Snatch Crop

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘I’ve been wondering the same thing. On the whole, I think not. I’d take notice, but I wouldn’t expect the police to think along those lines – especially not a man and a girl. We’ll be about a quarter of a mile off and it seems to me that they must by now be fed up of going to red alert every time a man on a tractor starts working nearby. I think they’ll accept us as part of the country scene.’

  We moved off again. ‘And if they don’t?’ I asked. We left the gates of the estate and made a turn which I guessed would bring us past the house.

  ‘I’ve asked for two plain cars to be waiting, one near the nearest junction in each direction. If we think that Delia’s being removed, we tip them off and they block the road. I fixed up some very short code-words, for whenever we have to break radio silence. That’s the best we can do until reinforcements arrive. Or isn’t it?’ he added uncertainly. ‘Have I missed anything?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ I said.

  With unnerving suddenness the trees ended, the countryside opened up and we saw the house ahead, set well back from the road on the right-hand side. I kept my eyes strictly ahead while Ian leaned back and stole a glance behind the back of my neck.

  ‘Looks quiet,’ he said, ‘but I think there was a face near one of the windows. Be natural. Don’t even think about anything but the woodies. Go left here.’

  I had already identified the mouth of the track. It was hardly more than a pair of wheel-ruts, made by tractors and awkwardly spaced for the narrow jeep. The rape stubble was on our left. On the other side, beyond a wire fence, was what looked like a harvested potato-field. A few greylag geese, grazing on the remains of the potatoes, ignored us but a cloud of pigeon went up from the rape and headed for the trees where we had been a half-hour earlier.

  ‘I hope they come back,’ I said as I pulled up beside the gorse-bushes. ‘If they don’t, we’ll look daft staying more than twenty minutes or so.’

  Ian grunted. ‘Twenty minutes may be enough,’ he said.

  We dumped Sam and the gear out of the back of the jeep. True to form, Dad had a couple of hundred cartridges neatly stowed. By good luck, I was wearing a dress of suitably neutral colour and sensible shoes, but I had come away with only a thin coat. I appropriated Dad’s waxproof coat and gave Ian the camouflaged shooting jacket to cover his white shirt. Then I drove the jeep on, turned in a gateway and came part of the way back. There was nowhere to hide the vehicle, so I left it far enough off to be ignored by the birds. Pigeon know the range of a shotgun very well but they are too accustomed to seeing vehicles in the fields to associate them with the probability of an ambush in the near distance.

  Ian had already set up a camouflage net to screen off a space between two gorse-bushes and was setting out some plastic decoys. In his few years of associating with me and my family, he had been learning. The pattern of decoys looked very natural as they bobbed in the breeze. I let him finish while I pulled up some dead grass and weeds to dress the camouflage net.

  Always the gentleman when reminded, Ian gave me the use of Dad’s fishing-stool and settled himself uncomfortably on a small rock from where he could bring the binoculars to bear on the house through the base of one of the gorse-bushes. I glanced once and once only in the same direction. The house stood out clearly, but in the damp air the trees on the higher ground beyond were no more than a fuzz. Sam curled down beside my feet. After a few moments Ian dropped the binoculars down the inside of his jacket, put his radio carefully to hand and took up Dad’s oldest twelve-bore.

  ‘Did you see anything?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a damn thing. Mr Taylor may be right. Perhaps those beads came in with the gravel. But I felt watched. You do most of the shooting while I keep observation.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you get somebody to speak to Mr Farquharson and find out where the gravel came from?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The time isn’t ripe,’ he said shortly.

  After five minutes, the birds had begun to forget that we were there. A single pigeon flew over. We left him alone. Pigeon behaviour and tactics are the subject of endless argument, but I had come to agree with Dad that these scouting singletons should be spared. Let the flight-line develop and it will continue under its own momentum.

  A trickle of birds began, in twos and threes, coming in high over the field and then homing in on the decoys. I missed the first and then began to score. My third kill landed on its back, a danger-signal to approaching birds. I would have gone out to set up the dead birds as extra decoys but after Ian’s words I knew that I would have had stage-fright. I lifted the corner of the net and sent Sam, who knew exactly what was wanted of him. In his old age, he ambled out into the field instead of racing over the stubble as he would have done in his youth. He ignored the decoys and the tidily dead and brought the inverted bird back to hand, settling down at my feet again with a contented grunt and glancing up for approval. I scratched his head, telling him that life was not over yet.

  ‘That should present them with a suitably uncoplike image,’ Ian said.

  The radio woke up suddenly. ‘Come in, Harry,’ it said. The words were repeated several times.

  ‘Harry’s the code for the car at the junction near the Boyes Castle gates,’ Ian said. ‘They’re telling me that it’s in place. That was quick.’

  ‘If that was quick,’ I said, ‘I don’t know that we can wait for slow.’

  ‘These things take time,’ Ian said. ‘They must have had a car nearby. Now they’ll be rearranging schedules, bringing cars in from further afield and asking each other whether I know what the hell I’m doing. I’m beginning to wonder the same thing.’

  ‘In about an hour,’ I said, ‘if their little crops are full, the pigeon are going to go for a drink and then up to roost and the supply will dry up. Only a prat or a policeman would hang on after that. A real shooting person would move to the woods.’

  ‘I don’t suppose that these are real shooting persons,’ Ian said anxiously. ‘They’re city boys.’

  ‘I hope to God they’re as ignorant as you think they are.’

  ‘Don’t sow these doubts in my mind,’ he said. ‘One of my bosses may be coming out to take over, but for the moment it’s my baby.’

  It came to me that his new responsibilities were weighing on him. Until a few months earlier, he had been the sergeant who carried out orders from on high. ‘You’re doing everything possible,’ I said. ‘If they find her here, the credit will go to you.’

  I brought down another five birds and Ian two. One of his was only winged, a runner. Old Sam showed that he still had a spurt or two left in him.

  The shadows were beginning to stretch out and our visitors were becoming fewer. Ian began to fidget. ‘The other car should have been in position by now,’ he said. ‘And somebody was to go to Mr Taylor’s house and be guided up to where we were this morning. Where the hell is everybody? All we need,’ he said disgustedly, ‘is a sudden riot in Edinburgh and nobody having time for me and my trivial problems any more.’

  After a few more minutes the radio suddenly woke up again. ‘Come in, Deborah,’ it said. ‘Harry calling.’

  Ian grabbed it. ‘I think it’s for me,’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘Yours was one of the few names I could think of in a hurry. They’re telling me that they have a message for me.’

  ‘It’s about time we packed up,’ I said.

  Ian frowned in concentration. A late pigeon swept in low and landed among the decoys before I was ready for him.

  ‘Could you hang on here for a minute?’ Ian asked suddenly.

  ‘A minute, yes,’ I said. ‘An hour, forget it!’

  ‘You wouldn’t be scared? I could walk there and back. For all the men in the house would know, I could be going to another car for a flask or some more cartridges. I don’t want to leave the house unwatched. I’ll leave you my radio. If I give the word . . . Think of a name.’

  ‘Ian,’ I said.
The pigeon either heard my voice or was spooked by the immobility of its companions. It took off. I missed behind.

  Ian looked at me expectantly and then grasped my meaning. ‘That’ll do. If you hear “Come in, Ian” on the radio, pack up and join me at the gates of Boyes Castle. If anything moves, press the “Transmit” button three times. But if a vehicle leaves and turns right from the house – their right, not yours – press it and keep on pressing it over and over again. We’ll hear it clicking and we’ll come after them. If they leave and turn left, press “Transmit” and tell me and we’ll follow them up.’

  ‘I can do that,’ I said. ‘But don’t forget that they may be armed.’

  ‘I won’t forget,’ he said. ‘By God I won’t.’

  ‘Well, don’t. You stay out of the rough stuff and I’ll do the same.’

  He gave me his best, number one grin. ‘Good girl. And if anybody leaves the house and seems to be heading in your direction, leave everything, get in the jeep and go. Across country, if you have to.’

  ‘Don’t think I wouldn’t.’

  He looked at me doubtfully for a moment but my words seemed to reassure him. He gave me a quick peck on the side of the nose, stepped out of the hide and set off across the rape stubble, slanting across to hit the road at the far corner beyond the house. He was carrying Dad’s gun over his arm. I nearly called him back and took it off him, because a man with a gun is much more likely to have a rush of courage to the head than one without, but decided to let him keep it. Dad believes that people should be allowed to defend themselves; and I have never seen why that privilege should not be extended to policemen.

  It seemed that my function was to keep watch. I tried to observe without turning my head. The house just sat there, impassive and bland. Even the smoke at the chimney had died or was being swept away by a rising breeze. Ian reached the road and went out of my sight.

  I was suddenly very much alone in an empty landscape. Courage drained away, leaving a vacant place in the pit of my stomach. The cold wind seemed to cut through me.

  A small flock of pigeon swept over while I was watching the house. To have ignored them would have been to signal that I was not a bone fide shooter. I was just in time to knock one down and miss another. And then, just as I had predicted, the visitations dried up.

  How long, I wondered, would Ian expect me to wait? How long before the enemy became suspicious of a lonely girl watching decoys while the birds were streaming to roost?

  I turned my attention back to the house and was just in time for a glimpse of a figure disappearing round the corner. I decided to let Ian know that the occupants were stirring.

  Pressing the Transmit button produced sundry clicks and hisses, so I was satisfied that something was happening. All the same, when my husband’s voice suddenly said, ‘Come in, Ian,’ I was so startled that I almost dropped the radio.

  I was free to move at last and suddenly I wanted to be a long way away, in front of a fire with a large gin and nothing in one hand and Ian in the other. I fetched the jeep first, just in case, and left its engine running, ready for a quick departure. Packing up a pigeon layout can be a slow business, but I bundled everything higgledy-piggledy into the back of the jeep; dead birds, decoys, cartridges, gun and camouflage nets all mixed together, with Sam sprawled across the top. Dad wouldn’t be pleased, but to hell with him! He wasn’t alone in hostile territory with night approaching.

  The jeep bounced and tried to take over its own steering as I drove, too fast, down the track. At the road, I had to wait for a moment as a tractor went slowly by, pulling a trailerload of straw bales. I sighed with impatience, but in a moment I would be accelerating away up the road out of harm’s way. The tractor went clear.

  The jeep’s engine was limping. It must have been cold. I coaxed the jeep out into the road and once we were moving I trod hard on the accelerator.

  That proved to be a mistake. The engine picked up, hesitated, chuffed a couple of times and then died on me. I declutched quickly in the hope that I could roll out of sight, but there was no slope to help me along. I coasted a few yards past the driveway of the house before I ran out of momentum and came to a gentle halt.

  When Dad taught me to drive, he also gave me a short course on what happens under the bonnet. Except around guns I might not be much of a mechanic, but at least I was not entirely clueless as to how the thing worked. Or didn’t. My best guess was a fuel problem. In the hope that the trouble was no more than an airlock I got out of the vehicle and blew down the petrol-filler a few times. Then I hopped back into the driving-seat and tried the starter. The engine coughed twice and died again.

  ‘Stay calm and think,’ I told myself. In hindsight, I now know that was the worst advice I ever received, from myself or anyone else. It would have been the right time to panic, to do exactly what I most wanted to do – to leap from the vehicle and run screaming up the road. But one never knows these things at the time.

  So I stayed calm and thought. And almost immediately, I saw the answer staring me in the face. Unlike any other car I had ever driven, Dad’s jeep had a manual choke. The choke control was still protruding, taunting me. I had flooded the damned thing.

  I had made the same mistake once before and I could still hear Dad’s voice. ‘Choke in, foot hard down on the accelerator and give it a long spin. If that doesn’t do it, go for a long walk while the plugs dry.’ The long walk sounded the more attractive, but I tried the first part of the advice. From the noises under the bonnet, the battery was going to fail before the engine fired.

  I said a word that Dad had used when somebody backed a Land Rover over his favourite gun. I still don’t know what it means, but it relieved my feeling a little.

  Ian’s radio was buried somewhere in the jumble in the back. He would not want me to leave it where somebody could find it and listen in or even send bogus messages; and if I had it in my hand I could scream for help if somebody grabbed me. I knelt on the seat and groped among the camouflage nets and dead birds, pushing aside the heavy and now somnolent Sam.

  The radio eluded me but after several frantic minutes my fingers touched the muzzles of the gun. That, I decided, would do just as well. I could not quite reach to grasp it. The driver’s door was open behind me. As I stretched further, somebody goosed me. I would have suspected Sam, whose cold nose has been known to catch ladies in short skirts unaware, but Sam was in front of me and snoring again.

  My nerves were already stretched. The sudden evidence that I was no longer alone was almost too much. I executed several simultaneous manoeuvres, none of them voluntary. I gave a leap that hit my head against the jeep’s roof, uttered a loud squawk, swallowed back some vital organ which had tried to jump out of my mouth and spun round, banging my hip on the steering wheel. Behind me, Sam grunted, decided that this was not the time for play and began snoring again.

  A man grabbed my elbow and pulled me out onto the road.

  ‘You keep your hands to yourself,’ I said. For the moment, indignation had taken over from fear.

  ‘If you leave a bum like that sticking up in the air,’ he said, ‘you must expect it to be grabbed. We were waiting our chance to move, and now you can come along for the ride. Don’t try to scream or I’ll belt you one.’

  I believed him. He was burly, with a strongly featured face. The cast of his features combined toughness with a sort of humour, like a playful bulldog. His was the type that goes zestfully into any wickedness. He would fight fiercely over little or nothing and then share a drink and a laugh with his opponent while they compared the damage. I might not have recognised the type if my Uncle Ronnie had not been cast in the same mould.

  A battered Transit van had come down the drive from the house and was halting at the gate. The back doors opened. He pulled me across and pushed me inside and down to the floor, climbing in after me. The van moved off.

  Two other people were in the back of the van. As I was pushed inside I had a photographic glimpse of a thin man wit
h hot eyes, perched on one of the bench seats that ran down either side. Mrs Thrower’s brief description had been remarkably acute. And sharing the bare floor with me, crouching almost nose to nose, was Delia, still in her school uniform. Her hair was untidy and her clothes seemed to be overdue for the laundry although she herself looked undamaged. There was even a smell of soap clinging to her. But her face was tear-stained and she was sucking her thumb.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked her.

  She took her thumb out of her mouth but no answer followed it. I could see her problem. How all right was ‘All right’? I tried to rephrase the question and ran into a difficulty of my own. I was not sure whether she would understand the terms, or even the concept, of sexual interference. Nor was I quite sure that I wanted to know.

  ‘Have they bad used you?’ I asked.

  She hesitated again and then shook her head, but her eyes brimmed over.

  ‘No talking,’ said the man who had grabbed me. ‘And don’t look up. Neither of you’s too old for a good spanking.’ He sounded more amused at the idea than I felt.

  ‘Let ’em talk if they want to,’ the thin man said in a flat, metallic voice. ‘I’d rather have talk than the eternal snivelling.’

  After that, of course, there seemed to be nothing comforting to say that would not have meant more to our captors than to Delia.

  It was one of Dad’s guiding principles that as long as there was something you could usefully do you kept your head and did it. ‘After that,’ he told me, ‘you can have hysterics if you want to.’ (I really must stop quoting Dad and invent a few aphorisms of my own.) I might have welcomed a refreshing attack of hysteria, but somebody had to keep their head and it seemed unlikely that that person would be Delia. She had resumed her thumb-sucking. I tried to apply reason to the available facts.

  The van had turned away from the castle gates. If an observer had already arrived at the release pen he would have seen our departure and the alarm would have been raised. And perhaps the other police car was even now in place. But we had only driven for a minute or so when we turned off again onto a rougher surface.