Crybbe aka Curfew

Still alive, anyway. But that could mean anything.

Fay drove into the track. She'd never been to Court Farm before.

Firemen were standing around the yard, and there was a policeman, one of Wynford's three constables. Fay ignored him; she'd always found it easier to get information out of firemen.

'Didn't take you long,' one said, teeth flashing in the dusk. 'You wanner interview me' Which way's the camera?'

'No need to comb your hair,' Fay said. 'It's radio.'

'Oh, in that case you better talk to the chief officer. Ron!'

Firemen were always affable after it was over. 'Bugger of a job getting to him,' Ron said. 'Right up the top, this bloody field, and the ground was all churned up after all this rain. Still, we done it. Bloody mess, though. Knackered old thing it was, that tractor. Thirty-odd years old.'

'It just turned over?'

'Ah, it's not all that uncommon,' said Ron. 'I reckon we gets called to at least two tractor accidents every year. Usually young lads, not calculated the gradients. Never have imagined it happening to Jack Preece, though.'

'Jack Preece?'

'Hey, now, listen, don't go putting that out till the police confirms the name, will you? No, see, I can't figure how it could've happened, Jack muster been over there coupla thousand times. Just shows, dunnit. Dangerous job, farming.'

'How is he? Off the record.'

'He'll live,' Ron said, changing his boots. 'Gets everywhere this bloody mud. His left leg's badly smashed. I don't know… Still, they can work miracles these days, so I'm told.'

Fay got him to say some of it again, on tape. It was 9.40, nearly dark, because of all the cloud, as she pulled out of the farmyard.

She was halfway down the track when a figure appeared in the headlights urgently waving both arms, semaphoring her to stop.

Arnold sat up on the seat and growled.

Fay wound her window down.

'Give me a lift into town, will you?'

It was too dark to see his face under the cap, but she recognized his voice at once from meetings of the town council and the occasional 'Ow're you' in the street.

'Mr Preece!'

Oh, Christ.

'Get in the back, Arnold,' Fay hissed. As she pushed the dog into the back seat, something shocking wrenched at her mind, but she hadn't time to develop the thought before the passenger door was pulled open and the Mayor collapsed into the seat next to her, gasping.

'In a hurry. Hell of a hurry.'

The old man breathing heavily and apparently painfully as they crunched down the track. As she turned into the lane, Mr Preece said, 'Oh. It's you.' Most unhappy about this, she could tell, 'I didn't know it was you.'

'I'm terribly sorry,' Fay said, 'about Jack. It must be…'

'Aye…' Mr Preece broke off, turned his head, recoiled. 'Mighter known! You got that… damn thing in yere!'

'The dog?'

The shocking thought of a couple of minutes ago completed itself with an ugly click. As she was pushing Arnold into the back seat she'd felt the stump of his rear, left leg and heard Ron, the leading fireman, in her head, saying, left leg's badly smashed.

'Mr Preece,' Fay said carefully, 'I'd like to come and see you. I know it's a bad time – a terrible time – but I have to know what all this is about.'

He said nothing.

Fay said, 'I have to know – not for the radio, for myself – why nobody keeps a dog in Crybbe.'

The Mayor just breathed his painful soggy breaths, never looked behind him at what crouched in the back seat, said not a word until they moved up alongside the churchyard and entered the square.

'I'll get out yere.'

'Mr Preece…'

The old man scrambled out. Started to walk stiffly away. Then turned and tried to shout, voice cracking up like old brown parchment.

'You leave it alone, see…' He started to cough. 'Leave it alone, you…'

Mr Preece hawked and spat into the gutter.

'… stupid bitch,' he said roughly, biting off the words as if he was trying to choke back more phlegm and a different emotion. And then, leaving the passenger door for her to close, he was off across the cobbles, limping and stumbling towards the church.

He's going to ring the curfew. Fay thought suddenly.

His son's just been mangled within an inch of his life in a terrible accident and all he can think about is ringing the curfew.

Jonathon had been saying for months – years even – that it was time they got rid of that old tractor.

Probably this wasn't what he'd had in mind, Warren thought, standing in Top Meadow, alone with the wreckage of the thing that had crippled his Old Man, all the coppers and the firemen gone now.

The Old Man had been working on that tractor all day, giving himself something to concentrate on, take his mind off Jonathon and his problem of having nobody to hand over the farm to when he was too old and clapped out. Then he'd mumbled something about testing the bugger and lumbered off in it, up the top field, silly old bastard.

Testing it. Bloody tested it all right.

Warren had to laugh.

With the last of the light, he could more or less see what had happened, the tractor climbing towards the highest point and not making it, sliding back in the mud, out of control and tipping over, the Old Man going down with it, disappearing underneath as the bloody old antique came apart.

But Warren still couldn't figure how he'd let it happen, all the times he'd been up here on that bloody old tractor. At least, he couldn't see rationally, like, how it had happened.

It was the unrational answer, the weird option, glittering in his head like cold stars, that wouldn't let him go home.

He followed the big tracks through the mud by the field gate, up the pitch to the point where the tractor had started rolling back prior to keeling over. He followed the tracks to the very top of the rise, to where the tractor had been headed, glancing behind him and seeing the trees moving on top of the old Tump half a mile away.

By the time he was on top of the pitch, he was near burning up with excitement. It hadn't seemed like the right part of the field at all, but that was because he'd come in by a different, gate, looking at it from a different angle.

Warren hesitated a moment and then dashed back down to the tractor. Somebody had left behind a shovel they'd been using to shift the mud so the firemen could get their cutting gear to the Old Man. He snatched up the shovel, carried it back up the pitch, prised away the top sod – knowing instinctively exactly where to dig – threw off a few shovelfuls of earth, and there it was, the old box.

The jagged thrill that went through him was like white-hot electric wire. 'Oh, fuck, oh fuck.' Blinded by his power. 'I done it. Me.'

His fingers were rigid with excitement as he opened the box, just to make sure, and he almost cried out with the euphoria of the moment.

He couldn't see proper, but it was like the hand of bones, the Hand of Glory in the box had bent over and become a fist.

It was curled around the Stanley knife, gripping it, and the blade was out.

Warren shivered violently in horror and pleasure – the combination making him feel so alive it was like he was a