by steve higgs
He said, ‘You’ll have to excuse the mess. Today has not been the most organised.’ As he led me through the house. I couldn’t see any mess, but I kept my mouth shut anyway.
‘So, you are here to find out why our cows are producing luminous milk, are you?’ He asked as he flopped into an armchair set at a table. I was left standing and feeling awkward until Glen spoke again. ‘I’m so sorry. Forgive my manners. Please have a seat.’
He jumped up to pull my seat out for me, but I waved him away as I set my bag down and slid into one of the ornate wooden chairs. As I opened my notebook I asked, ‘What do you think happened to your wife?’
He closed his eyes and opened them again. ‘The two detectives wanted to know the same thing. I can shed no light on what happened to Tamara. We went to bed together last night. When I woke up this morning she was missing. I didn't think too much of it at the time. She sometimes gets up to watch the sunrise, this is all still quite new to us as we only moved here in February. Usually though, if she did leave the house, she would return before breakfast. When I heard the first scream, I knew in my heart that it was her. That she was dead somehow and they had found her body.’ I kept quiet while he talked as it is a golden rule to never interrupt a witness or suspect while they are telling you everything. ‘I can’t explain it. I just knew. So, when I went outside, there she was, frozen stiff and laying on the mud and grass where she had toppled.’
A single tear rolled down his left cheek, but he made no attempt to wipe it away. He looked sad or lost maybe. I had seen people look like him many times when delivering notice of death as a police officer. It was the least pleasant thing I had ever had to do and the task always left me feeling empty for hours afterward. I could only imagine what the bereaved felt at their sudden loss.
I had more questions that I wasn’t going to seek answers for right now. I excused myself, thanked him for his time, repeated my sorrow for his loss and headed back to my car.
Outside, the sun was high in the sky but hidden behind a shield of thin grey cloud. To my right, the coroner's van was gone and a large white van from the forensics department was parked in the space it had vacated. Only one police car remained, the two officers with it electing to stay inside where it was warm. Their only purpose would be to keep people away from the body and the work the forensics chaps would be doing, so they were most likely right to hang out in their car.
I looked about. In front of me, opposite the farmhouse itself was a large shed that was open on two sides. I believed it to be the milking shed because I could see machinery inside that looked right for the job. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but they had to get milked somewhere, right? It was devoid of life. Not a cow or a person within its confines.
To my left, was another building that could be anything. I was telling myself it might be important to learn more about the farms, how they are set up, how they operate, but I needed a guide to achieve that and not only was there no one around, but all the staff here had suffered a shock today. My questions could wait.
The impact of Tamara’s death was probably felt less keenly at the other farms. I set off to my car.
Brompton Farm. Wednesday, November 9th 1312hrs
‘I have an appointment with Mr. Fallon.' I called. ‘I'm here about the milk.' I had arrived at Brompton Farm, the home of Kieron Fallon but could not get beyond the gate, as just like Glen Adongo's farm, there was a small crowd of nutters gathered outside. Fortunately, there were a couple of farm hands within earshot just like there had been at Larson Farm.
When I called out to them, one spoke to the other, who then trotted off towards a steel-sided barn. The first came to let me through the gate, eyeing the alien spotters suspiciously in case any of them tried to get inside.
I got back into my car and drove through the gate to park near other cars as the man indicated. To my left, his colleague emerged from the building he had entered now accompanied by another man. This one was older and looked in charge. He was tall with broad shoulders. His outfit of dark blue jeans and body warmer over a check shirt was spattered with mud in places. On his feet, he had green wellies that had seen better days and a sheepdog trailed along at his feet, full of nervous energy as sheepdogs always are.
I was willing to bet my wages the man I was looking at was Kieron Fallon. He was exactly as I imagined him.
Just then my phone rang. I moved my hand to reject the call but saw that it was my mother. Kieron was approaching. I stabbed the button to quickly answer the call. ‘Hi, mum.’
‘Hello, Mandy. Have you got time to talk?’ Mum often started conversations like that, have I got time to talk, but she never waited for an answer, so, true to form, she was already telling me about where she was and what her day ahead looked like.
I had to interrupt her. It took a few attempts.
‘Mandy, what is it, dear? I was just telling you about Miami.’ The disappointment at not being able to tell me her news was evident.
‘I have to go, mum.’ I told her for the sixth or seventh time. ‘I have a client.’ I explained.
‘A client?’
‘Yes, mum. A client. He is standing outside my car now. I have to go. I will call you back later.’
‘But you're a police officer. You don't have clients.' There was a pause. ‘Oh. God! Oh no. You're a prostitute now, aren't you?'
‘WHAT?’
‘I knew that silly police job wouldn't pay the bills.' She was muttering now and not listening to me at all. In the background, I could hear her shouting for her boyfriend.
‘Mother.’ I called down the phone through gritted teeth. ‘Mother.’ Still no answer. ‘MOTHER!’
Finally, she came back onto the phone, still shouting something about me to John. ‘Darling, I’ll be on the next flight home…’
I managed to cut her off, ‘Mother I am not a bloody prostitute. I am a private investigator. My client is a person with a case I am going to solve. For goodness sake.' She opened her mouth to speak again. ‘I have to go, mum. I will call you this evening.'
I disconnected the call and savagely stabbed the button that would silence the phone in case it should ring again.
The Farmer. Wednesday, November 9th 1412hrs
Kieron Fallon was waiting patiently next to my car, trying not to watch me while also keeping an eye on what I was doing.
Now that I was finished with my call, he tapped politely on the window. I opened the door and got out. ‘Sorry, Miss, this is private property. Do you have business here?’
‘Mr. Fallon, yes?' I offered him my hand.
‘Oh, goodness, no. I'm the farm manager, Gordon. Mr. Fallon is a young chap. I'm afraid you won't get to see him without an appointment though.' The man's dog was leaning forward to sniff my leg. It looked as dirty as the owner. I moved away slightly.
‘Mr. Fallon is expecting me. Please tell him Amanda Harper is here.'
Gordon looked slightly taken aback as if the idea that a woman might have business was preposterous. He was smiling at me like he was waiting for the punchline. Fortunately, the real Kieron Fallon emerged from the farmhouse. He was expecting a woman to visit and here I was.
Of course, I didn’t know it was Kieron until he arrived and thrust out his hand. ‘Hi, Amanda. Thank you for coming so quickly.’ He turned to Gordon who was still standing where he had been, the dog next to his feet still looking up at me. ‘I’ll take it from here, Gordon. Thank you.’ He said it in a positive way that sounded like he was praising Gordon for coming to see who I was, while also making it clear that the task was done, and he probably had other work to attend to.
Gordon was slow to respond though and clearly unhappy that he was being dismissed. ‘I don't think you've got time to be socialising, Mr. Fallon.'
Kieron turned to face the older man, evidently less than happy with his attitude. ‘Thank you, Gordon. I’ll take it from here.’ He repeated, this time with more force.
Gordon spun on his heel and strode away. The dirty do
g lingered for a moment but soon realised his master was gone and went after him.
Kieron turned back to me. ‘Sorry about Gordon. I got him with the farm when I bought it. I thought I was getting a real asset with his years of experience. Now I don't know how to get rid of him.'
‘Is he a problem?’ I asked.
‘Sort of.' Kieron started walking back toward the farm buildings, indicating that I should walk with him. ‘He has been here forever and knows that he knows everything. To start with, I thought I couldn't manage without him and made the mistake of saying it once. Now he argues with me about everything new I want to try. Drives me nuts.'
Kieron Fallon had a two-day stubble going beneath his almost black hair. His hair had been cut in the last week or less and complimented his tan skin. He sure was pretty. He had wide shoulders that tapered to a small waist, he was a shade over six feet tall and he had a smile that would light up a room. He had flashed it at me in greeting when he first walked over, and I almost had to grab the car to keep myself upright. He had the cutest dimples in his cheeks. Now he was walking away from me and I was looking at his muscular butt.
What is wrong with me?
I was behaving like a teenage girl, my hormones running unchecked. Had it really been that long since I got some? I did some mental maths and conceded that it had, in fact, been a while. It explained, to some extent, why I was drooling at the man-candy farmer.
At least that was what I was telling myself.
Kieron kept walking but turned his torso so he was looking back at me a few steps behind him. He slowed his pace so I could catch up but as he did so he pulled out his phone. ‘I will let Richard and Glen know that you are here. I doubt Glen will visit, but it would be wrong to assume.’ We had crossed the muddy apron of concrete that joined the farm buildings and were heading into a brick-built house that looked a hundred years old or more. The entrance door was low, Kieron had to duck as he went in. He had touched his phone and was speaking into it as I closed the door behind me.
He was talking to Glen, I had heard him say the name, but the conversation was brief. ‘Can I offer you a drink? Tea perhaps?’ He asked as he stuffed the phone into a back pocket.
‘Yes, thank you.’ Tea sounded good. It had been cooler out than I expected. It felt cooler here than it had in Rochester now that I thought about it. Was that normal? Was the countryside cooler than the city?
Kieron took a pace to the left and called through a doorway. A moment later, the yummy farmer’s wife appeared. I hadn’t noticed the ring on his finger, but it was obvious now that the heavily pregnant woman was waddling through the doorway and I remembered that he had mentioned his wife on the phone earlier.
‘Lara this is Amanda Harper. She will be investigating the recent problems for us.’ He said, his face still carrying the perfect smile that seemed to be permanent and his tone suggested that my arrival was the best thing ever.
‘Right.’ Mrs yummy farmer replied. ‘You hired a cute, busty blonde to catch an alien that is poisoning our livelihood and probably plans to steal my baby. Of course, you did.’ Clearly hiring me had not been her idea.
‘If we don’t solve this, love, there will be no farm.’ He chided gently. ‘Now be a love and make some tea, will you?’
She about-faced in the doorway and muttered something that sounded like it began with an F as she disappeared back through it.
Seemingly oblivious to his wife's mood, Kieron smiled brightly at me and indicated I should take a seat at the table and chairs arranged like a boardroom in what was a farmhouse dining-room setting.
‘Glen and Richard will be along soon. I doubt they will mind if I get started though.' He powered up a laptop. ‘I have some photographs to show you.' He said, swivelling the screen toward me. What I saw was pictures of crop circles taken from the viewpoint of someone standing inside them. Despite the close-up view, they could not be mistaken for something else. We talked about them until the tea arrived, Kieron's wife coming back through the same doorway with a mug in each hand just as two men and a lady came through the front door.
I recognised Glen and guessed correctly that the couple with him was Richard and his wife. She was introduced as Michelle and like Kieron's wife, she was pregnant, though not so far along.
‘I suppose more tea is required.’ Lara snipped as she went back out the kitchen door again. I wanted to feel sorry for her, but she was being a bit of a B**** in my opinion. I bleeped it out in my head because I didn’t want to think about how tough it might be to be pregnant.
Richard’s wife rushed after her, leaving the men to talk with me. I wasn’t sure what this said about the emancipation of the housewife, but it was probably not a good thing.
The men all shook hands like old friends and then first Glen and then Richard shook hands with me. Glen had recovered his composure and tried to apologise for being upset earlier. I think he realised that it was unnecessary as he was saying the words and he trailed off, apologised again and took a seat at the table.
I took a seat as well and handed out a business card to each man. Like Kieron, Richard was in his early thirties and attractive in a burly way. I wondered if the baby his wife carried would be their first.
‘I was just telling Amanda about the crop circles.’ Kieron told his colleagues. ‘It’s the milk we need to talk about though.’
I interrupted him. ‘If I may, I would like to learn some more about all of you and about your farms please.’ I had flipped my notepad open once more and had my pen poised. The three chaps looked at each other, each of them waiting for someone to start speaking. ‘Do you want to go first, Kieron?’ I prompted.
‘Sure. Richard and I went to university together in Cambridge where we studied agriculture and business. We bought the farms six years ago when first one, then the other came up for sale. At the time, the third farm, that’s Larson Farm to the west, was owned and run by Sven Larson. Richard and I had a plan for a large cooperative of farms, but old Sven wasn’t interested. We set up between ourselves and were able to secure a contract with one of the major supermarket chains for the supply of milk. We had borrowed up to our eyeballs, so it was a relief to finally be making a profit I can tell you.’
‘Then Sven fell ill toward the end of last year and called us to say he was selling the farm and moving back to Sweden. We really wanted to buy it, the geography of it being so close to ours means that we can share manpower and equipment to achieve economy of scale with our overhead.’
Richard picked up the story, ‘By making our business lean we were able to compete with other suppliers to win the contract. With another farm also producing, we could start making a healthy return. That was the original business model Kieron and I had worked out while still at Uni.’
‘We couldn't afford the farm though.' Kieron said, taking over again. ‘The banks just wouldn't lend us any more despite the strength of our predicted figures. It was heartbreaking.'
‘So, we put out an advert.’ Said Richard. Next thing we knew, Glen and Tamara called us and the rest, as they say, is history.’
‘We bought the farm in January and moved here in February.’ Said Glen, joining in for the first time. ‘It was Tamara’s dream to live in the countryside.’
‘What did you do before this?’ I asked him.
‘I was a farmer in Kenya. Or rather, I grew up on a farm in Kenya, but it was confiscated under a government enforced land act when I was twenty-three. My father suffered a heart attack and died six weeks after the farm was taken from him. It had been in his family for six generations. I think he died of sadness. Mother had died two years before that, so I left Kenya behind, disgusted that a ruler could do that to his people and came here. Like Kieron and Richard, I had to borrow a lot from the bank, but Tamara had money and she had a house in Knightsbridge which she sold. The money from that bought the farm and the loans covered the set-up costs to buy new equipment.’
Kieron started speaking again, ‘With the milk no longer fit for
sale, we will be owned by the banks in a matter of a few weeks unless we can find out what is causing it.’
I checked my notes, trying to be methodical. ‘Tell me about your partners, please. Michelle and Lara. Where did you meet them, how long have you been married? That sort of thing.'
Kieron pointed to Richard so he would go first. ‘We met them at a bar in Rochester. Kieron and I had just been into the bank to discuss more funds and been rejected again. This was in December when the farm was up for sale. We had met with Glen about a week before that, so we were getting excited about what the next year would hold. Anyway, the bank had turned us down, so we were drowning our sorrows instead. Ten minutes later these two girls walked in, came and sat next to us at the bar and we hit it off straight away.'
‘Are you married?’ It seemed like fast work if they were, but I had already seen the ring on Kieron’s hand and could see one on Richard’s now.
‘I proposed when Lara fell pregnant. We set the date for May, but Michelle announced that she was pregnant in late April, so we changed it to a double wedding.’ He talked about it with great happiness I noted. If he was this happy, what was with his wife?
‘Tell me about the milk, please.’
‘What about the alien your wife saw last night?’ Asked Richard. ‘She called Michelle.’ Richard continued. ‘I had already gone up to bed. But I heard the phone call and heard Michelle go out. I didn’t think anything of it until she told me about it this morning. I figured she was checking on the livestock or something.’
Kieron started telling the tale from his aspect. Lara had gone to get the cat in, the first thing he knew about it was when she started screaming. He ran to the door in time to see the moonlight glint off something as it vanished into the dark field opposite the farmhouse. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he called the police because his wife was borderline hysterical.
