‘Good. Let’s just hope that the Farrow are doing the same.’
* * *
It was a few minutes short of four in the morning when Viggo’s head shot up, and he jumped to his feet.
‘Look,’ she whispered, indicating the dog. ‘Shh, boy, nice and quiet.’
A moment later they both heard the metallic rattle and the creaking of the allotment gate opening, then the soft crunching of tyres on gravel as the snub-nosed shadow of a van rolled down the access road with its lights and engine both off.
‘Have you got your phone?’ she asked. He nodded.
‘Let’s see if we can get closer.’
They left the cover of the bean trellis and skulked forward to hunker down behind a pair of large compost bins, by which time someone was opening the newcomers’ shed and lighting a candle, and someone else was carrying a large bundle from the open doors at the back of the van.
A bundle that kicked and squealed.
‘David…’ she said.
He made the call.
‘999, what service do you require?’
‘Police,’ he said, not even trying to be quiet. There was no point any more.
‘Connecting you now.’ A moment later a different call handler asked, ‘What is the nature of the emergency and your location?’
‘The location is Briar Hill Allotments, Dodbury, in Staffordshire. There’s a girl being attacked. And they’ve got guns.’ He let his phone fall to the ground with its screen glowing brightly while the handler was asking him lots of other questions, and stood up out of hiding because he knew that Everett or whoever it was in the shed must have heard him by then.
Two figures came towards him – Matt, small and fast, and Gar, large and lumbering. Matt was strutting with his chest all puffed up the way David had seen lads facing off against each other in pubs and bars, stabbing a finger and waving a knife in his other hand. ‘You better fuck the fuck off right now, or…’
David never found out what the alternative was because he swung the lawn-edging tool up and around in a short arc that stopped as the flat of the blade smacked Matt in the side of the head with a dull clang! Matt uttered a single grunt and toppled sideways into someone’s cabbages.
So much for having a quiet word, he thought.
Then Gar was on him. He was seized in a bear hug and immediately had the wind crushed out of him. Gar headbutted him and the world greyed away for a moment and he was dimly aware of cracking sounds and a flaring pain like sudden savage heartburn as several of his ribs broke. Gar’s maw was opening for his face, far wider than any man should have been able to unhinge his jaw, and he was reminded of footage he’d seen of hippos fighting. Even the great razor-pointed pegs of ivory that passed for teeth were the same, but David wasn’t sure that a hippo’s breath could match the fetid stench that washed over him.
Suddenly the pressure was released as one of Gar’s arms fell away, and Viggo was snarling and tearing, teeth buried deep in the boar-man’s flesh. Gar squealed in rage and pain, staggering back with a hundred and fifty pounds of Great Dane clamped to his arm and worrying at him. David fell, gasping for breath and instantly regretting it; it felt like being impaled by burning spears. He fumbled on the ground for the edging tool which he’d dropped in Gar’s attack. Gar drove a fist hard into the side of Viggo’s head and the dog let go with a yelp, then aimed a kick at Viggo’s stomach which sent him tumbling. He turned back to David and met the blade of the edging tool as it swept in under his outstretched arm and thudded deep into the side of his torso. Gar frowned down at the metal sticking out of him, as if confused about what it was doing there, then took hold of the shaft and twisted it to and fro, working it free as blood gouted from the wound. It pulled free with a thick sucking sound and he tossed it to one side, then came for David again.
‘David!’ Dennie was yelling and shoving at the shed door. ‘They’ve locked it from the inside! Help me!’
He could barely breathe, let alone run, but he managed a kind of hunched stagger. Gar made a clumsy swipe that was easy to dodge, and when David reached the shed he kept going, shoulder charging the door with more momentum than finesse. It splintered around the bolt and sprang open, but before he could see what was happening inside, Gar grabbed him by the jacket collar and hauled him back. He bit deeply into David’s shoulder, and David screamed.
* * *
Dennie saw David lay Matt out and become enfolded in Gar’s huge arms, and she let go of Viggo’s collar.
‘Get him, boy!’ she ordered, but the Great Dane didn’t need any encouragement.
She skirted the lurching and thrashing figures and made her way to the shed. Two voices were chanting with a third muffled and whimpering, and light burned all around the edges of the door; she pulled at the iron ring handle, frantic at the thought that they might have been too late to save the girl, but it wouldn’t budge. ‘David!’ she shouted. ‘They’ve locked it from the inside! Help me!’
He was there in a moment and barged it open. Then Gar seized him and their brawl resumed, leaving Dennie to confront Ardwyn and Everett alone. She stepped inside; Sabrina was fully awake inside her and she saw everything with Sabrina’s eyes.
Mother was sitting cross-legged in the middle of a patch of bare soil where the false floor had been, chanting as she rocked back and forth with something across her lap that looked like an alpine horn made out of fused vertebrae. But she was altered; her beauty had become ancient and hard-edged, like a tree aged almost to stone.
