by D J O'Leary
Copyright © 2019 D J O’Leary
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Front cover by Dr Linda King
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Dedicated to the memory of the late Eric Hill,
the Somerset stalwart, who sowed the seed.
Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Acknowledgements
Prologue
It was an unseasonably warm night in late February. There was no frost, and, crucially, no moon. The church clock had just struck for the twelfth time, and before the echoes of that final chime had faded, and almost as if it had been a cue, a shadow detached itself from the dark edges of the field and began to move furtively towards the far corner, the whole time hugging the hedge that ran along the roadside. This intrigued Ned Kincaid, who was sitting on the ground at the other end of the Buttercup Field, his back against a large and ancient oak tree.
After perhaps a minute and a half, during which time whoever it was moved stealthily into and out of the deeper darkness along the margins, it finally came to a halt at the top of the field. There was definitely something shifty about it, thought Ned. Whoever it was clearly did not want to take any chances and run the risk of being discovered, to judge by the clandestine approach. Yet, despite the paucity of light, the person appeared to move with confidence, as if he or she was wearing night vision goggles, or, far more likely, was very familiar with the terrain.
Ned shifted his backside as the cold damp in the ground began to penetrate his thick corduroy trousers. He knew he should make his way home, but ever since his wife Gladys had died he had felt less and less like spending time in the modest tied cottage that he had called home for the best part of three quarters of a century. Instead he had found himself more inclined to while away the evenings in his favourite corner of the public bar, sipping glass after glass of local cider, as he had done for as far back as he could remember, and certainly since he had first started work as a farm labourer, aged fourteen. As old as he was, and these days not even Ned was quite sure how old that was, there was little wrong with his vision; he was a countryman after all, and he had spent many nights out in the fields and the woods doing this or that. So he did not miss the secretive movement. He followed its progress, his curiosity piqued, although not unduly so; folks did do strange things, especially in these modern times, and it was probably none of his business.
He could not help but wonder just what might be going on at midnight, in the middle of what was supposed to be winter. For its part the figure might have wondered just what Ned was doing out in the field at this time of night. In fact, he invariably paused here on his way home, had done so for many years. It was his way of clearing his head after an evening in the pub. He would sit for anything up to an hour, absorbing the nocturnal sounds around him.
By now he could only just make out the figure. It seemed to be crouching in the far corner, the one nearest the road, where the shadows were at their deepest. Old Ned adjusted his position once more, easing himself higher by using the trunk of the oak tree. He considered making a discreet exit from the field while the person was engrossed in whatever it was doing, but he decided that his movement might be spotted, and if the person were someone prone to violence, they might think nothing of clobbering an old man such as Ned. He decided to sit it out.
As things turned out he did not have to wait all that long. Whatever it was that the person had been doing had occupied them for only a couple of minutes. Ned realised that he could now see the figure beginning the return journey to the spot where it had originally entered the field. Ned gave the person a further five minutes to get clear before he got to his feet. There had been no sound of a car engine starting up, so Ned concluded that the person had to have been a local. He further reasoned that if the person were on foot then he or she had to be given plenty of time to get clear of the field. Finally, quietly and carefully, he worked his way around to his right, keeping tight to the hedge line, just as the mysterious figure had done. Ned was cautious in his movements, worried that if he stepped on a twig and it snapped, that if the person were still nearby, they would hear it.
His caution meant that in all it took Ned almost five minutes to reach the spot where he judged the person to have been; he was not too sure of the place, but was certain that he was close. The trouble was that, despite his countryman’s eyesight, it was so dark in the overhang of the trees and the hedges at this end of the field that an owl would have struggled to see anything. The spot had been well chosen, and again it occurred to Ned that this clandestine operation must have been well planned and possibly rehearsed. Ned squatted slowly, his knees creaking and cracking. Once down he thrust out a hand and began to pass it lightly over the surface of the ground, not sure what he was searching for, but convinced that if there was anything to be found it would become evident to him. The surface seemed to be devoid of dead leaves and twigs and grass. Instead what he could feel was earth. Fresh earth, smoothed down. Something had been buried here. But it had to be something small, because the area of newly-raked and tamped-down earth was perhaps two hands’ breadths, no more. Without a torch and some sort of implement Ned did not want to disturb the site any further, but he decided it might be worth returning during daylight to conduct a more thorough search. Except, he mused, how could he do that without being seen? He pondered it for a second or two, then decided that it probably was not worth the effort. Whatever had been buried there was none of his business. And like as not, the mystery would eventually be solved anyway, as these things invariably were. It was practically impossible to keep a secret in small communities such as this.
He eased himself painfully back to his feet, his knees popping and protesting again as he did so. He might consider himself a countryman, thought Ned wryly, but he had to remind himself that he was an old countryman. At last, just as cautiously as he had arrived, he left the spot, carefully retracing his steps. He had drawn almost level with the gateway that opened onto the road when he heard a scuffling noise and a whispered curse, accompanied by some wheezy breathing. His initial thought was that the mystery person had retur
ned. Ned froze. He was a few yards from the hedge and the only real cover he had was the darkness. He waited. Clearly no one had spotted him, and he could not see anyone either. He remained as still as stone. After perhaps half a minute he heard the distinct sound of a spade being driven into earth. A pause, a wheezy breath, then another sound of the spade. It sounded as if they were right by the gate. This went on for a further minute, with whoever was wielding the spade wheezing repeatedly. If I’m not mistaken there’s only one man who wheezes like that in the village, and that’s Clem Pewsey, Ned thought to himself.
The sound of the spade stopped and Ned heard someone whisper, ‘That’ll do.’ Then, half a minute after that, ‘Put it back carefully.’ Another pause, then the sound of earth being pounded, and finally, ‘Right, let’s go.’
Ned decided that this could not be the original person. In fact, he felt sure that he had seen two shadows crossing the gate entrance when the digging was done. And furthermore, there appeared to be a conversation going on, albeit one-sided. And if there were two of them and if one of them was Clem Pewsey, then it was a dead cert that the other one was Scott Ritching. They worked for a wealthy local farmer and were practically inseparable. Ned certainly did not want to reveal his presence to them, or indeed to anyone, although he was curious as to what had gone on in the second incident. But that would have to wait. He felt sure that the second incident was something to do with the gate, and he was equally certain that he would be able to spot anything unnatural in its look in daylight. Quietly he went all the way up to the oak tree, then past it, before slipping through the gap in the hedge which brought him back out opposite the pub. Lights were still on inside, but Ned would not get a drink now, and anyway he had had enough cider for one night. He had also had enough of shadowy figures. It seemed the world had gone mad. It was bad enough having one person acting secretively, but for there to have been two more was almost too much for Ned. It was definitely time for him to head home to his empty cottage.
One
It was threatening to turn into a summer of record high temperatures and hosepipe bans, when England would almost certainly be transformed from a green and pleasant land to parched yellow or scorched brown earth, courtesy of the unremitting sunshine and drastically reduced ozone layer. It had not rained for nine weeks, and now, in mid-July, farmers and gardeners, nurserymen and landscape designers were at their collective wits’ end as they tried to protect stock, crops and herbaceous borders from the predatory drought.
Out of the shimmering heat, in the early afternoon of this sweltering Saturday high in the Weald of Kent, there emerged the figure of a young man, toting a leather holdall in his left hand and dragging his feet in their dust-covered shoes uphill away from the railway station. At the summit of the hill the sweaty figure, who went by the name of Warren Pearce, although he was known almost universally as “Tolstoy”, came to a halt on his hike and leaned exhaustedly and momentarily on a five-barred gate, to mop his brow and take a breather, before continuing the trek. He was faced with a choice at this juncture in his journey. Just ahead of him, about fifty yards further on, and on the opposite side of the road, was a pub, the Snitcher’s Head, a venue with which he was acquainted. He thought longingly of its cool dark interior and the soothing pint of beer he could savour and swallow were he to go there now. To his right, through the gate on which he had just propped his weary frame, and beyond a further gate some one hundred yards distant, lay his destination, the Stottenden village cricket ground. He could, of course, have headed straight for the cricket field, but thirst and a pressing desire for somewhere to cool off, albeit momentarily, won him over. So, after glancing back at the way he had come, up a narrow country lane, which fed into one only slightly larger, before veering downhill to the railway station, and finally ending at the junction with the major road that led to the South Coast, he made his move. Eventually, opening the heavy old oak door of the hostelry he stepped inside and crossed to the bar.
There was a youngish woman serving, although there was only one other customer at that time of day, unsurprising since there was a cricket match involving pretty well all able and less able-bodied adults in the village. The solitary customer was an old boy, nursing a pint of local cider, and he was one of the oldest inhabitants of Stottenden, Ned Kincaid. Tolstoy recognised the barmaid, a woman around his own age, perhaps late twenties, maybe even thirty. She was called Joanna Fordham, a pretty, dark-haired woman of average height. She was a local and seemed to pop up everywhere. On his last visit he had encountered her delivering newspapers early in the morning, and later on that same day she had served him in the village shop, before drawing him a pint of his favourite Fuggles bitter in the evening. When he had asked her if she was a workaholic she had replied that she was saving up to leave the village and start a new, more exciting, life up in London, so she needed to take on as many jobs as she could physically manage. Other locals had told him that Jo, as she was known, had been saving up for her “getaway” for as long as anyone could remember.
‘Hello Mr Pearce, what’ll it be?’
‘Hello Jo – and it’s Warren, or Tolstoy – could I have a pint of Fuggles, please?’
‘Coming right up. It should be nice and cool, welcome on a hot day like this.’ She took a pint mug from an overhead hook just above the bar and set it beneath the pump and began to draw the beer from the barrel.
Feeling a responsibility to sustain the conversation, Tolstoy ventured to sustain the dialogue. ‘Yes, it’s really hot out there, but this should slake my thirst.’
‘What was that word? Slake?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it the same as quench?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why not say quench then?’
‘Because,’ he felt slightly affronted, ‘I prefer slake.’
‘Oh well. You do tend to use posh words. But that’s you, isn’t it? At least that’s what everyone who knows you says.’
She glanced up at him before wiping some stray drops of beer from his glass and placing it on the bar in front of him, then ventured, ‘Stop me if I’m being too nosey, but I’ve always wondered, why are you known as Tolstoy?’
‘Well, my name Warren Pearce sounds a little like War and Peace, the very long novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy. It was actually my father’s little joke to call me Warren, then he knew he could have fun with my nickname, and family and friends have called me Tolstoy ever since.’
‘Thanks for that. Do you mind being called Tolstoy?’
‘No, at least, I’m so used to it now it is almost as if it were my given name.’ He paused for a moment, then, following the tradition of all locals of the Snitcher’s Head, Tolstoy added, ‘Could you refill Ned’s glass, please?’ And he nodded in the direction of the other customer at the bar.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Jo and moved down the bar to where Ned was sitting, said a few words to him in an undertone, turned and pointed out Tolstoy, before picking up his by now empty glass and heading for the cider pump. She took the full glass back to the old man, who turned towards Tolstoy, nodded his head in appreciation before raising the glass to his lips and drinking a surprising amount in one go.
Tolstoy paid for the drinks, moved across to a table and sat down, and reflected on his journey, not least what had greeted him at the start of his walk to the centre of Stottenden village. On leaving the station, which was more a halt-whistle than a travel hub, he had faced a slog on foot of a country half-mile – all of it uphill – and for someone not used to walking, such as he, it had been a fair old hike in this heat. His route to his destination had been lined with placards on each side of the road, stating “Save Our Buttercup Field” in black letters on a yellow background. The placards were the symbol of a protest that had consumed the village since Jack Bentley, a local “gentleman” farmer, who also just happened to be the chairman of the parish council, and was a man renowned for his overbearing and
bullying manner, had decided to lay claim, on behalf of the council, to the Buttercup Field, which had immediately been earmarked for residential development. It had been the previous November that this shattering news had been made public, and rather puzzlingly for Tolstoy, at the time, his godfather Hubert de Groot had invited, nay insisted, that he come down from London for a chat about the Buttercup Field crisis – including attending a meeting of concerned villagers – and one or two other matters, which would all be explained on his arrival. On that occasion Tolstoy had also taken the train, but had been spared the long uphill hike in the November “mizzle” – that miserable drizzle which seemed able to penetrate even the most waterproof and snug of coats – that cloaked Kent late on that particular afternoon, by the appearance of his godfather’s wife Elspeth, who had been there to meet him in her car, Stottenden not having a regular bus or taxi service from the station to the centre of the village.
On reaching Stottenden Manor Tolstoy had picked up his overnight bag from the back of the car and joined Elspeth as she opened the front door. It was an imposing, yet welcoming, house. The hall would have been gloomy had it not been for the thoughtful lighting of the vast area, whose focal point was the grand staircase that split left and right at the first landing, taking guests into one of the eight bedrooms that lay on the first floor. There was a second floor that had, in its day, housed servants, but for the most part now those modest rooms remained unused.
His godfather had been in the library, which lay to the left of the front door, and Elspeth led him to it. Hubert de Groot was sitting in a leather wingback chair, one that creaked with every movement, as Tolstoy knew, and over to his left a large log fire burned brightly.
De Groot looked up from the book he was reading. ‘My dear Tolstoy, welcome.’ He then hauled himself slowly and, to Tolstoy’s eye, painfully out of his chair and held open his arms to greet his godson. Although appearing rather thin, pale and drawn, de Groot nevertheless still cut an imposing figure, topping six feet, and blessed with an abundance of white hair that crowned a lean, tanned face in which were set a pair of sharp grey eyes that had seen much in life and missed very little. He was, as usual, immaculately turned out, in a check shirt, sharply-creased slacks and highly-polished shoes.