Carnal Acts

by Sam Alexander

  ‘He’ll be all right, won’t he, Ag?’ her father-in-law asked, his voice cracking.

  She wasn’t surprised by the question. David asked it almost every day. Answering had become a kind of ritual, the words forming a protective sheath around the man they both loved.

  ‘Course he will,’ she said. ‘He’s a tough one, your son. It was bad, but he’s over the worst. At least he’s got a grip on his stomach these days.’

  David laughed. ‘Aye, it was tricky in the beginning. Remember the time he threw up on that toffee-nosed woman’s shoes?’

  Ag shot him a warning glance. ‘Alice Liphook was very good about it. She said her husband had done much worse.’

  Her father-in-law shook his head. ‘Poor Alf. Thirty years with that dragon and then a stroke turned him into a vegetable. Just as well he didn’t last long after it.’

  Ag wasn’t going to defend Alice, the ‘Dame’, as she was known by the other governors. She’d worked out how to handle her – massage her ego frequently – and she could be a useful ally.

  ‘I remember when she was young,’ David continued. ‘By God, she was a stunner. She liked Olive because she was handy at bridge.’ He fell silent.

  Ag knew he felt guilty about how he’d treated his wife in the years she struggled with emphysema. He was a kindly man, perhaps too kindly, and he couldn’t stand to see her suffering. He’d done more than the average man of his generation, but he’d taken every chance to meet up with his pals, often driving when he was way over the limit. Heck had been forced to have several words. Ag herself hadn’t found Olive easy. She was overprotective of her elder son and always gave the impression that he could have found a better woman to marry, meaning a woman with more style and less commitment to her work. Ag had never been one to apologise. She was a teacher because she had a vocation and she bought clothes for the family in Marks and Spencer because they were good value, end of conversation.

  ‘Poor buggers,’ the old man said, pointing to a line of people walking from an open-backed lorry to the gate of one of the large fields by the road. There were men and women, most of them young, their clothes ragged and dirty. They looked defeated, their faces blank and their shoulders slumped. ‘Poles, I should think, or other Eastern Europeans. Doing the jobs our benefit scroungers won’t touch. The Poles and Czechs, they were heroes during the war. Now see what their grandkids have got.’

  Ag let that invitation to political argument pass. Her father-in-law had voted Conservative since his thirties, his lowly management position at Corham Steel representing an upward move in society from his coal miner father’s class. Her own family had always been liberals, many of them insufferable do-gooders if truth be told, but she felt betrayed by the Lib Dems’ decision to form the coalition government with the Tories. She didn’t agree with her father-in-law’s harsh attitude towards the twenty per cent of society that were locked in the benefits spiral – some of the kids she taught came from such families and many of the parents were as honest as David.

  ‘I certainly wouldn’t want to work in the fields,’ Ag said, ‘even now the weather’s better.’ She’d caught a glimpse of the hard-faced ganger at the lorry’s door. These workers wouldn’t have a lunch hour and would only be taken back to the lodgings where they slept ten to a room when the sun was well down in the west. The Corham Bugle had run several stories about the appalling conditions migrant workers were forced to accept, both those from EU countries and from further afield. Nothing had happened, of course. The estate owners were in bed with agri-business and couldn’t give a damn about the people on the ground. She’d read enough local history to know there had always been such accommodations.

  ‘Looks like one of them has done a bunk,’ David said, as they approached a slim figure on the narrow road.

  Ag slowed down, thinking about offering a lift. As they passed, she saw it was a young woman, her high cheekbones brought into relief by the woollen hat she had pulled down low. She was wearing what looked like a good quality leather jacket, but her trousers were grubby and she was limping along in battered trainers. There were plastic bags in both her hands and a laptop bag across her chest. She doggedly refused to look at the car and its occupants.

  ‘I wouldn’t pick her up,’ her father-in-law said. ‘She probably stinks.’

  ‘While you are a paragon of cleanliness,’ Ag murmured. Her father-in-law had become erratic in his bathing habits and Heck had been forced to make that point to him.

  She accelerated, seeing from the clock on the dashboard that she was in danger of being late, a cardinal sin for a head teacher. But there was something about the woman – girl, really, probably not many years older than Kat – that bothered her. Then David started coughing and she had to pound his back when he leaned forward. He’d been getting these fits more and more often, but he wouldn’t go to the doctor. Men. Heck had been the same. She’d had to drag him to the GP and then to Corham General for preliminary examinations. If he’d put it off much longer … that didn’t bear thinking about.

  59

  At lunch time, Ag went to her office and called Heck on his mobile.

  ‘Hello, love,’ he said, surprised. ‘To what do I owe this enormous pleasure?’

  ‘I think I’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘You? Don’t be silly. You’re perfect.’

  ‘I’m serious, Heck.’

  ‘All right.’ Had his father been thrown out for setting the sheets on fire with one of the roll-ups he swore he never smoked? ‘Tell me.’

  ‘That girl, woman, you’re looking for who killed the Albanian. You know, the one Ruth Dickie was on the telly about last night.’

  ‘Aye?’

  ‘I think I saw her on the way to school this morning – well, on the way to David’s music and whisky session.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’m not sure. That’s why I didn’t call till now.’ She sighed. ‘To be honest, I forgot about it till classes ended.’

  Not perfect after all, Heck thought, then immediately felt guilty. ‘What did she look like?’

  Ag described the young woman.

  ‘It could be her. She probably reckons Alice Liphook’s big hat is too obvious in daylight. Where was this?’

  His wife told him. ‘There was a gang of field workers on their way into the kale,’ she added. ‘I suppose she could have been one of them who’d had enough.’

  ‘All right, pet, don’t worry about it. I’ll get on to it. Bye.’ He grabbed his rain jacket and went into the MCU. ‘Eileen, with me, now!’

  DC Andrews, who had recently arrived back from the headless body scene to open the file on it, picked up her own coat and followed the DCI to the stairs. She was smiling. It wasn’t often she got the chance to impress Heck Rutherford up close. She told herself to behave. Fancying your boss wasn’t a brilliant career move if it was spotted, and he was the most uxorious man she knew. She’d learned that word from the Sunday Express crossword.

  60

  The ganger had got his slaves – that was how he liked to think of them, the pieces of foreign shit – into the field and told the head man what he wanted: the fresh side shoots of the kale, nothing else. He’d be checking the boxes later. As soon as the men and women had their heads down, he went back to the lorry, took a mobile phone from beneath the driver’s seat and turned it on. This one he only used for important messages and he would turn it off as soon as he finished.

  ‘Yeah, this is Wayne Garston. That tart you’re looking for. I think I might have seen her.’ He listened, holding the phone away from his ear. ‘Er, not long ago,’ he said, suddenly aware that he’d fucked up by not calling immediately. ‘Maybe fifteen minutes. On the road between Haston and Wallington, heading north.’ He listened again, shaking his head. How the fuck was he meant to… ‘Yeah, all right, I’ll head up that way. I can’t leave the slaves for long, though.’ There was more shouting, then the connection was cut. ‘Well, it’s the estate’s land, you cunt,’ he continued, to thin air
. ‘Think I care if they hack the kale to buggery?’

  He went back into the field and told the headman he’d be away for a bit, but no fucking slacking or he’d kick his arse. Oh, and he wanted the blonde one again when he came back, the one with the big tits. No, he couldn’t give a shit if her husband didn’t like it.

  61

  Elez Zymberi, delayed by the clan’s tame surgeon, drove the black BMW K1300GT motorbike out of Newcastle, observing the speed limits and avoiding the eye-catching overtaking that he often went in for. He’d had difficulty getting on his helmet – orange rather than the usual black to avoid looking too much like the angel of death – because of the dressing on his head. The fork that the bitch had jammed into him went deep and the clan’s doctor said he was lucky he hadn’t suffered at least minor brain damage. Suzana Noli – he knew her name from the copies of the passports kept in the clan’s Newcastle premises – was going to suffer multiple organ damage when he caught up with her. It was a race, he knew. The English cretin in charge of the work gang didn’t only work for the clan. He was also loyal to one of the local figures who were being drawn into its web. The police might show up as well, not that he was worried about them. English police were children. They didn’t carry anything more than extendable clubs. He had a Glock 17L with a nine-cartridge clip under his leathers, and five more clips in his left pannier. There was a four-inch skinning knife in his right boot, while the right pannier contained rope, plastic cuffs, lengths of cloth for use as gags and to wipe up excessive mess, and a small axe. Suzana Noli was going into the ground jointed.

  Zymberi, known in the clan as ‘Fingers’ because of his propensity for removing his enemies’ digits, with his teeth on one occasion back in the mountains, turned off the dual carriageway and followed the signs as he’d been directed. The road quickly narrowed and he was forced to cut his speed because his vision was impeded by low-hanging branches. He soon found the field with the slaves bent double over plants that he wouldn’t feed to cattle. There was no sign of the lorry or of Garston. He stopped and called the ganger’s mobile.

  ‘Where fuck you?’ he demanded. ‘I at field.’

  ‘I’m about a mile further up the road. The woman went into a clump of trees and hasn’t appeared again.’

  ‘I come now.’ Zymberi gunned the engine and went down the road at speed. The bitch must be hiding, though he wouldn’t be surprised if the greasy Englishman had been tricked and she had slipped away. She was cunning as well as vicious. He hadn’t forgotten what she’d done to Leka, may he enjoy virgins for eternity. He saw the battered old lorry up ahead and decelerated, manoeuvring the bike on to the verge at its side. He didn’t want it to be obvious, never mind get hit by a passing tractor. He had worked for three months to buy the machine, even at the clan’s reduced price – it had been stolen, of course, and repainted. The number plates were real, duplicates of those on a bike in Cornwall, wherever that was.

  Keeping his helmet on, Elez Zymberi raised the visor. He saw Garston waving from a patch of trees about a hundred metres away. Opening the right pannier, he took out a set of plastic restrainers and a length of cloth. He didn’t expect to need them as he would knock the bitch unconscious as soon as he found her. Other members of the clan would come to pick her up when he called. By then he’d have fucked her up the arse as a starter for the feast that would ensue back in the city.

  Crouching, he went along the fence separating two fields until he reached the edge of a patch of trees.

  ‘I think she must be by that stream,’ Garston said, pointing to the shallow water at their feet. He pointed through the trees. ‘See that red pickup?’

  Zymberi nodded.

  ‘You know who he works for?’

  Another nod.

  ‘It’s been there for three hours, so you can be sure she hasn’t got out that way. There isn’t enough cover in the fields for her to have escaped us both. He must have been told not to go in because she’s yours.’

  The Albanian grabbed the ganger by the throat. ‘Hope that true, Mr Garston. Or I take you fingers.’

  The Englishman collapsed, gasping, when he was let go.

  ‘Stay here. I find cunt.’ Zymberi pulled the knife from his boot. Then he stepped into the water and started to move forward slowly, his head bending beneath the branches.

  Wayne Garston watched him go, trembling like a boy on his first date. Then he took out his phone and called the man at the other end of the stream.

  62

  Heck drove along the narrow road and slowed as they reached a field of kale with workers bent over the tall stems. There was a patrol car behind them carrying four uniforms.

  ‘They must be the ones Ag saw,’ Heck Rutherford said, pulling up. He got out and looked around. The trees by the road were thick with leaves and the hedges high, but he could see a large fallow field on the other side. ‘Can’t understand where she’d have got to here.’

  ‘Maybe she crossed that field to the road on the other side,’ Eileen Andrews said. She’d been told what they were doing on the way.

  ‘Maybe she did.’ Heck walked to the patrol car that had stopped behind them. ‘One of you lads come with me,’ he said, through the driver’s lowered window. ‘You, turn round and go to the road over there.’ He pointed through the trees.

  ‘She could have cut across the kale field,’ Andrews added.

  ‘You’re full of helpful suggestions, Eileen.’ Heck looked beyond the workers with their bent backs. The field was vast and he doubted the woman would have risked being visible for the time it took her to cross it – unless she was crawling. Which raised the question of what she was doing in broad daylight, even on this out-of-the-way road. Perhaps she’d spoken to the kale pickers. He looked at his watch. Time was getting on. She could be several miles away by now, but they still needed to check the vicinity of the sighting.

  ‘Constable…?’

  ‘Jackson, sir.’

  ‘Right. Get in there and find any of that lot who speaks English – there’s usually at least one. Should be a ganger around too. Ask if the girl said anything to them. They probably saw her. We’re going ahead, but we’ll be back for you. Keep in touch.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  Heck went back to the squad car. ‘Come on, Eileen. Let’s check all the way to the road end. I reckon she’s long gone, but we need to be sure. She might have stopped for a kip. You drive, but keep the speed down. I don’t fancy more time in hospital.’ He stood on the sill, holding the door partially open and looking over the hedges.

  After a few minutes, Andrews called up to him. ‘Lorry ahead, sir.’

  Heck turned to the front and told her to pull up behind it. He waited until the car had stopped before stepping on to the asphalt and closing the door. DC Andrews was already out and on the prowl.

  ‘Look at this bike, sir.’

  Heck went round the side of the lorry and took in the gleaming BMW. Its juxtaposition with the rust and mud on the old vehicle was striking. And interesting.

  ‘You know what I’m thinking, Eileen?’

  ‘That the ganger in charge of those kale pickers called for reinforcements.’

  ‘Clever lass. Run the bike’s plates, will you?’ Heck crossed the road and looked at the stream and fence that divided the fields, as well as at the clump of trees in the middle. As often happened in the past, rocks from the soil would have been dumped there, making the removal of the trees around them more trouble than it was worth.

  He thought he saw a heavy figure move back into the wood.

  Andrews was back in a couple of minutes. ‘Registered to a Mr Stanley Doolan of Penzance. Aged eighty-three.’

  ‘Unlikely to be crawling around the undergrowth, is he? There’s someone in that stand of trees.’

  ‘At least two people, assuming the lorry driver’s there too.’

  ‘We’re outnumbered here, Eileen. Go back and get Constable Jackson and call the squad car. No, hang on, we need them to secure the other si
de. Tell them to wait over there. They should be able to see the lorry.’

  ‘What about you, sir?’

  ‘What about me? Get moving.’

  Heck waited until Andrews turned the car round, then took off his coat, folded it and put it under the hedge. Ag had given it to him last Christmas and there would be hell to pay if he tore it. Then he had another thought. He went back to the motorbike, took out his key ring and opened the small penknife on it. It was a struggle, but he managed to puncture the front tyre. That would stop the rider going anywhere. He left the lorry untouched – it couldn’t outrun Eileen and, besides, the poor sods in the kale field needed to get back to their hovels somehow.

  He debated waiting for the others, then decided to set off alone. His heart was pounding and his stomach full of bile. He was glad there was no one there to see how much he was trembling. Do it, he told himself. Prove you’ve still got the balls.

  63

  Suzana had been overwhelmed by exhaustion and had taken refuge in the deepest part of the wood. She hadn’t been able to keep sleep at bay, but when she woke up she immediately took precautions. There were heaps of stones between the trees and she gathered some that fitted the palm of her hand. Her knives were fine for close work, but she might need to discourage the men’s approach or distract them. She knew the ugly man in charge of the workers had seen her and would be looking out for her. Perhaps he would only want to see if she would work in the fields or sell herself, but there might be others on her trail. She looked at the fence that divided two huge expanses of ground, one covered in fresh grass and the other with shoots of barley. As she reached the last trees, she saw a red pickup on the road beyond, a man standing this side of it and staring into the trees. That couldn’t be a coincidence. The word had gone out about her. She wasn’t surprised, but angry with herself that she’d succumbed to sleep.