The Family Lie

by P L Kane

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen.’ This was from the man with the stick, an effort to try to keep the peace. It would take more than that soon, if Mitch was any judge. ‘Please.’

  ‘This isn’t one o’ yer fancy council meetings, Nuttall. The time for words is past.’ Another snarl from the farmer. ‘An’ I’ve always been a man of action anyway!’

  ‘Except when it comes to acting in your best interests, Mr Granger. The best interests of this village, this entire region.’

  ‘Piss off, Sheldon!’

  So the sharply dressed man was Neil Sheldon, thought Mitch. The man he’d read about in his father’s notes. Property developer Neil Sheldon.

  ‘If you’d just stop being an idiot and—’

  That was it. The moment things turned, and farmer Granger lunged across for Sheldon. The moment that Nuttall guy with the stick got in the middle of the fight and was elbowed away. The blow would have seen him on the floor if it weren’t for Mitch stepping forwards and catching him, righting him. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked the man, who nodded.

  Now it was Mitch’s turn to get in the middle of things. He had plenty of pent-up anger himself left over from the previous evening, and he hadn’t had nearly as much to drink today. Some might say he hadn’t had enough. Mitch would have disagreed, he’d had just the right amount for a rumble.

  Granger had Sheldon by the scruff of the neck, was pulling the man towards him as the woman in the teal dress let out a yell. The big farmer’s fist was drawing back to punch his opponent, and Mitch was there to stop him. He grabbed that arm and yanked it, spinning a furious Granger to face him. It was only now that Mitch began to wonder if he’d bitten off more than he could chew. Not only did he not have his baton, pepper spray or anything else he usually relied on when breaking up a fight like this – including handcuffs for after the perp was incapacitated – but he didn’t have backup either. Which was more than might be said for Granger. For all Mitch knew, half the pub could be on his side in whatever row this was.

  Sheldon forgotten about for the moment, Granger set his sights on Mitch, taking a swing at him instead. Mitch ducked, avoiding the blow, but his ribs protested. He really shouldn’t have been getting into a scrape this soon after his last one, wasn’t his business until he made it his business. But he was trying to stop it from escalating, was probably the only one present with the training to take down Granger with the minimum of fuss – supposedly.

  Gritting his teeth, Mitch skirted round the back of the big farmer and grabbed him – under the armpits so he couldn’t shake him off. Holding him in place, even though it was just about killing Mitch, the old injury in his shoulder protesting too.

  ‘Enough!’ someone bellowed. ‘That’s enough!’

  It was the fellow in the apron who’d served them their meals earlier, wading in to settle this once and for all. The owner, perhaps?

  ‘Talk to him!’ shouted the man in the suit, pointing at Granger. ‘We only came in here for a quiet drink.’

  ‘It’s true, Granger here started it,’ Nuttall confirmed.

  ‘All right, all right. Settle down Cam,’ the owner said to Granger. ‘And you, yer can let him go now, mate. He won’t cause any more bother, will ye?’

  Granger gave a non-committal shake of the head. Mitch wasn’t hugely convinced, but when he felt the man he was holding loosen up, he had no choice but to step back and hold his hands in the air – still tensing, ready in case Granger should turn and want round two. The big man grunted, shrugging off hands that were not even there any longer. Keeping up the pretence of the tough guy. He gave them each a glare in turn, Sheldon, Nuttall, and then Mitch, before breaking through the crowd and heading for the exit. Leaving The Plough with a slam of the door.

  ‘What a psycho,’ said Mitch when he was gone.

  ‘He doesn’t mean any ’arm,’ the man in the apron assured him. ‘Just gets het up about things.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean any …’ But the man wasn’t even listening to him anymore, and the onlookers were dispersing – as if this was something that happened every night in the pub. No more unusual than a game of dominoes. Was it his imagination, or had this place got rougher too in the time since he’d last set foot in it?

  A hand was on his shoulder and Mitch flinched, almost turned and took down whoever that was as well – when he saw it was the older man, still leaning on his stick. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, lad.’ He offered his free hand now for Mitch to shake. ‘Appreciate the catch, I wouldn’t want to bugger up my other hip! Councillor Nuttall.’

  Mitch shook the hand. That’s right, Nuttall. He recalled this man having something to do with politics back in the day, but that hadn’t really interested Mitch at the time. ‘Prescott. Mitchel Prescott.’

  ‘Ah yes, Tommy’s boy,’ Nuttall said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Very pleased to see you.’

  ‘I’m glad someone is.’ And now Mitch was thinking: a councillor, and he knew his father? Didn’t hurt to have one of those owing you a favour, especially when you were looking into the things he was. Might even be more use than bloody Sergeant Wilkinson, could get a DI here or something to help.

  ‘That makes two of us,’ said another voice. Then there was a cough from the seated woman, and Sheldon changed it to: ‘Three, I mean. Neil Sheldon, Mr Prescott. Thanks for stepping in. I think I should probably buy you a drink or several.’

  ‘Oh, no. That’s okay, I’ve got—’

  ‘I won’t take no for an answer,’ said the man.

  Nuttall caught the bloke in the suit by the arm. ‘Neil, I can only apologize for Granger’s behaviour.’

  ‘He needs locking up,’ said Sheldon’s companion. Mitch couldn’t agree more.

  ‘If he signs over that land on the lower fields, I’ll forget it ever happened.’ Sheldon smiled then and he looked more like a predator than Granger had, even during the fight. Nevertheless, Mitch accompanied him and his girlfriend – wife? – back to the bar again. Back to Denise, who’d been watching the whole thing from a distance.

  ‘Give this man whatever he wants,’ Sheldon told her.

  Mitch picked up his full pint. ‘Like I said, I have one here waiting.’ He tipped it again in Denise’s direction, thanking her once more.

  ‘His next drink then, and the next couple after that,’ said the property developer, handing over a crisp note to the barmaid – who looked incredibly impressed. ‘You’ve got skills, my young friend. You’re trained. What are you, police?’

  Mitch didn’t see any reason to lie about it now. ‘Until recently.’

  ‘Right. Okay. So you’re at a bit of a loose end?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say—’

  ‘Have you ever considered any private security work, bodyguard, that kind of thing?’ asked Sheldon, and Mitch thought back to the conversation earlier where security work had cropped up in passing.

  ‘I hadn’t really—’

  ‘Well, when and if you ever do, give me a call.’ He handed Mitch his card; he didn’t think it was worth telling Sheldon he didn’t actually have access to a phone in his current circumstances. He just thanked him, and Sheldon clapped him on his back – then headed off with the woman in the silk dress.

  ‘I think you’ve just made a new friend,’ Denise said to him.

  ‘Yeah.’ But Mitch couldn’t help thinking about that farmer, Granger. Who in the pub might be mates with him, on his side. Couldn’t help thinking …

  He might just have made a few enemies as well.

  Chapter 14

  He’d thought about walking, rather than the bike.

  After all it was such a nice day, the sun up there in a relatively cloudless sky, the beautiful surroundings. It was the kind of day people came here to experience, to revel in: those who hired cottages or camped or just walked out there on the moorland. Seemed a shame to wrap up in leathers and plonk a ruddy great helmet on your head; for one thing it was really hot today. Had been getting hotter since he arrived from Downstone. But Mitch had a lot to get through a
nd his ribs were still aching – especially after the scuffle last night.

  With a couple more rounds ahead of him and paid for, he’d stayed in the pub and got chatting to Denise. That is, he listened as she told him more about the people who had been involved in the altercation – Nuttall, Granger, and Sheldon – and how this had been going on for a while. ‘Tempers have been running a bit high ever since Mr Sheldon moved into the area,’ she’d said to him.

  Mitch could imagine; he’d read the stuff his dad had written about the man wanting to purchase chunks of Green Acres to build on, then eventually sell off. He couldn’t imagine anyone being okay about that, most locals had his aunty and uncle’s view of new people coming in causing disruption. All right, it was inevitable that some outside people would marry into families here – his Uncle Vince for one – and you needed a bit of new blood every now and again, or things stagnated. But the villagers liked their traditions here, their beer was even called ‘Traditional’, for Heaven’s sake! Things were changing though, fast, and that was not going down well. Hardly surprising, when the result was break-ins and vandalism, the kind he’d witnessed first-hand himself.

  ‘Oh, they’re blaming a lot of that on things like the Commune,’ Denise had explained. ‘One step off gypsies and homeless people they are, but I guess we’re stuck with ’em.’ That loophole his dad had ‘mentioned’, the old family connection – and Denise’s opinion was probably the majority of people’s. The folk here made the NIMBY crowd look like amateurs. At least the kind of clientele Sheldon was talking about bringing into the fold had money, could afford the kinds of luxury and exclusive houses he was going to stick on this land. It was just a shame that in order to do that, the beautiful landscape had to change. But such was the way of all things, Mitch supposed. The Commune was what interested him most, however. Granger’s ‘hippy trespassers’.

  His uncle’s words:

  ‘I don’t trust ’em.’

  Wilkinson’s reaction:

  ‘You want to leave them well enough alone.’

  Always a dangerous thing to say to Mitch. Made him want to poke his nose in even more. Like a red rag to a bull. His father had been looking into them as well, and he decided maybe it was time he paid them a visit. See just what kind of a ‘cult’ they were really dealing with.

  Once he’d finished his drinks, Mitch decided to call it a night and head back. He wanted to stay relatively compos mentis in case anything happened at the house again. Denise had offered to walk back with him when she finished her shift – shouldn’t it have been the other way around? Or was he being old-fashioned? – but Mitch didn’t want to give her any ideas. No more than the ones she was already getting anyway.

  But once he stepped out and with the walk across the square ahead of him in the dark, Mitch began to regret that decision. He could definitely have used the company, the shadows between buildings – where the streetlamps couldn’t reach – certainly seemed to be getting longer with each step. Seemed to have things (people, monsters) hiding in them. It was like he’d inherited that paranoia his aunty and uncle had talked about from his dad, though he had been in yet another fight tonight, he reminded himself. What if Granger had waited around to take his revenge, or worse still, gone and gathered a bunch of mates to leap on him as he made his way home?

  Thankfully that hadn’t happened, but Mitch would’ve been lying if he’d said he wasn’t glad to get to the front door. To put the key in the lock and turn it. Only to jump again as something touched his leg. Something else outside in the shadows; that looked like a living shadow. His very own little monster, which meowed again and began curling around his legs.

  ‘Well, hello! You’re back again, are you?’ Mitch bent and picked up the cat, which immediately started to rub itself against his face. He laughed, the fur tickling his cheek. ‘I guess you’re my friend, aren’t you? Or is it just conditional on the amount of fish I can feed you?’

  Mitch had toed open the door, placing Cat on the floor again – and as if to prove him right, it headed off in the direction of the kitchen. Closing the door behind him, remembering to lock it, Mitch followed the creature. ‘My aunty reckons you’re a filthy thing,’ he told the ‘pet’, who looked over its shoulder at him and let out a meow of complaint. ‘Her words, pal, not mine. All right, all right, let’s see what we’ve got for you tonight. I’m guessing I can’t interest you in any more of that dried food.’ The short, sharp meow he got in reply said it all. And digging into the back of the cupboards, he managed to find some tinned spam that was in date.

  Making sure the back door was still locked – it should be, he hadn’t touched it since Wilkinson had demonstrated how it ‘worked’ earlier, and the litter had already been changed as part of the tidy-up so there was no need to unlock it – he’d hit the sack, heading upstairs this time. Contemplating the double bed for a moment, Mitch still couldn’t bring himself to spend the night in his mum and dad’s old room, no matter how much more comfortable he might be. It just wouldn’t have felt right.

  So, he’d taken to his old bedroom, crashing in there for the night – and hadn’t been surprised when Cat joined him not long afterwards. He couldn’t work out whether it was glad or pissed off he was in there too, taking up space. But in the end it snuggled up to him and he figured it was quite pleased to share the bed with him. The feeling was mutual.

  Even with all his good intentions, he’d still overslept – probably because he didn’t have a phone to set an alarm on, instead relying on the sunrise to get him up. Which he’d slept through. There’d been no sign of Cat that morning, but it had showed up again for breakfast. ‘I’ll soon be running out of things from the cupboard to give you,’ Mitch told it, doling out the rest of the spam, while he stuck to his toast; the toaster was something else the thieves were apparently not bothered about. He’d made a few cheese sandwiches for later and changed the litter again, securing the back door once he was done, and got ready to scoot off.

  Cat had followed him out today, perhaps also wanting to make the most of the sunny weather. ‘Right. See you later, then,’ he called out to it, suddenly feeling foolish for talking to the animal in public, particularly when it was taking not a blind bit of notice.

  And he was on his way, fetching his bike, donning his helmet and setting off back along the road he’d used to enter the village.

  Pointing his Honda in the direction of the Commune he’d seen that first day.

  ***

  Denise’s description of a kind of gypsy encampment was quite far off the mark.

  Yes, there were some mobile homes here – in the dusty yard slap-bang in the middle of the greenery – and a couple of caravans, though nothing approaching the size of the one his sister lived in. (Would the people in Green Acres have considered her a gypsy now too? he wondered.) But in the main these people lived in wooden structures they looked to have put up themselves; simple buildings, some square and others longer, rectangular. They looked relatively new, however – nothing like the buildings down there in the village itself, which had stood the test of time. And they looked temporary, which also made Mitch wonder how long they expected to be here.

  As he rode in and parked up, he spotted chicken runs – a couple of people in them wearing very simple cream tunics and trousers, collecting eggs – and a few goats tethered, which the Commune probably used for milk. One of the figures, a woman, placed a hand against her brow, shielding her eyes from the sun so she could see who was visiting. Beyond her were stretches of land that looked like they’d been farmed, albeit on a small scale. Patches where he could imagine vegetables might be growing like in an allotment or something.

  There was also a small bonfire burning not too far away, people tossing things onto it, getting rid of their rubbish; well, it wasn’t as if the bin men made it all the way out here, Mitch supposed.

  As he climbed off the Honda, kicking down the stand, locking the vehicle and taking off his helmet, more people dressed the same way appeared see
mingly from nowhere. Dozens actually. A few stood out: one man with ginger hair, verging on red; another completely bald with fleshy lips; and another, this time a woman, with terrible acne like the lad from the shop … or were those burns? No way of rocking up here unnoticed then, Mitch mused. And he also pondered absently how many hidden figures might be watching him, training their telescopic sights on him, pointing the barrels of their machine guns. But this was England, he reminded himself, then also remembered he knew plenty of people who could get hold of that kind of weaponry on the streets. Where there were actual streets, of course, and not dirt tracks.

  He decided to take his chances and go to meet them anyway; Mitch needed to talk to these people whatever the consequences. Whatever he discovered.

  A tall man with thinning hair, a broad chest and skin the shade of tanned leather approached him, holding up a hand. Whether he was telling Mitch to halt or waving in greeting was unclear. Either way it was enough to get Mitch to stop, waiting for the guy to cover the distance between them.

  ‘Hello, brother,’ he said. His voice was kind, warm, but strong at the same time. Could command respect, thought Mitch. Command people? ‘What brings you to our humble home this day?’

  Mitch hesitated, not sure what to say now that he was here. He decided to start with, ‘I’m investigating a crime that happened not long ago, and not far from here.’

  The man nodded. ‘You’re with the police, then?’

  Again, Mitch wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Thought it best to nod, since he’d started down along that path – in more ways than one.

  ‘You won’t mind if I ask to see some identification?’

  Not only did Mitch no longer have his police ID, he didn’t even have his cards in his wallet. He thought about telling this man all his methods of identification had been stolen, but that sounded lame even to him – regardless of the fact it was the truth. ‘Okay, okay. I’ll level with you.’ Mitch said this in the hopes he might get the same back. ‘This isn’t an official investigation, although I am in touch with the local authorities.’ That kept it nebulous enough, he figured. They could take it that he was still with the force, he wasn’t saying otherwise. And the authorities had been in touch with him – or he had been with them – since the start of all this. He’d been in touch with Wilkinson, too, for all the good it had done him. ‘My name’s Mitchel Prescott and this is about my father, Thomas.’