No Holds Barred (18 page)

‘I suppose so,' she said, looking depressed.

‘I didn't find any owls,' Drew told her. ‘I think the barn may have been too big. Owls like low, dark places.'

‘Then you should look in the one at the top of Coppice Field. That's old and dark and practically falling down; I should think it must be absolutely stuffed with owls!' Jenny told him.

Drew chuckled and began chattering animatedly about the solitary hunting habits of barn owls. Daniel watched him fondly, grateful for the change of subject. Jenny's remark about her husband had set his thoughts on an unwelcome tack, and one that he had far rather not discuss with her at this juncture.

Later, when the meal was over and Drew was playing happily with a computer game belonging to Jenny's son, Harry, Daniel asked if he might use the office computer the next morning.

‘Of course.' Jenny looked enquiringly at him over the rim of her coffee cup. ‘Are you looking for something specific?'

‘Not really. Discrepancies, I suppose. I thought it would be a good opportunity, as Boyd isn't working tomorrow. I see Reg is doing his shift.'

‘Yes, Taylor's away. Gone off to Ireland for the weekend. God knows why. Dek's gone, too. Blokey bonding or something. I assume they'll get plastered, though why they have to go to Ireland to do that, I don't know. It was Holland last time. I must be paying them too much!'

‘Holland?' Daniel's ears pricked up. ‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm certain because Taylor was talking about getting the ferry from Harwich to the Hook. Why? Does it mean something to you?'

‘It might. Or it might be pure coincidence. I'll let you know when I find out.'

‘Normally, I wouldn't let you get away with that, but just at the moment I'm too tired even to be curious,' Jenny said. ‘Drew's a nice lad,' she added softly, nodding in the direction of the boy, who was totally absorbed in his computer game on the other side of the room. ‘It's a shame he's here now, when my lot are with Mum. Any other time you could have left him with me while you were working. It would have been good for Harry to have some company for a change.'

‘Yeah, that would've been nice, although Drew was as happy as Larry in the lorry with me today. He said he'd like to drive a truck himself when he grows up. Good job the novelty will soon wear off, or I'd be even more in the doghouse with Amanda!'

‘So, why did she bring him all the way here, when she knew you were working?' Jenny asked curiously. ‘Not that I mind, but couldn't he have gone to another relative?'

Daniel shook his head. ‘Amanda's an only child. Her father's dead and her mother lives in the south of France. Besides, she likes to make things difficult for me, if she can, to prove that I'm not fit to look after him.'

‘Well, what about your family? Your mother? Couldn't she have asked her?'

‘No, she wouldn't do that. The thing is, my mother's never actually met Amanda.' Although he knew it was odd, saying it out loud made it seem extraordinary. From the look on her face, Jenny plainly thought so too.

‘Let me get this straight. Your mother has never met your wife? That's unbelievable! Didn't you invite her to the wedding?'

‘Yes, of course I did, but she didn't come.'

‘But why?'

‘Because most of my friends were cops – even Amanda was working at HQ, in a civilian capacity – and my mother hates anything to do with the police because of my father. You see, he left us when I was eight. Just walked out one day, after fifteen years of marriage, and went back to his first love – the police force. Mum never forgave him – never even spoke his name again, in my hearing anyway; he became “that man” whenever anyone mentioned him. And then, when I told her I was joining up, too, we had an almighty row and she more or less told me to get out and not come back.'

‘But she didn't
mean
it,' Jenny said. ‘It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing, I'm sure. We all say things we don't mean when we're upset.'

Daniel shrugged. ‘I don't know. I didn't wait around to find out. I was mad, too. I packed my bags that night and left the next day.'

‘How old were you?'

‘Eighteen.'

‘But you've been back since, surely?'

‘Oh yes, of course, but it's always – well, difficult. There's an atmosphere.'

‘And what about Drew? Please tell me she's met her grandson?'

‘Of course. A couple of times. Not for a year or two, though. To be honest, I don't often go down there. It upsets her too much.'

‘Says who?'

‘Penny. My sister. She still lives in the village.'

Jenny made an exasperated sound.

‘
What
?' Daniel demanded.

‘Phone her,' she told him. ‘Your mum, I mean. Take it from me – whatever she may say, she's a mother and she wants to hear from you. I mean, what if something happened to her? How would you feel? You have to sort this out, Daniel. Life's too short. I mean, look at me and Gavin.'

‘Mm. I know.'

‘Well, do it. There,' she said with a half-embarrassed smile. ‘I've done my bossy bit. Another coffee?'

TWELVE

D
aniel's session on the office computer that Saturday morning gave him plenty to think about.

Reg and Macca, as the drivers rostered on, had taken the lorries out earlier that morning, Jenny had returned to her vigil at the hospital, and Sue had very kindly offered to keep Drew amused at the stables, so he had the yard to himself with no likelihood of being interrupted.

The first thing he did was open and read the computer personnel files on all the drivers past and present. As he suspected, Reg had been with the company the longest, and his reference was simply that he had worked for Jenny's family before. Macca had been taken on on the strength of a reference from a fuel delivery firm who had previously employed him, and Dean Stevens had come straight from driver training and a shelf-filling job in an out-of-town supermarket.

It appeared that Taylor Boyd hadn't needed a reference at all, a fact that made Daniel raise an eyebrow, and the most recent employee, Dek Edwards, had arrived with a commendable report of his character written on headed notepaper. The company wasn't one Daniel had heard of, but an inked circle round the contact number indicated that the reference had been followed up to Gavin Summers' satisfaction.

Daniel noted down the address of the most recent deserter, Dean Stevens, with the idea of paying him a visit in due course, and – on a whim – also made a copy of Dek's reference on the office photocopier.

Next, he spent a laborious hour and a half cross-referencing orders, invoices and delivery records against one another, noting, as he did so, that much of Taylor Boyd's so-called ‘overtime' was not logged. It seemed that Dek was not above earning a little extra pocket money, either, which, considering the proposition Daniel had been offered at the end of his first day's driving, didn't surprise him overmuch. What did surprise him was the extent of Boyd's activities. Daniel estimated that barely ten per cent of his after-hours work was legitimate, and, with the facts and figures at hand, he could see that it was costing Summer Haulage dear.

He supposed that Boyd was banking on the assumption that, with spending so much time at the hospital, Jenny wouldn't be able to keep tabs on exactly which of her vehicles were out and when. He probably felt that as long as he logged
some
extra hours, she wouldn't look too closely at the detail, and the premise had obviously worked. Daniel printed off several pages and the notes he took down filled two A4 sheets and made damning reading.

Finally, satisfied that he'd learned all he was going to from the office records, Daniel made himself a mug of coffee, logged on to the internet and brought up Google Earth. Zooming in on an aerial view of the farm, he tried to follow the route he and Drew had taken on their ride the previous evening.

After a couple of false starts, he found the barn they had visited and worked his way back along its access track in the direction of the village. For what he judged was the best part of a mile, the track was of chalk and ran in a fairly straight line towards the dark mass of trees in which Forester's stood. There it joined the tarmac road that had obviously once serviced the old disused timber yard and which ran through the trees, past Daniel's cottage, to join the main farm drive and, ultimately, the road to Great Ditton.

Daniel sat and gazed thoughtfully at the screen for a long while, his coffee cooling at his elbow. The barn had only the one access road and Forester's Cottage was on it. If the barn was being used for ratting and/or dog fighting, would that be reason enough for Boyd to want the cottage empty? It was impossible to cross silently over the cattle grid, and any occupant of the cottage would inevitably be suspicious of a large number of vehicles passing during the evening or night.

Gavin had had a plan for the cottage, Jenny had told him when he first moved in, but she didn't know what. Daniel would have given a lot to know just what that had been.

Driven by curiosity, he panned the aerial view on down the road to the village and along the main street. He was interested to see just how big the Boyd's salvage yard was.

The answer was – huge. The layout had changed somewhat since the aerial image had been taken, and in the interim it seemed Norman Boyd and his family had accumulated a great deal more scrap metal. Daniel could see the reception unit and its accompanying sheds, and away behind these, standing incongruously in their own patch of garden amidst the metal jungle, were two large mobile homes. Chez Boyd, Daniel guessed, though an attempt to zoom closer only resulted in revealing the poor definition of the satellite imagery.

Panning across the rest of the site, he could make out the roofs of two other long, narrow buildings. Daniel sat back, thoughtfully, reaching for his coffee mug. He didn't remember those. Reducing the zoom, he tried to calculate where they would have been in relation to where he'd stood to wait for Ricky the day he'd been to see him about the headlights. All he remembered seeing were the mountains of scrap, but, then, if the buildings were single-storey, they would probably have been hidden from view. For some reason, he found himself very curious to discover what those buildings were.

Sipping his coffee, Daniel wrinkled his nose. It was stone cold. He got up to make himself another, glancing back at the screen. Remembering the barking he had heard, could the buildings be kennels to house Norman Boyd's pit bull terriers? If it weren't for Drew, he would have been tempted to pay Boyd's Salvage Spares another visit that afternoon.

As it turned out, Drew wasn't a problem. Over a lunch of fish and chips, eaten al fresco, Daniel enquired what he fancied doing that afternoon, and Drew asked if it would be OK if he spent the rest of the day at the stables.

‘Sue said she'd teach me to ride Western-style,' the boy said. ‘On Piper, cos he's the only one really trained for it.'

‘Oh, I see,' Daniel replied, putting spurious disappointment into his tone.

‘You don't mind, do you?'

‘Of course not. I suppose you're getting too old to want to spend time with your father  . . .'

‘Dad!'
Drew rolled his eyes exaggeratedly.

Daniel laughed at the boy's expression. ‘It's OK. I'm only teasing. You'll love riding Piper – he's amazing.'

An hour or so later, with Drew safely back in Sue's care, Daniel turned the nose of the Merc towards Ditton Cheney, the village where he'd found Mal and Sally Fletcher, and where, it seemed, Dean Stevens also lived, with his father.

It was clear by the noise emanating from the open window of number nine, Church Cottages, that a football match was being watched on the TV, and Daniel guessed his interruption would not be welcome, but that couldn't be helped.

His firm push on the doorbell button evoked no response, and he had to press it twice more before he heard the sound of heavy footfalls approaching. The door was yanked open by an unshaven, pot-bellied, middle-aged man wearing knee-length shorts and a Manchester United shirt.

‘It's ten minutes to half time; couldn't you have waited?' he demanded.

‘Who's winning?' Daniel asked, not even knowing who was playing.

‘We are, of course,' the man said, apparently apportioning himself some credit for the fact. ‘Which you'd have known if you'd stayed in and watched the match, instead of banging on people's doors in the middle of it. What d'you want, anyway? Who are you?'

‘I'm looking for Dean. Is he here?'

‘Who wants to know?'

‘My name's Daniel. I used to work with Dean.'

The man sniffed noisily, screwing his face sideways as he did so. ‘You're the one with the dog,' he said, which was no great feat of deduction, as Taz's head could be clearly seen leaning out of the open window of the car.

‘That's right.'

‘Well, he don't want to talk to no one.'

‘Could you please just ask him?'

‘He's not 'ere.'

‘All right.' Daniel had heard the sound of wood being chopped at the back of the end-of-terrace property and had his own suspicions about that. ‘I'll let you get back to your match. Will you tell him I called?'

The man sniffed again. ‘No point,' he said, stepped back and closed the door in his visitor's face with more vigour than was strictly necessary.

‘Charming.' Daniel shook his head slightly at this overt rudeness and, retracing his steps to the car, let Taz out. Whistling him to heel, he then followed the hedge of number nine round the corner into the adjoining road. Here, he found his luck was in. A full-height wooden plank gate was let into the clipped hawthorn and the catch lifted under the pressure of his thumb.

The gate opened on to a small back garden which was half rough grass and half vegetable plot, where summer vegetables flourished in neat rows. The orderliness seemed at odds with the character and appearance of the man he had just met.