Guardians Of The Haunted Moor (19 page)

“
I suppose so.” Gideon’s head was spinning a bit with all these
suppositions. Pendower was a different man on his own turf, though,
joining the dots with a confidence that drew Gideon helplessly
along with him. “What’s the significance there?”

“
The oldest word for barley or corn in the whole English
language is B-E-O-W. It’s a direct anagram, and the pronunciation
wouldn’t have been far off. I never thought about checking into
John Bowe’s name because John is so ordinary, but...”

“
You have to be kidding. John Barleycorn?”

“
Exactly. Isn’t that
marvellous
?”

“
If the poor bastard hadn’t been horribly murdered,
yes.”

“
And to top it all off...” Pendower flipped open another volume
at a bookmarked place and tapped the page triumphantly. “Carnysen
farm itself—Carn Ysen, the hill of the corn. John Barleycorn of
Corn Hill farm. What more do you want, Sergeant Frayne?”

Gideon
sat back and folded his arms. “I’d like some evidence, for
starters.” He waited until Pendower had turned a pre-explosive
shade of puce. “But I’ll admit this is interesting stuff. Do you
fancy coming along with me to check out another angle?”

“
Well—yes, of course.” Pendower looked mollified, then frowned.
“But Lawrence doesn’t want me involved with the real
investigation.”

“
Who says what you’ve been doing isn’t real? Besides, this
isn’t something I’d put before Lawrence, not until I know more
about it myself.” Gideon recounted his ideas about the torn scrap
of paper, aware as he did so that Pendower’s eyebrows were on the
climb. “So I’d like to pop along and see old man Baragwanath, if
he’s still running the shop. Just in case.”

Pendower stared at him. “You really are in no position at all
to lecture
me
about tenuous connections, Sergeant Frayne.”

***

Gideon
hadn’t taken Pendower along just to give him a breath of fresh air.
The sudden arrival of one police officer might be enough to daunt
your average guilty soul into a reaction, but lawyers were a
different matter. He ushered Pendower ahead of him into the dingy
little office and made sure to follow hard on his heels, the pair
of them a polite, nicely spoken brick wall. “Good afternoon. I’d
like a word with Mr Baragwanath, please.”

The lady
behind the desk jumped so hard that her calculator went flying.
“You can’t!”

“
Is he out of the office?”

“
No. I mean, yes, he is. He’s dead.”

Gideon
wasn’t in the business of frightening innocent receptionists. He
picked up the calculator and handed it back, trusting that the
noise and the poor woman’s high-pitched shriek had done their work.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“
Oh, it wasn’t recent.” She composed herself with an effort.
“The firm’s in the hands of his partner now, Mr Keast.
But—”

But nothing.
Gideon waited. The
scrabbling sounds in the office next door, the unmistakeable
slamming of metal file-cabinet drawers, eventually stopped. Then
the door creaked open.

Oh,
dear. This was no bloody use. Gideon sank down on one of the
rickety chairs and indicated to Pendower that he should do the
same. He vaguely remembered Baragwanath as a stocky, hard-faced old
sod, the one you went to for dodgy conveyancing deals or a quick,
dirty divorce. Just for once it would be nice if the world’s
badness could present itself like that, in an easily readable
format. The man who’d just crept out of the office was barely five
foot tall, and yellow-faced with fear. Just for once—today, for
example, when Gideon was nearing the forty-eight-hour mark without
his daughter—it would have been nice to have someone to beat up.
“Mr Keast, I presume,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “All hell’s
broken loose at Carnysen Farm, as you know. Tell me exactly what
this firm’s connection is to the Bowes, and all this will be over.
Come on, sir,” he added kindly. “You don’t want to carry this
around anymore, do you?”

For a
second he thought the man would tough it out. As Baragwanath’s
underling, he must have had some practice. Then the receptionist
made an unsubtle dash for the door, and to Gideon’s horror, Keast
began to cry.

Chapter Nine

“
I never wanted to do it. But John Bowe offered him
so much
, and he said I’d
get my share of it when the sale went through. I’ve slaved my whole
life in this dump. Baragwanath never even made me a full partner,
you know. I was just a name on the letterhead.”

Keast
stopped for breath, and to grab a tissue from the box Pendower had
handed him. He’d let himself be guided back into his office, and,
once seated behind his desk, had regained a little composure. He
was still a sorry sight. Gideon was glad of Pendower’s presence,
scratching away in his little notebook as usual. He had the feeling
he was going to need a witness. “What sale, Mr Keast?”

“
Carnysen Farm. You must know that already, or why are you
here?” Keast blew his nose. “Shit. I always knew we’d get done.
Bloody typical of Baragwanath to up and die just when it all went
through. Left me holding the baby. I was starting to think no
amount of money could be worth it, and I’m right, aren’t I? You’ve
come to finish the game.”

“
For the sake of honesty, I don’t know what you’re talking
about. You’re not under arrest, so I can’t read you your rights,
but I will warn you that the sergeant here will take down every
little detail of what you say, and it will be held against you if
it’s bad.” Pendower shot him a look that plainly told him he was
throwing away his advantage, but Gideon couldn’t keep up a front of
bullying vagueness for long. Instead he did what he was best at. He
leaned forward, examined Keast’s face. “You’re obviously miserable.
You’re not a bad person, are you? Why on earth are you behaving
like one?”

For a moment he thought Keast was about to throw himself
across the desk and into his arms. The poor bastard buried his face
in a tissue, banged the palm of his hand against the cheap woodwork
in a surge of grief. “I’m not! I wasn’t, anyway. It was just...
so
much
.”

“
All right. So much money for the sale of Carnysen Farm, which
I didn’t even know was on the market. Tell me why.”

“
Because of the purchasers. The confidentiality agreements they
made us sign.” Keast showed signs of recovering himself at the
thought of them. “My God, you really don’t know anything, do you?
Why am I talking to you?”

“
Because people have died. In my village! I won’t have that.
And when I make the connection back to you, you’ll wish to God
you’d taken the chance to tell me all about it in your own
words.”

Keast
swallowed audibly. “I don’t know where to start.”

“
The purchasers. Who was offering so much money for an old
Cornish farm that you and your boss sold yourselves out to get a
slice of it?”

“
It was him. Baragwanath sold out. He only told me when it got
too big for him to manage on his own, and then he offered me... he
offered...”

“
I don’t need the price of your soul. Just a name. I’ll bear in
mind that you volunteered the information.”

“
Oh, God. They’re a company called Mitchell Shale
Gas.”

“
Shale gas,” Gideon echoed. He sat back in his chair. “Wait.
Shale gas, as in... For Christ’s sake.
Fracking
?”

“
Yes. I hadn’t even heard of it until the old man told me. I
swear.”

Pendower
snapped his notebook shut. “Bollocks,” he unexpectedly announced.
“Gideon, this joker’s wasting our time.”

“
I’d love to think so. Er—Mr Keast is offering a voluntary
statement, so keep it civil.”

“
Yes. Sorry. But there is no natural shale or oil in Cornwall.
The geology rules it out. Not to mention that Carnysen’s smack in
the middle of the Bodmin AONB. You can’t get permission to build a
garden shed, let alone blast holes in the earth for
oil.”

Gideon
turned back to Keast. His skin was crawling. “Tell me he’s
right.”

“
It’s an isolated pocket of shale rock, packed with organic
matter. Mitchell does surveys for radon gas too, and they found it
by accident. It’s a rich one—untold resources, right underneath the
farm. Joe and Bligh Bowe still didn’t want to sell up. Mitchell
hired us to make them the offer, and...” He chuckled unsteadily.
“So much for the old farming family. The next day John Bowe was
here in the office with the deeds in his hands.”

“
This is still ridiculous. Mitchell would have had to jump
through a thousand hoops from the council for planning permission.
And even if they’d somehow managed that, there’s the—”

“
The Bodmin AONB?” Keast was calming down. Suspects often did,
once well launched into a confession, their worst fears realised
and their desire to tell their side of the story strong. “You’re a
bit naive, aren’t you, Sergeant? If there’s a good side to people,
you’ll try and find it. You say
council
and
planning permission
like they were
magic words.”

“
Tell me why they’re not.”

“
Don’t mix up an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty with a
National Park. It hasn’t got anything like the same legal
protection. Old Farmer Bowe—John’s grandfather—didn’t like the idea
of being bound hand and foot for planning consent back in the
1940s, so he just demanded Carnysen be left out when the AONB was
set up, and the Bowes were a big noise around Bodmin back then, so
the local authority allowed it. And as for your councillors and
planners today, Baragwanath knew the right ones to approach. What’s
the matter—did you think people like that couldn’t be bought?
Anyone can be bought, Sergeant. Anyone.”

A silence fell in the room. Shafts of dusty light drifted
solemnly through the cobwebbed windows. Baragwanath, Keast & Co
hadn’t attracted much in the way of big business over the years.
Mitchell’s proposition must have hit them like a solid-gold brick.
If someone had turned up on Gideon’s doorstep and offered him
Tamsyn back, what might
he
not have done?

Keast
was right. He was naive. He always looked for reasons, human
mechanisms of love or loss, to explain criminal behaviour. And
often it boiled down to sheer greed. “Right,” he said hoarsely. “I
need you to tell me now—has this deal with the devil gone
through?”

“
Finally. Two days ago, the very day that...” Keast gave a
shudder. “The day that John was killed. I had to act very slowly
after Baragwanath died, make sure nothing happened fast enough to
alert the AONB authorities. But yes, the land has been sold. And
the grand thing about all this is that... now I’ve done it, now
I’ve sold out this land and the moor and all the people who love
it, I stand to come away with...” He took up a pen and tapped it on
the desk top, a short, bitter tattoo. “With nothing. Even if you
and your sidekick hadn’t come along.”

Light
dawned on Gideon. “You’re being blackmailed.”

“
Oh, spectacularly. By Councillor Robin Walsh, if you want
final proof of the virtues of our noble town leaders. What—do you
think I’d have said a word to you now, if I’d had anything left to
lose?”

Gideon’s
phone began to ring. With a sense of unreality, he saw his
brother’s name flashing on the screen. He cut the call off and
stood up. “Right. I don’t actually know how to deal with you, Mr
Keast, but I’ll start by asking you to come down to the station
with me so I can find somebody who does. All I care about is
getting this monstrosity stopped.”

Pendower stood up too. “It
is
a monstrosity. Gideon, this was Lee’s vision—the
dark fields, all the trees gone. And no water—all it would take is
for the Mitchell company’s drilling or blasting to hit an aquifer
rock, and...”

“
All right, all right. I’m not gonna let it happen.” His damn
phone was ringing again. This was twice in recent memory that
Ezekiel had called him insistently. Perhaps he was just making up
for the ten years when they hadn’t spoken to one another at all,
but... “Pendower, keep an eye on Mr Keast. I’m going to have to
take this call.”

He let himself out onto the landing. The offices were poised
above a kebab shop, and the lunchtime smells that would normally
have enticed him now made his guts lurch.
Hard to breathe the darkness. Everything’s black now. The
leaves are withered, and the moor’s gone, and there’s no water, no
water anywhere. No fields, no trees...
“What is it, Zeke? I’m really busy.”

“
Mother’s disappeared from Roselands.”

“
What?” Gideon had to struggle to extract sense from his
brother’s words. They were plain enough, but he hadn’t heard that
ragged edge of fear in them, the distant threat of tears, since
before their decade’s estrangement. “Don’t be daft. She’ll have got
in a taxi and come over to Dark to visit Lee.”

“
I’m
in
Dark.
That was the first thing I thought too. Nobody’s answering at the
house. And Dev Bowe just accosted me in the street—I’m wearing my
dog collar—and said he was possessed, and I think he’s
right.”