Minette Walters - Fox Evil

"Julian Bartlett," said the woman obligingly. "He plays golf with my husband."

"Where does he live?"

"Shenstead."

"He must be worth a bob or two."

"Came from London."

"That explains it, then," said Debbie, locating the page in her notebook where she'd written "gypsies, Shenstead" and jotted "Julian Bartlett" underneath. "Thanks," she told the woman with a smile, "you've been really helpful. So, in a nutshell, what you're saying is that it's kinder to kill vermin with dogs than by shooting or poisoning."

"Yes. There's no argument. Dogs kill cleanly. Poison and shot pellets don't."

"Does that apply to all vermin?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, for example, is it kinder to set dogs on rabbits? Or gray squirrels… or rats… or badgers? They're all vermin, aren't they?"

"Some people would say so. Terriers were bred to go down burrows and setts."

"Do you approve?"

The woman shrugged. "Vermin is vermin," she said. "You have to control it somehow."

Bella left Wolfie with her daughters and went back to the chainsaw gang. The machine was working again and a dozen posts of various widths and lengths had been hacked out of fallen timber. The idea, which had seemed feasible in the planning but appeared naive to Bella now, was to drive posts into the ground to create a stockade. It looked an impossible task. Placed upright, these dozen haphazardly shaped posts would neither stand straight nor enclose more than a couple of meters, not to mention the arduous task of digging them into the frozen earth.

The Copse had been flagged as a site of scientific interest, Fox had warned that morning, and a felled tree would be an excuse for eviction. There was enough on the ground to get them started. Why had he waited until now to tell them? Bella had asked angrily. Who was going to let them build on a protected site? It wasn't protected yet, he told her. They would lodge an objection while they established themselves. He spoke as if establishing themselves would be easy.

It didn't seem so now. Much of the dead wood was rotten and crumbling, with fungus growing out of the sodden bark. Impatience was beginning to set in and Ivo, angry and frustrated, already had his eye on the living wood. "This is a waste of time," he growled, kicking the end of a branch that crumbled to dust under his boot. "Look at it. There's only about three feet that's usable. We'd do much better to take out one of these trees in the middle. Who's going to know?"

"Where's Fox?" asked Bella.

"Guarding the barrier."

She shook her head. "I've just been there. The two lads on it are getting bored."

Ivo made a throat-cutting gesture to the guy on the chain-saw and waited for the noise to die down. "Where's Fox?" he demanded.

"Search me. Last time I saw him he was heading for the Manor."

Ivo looked inquiringly at the rest of the gang but they shook their heads. "Jesus," he said disgustedly, "this fucker's got a nerve. Do this, do that. So what the hell's he doing? The rules as I remember them is that if we pull together we got a chance, but all he's done so far is play the ponce in front of a pissed-off farmer and a sad bitch in an anorak. Am I the only one with reservations?"

There were mutters of discontent. "The farmer recognized his voice," said Zadie, who was married to the chainsaw operator. She tugged off her scarf and balaclava and lit a roll-up. "That's why he's got us wearing this shit. He doesn't want to be singled out as the only one trying to hide."

"Is that what he said?"

"No… just guessing. The whole thing sucks. Me and Gray came here to try and get our kids a house… but now I'm figuring it's a setup. We're the diversion. While everyone's looking at us, Fox is off doing his own thing."

"He's mighty interested in this house," said her man, lowering the chainsaw to the ground and jerking his head toward the Manor. "Every time he vanishes it's in that direction."

Ivo glanced thoughtfully through the trees. "Who is he, anyway? Does anyone know him? Seen him around?"

They all shook their heads. "He's a type you notice," said Zadie, "but the first time we saw him was Barton Edge. So where was he before… and where's he been holed up the last few months?"

Bella stirred. "He had Wolfie's mother and brother with him then, but there's no sign of them now. Does anyone know what happened to them? The poor little kid's frantic… says they left weeks ago."

The question was greeted with silence.

"It makes you wonder, doesn't it?" said Zadie.

Ivo took an abrupt decision. "Okay, let's shift back to the buses. There's no way I'm breaking my balls on this crap till I get some answers. If he thinks-" He broke off to look at Bella as she put a warning hand on his arm.

A twig snapped.

"Thinks what?" asked Fox, sliding out from behind a tree. "That you'll follow orders?" He smiled unpleasantly. "Sure, you will. You don't have the guts to take me on, Ivo." He threw a scathing glance around the group. "None of you does."

Ivo lowered his head like a bull preparing to charge. "Try me, you fucker!"

Bella saw the glint of a steel blade in Fox's right hand. Ah. Jesus! "Let's eat before someone does something stupid," she said, grabbing Ivo's arm and turning him toward the campsite. "I signed on for my kids' future… not to watch a couple of Neanderthals drag their knuckles along the ground."

They ate lunch in the kitchen with James presiding at the head of the table. The two men prepared the food-the elegant fare that Mark had brought from London-and Nancy was put in charge of finding plates. For some reason, James insisted on using the "good" ones, and she was sent to the dining room to find them. She guessed it was an excuse to give the men a chance to talk, or a subtle way to introduce her to photographs of Ailsa, Elizabeth, and Leo. Perhaps both.

From the way the dining room had been turned into a junk room for unwanted chairs and chests of drawers, it was apparent that it was a long time since it had been used. It was cold, and dust lay everywhere. There was the smell of the decay that Mark had mentioned earlier, although Nancy thought it was disuse and damp rather than rot. There were blisters in the paintwork above the skirting boards, and the plaster underneath was soft to the touch. It had obviously been Ailsa's domain, she thought, and she wondered if James avoided it as he avoided her garden.

A dark mahogany table stretched the length of one wall, covered in papers and with piles of cardboard boxes stacked at one end. Some of the boxes had "RSPCA" inscribed in large letters across their fronts, others "Barnado's" or "Child Soc." The writing was strong and black, and Nancy guessed that this was Ailsa's filing system for her charities. Patches of mildew on the boxes suggested Ailsa's interests had died with her. A few were unmarked, and these lay on their side, with files spilling out across the table. Household bills. Garden receipts. Car insurance. Bank statements. Savings accounts. The stuff of everyday life.

There were no paintings, only photographs, although pale rectangular patches on the walls suggested paintings had hung there at one time. The photographs were everywhere. On the walls, on every available surface, in a stack of albums on the sideboard that held the dinner plates. Even if she'd wanted to, Nancy couldn't have ignored them. They were largely historical. A pictorial record of past generations, of Shenstead's lobster enterprise, landscapes of the Manor and the valley, shots of horses and dogs. A studio portrait of James's mother hung over the mantelpiece, and in the alcove to the right was a wedding photograph of a younger, unmistakable James and his bride.

Nancy felt like an eavesdropper, in search of secrets, as she stared at Ailsa. It was a pretty face, full of character, as different from James's square-jawed, black-haired mother as the north pole is from the south. Blond and delicate, with bright blue, impish eyes like a knowing Siamese cat's. Nancy was astonished. She hadn't imagined Ailsa like this at all. In her mind, she had transposed her late adoptive grandmother-a tough, wrinkled farmer's wife with gnarled hands and spiky personality-onto her natural grandmother, turning her into a daunting woman with a quick tongue and little patience.