An experienced pharmacist, she automatically glanced at the labels and a moment later was tottering after her brother-in-law, screaming at the top of her voice.
‘Samuel, you bastard! What have you done, damn you?’
ONE
Breconshire, September 1955
The burly youth pedalled his way along the lane, its high hedges still green, with just a few signs of approaching autumn. The Raleigh was old and clumsy and he made heavy weather of the slope up towards the barn. The bike was his father’s cast-off and, though Shane had tried to modernize it with a pair of drop handlebars, it still remained an old bone-shaker. If his employers weren’t so tight-fisted, he grumbled to himself, he could have got in a bit of overtime to afford the down payment on a new machine.
It was just seven o’clock when he dismounted at the gate and leaned his cycle against a post. Hauling a pair of keys from the pocket of his stained dungarees, he undid the padlock and pushed the metal gate wide open with a squeal of protest from the rusty hinges. He was always first here in the mornings, as Jeff and Aubrey were milking down at the main buildings, almost a quarter of a mile away. That lazy bugger Tom Littleman never got here before eight – or even later if he’d been hitting the beer the previous night.
Shane wheeled his bike into the large yard, the ground sticky with yesterday’s rain mixed with years of old oil from the vehicles scattered around like an elephant’s graveyard. Land Rovers, tractors, a couple of small trucks, muck spreaders, reapers and even an ancient threshing machine littered the area, laced with old tyres and unidentifiable pieces of rusty metal. Some of the debris had been there so long that grass, nettles and even briars were growing through it.
The young labourer propped the Raleigh against the wall of the barn, a huge structure with a corrugated-iron roof. The walls were of concrete block up to head height, from which rose vertical slatted timbers. A large corrugated-iron door gave access for vehicles, but the youth went to a small door alongside it and again unlocked another large padlock.
Whistling tunelessly between his teeth, he went into the gloom within the barn and pulled back the two metal bars that locked the main door and, with a heave, pushed it open. He kept walking until the door was flat against the outside wall, where he secured it by a rusty chain to a staple. In high winds, it was a beast to push open, but today the air was warm and still.
With the full light streaming into the barn, he could now see the usual collection of farm machinery under repair, a couple of tractors with their radiators and fuel tanks removed and a Land Rover minus its engine.
It was a moment before his eyes, used to the familiar scene, realized that something was not right. He was looking directly at the soles of a pair of boots which were projecting towards him from under a large blue tractor. They were attached to a pair of legs and, as he slowly moved forward, his uncomprehending mind was forced to accept that not only was the top end of the body directly under the huge back wheel of the Fordson but that the dark stain that had spread beneath it was certainly not motor oil.
After gaping at the body for long enough to recognize the clothing as that of their mechanic, Tom Littleman, the apprentice grabbed his bicycle and pedalled like fury back along the road to Ty Croes Farm, four fields away.
In the countryside, dealing with a death can be a slow process.
It was forty minutes before the first policeman arrived on his little Velocette ‘Noddybike’ from the police house in Sennybridge and almost another hour before the coroner’s officer appeared from Brecon.
The constable had been phoned by the owner of the farm, Aubrey Evans, who had left the milking shed as soon as Shane Williams had arrived to gabble his news. He had immediately raced back to the barn in his old Bedford pickup truck, the boy bouncing up and down on the seat beside him.
When they reached the yard, the farmer had jumped out and run to the threshold of the big door. After a single glance, Aubrey had dropped to one knee alongside the still form and grabbed the nearest outstretched hand. A dour, practical man, he felt the deathly cold of the skin and knew that his mechanic was beyond any help.
‘Bloody fool!’ he muttered uncharitably to Shane as he looked at the massive treads of the tyre crushing the victim’s neck. The pile of large wooden blocks that had been propping up the back axle of the Fordson were scattered under the vehicle. ‘I told him to get this job finished, but not when he was half pissed!’
With a muttered command to his shaken apprentice to get the big door closed again and to stand guard, he jumped back into the pickup and clattered off to use their only phone, which was back in the farmhouse.
By nine o’clock the group outside the barn door had grown appreciably and soon the arrival of a black Wolseley 6/90 brought two more, a detective inspector and a plain-clothes sergeant.
The DI was a tall, thin man of an age approaching retirement. He wore a long fawn raincoat and a permanently miserable expression, perhaps because of his name. After almost thirty years in the police, Arthur Crippen had heard every variation of the joke and it had long been worn thin. He advanced on the group and fixed his mournful eyes on the coroner’s officer, PC William Brown.
‘Right, Billy, what’s going on and who are these people?’ he demanded.
Brown was a thickset fellow with a pronounced limp, caused by a shell splinter in the Italian campaign. His Monte Cassino disability had gained him the job of coroner’s officer when he returned to the police force.
‘Like I said on the phone, sir, we’ve got an apparent accidental death from a chap squashed by a tractor.’ He jerked a thumb back at the barn, where the main door was open again and the body covered with a tattered canvas sheet. ‘But it’s a bit unusual, so I thought it better to be on the safe side and ask you to have a look before we move him.’
Crippen’s eyes peered out from under the wide brim of his brown trilby, scanning the other men standing around him.
Billy Brown pointed them out, one at a time.
‘This is Aubrey Evans. He runs the farm down the road in partnership with his cousin here, Jeff Morton.’
The two men nodded in acknowledgement. Aubrey Evans was a typical Mid-Wales farmer, impassive in nature but with shrewd eyes beneath the flat cap that he wore at a rakish angle. About forty years old, his big muscular body was clad in a brown warehouse coat, held closed by a length of binder twine tied around his waist.
Jeffrey Morton had a family resemblance to his slightly older cousin, but he was slightly shorter, though still sturdy. He had a fuller, more open face, marred by a large purple birthmark on his left temple. Like Aubrey, he wore a crumpled tweed cap, but it was perched on the back of his head, revealing slightly gingerish hair. Being as much involved in their mechanical repair business as working the farm, he wore faded blue dungarees, oil-stained at the front.
‘And this gentleman?’ demanded Crippen, staring at an older man standing behind the two cousins.
‘I’m Mostyn Evans, owner of the farm,’ came a deep voice as he stepped forward. ‘At least I own the land and used to work it until I passed the business on to these two here. Aubrey’s my son and Jeff is my nephew.’
He was in his seventies, the DI estimated, but still a strong man both in physique and temperament. Wiry grey hair covered a big head, his craggy face lined with a lifetime’s exposure to the elements. A baggy brown suit, with an old-fashioned waistcoat, covered a collarless flannel shirt fastened at the neck with a brass stud.
‘What about this young fellow?’ growled Crippen, staring at the youth, who lurked at the edge of the group.