by Mike Ripley
Let’s just say Werewolf shot me in the ‘lower stomach’ and leave it there. I know it didn’t hurt, the paint pellet hitting and exploding with no more than a mild flick. It was the surprise and indignity of watching the yellow stain spread that made me wince.
I left Werewolf with a withering look and headed for the edge of the road, cutting back deeper into the trees so I couldn’t be seen from the farmhouse when I reached the fenced-off field.
The fence was a four-strand barbed-wire job, and beyond it were rows of green plants about four feet high. Ideal cover running all the way to the farmhouse and the road.
Behind me, I heard two more shots. As Cawthorne had said, they were like airguns going off. Then there was a howl of protest, something like ‘Hey, that’s not fair!’
I dropped down and crawled to the front of the wood to have a look.
The guy with the hedgehog pullover, the one called Jenkins, was standing in the Paddock about 20 feet from the conifer where Werewolf had been hiding. He had both a yellow and a red stain across his chest and he was turning around with his arms out, appealing for a referee; then he turned and trudged back to the farmhouse for his time penalty.
It’s a man’s life.
I doubled back and picked a spot to vault the fence, using a post as a grip. I thought I did it quite well until I heard the khaki overalls rip. There was a horizontal tear four inches long just behind my right knee. People paid 60 quid for denims like that in the King’s Road.
The field was laid out in strips about two feet apart, and only after pushing into the crop did I realise that the plants were trained up a trellis of almost invisible wires and that I was in a hop field – a ‘beer field’, as Duncan would have called it. Perfect cover. So perfect, I had to keep parting the hop bines and leaves to see how close I was to the farmhouse.
As I drew level with the back of the farm, I could see Jenkins remonstrating with Cawthorne and Waters. He was pointing at his chest, which had gone a bright shade of orange. Against the wall of the changing-room extension, Private Boyd leant against the door with her head bowed, trying to control the giggles.
I would never have a better diversion, I thought; then it did get better. Another player came out of the wood and began to jog across the Paddock. Even from this distance, it was clear he’d been hit several times in the chest and there was also red paint all over his visor. Werewolf seemed to be conducting some sort of slaughter out there. It was getting more like a grousemoor by the minute.
While the Exhilarator high command were busy dealing with another unhappy customer, I ruined some more perfectly good hops – I’m probably personally responsible for the rise in the price of a pint – and pushed through to the fence. I came over it below the farmhouse and hugged the side wall, like I’ve seen them do in the movies, until I could peer round into the farmyard.
Apart from the parked cars, it was deserted. There were two outbuildings across the yard; one looked like a converted barn and the other had at one time styed pigs. I was looking for a 4 x 4 vehicle, and either building could have housed this year’s import quota.
I decided to go for the barn, and struck lucky twice in a row. For starters it wasn’t locked, and for seconds it was obviously the farm garage.
Lined up, and obviously well serviced, were a small tractor, a ride-on lawn-mower, a small white Citroen AX with French number plates (presumably to impress the odd Frog estate agent) and, at the end of the line, a blue Shogun four-wheel with metallic paint job.
Duncan had guessed right about it being a Shogun, the smaller, two-door version. They were good little motors. I’d even driven one once – a mad, bass guitarist friend of mine, who’d hit the minor big league with a couple of records, had bought three of them to race around the M25 orbital motorway. (He’d also had each one stencilled ‘tora’ across the back door, so that in formation on the three-lane motorway they read: ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’)
I went straight to the hood of the Shogun, digging the Olympus out of the front of my overalls and trying to guess if there was enough light in the barn. I need not have worried. The front of the jeep was as clean as if it had just come off the boat from Japan. There was no sign that it had ever had a front cow-catcher roll bar fitted.
I took a couple of pictures anyway, not knowing what possible good they would do, then kicked the Shogun in the driver’s door just for the hell of it.
Petty, but pleasurable.
Then I heard the slap-slap-slap of rubber-soled feet coming across the yard and did what any ice-cool undercover dude would do; I went into freeze-frame, rabbit-in-headlight shock. The one thing I didn’t have to worry about was losing control of my bodily functions. Thanks to Werewolf, it looked as if I’d done that already.
Instantly, I just knew that the barn had closed-circuit TV and kicking a company vehicle was a firing squad offence. Come on, think. Barns were supposed to have hay in them – they did in the movies – where the hero could hide while the baddies, with a total disregard for blood poisoning or spread of HIV, jabbed a pitchfork in and out like a demented barman trying to get the last maraschino out of the bottle.
I glanced around. The last time this barn had hay in it, Henry VIII took a tenth part in tax. Henry also had a go at stopping hops being used in good old English ale. Why do I know such stuff? Why did I have to think of it then? Sometimes I worry me. This wasn’t a game.
But hang about, it was. What if I was ‘discovered’? I was hiding, working my way round to the Orchard to try for the pennant in there. Okay, so I didn’t have my gun. Would they notice? Risk it. Hadn’t Cawthorne himself said there were no other rules? Where did it say I couldn’t go unarmed if I wanted to? If you’re daft enough to pay good money to have paint shot into your crotch, you’re daft enough to do anything.
I scurried under the tractor as the doors began to creak open. The tractor had more ground clearance than the Citroen, which was settled low on its hydraulics, and being found under the Shogun might just be too suspicious. I wasn’t desperate enough to get under the lawn-mower.
The floor of the barn was cold stone and slimy and smelled, of engine oil and damp cereals. I scuttered around until I was facing the doors and pulled my legs in just as they opened fully.
Sergeant Waters stood in the opening, his right hand reaching down to his side.
He produced a set of car keys and loped past the tractor about ten inches from my nose. I could read ‘Nike’ quite clearly on his trainers until they disappeared one after the other into the Shogun.
The four-wheel started first go, and he reversed out into the farmyard. With the doors open, I could see Cawthorne walking over to him. He handed Waters a battery-powered megaphone and pointed towards the wood. Waters nodded a couple of times and set off. Cawthorne walked back to the farmhouse and in through the front door.
I crawled out from under the back of the tractor just in case anybody thought to peer into the barn, and was about to use the lawn-mower for cover when my foot caught something hard and suddenly I was face down on the ground again.
Only this was more painful than the barn floor and it had a different texture. I checked my camera to see if it was still in one piece and stuffed it back inside my overalls. Then I put my hands out to explore what I had tripped over.
After having looked out into the daylight, it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust. Then I realised I was kneeling on a tarpaulin that someone had carefully placed over what could have been a small metal gate – or the detached ‘fun bumper’ cow-catcher device from a small four-wheel-drive vehicle; say, a Shogun.
You don’t have to give me clues on a plate. I fall over them.
Chapter Twelve
I did the business with my camera, now there was plenty of light with the barn doors open, and was in the process of replacing the tarpaulin when the alarm bells went off and scared the hell out of me for the second time in five m
inutes. This was becoming Stress City, and I was too old for it.
It wasn’t an alarm bell, of course, it was a telephone rigged to an extension bell fitted to the wall of the farmhouse, so that people working outside could hear it. There were four long rings and then it cut out, but before it stopped, Cawthorne was coming out of the farmhouse and walking quickly towards the Paddock.
I checked my watch: 10.40. That couldn’t be Patterson calling for Airborne yet, but it might well be Airborne out on another document delivery somewhere else. The four rings and then cut-out sounded like a fax line connection. Why bother having an outside bell if the delicious Private Boyd was sitting on reception?
Cawthorne had disappeared around the northern end of the farmhouse, so I ran back the way I had come, around the south end, and climbed the fence back into the hop field. I ran between the bines, parallel to the farm, until I reckoned it was safe to crawl to the fence and risk a look.
I could see the Wood to my right, and way across the Paddock I could see Waters in the Shogun patrolling the edge of the Orchard. There was no sign of Cawthorne, and I thought I’d come too far. Maybe the fax machine was in one of the outbuildings; but they were the other side of the yard near the barn, and Cawthorne had been walking away from them.
Another ‘combatant’ suddenly appeared from the Orchard end of the course, hurrying towards the farm. Even at this distance, I could see he was liberally spattered with yellow paint. Werewolf was on the move.
Then I realised that I could hear an engine getting louder and the Shogun was bouncing across the Paddock straight towards me.
I was convinced that the grass near the fence was long enough to conceal me, so they couldn’t possibly have spotted me. Not unless they had radar or heat-seeking missiles, which they didn’t. Did they? I was less convinced about that.
I was about to dive back in among the hops, though I probably smelled like last night’s barmaid already, when the Shogun veered off to my right, and then pulled up about 20 feet from me.
A very angry Sergeant Waters jumped out of the driver’s door. I could tell he was angry, because he was red in the face and his fists were clenched and he was swearing like a trooper. Well, I suppose that was in character. I could see why he was angry: the windscreen of the Shogun was well-smeared with yellow paint, and he’d obviously reacted by turning on the windscreen-wipers, the worst thing he could have done.
What I couldn’t work out was why he’d driven all the way over here. There was nothing here except the field and the old, disused pillbox Cawthorne had warned us about.
The door of the pillbox opened and Cawthorne stepped out, so close to me that if the wind had changed I could have sniffed his after-shave. Any closer and I would have fallen over him too.
‘What’s the panic? Don’t you know to stay away from here?’ Cawthorne was not pleased.
‘Look at this!’ Waters shook a fist at the windscreen. ‘Just look. One of those buggers is deliberately spoiling the exercise.’
‘Which one?’
‘I don’t know. I was over by the Orchard, and then this. He must have been up a tree. We’ve had four reported in for penalty hits already. Two of them twice.’
Cawthorne nodded towards the farm. ‘There’s another one.’
Sure enough, another player was trudging out of the Orchard towards base.
‘It must be those two in the BMW with the flash suits,’ said Waters. I was glad we’d made an impression.
‘I didn’t rate the weedy one with the glasses,’ said Cawthorne, ‘but the one with the beard looked a hard case.’
‘What do we do?’
‘Has anybody asked for their money back?’
‘Well, no.’
‘Then let the game run and say nothing, but tell Sandy to make sure those two don’t get another booking.’ He turned to the pillbox. ‘And don’t come here again, I’ve told you this is private property. And go and clean my fucking vehicle, okay?’
Waters reversed the Shogun and did a backward handbrake turn, shooting off in a cloud of exhaust fumes and clods of grass and earth. Temper, temper.
I crawled closer to the pillbox. It was the same hexagonal design as any of the thousands you can still see along the south coast, or that you suddenly come across in the wilds of East Anglia for no apparent reason until you realise that the fields you’re driving through were once airfields littered with empty Lucky Strike packets and B52 bombers. The whole concrete structure was sunk into the ground so it seemed only about four feet high. There were double firing slits on three sides and a metal door set in the side nearest to me. Cawthorne had had to duck his head to get in there, but he’d left the door wide open.
I had to get halfway under the bottom strand of barbed wire to see inside properly, and as I did so, my hand closed on something smooth and rubbery half-buried in the ground. I parted some grass and wondered why Cawthorne had bothered to run electric and telephone cables to a disused toilet for farmhands.
I could see why – and hear. There was a fax coming through. The machine had a plastic cover over it, like stereo systems used to have before they became furniture, I suppose to keep the dust out, but there was no mistaking the whirr-buzz sound. Cawthorne was leaning over the machine, blocking my view of anything else inside the bunker, and I slid around to check if I could see in through the slits.
No go. It would have to be the front door. But not while Cawthorne was in residence.
The door got me thinking. I crawled along the line of the fence to the nearest point I dared, so I could get a good view of it. There didn’t seem to be any sort of lock on the door;
wartime pillboxes wouldn’t have needed one, would they? Sorry, lads, can’t beat back the Nazi hordes today, Fred’s left the key at home.
The door was metal, on hinges four inches deep. There was a metal grab bar and two bolts on the outside, one-at the top, which could have had padlocks on at some time, to keep playful kids out. Then again, the pillbox was on private land, so maybe that hadn’t been a problem. But I couldn’t believe that Cawthorne would be so lax.
He wasn’t. Above the door’s right corner was a small black box burglar alarm, almost certainly wired back to the farmhouse, or more likely electronic, triggering a bleeper that Cawthorne could carry with him. It wasn’t likely that it was connected to the local cop shop. He might have had to explain why he’d put a fax machine out here for the sheep to use on a quiet day. Perhaps the sheep were monitoring the futures market in wool.
I guessed that it was set back in the farmhouse, unless he had some sort of remote control toy. If it was, I reckoned I had a few minutes while he walked back there. If it wasn’t, and he came back and caught me, then I’d have to fall back on my story as an over-enthusiastic games player. Trying that on Sergeant Waters was one thing. On Cawthorne, it could be a different ball game, and the balls on the line were probably mine.
The fax machine stopped whirring, and Cawthorne moved about, picking sheets from its output tray. Then I heard the snap of a lighter, and a cloud of blue smoke came out of the doorway, followed by a rattle sound. He was burning the fax message in a metal waste bin or my name was Roylance Maclean. Careful bugger, wasn’t he?
He came out before the smoke had cleared and swung the door quietly on well-oiled hinges. He flipped just one of the bolts in a casual way and strode off towards the farmhouse across the Paddock.
He hadn’t touched the black box alarm, so it was now or never. I guessed I had no more than four minutes before he got back to base, so I began to count on the old one-and-one, two-and-two, and so on principle in order to concentrate on the job in hand without looking at my watch. I told myself that I had up to two hundred and no more.
By ten, I’d crawled as far as the door. It took me to 20 to stand into a half crouch and reach up for the bolt. The door swung open and I scuttled in.
It wasn’t as dar
k as I’d expected. The four-inch-wide gun slits let in plenty of light, although there were electric wall lights. Everything was covered in plastic casing to keep the elements out. Apart from the fax machine, there was an Amstrad PC with monitor and printer. No phones – Cawthorne would have mobiles – and apart from the two benches for the machinery and a single typist’s swivel chair, nothing else. Except a long metal trunk on the floor, which removed a couple of inches of skin from my right shin as I scraped round it.
That got me to 30-and-five. Better do something.
I rattled the plastic cover over the Amstrad, but it was firmly locked in place. It was probably just as well. I am totally computer hostile, so I wouldn’t have known what to do with the damn thing. I’ve nothing against them, they just hate me, so I became a founder member of the Campaign for Quill Pens and Ink. It’s not a big organisation.
The trunk had a hasp and padlock, which looked new, though the trunk itself was war surplus. If I’d had my nail-file with me I’d have had a go at it.
Sixty. Don’t hang about.
I wound up my Olympus and took shots of everything there was.
That took about ten more seconds. I couldn’t think of anything else to do except get out.
That seemed sensible. I crouched down through the doorway and checked the coast was clear.
As I slid the door bolt home, I stopped counting at 92. A second later, there was a loud click and buzz, which could only be the black box alarm being activated.
Either I’d counted wrong or Cawthorne walked faster than I’d thought. Still (Rule of Life No 1), it’s better to be lucky than good.
I worked my way back through the hop field until I could get over the fence and into the wood. It was just after 11.00 when I made the conifer where I’d split from Werewolf. My Exhilarator visor was still in the grass where I’d left it, and I sat down beside it to take stock of my stings, bruises and cuts. I didn’t have time to get paranoid about blood poisoning, as my heart suddenly stopped beating.
