o
‘Would you open the gate for me?’ he said. ‘Are those things safe?’
‘What, the geese? You just have to show them you’re not frightened of them.’ ‘Thanks a lot.’ Fry struggled with the wooden gate, which was tied to its
J OO O
post with a length of baling twine and at the other end hung on only by its top hinge. But at last the car was through.
‘Are you sure anybody actually lives up here?’ said Fry. ‘Where’s the farmhouse?’
‘Well, though they’re called farms, these places, they’re really just bits left over from the days of the old cottagers, when everyone had their own plot of land, with a cow and a pig. They’re the bits that the bigger farms haven’t swallowed up yet, and the developers haven’t got round to buying up for housing. There’ll be a cottage somewhere. They’ll know we’re here, with all this noise.’
135
Cooper pulled up against the back wall of the Nissen hut. There was a rickety garage next to it, where a white Japanese pick-up truck was parked with a metal grille across the back. Enormous clumps of brambles grew over a wall which ran up to a range of low stone buildings that seemed to be growing out of the hillside.
‘Do you want to take this one?’ he said. ‘I’ll drive on up to Bents Farm and pick you up a^ain on the way back down.’
‘Fine.’
Fry got out and hesitated, looking at the threatening geese.
‘Take no notice. Remember, you’re not frightened of them,’
‘ j o
said Cooper as the Toyota bumped away.
Fry took a deep breath and began to walk up the slope towards the cluster of buildings. The geese immediately fell into formation behind her, hissing and honking and darting at her ankles with
‘ O O O
their long beaks. One of them pulled itself up to its full height and beat its wings angrily.
Fry fixed her gaze on the buildings ahead. They looked
J O o J
neglected and badly in need of repair. There were slates missing from the roofs and a gable wall of one of the outbuildings had bulged and slipped into an unnatural shape like something out of a Salvador Dali painting.
After a few steps, she realized she was walking on an uneven flagged path, the stone flags almost invisible under creeping dandelions and thistles. A trickle of water ran on to the path from a broken drainage pipe protruding from a stone wall. Where the water gathered on the dusty ground it was stained red, as if
O JO
it had run through rusted iron.
Fry cursed out loud as she tripped over the edge of a sunken flag. Behind her trooped the geese, still honking in outrage at being ignored. They made a strange procession as they approached the buildings.
‘Not exactly on undercover operations, then?’ said a voice.
An old man was leaning on a fork on the other side of the
o
wall. He was standing in a paddock that had been converted into a large vegetable patch. His red-checked work shirt was open at his chest to reveal wiry grey hairs, and his sleeves were rolled
136
up over plump arms. Ancient trousers that had onre been brown were barely held together at the waist and sagged alarmingly over
J O OO O J
his crotch. They were pushed awkwardly into black Wellingtons. His face was red, and there were irregular bald patches on his scalp that were turning dangerously pink.
In the corner of the paddock was a small lean-to building like an old outside privv, with an adjoining fuel store converted to a tool shed. On a wooden chair in front of the door sat a second old man. He had a stick propped in tront of him, wedged between his knees, with its end dug into a patch of earth. His cuffs were rolled back over his long, thin wrists, and he had a sharp knife in one hand, with which he was trimming cabbages.
‘Do you gentlemen live here?’ asked Fry
‘Gentlemen, is it?’ said the man with the fork. ‘Are you a gentleman, Sam?’
O ‘
The thin one laughed, flicking the knife so that it caught the sun, its blade sticky with liquid from the stems of the cabbages.
O
‘Are you the owner, sir?’ shee asked the first old man, raising
J
her voice above the continuing noise of the geese.
‘Hang on a minute,’ he said. ‘Let me turn the siren off.’ He thrust his fork deep into the ground with a heave of
