Minette Walters - Fox Evil

James and his two companions made no secret of their approach, although by mutual consent they didn't speak after they left the terrace and crossed the lawn to the ha-ha. There was no sign of the chainsaw gang, but Nancy pointed out the machine itself, which had been abandoned on a small pile of logs. They headed up to their right, skirting the thickly sprouting ash and hazel bushes which, once used for coppicing, created a natural sight screen between the Manor and the encampment.

In light of James's questions about recognition, Nancy wondered how deliberate the positioning of the vehicles had been. Any farther inside the wood and they would have been visible through the skeletal trees as the Copse dipped into the valley. Certainly James could have kept an easy eye on them through binoculars from the drawing-room windows. She turned her head to catch sounds, but there was nothing to hear. Wherever the travelers were, they were keeping as quiet as their visitors.

James guided them up to the path that led toward the entrance. Here the trees were thinner and they could see the encampment clearly. A couple of the buses were brightly colored. One in yellow and lime green, the other painted purple with "Bella" sprayed in pink along its side. By comparison, the rest were curiously drab-ex-coach-hire vehicles in grays and creams, with their logos obliterated.

They were parked in a rough semicircle arcing out from the entrance, and even from a hundred yards away Nancy could see that each bus was linked by rope to its neighbors, with more "keep out" notices strung between the gaps. There was a beat-up Ford Cortina nosed in behind the lime green bus, and children's bicycles lying on the ground. Otherwise, the site appeared to be empty except for the fire in the middle and two distant hooded figures who sat on chairs at either end of the rope barrier facing the road. A couple of Alsatians lay tethered at their feet.

Mark jerked his chin toward the two figures, then pointed his forefingers at his ears to indicate headphones, and Nancy nodded as she watched one of the guardians mark time with his foot as he strummed an air guitar. She raised the binoculars to take a closer look. They weren't adults, she thought. Their immature shoulders were too narrow for their borrowed coats, and their skinny wrists and hands protruded from the bunched sleeves like tablespoons. Easy prey for anyone prepared to cut the rope and reclaim the Copse for the village.

Too easy. The dogs were old and threadbare, but presumably their barks still worked. The parents and owners had to be within calling range.

She scanned across the windows of the various vehicles, but they all had cardboard obscuring visibility from this side. It was interesting, she thought. None of the engines was running so the interiors must be lit by natural light-unless the travelers were crazy enough to use batteries alone-yet the strong sunlight from the south had been blocked out. Why? Because the Manor lay in that direction?

She whispered her guesses into James's ear. "The kids on the barricade are vulnerable," she finished, "so at least one of the buses has to have adults in it. Do you want me to find out which one?"

"Will it help?" he whispered back.

She made a rocking motion with her hand. "It depends how aggressive they're likely to be and how many reinforcements they have. Bearding them in their den looks safer than being caught in the open."

"It'll mean crossing one of the barriers between the coaches."

"Mm," she agreed.

"What about the dogs?"

"They're old, and probably too far away to hear us as long as we move quietly. They'll bark if the occupants kick up a ruckus, but we'll be inside by then."

His eyes gleamed with amusement as he glanced toward Mark. "You'll frighten our friend," he warned, tilting his head fractionally in the lawyer's direction. "I can't believe his rules of engagement allow for unlawful entry to other people's property."

She grinned. "And yours? What do they allow?"

"Action," he said without hesitation. "Find me a target and I'll follow your signal."

She made a ring with her thumb and forefinger and slipped away among the trees.

"I hope you know what you're doing," murmured Mark in his other ear.

The old man chuckled. "Don't be such a killjoy," he said. "I haven't had such fun in months. She's so like Ailsa."

"An hour ago you were saying she was like your mother."

"I can see the two of them in her. It's the best of both worlds… she's got all the good genes, Mark, and none of the bad."

Mark hoped he was right.

There were raised voices inside "Bella," which became increasingly audible the closer Nancy came. She guessed the door was open on the other side for the sound to travel, but too many people were talking at once to follow the thread of individual arguments. It was all good. It meant the dogs were indifferent to altercation in the vehicles.

She knelt on one knee beside the off-side front wheel, which was as near to the door as she could safely go, confident that the cardboard blinds made her as invisible to those inside as they were to her. As she listened, she unhitched the rope barrier at "Bella's" end and let it fall to the ground with the "keep out" notice facedown, then she searched the trees to the south and west for movement. The argument seemed to be about who should be in control of the enterprise, but the reasoning was largely negative.

"Nobody else knows anything about the law…" "Only his word that he does…" "He's a fucking psycho…" "Sh-sh, the kids are listening…" "Okay, okay, but I'm not taking any more of his crap…" "Wolfie says he carries a razor…"

She raised her eyes to search for chinks at the base of the cardboard blinds, hoping to get a glimpse of the interior and a rough count of heads. From the number of different voices, she suspected the whole encampment was in there, minus the one who was under discussion. The psycho. She would have been happier knowing where he was, but the absolute stillness beyond the buses meant he was either very patient or he wasn't there.

The last window she examined was the one above her head, and her heart missed a beat as she locked eyes with someone looking down at her through a tweaked-back edge of the cardboard. The eyes were too round and the nose too small to be anything but a child's, and, instinctively, she smiled and raised a finger to her lips. There was no reaction, just a quiet withdrawal as the board was pressed back into place. After two or three minutes, during which the rumble of conversation continued undisturbed, she stole back among the trees and signaled to James and Mark to join her.

Wolfie had sneaked into the driving seat of Bella's bus, which was partitioned off by a piece of curtain. He didn't want to be noticed, frightened that someone would say he should be with his father. He had curled into a ball on the floor between the dashboard and the seat, hiding as much from Fox on the outside as from Bella and the others inside. After half an hour, when the cold of the floor set his teeth chattering, he crawled onto the seat and peered over the steering wheel to see if he could spot Fox.

He was more frightened now than he'd ever been. If Cub wasn't Fox's, then perhaps that was why his mother had taken him away and left Wolfie behind. Perhaps Wolfie didn't belong to Vixen at all, but only to Fox. The thought terrified him. It meant Fox could do what he liked, whenever he liked, and there'd be no one to stop him. At the back of his mind, he knew it didn't make any difference. His mother had never been able to keep Fox from acting crazy, just holler and cry and say she wouldn't be bad again. He had never understood what the badness was, though he was beginning to wonder if the sleeps she made him and Cub take had something to do with it. A tiny knot of anger-a first understanding of material betrayal-wound like a noose about his heart.