Tainted Ground

by Margaret Duffy

  Twelve

  ‘What do you think of Latimer?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘He’s an efficient chairman,’ John said. ‘Good organizer. Works hard. But you have to understand that I would never have him as treasurer – not that he’s ever shown the remotest interest in the post. Which, as you know, are all voluntary.’

  ‘And as a person?’

  ‘He can be a bit bombastic. Arrogant, really. Doesn’t suffer fools at all. To be honest I don’t like the man and I don’t envy you if you have to go and talk to him.’

  ‘If he starts to throw his weight about I shall cart him off to the nick,’ Patrick promised darkly. ‘People tend to deflate after an hour or so in the cells.’

  ‘Please be tactful,’ his father begged. ‘And I’m talking about everyone else who lives here. Something that people just shrug off in an urban area can have a dreadful effect in a rural community.’

  I was listening to this, wondering if Patrick would go and see Latimer straight away and whether there was any need for me to tag along, when I had one of those bombshell ideas that are usually associated with my writing. Not so much an idea perhaps as a recollection.

  ‘That large granite cattle trough in the barn,’ I said to Patrick, interrupting him in the middle of assuring John that he would handle matters carefully, ‘the one we sat on?’

  He broke off, obviously irritated with me. ‘What about it?’

  ‘It was upside down.’

  ‘That’s why we sat on it.’

  ‘When we were in there shortly after the bodies were found it was right side up.’

  ‘Perhaps SOCO turned it over.’

  ‘Why? Besides, it’s huge, it must weigh at least half a ton.’

  ‘Ingrid, it can’t be important. It was probably in the way of getting vehicles inside the place.’

  Sometimes I can just look at him unblinking and he really starts to listen to what I am saying.

  ‘No, it was over towards one side, wasn’t it?’ he mused aloud, staring into space. ‘The side you were working in.’ The fine eyes focused on me. ‘You won’t rest until I’ve turned it over to see if there’s anything underneath, will you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You couldn’t possibly move a thing like that on your own,’ Elspeth said.

  ‘A few strong blokes with crowbars and a couple of Hi-Lift jacks should do it.’ Patrick looked at his watch. ‘Who the hell do the fuzz call in to do that kind of thing – the Royal Engineers?’

  ‘Farmers with tractors and Land Rovers should do it,’ John said. ‘I’ll give Roger a ring.’

  ‘Are you both going out?’ Elspeth asked in deceptively off-hand fashion when John had left the room.

  ‘I’ll talk to Latimer in the morning,’ Patrick replied. ‘Tonight we’ll go and have a look under a cattle trough.’ Realizing that she felt safer in his company he added, ‘You can come with us if you like.’

  ‘But surely it’s confidential police work.’

  ‘No, I’m just humouring Ingrid.’

  ‘What do you think is under it?’

  ‘A small pile of ten-year-old cow muck.’

  The sliding doors of the building were as we had left them, partly open, and now we trundled them wider, the wheels squealing in dirt-encrusted channels, to allow a large tractor to gain entry. This did not belong to Roger, a local farmer, whom John had rung, but to his son, Steven, who farmed the high ground on a ridge above the valley in which Hinton Littlemoor was situated. There, he did not have to contend with narrow lanes and was mechanized accordingly. He was only here now because he had come across several fields, his own property, from the main road, gateways having been constructed with the easy access of combine harvesters and the like in mind.

  In the illumination provided by the headlights of the three vehicles – Roger, grinning delightedly, had felt compelled to attend – we pointed Steven in the direction of the granite trough.

  ‘You don’t want it bust, do you?’ Steven called down from the cab above the roar of the engine. ‘Those things go for a fortune these days.’

  Patrick shouted back that we did not want it so much as chipped as it did not belong to us. It was suggested that we pile a lot of loose straw on the far side of it.

  I was feeling very small already and preparing to vanish down a crack in the floor as soon as my silly notion was revealed for what it was. Even though Roger had told us that the tractor was brand new and Steven was itching to try it out on something I was asking myself how much fuel it had used to come here. What important jobs had the young farmer broken off from doing? No, in future I would confine myself to writing novels. And knitting dishcloths.

  ‘I still loves yer, babe,’ said a familiar voice in my ear as the bucket attachment on the tractor edged closer to the trough.

  It was decided to hammer in some wooden wedges first at either end to avoid damaging the rim. This took a few minutes and I became more and more miserable. Elspeth, standing a little apart from where the action was taking place in case something nasty was revealed, sensed my mood and grimaced at me sympathetically.

  Then, seemingly without any effort on the part of the machine, the trough had turned turtle and rolled over on to the straw.

  Beneath it was a very small pile of straw and dried-up manure.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly but my whisper was drowned out by the tractor. Steven turned it off and Patrick went over and kicked at the manure in desultory fashion. His foot hit something hard, like a stone. He bent down.

  I went over to see him unrolling a filthy rag. From the way he was handling the bundle it was obvious that whatever was inside was heavy for its size. Then, holding the rag by one corner, he tipped out the contents.

  ‘Well, I never,’ said Steven. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  Five gold ingots lay in the straw. Even though I had seen pictures of them in the books in the library and they were not very big, some three and a half inches long by about an inch and a quarter wide, a photograph could not quite capture the wonderful lustre, the weighty, sensuous glow. I understood now how people could become crazed with greed for it.

  Patrick straightened. ‘Would you be good enough to keep this under your hats?’ he said to Steven and Roger. ‘Even coming over here tonight? Just for a while – until arrests have been made.’

  We had been in a close huddle, having forgotten about Elspeth, and I was suddenly aware of her approach.

  ‘It’s not someone’s head, is it?’ she enquired with trepidation before peering over our shoulders. ‘Oh, how lovely,’ she murmured. ‘So old, so full of history. I take it the Tanner brothers were lying and opened the coffin. They helped themselves to a few, sealed it up again and hid them in here under the trough using the digger they’d borrowed before taking the coffin to wherever they handed it over to someone else.’

  ‘It’s a brilliant theory,’ Patrick said. ‘You ought to be doing this job, not me.’

  Before we left Patrick wrapped a few stones in the rag and then asked Steven to put the trough back how we had found it. After a bit of manoeuvring this was done. Patrick then gave the pair of them some ‘beer tokens’, as he put it, and the farmers roared away into the darkness together.

  ‘The Tanners can’t have done a runner yet or they’d have collected this little lot,’ Patrick said, placing the small hoard in a sample bag he had found in the car. ‘That’s if they did hide it here. We need to prove it. But having made everything look the same as it was before I’m reluctant to stake the place out waiting for them to turn up or people might be here for a month.’

  ‘If they returned to retrieve it you’d have your proof,’ I said.

  ‘I have to think about the cost of manpower. One could still wait around for a very long time.’

  ‘They’d never be able to sell it – they simply don’t have the contacts.’

  ‘No, but they’re stoopid, aren’t they?’

  ‘Nudge them into making a move.’

 
; ‘Like what? A thunderflash down their chimney?’

  It had been another long day. ‘No, SILLY! They’ve been getting funny phone calls. Give them a funny phone call.’

  ‘Ingrid, you keep telling me to stick by the rules.’

  ‘Who the hell’ll know?’

  ‘Are you going to tell James what’s going on?’ Elspeth called from inside the car.

  ‘Of course,’ Patrick answered. ‘Right now, in fact. Tell me why I haven’t inherited my mother’s brains,’ he continued in an undertone.

  Carrick, in a side ward, had been given special permission to retain his mobile phone. Joanna answered.

  ‘Yes, he’s a bit better, but we still don’t know whether it’s MRSA or not,’ I just managed to overhear her say. ‘He’s still feeling pretty rough, though. Is it important?’

  ‘Tell him we’ve found some gold ingots,’ Patrick requested.

  Carrick came on the line straight away and there was quite a long conversation of which I could only hear one side as his voice was quite weak.

  ‘Did he suggest anything?’ I asked at the end of it.

  ‘Yes, he said send a patrol car with all horns and blue lights flashing to the front of the Tanners’ house and give them plenty of time to escape through the back door. You mentioned motorbikes so they’ll quite likely do a runner on those. The plodding officers of the law will then pretend to lose contact with them so they’ll drop their guard and be feeling all cheerful and superior when they turn up here. If they turn up here. If they don’t nothing’s lost as their descriptions can be circulated and we’ll pick them up again anyway.’ He got out of the car and continued, ‘Please take Elspeth, and the gold, home. I’ll stay here, fix up what James suggested and hide myself somewhere. Don’t come back for if they’re on their way here too and see the lights of the car they’ll smell a rat and scram.’

  ‘You can’t arrest them on your own,’ I said.

  ‘No, I’ll make sure the patrol car comes here quietly anyway.’

  On the way to the rectory Elspeth said, ‘How on earth would they turn the trough over again?’

  ‘Pass,’ I said. ‘But they are built like elephants.’

  She did not mention leaving the house for the night on the way home but when we arrived John was on the phone.

  ‘That was Neil Makepeace,’ he said to Elspeth. ‘To ask how I was. I said we’d had a spot of bother with an intruder today and he’s insisting we go over to their place for the night. Really insisting, I’m afraid. In fact he’s coming over for us right away. It’s very good of them, but—’

  ‘Wonderful!’ Elspeth cried. ‘I’m dying to see their new house.’ She dashed upstairs to pack an overnight bag.

  Ten minutes later I had the rectory to myself and was feeling just the smallest, teensiest, smidgiest bit ignored. OK, everyone knew that some bug-eyed, tea-trailing monster wasn’t going to come looming out of the night to slobber at the windows trying to get in at me, but …

  I went out to the car, where the gold was safely locked in a secret cubby-box, found a map, returned to the house and, locking all the outside doors, pored over it. I thought Patrick was being over-cautious as the lanes around the Hagtop Farm area are always busy but respected his experience. I would walk back, across the fields.

  During my explorations of the village in between writing I had discovered a public footpath that commenced at a stile set into the churchyard wall and crossed pastures in the direction of the next village, or rather hamlet. It went, if I remembered correctly, quite close to the barn.

  I grabbed the map again. There was no point in taking it with me because I did not want to use any lights so I committed the route, actually much shorter than going by road, to memory. The only places where one was likely to go wrong was where the path met another in a spinney and at the point where I would have to leave it close to my destination. Everything like that would be obliterated by snow.

  Enough time had been lost. Leaving the house, I ran.

  The sky was overcast but because of the whiteness of the snow I found that I could see where I was going perfectly well, and, having crossed the stile, the only hazard appeared to be cowpats. There were some very hairy cattle being wintered in the field. The going was gently downhill and I jogged easily, quite enjoying myself but for the worry of Patrick being on his own awaiting men who would be desperate and possibly armed with shotguns. The Tanners would not worry about the consequences of opening fire, they would think only of the riches brought by something which, in reality, they would not be able to sell, and escape to a country where the law could not reach them when, in all probability, they did not even possess passports.

  I had overlooked the fact that the path, little more than a dip in the snow, curved quite close to houses. But I did not want to leave it and strike blindly across country. Dogs barked, sending my heart into my mouth, and I almost ran right into a white cow – it was so large it could well have been a bull – that was lying down concealed by a hump of snow-covered briars. It jerked to its feet with a snort and thundered off, rousing a couple of pheasants roosting in a nearby tree which flew away, their clattering alarm calls loud enough to waken a sleeping army.

  I slowed right down to give everything a chance to settle down, noticing with surprise that I was now only a matter of ten yards from the hornbeam hedge that formed the boundary of Hinton Mill. I could see that the lights were on by the row of garages and, on impulse, as quietly as possible, went closer. Some leaves still adhered to the hedge but it was fairly recently planted and although just above my head in height was quite thin. I found a place where I could see right through it.

  Two of the garage doors were up, the spaces within a gaping blackness, and, as I watched, a woman, someone I did not recognize, came out of the nearest one carrying a package and went into the other, emerging moments later without it. She then closed and locked both garages and walked away.

  I returned to the path and carried on running. A couple of hundred yards farther on I reached what I thought must be the copse but there were only a few trees and I wasted time trying to detect where the other path might be. Finally, I ran on, quite quickly coming to a much larger group of trees. It was very dark inside as they were conifers and I could see nothing at all. I had no choice but to walk around the outside and then strike across the field in the direction I thought the path might go.

  Already, it seemed, I could be lost.

  My feet were soaking wet by this time and becoming very cold, my trainers making squelching noises. The ground rose and soon I had to slow to a walk, conscious that I was puffing like a train. Then, quite by accident, I came upon a trail of footprints. Was this the path? It led in the right direction, uphill. Soon, I came to a fence and another stile, a detail I could not remember from the map. The field I found myself in was still down to autumn stubble, the tips poking through the layer of snow, sheep nibbling on what they could find. It was huge, crossing it seemed to take for ever and I slowed to a walk, not wishing to make them panic.

  I crested a rise, left the sheep behind and ran again but after a while was going uphill once more and forced back to a walk. Once again I came to a fence and stile and another field with sheep, a few of which trotted off when they sensed my presence. A freezing wind met me: I was on open hillside, the ground flattening out, so I ran on. Then, on the wind, I heard the sound of a distant motorbike, seemingly over to my left but somewhere below. I stopped, crouching down in case I was silhouetted against the white background and gazed around me, breathing deeply.

  If I had paused a few minutes previously I would probably have spotted my destination. There was no mistaking that brutal outline. I had come too far to the north and much higher up than I need have done and was probably in the middle of the last of the three fields that Steven had crossed in his tractor. No matter, this was better than plodding around somewhere below unable to get my bearings.

  The single headlight of the bike came briefly into view as it flashed
past a gateway and then there was only an intermittent glow as it travelled along the deep winding lanes. It was too soon to tell if it was heading for the barn. There was other traffic; a vehicle was moving slowly somewhere over to my left, going away from me, and on the other side of the valley the occasional lights of other cars went to and fro on a busier road.

  I set off downhill and almost immediately came upon the fresh tracks of a heavy vehicle. This was more than I had hoped for and I jogged on. An untidy low hedge appeared ahead of me and a gate. This had to be a Hagtop boundary as the gate was rotten and literally leaning against the post at one end, the hinges having gone and been replaced with baler twine. Steven had obviously hefted it open but it was too heavy for me to lift so, carefully, I climbed over it.

  There could be no mistake now: the bike was coming towards the barn.

  I was actually standing in a lane. Steven must have had a problem turning the tractor to the right as the ground was thick with mud where the tyres had gouged into the verge. I followed the mud and churned-snow trail, slipping a couple of times, and then it turned left into a gateway set in a block wall. I had arrived at what no doubt had been bovine hell.

  Coming to a halt, I peered around the edge of the opening in the wall. The gate was wide open, the area before me with not a scrap of cover before one reached the rear of the building. As I stood there the bike roared into view, made a complete circuit, two large figures mounted on it, and disappeared round to the front again. The row ceased but the light remained, moving. They were wheeling the machine into the barn to use it to see by.

  Staggered by this blatant, if not downright idiotic, announcement of arrival I dashed across the open space towards a door, this just a small one for those on foot, with the idea of either observing what was going on from just outside or creeping in and concealing myself somewhere, coming to Patrick’s aid if he needed me. Close to it was a lean-to, a homemade afterthought built of scrap wood and rusting corrugated iron. I deliberately went wide of the opening that led into the dark interior, mostly because such cobwebby places give me the horrors, and then paused by the doorway, a slanting oblong of light now thrown on to the ground near my feet.