Briefly John told Arkwright the story, most of which the other had read in the newspapers anyway; his own involvement, the death of his aunt.
'What you need is a bloody mongoose to hunt 'em out.' John's hopes soared as Bill came back at him with his own theory. 'Soon sort the buggers out.'
'That's what I'm ringing you about, Bill.'
'You mean have I still got Rick and Tick and can you borrow them? Sure I have, and if you take the responsibility and fetch 'em you're welcome to 'em. I still get the ruddy RSPCA poking round from time to time to check that I'm not snake-fighting with them. You'll have to fetch 'em, though, and if you get caught with 'em they're not mine.'
'Oh sure.' John did some mental calculations, a round trip of something like four hundred miles. Twelve hours in the Mini if she didn't play up. Back in Stainforth before dark.
'I'll see you early afternoon then.' He replaced the receiver, stepped gratefully outside into the hot sunshine.
Twelve hours' driving in this bloody heat! Twelve, twenty-four, thirty-sixhe'd do it if it meant death to the killer snakes. And tomorrow afternoon as he sat head bowed in the cool of the church at Aunt Elsie's funeral he would have the secret satisfaction of knowing that he had made the snakes pay for their killings. He would never have believed during those long years of studying for his degree that he would ever come to hate reptiles the way he did now.
Twenty minutes later he was in the old Mini, both windows wound down in the hope of a cool breeze, driving out of Stainforth; down past the church, past the track leading to the old disused quarry where he used to play on his visits here as a boy. He wondered if it was still there. Probably partly filled in by its own avalanches and overgrown with vegetation. He would not have any regrets about that, remembered the time when he had gone there after butterflies for his collection, had scaled one of the steep sand walls in an attempt to catch a Red Admiral and had fallen fifteen feet. Fortunately the soft sand in the bottom had broken his fall otherwise he might have broken a leg, or worse.
It used to be a damned dangerous place.
His thoughts returned to Keith Doyle. Somehow he did not believe that the gardener had left Stainforth and that made it all the more worrying. Because PC Aylott had vanished into thin air also.
John Price filtered on to the motorway, moved into the middle lane and jammed his foot down on the accelerator as far as it would go. Suddenly he was aware that he did not have that 'unemployed feeling' any more.
Chapter 15
'WE'RE BALING that sandpit field today no matter what the army, the police or any other bugger says,' Jack Jervis informed his son when he came in to breakfast after doing the early morning round of the stock field. 'You can't waste bloody weather like this and I won't be happy till all that hay is under cover.'
'Blimey, Dad,' said Sam Jervis, splashing milk on to his cereals, knowing that his earlier suspicions were correct and that the old man was in one of his moods. 'It ain't goin' to rain for weeks, if it ever rains again.' Not just a bad mood, a very bad mood.
'We can't chance it.' Jervis senior chewed noisily, took a swallow of tea to help the stringy bacon down. 'We can't just sit around doin' now't, this bloody nonsense could go on for weeks.'
'I don't like the idea o' you and Sam goin' up there.' Dora Jervis shuffled across the room, deposited a plate of toast on the table. 'Them snakes are dangerous.'
Silence, just a smacking of greasy lips as the Jervis family meditated on the perils of snakes.
Jack and Dora had rented their scattered smallholding for the past twenty years, a kind of 'getting-away-from-lorry-driving' move. It had been a messy venture, made all the more disorganised by the fact that their rented land was scattered around Stainforth; fifteen acres of meadowland that Phil Burton was only too pleased to find a tenant for, rough tussocks of unpalatable grazing, two more tracts of eleven and nine acres, and finally the 'sandpit field' leased from the council. All run from their existing tumbledown dwelling and the few acres that they actually owned.
In the beginning Jack had had to rely on casual farm work to make ends meet. Rumour had it that his 'capital investment' had come from equipment stolen from his various employers; nothing serious enough to warrant police investigation, a roll or two of sheep-netting from one place, a few stakes and staples from another. Jack's mechanical knowledge from his haulage days came in handy, enabled him to keep their old 1962 Ferguson tractor going, and, with some very untidy improvisations, they managed to scrape a meagre living. Sam was an accident, set them back a bit, but they got by in their own slovenly fashion. Their shortcomings were many but all were agreed that the one thing they did not shirk was work.
Sam was not at all keen on the idea of lugging the bales off the sandpit field, but if the old man said that that was what they were going to do today then that was what they would do. He had learned many years ago not to argue with his father.
Dora watched the two of them file out of the room, and sighed loudly. Jack worked the boy too hard, never gave him any time off. Sam was a hired labourer on a pittance of a wage, not a son. The boy was bright enough, would in all probability have done well at school if Jack had not persistently kept him at home to help with the harvest, the lambing, every seasonal job as it came round. 'Tell, 'em you've 'ad the 'eadache, boy,' he would say at every period of absenteeism from school. Sometimes it was "the bellyache' just to ring the changes. Sam might have gone on to sixth-form college if his school attendances had not been so inconsistent, but Jack Jervis wouldn't have stood for that. 'Work is what you do with yer 'ands, boy, not sittin' at a desk thinkin' about it.'
She began to clear the table, Sam would end up an ignorant pig, just like his father. She couldn't change either of them so she might as well go along with them. They would still be scratching for a living in another twenty years' time.
Work was a way of life to Sam Jervis. Seven days a week, 365 days a year, he did not expect anything else. On a holding like this one you did every job yourselves, spent as little money as possible; a cycle that you began again as soon as the old one ended.
This bloody heat was a bit much, though. He wondered how the old man could stand not just a shirt on but a woollen waistcoat worn over it. Trousers and heavy boots, too. All Sam was wearing was a pair of denim shorts, hacked from his old working jeans when the lower legs became threadbare, and a pair of scuffed pumps.
The routine was always the same. Dad drove the tractor and trailer, Sam rode on the back. Then between them they loaded the trailer with bales, stacked high and precariously, and trundled back home where they unloaded them into the barn. They managed three loads before lunch and estimated that there were probably another five left. They would finish around teatimea late tea.
The upright exhaust belched black fumes as they drove past the church. Sam glanced idly at the track leading into the quarry. The old sandpit was technically theirs, its acreage included in the rent they paid the council each quarter for the field. Now that was a bloody waste, a piece of ground that you could not plough up, would not hold stock. He wondered if there was any way of filling it in, levelling it up to the field that surrounded it.
The Ferguson struggled up the steep incline, shuddered to a halt by the first stack of eight bales. Jack Jervis leapt down, shouted at Sam to hurry. 'We ain't got all bloody day, boy.'
Eight bales loaded, drawing up to the next pile; another eight layered on top of those. Now it was Sam's job to clamber up on to them, take the bales from his father as the old man hoisted them up to him on the prongs of a pitchfork. Jesus, the old man would have a heart attack if he didn't slow up, working in a near-frenzy in this bloody heat. It had to be ninety in the shade today. One day the silly old fucker would drop in his tracks, just like that. And I'll bloody well load him up on top of the hay and take him down home. And it won't spoil our tea, either.