air.
The walled kitchen garden was only a few paces further on, and having let himself in through the wooden gate he crossed the weed-filled expanse of old beds by a gravelled path whose borders he could barely make out in the fading light, but which he knew by heart.
Another gate on the opposite side of the rectangular plot gave access to the yard and there Eddie paused for a moment, his eye caught by the sight of the moon, rising like a golden sickle over the looming outline of the barn. The light it cast was still faint, but once darkness had fallen – and that would not be long now – it would offer ample illumination for his walk across the fields.
He went on and had covered perhaps half the length of the yard when it struck him that there was something strange about the barn doors. The gathering gloom, neither night nor day, made it difficult to see clearly, but presently he realized what it was he had noticed. Although the doors were shut, as they should be, the gap between them was marked by a thin thread of light coming from the inside.
Eddie stopped. His first thought was that Sam had dropped in to pay him a visit, but he dismissed the notion at once. Today was a Friday – not one of the days he regularly called at Coyne’s Farm, which were Tuesday and Thursday – and besides there’d been no sign of his van in the parking area by the road.
Then he remembered something else. Only a few days before Sam had told him about a near encounter he’d had with a man he’d caught snooping about in the yard. He’d tried to hail him, Eddie recalled now, but the bloke had made himself scarce.
‘He was about my size and dressed like a toff.’ Sam had scowled as he recounted the incident. It was plain something about it had upset him. ‘I didn’t like the look of him, or the way he behaved, so if you see anyone like that hanging about the place, tell him to shove off.’
Alert now, Eddie strode across the yard, his boot heels ringing on the cobbles. When he reached the barn he saw that the bolt on the doors had been drawn and the padlock, which somehow had been opened, hung loose from it.
He pulled the doors open and looked inside. There was a light burning at the far end of the barn, but he couldn’t see where it was coming from.
‘Who’s there?’ he called out loudly.
Silence greeted his words.
‘Come on out. I know you’re there.’
Again there was no response. Eddie strained his ears, trying to pick up any sound from inside, but heard nothing. The silence was unbroken.
Delaying no longer, he stepped inside and strode down the broad corridor formed by the hurdles, which were stacked up on either side of him above head height. At the end of this artificial passageway, the rest of the barn’s contents – canvas-draped pieces of furniture and odd bits of farm equipment – had been stored haphazardly, turning the area, cloaked in shadow now, into an obstacle course through which he had to pick his way to the back of the building.
There a further surprise awaited him. The source of the light proved to be one of the oil lamps he used himself. It was hanging from a nail in the wood above the corner where he slept, somewhere he would never have placed it himself. He and Sam had agreed that both lamps and brazier should be kept well away from the straw bedding for fear of starting a fire.
Of the intruder himself there was no sign. With the whole of the rear of the barn illuminated, Eddie could see that it was deserted. But if his visitor had made himself scarce, it was plain he had not been idle.
The mound of hay which served him as a mattress had been enlarged to more than double its size and filled the corner. He spied a pitchfork that must have been used for the purpose lying on the floor beside it, the prongs upturned as though it had been dropped in haste.
Eddie scratched his head. At first glance it looked as though whoever had broken in had been seeking a place to spend the night. But that didn’t make sense. Or rather, it hardly fitted in with the picture Sam had drawn of the supposed intruder. A toff, he’d called him.
He shrugged. There was no point in racking his brains about it. Clearly the fellow had run off. The riddle would remain unanswered. All he could do was tell Sam what he’d found and leave it up to him to decide what to do next.
Meantime, he thought he’d better check on his own belongings to make sure they were safe. Tidy by nature, he had put his toilet articles in the small cupboard beneath the washstand Sam had provided him with, while his bedroll and spare clothes were stowed away in a tall mahogany wardrobe, stripped of its canvas shroud, that stood handily nearby.
He went to the washstand first, but as he bent to open the cupboard doors he had a flash of intuition that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The sensation was eerie, but not unfamiliar. The selfsame feeling had come to him during the war in the few seconds before he was shot, when he had known instinctively, but too late, that a sniper’s eyes were upon him.
He whirled round.
The figure of a man had appeared behind him, as if from nowhere. Half hidden in the shadows, he stood at the edge of the circle of light cast by the lamp, in one of the narrow alleys that led into the piles of stored furniture.
‘So there you are!’ Angry at being given such a fright, Eddie let his feelings show. ‘Didn’t you hear me call out?’
The man made no reply. Well dressed, he was wearing a tweed coat with a soft hat of the same material pulled down low over his forehead.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Eddie’s tone sharpened still further. ‘Are you deaf?’
This time he provoked a response, though not the one he was expecting. The man moved, coming forward into the light, giving Eddie a clearer picture of his face, which was pale beneath his hat brim and without expression.
‘What are you doing here, anyway?’
Eddie scowled. There was something here he didn’t understand. It was obvious the fellow had been hiding in the shadows for the past few minutes, not wanting to be discovered. He could easily have slipped away during that time, crept out of the barn and escaped, but instead he had chosen to show himself.
‘Don’t you know this is private property?’ he demanded.
Thus far the man had shown no reaction to the words addressed to him. It was as though he had not been listening. But his eyes, sharp behind gold-rimmed spectacles, were busy. He was studying Eddie closely, examining him from head to toe, and now he spoke:
‘Who are you?’ he asked. His voice was low and rasping, the accent guttural and foreign-sounding.
‘Never mind who I am.’ Eddie fairly bristled with anger. The unblinking stare to which he was being subjected had made him conscious of his own appearance: of his torn clothes and unwashed body. It was quite possible the fellow had taken him for a tramp, which would explain his apparent lack of concern at being discovered trespassing. ‘You’re the one breaking the law. I’ve a good mind to set the police on you.’
At the word ‘police’, the man’s manner changed. He seemed to stiffen, and as their eyes met for the first time Eddie felt a tingle of alarm. Up till then he’d simply thought the fellow’s behaviour peculiar. Now, looking into the slightly sunken eyes, which reflected the lamplight in yellow glints, he sensed something else, something he couldn’t put a name to which made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle once more.
He barely had time to take note of his reaction when the man moved again, edging to his right and turning so that the lamp was behind him. To Eddie, the manoeuvre seemed hostile: the light was shining in his eyes now. But he’d faced scenes like this before, a long chain of confrontations starting in his school playground and continuing after he had joined the army, when he’d had to assert himself in the rough society of the barracks. Because he was small, some people thought they could push him around, and he’d learned early on that the only way to take care of yourself was to stand up to them.
‘Look, I’ve had just about enough of you, whoever you are,’ he declared roundly. What was a foreigner doing messing about in someone else’s barn? ‘This is your last warning. Either hop it now, or you’ll get what’s coming to you.’
Suiting words to action, he stepped forward, reducing the distance between them, staring the intruder straight in the eye. Although the fellow hadn’t offered him any violence – he’d been standing all this time with his
