She picked her way over the snow-covered cobbles until she rounded the corner of the barn and saw his truck. It was a large, half-covered 4x4 with ‘Quantock Hills, Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ stencilled down the side and a white outline of a bird of prey. ‘They’re everywhere,’ she said, pointing to the bird.
‘You’d see more in the spring,’ he said, ‘but yes, there are a fair few.’
‘No, I meant the image,’ she said. ‘I noticed it on a few of the signposts.’
‘Sure, right,’ he said. ‘It’s a buzzard.’ He walked around and got into the truck. Jane pulled open her door and held on to a handle to haul herself up and into the cab. ‘Sorry about the smell,’ he said, laying the blanket he had been carrying on her seat. She couldn’t decide if it was for her benefit, or so she didn’t sit her wet and muddy arse on the seat. ‘Billy, one of the other rangers has had his dog in here . . . massive thing it is. He’s meant to ride in the back but he never does.’
‘Billy or the dog?’ Jane said, looking around. Grey hairs and mud covered the seat, the footwell, the dashboard and the windscreen. There didn’t appear to be a surface untouched. At least that answered one question: Barney had brought the blanket for her.
‘Should be both,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘You ready?’ He turned the key to start the engine. It took a few seconds, but then growled into life. She nodded as she decided where to rest her feet. ‘Let’s get going.’
As he pulled away Jane fastened her seatbelt and wedged one foot against the door and the other at the base of the gear stick so she could steady herself. However, as soon as he started over the uneven terrain she was sliding from side to side and back and forth in the seat. ‘So is this part of the national park?’ she asked as he swung the truck to the right and they headed off away from Fyne Court. There were pine trees to her right, hedgerow and rolling fields to her left. Barney changed gear and took a right. Jane frowned. Was this the way she had come? She couldn’t tell. All the lanes looked the same: narrow, single-track, high beech hedges either side, bare trees and the occasional glimpse of the fields and farmland beyond when they passed a gateway or reached the rise of a hill.
‘AONBs are different,’ he said. ‘They’re not national parks. They were formed after the national parks . . . they didn’t make the grade.’
‘Why not?’
‘Not remote enough. Not big enough,’ he said with a shrug. He was almost reclined in his seat, with only one hand on the wheel. He filled the space, but he appeared a lot more relaxed than she was.
‘How big is it?’
‘Ninety-nine square kilometres,’ he said. Jane tried to convert to miles in her head but couldn’t remember the formula. ‘Or thirty-nine square miles,’ he added, as if noticing her confusion.
‘Seems pretty big to me . . . and remote,’ she said. It was beginning to feel more remote by the minute. Other than the occasional telephone pole, there was little to no sign of habitation until he turned again and they were on a proper road. Jane relaxed her shoulders down an inch. To her right was bare woodland on a steep incline, dead leaves mulched on the ground dusted with snow. ‘Is this lower-lying?’ she asked.
‘Slightly,’ he said.
‘I felt like I went up and down a lot on the way here,’ she said.
‘The gradient changes a fair bit,’ he said. ‘Now we’re gonna be coming at the crash site from the opposite direction. Pip would have come up through Crowcombe, up the hill and over the top, dropping down to where she crashed.’
‘Can you take me back that way?’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’ll take a bit longer, but that’s no bother.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, wishing she hadn’t asked. Longer meant darker, and darker meant the nervous knot in her stomach getting tighter. Her mind kept drifting back to one of the tall tales her mother had told Peter this morning, about animals going missing. The farmer would count his livestock at dinner time, but by breakfast one or more would be gone, just scraps of wool or hair left behind – the animals never to be seen again. She cleared her throat. ‘So, I guess you must know the roads round here better than most.’
‘No more than the locals,’ he said, flicking the air vent nearest her open. ‘For your hands,’ he said, nodding at her frigid fingers in her lap.
‘Thanks.’ She held her hands up, grateful for the warmth.
‘Most folk round here know their way around.’
‘But you can go off-road?’ she said, pointing to the four-wheel-drive gear stick.
‘You’ll be hard-pushed to find people who don’t have four-wheel drive round this way,’ he said, ‘but me and the other rangers are the only ones allowed to go off-road, yes.’
‘But other people do?’ She took her notepad out of her jacket pocket, getting another whiff of the coat as she did so. She uncapped her pen. Maybe if she got her mind into work mode she might be able to ignore the little voice in her head.
‘If they want to . . . or need to, yes,’ he said. ‘We get people up here at the weekends or late at night on quads, motorbikes and all sorts.’
‘No one stops them?’
‘Who’s here to see?’ he said. She felt her shoulders creep up again. ‘No one’s here at night. My place is over in Doddington so I can get up here pretty quick, but who’s to know they’re up here? It isn’t ’til the next day that we see the damage.’
‘Damage?’
‘It’s young’uns mainly,’ he said. ‘They come up here to drink, smoke, take drugs . . . who knows?’ He shook his head. ‘They’d have to be on something, the stuff they get up to.’
‘Like?’
‘You name it,’ he said, his mouth pulled to one side. ‘They’ll nick anything that isn’t nailed down, and if they can’t nick it, then they tag it.’
‘Graffiti?’
‘Everywhere,’ he said with a sigh. ‘They’ve even done the animals once or twice. One time I came up here and there were a couple of sheep gamboling about with luminous green tags on their backs.’
‘They spray-painted sheep?’
‘Sure,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Give ’em half a chance and they’ll tag anything.’ He looked around, as if checking they were alone in the truck. ‘And you wouldn’t believe the stuff they leave up here,’ he said, his voice quiet. ‘A simple roll in the hay isn’t enough for these kids, I’m telling you.’ Jane was intrigued and repulsed in equal measure. ‘But the worst of it is the tracks they leave . . . tearing up the ground. Wouldn’t matter so much, but under the top layer of earth it’s peat, and it can’t recover the same. Graffiti I can get rid of, but once the peat gets damaged, that’s it . . . takes years to recover. But like I said – there’s no one here to stop ’em.’
‘So what do you actually do, then?’ she asked. She saw him flinch. ‘I mean, what’s your job description? What does a ranger do?’ She could see that she had offended him.
‘Anything and everything,’ he said, turning off the main road and back onto another narrow lane, the hedges coming in to meet them. Jane tensed, and held on to the side of the truck. ‘We keep an eye on the livestock . . . sheep, horses, et cetera. Talk to the farmers and deal with any issues they might have. We’ll get called out if a tree comes down over a roadway. I’ve got a chainsaw in the back,’ he said, gesturing over his shoulder.
‘Reassuring,’ she said with a nervous chuckle.
He turned to look at her, taking his eyes off the road. ‘You’re quite safe with me,’ he said.
‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘Chainsaw or no chainsaw, I’m not sure I could do much about it if you decided to do anything.’ She laughed again, but it felt forced. Her shoulders were now up around her ears.
He shrugged and turned back to the road. ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘I do a bit of everything, big jobs, little jobs, whatever.’
‘And who do you report to?’ She was trying to make notes, but so far she had only written down random words that meant nothing on their own.
‘N
o one,’ he said. ‘I mean, I’ve got a boss and everything, but I rarely see him.’
‘So who tells you what to do?’
‘No one,’ he said. ‘I sort myself out.’
‘How does anyone know what you’re doing? Or whether you’re working your hours?’
‘They don’t,’ he said, looking at her.
She shielded her page as she wrote ‘free reign’ next to the word ‘ranger’ and several question marks. There appeared to be a lot of trust involved in the job. As long as you had someone trustworthy, it was the perfect job for them and the boss. But what if they weren’t?
‘Here we are,’ he said, pulling the truck off the road and half into a ditch.
There was no crime scene tape, no officer waiting for them. It was just her, Barney, a whole lot of countryside and very little light. There was a cluster of signs on the left-hand side of the road: two warning triangles, one with a deer on it and the other letting drivers know about the upcoming cattle grid. Beneath them was an old-fashioned white sign outlined in black that read ‘Quantock Common’ beneath the now familiar bird of prey silhouette. Below that sign was another that read ‘Quantock Hills, Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’. Beyond the plethora of signage was the cattle grid. A hedge and, she assumed, fields to her left, and woodland to her right. There was a wooden five-bar gate to the right of the cattle grid. Jane couldn’t see where Pippa’s car had left the road. ‘Where . . . ?’
‘You’ll need to get out,’ Barney said. He opened his door and climbed down into the leaf-filled ditch. ‘This was cordoned off, but someone’s been up and nicked the tape – a souvenir, I s’pect.’
She opened her door and jumped down to the road, hit by the sudden rush of cold air. As she followed Barney up the hill, he pointed to his right. She had to step around him, given he was a wall of a man, and then she could see what he was showing her. On their side of the cattle grid, off to the right, there were clear scorch marks on the road surface. It looked as if someone had had a barbecue and then, once it was cleared away, all that was left were the marks where the fire had burnt through onto the ground. She noticed the skid marks leading up to the edge of the road, leading up to the tree. It was an oak. If she hugged it, her arms would cover maybe a third of its girth. The base of the trunk looked shredded; bits of bark ripped off and discarded, revealing the naked wood blackened by the fire. Scars cut into it from the bonnet and bumper as it made impact. She could even see where pieces of the windscreen had embedded in the bark, just above the main area that was damaged.
‘You should have seen the car,’ Barney said.
‘I saw photographs.’
‘You should have seen the car,’ he said again.
She looked up at him. His cheeks were pale against his beard. Maybe she wasn’t the only one to be a little freaked out. The reasons might be different, but the feeling was the same. ‘How soon after did you arrive on scene?’ she asked.
‘I got the call right after they called the Bridgwater guys,’ he said. ‘I came up hoping to . . . hoping I might be able to help, to help her, but then . . .’ He held his chin, stroking his beard. ‘But when I got here I realized it was over. It had been over for a good while.’
‘Was the fire completely out?’
He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’d had rain, sleet . . . not dissimilar to the weather now. The fire was out, but the car was still . . . smouldering.’
She touched his arm, pulling her hand back quicker than she intended when he flinched away from her. ‘I’ve been to my fair share of accidents, Barney,’ she said. ‘It takes a while to get over.’
‘I guess,’ he said, ‘but this wasn’t an accident, was it?’
Jane stopped. She couldn’t discuss the case with him. She was here to get information, not give it. ‘It’s too soon to—’
‘Don’t bother,’ he said, waving her words away. ‘You can’t talk about it, it’s fine. I know enough.’
She wanted to ask what he meant by that, but decided it could wait. ‘I’m going to have a look around,’ she said, walking up the road away from him. She was grateful when he didn’t follow.
Her breath billowed out in front of her. She looked back at the tree, the scorch marks and the tyre tracks on the road where Pippa had skidded, trying to stop her car’s progress towards the giant oak. It wasn’t hard to imagine what it must be like up here at night. The waning light was already giving everything a different, more sinister feel. She shivered. The shadows lengthened in the woods to her right, making it hard to distinguish where the trees ended and the forest floor began. She heard a rustling in the leaves somewhere off to her right and stopped, her spine rigid. There was no way she would come up here on her own.
She looked at the snow touching everything around her. A fresh blanket of snow should make the land look pure and clean, but here it was different. The bed of leaves broke through, creating dark cracks and furrows. On the other side of the road, farmland stretched away to what she guessed must be the Bristol Channel. The water looked black from up here. She could see a road cutting through the countryside, the lights of the vehicles blinking in the distance. It was a good few miles away. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a second, noticing the smell of the earth, a combination of moisture, peat and foliage. She turned and looked further up the road, away from the crash site. There was a bend to the right, a signpost and a gateway.
‘That’s Walford’s Gibbet,’ Barney said.
‘Jesus,’ she said, almost losing control of her bladder. ‘You’ve got to stop doing that.’
‘Sorry.’
‘For a big guy you don’t make a lot of noise, do you?’ His mouth turned down at the edges. His eyes were dark, darker than his hair.
‘Let me show you,’ he said, ignoring her comment and walking up the hill, gesturing for her to follow. She couldn’t help but keep her distance. She knew she was being pathetic, but the darker it got, the more vulnerable she was beginning to feel. She was in the middle of nowhere with a six-foot-seven, beardy-weirdy ranger. At least, she hoped he was a ranger. She had never even checked. He could be anyone. He could have told her anything. She rolled her eyes at her own hysteria.
‘This is Walford’s Gibbet,’ Barney said, pointing to a wooden marker post. The name was carved in capital letters running the length of the pole. The letters had been painted a snooker-ball green.
‘What is it?’ she asked, forcing herself to take a step towards him.
‘This is where they hanged him.’
As he spoke, a branch cracked behind her. She whirled around, her pulse quickening. She felt sick. Barney just looked at her as she took a deep breath, waiting for her heart to steady.
‘Hung who?’
‘John Walford. He murdered his missus, back in 1789. He was hanged, and then they put his body in a gibbet . . . a metal cage,’ he said, ‘and left him here for a year as a warning to others.’
‘Some warning,’ she said, looking around her. ‘Why did he kill his wife?’
‘She drank too much, spent his money and kept getting pregnant,’ he said with a shrug.
‘Blimey,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t a very tolerant husband, then.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I suppose not. He left her body near here . . . over that way, in Dead Woman’s Ditch.’
‘They called it that? Seriously?’
‘It was called that before he killed her.’
‘Odd,’ she said, frowning. ‘So why’s it called Dead Woman’s Ditch, then?’ she asked, resisting the shiver that was hovering at the base of her neck.
He shrugged. ‘No one knows. They think it . . . hang on, let me show you.’ He started off back down the hill. ‘It’s about time we got back, anyway,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m bloody freezing.’
If Barney was cold, then Jane must have gone hypothermic and not realized it. She jogged after him, grateful to climb back into the relative warmth of his truck, grateful they were leaving. It wa
s almost dark now.
‘I’ll show you Pip’s trip in reverse, so to speak,’ he said. ‘And I can show you the ditch at the same time.’
‘Great,’ she said, thinking that ‘great’ was the wrong word on both counts. In this light they weren’t going to see much anyway. She should send Peter up here – bit of tinsel and a few strings of fairy lights, and he would have this place sorted. What she wouldn’t give for a bit of illumination and Christmas cheer.
Barney started up the truck and pulled over the cattle grid. Jane glanced back at the crash site. So little evidence from something so horrendous. They passed Walford’s Gibbet and rounded the bend. ‘What’s this wood here?’ she asked.
‘That’s Shervage,’ he said.
Almost as he spoke, the wood seemed to retreat behind them and they were on open heathland, the snow taking on the appearance of icing sugar dusting the landscape. It was like something out of Wuthering Heights: undulating grassland interspersed with pockets of earth where animals had burrowed. There were sheep grazing, although from what Jane could see they had bugger all to eat. There was the occasional tree, stunted and wizened, blown into submission by the crosswinds that must buffet this place. The road cut right through the centre, with an occasional pull-in for drivers to pass each other. She saw a brown smear in the distance.
‘That’s the main car park up here on the Common,’ he said, pointing to what she was looking at.
‘A real thoroughfare,’ she said. They had been up here for about thirty minutes and she had not seen another soul; not a car, not a walker, no one. All she had for company was Barney and the sheep.
He pulled the truck off to one side as they approached more woodland to their left. The trees here were twisted and short; their trunks white like silver birches, and peeling. ‘Locals call that the Petrified Forest,’ he said.
‘I can see why,’ she said. ‘Is anywhere around here called something normal? Something not out of a horror film?’
The Night Stalker (Detective Jane Bennett and Mike Lockyer series Book 4) Page 10