Peter Helton - Rainstone Fall

‘Couldn’t you get a more aggressive dog to help guard this place?’ I suggested tactlessly when two mugs of tea steamed between us.

She shook her head. ‘Not while Taxi is around,’ she said, looking out of the window.

‘I have bad news, I’m afraid.’

Gemma put her mug down. She understood instantly. ‘Oh. Poor Taxi. I had him for ever, it seemed. He went walkabouts some time yesterday. I was afraid that in this weather. . Where did you find him?’

‘Just a bit further up the valley.’

‘You mean near Blackfield’s place?’

I nodded.

‘Any sign of how he died?’

‘Not really. Hard to tell, I’m not a vet, you know.’

‘So he wasn’t run over or anything obvious like that. Probably old age, he was ancient, and the weather has been lousy. But I always hoped he’d just lie down by the stove and fade away, not out in the cold. But he always liked to roam. Come on, drink up, show me.’

‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. .’

‘Rubbish. Can’t let him just lie there. I thought you loved animals. We’ll go and bury him.’ She walked out, leaving me little choice but to gulp my scalding hot tea and follow her. With spade over her shoulder, pointy hat and scabbed and bruised face, she appeared to have stepped out of some medieval tapestry, the kind where people lie about with arrows stuck in their eyes. She chucked the spade into the cluttered back of the Volvo and we got in.

‘How’s Al’s cat settling in with you?’ she asked as she propelled the car up the slope.

‘Oh, he’s fine, still sniffing out the place. He can open doors, did you know that?’

Gemma stopped so I could get out and remove the rope from across the entrance. ‘Have you decided what to call him yet?’ she asked when I got back in.

‘Not yet.’

‘He’s a cute cat. You could call him Widget.’

‘No chance.’

‘Suit yourself.’ She took the ford of the brook as though it was open road, just briefly flicking the windscreen wipers on and off. Once up in the lane she cranked the big Zeppelin of a car round the corners in grim, high speed silence and eventually powered it up the hill so fast I thought she was going to drive smack through the locked gate on to Blackfield’s land. Instead she stopped a couple of inches short of the chain link, jumped out and got the spade.

‘Go on, show us.’

‘Actually, I think he did have some kind of accident. It looked as if. . someone might have hit him.’

‘Hit him,’ she repeated flatly.

I risked a glance over my shoulder. Her face was set in a rigid scowl. We walked on in silence. It didn’t take long to reach the point where I had turned down the hill. I slithered through the leaf litter with Gemma at my heels and found Taxi’s corpse easily.

Gemma stood motionless in front of it, gripping the spade like a weapon. ‘The bastards. They didn’t have to do that.’

She obviously had some idea of the who and why but an odd rasp in her voice made me think that this wasn’t the moment to quiz her about it. My own list of suspects was very short. Eventually she dragged her eyes away, sniffed. ‘I changed my mind, I don’t want to bury him here,’ she said, looking towards the fence. ‘I’ll bury him at the Hollow. Can you give me a hand? He’s quite heavy.’

Despite the cold, flies buzzed as we lifted the cold body. Gemma carried the front of the animal, oblivious to the blood and gore of the broken skull. We walked awkwardly up the slope, nearly fell twice. My mobile chimed as we reached the top. I shifted the weight on to my left arm and answered it.

It was Annis. ‘At last, I’ve been trying to get hold of you for ages but it said your mobile was unavailable. What’s going on, where are you, what are you doing?’

I sighed. There was some kind of liquid draining from the dead dog on to my clothes. I could feel ants crawl up my sleeves. A fat fly buzzed insanely around my head. ‘I’ll explain later.’

‘Sooner rather than later. He called again and he seems furious, demanded to speak to you. He has another job for us but he wants you on the phone when he calls again at. . well, in less than an hour from now. Can you get here?’

‘I’ll be there,’ I said simply and rang off.

We found space among the crates, buckets and tools in the crowded back for the dog and I closed the door with all the reverence I could muster. When I got in myself I noticed several bluebottles had made it into the car. Gemma reversed down the hill like she’d been driving backwards all her life, stuffed the back half of the car into the track-side weeds by the barn at the bottom and cranked the wheel around with furious efficiency before propelling us back towards the Hollow.

Digging a hole large and deep enough to bury the dog turned out to be surprisingly hard work. We dug the grave on the side of the slope, away from the springs, taking turns with the only spade. The ground was wet and heavy. When we had laid the dead animal at the bottom Gemma picked up the spade and without ceremony began the task of backfilling. I went off to wash my hands at the spring. By the time I got back she had nearly finished.

‘Thanks for doing that. Can you go now, please?’ she asked without looking at me.

I ignored the request. ‘Do you ever go to those woods?’

‘Of course I do. I go mushroom picking there for a start.’

‘But it’s private property? Blackfield owns it?’

‘Yeah, they own it, so what. Blackfield’s a complete bastard and wants no one near his property, he doesn’t give a shit for the few mushrooms I take away. Perhaps he got a few threatening letters or something when he started up that business with the containers and that’s what turned him into a paranoid antisocial bastard, that’s my most charitable theory anyway. We had words about me collecting wild herbs and mushrooms around there before he started with the containers though.’

‘And you do that at night?’ I was thinking about ‘the old witch snooping at night’.

‘Yes, some plants are best collected after nightfall. Or so it says in some of my old herbals and I have no reason to doubt it. Anyway, I like walking at night, it’s peaceful.’

Albert Barrington hadn’t found it so peaceful, though you could argue he’d found peace in the end. ‘Blackfield, is he the big guy with a shaved head? Dresses like a Hollywood mercenary?’

‘That’s Tony’s son Jim. I think you’ll find it’s him who’s in charge now. He went off for a few years, no interest in farming whatsoever. Can’t blame him, he saw his parents work themselves into the ground for no reward. Mind you, if he’d stayed they wouldn’t have been so shorthanded in the first place. Small mixed farm. Mad Cow Disease, Foot and Mouth, it doesn’t take much, the margins are so small. Then Tony’s wife died, cancer I think, not sure, the Big C’s still only whispered around here. Jim came back, took over, got rid of the last animals. I think Blackfield senior never recovered from losing his wife. Apparently he still keeps three chickens and only talks to them. Sounds like depression if you ask me. And when he looks out the window he sees a sea of containers rusting in his fields. Cheerful. You met his son then.’

‘Yes. He’s a charmer. Do you think he’s the one who killed your dog?’

‘Don’t know. Probably. Didn’t I ask you to go a while back?’ She looked a tired pointy-hatted pixie now, gazing past me, unfocused.

‘All right. Look, I’ll leave you my number.’ I made her accept one of my cards. Then I looked around. ‘You’ve got a phone, I take it?’

She snorted. ‘Dream on. They refused to give me a land line since none of this,’ she waved her arms in an irritable gesture, ‘amounts to a permanent abode . And you can’t get a mobile signal down here.’