No Holds Barred Read online

  ‘I suppose so.’ She sighed. ‘And now I don’t know what to do about Taylor.’

  ‘What were you arguing about?’

  ‘Oh, he wants me to get rid of one of the other drivers – says he’s not pulling his weight and makes mistakes.’

  ‘And you don’t agree.’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s true he has made a couple of mistakes lately, but he’s worked for us for ages. He used to work on the farm with Colin. The trouble is, he’s sixty-two, and Taylor says he’s not up to the job and it’s time he retired.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  Jenny frowned.

  ‘I think he’s probably slowed down a bit lately, but he’s a good steady worker and I trust him. He’s the only one of the original crew left.’ She looked across at Daniel. ‘I’ve answered my own question, haven’t I?’

  ‘Sounds like it. I think you have to do what’s right for you. Follow your instincts.’

  ‘I know you’re right, but sometimes it’s really hard. Things have been going wrong lately. I’m losing stock and the figures aren’t adding up properly.’ She hesitated. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t … ? I mean, Fred said you’d help me out. Will you take over as manager for me?’

  Daniel shook his head.

  ‘No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. Not yet, anyway. I’ll just drive for you and get the lie of the land. Then if anything’s going on, maybe I’ll be able to see what it is.’

  The grandfather clock across the room whirred and chimed the hour, prompting Jenny to look at her watch and jump to her feet.

  ‘Oh my God! I’m supposed to be at the hospital because I’ve got to pick the kids up from Mum’s by six, and I haven’t shown you the cottage yet.’

  ‘Well, if you give me directions, I’m sure I can find the cottage,’ Daniel told her. ‘In fact, I might even have seen it on my way here.’

  ‘You could have. You can see it from the fork. It’s been empty since George and Marian left, but I opened it all up yesterday and gave it a quick once-over with a duster,’ Jenny said, gathering up mugs and biscuits. ‘And there’s milk and bread and bacon and stuff in the fridge …’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ he assured her. ‘You go.’

  Seen at closer quarters, the cottage Daniel was to stay in while he worked at Maidstone Farm was a typical Victorian red-brick worker’s cottage, a fact borne out by the name ‘Forester’s Cottage’, carved into a cement square above the green painted front door.

  From the outside it looked a little grim, with dingy, pale green curtains at the windows and a border of lavender and weeds between the picket fence and the building. The narrow lane carried on past it, over a cattle grid and away into the trees.

  Daniel regarded the cottage with equanimity. If anything, it was a stage more welcoming than the bedsit he’d called home for the past few months.

  With Taz at his heels, he let himself in with what was probably the original key. No Yale locks here.

  Inside, he was faced with a tiled narrow hallway and a steep flight of stairs, carpeted in a busy pattern of brown and amber, but the thing that immediately forced itself upon his senses was an almost overpowering reek of creosote. Two doors led off immediately to his left and right, and, wrinkling his nose, he turned left into what was the cottage’s sitting room. At this point, however, his complacency suffered a check.

  Inside the room, the stench of wood preservative was choking and he didn’t have to look far for the reason. The sage-green three-piece suite, which had doubtless served its previous owners for many years, was now upended and piled in the centre of the carpet, along with the shattered remains of what had probably been a coffee table and the broken stand of a standard lamp, its fringed shade crowning the whole like a cherry on a cupcake.

  A bookcase, whose previous position was outlined in a brighter patch of the yellowing wallpaper, had been tipped over and lay atop its erstwhile contents against the Hessian-covered underside of the sofa, and everything appeared to have been liberally doused in the pungent brown liquid. The accumulated fumes, in the closed room, made the air unbreathable.

  Beside him, Taz sneezed, and he pushed the dog back into the hall and shut the door. Holding his breath, he opened the window as wide as it would go, although the situation would plainly improve little until the contaminated furniture was removed. He knew from experience how the smell of creosote lingered. Unless the floorboards were replaced, it would be many weeks, if not months, before the room was inhabitable once more.

  Eyes watering, he returned to the hall where Taz greeted him as if he’d been gone for a week. Ruffling the dog’s fur, he went through into the room on the opposite side of the hall. This proved to be a tiny dining room, with the remains of its table and chairs piled in the centre of the faded floral carpet like a ready-to-light bonfire. These, too, were soaked in wood preservative, and it occurred to Daniel to wonder why the vandals hadn’t put a match to their handiwork. After all, with the creosote it would all have gone up like a torch, and the cottage, too. The dining room contained no other furniture apart from a dark oak dresser, which had, inevitably, been tipped over, depositing a quantity of leaf-patterned china on the floor.

  As in the first room, Daniel opened the windows wide and shut the door on the stench, before going along the hallway to the kitchen, mentally bracing himself for what he might find.

  It wasn’t as bad as he feared. Someone had emptied the contents of all the cupboards and drawers on to the floor, where crockery and glass lay shattered on the stone flags, scattered with sliced bread, liberally dusted with flour, coffee powder and sugar, and swimming in pools of milk.

  Cutlery was thrown down like some weird game of culinary jackstraws on top of the mess, and something that was probably ketchup had been thrown against one brightly papered wall, but the creosote, thankfully, was absent. Also, for some reason, the electrical appliances appeared to have been left largely undamaged. This, Daniel felt, must have some significance. Surely, amid such wholesale vandalism, it could not be by accident that the inviting glass doors and fragile electrical innards had been overlooked.

  He filed this piece of information away for consideration later, his attention caught by the realization that the tomato sauce on the wall had been used to write a few crudely fashioned words. He stepped closer, his shoes crunching on the carnage underfoot, and read:

  Fuck off home yore not wanted here.

  ‘You don’t say,’ he muttered under his breath.

  THREE

  ‘I don’t believe it! I was only here yesterday.’ Jenny stood in the hallway of the cottage, a handkerchief held over her nose and mouth, staring at the mess that was the sitting room. Her children, recently collected from their grandmother, waited outside in the Land Rover, where they peered through the side windows, no doubt yearning to see what was going on in the cottage.

  ‘It probably only took them a few minutes,’ Daniel said. ‘It could’ve been done any time.’

  ‘But who would do something like this? And why? Was it kids, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Come and have a look at this.’ Daniel led the way into the kitchen, where he’d cleared up the worst of the mess on the floor, shovelling everything into black bin bags and then using a mop to deal with the residue of the milk and foodstuffs, the smaller shards of glass and the china. He had, however, left the ketchup message scrawled across the wall.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ she said.

  ‘Who knew I was coming?’

  Jenny frowned.

  ‘Well, I told Taylor, of course, and Mum. No one else. But having said that, I expect half the village knows by now. You know how word gets round. But I don’t understand why anyone would do this. It doesn’t make sense. Why should anyone care about you coming here? You’re not the first new driver we’ve taken on lately. I mean, Derek has only been with us a few months.’

  ‘Actually, something else happened earlier this afternoon.’ Daniel hadn’t mentioned his run-in
with the two troublemakers from the village, but now he outlined what had happened.

  Jenny looked concerned.

  ‘A blue pick-up?’

  ‘Yes. With wide wheels and enough spotlights to light Wembley Stadium. Do you know him?’

  ‘Ricky Boyd. Taylor’s younger brother. He’s a waste of space.’

  ‘I wouldn’t disagree with you there. And the other one?’

  ‘I don’t know. It might have been Scott Selby. He’s a mechanic at the garage. Crazy about cars but not too bright in the other departments.’

  ‘Mm. That sounds like our boy. Can you think of any reason they wouldn’t want me here?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Although, come to think of it, Ricky did ask me if I’d got any driving work for him, a few days ago, when I stopped for petrol. I didn’t take him seriously. I mean, he hasn’t got an HGV licence or anything. If it was him, he probably doesn’t need a reason. He’s got a real attitude problem. You only have to look at him the wrong way and there’s trouble. Do you think we should call the police?’

  ‘It’s up to you, but don’t do it on my account,’ Daniel told her. ‘It’ll probably be more trouble than it’s worth, even if they have a good idea who did it, and I should imagine you could do without more stress. There’s nothing here that can’t be sorted.’

  Jenny looked round at the mess and ran a hand through her fringe. She had dark circles under her eyes and looked worn out. Daniel was sorry to have added to her worries, but it had been unavoidable.

  ‘I suppose they’ve been upstairs, too?’ she said after a moment.

  ‘Yeah, ’fraid so. No creosote, but the bedding needs washing and the mattresses have been slashed.’ No need to tell her that the filthy sods had emptied their bladders over everything.

  ‘Well, you can’t stay here tonight,’ she said decisively. ‘The creosote fumes would make you ill. I don’t know where they got their hands on it, but I’ve got a horrible feeling there might have been some stored in the shed from ages ago. I mean, we always used to use it for everything before it was banned. No one knew any better.’

  ‘We’re lucky it’s only in these two downstairs rooms,’ Daniel said. ‘I had a look while I was waiting for you. It looks as though those boards have been laid on chipboard, and there’s a stone floor underneath that, so I might be able to lift the lot and just throw them away; burn them – whatever. It would be the quickest way to get rid of the smell, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind. I remember now. George put those floorboards down himself, must be about fifteen years ago. He was our general handyman around the farm until he retired a couple of years ago. Marian was always complaining that the stone floor was cold and uneven.’

  ‘Was that when they left? When he retired?’

  ‘No. They were here until just after Christmas. I was really surprised when they said they were going. I always thought they’d be carried out in a box – or at least George would. He loved this place. But maybe Marian put pressure on him. It is very isolated here, and they weren’t getting any younger. They’ve gone to live a couple of miles away, in Lower Ditton, in a modern bungalow. I visited them once, but it’s really depressing. I should think George hates it. He didn’t seem very happy.’

  ‘And the cottage has been empty since then? What were you going to do with it?’

  Jenny shrugged. ‘Gavin had some sort of plan for it, but I’m not sure exactly what.’

  ‘OK. Well, I’m happy to have a go at the floor tomorrow, if you can manage one more day with a driver short,’ Daniel suggested.

  ‘Yes, that’s no problem, but are you sure? I mean, it’s very kind of you, but it seems a bit much to ask …’

  ‘You didn’t. I offered. Now is there somewhere in the village I can get a bed for the night. A pub or somewhere?’

  ‘There is, but you can stay at the farmhouse. We’ve got heaps of space.’

  ‘Better not. Preferential treatment and all that.’

  ‘Does that matter? It’s not exactly anyone’s fault, and you are a friend of Freddy Bowden’s.’

  ‘Mm. Better keep that to ourselves, if you don’t mind. Might put Taylor’s back up, from what I hear, and I’ll learn more if I’m just one of the crew.’

  Jenny looked a little bit crestfallen. ‘Oh, yes, I see. Well, you’ll come to supper, anyway. It’d be nice to have a bit of adult company for a change, and no one need know.’

  In the event, after a pleasant evening spent with Jenny and her young family, Daniel opted to drive back to the cottage, park up and sleep in the back of his car. To avoid argument, he didn’t tell Jenny, but it was no great hardship. He’d done it many a time before and kept a pillow and sleeping bag in the vehicle in case of just such an eventuality.

  Letting himself into the cottage, Daniel made a mug of black tea with one of a few teabags that he’d been able to salvage from the chaos in the kitchen. Even with all the windows open, the overpowering stench of the creosote wasn’t noticeably better and his eyes smarted. Using a pair of rubber gloves, he gathered up the damp bedding from the upstairs rooms, stuffed it into the surprisingly modern washing machine, added powder he’d begged from Jenny and set it going, before taking his brew and returning to the car, where Taz waited.

  Nothing disturbed the peace of the woodland night except the odd fox call when Daniel took Taz for a nocturnal ramble before taking to his sleeping bag. Once there, he lay awake for a while, listening to a conversation between two owls in neighbouring trees and pondering the possible implications of the day’s events.

  The state of the cottage still puzzled him; not so much what had been done as what hadn’t. He’d seen many places trashed in his police career, and the damage was often far more extreme than had been inflicted at Forester’s. To have gone to the lengths they had and yet not smashed the windows or the electrical goods argued that, rather than being random, the vandalism had been carried out to a plan.

  Surely the most effective way to dissuade him from staying would have been to burn the cottage down, and it would have been quicker and easier, too.

  It was as though the fabric of the house had been intentionally left untouched. Did someone want it for themselves? He’d asked Jenny, but she said no one had approached her about it. And if that was the case, then the vandals had been a bit short-sighted when they started sloshing creosote around.

  With sleep elusive, his thoughts turned to Jenny’s family.

  The older children, twelve-year-old Lucy and eight-year-old Harry, had the same colouring as their mother, Lucy having a blue-eyed, round-faced prettiness that might or might not mature into good looks, and Harry an expression of solemn and wide-eyed innocence that Daniel soon began to suspect was wholly misleading. It was sad to think that although Harry was just a year younger than his own son, Drew, both of them already bore the scars of life.

  The youngest of the family, three-year-old Isobel, who was known as Izzy, was dark-haired and dark-eyed, apparently taking after her absent father, a fact that Jenny confirmed when she came downstairs after putting the children to bed.

  ‘She’s going to be like Gavin: adventurous and independent. She’s quite a little madam already. Far more confident than Lucy was at that age. Into everything.’

  ‘Is Gavin a sportsman?’

  ‘He was when he was younger. Used to race motorbikes – speedway, down at Poole – and tried his hand at microlight flying and paragliding.’

  ‘A bit of a thrill seeker,’ Daniel observed.

  ‘Before I met him. He had to give it up, though. Back trouble. His chiropractor told him if he didn’t slow down, he’d end up crippled.’

  ‘That must have been frustrating for him.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘So how did he amuse himself round here? Apart from chasing poachers, I mean.’

  ‘Well, like I said, he used to take the gun out after rabbits, or go dog racing with his mates, but I think he does get bored sometimes,’ Jenny said, starting
to clear the table. ‘He says he isn’t, but I’m not sure. He can be very short-tempered at times.’

  ‘The kids miss him, don’t they?’ Daniel had picked that up clearly. He stood up and began to help gather up the dirty dishes.

  ‘Yes. He’s a good father – to all of them, not just Izzy. It’s really hard on Harry and Lucy having this happen again. After Colin, I mean. It’s made them very clingy. And I keep thinking …’ She paused, her voice breaking. ‘The thing is, the doctors have warned me that when Gavin comes round, if he does, he mightn’t be the same. They don’t know what damage may have been done.’ She fished in her pocket for a handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘That’s the worst part – the waiting and the not knowing.’

  Daniel turned over with difficulty in his sleeping bag and, with his foot, nudged Taz, who was snoring. The dog stretched and sighed before settling back against Daniel’s legs once again. Moments later, the heavy breathing had resumed.

  Rising early the next morning, Daniel took Taz for his morning constitutional and then drove to a farm shop café he’d noticed the day before, on the main road that ran through the neighbouring village of Lower Ditton. Tucking into a full English breakfast with a large latte at his elbow, he was able to contemplate his day’s labours with fortitude, if not enthusiasm.

  Out in the car, Taz gazed soulfully at the door through which Daniel had disappeared into the shop, unhappy at being excluded even though he had already been fed, and towards the end of his meal, Daniel folded half a bread roll and a rasher of bacon into a paper napkin and slid it into the pocket of his jacket to appease the dog.

  Half an hour later, Daniel was back at Forester’s and hard at work. An early morning foray into the shed behind the cottage had turned up a selection of tools and the discovery that someone had been there before him. The thin panels of the door had been newly splintered and the padlock that had secured it hung drunkenly on its hasp, the whole set-up entirely inadequate to keep any but the most ineffectual thief at bay.

  What, if anything, they had taken, it was impossible to say, but perfectly useful tools had been left behind, so it seemed probable that someone had broken in just to see what was stored behind the locked door.