LITMIR.BIZ

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stood rotting in the corner of one paddock, and an ex-Army Nissen hut with an arched corrugated-iron roof stretched the full width of one field.

      A rich smell drifted through the open windows of the car – mud and soiled straw, and the odours of animals of all kinds. Somewhere there was certainly a fully operating dung heap. There seemed to be poultry everywhere – in the fields, on the track, perched on the roofs of the buildings. There were red hens and speckled grey hens, a variety of ducks and a dozen large white geese which immediately waddled towards the car, honking an aggressive warning at the intruders. Their noise started dogs barking somewhere in the midst of the shanty town, and a goat could be heard bleating from one of the sheds as Cooper drove up to a gate across the track.

      He waited for Fry to get out and open the gate. This was, after all, the usual practice for the passenger on a gated road. But he saw she needed coaching.

      ‘Would you open the gate for me?’ he said.

      ‘Are those things safe?’

      ‘What, the geese? You just have to show them you’re not frightened of them.’

      ‘Thanks a lot.’

      Fry struggled with the wooden gate, which was tied to its post with a length of baling twine and at the other end hung on only by its top hinge. But at last the car was through.

      ‘Are you sure anybody actually lives up here?’ said Fry. ‘Where’s the farmhouse?’

      ‘Well, though they’re called farms, these places, they’re really just bits left over from the days of the old cottagers, when everyone had their own plot of land, with a cow and a pig. They’re the bits that the bigger farms haven’t swallowed up yet, and the developers haven’t got round to buying up for housing. There’ll be a cottage somewhere. They’ll know we’re here, with all this noise.’

      Cooper pulled up against the back wall of the Nissen hut. There was a rickety garage next to it, where a white Japanese pick-up truck was parked with a metal grille across the back. Enormous clumps of brambles grew over a wall which ran up to a range of low stone buildings that seemed to be growing out of the hillside.

      ‘Do you want to take this one?’ he said. ‘I’ll drive on up to Bents Farm and pick you up again on the way back down.’

      ‘Fine.’

      Fry got out and hesitated, looking at the threatening geese.

      ‘Take no notice. Remember, you’re not frightened of them,’ said Cooper as the Toyota bumped away.

      

      Fry took a deep breath and began to walk up the slope towards the cluster of buildings. The geese immediately fell into formation behind her, hissing and honking and darting at her ankles with their long beaks. One of them pulled itself up to its full height and beat its wings angrily.

      Fry fixed her gaze on the buildings ahead. They looked neglected and badly in need of repair. There were slates missing from the roofs and a gable wall of one of the outbuildings had bulged and slipped into an unnatural shape like something out of a Salvador Dali painting.

      After a few steps, she realized she was walking on an uneven flagged path, the stone flags almost invisible under creeping dandelions and thistles. A trickle of water ran on to the path from a broken drainage pipe protruding from a stone wall. Where the water gathered on the dusty ground, it was stained red, as if it had run through rusted iron.

      Fry cursed out loud as she tripped over the edge of a sunken flag. Behind her trooped the geese, still honking in outrage at being ignored. They made a strange procession as they approached the buildings.

      ‘Not exactly on undercover operations, then?’ said a voice.

      An old man was leaning on a fork on the other side of the wall. He was standing in a paddock that had been converted into a large vegetable patch. His red-checked work shirt was open at his chest to reveal wiry grey hairs, and his sleeves were rolled up over plump arms. Ancient trousers that had once been brown were barely held together at the waist and sagged alarmingly over his crotch. They were pushed awkwardly into black wellingtons. His face was red, and there were irregular bald patches on his scalp that were turning dangerously pink.

      In the corner of the paddock was a small lean-to building like an old outside privy, with an adjoining fuel store converted to a tool shed. On a wooden chair in front of the door sat a second old man. He had a stick propped in front of him, wedged between his knees, with its end dug into a patch of earth. His cuffs were rolled back over his long, thin wrists, and he had a sharp knife in one hand, with which he was trimming cabbages.

      ‘Do you gentlemen live here?’ asked Fry

      ‘Gentlemen, is it?’ said the man with the fork. ‘Are you a gentleman, Sam?’

      The thin one laughed, flicking the knife so that it caught the sun, its blade sticky with liquid from the stems of the cabbages.

      ‘Are you the owner, sir?’ Fry asked the first old man, raising her voice above the continuing noise of the geese.

      ‘Hang on a minute,’ he said. ‘Let me turn the siren off.’

      He thrust his fork deep into the ground with a heave of his shoulder, and walked to the wall. Then he picked up two clumps of weeds with balls of dry earth sticking to their roots. He hurled them one after the other at the geese, shouting at the top of his voice.

      Fry thought the sounds he was making could easily be some local dialect descended directly from the Ancient Scandinavian of the Viking invaders. But probably they were just noises. The geese, at least, understood him, and turned and waddled away back down the track to wait for the next intruder. Without the geese, it was quieter, but not silent. There was a continual background clucking and muttering of poultry, a dog barking, the grunting of a pig. And, not far away, the yelling of the goat.

      ‘I’m Wilford Cutts. This is my place. Over there’s my pal Sam.’

      Sam waved the knife again and slashed at another stem. It severed in one clean blow, and the trimmed cabbage was dropped into a bucket.

      ‘Sam Beeley,’ he called.

      ‘Are you police? I suppose you’re asking about that lass,’ said Wilford. ‘The Mount girl.’

      ‘Laura Vernon, yes.’

      ‘I saw the lass about sometimes, I suppose. Is that what you want to know?’

      ‘Were you in the vicinity of the Baulk on Saturday night or Sunday morning?’

      ‘Ah. Sam’ll have to tell you what I did Saturday night. I can’t rightly remember.’

      ‘I’m sorry?’

      ‘I’m quite fond of a drink, you see. At my age, it only takes a couple of pints and the old brain goes a bit. Do you know what I mean? Ah, probably not.’

      ‘Where do you go drinking?’

      ‘Where? There’s only one place round here, lass. The Drover. As for Sunday morning, well, I’m always here. All this lot to see to, you know. It takes a while.’

      ‘Feeding the animals.’

      ‘That’s it.’

      ‘Do you live here alone, Mr Cutts?’

      ‘Alone? Well, you’d hardly call it that, would you?’ he said, turning to look across the jumble of buildings, where any sort of animal could have been lurking for all Fry knew.

      She turned at the sound of an engine, and saw a battered blue Transit van struggling up the track. As it reached the gateway, a bent little man in a tweed jacket and a cloth cap got out of the driver’s seat to wrestle with the gate. He, too, took no notice of the geese.

      ‘I’ll have to leave you to it for a bit,’ said Wilford. ‘I’ve got a customer.’

      He walked off, waving to the driver of the van until they had manoeuvred the vehicle against the end

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