‘Thanks,’ said Mariner. He shook his head. ‘I’m fine. I’ll get changed and go back to the pub. It looks pretty lively down there tonight.’
‘I’ll bet it is. Word is out already that the police are up at the hall. Everyone’s speculating about what’s going on. I’d have thought the last place you’d want to be is down there; particularly if they find out that you’re involved. They won’t leave you alone.’
He was right and Mariner knew it.
‘We’ve got a bit of chilli left over. Why don’t you go and clean up and I’ll get it heated up for you.’
‘You really don’t have to …’
‘Ah, come on, man, it’s what friends do, isn’t it? Besides, I have to admit, we’re pretty curious to know what’s going on too.’ He was honest; Mariner had to give him that.
Mariner went across to the hostel, had a hot shower and changed into his remaining clean clothes, realizing that he was going to have to find a launderette before long, or talk very nicely to Elena. By the time he returned, she too was in the kitchen and as he pulled out a chair, she put a piping-hot plate of chilli and rice in front of him. Both she and Rex had the courtesy to let him eat, before bombarding him with questions.
Mariner kept his account of what had happened short. Returning through the woods Joe Hennessey had run into him (literally) having found the body of a man who had almost certainly died of unnatural causes. No, Mariner didn’t know who it was, and in any case couldn’t disclose it ahead of the police making it public.
‘Oh God,’ was Elena’s response.
‘Unbelievable,’ said Rex, looking bewildered.
‘What about Hennessey?’ Elena asked suddenly. ‘Why was he hanging about in the woods?’
‘He’s a photographer,’ Rex said. ‘He was probably photographing the wildlife.’
‘The sort of weather we’ve had today?’
‘He was out running,’ Mariner said. ‘He was wearing all the right gear and he’d got an mp3 player plugged into his ears. You know him?’ he asked Rex.
‘He was propping up the bar of the Hart at the weekend,’ said Rex. ‘We just got chatting, like you do. He’s particularly interested in the peregrine falcons that have been seen over Gwyn Myndd. At least, that’s what he said.’
‘As long as he’s not after the eggs,’ said Elena. ‘We’ve had enough trouble with that in the past.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Rex said. ‘He seemed to have all the right equipment. Looked as if that’s what our Megan thought too. She was mooning all over him.’
‘Our Megan moons over anything in trousers,’ said Elena. ‘Ron and Josie’s daughter,’ she added, for Mariner’s benefit. ‘She serves behind the bar.’
‘She’s a mousey little thing though,’ said Rex. ‘I should think Hennessey’s a bit out of her league.’
Elena shuddered. ‘I’m still trying to work out how something so brutal can happen out here for no reason.’
‘Oh, there’ll be a reason,’ Mariner said. ‘There always is. It’s just that we can’t yet see it.’
Rex reached out and put a comforting hand over Elena’s. ‘Sorry, love, but I’m going to have to get going,’ he said, getting to his feet. He glanced apologetically at Mariner. ‘I help coach the under-16s rugby squad. We’ve got an important match tomorrow up at Harlech, so an early start.’ He and Elena went to the door. ‘You’ll be all right here tonight?’ Mariner heard him ask.
‘We’ll be fine,’ Elena replied, ‘especially with Tom just across the yard.’ By the time she returned to the table Mariner had finished eating. ‘That was delicious, thank you.’
Taking his plate, Elena flashed a wry smile.
‘What?’
‘You must have thought you’d come out here to get away from this kind of excitement.’
It had crossed Mariner’s mind too. ‘DI Griffith wanted to know where I’m staying, of course,’ he said. ‘I could have made something up but it wouldn’t have been very sensible, so I’m afraid I told him. I hope that’s not going to make things awkward for you.’
Elena shrugged, as if it wasn’t important.
‘So what’s the story with you and DI Griffith?’ Mariner asked, carefully.
‘What makes you think there is one?’
‘Oh, I don’t know – copper’s intuition?’
She gave a weary sigh. ‘We went out for a few months; about eight years ago, before I met Rex.’
‘Who ended it?’
‘I did. I couldn’t take any more. He could be very intense. In bed, he was ferocious, brutal even.’
Mariner balked. ‘He abused you?’
‘No, nothing like that. It was just … There was a lot of anger inside him, and that seemed to be where it all poured out. At first I found it exciting, exhilarating, but then I realized it was the only way he could operate. He used to have nightmares too, about the things he’d seen in Bosnia.’
‘He was out there?’
‘Yes, he’s ex-SAS.’
Somehow Mariner wasn’t that surprised. It helped explain why Griffith had taken in the murder scene so serenely. ‘If it will help, I can move out,’ Mariner said. ‘I might attract a bit of attention over the next few days.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ Elena said straight away. ‘Besides, until they find out who did this it will be quite nice to have the security of a man around all the time.’
‘I don’t think you need worry. The police will be all over everything for a while.’
‘Including the farm, I suppose, given how near it is. Willow won’t be very happy about all that,’ said Elena. ‘It’ll be like the last time.’
‘This has happened before?’
‘Oh, not a killing, of course, but the police interest. When Willow first moved out here, before we really knew what he was up to, he was enlisting volunteers to help him. It led to ridiculous rumours that he was starting up some kind of religious cult, and that young people were being recruited via the Internet.’
‘Not true?’
Elena laughed. ‘No, not even a bit. I think it was much more pragmatic; he couldn’t afford the labour so he advertised for young people to come and work there, like a kind of gap-year experience. The raid happened years ago and there was no evidence of anyone being held there against their will, or being indoctrinated in any way, so the furore soon died down again. But at the time it was tough on Willow; there were even calls to close him down.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘On the grounds that he was different and people didn’t understand him. Then once the business side of it started to become clear and people could make sense of what he was trying to do, and especially when it began to look as if he might make a go of it, people became more accepting.’
Mariner wondered how accepting they’d continue to be if his own suspicions about Abbey Farm were confirmed.
Although it was close to midnight when Mariner retraced his steps across the yard, his mind was still buzzing and he felt fully awake; a phenomenon that often occurred when he was involved in a case. Even though this one wasn’t his, he couldn’t help mulling over what might have happened in Plackett’s Wood, and when. The identity of the victim would be central, of course, and Mariner had no way of knowing who it was. If he was local then already at least one credible motive had surfaced, in the form of that potential land dispute between Shapasnikov and Willow, but after his visit to the farm today, there was also another possibility lurking at the back of Mariner’s mind.
The sky in the direction of the Hall was pale from the glow of crime-scene floodlights. Knowing sleep would be a long time coming, and interested to see exactly what was going on, Mariner retrieved his binoculars from his rucksack and climbed the stairs to the attic room. The area beyond the woods and just inside the park’s perimeter was as brightly illuminated as an evening-fixture football pitch, and he could see the swollen hulk of the incident unit to one side, though the lights were out. He became aware of a movement in front of it and
with the naked eye he could just about make out tiny figures like insects moving slowly around. His Dyfed colleagues going about their business even in the dead of night, responding to the pressure on them to get a result, even though realistically Griffith and his team could hardly expect to pick up anything meaningful at this hour.
As he lowered the glasses some further night-time activity caught Mariner’s attention. This wasn’t around the murder scene, but was much closer, at Abbey Farm itself. Through the tops of the trees Mariner could just distinguish the main farmhouse and surrounding buildings and scanning down from that he saw a transit van parked in the yard, with its rear doors open. Two figures were moving back and forth between the back of the van and that shiny new barn, each staggering under the weight of several crates stacked on top of one another, delivering the contents of the barn to the van. One was making heavy weather of the work, while the other moved with ease. A third man seemed to be directing the proceedings, occasionally lifting his arms and pointing, apparently supervising. There wasn’t enough light to make a precise identification, but from the height and build of this person, Mariner surmised this to be Willow. As he watched, the last of the crates were loaded into the van and the doors were closed. A conversation ensued between two of the men, one of whom then walked round to the front of the van and climbed into the driver’s seat.
Moments later the vehicle moved off, and through the foliage Mariner saw the twin headlights bumping along the track and towards the lane. It must have turned left out of the farm entrance because, though Mariner waited and watched, it didn’t come past the hostel. Since the Internet had taken off Mariner was well aware that many haulage and delivery companies worked around the clock, and, behind the dense screen of woodland, the goings-on were unlikely to disturb anyone in the village. All the same it did seem like an unusual time to be doing business. Given today’s discovery and the proximity of the farm to Plackett’s Wood, it might have been reasonable for Griffith to have sealed off the farm and have his officers monitor any comings and goings. This didn’t appear to have happened, perhaps because of limited manpower, or maybe even to avoid conflict with the locals.
The legitimate explanation for the night-time activity was that Willow had orders to fulfil and didn’t want to let down his customers. But he must also have worked out that amongst the tasks for Griffith and his team the next day would be a thorough search of the area surrounding the murder scene, and that would include the farm. Mariner couldn’t help but wonder if there was a reason why Willow particularly wanted his new shed emptied tonight.
Mariner had been watching out for the van, but now, as he looked back at the farm, he saw that the yard lights had gone off, the work finished for the night. Right from the start his curiosity had been piqued about the place. Try as he might, he couldn’t reconcile the area of land with the business it apparently was doing, and now there was an added layer of mystery. What Mariner was really interested in was exactly what that new shed was being used for and whether what he had seen on the ground yesterday provided a clue. If he was right about that, it meant serious business, the kind of business Willow wouldn’t want Ryan Griffith to find out about, and the kind of business that could easily get a man killed. Mariner had been on the verge of sharing his thoughts with Griffith, or even Fielding, this afternoon, but without anything tangible to present them with, all he had was empty speculation, and few coppers, himself included, would be interested in that. The very least that he needed was, at this moment, lying on the ground in the farm’s compound. Mariner was still fully awake. He had a good torch. What better opportunity would there be for sneaking down to the farm than now, while all was quiet, to see if he could retrieve it?
Outside again, the half moon cast a blue light over everything and Mariner’s eyes quickly adjusted to the dark. Plackett’s Wood itself had been cordoned off as the crime scene, which meant approaching the farm from across the fields, so he walked down the lane and clambered over the gate. As he neared the farm he could see the kind of standard security lights illuminating the compound that most farmers had these days. The van had long gone, but Mariner was surprised to see two people, standing by the farmhouse door, one of them smoking, and engaged in a murmured conversation. Mariner found a spot and waited in the cold.
After a while the moon disappeared behind a cloud and a light drizzle started to fall. Eventually he heard the men saying goodnight, the door opened and slammed shut, and the yard went quiet. Mariner waited another few minutes to be sure, then climbed the fence and dropped into the compound. Keeping close to the buildings he skirted round to the barn. Using the buildings as reference points he tried to ascertain the exact spot where he’d conducted the conversation with Willow, positioned himself as carefully as he could, before crouching down and sweeping his torch back and forth methodically across the ground around him. After a while it seemed hopeless; all he could see in the compressed earth were assorted stones and the occasional glint of broken glass. Several times he mistook bark chippings and other plant matter, and he was beginning to think that the rain of the day might have washed it away or even that he might have been mistaken, when suddenly, on the periphery of the spotlight cast by the torch, something registered fleetingly in his visual field. Slowly, he tracked back the path of the beam, and there it was, flattened into the ground, but unmistakable; a single leaf, quite distinctive in shape. Curbing the impulse for a triumphant cry, Mariner eased the leaf out of the compressed soil without tearing it, and slipped it carefully into the back pocket of his jeans.
Straightening up, Mariner began to make his way slowly back across the yard to the field, but now he was here and so close it was impossible to resist taking a look in that new shed. Even though he was pretty sure that its contents had just been removed, the generator at the far end continued to hum and he was certain he could see a faint glow from around an air vent. Rounding the end of the building he noted the heavy padlock on the doors. In mild frustration he gave it a tug anyway, and was so surprised when it fell away in his hand, that he fumbled and almost dropped it. Recovering, he placed the padlock carefully on the ground before releasing the flap and easing open the sliding door. Instantaneously a floodlight snapped on, dazzling him, and seconds later he heard the bang of slamming doors close by, followed by shouting and heavy running footfall. Shit! He must have triggered some kind of alarm within the farmhouse.
Behind the shed Mariner had the advantage of darkness and, leaping back into the shadows, he crept back along the length of the shed and round to the back where, out of sight, he could hurl himself over the fence and, staggering back to his feet, run down the edge of the field, trying to ignore the mud that caked his boots and weighed him down. Arriving breathless at the gate Mariner risked a look back, but even with the backlight of the yard he couldn’t see if anyone was following him. Back at the hostel he stripped off his outdoor clothes, leaving them in the boot room, before creeping back into the dorm and into bed. The temperature had dropped, inside as well as outside, and it took Mariner a long time to get warmed up, and when he woke in the early hours he had to put on his thick walking socks to warm his feet.
NINETEEN
Day Six
Mariner was woken early the next morning by the sound of a vehicle arriving at speed, and when he looked out into the yard he saw a couple of uniforms going into Elena’s kitchen. He’d stay out of the way until they had finished doing their job. Breakfast was in the hostel kitchen and made up of his bothy leftovers, and he sat to eat it at the old wooden table in the main dining room, a draught blowing under the door and his breath misting in the cool air.
The kitchen was exactly as it had been back in the early Eighties, when it was already old-fashioned, with a large stone sink and wooden drainer, an antiquated fridge, a geyser on the wall to heat the water, and a simple four-ring electric cooker that everyone fought over to cook their evening meal, before going to sit and eat at one of the two long refectory tables with benches either side
. It all smelled musty and unused, and there were telltale mouse droppings on the floor in a corner. The only attempts at décor were on the wall at one end: a couple of framed black and white snapshots and a pale outline where a crucifix had once hung.
Mariner had rarely known a Welsh Sunday when it didn’t rain, and today was holding to that tradition, with low cloud and a light but persistent drizzle that looked set in for the day. The hostel was too cold to stay in all day and he had no wish to hang around getting under Elena’s feet, so Mariner decided to do a low-level walk along the valley to the next village where he knew there used to be a decent pub. He could buy a Sunday paper and catch up with what was happening in the rest of the world. He also wanted to talk to Griffith, now that he had some hard evidence to support his suspicions. Before leaving the hostel he went across to Elena’s to check that all was well.
Elena was peeling potatoes and Mariner stood and watched her for a second. He wondered if she and Rex had any idea about what else might be being produced on Abbey Farm, and if they would enjoy the relaxed relationship they seemed to have with Willow if they found out. At that moment Elena looked up and saw him and beckoned him into the kitchen. She looked pale and distracted. ‘Would you like some breakfast?’
‘No, I’m fine, I’ve already eaten. I’m not going to disturb you today.’
‘Oh, we’ve already been disturbed,’ she said. ‘The police were here.’
‘Yes, I saw.’
‘The man you found … It was Theo Ashton.’
‘The boy from the farm?’ said Mariner.
‘Well, hardly a boy any more, but much too young to die. Apparently when one of Ryan’s officers went to tell them at the farm about what had happened in the woods, they realized Theo hadn’t been seen all day.’ Elena looked up at Mariner, her eyes gleaming. ‘What’s going on? Why would something like that happen here of all places? I’ve just told Cerys. It’s freaked her out, of course.’
Blood and Stone Page 14
