“Alice Cranson. I would be absolutely delighted if you would agree to become my wife. Will you marry me?”
Her mouth opened and closed several times, but no sound came out. She eventually regained her composure and managed to speak. “Yes please.”
With that, Josh slipped the ring on to the appropriate finger on her left hand, which was greeted with loud applause from the chef and the other diners in the restaurant as the happy couple stood up and embraced.
After that the meal was a bit of a blur, for Alice in particular, sometimes being eaten one handed as the two lovers held each other’s hand across the table. Just before their dessert was delivered, Josh’s mobile pinged. He was reluctant to read the text as he suspected it was from the hospital as he was on call: he was right. He read the message to his fiancée.
“Coach crash on A38 just after Plympton slip. Road blocked both ways. Many casualties. Please report to A&E immediately.”
“So sorry, Alice, but I’ve got to go. I’ll see you tomorrow. Love you.” He gave her the cash to cover the cost of the meal, kissed her on the lips, grabbed his jacket and left. The other diners couldn’t quite understand why he left without his betrothed so soon after becoming engaged.
The A38 would have been his road of choice to get to the hospital, but as he had been told it was blocked, instead he decided to head across the moor.
Outside he jumped into his beloved, 1965 model Triumph Spitfire and roared off, heading for Two Bridges, Princetown and then Yelverton, thus approaching the hospital from the north. He flashed past a forty miles per hour maximum speed sign and also one of the many brown signs with white lettering urging drivers to ‘Take Moor Care’. In normal circumstances he would have heeded both instructions, but he knew that his trauma skills were desperately, and urgently, needed at Derriford. He reasoned that as it was dark it made driving fast a lot easier along the fairly narrow moor roads, as he would see the headlights of any oncoming cars for some distance ahead: he could then momentarily slow down until they passed. In his haste he didn’t consider the major flaw in this driving tactic: ponies don’t have headlights.
He negotiated the many bends in the road travelling at over fifty miles an hour in the safe knowledge that no car was coming the other way. He took a particular blind bend faster than he would have done in daylight and normal circumstances: he didn’t see the pony standing in the middle of the road until it was too late. It became dazzled and transfixed by the Spitfire’s main beam: the totally unsuspecting animal was side on and turned its head to face the fast approaching car. This pony was smaller than a horse, but still weighed over four hundred kilograms. Josh wasn’t wearing a seat belt, not because he was reckless; he didn’t have one as cars produced before 1966 were not required to have them fitted. (His good friend Tom Bowers later reflected what a stupid law that is.)
As the nose of the classic car smashed into the poor animal’s side, it shattered its front right foreleg and both hind legs: the body of the stricken beast was propelled straight at the car’s windscreen. The doctor may have survived such a catastrophic crash if he had been wearing a seatbelt, but as his windscreen and front seats were flattened by the impact with the hapless animal, avoiding serious injury would not have been guaranteed. The pony was dead by the time the impact had flung it into the roadside ditch.
Josh was lying prostrate in the now mangled wreck of his pride and joy. A motorist passed the crash scene a few minutes after the accident and immediately contacted the emergency services. He parked his car next to the crushed Triumph, and kept its headlights full on to warn oncoming vehicles, as well as its hazard lights flashing, mainly to warn any motorists approaching from the other direction. Even then, he felt vulnerable as his car was on a blind bend: he walked back to where the road began to kink so he could flag down any approaching drivers.
What seemed like an eternity was in fact twenty one minutes from his call before an air ambulance could be heard hovering overhead. It was fortunate to find level ground and was able to land near to the carnage. The helicopter paramedic, Anthony Blackler, was the first to get to the dying doctor: they knew each other.
Two police cars and an ambulance arrived shortly after the helicopter touched down and by then the paramedic was leaning over his hospital colleague.
“Josh mate, just hold on and we’ll get you out of this mess.”
“Too late for that, Tony. Tell Alice I’m sorry and I love her with all my…”
He didn’t live long enough to finish the sentence. The paramedic had seen the aftermath of many horrendous accidents in his time, but nothing compared to seeing his friend die in front of him. He helped remove the body to the ambulance and then knelt by the roadside, covered his face with his hands and wept.
*
Alice Cranson had been on an emotional high ever since the love of her life had put the ring on her finger only a few hours before. She was about to go to bed when the doorbell rang. Opening the door she was slightly taken aback for the second time that evening when she saw two police officers.
“Hello, can I help you?”
Before they could speak it dawned on her why they might have come at such a late hour.
“No, please, God, not Josh.”
The next day when the paramedic, who had been first on the scene, spoke briefly to Alice he told her Josh’s dying words: he completed the farewell message for his dead friend.
*
Early on the following morning, King, who had wanted to raid Black Tor Farm the day before, was preparing his raiding party. He had been patient as he knew it would take some time to get a search warrant and also to assemble a team of officers to apprehend the Pearce family, and search their suspicious outbuildings and the farmhouse. He also secured the services of the in-house vehicle recovery lorry, as he was sure it would be needed. He had been informed of Doctor Ingram’s death, but as there was no link to the case he was dealing with, he saw no reason to defer the raid. The Suttons were on his action list too, but they could wait.
At 8 a.m. precisely, King briefed his detectives, six uniformed officers and the lorry driver. The convoy set out at 8.15, with the detectives in one car, the uniformed officers in three cars – one a 4x4 – with the lorry, bringing up the rear.
Twenty minutes later, the cavalcade swept up the drive of Black Tor Farm. Fred Pearce appeared from the farmhouse and although he protested he was immediately arrested. After the arresting officer had handcuffed the farmer, King stepped forward and from his tone, it was obvious that the time for polite niceties was over.
“Okay, Pearce, where are your son and daughter?”
The farmer quickly glanced to his left, and then looked back at the inspector and belligerently said, “No comment.” King thought to himself that this was yet another smart-assed criminal, but the surreptitious look had not gone unnoticed and he instructed two officers to try and locate the son and daughter across the field in the direction of the farmer’s glance. Pearce was put into the back of another police car and told not to move, which, in any event, was unlikely as the car door could only be opened from the outside.
The sergeant approached the barn that she had inspected the day before and once again saw that the sliding doors were padlocked together. Her request for the key from the owner received the by now irritating two word response, and a cursory inspection of the farmhouse for the key proved fruitless. The vehicle recovery driver then went to his cab and emerged with a pair of bolt cutters: the padlock was no match for its hardened jaws. With what appeared minimum pressure on the handles, the padlock fell to the ground and both doors were slid wide open. Once again, the giant ‘unicorn’ tractor and the impenetrable wall of round hay bales were visible for all to see.
Because the barn doors had been locked, the Pearces saw no reason to remove the keys from the tractor’s ignition. The lorry driver’s resourcefulness knew no bounds, as he duly oblige
d when the inspector asked him if he could operate the tractor and remove the bales. Skilled as he was, dismantling the hay wall proved to be a fairly slow process. He began spiking them from the top down and they were neatly stacked around the perimeter of the farmyard. King told the driver it wasn’t necessary to remove the entire wall, just a sufficient number of bales so access could be gained to what was behind whilst ensuring the wall remained stable. He wasn’t particularly surprised when the middle section was removed and revealed yet another wall of large round bales: he almost expected it.
When that wall was breached, and there was a large enough aperture to allow access, King presented a torch he was carrying to Dyson: a gesture that recognised it was the detective constable who had earned the right to discover exactly what the criminal farmer had hidden in his barn. This philanthropic action had not gone unnoticed by Harris and her admiration for her boss went up another notch.
As Sam Dyson stepped through the gap in the bales, closely followed by DC Hammond, she gazed into the darkness and was the first to witness an Aladdin’s cave of stolen items. Neatly parked side by side in the cavernous barn were two quad bikes, three Land Rover Defenders, a utility task vehicle and a jet ski. There was no urgent need to check her record of stolen items: she knew these would be on the list. She remembered that a jet ski had been reported stolen from a Plymouth marina and at the time, she wasn’t sure that it had been stolen by the same villains: she now had confirmation that it was. As she slowly wandered around the plunder, her feelings were a mixture of pride at what had been achieved, and relief that the crime spree was over.
The inspector rightly allowed both detectives to bask in their moment of triumph as they took a closer look at the booty. He turned to Harris and quietly said, “Well done, sergeant. Your suspicions about this barn were spot on.” She was happy for the detective constables to take the credit and that recognition was given to her role.
*
Dylan Pearce knew in advance that the police convoy was heading his way as he could see the main lane leading to the farm from some way off. After his sister’s phone call the previous day, alerting him to the snooping police, he was half expecting yet another visit. The sensible thing to do would have been for him to surrender to police custody. The nonsensical thing to do would have been to grab a shotgun and take off on a quad bike across a field to a nearby wood: he was young, idealistic and foolhardy, instinctively wanting to avoid capture at all costs. Did he but know it, arming himself with a gun, put his life in grave danger – grave being the operative word!
Because of recent rain, the pursuing police officers in their 4x4 could see the tracks of the quad bike leading into the wood. They were about to follow them, when some information came over their radio that caused them to brake and make a hasty retreat. Sergeant Harris was making a cursory inspection of the farmhouse and realised a weapon appeared to be missing from the open gun cupboard in the utility room. Of course, it was conjecture as to whether Dylan Pearce was in possession of it, but she was taking no chances.
Without warning, there was a sudden shotgun blast from the wood that shattered the quiet of the moor as over a hundred starlings took flight from their overnight roost. Why he fired the gun only the young Pearce knew: misplaced bravado was a dangerous game to play.
Fifteen minutes later an armed response unit arrived and headed straight for where the fugitive was hiding, directed by the observer in the police helicopter that was now overhead. The eight black clad specialist firearms officers were soon deployed carrying their semi-automatic weapons, not at rest with their index finger straight, but each with it squeezed lightly on the trigger. The observer in the air saw movement on the edge of the wood and two armed officers moved to cover that area.
Dylan Pearce had watched too many old western movies, his favourite being Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made over twenty years before he was born. Fortunately for him, he knew how that movie ended, and didn’t want his life to end in a hail of bullets.
He walked out of the covering trees, the gun held high in his right hand. He didn’t realise, but at that moment he was a second from death: if he had looked down to his chest he would have seen several illuminated red dots indicating the gun sight lasers were on target. One false move and he would have been dead before he hit the ground. An authoritative voice issued a life-saving command.
“Armed police. Drop the weapon now. Drop the weapon now.” He did as he had been ordered and a second command quickly followed.
“Face down on the ground now. Do it now. Hands behind your back. Do it now.”
All the weapons were still trained on the now prostrate farmer’s son. He was handcuffed and carried facedown by four of the marksmen, with their guns slung across their backs, and unceremoniously put in the back of the 4x4: it was an ignominious end to his reign as the scourge of farms across Dartmoor. The crime spree that had caused so much misery and hardship, primarily to fellow farmers, was over.
*
While the drama of Dylan Pearce’s capture was unfolding, Harris, Dyson and Hammond had continued their search of the farmhouse. No doubt they would uncover evidence relating to the vehicle thefts, but what was of more immediate interest was any indication of the whereabouts of the recalcitrant daughter. When they entered what was obviously Kate Pearce’s bedroom, they found the wardrobe doors open, as were the drawers in a wooden chest. It was evident she had packed and left in a hurry. Outside there was no sign of the Jeep.
*
The night before, Kate Pearce had boarded the Brittany Ferries ferry to Roscoff in her Jeep Cherokee. She knew it would take less than six hours to cross the stretch of water and she wanted to be across on the other side before the UK police could alert their counterparts in France. She had with her two suitcases and a holdall bag. The suitcases contained clothes, footwear and toiletries: the holdall contained £30,000 in £50 and £20 notes. This money was part of the ill-gotten gains amassed over many months from the theft of vehicles. The illegal transactions were always made for cash and what she had taken represented about a third of the farmhouse stash.
She disembarked and headed south, with a sketchy plan that she would put distance between her and her nemesis in the form of the tenacious Detective Sergeant Lucy Harris: how she hated that woman for spoiling her corrupt livelihood. Her escape plan would take her through Brittany and the Loire Valley and on to Bordeaux: a distance of over five hundred miles, which she figured was far enough away from any likely pursuer. When there, after, in her eyes, a well-earned holiday, she would get a job on a farm or a vineyard. She would gradually convert the money into euros, exchanging a few hundred pounds each time so as not to raise alarm.
The wanted woman reached Nantes, which she calculated was roughly halfway to her eventual destination, and stopped for brunch. After the food, that seemed to energise her, she went in search of a car sales place and found one quite close to the restaurant she had just left. After a brief haggle, conducted in Frenglish, the Jeep was more or less exchanged for a five year old Citroen DS3. Apart from grabbing her passport when she hurriedly left, she also packed the car’s paperwork, although the garage wasn’t that interested in the Jeep’s ownership or history. From that moment on, she assumed a new identity and became Trudy Best. The fugitive from justice left Nantes and continued her journey south.
*
At Black Tor Farm a thorough search was underway for more incriminating evidence. In a garage next to the farmhouse a drone was discovered and on further inspection back at the police station, recorded aerial images of various farms across Dartmoor were discovered. The police later identified the farms that had been filmed and they happened to be the places where vehicles were taken, further implicating the family in the thefts. The Pearces had used aerial reconnaissance to identify potential targets and to plan the easiest escape route, not always along roads.
In one of the barns housing a dozen or so sh
eep, Harris solved the mystery as to why they had been sheared in February, when most farmers did the shearing in May. The answer was in the fleeces found by DC Hammond secreted in a loft above the sheep. The sergeant asked him to check the identification paint on a fleece and while he was doing that she flipped open her note book. She quickly found what she was looking for, which was a quote from John Sutton, “Fred uses a blue dye on their backs in the shape of a cross.”
Alex Hammond shouted down the marking was a red dot: sheep rustling was added to the growing list of crimes perpetrated by the Pearce family. The father and son were taken to the central police station in Plymouth and charged with numerous vehicle thefts and sheep rustling. Despite their protestations, they were kept in custody overnight before appearing before a magistrate the following morning and being remanded.
*
It transpired that the call record from Fred Pearce’s confiscated mobile phone revealed regular contact with John Sutton, often in the small hours and, coincidentally, at the time of the vehicle thefts. Sutton was arrested and his mobile phone confirmed his illicit calls to his neighbour. The fathers were the masterminds behind the farm thefts as they earmarked potential targets from their casual observations at the livestock market.
As the son and daughter were the thieves, Pearce’s farm was the transit point for the stolen items. The Sutton farm was not used as a staging post, because the Sutton sons were not involved in the thefts: their father would not have been able to satisfactorily explain the sudden appearance of machinery and vehicles.
Nevertheless, the Sutton brothers were also arrested the following day, but as there was nothing to implicate them in the thefts, they were not charged. However, they were not released as the detectives wanted to interview them for a third time about the Cranson case.
Missing on Dartmoor Page 24