Limestone Cowboy (19 page)

“What did Dewsbury do?”

“They sent in the heavy mob, and the helicopter, and they were all arrested. Seven of them. They thought it was great fun, laughing and joking and
taking
the piss.”

“So what were they up to?”

“Crop circles. They were making crop circles in the
corn. Said it would create interest in the area, generate publicity, help the tourist trade and all that.”

“Ha ha! And what did your colleagues from the Dewsbury force have to say to you?”

“They suggested, very politely, that in future we restrict our activities to Heckley and district.”

“They can do them for criminal damage. It’s a
face-saver
. Not much of one but a result just the same.”

“No they can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it was their own chuffing field, that’s why.”

We get a fair number of UFO sightings around Heckley. Apparently there’s a vortex somewhere up in the hills. That’s a fault in the structure of the Earth that allows magnetic energy to leak out, providing a source of power for alien spacecraft. They hover overhead and recharge their power packs. Foggy nights are
particularly
propitious, as this allows the energy to flow more freely. It also conveniently blurs the evidence. Anybody with more than half a brain puts the
sightings
down to the police helicopter with its Night-Sun searchlight on, or airliners groping their way towards Manchester airport, or to too many Carlsberg Specials, but they could be wrong. The Great Crop Circle Massacre was destined to be written into the annals of Her Majesty’s East Pennine Police Force, and those involved would be spoken of in hushed tones for the rest of their careers. I had a couple of hours in the office and went home to work on the paintings.

Sophie and Digby came to visit, on their way to her parents’, and Digby said it was nice to see me again and it had been really generous of me to run Sophie home last week, which made me glad that we weren’t holding the conversation in front of her mum and dad. Tea and coffee were refused but they insisted on seeing the paintings. Digby thought they were great, and appreciated the irony of the beautiful poetry and the careless lover’s doodles. He offered to ask his father to make a telephone bid for them, but I said they weren’t that good and discouraged him.

The troopers on observation at High Clough rang to tell me that all was quiet. They were in regular contact with the control room but I’d told them to give me the occasional call. The Land Rover had left at nine and returned two hours later. The postman had driven straight past.

Rosie had never visited my house but I’d have to invite her round soon, so I did a big clean-up, right through to the oven and the tops of the doors. I had a cleaning lady, once, but when she told her husband I was a cop he stopped her coming. He must have been scared she’d reveal more than she ought when we shared the obligatory pot of tea. Sunday I did all the usual Sunday things: cleaned the car; went to the supermarket; drove past the church and cursed the traffic jam near the garden centre. I rang Rosie and left a message, said I was just wondering how she was, but she didn’t come back to me. Not much moved up at High Clough.

Mad Maggie Madison, one of my two female DCs, was back at work on Monday morning after a fortnight in Tenerife. She looked fit and tanned and had lost a
couple
of pounds.

“You look well, Maggie,” I said when I saw her. “Good holiday?”

“Brilliant, thanks. Have you missed me?”

“You’d never believe how much. It’s been
unbridled
sexism for the last two weeks. We desperately need the woman’s touch.”

“Saveeta still on her course?” she asked.

“My little bit of Eastern promise? Yeah, she’s
another
week to do.”

“Uh!” Maggie snorted. “You’re as bad as the rest of them.”

I met Gareth Adey on the stairs as we went up to Mr Wood’s office for the morning briefing and he said something about my boys being busy on Friday night. I resisted the urge to tip him over the banister. They were already in there when we knocked and entered: Dave, Jeff, Pete and Don; the Crop Circle Four. Dave winked at me and Gilbert wore the expression of a father who has just learned that his teenage son has rodgered the vicar’s wife: a struggle between anger and amusement.

“Have you heard about this lot?” Gilbert asked, looking at me.

“I’ve heard the expurgated version.”

Gareth, in his usual smug manner, said: “I’d rather not intrude into private grief.”

“What do you reckon we should do with them?” Gilbert asked.

“Latrine duties,” I said. “Put them on latrine duties for three months. Maggie’s back so we won’t miss them.”

“We could do it, Boss,” Pete replied. “We’d have the cleanest bogs in the division, guaranteed. We could put those little blue things in the cisterns, and maybe even have a few flowers.”

“I could supply the flowers,” Jeff said. “Grape hyacinths would go well with the blue water. We’d need some vases, though.”

“Coffee jars would do,” Pete suggested. “Not plain ones. Those fancy Kenco ones. We could start
collecting
them.”

“OK, OK,” Gilbert interrupted, holding up his hands. “We’ll spare you the latrine duties. But could we please have a little less gallivanting round the countryside like a bunch of cowboys? Dewsbury are threatening to sting us for the cost of the operations support unit and the chopper. Now, haven’t you any work to do?”

They trooped out through the door, Dave at the rear. He paused, one hand on the handle, turned and said: “That might be an idea, Mr Wood.”

Oh no, I thought. Don’t say it, Dave, whatever it is, please don’t say it.

“What’s that, David?” Gilbert asked.

“What you said about cowboys. It might be an idea for the gala. They could dress up like sheriffs and their deputies. Lawmen and all that. It might go down well with the kids.”

Gilbert looked doubtful, started to voice his
misgivings
, but Gareth interrupted him. “Um, well, in the
absence of any other suggestions, Mr Wood, it might be worth considering,” he said, as I glared after Dave as he pulled the door shut behind him.

I was thinking about a mid-morning coffee when the man himself brought me one. “You’re a mind reader,” I said. “Pull up the chair,” and placed two beer mats on the end of my desk. “Gareth took the bait,” I told him.

“He’s a twat.”

“That’s no way to talk about a senior officer. So, how did the weekend go?”

“Terrific, Chas. He’s a good lad, I really liked him.”

“That’s what I thought. They called to see me on the way.” I sighed inwardly: with a bit of luck that
disclosure
would eliminate the need for any more untruths.

“He plays rugby, and he’s devoted to Sophie. He asked me if he could marry her. Can you believe that? He actually asked me. Bet that doesn’t happen too often, these days.”

“That’s great. So they’re engaged?”

“I suppose so. He didn’t have a ring or anything.”

“What does Shirley think?”

“Oh, she’s over the moon one second, tearing her hair out the next. She spent all last week doing the house, now she scared stiff about meeting his parents. They seem to be quite well off.”

“That’s good. What are they called?”

“I knew you’d ask that, so I wrote it down.” He pulled a pay-and-display ticket from his pocket. “Here we are: Merriman hyphen Flint.”

I said: “Wow! That’s a mouthful.”

“That’s what I thought. Sophie says they own half of Somerset.”

It was nearly my undoing. I thought Sophie had said Shropshire, so I responded with: “You mean Sh… Sh… Sh… she’s, er, she’s marrying into a wealthy family?”

“It looks like it.”

“Good for her.”

“That’s neither here nor there, Charlie. They looked good together, and she’s ’appy. That’s all I care about.”

He asked me about my weekend and I was
blustering
again when the phone rang. How the crooks we work with keep track of their various subterfuges escapes me. Perhaps they’re cleverer than I think they are. It was Control.

“Things are happening up at High Clough, Charlie. Four vehicles have arrived in the last fifteen minutes.”

“That’s interesting. Tell the OSU to start their engine and tell the FOP to give me a ring.”

Five minutes later the pair in the Transit were telling me that another three vehicles had arrived. “That’ll do,” I said. “Stay put and direct the heavy mob straight in when they arrive. You watch out for escapees.”

The operations support unit used to be called the task force. We had one van with a sergeant and six PCs standing by, all in heavy riot gear. I told them where to rendezvous with my team, in a lay-by about a mile from the farm. I raised an armed response unit off the motorway, because there was certain to be a shotgun at the farm, plus two pandas and three unmarked
vehicles
with my lads in them. A video cameraman was in one of the pandas, with a bobby to act as his personal bodyguard as he recorded the scene. The chopper was
up above. It’s compulsory, these days. What did we do before Heinrich von Helicopter invented the craft that made him into a household name? On the drive over I told Dave to let the RSPCA know what was happening.

We were the last to arrive at the rendezvous. I jumped out and briefed the OSU sergeant, who didn’t think they’d meet any resistance. We agreed that the best tactic would be to tear straight up the drive and block their vehicles in. The only other way out was to leg it over the fells.

“Let’s go!” I shouted, because I get all the best bits.

The FOP Transit saw us coming and pulled across the lane. The passenger got out and directed our
convoy
into the dirt drive that led to High Clough farm, as nonchalantly as if he were on crossing duty. We bounced up the drive, dust billowing from the vehicles in front, gravel rattling underneath us.

“Oh, my springs,” I complained.

“Oh, my giddy aunt,” Dave said.

“Oh, my sausage sandwiches,” Pete added as we bounced out of a particularly deep hole.

“Don’t be sick in my car,” I snapped, glancing at him through the rear-view mirror.

The buildings were arranged in a quadrangle. The house was single storey with a stone flagged roof encrusted in two hundred years’-worth of lichen and moss. From either side there sprang outbuildings with sagging doors and roof tiles awry. Grass grew from gutters and drainpipes hung away from walls. Apparatus with mysterious applications stood in every corner, rotting away on punctures tyres: Heath Robinson contraptions for spinning, shredding,
flinging and spreading, and uses I didn’t want to know about.

They heard us coming and started to dash for the shelter of the buildings. Our OSU Transit tore straight into the middle of the quadrangle and the crew baled out and started running. Jeff was right about the
chicken
run. A mean-looking bull mastiff-type dog with a black patch over one side of its face was leaping and snarling inside it, bouncing off the wire in its frantic desire to be part of the action and tear something apart. Another dog, equally enraged, was inside a small cage against the wall, where we’d seen the cats. I said a little prayer about the strength of wire netting and looked for someone not too physical to chase.

A few of the participants gave themselves up,
turning
to meet their attackers, arms raised. Others were followed inside and dragged out, protesting. I saw a figure run to a door, find it locked and run into an open outhouse. A figure I thought I recognised.

I stood gaping at him for a moment, not believing my eyes, until I saw one of the OSU officers emerge from the house leading a woman by the arm. I jogged over to the outhouse as one of the PCs from the pandas looked inside, and put my hand on his arm.

“This one’s mine,” I whispered.

It was a pig sty. There were two stalls inside with fat sows asleep in them. I tiptoed past, looking into the corners while my eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom. The stink of ammonia made me weep and my feet squelched in the muck on the floor. The next stall had quarter-grown piglets in it which dashed
squealing
to meet us, hoping we were bearers of food. The
next one was used for storage, with several long planks leaned up in the corner. He was pressed against the wall, trying to make himself invisible behind them, while the ordure on the floor lapped over the tops of his highly polished brogues. The PC produced a torch and shone it on him.

“Hello, Sir Morton,” I said. “It looks as if you’re in the shit.”

He was a knight, after all, so I handcuffed his hands to the front.

“I can explain, Inspector,” he protested. “This is all a mistake.”

I put my finger in front of my lips to hush him. “Not now,” I said, and led him out into the sunshine.

Sharon Brown was standing near the transit, also in handcuffs, with a group of men. Some wore flat caps and dirty jackets, with collarless shirts; others were in leather jackets, smart trousers and enough gold
ornamentation
to pay off the national debt of a South American republic. I stood Sir Morton near my car and brought Sharon to join him. They faced each other without speaking.

“You wanted a word,” I said to him.

“Er, yes, Inspector. I was saying, this is all a mistake. I’ve never done anything like it before. I was appalled by what I’ve seen, totally appalled.”

“Well, you’ll be able to explain all that when we take a statement from you back at the station.” I led him over to a panda and removed his handcuffs,
saying
: “I don’t think these are necessary, do you?” and placed a protective hand on his head as he ducked
into the car, all for the benefit of the watching Sharon.

I was walking across to talk to the OSU sergeant and congratulate him on a job well done when I saw one of the uniformed PCs sitting on his heels, looking at something between the cages.

“What is it?” I asked, stooping beside him.