‘You have to do this sometimes with the young ‘uns,’ said Scrubby. ‘They get the hang of it after the first time. The old chap there knows what he’s about, though.’
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The billy glared at him once, then took a few short steps and launched himself on to the young goat, digging his hooves hard into her sides and throwing the weight of his hairv bodv on to her back. Scrubby hung on grimly, tightening the nanny’s collar so that she couldn’t escape. She began to moan and whimper, and her breath came in short gasps. The billv balanced himself on her bony pelvis and thrust into her. The young goat’s back legs buckled, and she began to collapse under his weight. Srrubbv hauled her forcibly upwards to keep her oil the ground. The billy thrust three more times in rapid succession, then tossed back his head and gradually slid off. It was over.
Scrubby eased his grip on the goatling’s collar, and she began to cough spasmodically. Her legs were trembling and a string of white semen dripped from the bare patch of skin on the underside of her tail.
There was silence for a moment, except for the painful coughing of the goat.
fo o o
‘She didn’t enjoy that much,’ remarked Wilford in a strange voice.
‘She’s just immature, that’s all.’
‘Is that it, then?’
Jenny crouched and a stream of pale yellow urine hit the dirt. The billy stepped forward to sniff at the stream, then began to lap at it eagerly with his long tongue. The old men screwed up their faces and shuffled uneasilv.
‘I’ll just hang on to her for a bit, while he gets his breath,’ said Scrubby. ‘Then he can have another go.’
j O
The three men were quiet in the pick-up on the journey back to Moorhay. The visit to Bamford seemed to have subdued them.
‘Reckon she’ll be all right?’ said Wilford, as they climbed the hill out of the Hope Valley.
‘He looked as though he knows his animals,’ said Sam.
O
‘It seems hard on them, when thev’re so young. She was a
J J O
bit innocent.’
‘Innocent?’ said Harry. ‘She was screaming for it all the way there, wasn’t she?’
The others nodded uncomfortably, and Sam gave a painful
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cough. He looked exhausted by the drive, and had lost his willingness to make a joke. Wilford stared grimly through the windscreen until Harry spoke again as they breasted the rise that looked down on to their own valley.
‘I think/ said Harry, ‘I might tell them a bit of what I know, after all.’
Sam and Wilford nodded again. After that, nobody spoke all the way home. And nobodv sang.
- . o
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14
Den Cooper and Diane Fry emerged from their showers clamp and tingling, and drank a fruit juice in the rugby club bar before heading back to Edendale, Cooper had seen a glimpse of Frv’s flat in Grosvenor Road, and he thought he knew why she had been so easy to persuade with an excuse not to go home. But she could not know his own reason, and so far she had shown no curiosity. She did, however, want to talk about work, to go
J ‘ ‘ O
over the day’s results.
‘God, that Moorhay place,’ she said. ‘Is everyone round here as stroppy and awkward as that? The Dickinson man was the worst. Unhelpful or what?’
‘He’s an old man,’ said Cooper. ‘An old man who’d had a shock. How do you expect him to be? Most people around here are friendly and helpful, anyway.’
‘That I remain to be convinced of.’
Her view of Harry Dickinson struck Cooper as superficial. His own feelings had been quite different. He thought of the moment when he had found the body of Laura Vernon, of Harry standing like a black mark against the sun- drenched hillside. Stroppy and unhelpful? Maybe. Deeply disturbed and afraid, definitely.
‘Anyway,’ said Fry, ‘hold on a minute. That wasn’t what you said at the briefing this afternoon. You wanted Dickinson to be pressed harder.’
That’s different.’
‘Yeah? An old man who’d had a shock. So what do you want to press him harder for? That sounds suspiciously like gratuitous harassment to me, pal. Where’s the caring, sharing Ben Cooper here? Come off it, you think he was unhelpful too, don’t you?’
‘I think he knows something he’s not saying,’ admitted Cooper.
‘And that’s not the same thing?’
‘Maybe Mr Tailby and Mr Hitchens didn’t ask the right
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questions,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe it’s not to do with Laura Vernon at all. I don’t know.’
‘Well, you could always ask your girlfriend, I suppose,’ said Fry.
‘Who?’
‘You know — the granddaughter, Helen Milner. Got the hots
