by Joe McNally
‘Can you remember when you last saw him?’
‘I haven’t seen him since before Cheltenham.’ She sulked.
‘And he hasn’t phoned?’
She stared at me, weighing things up. Finally she said, ‘He phoned two days ago.’
‘From where?’ I asked.
‘Fuck ‘em Farm?’ She waited for my reaction.
‘Not a place I’m familiar with.’ I said
‘You sure? Never been to an orgy or anything there with your mate Alan?’ She was getting angry.
‘Priscilla, I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. What did Alan say?’
She stared at me. ‘He said, “Help me, Priss, I’m at Fuck ‘em farm.” Then I heard him laughing and hung up on the bastard.’
‘You sure he was laughing?’
She was glaring now, maybe at the memory or at me questioning her interpretation of the call. She leaned toward me aggressively. ‘Listen, he was screeching with laughter. Fuck ‘em farm! Big joke, eh? He always thought practical jokes were funny. I never did and that just egged him on with his piss-taking.’
‘Why would he be laughing after asking you for help?’
‘I’m telling you! That’s what it sounded like to me. He was always taking the piss. Probably in bed with some bitch and thought he’d have a laugh at my expense.’
‘Supposing he was in trouble?’
She looked uncomfortable. ‘What kind of trouble?’
‘I don’t know. You said he was screeching?’
‘He was ... It sounded, well you know that high-pitched kind of ...’
‘Did he sound scared?’
She hesitated then said, ‘I suppose, if I didn’t know what he could be like, I’d have taken it as sounding scared.’ Her look hardened again. She said, ‘Is this something to do with this deal you’re in with him? Has it got him in trouble?’
‘It can’t have done,’ I said, ‘it’s a straightforward, upfront property deal. All above board.’
‘He never did anything straightforward in his life.’ She said, slugging down the rest of her drink. I pointed to her glass. ‘Same again?’ I asked. She pushed the glass away. ‘No, thanks.’
‘Did Alan talk much about his job with Basil Roscoe?’
‘I think you’re not understanding our relationship Mister Malloy. I didn’t give a toss about his job with Roscoe so I never asked about it.’
‘And he didn’t say anything about it?’
‘If he did, he’d have got the rubber ear from me so I wouldn’t remember.’
‘You ever hear him mention a guy called Perlman?’
‘Nope ... You think these people have got something against him?’
I sighed. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What are you going to do now then?’
‘Try and find out where fuck’ em farm is.’
For the first time she smiled. ‘You’re serious?’
I shrugged. ‘I’ve got nothing else to do, especially if this deal falls through.’
‘So you think Alan will still be at this fuck ‘em farm, eh? Like, mucking out the whores or something?’
It was my turn to smile. ‘Maybe.’
‘Good luck with that and do let me know if you find him so I can twist his little balls off.’ She got up.
I looked at her. ‘I thought you were worried?’
Hoisting her bag strap on the shoulder of the red leather jacket she looked down at me and said, ‘Life’s too short.’
12
Fuck ‘em Farm. Maybe it was a nickname for some brothel or other. If Harle knew it by that name, other jocks would too. Most jockeys are highly-sexed. Psychologists will tell you it’s all linked to the danger and adrenaline and the ‘today-could-be-my-last’ culture. I rang three riders that I knew had the same appetite for women as Harle did. None of them had heard of the place.
I sighed and did some physical and mental head-scratching. Supposing Harle had been abducted. I had to assume it was by the two men who’d smashed up Bergmark and blinded Rask and maybe killed Danny Gordon. Harle had last been seen at Cheltenham races. If these guys wanted to get him, they’d have known they could intercept him on the way back from the racecourse.
Harle lived in Lambourn but would probably have been staying over in Cheltenham for the three-day race-meeting. I knew he hadn’t because the receptionist had told me he’d checked out of his hotel on the Wednesday morning, the second day of the meeting. Whatever had spooked him, must have happened at the party on the Tuesday night, or after it.
Assuming he was running for home after leaving the hotel, he’d have travelled south west toward Lambourn. The area around Cheltenham had its share of quiet country roads and most jockeys knew the short-cuts. I needed a road map to try and figure out the route Harle might have taken. I headed for Cheltenham to buy one.
Driving into town along the A46 I saw the Library sign and quickly turned left. They’d have maps, and parking spaces. The smiling young man at the desk said they didn’t have ‘your standard road map’, but the reference section did have ordnance survey maps for the whole of the UK.
Juggling a plastic cup of very hot coffee from the machine I sat down with OS Map 163, Cheltenham and Cirencester. I smoothed out the area to the south west: one of the benefits of the OS map was that it included every road, right down to a pig track. From the centre of town, I searched the possible routes Harle would have taken if he’d planned to go home. Three cups of coffee later I was bleary-eyed and no wiser and I began chiding myself on the basis that I hadn’t a bloody clue what I was doing.
They could have got him anywhere. Stepping into the car at The Duke’s Hotel, arriving home at his remote place in Lambourn and any point in between. I got up and began folding the map to hand it back when something caught my eye; an area to the east of Cheltenham coloured green on the map, shaped like a pair of thin legs wearing different size boots - Puckham Woods. Slowly, I sat back down keeping my eyes fixed on the spot in case I lost it. Opening the map again, I traced with my finger a narrow dead-end road on the north west side of Puckham Woods. Where the road finished sat some small closely-grouped buildings with the name Puckham Farm.
From the throat of a desperate man to the ear of an angry woman how easily misheard? I noted the road numbers and directions and hurried to the car.
It was only half an hour’s drive. The closer I got to it the narrower grew the roads and the sparser the houses. Just after one o’clock I passed through the last village on the map and out into open country. The road climbed and the surface worsened. Bushes on the overgrown verges scratched at the Rover as we sped along. In that twenty minutes a blue van passed me going in the opposite direction; that was the only vehicle I saw.
It began to rain.
I turned at the no-through-road sign, knowing the farm should be at the end of it. The track dipped steeply like a ramp in the first fifty yards. It ran between trees and broken rusted barbed wire fencing and I could hear the tyres sloshing through the rain-softened surface.
The fields on either side were empty. The trees grew denser the further I went till I seemed to be driving in a tunnel. I broke out of it into daylight and a farmyard, so suddenly that I ran past and had to reverse to a point where I faced what looked like the main house.
I sat in the car watching for some sign of life. The yard, rutted and puddled, was about the size of two tennis courts and seemed to envelop the house in a grasping semi-circle of black muck.
The dark grey stone walls were pitted and dirty. The front door was not in the centre of the building but well to the left like it was trying to sneak around the back. Mustard coloured curtains sagged in tatters behind the two windows, one of which had a smashed pane. The other had a crack which spread each leg to touch a corner of the wooden frame. What was left of the glass was filthy.
Broken guttering hung from the roof and rainwater streamed over the green moss clinging to the end of it onto the mud below. Enough grey tiles were missing
to make the roof look like a big wet crossword puzzle.
As I got out of the car the wind snatched at my collar and rain peppered my face. I hurried toward the house, hands deep in pockets, gathering my jacket close round me. I stood at the door. The dark green paint was cracked and blistered, tiny pools over-flowing from the open paint bubbles.
I knocked hard. Nobody came. I tried the handle. It turned half an inch, no further. Going to the window I squatted to look through the hole in the pane but the dirty curtains hid whatever was inside. In the glass I saw the reflection of something move quickly behind me. There was a slapping, rustling sound. I spun to see a plastic rubbish sack blowing across the yard.
I realised I was holding my breath.
My pulse was pounding.
The black muck sucked at my boots as I skirted the side of the building, trying to be cautious. I’d decided to adopt the lost tourist routine if anyone was round the back but I realised it wouldn’t fit with the way I was slinking along, so I straightened and strode out boldly till I reached the yard behind the house.
A barn-type block with a huge brown door joined the house at the far side. The door was fixed on runners top and bottom and I grasped the handle and leaned back, pulling. It wouldn’t budge. Using both hands, I tried again – solid. For a derelict property things were kept pretty secure. I stepped away from it ready to turn toward the back door of the house when I heard a noise. I stopped; it came again ... moaning, like an animal, long and low and guttural.
Whatever was making the noise was behind the sliding door. I looked up. There were two small windows, both too high to see through.
Along the wall beneath a broken drainpipe was a metal beer barrel lying in the gutter. I hauled it out. It was so heavy I thought it was full. I rolled it through the mud toward the big door.
The rain fell steadily and by the time I got the barrel across the yard I was mud-splattered and soaked. My hair clung flat and rivers of water ran down my face and neck inside my collar. My trousers and hands were filthy and though the jacket I wore was waterproof the rain streamed from it onto my thighs till my trousers stuck to my skin
I climbed onto the barrel with the thought that whatever was in here would probably get the fright of its life when it saw me. It also occurred to me that if anyone came out of the house now I was going to have a hard time convincing them I was a lost tourist.
My hands clasped the ledge and I looked in. There were three stable boxes, each with its own door. Metal bars ran from the ceiling into the front wall of each box. From the bars of the middle box hung an empty hay net.
I heard the moan again. It was long and painful and, I decided, human. I jumped down, two arcs of mud splashing away from my feet as I landed.
Going back to the door I looked more closely at the lock. The keyhole was large and empty. I went to the car and got the lockpicks. The mechanism, though heavy, was crude and it clicked open in a few seconds.
Leaning back on my heels I pulled at the handle and the door trundled on its runners, sounding noisy as a train in a tunnel. I took an anxious look round the yard before going inside.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. It brought back vivid memories of a bad fall I’d taken on the schooling grounds years before. I heard the horse’s neck crack as he came down behind me and rolled over to rest on my lower legs. I lay trapped, my feet under his belly as he shuddered into death. In his final throes his bowels and bladder opened and emptied six feet from my head – the smell was similar to what was in my nostrils now.
It grew worse as I left the fresh air. It was old and stale and dank and held more ingredients than any horse’s bowels. I followed the stench to the end box where the door lay open. Stepping through onto dirty wet straw I found what was left of Alan Harle.
13
He was curled up against the inside of the wall below a torn hay net, naked, his flesh filthy with smeared shit. His knees were pulled up to his chin and his head lay in a foul patch of stale vomit and dirty straw which clung to his face and hair. From the bars above him hung a heavy dog chain which was fastened around his neck. He moaned.
Kneeling beside him I reached to turn his face toward me but felt myself gagging at the stench. I turned away quickly, thinking I was going to be sick. I held it down and turned back to him. He felt my hands on his shoulders and tried to resist, drawing himself closer to the wall. I eased his head up and he whimpered pathetically. Small islands of flaked whitewash from the wall stuck to his forehead and a stream of saliva ran from the corner of his mouth down his chin. His eyes stayed closed.
‘Alan!’ I whispered it and didn’t know why. No response. I pushed my fingers inside the heavy links around his neck and he flinched. The flesh was a raw ring where the chain had sawed at him.
I supported his head with my left hand while my fingers followed the chain round to the back of his neck. I found a small padlock just below his left ear.
Easing the chain round as best I could without hurting him further, I picked the lock. The chain end slid smoothly from his neck and lay in the straw. I raised his eyelids and saw the eyes of a sick waxwork dummy. The pupils were pinheads and the whites yellowish green. A sore festered in the corner of his right eye so I couldn’t open it fully.
His knees were still drawn up and I turned him gently on his back to try to straighten his legs. The foul smell welled again and I had to hurry to the door to suck fresh air.
His right thigh and lower left leg were badly scarred but they were old wounds from pin and plate insertions after fractures. Shuffling through the straw I manipulated his legs and feet one by one, watching his face for signs of pain. There was none, his joints moved freely. I worked back up and checked his arms and wrists.
The bones were all right but the skin on the inside of his left arm at the elbow joint was black with bruising and needle punctures, some of which were growing scabs. His ribs were all in one piece, which was easy to see because they showed through his skin individually. Harle had always been wiry but in a whipcord sort of way, now he looked emaciated. I doubted if he’d been fed anything but heroin since his capture.
So, no bones broken but he was in a bad way. I decided to get him to hospital and worry on the journey about the story I would tell. I checked the yard back and front; the last thing I wanted with my hands full of invalid was to walk into the men who’d done this to him.
The place was still deserted. I opened the rear door of the car and went back for Alan.
I scooped him up and tried to support his head as I walked to the door but couldn’t and it hung over the crook of my elbow. His lower legs dangled and swung as we moved. I stopped and looked out again before going into the yard; the rain was at its heaviest.
Carrying him through the downpour the big raindrops pelted his flesh and ran in rivers through the stinking brown smears, streaming down the vee shape of his rib cage and gathering in his crotch till a pool formed, covering his pubic hair.
When I arrived at the Casualty Department of Cheltenham General Hospital steam was rising from my clothes and the rank smell filled the car.
I went in and spoke to the receptionist. Two orderlies came back out with me and slid Harle onto a stretcher, grimacing as they did so. They covered him with a blanket and hurried inside.
The triage nurse wanted particulars. I told her his name was Jim Malloy and that he was my brother, a heroin addict who’d been taking treatment at home but had disappeared two weeks ago. I said I’d been searching for him and had just found him in a filthy squat, deserted by his friends.
She gave me sympathetic looks and said they’d do their best for him, but they’d have to inform the police of his condition. I told her to save herself a call as I was going to the police station next to update them having originally reported him missing. She believed me.
I promised to visit him next day, and I assured the nurse I would bathe and change, as she suggested, as soon as I got home. Which was exactly what I did.
I stood on the bathroom floor letting the sodden clothes slide from my body. Then I stepped out of the dirty soaking pile and lowered myself into the hot water. Beautiful. I wished immediately I’d poured a drink and brought it with me.
Promising myself a double when I got out, I lay back to think things through.
I had no doubt the thugs who’d maimed Bergmark and Rask were responsible for Harle’s abduction and subsequent treatment. Did that mean the trainer, Roscoe, was implicated? At the start he’d claimed Harle was ill, then said he’d walked out. Harle’s disappearance could have been looked on by Roscoe as voluntary but I had a feeling the trainer knew all about it.
If so did he know what Harle had been involved in before they’d caught up with him?
And what the hell was Harle involved in? The whole Perlman-Roscoe-Harle thing stunk of something illegal and with Skinner the vet involved it looked odds-on to be horse-doping. But where did the heroin come in? Was it just a personal habit of Harle’s? Was he dealing in it?
Who had abducted him, Kruger’s men? The same two he’d been seen talking to? The ones who’d visited Rask, Bergmark and Danny Gordon? If I could tie Kruger into it more solidly it seemed certain I was on the trail of the people we wanted.
So where did I go next? Where did Kruger’s men go next? Could Roscoe help me track them down or should I put my name about as the one who rescued Harle and let them come straight for me?
I felt distinctly cool about that even in the warm water. These were imaginative guys, not your straightforward hit men. They liked a bit of variety in their work: cut-throats, pulped ankles, chained-up jockeys I wondered what page of their cookery book I’d turn up on.
The prospect of being the fox to their hounds didn’t enthral me but it didn’t petrify me either. They’d had the advantage of surprise over their past victims but I would know they were coming for me. I was also angry that those two could go around maiming and killing without fear of retribution. They were due back a little of what they’d been dishing out.