Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

There was not much else I could do. I had to be seen to be leaving. Nothing could have better reinforced the paranoid feeling that I was constantly being kept tabs on than the note that seemed to burn acidly in my pocket. Told you what will happen . Go here, don’t go there. Stop, start, fetch. Wait to be contacted . The impersonal phrase did nothing to hide the very personal nature of the relationship: I’ve got you by the balls and you will do my bidding. His bidding, his robbing. A man in a hat.

How long would I let myself be blackmailed? Wasn’t it in the nature of blackmail that it never stopped, that the blackmailer never went away? Would it be all over, would Louis have been reunited with his mother by now, if I hadn’t let myself be mugged of the ransom? Who had held me up in the lane after the burglary? All three of us had sworn blind that we hadn’t told a soul. That almost certainly meant that either the kidnapper himself had bragged about it in the pub or he had himself staged the mugging. I was not in a position to steal it back, whichever scenario held true, because I didn’t have the first idea who I was dealing with and I had the distinct impression that shouting ‘Who are you?’ down the phone might not make him give me his name, address and National Insurance number. It was beginning to dawn on me that not only did I have Louis’s abductor on my back but very likely a third party that knew what I was doing and when I was doing it (one which might soon be joined by Mr Disappointed of Lansdown demanding his stuff back, possibly with menaces).

While I was furiously chewing this over and without giving it much thought I’d hustled the bike up Lansdown Road and turned into Charlcombe Lane. I didn’t know what I was hoping to find as I rumbled past the scene of my humiliation and indeed I didn’t see anything that might be of use. But not so much further on stood a cast-iron signpost pointing towards the village of Woolley and the Lam valley where I had strange and unfinished business. I slowed to a less ferocious pace, took the turn and began to enjoy the sun as it dodged in and out of clouds as though desperate to dry the steaming land below. I passed small orderly farms, fields of grazing cows and sheep, yards full of scratching chickens and a herd of alpacas eyeing me as curiously as I did them. In the tiny village of Woolley the Norton’s growl brought children out into the single track lane that connected the small community with the outside world. I turned a corner and immediately a steep descent brought me down to the bottom of the valley where I crossed the Lam brook via a narrow bridge near the old gunpowder mill. Following the undulating lanes I soon reached Spring Farm where I’d met Jack Fryer struggling with his subsidy application. The gate to the yard was firmly closed and there was no sign of life. But the unmistakable smell of several thousand chickens reassured me that he hadn’t yet packed it all in. I shunned the muddy turn-off towards Grumpy Hollow and Gemma Stone’s ramshackle herb farm and rode on along the deserted lane. A horse poked its head over a hedge and snorted. I rode on until I came to a fork in the road and instinctively took the left; it was narrower and the road surface was nearly worn away. After I had passed a long and dilapidated structure made mainly from corrugated metal and girders, the tree-lined road lazily rose and fell for a quarter of a mile. Then it suddenly climbed steeply before broadening out as I approached what simply had to be Lane End Farm. One minor clue of course was the fact that the lane ended here at a high and substantial modern gate set into a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. The fence ran up the side of the hill to my left where it disappeared into the trees. A sign fastened to the chain link advertised the fact that there was 24 hour Security , illustrated with the drawing of an uncommonly ferocious-looking dog. To the right the fencing seemed to run across the entire end of the valley, which was much narrower here. The other clue, keeping in mind what Jack Fryer had said, was that beyond the fence lay what looked like a mix between junk yard and building site.

Beside the insubstantial and neglected-looking farmhouse and the few outbuildings I could make out, there stood a mass of shipping containers, by the looks of it simply plonked into the muddy grass of the field, perhaps a hundred and fifty yards from the fence. Many were blue, some white, but most of them were rusty. They seemed to have grown up there like a small hideous village around the L-shaped farmhouse’s grey and utilitarian shape. I glimpsed one or two Portakabins and a blue Portaloo among the containers. It was a depressing sight. Lane End Farm occupied nearly the entire end of the valley and as far as I could see nobody farmed it. The containers, apart from being ugly in themselves, looked out of place in a field many miles from the nearest port. To the left the hillside was covered in what looked like the remains of ancient woodland. Far to the right of the ‘farm’ snaked the other fork of the lane, disappearing into the distance. There was no farming machinery to be seen but a large van was driving along a track on the far end of the property and beside the furthest container a mobile crane stretched its telescopic arm skywards in a mute salute. I dismounted and leant the bike against the fence. After giving the gate, which was topped with razor-sharp spikes, a futile pull I decided to do a little exploring on foot. Judging by the path worn alongside the fence to the left I wasn’t the first to take this route up into the wood, in fact there was evidence that someone walked here quite regularly. I just hoped it wasn’t a patrol of dogs. The place looked like it should have guard dogs tethered to overhead wires patrolling the perimeter, then all it needed was a watchtower to make the stalag impression complete.

The fence curved sharply away and I left it behind for a while, just enjoying my walk. It wasn’t much of a climb from the gate before I stood on the crest of the hill. The woodland was dense here but wind and rain had done their bit to thin out the autumn foliage. I could see below me that the fence skirted the edge of the wood for a while, running east while it did. I made my way downhill again through the pathless strip of woodland. Halfway down I nearly slithered into something on the damp leaf litter: a dead dog. It was Taxi, Gem Stone’s old mongrel. There wasn’t even a second’s hesitation before pronouncing him dead, his head was such a bloody mess. Had I found him on the road I’d have assumed he’d been run over but here, in the middle of the strip of woodland? I knelt down and forced myself to take a closer look. I’d have made a bad crime scene technician, or one that threw up a lot over the evidence.

The blood was dried and there were ants crawling all over the beast’s fur. It quickly became obvious that his skull had been bashed in, even without the spatter of blood on the surrounding leaf litter. All that told me was that it happened right here.

I thought I could smell death too, despite the strong breeze that pulled the last leaves off the trees and sent them dancing around me.

I slithered further down the hill until I reached the fence. It cut at an angle here which brought me closer to the containers, allowing me to get a better view of the set-up. Walking on I kept close to the fence, which turned out to be a mistake. A gravelled track ran north out of what was really quite a small farm, through another gate and then disappeared over the rise where it would eventually connect to the Lansdown Road. A large van in the unmistakable red livery of the postal service made its way towards the gate. At the same time a skinhead on a quad bike appeared from between the rows of containers and took a fast and bumpy ride straight towards me. Who said there was never one around when you needed one? Pretending not to have noticed him I walked on along the fence.