he saw us he turned and ran. I had the headlights on full and we saw that there was blood all over him. I am sorry that I cannot reveal my identity but I swear this is the truth.
I did not think to look at the exact time but it was about 8.00pm. This is all I can tell you. I hope it helps you catch him. I am unable to give you a better description of him because of all the blood.
‘This has been processed, presumably?’ Annie said.
‘It’s a copy.’
‘Where was it posted?’
‘In town.’
‘Could be on CCTV, then. If we can tie it down to a time margin, could be a simple process of elimination.’
‘Already being done,’ Bliss said. ‘What strikes me is the way he calls Mansel Farmer Bull. Heard that a few times the last couple of days. Some local people called him Farmer Bull in a humorous kind of way because he looked so much like an old-fashioned gentleman farmer – tweeds, waistcoat, cloth cap.’
‘That been in the papers?’
‘Not that I’m aware.’
‘So this person’s probably a local. Fairly intelligent, no spelling mistakes or dodgy grammar. We could be looking at a neigh-bour. In a car. With a girlfriend. So if he’s married… What’ve you done about it so far?’
‘Extended the search area. Nasty night, so there’ll be tracks. Also, if this bloke they saw was well splattered with Mansel’s blood, he’s likely to’ve sprinkled some of it around.’
‘We need to find whoever sent this,’ Annie said. ‘This guy thinks he’s told us all he knows, but half an hour’s questioning we could get twice as much. Let’s put out an appeal. Person who sent a letter posted in Hereford. No details.’
‘OK, will do. Interesting they saw only one man. Could be significant?’
‘Unless they split up, took off in different directions.’
‘There’s also a report come in of a man at Leominster being taken away in a four-by-four with a bag over his head. But that was two nights earlier. Maybe a joke.’
‘Yeah, well, from now on, we ignore nothing that happens in the sticks,’ Annie Howe said.
‘Yeh. Um…’ Might as well tell her. ‘Don’t think you’ve ever seen Kirsty, have you?’
‘Apart from in the wedding picture that used to be on your sideboard.’
‘She looked different then. Longer hair. And it’s dyed now. Dark red.’
Annie looked at him, a forefinger extended along one pale cheek.
‘Dark red hair? Black coat?’
‘You noticed her, then.’
‘On the box? Oh God, Francis.’
‘Yeh.’
‘Who was the man, with her?’
‘Her old man, Chris Symonds. Interesting the way they were sitting at the table right underneath the Countryside Defiance banner.’
‘So they knew they’d be on TV, and you’d see it.’ Annie folded the photocopy of the letter and stood up, allowing her hand to brush briefly against Bliss’s. ‘Come over later, if you can.’
14
Borderlife: that was when the knife really went in.
A quarterly glossy, full of ads for luxury stuff that few local people would buy even if they could afford it. But then, Borderlife wasn’t aimed at local people. Getting off the school bus, Jane had seen the spring issue on the rack at the Eight Till Late. Hadn’t wanted to buy it, obviously, but the know-your-enemy instinct had kicked in with the picture of Ward Savitch on the front, sitting on a vintage Fergy tractor with The Court in the background, all misty, and the blurb Just Call Me A Reformed Townie.
OK, Jane had never actually met Savitch. Didn’t really want to, either, in case he turned out to have, you know, some level of basic charm or a prosthetic leg. But she was building up a file of news cuttings, background for the expose in a proper pub lication.
Borderlife had four pages, including about six pictures of the countryside looking lush, the enemy looking smug.
THE SAVITCH EFFECT
Lorna Mantle meets the man at the heart of the New Cotswolds
Jane had the magazine open on the floor by her bed and was lying across the width of the duvet, tensing up already.
How many lives must have been changed for ever by a quick flip through the property pages in a dentist’s waiting room. ‘Yes, I the secrets of pain owe all this to a broken tooth,’ Ward Savitch laughs, showing me around an estate that now extends to over 300 acres… and growing.
The advertisement for The Court at Ledwardine wasn’t the biggest on the page, but there was something about it that told the jaded City broker: This is the one.
‘I think it was the fact that I’d simply never heard of the place,’ he says. ‘I’d inspected properties all over Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire with an increasing sense of seen-it-all-before. But Herefordshire was a revelation.’
They all said that. Jane wrinkling her nose in distaste. What they meant was that Herefordshire was still up for grabs, whereas the Cotswolds had been firmly grabbed, no bargains left.
The term ‘New Cotswolds’ as applied to the pre-recession rush to buy property in Herefordshire is not always used approvingly, but Ward Savitch sees it as a challenge. ‘This county has a wealth of customs and traditions in danger of being lost for ever. I want to see growth of a kind which supports the old traditions and helps develop a society that will preserve them in a sympathetic and lasting way.’
Made you want to vomit.
After an extensive restoration of the former farmhouse and its grounds and outbuildings, Mr Savitch began breeding pheasants and organizing shooting weekends. Then, as he acquired more land, new luxury chalets were concealed in the dark woods, giving upmarket holidaymakers a taste of the wilds.
The action-holiday market was also catered for, with paintballing events, canoeing on the river, quad bikes and rough shooting. Many of the guests enjoyed themselves so much that they didn’t want to leave and went on to buy their own homes in the area, finding that it was possible to live on the Welsh Border without giving up their highpowered business ventures.
‘I realized there was a new energy here,’ says Mr Savitch, ‘and became more excited than I’d ever been in my life. I saw that, with the decline of agriculture, the countryside was literally being left to rot – by the damned townies. Well, you can call me a reformed townie – I’ve seen the light. In the Internet era we can do anything here that can be done in a city – and better.’
To prove this to City power-brokers, Mr Savitch has been organ-ising hugely popular ‘freshen-up’ weekends aimed at London-based professionals damaged by the recession and and desperate to make a new start.
Cornel and his mates? They were damaged all right, but not in ways they’d accept.
Ward Savitch certainly exudes an infectious vitality as he drives me in a bumpy old Land Rover across fields and along forestry tracks, where every chalet – and chalet is a poor term for these luxurious holiday homes – comes with over half an acre of wooded land, and full Wi-Fi broadband. They all have solar panels and Ward has plans for a small wind farm on the edge of his estate.
‘Oh, I’m as green as the next man,’ he says. ‘But I’m not into gimmicks and all that old hippie “good life” nonsense. The countryside isn’t a place for running away to. It’s a place to progress to. Surveys show that the largest proportion of incomers to Herefordshire in the past year have been from London.
‘Many are people with money, eager to invest it somewhere they can see it having an effect,’ says Mr
