Dead People. Ewart Hutton

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СКАЧАТЬ looked at me like I had just awakened from a coma. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

      ‘Isn’t there an ambulance?’

      He grinned maliciously. ‘If you’re discharging yourself you must be better. You don’t need an ambulance.’

      ‘Ambulances take cured people home too,’ I countered.

      His grin widened, and he shook his head. ‘Not at this time in the morning.’

      It was frustrating. There was no one around to appreciate the urgency of the situation. There was no one around, period. I was a cop on a mission, but the place was dead, there wasn’t even a milk float to commandeer. And it was cold. It was that grey, miserable hour of the morning that you know you were never meant to belong in.

      And what was I going to do when I eventually got up there? All the diggers had been put out of commission. But that was the least of my worries. I was deliberately ignoring the fact that I was soon going to have to stare at a whole fucking hillside, with no idea where to begin searching.

      The hospital was way outside of town. A drear, dark-stone Victorian building that had once been a refuge for fallen women. I started walking. It was too early to wake David Williams up, but I had already figured that I could hot-wire the old Land Rover that he kept parked and unlocked in the rear yard of The Fleece.

      It kept churning over in my mind. What else were we going to find? Could the missing head and hands be buried elsewhere on the site? I was so wrapped up in speculation that I almost didn’t hear the approaching vehicle.

      And it was a big one. I stepped out into the road with my warrant card in my outstretched arm, waving him down.

      ‘Have you escaped?’ the driver asked, pulling up, a short cheery guy with red hair and a thick forearm perched on the open-window ledge.

      It took me a moment to realize that he’d made the link between the dressing on my head and the hospital. ‘No,’ I said reassuringly, ‘I’m a policeman, I desperately need to get somewhere where I can organize some transport.’

      He looked slightly disappointed that I wasn’t an injured loony on the lam. ‘So where to?’ he asked, shifting noisily into gear as I climbed up into the cab.

      I explained about the wind-farm site, but said that I would be happy to be dropped off in the centre of Dinas.

      ‘No worries, I’ll take you up there,’ he said chirpily, introducing himself as Jim. ‘We can pretend it’s a car chase,’ he added with a grin.

      He explained that he worked for the local animal-feed mill and delivered to all the farms in the area.

      ‘Anything unusual about the farms down the wind-farm valley?’ I asked.

      ‘You’re looking for someone for that body you’ve found up there, aren’t you?’ he conjectured happily, jumping slightly out of his seat to notch the truck into a recalcitrant gear.

      ‘Background only. My own interest.’

      He thought about it for a moment. ‘There’s not that many left that are still farms. Pen Tywn has been turned into some kind of fancy shop that’s hardly ever open. Then Fron Heulog Farm, which is now the activity centre.’

      ‘What kind of activity?’ I asked.

      ‘A bunch of Brummies bought the place. They take in gang members from the city. It’s supposed to help them see the error of their ways. They get to come out here on a break from thieving cars. Using our tax money to give them a holiday because the deprived bastards have never seen a sheep.’

      I made a mental note of Fron Heulog. It contained the elements of Jack Galbraith’s suggested city connection.

      ‘It’s Cae Rhedyn after that?’ I prompted.

      ‘That’s right. Crazy Bruno with his so-called gold mine.’

      ‘I’ve been there.’

      He glanced over to see if I was going to expand on Crazy Bruno before he continued. ‘Then there’s the Joneses at Cogfryn.’

      ‘I’ve been there too.’

      ‘Tidy farmers. Up from them there’s The Waen. Old Ivor Richards, who’s let most of his land out to the Joneses and the Pritchards, who farm Tan-yr-Allt at the head of the valley.’ He nodded to himself, working his way up an imaginary map.

      ‘Who around here, in your opinion, isn’t a tidy farmer?’

      ‘Ivor Richards, but it’s the poor old bugger’s age. He’s lost it.’

      ‘What about farmers outside the valley?’

      He glanced over at me, a shrewd look on his face. After a moment he nodded. ‘You want me to tell you about Gerald Evans, don’t you?’

      ‘Why would I want you to do that?’

      He smiled knowingly. ‘Because he’s the bastard that everyone around here would like to see toasted.’

      ‘Does he deserve it?’

      ‘They say he tried to buy in infected sheep during the foot-and-mouth. To get the compensation.’

      ‘I’ve heard that rumour about a lot of farmers.’

      ‘Yes, but he’s the sort of bastard who would have really done it.’

      Gerald Evans was getting more and more interesting.

      We turned off the main road into the valley. As we passed the Pen Tywn Barn Gallery I thought I caught a glimpse of a yellow car parked up by the house. ‘When does the gallery open?’ I asked Jim.

      ‘God knows. They’re not like a regular shop, its all posh and expensive, nothing in there for any local to buy. They seem to turn up when it suits them.’

      ‘They?’

      ‘Two women. They say they’re from Cheshire. Somewhere posh anyway.’

      Cheshire worked as a generic location for people who were rich enough to escape from Manchester or Liverpool. I craned round to get a last look at the place. My quick reconnoitre yesterday had told me that they had spent money on it. But why the hell would anyone with any sort of business acumen open an up-market joint in a place like this? A dead-end valley from which even the glacier had packed up and left.

      I glanced down the drive to Cogfryn Farm as we went past. Fantasizing the sort of breakfast Mrs Jones could probably conjure up.

      ‘Stop here!’ I yelled to Jim, as the image I had just seen resolved itself onto my consciousness, erasing the vision of bacon.

      I walked up the driveway to the farm. The dogs started barking, bringing a man out of the lambing shed. He was tough-skinny, weathered, and wore an old flat cap at an angle that had probably never changed over the last thirty-five years.

      ‘Mr Jones?’ I called out as I approached.

      He nodded СКАЧАТЬ