Outside Chance Read online

  ‘I’ll try.’

  From Wincanton, Allerton joined the A303 going east, hammering along it at great speed and staying on until just short of Andover, where he headed into the countryside. He then proceeded to work his way through a bewildering maze of single-track lanes, turning left, right and back on himself countless times.

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been quicker to blindfold me?’ Ben asked eventually, faintly amused.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d stand for that,’ Allerton said in all seriousness.

  ‘No, you’re right. I wouldn’t.’

  The journey finished at the end of a long gravel track down which the vehicle lurched, wallowing in and out of a series of muddy puddles that stretched from hedge to hedge. They pulled up in a grassy hollow, in front of a green painted Nissen hut that had seen better days, parking beside an old VW camper van that was decorated with a rainbow and various stylised animals.

  ‘Greenpeace meets Disney,’ Ben muttered, and Allerton shot him a suspicious look but said nothing.

  The hollow was bounded by untidy hedges and overhung by several large ash trees. Apart from the lane down which they had come, the only other access was by way of a gate in the back left-hand corner, beyond which another track wound off into the distance.

  ‘So who does this belong to? Is it rented, or are you squatting?’

  ‘It was falling down. The farmer who owns the land was grateful to have us do it up, in return for which we get it rent-free for a year.’

  ‘A farmer? Isn’t that exploitation of animals on a grand scale? No, don’t take offence – it’s a fair question.’

  ‘You don’t understand the issue here, do you? A.L.S.A. Action for the Liberation of Sport Animals. Making animals perform unnatural tasks in the name of entertainment. Farming doesn’t come into it. Granted, a good few of our members are vegetarian – I am, myself – but farming can be seen as a regrettable necessity, provided it’s carried out humanely; sport isn’t.’

  ‘OK, you’ve made your point. I’ll try not to ask any more stupid questions.’

  He followed Allerton across to the door of the Nissen hut, where they were met by a young woman with a shock of frizzy pink hair and more visible body-piercings than Ben had ever seen on one person. The unseen ones, he didn’t care to contemplate. Her clothes were eclectic and each article seemed to have been carefully chosen with the intention of not matching anything else.

  ‘Della, this is Ben, the journalist I told you about.’

  Ben said ‘Hi,’ and the pink frizz nodded.

  Allerton gestured at the open doorway. ‘Shall we go in?’

  The inside of the metal hut had been painted cream and at present it housed four people, to whom Ben raised a hand in friendly greeting.

  The response was mixed. One smile, two raised hands and an unencouraging stare from a young man with dreadlocks and a nose stud.

  Ben turned his attention to the building itself. The end wall nearest the door was lined with free-standing metal shelving and a row of desks ran down each side. Above them cork notice-boards bristled with pins attaching maps, memos, and calendars marked with equine and canine sporting features, details of hunting fixtures and notes such as John Taylor’s Circus arrives – Sherborne. He moved to look more closely but Allerton blocked his way, shepherding him on.

  The other end of the hut had been made more comfortable, with a couple of easy chairs, a sofa, a coffee table and a fridge and microwave. More cartoon animals looked down from the walls, some spouting slogans. They were beautifully painted, and Ben’s eye was immediately drawn to them.

  ‘Who’s the artist?’ he asked, wandering down the hut to get a better look.

  ‘Della is,’ Allerton said. ‘She’s a trained illustrator.’

  ‘She’s good.’ Ben looked round. ‘So this is the nerve centre of the organisation. I must admit, I expected something a little more hi-tech. You have a website, so where are the computers? Where, for that matter, are the telephones?’

  ‘We haven’t been here long but we’ll have a telephone just as soon as BT get round to it. In the meantime we have mobiles, and I’ve got a laptop in the car.’

  ‘Where do you send your emails from? Or don’t you?’

  ‘Mostly from home or the library.’

  ‘So at the moment you use this for …?’

  ‘We meet here, discuss strategy, organise fundraising, that sort of thing.’

  ‘How many of you are there?’

  ‘It fluctuates. Locally, I’d say somewhere between thirty and fifty. Nationwide, nearly four thousand paid-up members at the last count.’

  Ben was surprised. It was far bigger than he had expected. He took a notepad from his pocket and unclipped its pencil.

  ‘So, how long has the group been operating?’

  ‘Five and a half years. Look, would you like a coffee?’

  He accepted and settled himself into one of the armchairs. Coffee made, Allerton sank on to the saggy sofa opposite, where Della promptly joined him and the other four drifted closer to listen, ranging themselves on and around another smaller chair. Ben would have preferred to talk to Allerton in private but it was obviously not to be, so he tried to put the others out of his mind.

  Over the next half-hour Ben learned far more than he wanted to know about ALSA, their origins, ideals and aims. A staunch supporter of animal welfare himself, he could not entirely condemn the group for their principles, but felt they were pursuing them to a ridiculously radical degree. In his search for quotable material he argued the opposing view, and, although Henry Allerton seemed to understand what he was doing, Ben noticed that Bella and the others were regarding him with increasingly stormy expressions.

  Eventually the owner of the dreadlocks could bear it no longer.

  ‘This is fuckin’ stupid!’ he exclaimed explosively, stepping towards Ben. ‘He’s not going to give us a fair go. He’s like all the fuckin’ others and he’ll sell us down the fuckin’ river, just like they did!’

  Ben gave the young man a cool stare, trying not to recoil from his rampant aggression, and Allerton stepped into the breach.

  ‘No, he won’t. He’s promised to be fair and I believe him. I told you, it was Ben who saved Seb in town yesterday.’

  This reminder seemed to appease most of the group but Dreadlocks clearly preferred to see him as the enemy, for he continued to glower.

  ‘I still say it’s a mistake. Especially now. We don’t need some nosey bastard from the press poking round.’

  Ben’s ears pricked up.

  ‘Why does he say “especially now”?’ he asked. ‘I should’ve thought you’d always want publicity.’

  For the first time, Ben saw Allerton looking annoyed. He directed a furious glance at Dreadlocks.

  ‘Because he’s an idiot,’ he said shortly. ‘We have a … let’s call it a project, in the planning stage. A campaign, if you will. It’s not something you need to know about, and if he’d kept his big mouth shut you probably never would have.’

  ‘But he didn’t keep his mouth shut, did he? So tell me now,’ Ben invited.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t.’

  Ben looked from Allerton to Dreadlocks, who had resumed his sullen scowl, and sighed. He was quite plainly going to get no further revelations from either.

  ‘OK. So tell me what you realistically hope to achieve in the long run.’

  Happy to be back on safer ground, Allerton became expansive and it was some time before Ben was able to wind the interview up.

  Once outside the Nissen hut Ben wandered away from Allerton, climbed a slight bank and stood looking out over the hedge to the adjacent farmland. Most of it was grassland, some fields occupied by cattle, some empty. He could see what he presumed to be the farmhouse on rising ground in the distance and, closer to hand, a cluster of ramshackle buildings including a low shed with a rusty, corrugated tin roof, a barn stacked half-full of hay and a couple of stables. He could just make out a single horse grazing in the
field nearest the buildings, but it was wearing a green, New Zealand rug and he couldn’t make out the colour of its coat.

  Ben stared, his mind racing. It couldn’t be that simple, could it? But then again, why not? A horse was a horse; it couldn’t be hidden away in a dark corner: it needed to move around, to eat, drink and lie down. Dreadlocks had definitely been jumpy about something, but would they have brought him here if that were indeed Cajun King?

  The answer again was, why not? They could have no way of guessing that he knew anything about the kidnap. After all, apart from Eddie Truman himself, no one was supposed to know.

  ‘Are you coming? What are you doing?’

  Ben turned to find Allerton approaching. He looked a little impatient but not particularly anxious.

  ‘Who does the horse belong to?’ he asked.

  ‘What horse?’

  ‘The one in the field across there.’ Ben pointed.

  ‘I’ve no idea. I didn’t even know there was one.’

  He sounded a bit testy. Ben had discovered that horses were a bit of a moot point in the ALSA philosophy. Making a beast carry a human for pleasure was definitely against their principles but, on the other hand, it could not be denied that horses seemed to enjoy associating with mankind. The ideal was, apparently, that they might be kept but not used for work, sport or entertainment.

  ‘What’s the farmer’s name?’

  ‘I don’t think you need to know that,’ Allerton said. ‘If he gets any grief he’ll probably throw us out.’

  Once again Dreadlocks stepped forward, all fired up.

  ‘I told you he’d be trouble. He’s gonna start poking around. Remember what happened last time.’

  ‘Oh please. Put a sock in it!’ Ben said, stepping off the bank to join Allerton.

  Dreadlocks advanced threateningly but a sharp word from his comrade stopped him, and he contented himself with muttering obscenities under his breath as Ben passed.

  ‘I don’t suppose you ever considered a career in the diplomatic service,’ Allerton observed dryly.

  ‘I did say please,’ Ben pointed out as they got into the Volvo.

  When, having lurched back down the track, the vehicle reached the blessed smoothness of the tarmac once more, Ben kept his eyes peeled for informative road signs, but there was a distinct lack. In fact, they had travelled a couple of miles before he saw any at all, and then it was a rather confusing four-way job at a remote crossroad.

  On the return journey Allerton seemed disinclined to talk and drove, if anything, even faster.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ Ben enquired as they reached the outskirts of Wincanton. ‘Was it something I said?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Not really. I was just wondering if Baz was right and it was a mistake to take you there. I don’t blame you for being inquisitive – it’s your job, after all. I blame myself for not thinking it through.’

  Ben didn’t quite know how to respond to this. Allerton’s openness was somewhat disarming.

  He turned into the car park of The Pig in a Poke, where a few more cars had now gathered. As he pulled the handbrake on he looked across at Ben. ‘You won’t crucify us, will you? Even if you don’t completely agree with our aims, you must see we have the animals’ interests at heart. I’d rather you didn’t write anything at all than drag us through the shit.’

  ‘I said I’d be fair and I will. But I can’t promise one of the nationals. I’d need something hugely controversial for that, a real exposé, but we should get a slot in one of the locals.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Allerton looked down at the steering wheel, a frown of concentration furrowing his brow. Ben waited, sensing that there was something else on his mind, but when it came it wasn’t the breakthrough revelation he had hoped for.

  ‘When you preach, you can’t choose your disciples,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m aware that Baz and Della don’t necessarily present an ideal image for the organisation, but they are loyal, and their hearts are in the right place.’

  ‘Even Baz?’

  Allerton smiled. ‘Yeah, well, he’s maybe a bit headstrong,’ he conceded.

  ‘That’s one word for it,’ Ben said as he got out of the car. ‘I’d be careful if I were you. Too many like him and you’ll have a mob on your hands. Tell me, do you get much bother from the police?’

  He shook his head. ‘Only when we’re actively protesting, but then they just move us on. It’s all quite peaceful. Why?’

  ‘Just wondered. It’d be another angle but never mind.’

  Allerton leaned across as Ben turned to slam the door. ‘And the article?’

  ‘I’ll let you know,’ he promised.

  Ben had intended to spend the rest of the day dealing with his mail but somehow he couldn’t settle to it. In the end, the discovery that he didn’t have any stamps proved to be all the excuse he needed to put it off until another day, and he was able to let his thoughts run in the direction they had been pulling all afternoon.

  Could the horse he’d seen that morning really have been Cajun King?

  On the face of it, it was extremely unlikely. Given that ALSA had been a thorn in Eddie Truman’s side for some time, if they had the horse they must have known that they would be prime suspects, and therefore it would be monumentally stupid to ‘hide’ the animal within a couple of hundred yards of their HQ. Or were they completely confident that they could keep the location of their Nissen hut secret? If so, they were fools. The police would certainly know the identity of the more prominent members of the group, and it wouldn’t take long, however careful they were, before one of them was trailed to their base.

  Ben couldn’t think that Allerton was anywhere near that stupid.

  He made a cup of tea, stoked up the wood-burner and started again.

  What had it been that Baz was so desperately afraid he would find out?

  Why did he say they didn’t want someone poking around especially now? Allerton had apparently not considered it a risk. But then again, when pressed, he’d spoken of a project. Could that be significant?

  By the time he’d finished his tea, Ben had acknowledged the decision his subconscious had made somewhere on the journey home that morning. He was going to go back to ALSA HQ and take a second, unauthorised, look round. And because time was of the essence, he would have to do it tonight.

  It was no longer raining when Ben left the house that evening, just after eleven, but the clearing skies had caused the temperature to drop and, with a lively wind, it felt raw out.

  Once again he’d left Mouse behind and she’d made no complaints.

  ‘So much for the idea of Man’s Best Friend – faithfully following at his heels through thick and thin!’ he said as she regarded him sleepily from under one bushy brow. Clearly unimpressed by his histrionics, she closed her eye and sighed deeply. ‘If you wanted a guard dog, you should have bought a Rottweiler,’ she seemed to be saying.

  Because he didn’t have to go to Wincanton Ben could cut a chunk off the journey and join the A303 further east, and it wasn’t long before he was into the maze of roads through which he’d been taken that morning. Allerton had sought to confuse him, and had done a very competent job; but for all that they had forgotten to cover up the maps on the walls of the Nissen hut, and the one that Ben had managed to get a good look at had many coloured pins stuck in it and also a star near its centre. Armed with that information, and knowledge of the crossroads and the geography of the immediate area, Ben had been able to consult a map of his own and make a fairly definite estimate of the position of the ALSA HQ.

  Pulling up at the entrance to the muddy lane, Ben considered his options. He could, of course, drive straight up the track to the hut and park outside, and he was ninety per cent sure that it would be quite safe to do so. The other ten per cent of his mind, though, pointed out that if he did run into trouble, then the top of a long lane with no turnings wasn’t the smartest place to be.

  The ten per cent won out
. He drove the Mitsubishi slowly on until he reached a convenient gateway, then parked up and disembarked into the cold night wind. Even though there was only the occasional gleam of moonlight, Ben had come prepared in what he jokingly thought of as his cat-burglar’s outfit: jeans, roll-neck, leather jacket, woolly hat and gloves, all in black. It had come in useful on similar occasions in the past, but he thought, not for the first time, that if he was ever stopped by the police when wearing it, he would probably be taken in for questioning as a matter of course, whether they could connect him with any crime or not.

  Rejecting the lane as a means of approach, on the grounds that it was too exposed, Ben took to the neighbouring field, keeping to the hedge line and finding after only a few steps that the grass was long and unpleasantly wet. By the time he’d covered fifty feet or so, both his leather trekking boots and the lower legs of his jeans were soaked through.

  His plan was to look out for the tall ash trees that overhung the clearing and, after about two hundred metres, he saw them, silhouetted against the cloud-streaked sky. Locating the clearing was one thing; finding a way through the dense mass of tangled hawthorn and brambles that made up the hedge was another. By the time he did so he’d managed to rip his jeans and his face smarted from a dozen or more scratches. He was very thankful that he was wearing his gloves, although several of the more determined thorns had found their way through the thin leather and embedded themselves in his flesh.

  As he’d hoped, he emerged from the undergrowth behind the Nissen hut, in the opposite corner of the grassy hollow from the approach track.

  There was no sign of life. No lights burned behind the curtained windows and, as far as he could see, there was no vehicle parked on the grass in front of it. Ben relaxed a degree but clouds were masking the moon now, making visibility poor, so to be completely sure, he set off to patrol the perimeter, keeping as close to the hedge as he could.

  It was just as well that he did.

  About twenty feet up the track that led away to the farm, and barely discernible in the shadows, a small, dark-coloured car was parked.

  Ben shrank deeper into the hawthorn. It was possible that it was just a coincidence – maybe the farmer’s car – but he thought not. It was also possible that it was an amorous couple, but the car was a ridiculous distance from the road, even supposing they were quite excruciatingly shy.