Danny dug his hands into his pockets. Warming himself inside with thoughts of the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury on a hot night at the end of June, coloured lights in rippling sequence, the strobes going, the ole Strat hard against his thigh as he went sailing off into the solo from ‘Mephisto’s Blues’.
Well, it could be, if only Lol would realize how much he had to offer… if the boy could just overcome that persistent low self-esteem.
What the hell, life was good.
Had been good.
‘You all right, Gomer?’
‘Course I’m all right.’
Bronwen went grinding on between leafless trees turned into great white mushrooms. Humpy, glistening ground and a teeming sky, the countryside like a strange new-made bed, all the familiar creases filled in.
A slow, downward slope, now, the snow-level rising either side of them. Not going to be that easy getting back up.
‘Oh, hell!’
Patches of grey stone in the lights.
‘All right, boy, I seen him.’
‘What the hell is it, Gomer?’
‘Looks like an ole sheep-shelter.’
Gomer brought Bronwen grunting to a stop and Danny made out the roof of a vehicle behind the broken wall, a wedge of thick snow on top. How the hell did he get behind the bloody wall? Danny lowered his window.
‘You all right there?’
No reply. He glanced behind. The incline they’d just come down would look dangerously steep on the way back. He turned back to find shadows moving silently on either side, just beyond the lights. Danny stiffened. How many of the buggers were in this yere Land Rover, and why wasn’t they calling out? Like, Thank God you come, kind o’ thing.
‘En’t bein’ funny, Gomer, but I don’t altogether like the looks of this, to be honest.’
The shadows were spreading out, circling and crouching like a pack of wolves. Five of them at least, murky grey now in the swirling night.
A sudden massive bang on Danny’s side of the tractor.
One of them was there. All black, no face.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! on the panel.
The man was in camouflage kit. Gloves, balaclava. No glint of eyes behind the slit.
Danny got his window up to just a bit of a crack. Looked at Gomer across the grey light in the cab. In the past year, two JCBs had been nicked from this area. All right, not hijacked, just stolen out of their sheds, but there was big money in a brand new tractor and a first time for everything.
‘Don’t wanner make a thing ’bout this, Gomer, but how about we don’t get out till we finds out a bit- No! Gomer!’
‘Balls!’ Gomer was leaning across Danny, mouth up to the crack at the top of the window. ‘ Gomer Parry Plant Hire. You all right, there?’
Oh Jesus… Like these were the magic words, the key to not getting dragged out into the snow and having the shit beaten out of you while the lovely new tractor you’d called Bronwen and had blessed by the vicar got shipped out to Lagos.
Danny was going, ‘Look, pal, we-’
When the voice came out of the snow.
‘Yow know who we are.’
Aye, that kind of voice. Full of clouds and night and a bit of Birmingham, and now Danny could see two solid shadows, either side of the camouflage man. Gomer coughed, a bit hoarse.
‘This a hexercise, pal?’
Silence. Then a short, little laugh.
‘Give the ole man a coconut.’
‘What I figured,’ Gomer said. ‘Only, Sarah back there, see-’
‘… so yow just turn this bus around, yeah, and bugger off.’
All the breath went out of Danny in a steam of relief.
‘I should just do it, Gomer. These guys, they don’t make a habit of flashin’ their ID.’
‘Put your lights out, now,’ the camouflage man said. ‘Then fuck off and forget you seen anything.’
Danny shifted uncomfortably in his seat. You wanted cooperation, you didn’t talk quite like this to Gomer Parry. Five foot four and well past seventy, but you just didn’t. Everybody knew that.
‘And you might find it easier if you put that filthy cigarette out.’
‘Now listen, boy-’
‘Just do what he says, eh, Gomer,’ Danny hissed. ‘You can complain to the Government later.’
Gomer said nothing, just let the windows glide up, putting the tractor into reverse and reaching out for the lights.
Only, the mad ole bugger didn’t switch them off, he threw them on full beam, making a starburst in the snow, and – Jesus! – Danny was jerking back as Bronwen swung round hard, on a slide. In the lights he’d seen what he’d seen – what he thought he’d seen – before the tractor lurched and bucked and went snarling back along the track they’d made earlier.
Danny and Gomer didn’t speak at all till they’d managed to make it up the hill and out the gate and onto the road again. Then Danny sat up and looked hard into Gomer’s thick, misty specs.
‘We really see that?’
‘Hexercise,’ Gomer said gruffly. ‘That’s all it is. Kind o’ jobs they get, they gotter be hard, ennit?’
‘Well, yeah, but, Gomer…’
‘ Hexercise,’ Gomer said. ‘That’s what we tells Sarah Protheroe. Her’ll know.’
‘You reckon?’
‘And we don’t say nothin’ else. All right?’
Danny was shivering. He’d go along with that. Anything. But what they’d seen in the white hell… in other circumstances it could have been almost funny, but in a late-February blizzard, in the minutes after midnight, it was enough to scare the shit out of you.
Especially the way the fifth man had been just standing there laughing, bollock naked in the snow.
Part One
MARCH
Empty your septic tank
Take it to the bank
2
The bad stuff started with Jane insisting on getting the drinks. A Lotto thing – she and Merrily had both had
