'This is awful, Matthew. Why did he stop like that? Cat run across the road or something?'
'Oh, something bigger than that,' Matthew had said. 'So big that nobody else saw it.'
Diane turned her back on the Abbey, edged around the POLICE ACCIDENT signs and the taped-off area and walked down Benedict Street, where Woolly had his shop.
She had to tell him. Not that it would help him much, credibility wise. The good news: somebody else believes you saw a black bus that wasn't there.
The bad news: it's Lady Loony.
You could see the big house now, the lights just coming on, winking through the stripped-off trees. Only, it wasn't a friendly wink; the lights were a baleful white. In Sam Daniel's view, Bowermead Hall made Dartmoor Prison look like the House at Pooh Comer.
The moon had risen over the woods, making it easier to see the footpath even when it got tangled. So far he was legal, not even trespassing, although you wouldn't know that from the signs.
New signs. Aggressive signs with red lettering.
PRIVATE LAND. KEEP OUT. SECURITY PATROLS. ALL TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
Sam knew all these public paths. Two or three years ago, he and Hughie had joined a protest with the Ramblers' Association when Gerry Rankin had fenced off a right-of-way with barbed wire. They'd taken wire-cutters to the fence, and Rankin couldn't say anything apart from, I'll remember your faces. Which was when Hughie grew his beard.
There was plenty of new barbed wire now, dense and high. But there were ways. Rankin had to get in and out. Stay clear at the hall was the answer, go for Rankin's farmhouse, which was about five, six hundred yards from the Hall, tucked into the bottom of a wooded hill. The vineyards were the other side of it, facing the town and Glastonbury Tor. Between the farmhouse and the entrance the vineyards Sam saw what looked like new hunt kennels: two long, low sheds in a cobbled yard.
He thought about the possibilities. Maybe he could pull a stroke the night before, like letting the hounds into the vineyards.
Or, presuming the meet was at the Old Bull like it used to be, with stirrup cups and all this shit… well, that was over three miles away, so they'd be using transport – horse transporters, dog wagons. Maybe he could find out tonight where they'd got the trucks. Then come up here very early Boxing Day morning and slash all the tyres.
Wilful damage, Sammy? Hughie's voice in his head. They'll throw the book at you this time, son. You 're known. You've been warned. Conditional discharge… conditional, yeh? Also, you just don't do this kind of stuff when you're angry. That's how you get nicked.
'Oh. I see. You do it when you're feeling rather tolerant about blood sports. My mistake.'
Sam stopped hallway over a rotting wooden stile. Bloody well talking to himself now. You really are in a bad way now, Sammy. You know what this is? It's what love does to you.
'Piss off. Don't be soft.'
A dog barked in the kennels, and then another.
Damn. Once they started, it would go on and on. That was why it was normally best to do a recce in the daytime. Come the innocent rambler bit if anyone saw you.
Except when they know your face -..
Sam detoured off the path and into the woods behind the new kennels. He was on higher ground now and suddenly he could see the Tor, like an upturned paraffin funnel prodding the white moon.
The Tor would do that, suddenly come into view from nowhere. If poor bloody Woolly was here now, he'd be climbing to the top of the next hill to see if he could see the tower of Stoke St Michael church, which was the next point on his beloved St Michael Line.
Poor little sod. He'd probably be hounded out of town, out of Somerset in fact. And then the old man would swagger back with a bloody huge majority thanks to Glastonbury First, which stood for Traditional Standards and road safety and getting rid of nutters.
Sam kicked at a branch, which turned out to be dead and rotten. It shattered into a shower of sodden splinters and one lump flew into his face. Bastards.
Everything collapsing. Everything diseased. How could any silly bugger believe there was a God up there?
The full implications were only now becoming sickeningly clear. The way the scum was rising back to the top: the return of Councillor Griff, man of the people, and Archer Ffitch smarming his way into Parliament – the cool, blatant way Ffitch had planted the idea with the TV people that his little sister was a hopeless fruitcake and you mustn't hold her against him.
Sam peered down the slope towards the bulk of a barn. You'd get a couple of horse boxes in there, no problem. If he got here before daybreak, came round under cover of this wood, he could do all the tyres before breakfast. No way they'd get them all replaced in time. Not on Boxing Day. Hunt off. Piece of cake. Merry Christmas, Mr Fox.
So, need to check for padlocks on the doors. Might need some cutters.
Sammy, Going Equipped for Burglary is the charge, coppers find you with bolt cutters. You'll go down for three months and when you come out nobody respectable's going to give you any more work.
'Get off my back, Hughie!'
Sam was about to slide down the bank towards the big barn when he smelled something.
Smoke. Burning.
Well, he wasn't daft. If Pennard was hosting a top-people's barbecue over the next rise, he wanted to know about it.
He scrambled back up the slope, holding on to bushes, torch in his pocket. Slowing up the nearer he got to the top, trying not to breathe too loudly.
The hill was longer than it looked. Must have been two, three hundred yards. Scrambling to the top, he nearly toppled into empty air.
He dropped flat, didn't move, kept very quiet for two minutes, the acrid smell everywhere now. Peered over the unexpectedly abrupt edge – almost like a big slice had been taken out of the hill.
It had. That was precisely what had happened. You could make it out now: a big, wide trench. JCB job.
What we got here then, Sammy?
No sign of flames. No sounds, not even an owl. He was well out of sight of Bowermead Hall and, presumably, Rankin's farm. He pulled a torch from his jacket pocket, a Maglite, big beam. Snapped it on, stared in disbelief.
Shit on toast!
At first, Sam didn't understand. Used to be all woodland here. Lovely woods. Used to sneak in here as kids. It was legendary for conkers. Giant horse-chestnut trees. Also beech and sycamore and huge, thick oaks.
Now, for as far as the torch beam would stretch, it was a sea of stumps. And fallen tree trunks whose branches and winter foliage had been cut off, piled together and burned.
Burned. It was horrible. A massacre. When he switched off the torch he could detect glimmerings of red, the damped down smouldering of bonfires.
I don't get it. I don't get it, Hughie.
Come on, Sammy, where's your brain gone? It's the road! The sensitive Glastonbury stretch of the Bath-Taunton fucking Relief Road! It's happening now. Here. In secret.
Sam felt like one of-those poor bloody trees, all the sap in him drying up, everything crashing to earth around him. This was some of the finest broadleaf woodland in Somerset. A wildlife paradise, with badger sets and all kinds of birds and wild orchids.
Scorched earth, now. He scrambled down, stood in the deep, wide trench, flashed his torch from one side to the other. It was massive, surely twice as wide as a dual carriageway. But then, they had to allow for the banks, the verges and the hard shoulder.
It made some sense when you thought about it. If Pennard had sold a chunk of his precious land for the road, what he didn't want was a few hundred eco-guerrillas camping out on the site and living in the trees to prevent them being axed. This was a pre-emptive strike.
He shone his torch ahead of him. The beam faded out before the road did. When he looked up, he could see the Tor again, looking shadowy and majestic… and dead straight ahead.