BLINDFOLD (38 page)

`But something must have given him the idea.'

`I think it was something old Mrs Harvey said. Her that used to own the farm. But then she was as nutty as a fruitcake, if you ask me.

`And what did Slade think of the idea of a bunker?' Gideon probed casually.

`He didn't seem to think it was very likely, as far as I could gather. I only had one ear on them really,' she said apologetically. `I was doing my knitting. I'd heard it all before, you see. George got quite excited in the end, trying to convince him. I had to tell him to calm down because of his heart. Silly old fool!' she added fondly, with tears shining in her faded, blue eyes. `But I did love him, you know, Gideon.'

On an impulse he put an arm round her thin shoulders and squeezed gently. `Are you going to be all right, Rose?' he asked. `Isn't there anyone who can come and stay with you for a while?'

`No. I'll be all right. I've got Benny. And everyone's been so kind. After all, I've known I would lose him for a while now. In a way, I was ready for it, even if it was a bit sudden. Much better for him though,' she said with determined brightness. `But, you know, he never minded the thought of going - only of leaving me. He used to say he'd had more than most and been very happy. So I really shouldn't grieve, should I? He was eighty-seven, you know.'

`Was he really?' Gideon gave her another squeeze. `You're a remarkable woman, Rose Callow,' he said warmly. `And George was indeed a lucky man.'

Gideon left the cottage in a thoughtful frame of mind. As far as he could see, the possibility of there being an underground bunker of the Sanctuary did nothing to explain Milne's obsession with the place, but nevertheless Tim really ought to know about it. Gideon made a mental note to ring him that evening.

The Gatehouse looked deserted when he got back. Rachel's Mini was nowhere to be seen, no lights showed at the windows, and the kitchen chimney was the only one to send a thin plume of smoke into the leaden grey sky.

Gideon concluded that if Rachel and Pippa were home from their shopping trip they had gone straight back to the Priory and, as he had anyway to return Pippa's car, he followed them.

Sure enough, the Mini was parked in the stableyard but when Gideon let himself into the kitchen he found only Fanny and her five remaining pups, and Mrs Morecambe, who was up to her elbows in floury dough.

`You've missed the girls,' she told him, when greetings had been exchanged. `They've gone out riding. I told them they'd catch their deaths in this rain, but Pippa would have it that the horses needed their exercise. Personally I should've thought they'd be just as happy not going out in this, but who am I to have an opinion?'

`Actually, it's almost stopped now,' he informed her. `So, where's Giles?'

`He's down at the farm with the donkeys,' she said, pummelling her dough. `Funny how he's taken to them. Can't see no good coming of it.'

Gideon was amused. `Whyever not?'

'Talking about starting a sanctuary now,' she said, wrinkling her nose disapprovingly. `That won't'make him a living, will it?ff 'He's not exactly short,' Gideon pointed out. `Still, I expect he's got some scheme in mind. I might go down there, actually, as the girls aren't back.'

,I think that's where they were going, too. But, you'll have to go the long way if you're taking the car,' Mrs Morecambe informed him. `The ford will be full to bursting after all this rain.' `Thanks, yes, I will.'

The local radio news that morning had been followed by a list of rivers on flood alert due to the recent rain. These included the nearby River Tarrant that flowed through the village, and the Tarr, one of its minor tributaries that crossed the Priory estate, was certain to be equally high. A gravel lane ran from just outside the stableyard down beside the park to join the one that led from the village to Home Farm. However, it forded the stream on the way, so Gideon would be safer going back past the Gatehouse, to the village and down the farm's own drive.

He picked up Pippa's keys from the table where he'd just dropped them and turned towards the door.

`Oh, there was some policeman here too, a while ago, looking for Rachel,' Mrs Morecambe said as an afterthought. `I'd have told him about the ford too, if he'd not been in such a hurry. He didn't even have the grace to apologise for calling me away from my baking, so high and mighty he was. I thought it might do him good to get his feet wet. Bring him down a peg or two.'

`What policeman?' Gideon asked sharply, pausing with his hand on the door handle. `Was it Logan? What did he want?'

`That might have been his name. I'm sure I don't remember.' Mrs Morecambe sniffed with remembered indignation. `He came hammering on the door fit to break it down and asking for Rachel. I said she'd ridden down to the farm with Pippa and he wanted to know how to get there, so I told him. Didn't seem any call to mention the ford.'

`When was this?'

`Oh, I don't know, ten - maybe fifteen - minutes ago.' Gideon was uneasy. Brisk and to the point he might be but Logan's manners had always been exemplary.

`What did he look like, this policeman?'

`Oh, I can't remember. Nothing out of the ordinary, I don't think. I was too busy to notice.'

`It might be important,' Gideon persisted. `Please.'

Mrs Morecambe stopped kneading and looked at the ceiling as if to see his face there. `Plain clothes. In his thirties, I suppose. About Giles' height but quite stocky, and he had very short brown hair.'

You wouldn't describe Logan as stocky, Gideon thought, his suspicions mounting. `What shade of brown, light or dark?' he asked, trying to keep his voice calm. On the other hand, Duke Shelley was fairly heavily built.

Mrs Morecambe frowned for a moment, then her face cleared. `Dark,' she stated decisively. `Oh, and he had a tattoo on his neck. In my day you would never have seen a policeman with a tattoo, but anything goes these days, it seems.'

Gideon didn't wait to hear any more, and her indignant tones were cut off as the door swung to behind him.

Outside in the yard he paused. The route back through the village to the farm was a good three miles, as opposed to maybe half a mile the other way. Even if Duke's car had got stuck at the ford, he would almost have had time to reach the farm on foot by now. The quickest option for Gideon was clearly on four legs rather than four wheels, and Blackbird's long black face was watching him with interest over one of the doors.

He swung towards the tack room and retrieved the key from its ledge above the door. Blackbird, originally having come to the yard for schooling, had his own tack, which hung on the wall under a nameplate bearing his name. Gideon scooped up both bridle and saddle. Although he'd ridden bareback many a time in his youth, he hadn't done so for quite a while, and he had a strong suspicion that false heroics at this point would leave him sitting very unheroically in the mud somewhere between the Priory and the farm.

He managed to tack Blackbird up in reasonably good time, ignoring the evil looks and snapping teeth' that expressed the horse's feelings at being commandeered in such hasty fashion. Before he had time to organise a more efficient protest, Gideon had him out of the stable, mounted, and cantering across the yard and down the lane.

Resentment quickly gave way to excitement, and as Blackbird's hooves touched the grass verge of the lane he lowered his head and arched his back ominously.

`Oh, no, you don't, you tricky bastard!' Gideon muttered through gritted teeth as he wrenched the black head up and booted him ruthlessly forward. `Go on. If you've got so much energy, you can bloody well run!'

Blackbird bloody well ran.

For Gideon, the exhilaration of the cold wind blowing through his hair and whipping tears to his eyes lasted about as long as it took for the ford to come into view round a bend in the track. Cursing, he sat back, wrapping his long legs round Blackbird's body and hauling at his mouth with all the strength he could muster. He might just as well not have bothered for all the effect it had.

The stream was in spate; twenty feet or so wide where it met the road and coming well up the side of the white van caught halfway across the ford. The muddy torrent swirled and eddied

around the black-and-white marker posts, which showed nearly three feet of water.

To the right of the ford a narrow footbridge spanned the stream but it might as well have been a tightrope for all the hope Gideon had of slowing Blackbird enough to use it.

It wasn't that three feet of water would have presented a problem to the horse under normal circumstances. It was just that running at full speed into a deep, fast-flowing current is enough to unbalance anybody, and horses are no exception,,as shown by the number of competitors that come unstuck at water obstacles on cross-country courses.

With ten feet or so to go, it didn't look possible. It wasn't.

Blackbird floundered helplessly as the water dragged at his galloping legs and although he leaped and plunged to try and maintain his balance, his momentum carried him on and down, finally collapsing some two-thirds of the way across. Gideon felt the murky water close over his head and the churning cauldron of noise as the horse scrabbled for footing alongside him was almost unbelievable. Grimly, he held on to the reins, finally feeling the pull as Blackbird regained his feet and splashed clear of the stream. Twisting to get his own feet underneath him, Gideon waded out of the flood and pulled the horse to a halt.

Looking back, he found it hard to see how they'd avoided hitting the abandoned van on their way through. He supposed he should think himself lucky, but soaked to the skin in ice-cold dirty water, with a litre or so of the same in each boot, somehow the feeling eluded him.

Blackbird stood, steaming and trembling, with rivulets of stream water pouring off him and one stirrup caught over the top of his saddle.

`What a good thing I put a saddle on,' Gideon remarked, as he patted the horse and prepared to climb aboard once more. `I might have fallen offl'

He settled back into the saddle with an audible squelch and

gathered up reins that had become horribly slippery, but thankfully the shock of his ducking seemed to have calmed Blackbird down. With another look back at the empty van, Gideon sent him on into a canter. Impossible to be sure it was the one driven by Duke Shelley - one white van looks much like another - but he didn't like the way the evidence was piling up.

They reached the farm drive proper, swung into it and in a matter of moments were through the gateway and trotting alongside the massive wooden granary that stood on staddle stones, end-on to the yard.

Gideon almost missed Giles. There was a tractor parked at the far corner of the barn and as he rode past, Blackbird shied violently away from it, causing his rider instinctively to look down. There, behind the tractor and partially under the raised wooden floor, lay Giles, face down in the grass.

`Shit!' Gideon leapt off the horse and ran over, dropping to his knees beside his friend. 'Giles?'

There was no response, so he rolled him over with gentle hands, guiltily aware that it probably wasn't good first-aid practice to do so without first discovering the extent of his injuries. Wet hair was plastered on to a pale forehead that sported a large, rapidly purpling bruise. It looked as though he might have hit his head on the staddle stone.

'Giles? Can you hear me? Giles!'

His eyes were closed but, as Gideon watched, they screwed tighter shut and then partially opened.

`Bugger!' Giles said distinctly.

Gideon grinned briefly but there was something he urgently needed to know.

`Can you remember what happened? Did you fall or were you pushed?'

Giles struggled to focus on Gideon's face. `I don't know,' he said dazedly. `There was a bloke ... I'm not sure what happened.' Gideon had heard enough. He got to his feet and collected Blackbird who was happily cropping grass.

`Look, when you feel able, get to the farmhouse and call the police,' he said, remounting. `Tell them Duke Shelley is here looking for Rachel. Tell them to get over here fast!'

Giles tried to sit up. `Duke? Oh, shit! I'm sorry, Gideon!' `Yeah, well. You didn't know. I'll try and find the girls. I suppose Henry isn't about?' Henry Williams, the tenant manager of Home Farm, was five foot ten of pure muscle and would have been a good man to have backing him up.

Giles shook his head and winced. `No. Out in Five Acre with Bob. The girls were going to see the donkeys. Watch yourself) I'll be with you as soon as I can.'

To reach the donkeys' barn and paddock, Gideon had to go through the farmyard itself, round the old pigsties and then down a narrow corridor formed by the back of the milking parlour on one side and the barn itself on the other. The mass of outbuildings belonging to the farm formed a veritable labyrinth and there was still just a hope Shelley had not yet located the girls if he hadn't been very far ahead of Gideon.

As they passed the pigsties, Blackbird gave a soft whicker and Griffin's chestnut head appeared over one of the low doors. After a moment, Cassie came into view next door.

The girls were still about then. Gideon toyed with the idea of sticking Blackbird in one of the sties but thought better of it. He was more than capable of clambering out over a door that low, and would almost certainly create havoc with the other horses, once free.

He was halfway down the muddy comdor when Pippa and Rachel came into sight, laughing and chattering, at the other end. He jumped to the ground and hurried forward to meet them. Pippa was quick to notice his bedraggled state.

'Gideon! What have you been up to, for heavensakes?' she exclaimed, laughing. `Did you fall in the stream?'

`Listen, Duke's here somewhere!' Gideon cut across her laughter. `Get the horses and get out of here! Ride over to Henry in Five Acre and stay there until I call you.'

`Oh, my God!' Shock drained the colour from Rachel's face and she clasped Pippa's arm convulsively. `Pippa!'

`It's okay. Come on.' Pippa was briskly efficient as always. She made to move past Gideon and then stopped short, her eyes widening.