Cooper and Fry Crime Fiction Series Books 1-3: Black Dog, Dancing With the Virgins, Blood on the Tongue. Stephen Booth

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       11

      ‘Where to next, then?’ said Cooper.

      ‘What’s up with you? Eaten too much cheese at lunch?’

      ‘I’m fine. Where to next?’

      ‘Thorpe Farm,’ said Fry, consulting the map.

      ‘That’s one of the smallholdings. There’s another one at the end of the same lane. Bents Farm. We’d better make sure we don’t miss it out.’

      Cooper had to wait while two women on horseback passed them, the horses walking slowly and elegantly, their muscled hindquarters shining with good health. The riders nodded a greeting and looked down into the car to study them, as if motorists were unusual in Moorhay. Someone appeared at the door of the bar at the Drover, wedged it open and propped a blackboard outside. From the tiny shop and post office came the sound of laughter.

      Across the road, a workman was playing a transistor radio as he repointed the wall of a cottage. An old lady emerged from the open doorway to speak to him on his ladder, probably asking him if he wanted a cup of tea. She saw the Toyota and said something else to the workman, who turned round to look. Cooper had already visited the old lady, who had seemed to know more about everyone in the village than was good for her. But she had known nothing about Laura Vernon. Nothing at all.

      It seemed to Cooper that there was more life about the village of Moorhay today than ever before when he had been there previously. It was as if the murder of Laura Vernon had given it a new vitality, had brought its inhabitants together in the face of adversity. Or maybe it had just given them something to talk about.

      He turned the Toyota confidently into a rutted lane overshadowed by trees, with a tall border of grass growing up the middle that brushed along the underside of the car. The trees were mostly beech, with some huge horse chestnuts creating a dense canopy overhead. In the autumn, the children of the village would be drawn to this track with their sticks and stones to knock down the conkers.

      ‘Who lives out here, then?’ said Fry. ‘I suppose it’s your Auntie Alice or something, is it? It’s bound to be someone who greets you like the prodigal son. Some second cousin or other. Have your mother and father got big families? Inbreeding affects the brain, you know.’

      ‘I don’t know these places,’ said Cooper.

      Within a few yards of leaving the road the track took a turn and they were reduced to a crawl to protect the suspension. Already they might as well have been miles from the village. The trees completely cut off their view of houses that were only a couple of hundred yards away. It was a very old patch of woodland they were driving through, and Cooper could see it was not managed, as a woodland should be to remain healthy. Many dead branches and boughs brought down by winter gales lay rotting among the remaining beeches. They were covered in lichen and clumps of white fungi, and the bracken and ferns were chest-high. Parts of the stone wall in front of the wood had collapsed, and a makeshift post and wire fence used to block the gaps had long since given up the battle. A handsome cock pheasant walking along the edge of the wood paused with one foot in the air, its claws frozen in surprise. The greens, reds and golds of its plumage were vibrant and iridescent, and for a moment Cooper wanted to stop the car and reach out for the bird. But it suddenly burst into a run and dodged and weaved its way back into the dense undergrowth, its tail extended straight out behind it.

      The pheasant had started a train of thought for Cooper about poachers, and he turned towards Fry to mention it. But he realized that she hadn’t even noticed the bird.

      ‘There are no signs,’ she complained, frowning out of the window, as if the AA had failed her.

      ‘There don’t need to be,’ said Cooper. ‘Everyone in Moorhay will know that Thorpe and Bents Farms are this way.’ And though the thought inspired by the bird stayed with him, he decided to keep it to himself for a while.

      Soon the trees gave way to a view up the slope of the hill. The land here was largely rough grass. It was divided by stone walls, then divided again by strands of electrified fencing. A hundred yards up the slope was a jumble of makeshift buildings – wooden hen huts and sheds, a row of breezeblock pig sties. Two old railway carriages stood rotting in the corner of one paddock, and an ex-Army Nissen hut with an arched corrugated-iron roof stretched the full width of one field.

      A rich smell drifted through the open windows of the car – mud and soiled straw, and the odours of animals of all kinds. Somewhere there was certainly a fully operating dung heap. There seemed to be poultry everywhere – in the fields, on the track, perched on the roofs of the buildings. There were red hens and speckled grey hens, a variety of ducks and a dozen large white geese which immediately waddled towards the car, honking an aggressive warning at the intruders. Their noise started dogs barking somewhere in the midst of the shanty town, and a goat could be heard bleating from one of the sheds as Cooper drove up to a gate across the track.

      He waited for Fry to get out and open the gate. This was, after all, the usual practice for the passenger on a gated road. But he saw she needed coaching.

      ‘Would you open the gate for me?’ he said.

      ‘Are those things safe?’

      ‘What, the geese? You just have to show them you’re not frightened of them.’

      ‘Thanks a lot.’

      Fry struggled with the wooden gate, which was tied to its post with a length of baling twine and at the other end hung on only by its top hinge. But at last the car was through.

      ‘Are you sure anybody actually lives up here?’ said Fry. ‘Where’s the farmhouse?’

      ‘Well, though they’re called farms, these places, they’re really just bits left over from the days of the old cottagers, when everyone had their own plot of land, with a cow and a pig. They’re the bits that the bigger farms haven’t swallowed up yet, and the developers haven’t got round to buying up for housing. There’ll be a cottage somewhere. They’ll know we’re here, with all this noise.’

      Cooper pulled up against the back wall СКАЧАТЬ