Cold in the Earth Read online

  If it was just the fattening cattle, she wouldn’t worry. Losing them would be a financial blow but they’d weathered setbacks before and no doubt there would be compensation eventually. But the sheep – the sheep were different. They had colonised Mains of Craigie land even before Bill’s grandfather bought the farm and Bill’s pride in and, yes, love for his heritage went deep. How would he deal with strain and anxiety and perhaps, in the end, despair, if she was banned from his side? She couldn’t bear it if anything happened to Bill.

  By the time the Chief Constable had wound up his peroration, she had made up her mind. She would see Bailey and ask to take leave – call it compassionate leave, if necessary – and it was as if a burden had been lifted. She and Bill would be together, and together they could face whatever the fates had in store.

  She was humming ‘Stand by Your Man’ as she made her way to the Superintendent’s office half an hour later.

  ‘No,’ Donald Bailey said flatly.

  Fleming stared at him. ‘I’m asking on compassionate grounds, Don. Surely you can understand my position?’

  She was taken aback. Bailey was inclined to be pompous and to stand on his dignity but he was in general a good boss and they’d always had a good relationship. She’d been, she thought, eloquent about her situation, both domestic and social; she’d expected him to try to talk her out of it, then, however reluctantly, to agree.

  ‘Of course I bloody understand!’ He spoke with a bluntness unusual for him. ‘It’s a hellish position for you, but then it’s not a bed of roses for anyone. People like you with good links to the farming community are particularly valuable just now, and anyway we’re going to be at full stretch over the next few weeks.’

  She said stubbornly, ‘Surely it’s going to be mostly a problem for the uniforms? In fact, I’m expecting crime figures to drop. Having everyone staying in of an evening’s fairly going to cramp your style if you’re into housebreaking or pub brawls.’

  Bailey shifted uncomfortably in his swivel chair, which gave a protesting squeal. ‘I’ll be brutally frank. We’re expecting trouble of a kind which may well involve the CID.’

  ‘Like suicides, you mean,’ she said flatly.

  ‘We-ell . . . Violence against the person, anyway, whether that person is someone at the other end of a gun or the man holding it.’

  ‘And what if Bill’s one of them, left on his own?’

  Bailey pursed his lips. ‘It’s not very flattering, is it, to suggest that Bill might be selfish enough to inflict that on you and the bairns?’

  She’d have liked to have an answer to that. There wasn’t one, though; winded, she subsided and he went on, with evident reluctance, ‘I’m afraid it’s an order, Marjory. I need you.’

  ‘Sir,’ she said automatically, then paused. ‘I could resign . . .’

  It was gesture politics and they both knew it. She’d get no support from Bill, who would have every right to feel insulted at the implication. It would certainly be crazy for her to throw away their only certain source of income because she was feeling neurotic. And she could almost hear her father’s voice – ‘Well, I could have told them they were daft to put a woman in a man’s job.’

  She didn’t meet his eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.

  Bailey’s brow cleared. ‘I always knew I could rely on you to conform to the highest standards of the service,’ he said.

  It was only as she heard the familiar orotund phrase that she understood how anxious he had been, and realised that, perhaps, he had stuck his neck out in backing her promotion and would suffer for it if she let him down with a response which would definitely be judged feminine and neurotic. Which might – she was nothing if not fair-minded – even be feminine and neurotic.

  ‘Thanks, Don,’ she said with genuine gratitude, getting up. Then, at the door, she turned. ‘But how would you like to have to go home every night and hear from my father what a balls-up the modern police force is making?’

  He’d been a constable when her father was a sergeant. He laughed. ‘Rather you than me, right enough. Thanks, Marjory.’

  ‘What are you saying? Are you trying to tell me that after Papa slaved all these years to breed the best pedigree herd of Welsh Blacks in the country, they could just march in here in their jackboots and slaughter them all? Wipe out his life’s work, the heritage he left us? And you would just let them do it, just stand by and do nothing – nothing?’

  The woman’s voice rose dangerously. She was pulling a long chiffon scarf through her hand with sweeping, theatrical movements and her heavily jowled face was mottled with patches of dark red. Her histrionic behaviour was in marked contrast to her overweight frame, with its broad bosom and wide hips. Only her style of dress, shapeless layers and wispy scarves, gave a hint of the Isadora Duncan within struggling to get out.

  She gestured dramatically towards a row of leather-bound ledgers in a bookcase to one side of the elaborate Victorian fireplace. Above it hung the dusty, mounted head of a magnificent black bull with sweeping horns, a silver plate underneath declaring its champion status. Round about were mementoes recording triumphs at the Royal Smithfield Show: rosettes, certificates, framed newspaper cuttings.

  ‘Look at those records, Jake! Meticulous records of every cow, every bull, every pedigree, right back to nineteen forty-seven. That’s more than fifty years!’ She glared at him: her eyes were a curiously opaque grey-green which at school had earned her the unkind nickname ‘Goosegogs’.

  ‘I can count, Brett.’

  The man who spoke sounded exhausted. His head was propped in his hands as he sat at a Regency partner’s desk facing a tall bay window which gave on to a gravel drive and a lawn beyond. The wall behind him displayed a montage of bullfighting posters, ancient sepia photographs and, in pride of place, a silver mask of the horned head of a fighting bull, superbly moulded but tarnished from neglect.

  He had a marked family resemblance to his younger sister: the same heavy build, the same strongly delineated features, which, though clumsy on a woman, were striking in their male form. The years had been much kinder to him too and his thick black hair, curling and cropped short, showed no trace of grey. The contours of his face might have blurred and his eyes, dark blue where hers were green, were set in sclerotic whites which suggested too many evenings spent with a whisky bottle as sole companion, but he was certainly still an attractive man.

  ‘Do you think I haven’t flogged my guts out trying to find a way round this?’ he said tautly. ‘Foot-and-mouth isn’t even that serious, and you can vaccinate against it – but the Government won’t authorise the vets to prescribe it. Yes, yes, I know,’ as she made to speak, ‘I’ve thought of that – give me some credit!’

  He glared at her and when she subsided went on, ‘I’ve tracked down a supplier in Spain and he’s sending me some so I can do it myself – oh, there’s a nonsense about vaccinated herds being less valuable, but who’s to know? I can protect our own cattle, but it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference. If just one of the farms on the Chapelton boundaries has just one infected animal the men from the sodding Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are entitled to walk in here and slaughter everything that moves.’

  His anger mounted as he spoke; he brought his clenched fists down on the red leather desk-top with a force which indicated the level of his frustration.

  Brett swooped over to take the chair opposite and covered her brother’s hands with her own. ‘Jake, you’re getting too emotional,’ she said infuriatingly. ‘You need to calm down and think this thing through rationally. Now, who’s in charge of making the MAFF decisions? We probably know them, or at least know the person who tells them what to do. If it’s a question of money – well, I know you’re always boring on about times being hard, but to save the herd—’

  He stared at her, rage swamped by astonishment. ‘Are you really suggesting trying to bribe officials? Are you mad? Or do you want me to end up in jail?’

  Brett tossed her
head and laughed, in a parody of the girlish gesture someone had once, long, long ago, described as attractive in the days when her hair wasn’t grey and straggling. ‘Don’t be silly, Jake. I wasn’t suggesting anything crass, that goes without saying. There must be subtle ways of approaching these things.’

  He groaned, sinking his head into his hands again. ‘Oh, shut up, Brett. Just shut up, would you?’

  She burst instantly into noisy tears. ‘Shut up? How can you say that, when all I want, all I’ve ever wanted, is the best for you and Conrad, and to preserve Papa’s legacy . . .’

  Jake sat in dull despair as the self-indulgent lamentations continued. He was trapped in a relationship more permanent than any marriage with this woman who owned a half-share of his business, his house and the family money and was bound to him by the ties of blood and the needs generated by her own failures. She was demanding, extravagant, possessive and becoming more neurotic with every year that passed. As if his anguish at the thought of losing his own life’s work – the superb black bulls with the same ancient Celtic lineage as the glorious fighting bulls of Spain – weren’t enough, he would no doubt have to cope with what Brett termed ‘one of my petites crises de nerfs’.

  The first of these had been when her husband, a transparent chancer she’d insisted on marrying against all advice, had decided there must be less costly ways of earning money and walked out. The second was worse, when Jake had signed the papers committing her adored papa to a discreet private nursing home when age had compounded the ravages of absinthe abuse to the point where he was actively dangerous. There had been others over the years, though latterly Jake had come to suspect they were manipulative contrivances directed at ruthlessly forcing her brother or her son into compliance with her selfish demands.

  The sound of a car being driven a little too fast, spurting gravel, cut off Brett’s sobs as if it had triggered a switch. She jumped up, dabbing at her eyes with the end of her scarf.

  ‘That’s Conrad back. He’s the very person who can tell you what to do. I’ll fetch him now.’

  Her departure was a relief. The headache Jake had suffered all day was pounding now and he reached into the desk drawer to take another couple of painkillers, though it was only two hours since he’d taken the last dose and they didn’t seem to be doing much good anyway.

  All day the news had been getting worse. He’d tried telephoning MAFF to point out that the Welsh Black was a rare breed and to offer to put the herd in quarantine along with everyone coming into contact with them, but the only person he had reached was some underling who had just parroted the regulations, then when he lost his temper put the phone down on him.

  And the herd, really, was the only thing nowadays that gave Jake anything recognisable as pleasure – his magnificent beasts, majestic, simple in their needs, honest to their own brute natures. Human relations were ugly and sordid by comparison, a maze of complicated and dangerous paths where you could see no way through – like the maze there at the foot of the garden which he had so deliberately neglected for so many years. He didn’t often allow himself to contemplate the grim wreckage of his life, the failures, the disasters, the terrible secrets, but in the apocalyptic light of present events he found himself contemplating them more and more often. He groaned, shut his eyes and leaned back in his chair, digging his fingers into the base of his skull to try to ease the pain.

  The sound of Brett’s whining tones as she complained her way down the corridor with her son was almost a relief, though there wasn’t much love lost between Jake and his nephew. True, Brett was an unduly possessive mother and far from easy to live with – who knew better than he did himself? – but Conrad treated his mother with cruel impatience and blatant contempt, and even Jake too, in the unguarded moments when his temper got the better of him. Afterwards, he was always obsequiously and unconvincingly apologetic.

  Jake was no fool and Conrad’s strategy, in any case, was hardly subtle. He was desperately hoping to inherit control of the farm – and he probably would, when Jake got around to remaking his will. Conrad had the true Mason feel for the beasts, a good eye for selection, and he’d carry on the tradition of Chapelton champions. Max, though . . .

  It was like pressing on a painful bruise. As always, his mind slid away from the thought of his son.

  He could hear his nephew’s voice now outside the door. At least Jake could trust him over this: the prosperity of the family business was dear to Conrad’s mercenary little black heart. Certainly, as a policeman, he’d be in the best position to know what, if anything, could be done, and perhaps, after all, media reports were exaggerated – they usually were.

  One look at Conrad’s sombre expression as he came into the farm office behind his mother was enough to disabuse Jake of any such comforting delusion.

  ‘Does my bum look big in this?’

  The large, jolly young woman who had squeezed herself into a short, tight, orange Max Mara skirt had to say it twice before the fair-haired woman, sitting in her office with newspapers bearing lurid pictures of cattle pyres open in front of her, reacted.

  ‘Sorry?’ she said. She looked up, her grey-blue eyes wide and expressionless, then realised what the question had been. For a terrible, unguarded moment the thought, ‘Your bum would look big in anything,’ almost reached her lips. She fought it back. ‘Well . . .’ she murmured diplomatically.

  ‘It does, doesn’t it?’ The woman turned to squint over her shoulder at the pier glass in the corner under a strong spotlight, and shuddered. ‘Oh dear. No wonder you were struck dumb. Never mind – back to the drawing-board.’

  ‘What about this – or this?’

  After quarter of an hour’s hard work evangelising for the slimming virtues of black, she was able to see her customer leave with a larger, longer, slightly draped crêpe skirt in that useful colour and only a brief, longing glance at the orange creation, now back on its hanger.

  Shutting the door behind her, she returned to her desk and the newspaper she had been studying with such painful attention. It wasn’t one of the garish tabloids; it was a sober production with the masthead the Galloway Globe, though its headlines were in the largest point available and its pictures of the pyres – livid smoke, sullen red and orange flames and the black, twisted limbs of burning carcasses – were as shocking as any. She read on, unconsciously wringing her slim hands, as she scanned column after column in a painful search for the information she hoped, yet feared, to find.

  ‘Are they going to come and kill all the sheep? Even the lambs?’ Cat was sitting up in bed, her eyes bright with tears, when Marjory came in to say goodnight.

  The little wooden bed, tucked in under the eaves, had been painted white by Marjory herself, and Grannie Laird had stitched its patchwork quilt. These days Cat was starting to make noises about the room being babyish but at the moment the pink-shaded bedside lamp was bathing in its rosy glow the relics of childhood – the doll’s house, the soft toys which were almost if not quite outgrown – and creating an idyllic picture of comfort and security. Only the faint moan of a rising wind hinted at a bleaker world beyond the pink gingham curtains.

  It had been a lot easier to deal with Cammie, whose main preoccupation was the cancelling of the mini-rugby tournament next week. Marjory had to swallow hard.

  ‘Not necessarily. If everyone is really careful and sensible it might just fizzle out and anyway our sheep might not get it.’ But Cat was entitled to an honest answer: she went on, ‘Though yes, of course they might.’

  The tears spilled over and Marjory gathered her daughter into her arms with the meaningless reassurance mothers have murmured down the ages. ‘It’s all right, pet, it’s all right . . . Have you got a tissue? Here. Now listen – you’re a farmer’s daughter. You know what happens to sheep anyway.’

  Sniffing, Cat nodded.

  ‘So it’s sad and we’re upset this is happening, but it’s not as if they were going to live happily ever after, is it?’

  Fair-
minded like her mother, Cat acknowledged the justice of this. ‘And at least there haven’t been any pet lambs this year.’

  Marjory had thought of that; it was one of the few ‘well-that’s-a-mercy’ aspects of the whole sorry situation. ‘And you’ll have fun staying with Grannie and Grandpa. She’s going to give you cooking lessons and you’ll be much better than I ever was.’

  ‘And I can walk round to Flora’s after school.’ Her daughter brightened. ‘They’ve got satellite, you know . . .’

  Having given her daughter’s thoughts a more cheerful direction, Marjory kissed her goodnight, but as she walked downstairs she was close to tears herself. Oh, what she’d said to Cat was sensible, but all the same it felt as if a whole ordered way of life was being torn apart by the forces of anarchy and chaos. She could almost see them, wolves prowling round the fold, grey menacing shapes in an outer, impenetrable darkness.

  Had her parents, she wondered, felt similarly helpless as they waited for the outbreak of war? Of course it wasn’t the same – no one was going to come and bomb their farmhouse – but even so, it was a war of sorts, not only against the virus but against the bureaucratic powers of a government which either didn’t understand or didn’t care. Or both.

  She would be obliged to help support its edicts, then she’d have to go home at night to her father who would have his own views and wouldn’t hesitate to express them. It was an indefinite sentence, too, the sort Human Rights legislation wouldn’t allow to be imposed in a courtroom. Cruel and unusual punishment.

  ‘Bill?’ she called as she reached the hall, but there was no answer. He must still be out with the sheep and anyway she had a pile of clothes that needed ironing before she could pack them. She set up the ironing-board in the kitchen and switched on the portable TV.

  The news was on, full of more and more depressing stories about the progress of the disease. Marjory watched till she could bear it no longer, then channel-hopped between a soap, a quiz show and a sit-com, each of which seemed even more irritatingly stupid than usual, and she switched it off. She was ironing with only her own gloomy thoughts for company when she heard the door of the mud-room open.