by Kim M Watt
“Maybe they’re at lunch?” Mortimer suggested, and his stomach reminded him that it would quite like to be at lunch, too.
Beaufort nodded at the farm below them, grey stone buildings bleached in the sun. “Keep looking.”
They did, Mortimer straining to see movement in the barn, to hear cows grumbling or sheep complaining to each other. There was nothing. No cars moving on the farm tracks, no shouts from the house, no dogs in the yard or tractors rumbling across fields. The house was as motionless as a painting, and the fields surrounding it were empty.
“There’s no one,” Amelia said softly.
“You don’t think— you don’t think someone did something?” Mortimer was thinking of Rockford and his ridiculous fixation on dragons being dragons and eating sheep and all that nonsense. He wouldn’t have even put it past the silly throwback to fancy stealing a maiden, although who knew what you were meant to do with them once you had one. It all sounded like an awful lot of trouble.
“Not one of us, no. But a whole farm doesn’t just pack up and leave.”
They stared out at the empty fields for a long, still moment, then Gilbert said, “If they’d been farming pumpkins, the pumpkins would still be there.”
Amelia hit him.
They stayed where they were for a little longer, then Beaufort said, “Shall we take a closer look?”
“No,” Mortimer said immediately, then gave the High Lord a half-hearted grin. “I mean, it’s still light. It’s too risky!”
“I don’t mean going up to the house, lad. Just down to the edge of the forest, so we can take a look at the fields.”
“Yes,” Amelia said. “We should do that. Find out who did this.”
“Wouldn’t tonight be better?” Mortimer pleaded. “It’s not like we can do anything right now.”
“We can gather information,” Amelia said.
“They better not be turning it into an experimental site,” Gilbert said, and the others looked at him.
“A what?” Beaufort asked, with enormous interest.
The younger dragon wrinkled his snout. “An experimental site. For, like, new stuff.”
“New stuff,” Amelia said.
“Yeah. Like new pesticides, or specially bred ducks.”
Mortimer was fairly certain he’d never heard of experimental sites, let alone farms for specially bred ducks, but Gilbert did seem to learn about the strangest things. Like piercings and vegetarianism. “I don’t see any ducks,” he said.
“That was just an example.”
“It all changes,” Beaufort said, watching the land below. “I remember when this was more trees than farmland, and there was only one track leading to Toot Hansell. You couldn’t even get a cart down it.” He shrugged, lifting his snout to watch a plane pass. “Everything progresses.”
Mortimer tried to imagine a world awash with trees and beasts and Folk, where they only considered living, not hiding, because the humans were the minority. He couldn’t. And he wasn’t at all sure he agreed with progress, although he realised he was the one who had brought progress to the Cloverly dragons. Maybe there were different kinds of progress. Maybe some made the world more beautiful, while others broke it. Or maybe they all broke it in different ways, and you never knew which until it was too late.
“It’s bollocks, is what it is,” a new voice said, and they looked down the slope to see a dryad sitting on the sparse grass with her back against a tree. “Killing trees and murdering rivers.”
“You’re quite right, of course,” Beaufort said. “But they need to live, too.”
“I’d rather they didn’t do it in my woods,” the dryad said, screwing her face up. “I don’t mind them collecting a bit of firewood, but we can’t stand much more clearing.”
“I know,” Beaufort said, and they were quiet for a few moments, watching the dryad tease a sapling out of the ground. “Any changes around here recently?”
The dryad shrugged. “Not really. We’ve had a new species of mushroom come in. It only grows on the west side of ash trees, for some reason. Want to see it?”
“No, that’s alright,” Beaufort said. “I was thinking more any changes with the humans.”
“Oh, them. I try to keep away from them,” the dryad said.
“So nothing much changed at the farm?”
“Oh yeah. Plenty.” She unfolded some new leaves on the sapling.
The dragons exchanged glances. “Such as?” Beaufort prompted.
“They left.”
“Left?”
“Yeah. Left. Gone.”
Mortimer squinted at the house, crouching alone amid the cluster of outbuildings. One of them looked slumped and blackened, and he wondered if he could smell old smoke.
“Did anything strange happen before they left?” Beaufort asked.
The dryad stroked the leaves, and they trembled, unfurling under her touch. “Humans are strange, generally.”
“True.”
“There was this new one who came around. Every day, in his shiny car. All clean it was.” She frowned. “He threw a sandwich wrapper out of his car window once. I threw rocks at his windscreen.”
“Did you get him?” Gilbert asked.
“Of course.”
“Well done,” Beaufort said. “But he kept coming back?”
“Every day. On his own at first, then with a couple of other humans. Big ones.”
“And then the house humans moved out?”
“Yeah. Well, first the shed burned down, then they left.”
Mortimer looked back at the blackened outbuilding, and thought it wasn’t smoke he was smelling. It was the scent of small animals in tight places, burrowing to escape.
“Well. That is interesting,” Beaufort said, which Mortimer thought was rather alarming. Interesting sounded worse than a jaunt. Interesting sounded like trouble. “And what’s happened since then?”
“Not much. They haven’t touched my woods.”
“Well, that’s good,” the High Lord said.
The dryad gave the sapling an approving pat and leaned back against the tree. “Sure you don’t want to see the mushrooms?”
“No, thanks,” Beaufort said. “But we appreciate the offer.”
“Your loss,” the dryad said. “See ya.” Then she was gone, melted into the tree or the woods or the whispering, fiddling leaves, and the dragons looked at each other.
“I think we should take a sniff,” Beaufort said, and Mortimer sighed.
“Now?”
“Lad, there’s no cloud cover, a main road, a farm, no trees once we’re on the fields, and dozens of walking tracks around here. Now would be a bit silly, wouldn’t it?”
Mortimer thought it wouldn’t be the silliest thing he’d known to happen, but he kept that thought to himself and just said, “I might go back to my lunch in that case.”
“Shall we see if we can find those mushrooms?” Gilbert offered. “Mushrooms are lovely roasted.”
Beaufort finally looked away from the farm and turned back toward the mount. “I knew a dragon once who was very fond of mushrooms. She used to build fairy houses with them.”
Mortimer thought he might stick with fishing.
10
DI Adams
Ervin jumped to his feet as DI Adams walked in the door of the police station, to-go coffee mug in hand. She’d been trying to reach Alice, who should have attended her first council meeting today, but the phone just kept going to voicemail, which was doing nothing to improve her disposition toward persistent journalists. “No.”
“I haven’t asked you anything!” Ervin protested.
“Still no.”
“Aw, c’mon.” He fell into step with her, causing Dandy to give him what probably would have been a disapproving look if his eyes had been visible behind the flopping dreadlocks. “Any news on the publican with the dodgy heart?”
“Did I already say no?”
“What about the rumour that his heart was absolutely fine, and he
may have run afoul of some unsavoury sorts?”
DI Adams swiped her card at the door to the offices, but didn’t go in. “Do you always talk like back-cover copy for a pulp magazine?”
“I thought you might appreciate it more than, ‘Oi, copper, d’you reckon someone offed ’im, then?’”
He gave her that dimpled grin, and she scowled at him. “I’m not appreciating the whole conversation, really.”
“Oh, come on, Inspector. Give me something.”
“I have nothing to give you, Mr Giles.”
“Won’t you call me Ervin?”
“No. Why would I?” She pushed through the door, and it was swinging closed when he shouted behind her.
“How about the possible connection to BelleVue Developments?”
She let the door bang shut, squeezing her eyes closed, then looked down at Dandy. Today he seemed to have settled on Labrador-size as being ideal, and he looked back at her blandly. “I’m probably going to regret this,” she mumbled, then glanced around to make sure no one had seen her talking to the invisible dog. They already seemed to harbour doubts about her because she turned up in a suit every day. She opened the door, revealing Ervin hovering on the other side. He gave her an enormous smile. “Who are BelleVue Developments?”
“Well, I could explain, but in a doorway’s probably not the best spot.”
She considered sitting him back in the plastic chairs of the waiting area, but PC McLeod had already dropped a stack of files when she came in, and when she reopened the door he spilled tea down his front. And that was even after she’d saved him from Daffodil Woman. Maybe she should try jeans one day. She pulled her attention back to Ervin, who was still grinning at her like a kid who’d just wriggled out of detention.
“Come in,” she said.
Collins was leaning back in his chair and poking gravely at his phone when she led the journalist in. She installed Ervin in a chair between their two desks and sat down.
“What, no tea?” Ervin asked.
“You’re not going to be here that long,” DI Adams said.
“The standards of civility are very low here.”
The inspectors looked at each other, and Collins got up. “I could do with one anyway. Adams?”
She waved her to-go mug at him, and he ambled out of the room.
“Now that’s proper Yorkshire hospitality for you,” Ervin said.
“You’re not a guest, Mr Giles. You’re doing your civic duty.”
“Call me Ervin.”
“Why?”
“Mr Giles makes me feel old.”
“Diddums,” she said, and leaned back in her chair to wait for Collins. She was also watching Dandy, who was cruising around Ervin, snuffling at his shoes and the canvas satchel he’d placed on the floor. He didn’t seem to find anything more interesting than he had on the first encounter, and wandered back to flop at her feet. She was quite fond of Dandy, but she couldn’t quite figure out the use of him. He hadn’t shown any inclination to track down criminals or rescue children stuck in wells. She wondered if she should be trying to train him.
“You got milk and two sugars,” Collins announced, coming back into the office and handing Ervin a pink mug with a pig’s snout painted on it.
“Close enough,” Ervin said, taking a sip and immediately making a face.
DI Collins dropped back into his chair and took a slurp of his own tea. “Speak up, then, lad. You’ve got our attention for as long as this tea lasts.”
Ervin took another sip of tea, wrinkling his nose slightly. “Fine. Right to it, then. BelleVue Developments. Have you heard of them?”
DI Adams underlined the name on her notepad and said, “Give us the basics. We can look into it further later on if we feel there’s any merit to it.”
“Would I waste the police’s time?”
“Probably.”
Collins chuckled, and pulled a packet of biscuits from his desk drawer. DI Adams took one automatically, then stared at it. “Rice cakes?”
“I’m trying to be a bit healthier.” He offered one to Ervin, who waved it away.
DI Adams put hers on the edge of the desk and said, “Your aunt will disown you.” She turned back to the journalist. “What do we need to know about BelleVue Developments?”
“On paper, perfectly respectable. However, I ran across them with one of the country houses I was profiling. It was after I stayed there – the owners contacted me. They wanted me to write a story on it, but I couldn’t have, because libel is kind of a big deal. But apparently the company had been leaning on them pretty heavily to sell. As in, heavily.”
DI Adams knocked the rice cake to the floor so Dandy could have it. “More specifically?”
“Huge incentives. Offering to pay way over the asking, and suggesting that selling was a really good idea.” He put the last two words in air quotes, and DI Adams gave him a distasteful look. She couldn’t stand air quotes. Or people who used air quotes. “But they didn’t want to sell,” the journalist added.
“So then what happened?”
“They started getting loads of anonymous reviews online, all saying that it was about the worst place in the world. You know, that it was filthy and run-down, and the staff were rude and so on. They reported it, but there was no way to trace who did it, and it hit their business pretty hard. BelleVue came back with more offers, still high. They still refused. Then one night one of their outbuildings burned down. Looked electrical, so the insurance agency should have paid out, but their investigator suddenly changed his tune and said it was due to poor maintenance on the wiring, or even deliberate tampering.”
“So they got nothing,” DI Adams said.
“Not a cent. And the police looked at them pretty hard for it, but couldn’t prove anything.”
“What happened then?”
“BelleVue came back. Still offering a decent price, though not as good, obviously.”
“And then?” Collins said. He was nibbling on a rice cake, looking distressed. DI Adams thought that was more due to the rice cake than the conversation.
“Then their car got run off the road one night. They were both pretty shaken up, but not seriously hurt.”
DI Adams looked up from her notepad. “And then another offer?”
“Yes. They took that one.”
“And there was no way to say for sure it was BelleVue behind any of it.”
“No. They took it to the police, but there was no evidence, and they’d already sold. BelleVue gave them an okay price, well below market but okay, so that side was pretty legitimate. Plus the police were already suspicious of them after the fire, so they weren’t too helpful. You lot do get a bit fixated.”
Collins made a rude noise. “What made you believe them, then?”
“Because it all added up. They loved that house. It had been in her family forever. They were going to pass it down to their children. And they were doing alright with it as a posh country house retreat. They didn’t need to sell before all that.”
DI Adams leaned back in her chair, rolling her pen in her fingers. “Maybe they just had bad luck and sold hastily, and are now regretting they didn’t ask for more.”
“It’s possible,” Ervin said. “But what would it gain them to blame it on BelleVue? They’re not going to get any more out of them. And it’d have to be the world’s biggest run of bad luck and coincidences.”
“You said BelleVue looks good on paper. You done some digging?” Collins asked. He’d given up on the rice cake.
Ervin wrapped both hands around his mug and tried his dimples on them. The inspectors stared back, unimpressed. “What do I get for bringing you such invaluable information?”
The DIs exchanged glances.
“Another cuppa?” Collins offered.
“An actual biscuit?” DI Adams suggested.
“Aw, come on. We’re all grown-ups here. We know the press and the police can work really well together.”
DI Adams rubbed her chin. “C
an being the operative word.”
“It requires trust,” Collins agreed. “Do we have a circle of trust here, Adams?”
“I’m not sure, you know. I feel this is more a triangle, rather than a circle.”
“Oh, you two are just bloody hilarious.”
“We are,” Collins agreed. “Now stop messing us about and tell us what you know. We can always find it online anyway.”
Ervin scowled, then said, “Fine. But can I at least get a decent brew? This one tastes like it was two tablespoons of sugar.”
“I’ll make you one myself if you just get on with it,” DI Adams said.
“Don’t do it,” Collins said. “She’s a coffee-drinker, and southern to boot. She makes a terrible cup of tea.”
Ervin put his mug down on DI Adams’ desk and leaned back again, folding his arms. “D’you know what, enough. I can’t take the comedy act anymore. Do people confess just to get you two to shut up?”
DI Adams fought the smile twitching in the corner of her mouth and took a sip of coffee. “Sorry we’re not to your taste. You telling us anything more or not? Because we do have actual work to do.”
“Ugh, okay. But remember me when you’ve got news, right?”
“How could we forget you?” Collins asked, but Ervin ignored him and talked to DI Adams instead.
“Usual thing, the corporation’s based overseas. The paper trail’s a bit thin, but I’m pretty sure they were involved under other names in some of those Spanish developments that sold like mad but never got built, as well as a couple in Turkey that were built but basically started falling down again straight away.”
“Who’s behind it?”
“In theory, the UK face is a woman named Greta Moore. But she seems to have pretty much just popped up here, so my thinking is there’s probably been a Greta Moore for Spain and one for Turkey, as well.”
DI Adams was scribbling notes as the journalist talked. “So why do you think BelleVue has any involvement in the Wright death? There’s been nothing flagged in his correspondence as threatening, certainly not that we’ve come across. And I’m not confirming there was foul play,” she added, just to be sure.