Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕

being away on holiday, but amplified. There was little furniture. The painted wooden walls were bare, floors too. Except for the graffiti.

Red and black and green swirls, twists, lines and curves, everywhere. The floor, the walls, the ceilings, all ruined. No words or pictures, just chaos. There were streaks and bare spots and smears and translucent areas where attempts had been made to scrub the paint away, and cleaning materials were in every room, reeking of it. In each room, Crabtree ranted as if seeing the carnage for the first time.

In the living room, Bennet noted an oblong section of the wooden floor that was a little less scuffed than the rest of the room. Where a sofa had been. Crabtree was quick to explain: ‘They ruined my sofa. And it was the first sofa me and my wife bought for our house. Vandals.’

In the kitchen were a set of four wooden chairs against a wall. ‘Kitchen table, oak. Lovely. Someone gouged a load of swear words into it. My wife’s mother gave us that table, and I had to smash it up and burn it.’

There were two bedrooms, one with a single bed and one bearing a double. Both were just metal frames. ‘I burned the mattresses and covers. Dirty scumbags shat on them. I couldn’t use them again. How could I? I burned all the stuff, and I burned everything they left behind, all their nasty trash. There was loads of it, like squatters had lived here for months. Doesn’t this make you angry?’

No, just confused. He tried to picture Lorraine here, a maniacal grin on her face as she smashed and graffitied, but it wouldn’t come. Too far-fetched. Had she watched in horror as the others, in revenge for being snubbed by the village, let loose their inner wild child? It was the only answer that made sense.

Unless Lorraine was no longer the woman he knew. Did he want such a person reunited with Joe?

Crabtree grabbed his arm. ‘Come see their stuff.’

Bennet shrugged the hand away. ‘No. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I need to be leaving. Call the damn police about this.’

But outside, he stopped, and when Crabtree turned to walk around the back of the ranch, he followed to a brick annex with a heavy iron door that was fire-blackened on the inside, like the bare brick walls. The space had no lighting, so Crabtree used the torch on his phone to light up a concrete floor covered in ash and survived paper fragments, twisted metal and springs from a sofa, blackened nails and pieces of metal from other items. It all still gave off heat.

‘You burned it inside after all. Hardly a shrine now,’ Bennet said, aware that he was lashing out at the farmer unfairly but unable to prevent it.

‘Piss off,’ Crabtree spat. ‘There was nowhere else. Look, this is all the shit and trash they left behind. Maybe you can get something from it, some evidence these scumbags did this. Cos I know they’ll just say the ranch was fine when they left.’

Bennet strolled through the mess, kicking at things, turning others. He bent in amongst the ash and burned wood and spiky metal and paper that disintegrated under his shoe. He bent down and picked up a sliver of white paper with the typed letters ‘EXT – STR’. He figured he knew what it was. ‘EXT –’ was movie terminology for exterior, meaning a scene shot outdoors. Possibly on a STReet. He’d found a piece of a script. The film crew had definitely been here. But it didn’t prove they’d caused the destruction Crabtree was blaming them for. Maybe the ranch had been fine when they left.

Or was that his brain trying to defend his son’s mother?

Bennet’s ears pricked up at the sound of an approaching vehicle.

28

It was a Mercedes G-class four-by-four, coming at speed and dancing on its suspension. Clearly recognising it, Crabtree ran ahead to greet it. Liam knew the farmer planned to say something in secret to the driver, but he didn’t care.

The driver was Councillor Richard Turner. When he exited, he was careful not to get his fine shoes dirty. It seemed obvious that Turner had heard about Bennet’s visit to Crabtree, possibly from the man himself, and rushed over. Just like when he’d learned of Bennet’s meeting with Anika Jenkins.

‘I told him I’d cleaned the place of their foul memory,’ Crabtree told the councillor. Turner gave a slow nod and threw his arms wide.

‘Now, detective, what do you think of your film crew?’

‘A little over the top, but I understand their reaction. If they’d been carried out of town on a rail.’

Crabtree looked puzzled; Turner didn’t. An educated man, he knew what Liam referred to. Riding the rail was a form of punishment popular in the USA in the 18th and 19th centuries, in which undesirables were carried about town on a rail, parading them before they were evicted. Liam had read about it in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

‘If these people felt unwanted,’ Turner said, ‘that was on them. We’ve had this discussion and I have no mind to repeat it. As you can see, your girlfriend and her people have gone. My village would relax, but there’s an annoying off-duty policeman slinking about, asking questions.’

It was as good as an admission. Bennet had come to suspect that the film crew had suffered more than just a wall of silence. They’d been run out of the village.

‘Wait a minute,’ Crabtree said, staring at Bennet. ‘Girlfriend? I thought you said they were criminals.’

Turner grinned. ‘Ah, our friend here is on a personal mission, not police business. Look, detective, your film crew were bothersome, here for nothing but selling a story. No one here cared and they certainly have no interest in where these people went. They came, they vandalised this pretty home, and then they left. Good riddance. I’m sorry you’re having problems with your girlfriend, but that’s no reason to cause trouble.