It was after midnight. The sky was clear and cold, stars blazing. All those distant suns, I thought; as mysterious and inaccessible as Ehrlichia risticii.
All the horseboxes were home in the roost, subduedly shining in the light of the night bulb over the canteen door. A quiet Sunday evening, peace after bustle. I had not, this time, walked into a mortal situation.
Harve, I imagined, had done his last rounds, and was watching video football. I unlocked the offices and, without switching on the interior lights, went along to my own room, enough glow creeping in through the windows for me to locate the torch I kept in the desk there and to check that its batteries were functioning. Then, relocking the office door on my way out, I padded across the farmyard to Jogger’s old van from whose front seats I could see all my monsters partially, and one or two of them clearly.
The super-six Lewis would drive to Milan was one of those. I settled into the dark interior of Jogger’s van and tried resolutely to stay awake.
I managed it for an hour.
Dozed.
Woke with a jerk. Two o’clock. Sentries could be court-martialled for sleeping on duty. No one could help going to sleep. When the brain wanted to switch off, it did.
I tried reciting old verses. Nursery rhymes. One two, buckle my shoe.
Went to sleep.
Three o’clock. Four. Half the night passed across my shut eyes. Absolutely no good. Waste of time, sitting there.
When he came, the padlock clicked and rattled on its chain, and I was fully alert instantly.
I held my breath, not moving.
Lewis’s unmistakable short haircut passed in silhouette between me and the outside light. Lewis, carrying a shapeless bag, moved unhesitatingly towards his own lorry, where he lay down on the ground and disappeared from my sight.
He remained out of sight for what seemed a long time, until I began to think he must have left without my noticing. But then, there he was, standing up, moving away, returning with his bag to the main gate and fastening the padlock with an almost inaudible click.
Gone.
I sat for another half hour, not entirely from wanting to be sure he wouldn’t come back but from reluctance to face the next bit.
Phobias were irrational and stupid. Phobias were paralysing, petrifying and all too real. I slowly emerged from the van, took the torch, tried to think of race-riding... anything... and lay down on my back beside Lewis’s box in the location of the fuel tanks.
The cold stars up there didn’t care that my skin sweated and my courage shrank to the size of a nut.
The horsebox would not collapse on me. It obviously would not.
For fuck’s sake, do it, I told myself. Don’t be so fucking stupid.
I shifted my shoulders and hips over the ground and wriggled sideways until I was totally under the tons of steel, and of course they did not collapse on me, they hung over me immobile and impassive, a threat unfulfilled. I stopped under the fuel tanks and felt the stupid sweat wet on my face and came near to complete panic when I tried to raise my hand to wipe the sweat away and hit metal instead.
Fuck, I thought. No word was bad enough. I didn’t habitually think in that casual expletive universal on the racecourse, but there were times when no other word would do.
I’d chosen to lie where I was. Stop bloody trembling, I told myself, and get on with the matter in hand.
Yes, Freddie.
I felt for, and found, the round end of the container above the rear fuel tank. I unscrewed and laid it on the ground beside me. I switched on the torch and raised my head to look into the container.
My hair brushed against the metal. Tons of steel. Shut up. My hands were slippery with sweat and I could hardly breathe and my heart pounded, and I’d risked death in racing thousands of times over fourteen years and I hadn’t cared... it had been nothing like this.
Inside the tubular container there lay what seemed to be a long flat narrow plywood tray stretching away into shadow. Standing on the plywood was an oblong plastic kitchen food-box very like the one I’d taken to Scotland, except that this one had no lid.
Gripping the flashlight convulsively, I stuck my arm with the torch into the tube for a deeper look.
The kitchen food-box held water.
Little stars appeared above the tubular container, showing on the underside of the horsebox floor above. The stars were from the torch-light inside the tube. The stars were the result of holes in the tube.
‘There would have to be air holes in the container,’ Guggenheim had said.
There were air holes.
I peered straight into the tube, my head hard against the metal above, arms constricted by metal on both sides, nerves shot to pathetic crumbs.
Deep along in the tube something moved. An eye shone brightly. In his metal burrow, the rabbit seemed at ease.
I switched off the torch, screwed the end back onto the tube and wriggled out again into the free night air.
I lay on the hard ground, regrouping, heart thudding, ashamed of myself. Nothing, I thought, nothing would get me to do anything like that ever again.
In the morning, life in the farmyard looked normal.
Lewis, predictably, was annoyed that I’d allocated Nina to go with him instead of Dave.
‘Dave wasn’t well on Saturday,’ I said. ‘I’m not risking him getting flu away in Italy.’
Dave at that moment creaked into view on his bicycle, obligingly flushed and heavy-eyed. Flu wasn’t going to stop him, he said.
‘Sorry, but it is,’ I replied. ‘Go home to bed.’
Nina arrived looking the epitome of feminine frailty, yawning artistically and stretching. Lewis regarded her thoughtfully and made no more objections.
He and she both collected their travel kits from Isobel and went over the paperwork requirements with her. When Lewis went into the washroom I had a private moment to murmur in Nina’s ear.
‘You’re taking a nun with you.’
Wide-eyed, she said, ‘How do you know?’
‘I saw her arrive.’
‘When?’
‘Five this morning. About then.’
‘So that’s why...’
Lewis reappeared, saying if they were going to catch the ferry they’d better be off.
‘Phone home,’ I said.
‘Sure thing,’ he agreed easily.
He drove out of the gate without a worry in the world. I hoped to hell that Nina would come back safely.
From the business point of view it was not an overpoweringly busy day, but the plain clothes police swept in with sharp eyes to take over the place before nine, setting up an interview room in my office. Dispossessed, I showed them whatever they wanted, offered them the run of the canteen and sat for a while on a spare chair in Isobel’s office, watching her work.
Sandy drove in in his uniform, still confused in his loyalties.
‘Tell them about the containers,’ he blurted. ‘I haven’t.’
‘Thanks, Sandy.’
‘Did you find your answers?’
‘I asked some questions.’
He knew I wasn’t being open with him, but he seemed to prefer ignorance. In any case, he joined his colleagues and ran errands for them all day.
The colleagues found out about the containers from the landlord of the pub.
‘Lone rangers?’ I repeated when they asked me out in the farmyard. ‘Yes, Jogger came across three containers under the lorries. All empty. We don’t know how long they’ve been there.’