In Vino Veritas lah-23

by J M Gregson

‘I must be on my way,’ said Tom Bowles with a glance at his watch. ‘All the best in the next round of the knockout.’

  ‘Thanks, Tom. And all the best in the new job and at Sunningdale.’

  The bar was quiet at this time. Jason Knight bought himself another drink and sat quietly for a while, digesting the results of their discussion. He told himself not to be disappointed — this was surely what he had expected to hear. He had already known in his heart of hearts what the harsh facts of the situation were.

  Martin Beaumont wasn’t an owner prepared to listen to reason, to share his power with the man who was steadily building it up for him. If Jason was going to get the share of the business he wanted, he was going to have to use more than mere reason. Something much harsher would be needed.

  FOUR

  Tom Ogden’s family had farmed this land for almost four hundred years — since the area had been rent by the civil war which had resulted in the death of Charles I and the brief rule of Lord Protector Cromwell.

  Tom had watched the spread of Abbey Vineyards beside him with interest — farmers are conservative folk, and a completely new use of land always seems more risky to them than to anyone else. That interest changed first into a vague feeling of unease; this was rapidly followed by the outright apprehension which a small landowner always feels with the spread of a bigger and more prosperous neighbour. Yet Ogden had been glad to sell the highest and least productive part of his land to Martin Beaumont in the early days of the vineyard. The money had enabled Tom to convert the fertile lowland area of his farm to intensive cultivation. He had opted for a new life of his own which to him seemed quite daring enough.

  Tom Ogden was now a strawberry farmer, with long rows of plastic cloches stretching away across his fields and an influx of foreign pickers at the height of the season. Both of these developments had brought opposition from different sectors of the local population. This opposition had been accorded full voice in the Gloucester Citizen, which had many pages to fill each evening and was delighted to fan local controversy. The issue had then been taken up by local radio, and had even featured on Central Television news. Tom Ogden had been uncomfortable in the face of such publicity, but had affected to treat it with the sturdy indifference farmers customarily accorded to aesthetes and townies.

  Tom now had half his fields converted to the increasingly popular ‘Pick Your Own’ option for his strawberries. People came out from the towns and villages of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire to pick his produce, often treating the expedition as a family outing. They had caused a little damage at first with their clumsy fingers and clumsier feet, but Tom had soon learned to limit that. The important thing was that they paid almost as much for his strawberries as the retail price in the shops, and far more than he could get from the markets or supermarkets. Children in particular tended to eat energetically whilst they picked, but Tom treated that as a necessary but minor evil, to be set against the lower overheads of selling on site. He was delighted with his profits, whilst his customers enjoyed the warm glow brought by physical exertion and then the flavour of strawberries which could not have been fresher.

  On this bright April day, Tom Ogden was looking over the bent backs of his workers, as they weeded the rows and nourished the promising green fruits with a little fertilizer. He imagined the summer scene here, when he would be listening to children’s shrill cries to their parents, and congratulating himself on taking what had seemed an adventurous step into this new area of farming.

  Ogden went out into the field and exchanged a few words with ‘Spot’ Wheeler, his foreman. No one, not even the man himself, was sure how he had acquired his soubriquet. He was Henry on his birth certificate, but he had answered to Spot for so long that no one knew any other forename for him. Spot had rarely ventured outside Herefordshire and had an accent far stronger than even Tom’s very noticeable one, so that any Englishman from more than fifty miles away found his speech difficult to follow. Yet, in some strange combination of sign and sound argot, which perhaps even he could not have explained, Spot managed to communicate effectively with the variety of mainly Eastern European workers who came each year to work in the strawberry fields.

  Tom Ogden always enjoyed talking to Spot, feeling an affinity with a man who had the same roots as he had, whose family had worked the land as his had for hundreds of years. Though neither of them would have acknowledged it or voiced it, the bond between them was sealed by a sense of rank. Spot Wheeler accepted his lower station as labourer and now supervisor of labour as unthinkingly as Tom accepted his role as owner of the land and thus master of his workers’ destiny.

  Spot gave his employer a brief report on the progress of cultivation and directed two of his newest workers to a new area with a series of guttural sounds; they nodded and bent anew to their work with the forks. Tom scratched his head, then shook it once again in happy wonderment at his foreman’s ability to communicate with his workforce.

  It was at that moment that a cloud fell across his world. It was a metaphorical cloud, for the day was golden still with a steady sun, but a cloud nonetheless. Spot Wheeler said suddenly, ‘That chap be ’ere again, Mr Ogden,’ and Tom turned to see a figure outlined against the sun at the entrance to his fields. It looked to him for a moment like some great bird of prey, black and ominous against the sky.

  ‘I don’t know why. I’ve told him often enough there’s nothing for him here,’ said Ogden, turning his steps reluctantly towards the interloper.

  ‘Wonderful day, Tom!’ said Martin Beaumont, when Ogden got within ten yards of him. He forced the farmer to fall into step with him, turning his path along the edge of the strawberry fields. Tom had been intending to lead him quickly back to the exit and his car. ‘At least the sun and this southerly wind are fine for vineyards. I expect you’d like a little more rain to swell your strawberries. Temperamental crop, I believe. I shouldn’t like to rely on them for a living.’

  Ogden resisted the farmer’s temptation to agree about the weather. It was one of the modern jokes that no season was ever exactly right for the farmer, but he did not wish to agree anything with this man. He said gruffly, ‘Nothing like as temperamental as vines, I should think.’

  ‘Oh, they’re much less difficult than most people imagine, once you get the hang of viniculture. Everyone else is moaning about global warning, but it’s helping us. And we’ve diversified as we’ve developed, you see, Tom. We’ve got quite a variety of grapes now, so that something’s pretty well bound to do well, even in a difficult season. One of the secrets of success in the agricultural industry, diversification. Now that I’ve got used to diversity, I shouldn’t like to be dependent on a single crop for my livelihood.’ He looked sideways over the long rows of plastic cloches and the bent backs of workers in the open areas beyond them. ‘Must be pretty labour-intensive, strawberries. Not a good thing, nowadays, with men likely to let you down the moment they get a better offer.’

  ‘We’ve got autumn raspberries as well as strawberries. And I don’t have difficulties with labour. The recession’s made people glad of a job. It’s true it was difficult to get workers, a couple of years ago, but I can pick and choose a bit now.’

  ‘Really?’ Beaumont let his elaborate surprise slide into a grin. ‘Better not let the Citizen know that, eh, Tom? They’ll be saying you should get rid of these cheap-labour foreigners and employ local labour!’

  ‘If they do, I’ll know where their information’s come from, won’t I?’

  Beaumont made an elaborate show of looking hurt. ‘Oh, it wouldn’t be me, Tom. I’m your friendly neighbour, aren’t I? But there are always plenty of people ready to make trouble for us chaps who provide the work, aren’t there?’

  ‘These men work hard all day and earn their money. I’ve no complaints about them.’

  ‘I’ll bet you haven’t. Slave labour without union rates. We’d all like a bit of that!’

  ‘They’re not slaves and they’re properly paid. It’s none of yo
ur business, anyway, Beaumont.’

  ‘Could be, Tom. Could be. In a roundabout sort of way, of course. I’m still willing to pay a good price for your land, you see. Should be music in your ears, that, with the worst recession for eighty years gathering pace, and the price of agricultural land steadily dropping.’

  ‘The recession’s helping my business. More people are prepared to pick their own, in a recession.’ Tom felt himself being drawn into an argument he had never intended to have.

  ‘You’d get a higher price from me than from anyone else, Tom. You’re lucky in that your land would fit neatly into my estate, as I’ve explained to you before. Our vineyards could span the valley nicely, if we took this little tongue of land in, so I’m still prepared to offer you the price I offered last year. That might not be the case for much longer, though.’

  Ogden glanced from right to left. Beyond his land, all he could see was Abbey vineyards. His strawberry farm was an obstinate, alien wedge in Beaumont’s empire. ‘My family were farming this land for centuries before Abbey bloody Vineyards was even thought of, Beaumont! And we’ll be here long after you’ve gone.’

  Martin allowed himself a leisurely snigger, well aware that his derision was only increasing Ogden’s fury. ‘Oh, I doubt that, Tom, I really do! In fact, I doubt it so much that I’m prepared to say definitely here and now that it won’t happen.’

  ‘If you get your hands on these fields, it will be over my dead body!’

  ‘Oh, let’s not get all dramatic about it, Tom. We’re talking as two friendly neighbours. At the moment, I’m prepared to do you a favour and take over your land at an excellent price. I should hate it if that situation had to change.’

  ‘I’ve said all I’ve got to say. You’re wasting your time here, Beaumont, and I don’t want to see you again!’

  ‘Spreading alarm among the workers, am I?’ Martin took a leisurely look towards the distant, diligent men in the valley below them, and saw Spot Wheeler watching them curiously. ‘Perhaps some of them are a little more realistic about the situation than their employer.’

  ‘They’re no more interested in you and your schemes than I am.’ Ogden turned his back ostentatiously upon his unwelcome visitor.

  ‘I just hope no one causes trouble for you, Tom. Be a shame if they did.’

  Ogden whirled back to face him, his weather-beaten face puce now with rage. ‘And what the hell do you mean by that?’

  ‘I was just thinking this would be a bad time for some mischief-maker to start moaning to the Citizen again about you employing foreign labour when Englishmen are losing their jobs all over the locality. Just as we move towards the height of your season, I mean. It would be a real shame if some person like that encouraged people to boycott your fields, now that you’ve made yourself dependent upon the pick-your-own clientele.’

  ‘If that happens, I’ll know where to come looking for the culprit.’

  ‘Oh, it wouldn’t come from me, Tom, anything like that. I’m hurt that you should think it might. I’m a friendly neighbour, remember. But you can’t prevent people talking, and once someone like the Citizen or Radio Gloucester chooses to offer those voices a wider public, it’s surprising how things can build up. Mass hysteria, someone called it to me the other day. Still, we’ll hope it doesn’t come to that, won’t we? It would be such a shame if you had to sell your land on a falling market.’

  Tom Ogden wanted to seize him by the throat, to wipe that silly, gloating smile off his face and see panic there instead. He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers, felt the fists already formed and trembling. ‘Get off my land, Beaumont! Get off before I throw you off!’

  ‘I’ll go, I’ll go!’ The viniculturist held up his hands in mock horror. ‘I can see you’re not in the mood to listen to reason, Tom. That’s a pity, from your point of view as well as mine.’

  Beaumont left his words hanging as a threat in the soft spring sunshine and walked unhurriedly towards his Jaguar. He looked over his neighbour’s land as he went and smiled an anticipatory smile.

  FIVE

  It was a quiet Monday morning in Oldford police station. There had been the usual drunken brawls in the centre of Gloucester on Saturday night and the usual half dozen ‘domestics’, involving more personal violence. The usual number of youngsters between thirteen and eighteen had left home without any notice of their plans or destination; they would now become official Missing Persons and be added to that melancholy register of misery.

  There was nothing of great interest to CID here, and certainly nothing to excite the attention of Detective Chief Superintendent John Lambert, who was in danger of becoming bored. He had made his usual report to the chief constable. He had written up his comments on CID officers who were due for their career assessments. He had even made out a detailed case to those faceless financial controllers for the maintenance of his overtime budget, which had not been fully used in the last quarter.

  He was fully up to date with his paperwork, a situation which the experienced members of his team recognized as a dangerous one: a bored Lambert asked the questions which a busy one thought far too petty for him. He was roaming the CID area and taking an unhealthy interest in detail. He had even approached Detective Inspector Chris Rushton for instructions in the mysteries of computer science, bravely asserting that old police dogs needed to learn new tricks, if they were to keep abreast with the criminals of the modern technological world.

  Rushton found that the chief superintendent knew more than he admitted about the possibilities of the computer, which was a little disturbing. Chris was happier with his picture of the chief as a dinosaur in the modern police world, the chief super who was not happy as others were to direct the investigation of serious crime from behind his desk. The senior man who still insisted on getting out to confront those nearest to the offence and make his own judgements upon them. Yet this morning Lambert was filing away useful information from his discussions with Rushton on how best to use HOLMES, the national police file on serious crime and serious criminals.

  Lambert also gave Rushton an item for the station news bulletin:

  Detective Sergeant Bert Hook has graduated as BA with second class honours (division one) in the Open University degree for which he has been studying in his own time for the last six years. He deserves our heartiest congratulations on this very considerable achievement. Bert has informed his senior officers that it is not his intention to look for accelerated promotion through the graduate recruitment scheme!

  Chris Rushton smiled at the idea of stolid, reliable Bert Hook joining the fresh-faced and eager young graduates on the accelerated promotion scheme. He was prepared to agree now that Bert knew more about police work than most of these youngsters would ever learn. It had not always been so: Chris had felt at a moral disadvantage with Bert because he knew the older man had turned down the prospect of promotion to inspector years ago, because he preferred his work as a detective sergeant at the crime-face. It is almost unknown for policemen to turn down the chance of higher rank, and although Bert never broadcast the fact, and few people were aware of it, the considerably younger and newly promoted Chris Rushton had felt uncomfortable in the face of such integrity.

  Hook himself had been in court that morning, sturdily resisting the attempts of a clever young defence barrister to trip him up and cast doubt upon his evidence. The Crown Prosecution Service had secured its conviction and Bert was back in the police canteen at lunch. He found himself much more embarrassed than he had been in court by the police banter about this new Einstein within their midst. Policemen, even sometimes quite senior policemen, feel more threatened by intellectuals than those in any other calling. When, as in Bert’s case, a degree was accompanied almost uniquely by many years of solid work and achievement in feeling collars and putting dangerous men and the occasional woman behind bars, they did not know quite how to react. There was genuine admiration behind all the routine banter and the comments on this new professor in the
Oldford ranks.

  Lambert seized him during the afternoon and took him into his own office, where he produced the bottle of whisky which rarely left the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet and insisted upon a celebratory toast with his old colleague and friend. ‘I never doubted you could do it intellectually, Bert. I just wondered whether your resolution would hold, with the crazy hours we sometimes work and a family growing up around you.’

  ‘The boys have been a stimulus really, I suppose,’ said Bert. ‘Once I’d started, I could hardly give up, in the face of all their comments. And of course, Eleanor’s been marvellous. I couldn’t have done it without her looking after the kids for long hours on her own, as well as encouraging me whenever it seemed too high a cliff to scale. I expect it’s Eleanor who’s blown the gaff on me now. I didn’t expect to come into a station which was throbbing with the news.’

  ‘You can blame me for that. I’m the one who told Chris to put it in the station information bulletin. The grapevine then relays it pretty quickly, especially on a quiet Monday like this. You might as well bask in a little glory whilst it’s there to be had. You know it will be the centre of gossip for about two days, until something more salacious like an officer’s divorce takes over.’

  ‘I suppose I have Eleanor to thank for you knowing about it.’

  ‘Christine asked her outright over the weekend. You know what wives are like. You wouldn’t have wanted Eleanor to lie, would you?’

  ‘I suppose not. And as you say, it’s probably better to get all the jokes out of the way at once. It won’t last.’

  ‘We could do with a good juicy murder to get everyone’s attention back on the things that matter. Not that one wishes ill upon any of the honest citizens who pay our wages, of course.’ Despite this routine denial, both of them felt the familiar CID men’s lust for a crime that would fully occupy their predatory minds.