‘I thought you might mean that.’
‘You said he was highly sexed. Do you think it’s possible that he might have looked elsewhere?’ Yvonne smiled and shook her head. ‘You don’t
understand the life of a small farmer. Warren wouldn’t have the time or the opportunity for an affair. Where would he meet women? He spends every hour working on the farm.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh, I’ve seen him looking at the hikers sometimes. You know, the women who come past on the track up to the moor. Sometimes, when I didn’t know where he was, I thought he might have gone up there to look at them. In the middle of summer, you can see them all gathered round the stone circle, the Nine Virgins, all the young ones. But he would never do anything except look, I’m sure.’
She must have seen the sceptical look on Fry’s face. ‘Warren is a good man, really,’ she added. ‘Things just haven’t gone right for him.’
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I
I
‘What about the boys, Mrs Leach?’ asked Cooper.
‘I wanted to bring them away with me, of course. But how could IT She gestured at her surroundings. ‘I had to come here, because I’ve got no family to go to. But I can get a job, can’t I? I’ve been looking. I can earn some money and I’ll get somewhere bigger that I can take the boys to.’
‘But in the meantime … are you quite sure they’re safe?’
She shook her head vehemently. ‘Oh, Warren won’t do anything to harm the boys. He thinks the world of them. They’re his whole life, but for the farm. He wouldn’t do a thing to harm them.’
‘It was Leach you had in mind, Ben?’ said Diane Fry as they drove back to Edendale.
‘How do you mean?’
‘You said your friend Fox was being made a scapegoat. If so, he has to be a scapegoat for somebody else. Who did you have in mind? It must have been Leach. But if it was, you seemed a bit soft on him earlier on.’
‘He won’t take pushing any further,’ said Cooper. Fry slapped the steering wheel in irritation. Then her shoulders slumped, and she sighed. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she said.
‘Shall I call in?’ he said. ‘Go ahead.’
Cooper reported in to the incident room. His head lifted as he listened to the latest news. Fry turned impatiently.
‘What is it?’
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‘Information from the RSPCA special investigations officer dealing with the Ringham Edge Farm enquiry.’
‘Yes? Have they got any firm evidence? Enough to act on?’
‘They’ve passed on the name of one of their informants. They don’t usually do that, because they have to protect their identities. But this one happens to be dead.’
‘Dead?’ ‘Yes. One of their informants was Jenny Weston.’
Will Leach had already seen the shotgun standing against the wall, where it had been taken out of its steel cabinet. He knew this was wrong, that a shotgun should never be left out. His father had always said so. The police might call at the farmhouse at any time and see it, and then his father would lose his shotgun licence. But he didn’t seem to care about that at all now.
Will hated it when his father shouted and swore. But he hated it more when he fell into a long silence. At those times, his eyes seemed to be looking far away and his body quivered, like the strands of wire in the electric fence in the top field. Will had known what his father was thinking when he had looked at Doll and had been so silent. And now Doll had gone. Will had tried to guess what his father was thinking when he had looked at their mother and was silent, too. And now their mother was gone as well.
It was the first day of half-term, and this morning Will had listened very carefully. His sense of hearing was trained to pick up the sound of his father’s foot
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steps in the yard or the clink of a glass against a bottle in the front room. His father had been more silent this morning than he could ever remember. And this time, Will thought he knew what his father was thinking.
Warren Leach had never really known the meaning of shame. He had heard people talk about it, but had never understood, and had just thought them weak. Now it was an emotion that came upon him suddenly, devastatingly, roaring over the hill and scything him down like ripe corn under the blade of the combine.
His cheeks had burned under the policewoman’s stare. This woman looked at him differently from the others. It was more than antagonism, it was contempt. She had seen what had become of his life, and she thought it was his own fault. She saw the squalor and had no hesitation in blaming him for it. And, of course, she was right.
His world took a sudden shift and became vivid and clear, as if somebody had shaken it to bring the picture into proper focus. Now he saw the colours of his life distinctly, and they were all dark. The revelation coalesced in one great lump all the burdens that had been piling up on him in the last few weeks. He knew now that they had drained his strength and his will, and had been the cause of all those strange, crippling aches in his belly that he hadn’t been able to explain.
For the first time, Leach faced the impossible magnitude of his problems; the disastrous hole that he had
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fallen into loomed way over his head like the walls of a deep well. And he had no energy left to climb any more.
‘But I never hurt the boys,’ he said to himself. Then louder: ‘Dougie, I never hurt you, did IT He reached out to take his youngest son by the shoulders. Dougie wriggled to get away, but his father gripped him harder, making him cry out.
Leach knew he had to make his decision. He was sure the police would come for him anyway because of what had happened with the young Ranger. The boys would be taken away from him. They would end up in one of those homes. But he had already thought about this moment, and he knew what he had to do. He let Dougie go, and the
