway and he walked stiffly across to it.
Two police officers got out, a man and a woman. They introduced themselves as PC Lambert and PC Blake, and then they started asking Dad questions. He answered slowly, and Jasmine had to prompt him on some of the answers. The woman wrote things down on a clipboard. They asked a lot of details that seemed completely irrelevant to Jasmine. Why weren’t they just trying to catch the thieves and rescue the sheep?
When Dad told them that it was Jasmine who had seen the lorry, they questioned her too. Then they walked away a few paces and held a muttered conversation. PC Lambert went back to the police car and made a phone call. PC Blake walked over to Jasmine and Dad. She looked very serious.
“Obviously we don’t know yet who stole your sheep,” she said, “but one possibility is that they might have taken them to an illegal slaughterhouse.”
Dad clutched the gatepost. Jasmine stared at her in blank horror. An illegal slaughterhouse?
“We’ve had our suspicions for a while about a place over in Liston,” PC Blake said. “We suspect that, as well as their legal operations, they’ve been accepting stolen animals and selling the meat illegally. We don’t have enough evidence for an arrest yet, but this is the largest group of animals to have been taken in this area, and we’re not too far from Liston. It’s a distinct possibility that that’s where they’re headed.”
Dad found his voice. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go after them.”
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” said PC Blake. “My colleague is calling for back-up and another car will meet us there.”
“Good,” said Dad. “Let’s get going, then.” He strode to his truck and opened the driver’s door.
PC Blake held up her palm. “My colleagues and I will handle this,” she said. “We’ll keep you updated as soon as there’s anything to report.”
Dad laughed in disbelief. “You tell me my sheep are about to be slaughtered by a criminal gang and then you tell me to go back home to bed? I’m sorry, PC Blake, but I’m heading straight over to that abattoir. Come on, Jasmine.”
“Mr Green, if this is a criminal gang, they could be highly dangerous. You and your daughter need to go straight home and not hinder the investigation. We’ll keep you fully informed.”
She walked over to the car and opened the passenger door.
“But if you do find sheep there,” said Jasmine, “how will you know if they’re ours?”
“If we find any sheep,” said PC Blake, “we’ll call you to come and identify them.”
“But Liston’s at least an hour’s drive away,” said Dad. “A fat lot of good it will be if you call us in an hour’s time and it takes us an hour to drive to Liston and then the sheep you’ve found aren’t ours. Our sheep could be a hundred miles away by then.”
And they could be dead, thought Jasmine.
“I’m sorry,” said PC Blake, “but this could be an extremely dangerous operation and it needs to be handled by trained police officers. I must ask you to go home and not obstruct police business. We’ll be in touch as soon as we have anything to report.”
She got into the passenger seat and shut the door. PC Lambert backed the car out of the gateway. The engine noise faded into the distance and the lane was silent again.
Jasmine turned to her father. “Come on, Dad. Let’s go.”
“I’m not going home,” said Dad. “Not while my sheep are being driven around the countryside by criminals.”
“I wasn’t talking about going home,” said Jasmine. “The police can’t stop you driving around in your own truck, can they? So let’s go and find our sheep.”
Organised and Ruthless
It was only after they had been driving for half an hour that a question occurred to Jasmine.
“Do you actually know where you’re going, Dad? They didn’t say where in Liston the place was, did they?”
“There’s a farm on the outskirts,” said Dad, “with a couple of industrial units. There have been rumours for a while that there’s something dodgy going on there. I’m pretty sure that’s the place they’re talking about.”
After what seemed like hours, he pulled over on a grass verge just outside a gateway that led to a farm track.
“Is this it?” asked Jasmine.
“Yes.” He turned off the engine.
Jasmine frowned. “Why have you stopped? Why aren’t we going up the track?”
Dad gave her a serious look. “Listen, Jas, the police were right about one thing. People who steal an entire flock of sheep like that in the middle of the night – they’re not going to be nice people and it’s not going to be the first time they’ve done this. They’ll be organised and ruthless. So we’re going to let the police handle them. As soon as they phone and say they’ve found the sheep, we can be in that farmyard in two minutes, instead of the hour it would take if we had to set off from home. That’s why we’re here, OK?”
Jasmine sighed. “OK.”
But she couldn’t stop worrying. What if their sheep weren’t here at all? What if they were on their way to an illegal slaughterhouse at the other end of the country? What if she never saw Lucky again?
Jasmine felt sick.
“Can I open the window, Dad? I need some air.”
Dad turned the engine on so she could wind down the window. She leaned out and took a deep breath.
“Ugh. Look at that litter. Disgusting.”
Someone had thrown a whole load of rubbish into the hedge. There were drinks cans, crisp packets, paper bags and sandwich wrappings lying on the ground.
“How can people do that?” she said. “Why don’t they just put it in a bin?”
Then she spotted something amongst the litter. A small piece of yellow plastic. Her stomach churned. An ear tag.
She opened the door and scrambled out of the truck. From the direction of the farmyard came distant sounds of shouting, banging and clattering. Suddenly she was worried about the police officers. What if the sheep rustlers were armed?
“Jasmine?” said Dad. “What are you doing? Get back in. Now.”
Jasmine picked up the piece of plastic and got back in. She held it out to Dad. His eyes widened and he snatched it from her. He turned on the light above his seat and looked at the numbers on the tag. Then he swore under his breath. Jasmine felt the contents of her stomach turn to water. She didn’t need to ask him whether the tag belonged to one of their sheep.
“That’s what they did in Yorkshire, isn’t it?” she said. “It said so in the Farmers Weekly. They took off all the ear tags and threw them away, to stop the sheep being identified.”
“Well, I don’t know what the police are playing at,” said Dad, “but I’m not staying here while my sheep are being slaughtered at the end of that track.” He reached for the ignition key.
“Wait a second,” said Jasmine. “I bet the other tags are here, too.”
She jumped out of the cab and began to rummage in
the rubbish. Sky leapt out too, and started lapping water from the ditch that ran under the hedge.
“Get back in,” called Dad. “Let’s go up there. That tag will be enough to prove they’re ours.”
Jasmine was about to get back in when she caught a glimpse of something orange in a patch of stinging nettles. She reached into the nettles, feeling the stings prick her hands and wrists.
She pulled out a supermarket carrier bag. The handles were tied in a double knot. Jasmine ripped a hole in the bag.
It was full of ear tags.
She took one out and handed it through the window to Dad. He read the number.
“That’s ours,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Suddenly, Sky started to bark.
“Ssh, Sky,” said Jasmine, stuffing the bag into her coat pocket. “Be quiet.”
Sky continued to bark. He was standing in the gateway, looking up the farm track.
“What is it?” she said. She walked over to see what he was barking at. It was a long track, and you couldn’t even see the farmyard.
Then she froze.
In the dim moonlight, she could just make out the silhouette of a man, running down the track towards them.
“Dad,” she hissed. “Someone’s coming.”
Dad leapt out of the truck and sprinted to the gateway. “Get in the truck!” he hissed.
But Jasmine stayed rooted to the spot. Sky was barking frantically now. The man glanced around, as if looking for a gap in the hedge.
Dad raced towards him. Sky bounded after Dad and Jasmine followed them. The man turned and started sprinting back towards the farmyard. Sky ran in front of him, and he tripped and fell. He swore and cried out in pain.
Something fell out of his pocket.
A gun.
He reached out to grab it but Dad dropped to his knees and pinned the man to the ground.
“Don’t touch that gun,” he said to Jasmine, in a calm, steady voice. “Now get my phone from the truck and call the police.”
Jasmine walked over to the truck, her heart beating very fast. She’d never seen a handgun before, and it was terrifying to be so close to a live weapon.
The man swore at Dad and tried to get up, but Dad kept him firmly pinned to the ground, face down on the rough track. Sky stood in front of his face, baring his teeth and growling.
Jasmine called the police as she walked back to Dad. The man was kicking out, but his legs just kicked the air. He tried to free his arms again, but Dad kept hold of them. Sky stayed in position, growling softly.
Suddenly, Jasmine had an idea. She ran to the truck and took out a length of baler twine. Then she ran back to Dad.
“We can tie his wrists together behind his back,” she said. “Like handcuffs.”
“Get off me,” snarled the man, “or I’ll sue you for assault.”
“Really?” said Dad. “Will that be before or after you go to jail?”
And then, around the corner of the track from the direction of the farmyard, appeared a police car. It braked just in front of them and three officers jumped out. PC Blake held a pair of handcuffs. Two of them took an arm each and handcuffed the man’s arms behind his back. PC Blake started telling him he was under arrest.
“Enough about him,” said Dad. “Just tell me what’s happening to my sheep.”
He’ll Come Running
“We caught the others in the farmyard,” PC Blake told Dad and Jasmine, once the other two officers had retrieved the gun and taken the man off to the police station, “but this one managed to get away. Well done, you two, for stopping him.”
“It was Sky, really,” said Jasmine. “He tripped him over. Can he have a medal?”
The policewoman laughed, which Jasmine found rather insulting.
“We raided the slaughterhouse,” said PC Blake, “and arrested several men who were waiting to slaughter the sheep.”
“Where are the sheep?” asked Dad. “Are they safe?”
“Safe and sound,” said PC Blake. “Only just, though. They’d been put in a holding yard. We got here in the nick of time.”
Dad rested his hand heavily on Jasmine’s shoulder. “Thank goodness you woke up and saw that lorry, or we’d have lost them all. Let’s get them home.”
“Wait a second,” said PC Blake. “It’s not quite as simple as that.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve had a call from a man who says he farms over at Bellingham. He claims to have lost a flock of Southdown sheep tonight. He thinks these sheep are his.”
Cold dread clutched at Jasmine’s stomach. If the sheep on this farm weren’t theirs, then where were their sheep? And what was happening to them?
“What do you mean?” said Dad. “What bloke at Bellingham?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t give you his name.”
“I don’t know anyone at Bellingham with a flock of Southdowns,” said Dad. “Show us these sheep and I’ll tell you straightaway whether they’re mine.”
“I’m afraid we can’t just go on your word,” said PC Blake. “We’re going to need proof before we can return them to you.”
“We’ve got proof,” said Jasmine. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the bag of ear tags. “We found these on the verge. The thieves must have taken them off in the back of the lorry and thrown them away. They’re definitely from our sheep. Dad knows the numbers.”
PC Blake looked impressed. “Nice work,” she said, taking the bag. “We can do all the checks to make sure these are your ear tags. But since the tags aren’t actually on the sheep any more, it would help right now if you had another way of proving that the sheep are yours. Do you have any other means of identification?”
“I’ve got loads of photos,” said Jasmine, “but my camera’s at home.”
Dad had been frowning in silent thought. Now he said, “I’m absolutely certain there’s no one at Bellingham with a flock of Southdowns this size. That bloke who phoned you must be tied in with the gang who took our sheep.”
Jasmine’s mouth fell open as she realised what he was saying. “Yes! When they got caught, one of them sent him a message, and then he phoned and pretended the sheep were his.”
“That is a possibility, of course,” said PC Blake, “and we’ll obviously check his claims, but this will all take time. Are you sure you don’t have any other way of identifying the sheep?”
“Yes!” cried Jasmine, kicking herself for not thinking of this before. “If you take us to them, I can prove right now that those sheep are ours.”
“Really?” said PC Blake. “How’s that?”
“My pet lamb is in that flock. He’ll come running to me when I call him. And he has a very special way of running.”
“Come on,” said Dad. “Let’s head up to the yard.”
“I have to warn you, they’re not being kept in very nice conditions,” said PC Blake.
“All the more important that we get them home quickly, then. Let’s go.”
They bumped up the track to the derelict farmyard, bordered by tumbledown buildings. Dad parked the truck and they jumped out, landing in a squelch of dung and mud.
PC Blake didn’t need to tell them where the sheep were. They could hear the baas and bleats across the mucky yard.
As they drew closer, Jasmine began to make out the dim shapes of a huddled mass of sheep, crammed together in a filthy pen on the other side of the yard.
“Lucky!” she called. “Lucky!”
The sheep set up a deafening din of baas and bleats. Jasmine called Lucky again, but he didn’t appear. Maybe he was crammed in so tightly that he couldn’t push his way through.
“Lucky!” she called. “Come here, Lucky!”
And then, through all the other sheep voices, she heard it. Lucky’s high-pitched little bleat. She would have recognised it anywhere.
There he was, pushing, ducking and weaving his way through the flock. He propelled himself through the bars and raced towards Jasmine, running on his front
legs and jumping on his back legs. Jasmine crouched down in the stinking mess, gathered him into her arms and hugged him tightly. Lucky bleated and sucked the collar of her coat.
Jasmine turned to PC Blake with tears in her eyes.
“This is my lamb,” she said. “This is Lucky.”
A Very Lucky Lamb
By the time Jasmine finally got to bed, it was already light. She slept until the early afternoon. When she came downstairs, Manu bombarded her with questions about the police and the man with the gun.
“I wish I’d been there,” he said. “I would have karate-chopped all those men and knocked their guns out of their hands and the guns would have flown up into the air and then I’d have caught the guns and shot all the men, bang bang bang, right through their heads.”
The doorbell rang. “That’ll be Tom,” said Jasmine.
“You’d better let him in, then,” said Mum. “I expect you’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Once Tom had heard all the details and got over the shock (helped by several chocolate biscuits), he and Jasmine went out to see the lambs. Tom had an old football tucked under his arm. “I thought the lambs might like it,” he said.
Dad had put the sheep in the closest field to the farmyard, right next to the barn. “It’s not the best grass,” he’d said, “but I’d rather have them nearby at the moment.”
Tom climbed over the electric fence and kicked the ball towards a group of lambs. One of the bolder ones galloped up and started dribbling it across the field with his head. The others ran, skipped, hopped and jumped behind him, throwing their back legs into the air in joyful, crazy leaps.
The leader stopped, and the other lambs gathered around the ball, sniffing it curiously. One of them nudged another with his head, and they started to play fight. Then Lucky began to dribble the ball, and the others all set off in happy pursuit.