by AB Morgan
‘That’s fascinating, Mr Jordan,’ DS Quinn remarked with a heavy hint of impatience. ‘What happened next?’
With no sign of the acerbic Fewtrell family, Howard and Martin had approached the front door of number four and taken shelter from the rain by standing inside the brick porch. Having rung the bell a couple of times, they were waiting patiently for the door to be opened. Instead the occupier had approached them from behind. All three jumped as if startled. ‘Bloody hell, where did you come from?’ Howard asked.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘We could ask the same question. We’re from the council and we’re looking for a Mr Rory Norton.’
Rory apologised, explaining that he had been working on one of his old motorbikes in the barn at the rear of the house.
‘I don’t usually hear a thing when I’m in the workshop, so you were lucky to catch me. No one from the council told me you were coming. Do you have any ID?’ Having been reassured by an official letter and photo cards on lanyards, Rory reached past them with his keys and opened the front door. ‘I was heading in through the back to the kitchen to make a cuppa when I spied your van on my driveway.’ The two men from the council were invited in. ‘So, you lot finally decided to investigate my rodent problem. What took you so long?’
‘There are an awful lot of demands on our service, Mr Norton. Still, we’re here now, so shall we take a look?’ Howard and Martin had wiped their feet before entering onto the tiled floor of the hallway.
‘Right, Martin, do your thing. Have a good scout around outside and see what you can find.’
Normally it was his favourite part of the job, come rain, wind, snow or sunshine, but on this occasion, Martin had appeared disturbed by Mr Norton’s presence and had been making faces at Howard behind the customer’s back. Howard had paid no heed, instead criticising the bad-mannered behaviour in a stage whisper. ‘What on earth is the matter with you? Get on with it and stop piss-arsing about.’
‘I should stay with you, just in case.’
‘In case of what? Martin, get a grip, boy! You’ve been twittering on about this job all the way here and behaving like a child. Are you ill?’
‘No, but …’
Despite protesting, Martin eventually resigned himself to returning back into the rain to explore the outside of the property with the aim of tracking down where the rodent invasion was being launched from, and to identify the location of the rats’ nest. Howard was baffled by his workmate’s unusual hesitance. Mr Norton hadn’t been very friendly, granted, but he certainly wasn’t rude or hostile, so Martin’s reaction was unexpected.
Inside the house was immaculate, and initially Howard had assumed that Rory’s wife was cleaning-obsessed. However, there was no real indication of a woman’s hand in the practical furnishings or the plain décor. Rory slipped off his boots and placed his feet into a pair of moccasins in which he padded along the hallway.
‘Don’t worry. Keep your boots on for now,’ he said.
When they had first been let into the cottage, Howard had noticed a perfumed air reminiscent of his wife’s cheap eau de toilette that she sprayed liberally each side of her neck every morning before she left for work. He couldn’t see the necessity. As far as he could discern, her bottom-of-the-range “Luscious Lilies” had the faint pong of cat’s pee about it and made her smell like a back alley.
With Martin sent outside and thoughts of his wife pushed from his mind, he followed Rory towards the kitchen. However, the tall, slim man in jeans and an oily sweatshirt seemed to have disappeared.
Howard raised his voice slightly. ‘Live here alone, do you?’
He heard someone running a tap. Rory was washing his hands at a small sink in a downstairs shower room. His voice echoed in response.
‘Yep. No one will put up with me, I’m afraid. I prefer motorbikes. They’re easier to fathom.’
While Howard waited in the kitchen, he wondered what sort of man wore grease-stained clothes but lived in an antiseptic home and preferred mechanical objects to women. The work surfaces in the kitchen were spotless, and as the fridge door was opened by Rory to retrieve the milk, Howard spied Tupperware boxes neatly labelled with content and dates. Looking around he had noticed air fresheners or reed diffusers placed on windowsills or shelves. He had to admire the effort Rory was making to cover up the industrial chemical smells and farmyard manure odours that wafted into the cottage from his neighbours over the wall.
‘How on earth do you cope with the Fewtrells next door?’
‘That’s an interesting question … considering. You could say I’ve had one or two unpleasant confrontations lately, but so far I’ve lived to tell the tale.’
‘You tolerate them better than the last family that lived here. Your hideous neighbours practically drove them out. Where are they all today, anyway?’
‘Next door? I’m surprised you didn’t hear it on the news—’
The back door had then opened with a loud creak making Howard lose his train of thought.
‘Is it what we suspected?’ he had asked as Martin reappeared, soaking wet, holding his heavy-duty torch.
‘It looks like it,’ his sodden colleague confirmed, taking care to wipe his feet thoroughly on the doormat. ‘One of the airbricks is broken and they’re getting in through that. I can tell ’cause of the greasy marks on the brickwork. Maybe they’re coming from the buildings on the other side, I dunno. I had a look as best I could, and I reckon they might have a route in from there as well.’ Martin had removed his jacket having shaken off what he could of the rain before hanging it on the back of a chair as indicated by Rory.
‘Let’s go and have a look from the inside,’ Howard had suggested. ‘Where exactly did you say you heard the noises coming from?’
Howard looked the police officer in the eye. ‘I remember stopping not three feet inside the lounge doorway and saying, “I can smell something rotten.”’
3
Some Weeks Earlier
‘Nice morning for a walk,’ Barney said as he grabbed hold of an oil-stained towelling rag from the bonnet of the car he was working on. He made minimal effort to remove the grime from his hands before greeting Rory with a firm meaty handshake.
‘Lovely morning it is indeed, Barney,’ Rory replied looking down in dismay at the grease on his right palm. ‘Thanks for opening up early. I’ve got three novices for their CBTs today and they always turn up well before time on the first day, for some reason.’
‘Remind me what CBTs are again,’ Barney said, passing his customer a sheet of paper towel on which to wipe his hand clean.
‘Compulsory Basic Training. Why … do you want to have a go?’
‘No, thanks. When I took my motorbike test all I had to do was ride around the block and then an ancient examiner with a clipboard would launch himself from the side of the road and I had to do an emergency stop. That was it.’ He looked around checking that no one was within hearing distance. ‘I don’t tell many people this story, but when I took my first bike test I was a bag of nerves. I borrowed my mate Jim’s bike and a proper jacket, one without the badges on and the Hell’s Angel artwork on the back, you know the sort of thing. On the day of the test I drove off down the road and turned left where I was supposed to. We all knew the route. The examiner would appear having legged it through a couple of alleyways, so I was expecting him to jump out towards the end of Oak Way but the bugger leapt from between a couple of trees not even halfway down the road, and I ran straight into him. No kidding. I didn’t even manage to brake in time. There was an almighty tangle of legs, clipboard and machine. When I came off I ruined Jim’s jacket, scratched his bike to buggery and broke the examiner’s leg. I suppose it’s all changed since then.’
Rory couldn’t help but laugh even though he had no reason to challenge the validity of the story, as it was told with such sincere embarrassment. ‘But you passed second time?’
‘Oh, yes.’
Following his confession, Barney
watched as his young apprentice wheeled Rory’s bike out from the workshop, kicked down the side stand and handed over a test certificate that Rory perused for only a few seconds.
‘She passed then, with no advisories.’
‘Yes, old fruit, she sailed through the MOT. You keep the gal in good order, so I wasn’t expecting any issues even with a fair few miles on the clock.’ The two men talked while standing over the motorbike they were referring to, giving the machine admiring glances as if it were a pedigree racehorse. ‘I bet you have a name for her.’
‘Yes, this is Donna.’
‘Do you give all your bikes girls’ names?’
‘Of course, doesn’t everyone?’
‘No. Not necessarily. I used to call mine something that went with the make, you know, Tony the Triumph, Henry Fonda the Honda, Suzy Suzuki. However, my last one was named Delilah because she was always breaking down and I didn’t know why, why, why.’ Barney chuckled at his own joke and Rory couldn’t help but join in. A permanently cheerful chap, Barney Ribble had been the first person to befriend Rory when he’d moved in to the village nearly three years previously.
‘Some bloke that came in for an MOT the other day called his bike Thunderbum. It failed. Bloody exhaust was louder than AC/DC. He wasn’t clever enough to baffle the bloody thing before he brought it in. Talking of noise …’
They swung around to face the direction of Quarry Farm Lane. A flat bed tipper truck and two double-cab vans, in various states of disrepair, could be seen and heard making their way rapidly towards the T-junction opposite Ribble’s Garage and Service Station.
‘Here they come, old man Fewtrell and his gang of bandits and robbers, off to swindle some unsuspecting elderly couple out of their life savings in exchange for dodgy tarmac or not repairing the roof. I hear he’s doing some flash-chrome plating as well as crap welding in that unit of his. It must stink where you are.’
‘It’s not so much that; it’s the noise. Dogs barking, metal clanking, men shouting at all hours of the night. They’re a bastard menace, but the rent on the cottage is so cheap I can’t moan. Besides, I’ll never have to worry about burglars. No one dares go near the place.’
‘How come they’ve left you well alone?’
‘I’m not exactly sure. I don’t bother them, and they don’t bother me. It’s an uneasy truce. I’m out most of the time or in my shed tinkering. Having said that, I’ve emailed the authorities about one or two issues, but they don’t seem to care.’
‘Really? You haven’t done anything stupid like speak to Leo directly, I hope.’ Barney took a step back, eyeing Rory up and down.
‘No. I’m not that damned silly. It’s not worth it. Look at what happened to Joe up at the farm when he created about the industrial muck and the vehicles blocking the lane. These days the poor man can’t go anywhere without his dog to protect him.’
Barney and Rory watched as the rumbling, jangling vehicles from Leonard Fewtrell’s yard turned right. ‘Where the hell does he get all those labourers from?’
‘If the accents and names are anything to go by, I would hazard a guess at Eastern Europe. The name “Pavel” has been shouted repeatedly in the past fortnight. Whoever Pavel is, he catches the brunt of Mad Leo’s foul temper. I don’t always see much of the lads he has working for him, but I have to say the one or two I have glimpsed so far look too young to have left home. That’s what I’ve emailed the authorities about. I spoke to the police as well. They didn’t seem too bothered either.’
‘The country has gone to the dogs. Annette says we’ll all die of organisational apathy. Maybe she’s right.’
A blue saloon car that had been parked near the junction pulled out to follow the clamorous convoy. ‘Who’s that? I’ve seen that car quite a few times lately.’ Rory tried to get a better look by arching his back and craning his neck to see into the passenger window, but the reflections defeated him.
‘It’s a woman. She’s been parking there on and off for the last week or so. I’m not quite sure what she’s up to, but she’ll get herself into trouble following that lot around. I suspect she’s from the council, so maybe they are more interested than you think. She chats to someone on hands-free while she’s waiting for the trucks to turn up. Word has it that the local authorities have been giving Leonard Fewtrell a bit of grief about health and safety again. Something to do with environmental risks. Who’d have thought it?’
Barney was the man you went to for information. Apart from the local pub, his garage and its small convenience store was at the heart of village social life, and if Barney were not in one place then he would be found in the other. He knew the gossip but, because he cared, was also a wise keeper of secrets told him in drunken disinhibition in The Valiant Soldier.
‘Were you at home when they turned up in force last year and Mad Leo got his shotgun out?’ Barney asked.
‘No, I’m bloody glad I wasn’t. I heard all about it that night while I watched the Fewtrell gang from my bedroom window with the light off. There was a late drunken barbecue - if you can call bits of meat being dangled over a bonfire in a scrapyard a barbecue. Anyway, Leo’s men found it gut-bustingly funny that the enforcement officer had nearly soiled his pants when the gun appeared, but it was the dog that got him in the end. Bit his leg. I’m still amazed the police haven’t arrested anyone or destroyed the dog.’
‘Too scared, mate. You ever seen any coppers up your lane? No. There’s good reason for that. They’re cowards. So, you keep your head down and make sure you maintain what harmony you can with your neighbours. Ever since Joe reported a leak of acid from the yard there’s been big trouble brewing. He reckons that acid killed every living thing in the brook, you know, the one that runs on the edge of the big field at the back of your place.’
Rory was intrigued. ‘I ‘d heard it was slurry or fertilizer.’
‘You heard wrong, pal. It was acid, hydrofluoric or chloric, one of the two. Nasty stuff. You must have smelt it. Still, over the whiff of dog shit, sump oil, and general pong from the rubbish, I don’t suppose you even noticed.’
‘What would he be using that for?’
‘Pickling. Not onions. Metal. Getting rid of rust … that sort of thing.’
Rory, unnerved by what he had heard, settled his bill and headed off on Donna the motorbike for a day at work.
On his way home, later that same day, he waved to Barney who gave him a cheery thumbs up as he passed by the garage forecourt. Before he reached the lady in the blue saloon car, who he had seen that morning, he turned left into the lane. She was parked in a different spot, under a tree, next to the garage and had her head bowed hiding her features. Rory assumed she must have been waiting for the Fewtrell’s Yard gang to return home. I hope she’s not stupid enough to ever follow them up the lane, Rory thought.
4
Anna’s Mission
Anna was becoming increasingly suspicious about the daytime activities of Leonard Fewtrell and his gang of unkempt, uncouth workers. Only the day before she had seen five of the men bundle a heavy carpet into the back of one of the vans. There was something about the way they kept checking to see if they were being observed that aroused her curiosity. From her car she had managed to steal a number of camera shots of Leo Fewtrell as he spoke to the elderly homeowner at her front door. She had counted cash into his hand in return for clearing several large items from her garage, including an old washing machine. The lady was distracted by Leo’s banter and hadn’t noticed two workers making their way through the side gate and into her back garden. Anna suspected the worst and, trying not to draw any attention, had driven sedately into the next road, a cul-de-sac. Taking a huge risk by leaving the safety of her car, she had made her way to the rear of the property where she stuck the lens of her camera through the shrubs at the end of the small garden.
She was too late. By the time she put the camera to her eye the two men were disappearing from view, back the way they had come. Their furtive manner gave away their
intentions and, as they made their exit, Anna was convinced she had seen one of the men stuffing items into an inside pocket of his lightweight jacket. She couldn’t see what it was. She wasn’t entirely shocked, this wasn’t the first time she’d witnessed a distraction burglary by the Fewtrells.
Realising that she had missed being able to capture the evidence on film, she was about to leave her position when a series of shouts were heard coming from the house. An elderly man in a grey cardigan and beige trousers staggered from the back door in his slippers, holding a hand to the side of his face. ‘Stop! Stop right now and give that back, or I’ll call the police.’
He held onto the windowsill as he faltered towards the pathway, falling onto his knees. Anna gasped. From where she stood at the end of the garden she could see blood running down his right cheek and through his fingers, but as she fumbled in her pocket for her mobile phone a tall man in a battered porkpie hat and checked shirt appeared at the back of the house. Without speaking, he took a stride towards the old man and swung a fearsome flying kick at his head. Anna’s phone fell through her fingers as she raised the long lens camera again, stunned by the thoughtless attack. By the time she recovered herself the perpetrator had gone, and the elderly man lay in a heap against the wall.
Scrabbling in the earth beneath the bushes to locate her phone, she felt exposed with her back to the open ground between the garden fence and her car. It was only a matter of a few feet of grass verge and footpath, but she was out in the open, a witness, and therefore at risk from the very people she was trying to remain hidden from. She didn’t hang around once she’d made it back to her car and drove several miles before reporting to the police what she had seen.
‘Thanks for your call. We’ll add this to your concerns from last week about the incident at Lensham railway station. I’ll just give you an incident number, Mrs Chamberlain, and we’ll be in touch should we need further information.’ Anna could have sworn she heard the operator sigh before ending the call.
