Tainted Ground by Margaret Duffy Page A

rusting farm machinery, piles of bricks, coils of wire and rubbish and a vast pile of manure surrounded by a moat of stinking effluent that the now weak light from the torch failed to show up. We arrived in the lane filthy of foot and reeking.
    â€˜Which way?’ I wondered aloud.
    â€˜To the left,’ Patrick said.
    â€˜Could it be that the Manleys and Davies blundered into some kind of criminal set-up that Stonelake’s got up here and paid the price?’
    â€˜I’m beginning to believe that something like that is perfectly possible. Some price, though.’
    Ten minutes later we walked, nay squelched, into the farm entrance. There was no sign of the dog.
    â€˜Whistle it,’ I suggested. ‘Do we know its name?’
    â€˜No.’
    Patrick whistled, one of those thumb-and-finger ones that few women have ever mastered.
    No dog.
    â€˜It might not be used to being whistled,’ I said lamely.
    The torch was almost dead and we switched it off to save what was left of the battery, walking round the side of the house and towards the tractor shed where we had come upon Carrick and Lynn. Then, a dark shape detached itself from the deeper shadow within and crept towards us, tail waving hopefully. Arriving at Patrick’s feet it cringed there, tail still brushing the ground, and he bent down to stroke it. As his hand went down its back it drew away, whimpering.
    â€˜A couple of pellets must have hit it,’ he said. ‘I did wonder. I only managed to knock up the gun at the last second. That makes two of us, mate. The vet, then, straight away.’
    â€˜The car’s in the village,’ I reminded him.
    â€˜Shit. So it is.’
    The dog left us and went back into the cart shed, sniffing at the bales of hay. Then, judging by the noise, it began to scratch and dig at the base of them.
    â€˜God, don’t say it’s found another corpse,’ Patrick said.
    We hefted away some of the top bales, still could not see into a space between them and a wall, and moved some more.
    â€˜No, it’s just sacks of animal feed,’ Patrick said, having clambered up to look by the last glimmerings of the torch. ‘He must be hungry. No, hang on …’ And with a scramble he had disappeared. Moments later, ‘There’s a whole pile of horse tack under a tarpaulin here. Saddles, bridles and driving harness, which is super black patent-leather stuff. Worth hundreds, if not thousands of pounds. I reckon this is stolen property.’ His head appeared above the bales. ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’
    â€˜Stonelake is a crook after all and not just a horrible man.’
    â€˜Yes, and I can arrest him. But only when we’ve got ourselves some transport.’
    The torch finally went out.
    Lynn Outhwaite arrived, doggedly, together with an area car, a different one, and with typical Lancastrian decisiveness as well as enormous loyalty to her boss, suggested politely that she dealt with Stonelake and that the dog ought to go to the RSPCA as there could well be a prosecution there too. She pointed out that the business of the twenty pounds ought not to have happened although she realized that it had occurred before we found the tack, which she thought might fit descriptions of items stolen from an equestrian centre in Chipping Sodbury several weeks previously.
    Packed off to bed for the second time that night we handed over the shotgun and ammunition, accepted a lift back to the village, drove into Bath and gave the dog into the care of the duty RSPCA inspector. I tried to erase a lingering memory of sad brown eyes and drooping tail as it was lifted into a cage in the van, and failed.

Five
    A t eight thirty the following morning Patrick rang Tamsin Roper, who lived in the other studio flat at the mill, and asked when it would be convenient for him to ask her a few questions. He was lucky, as undoubtedly had been the case with the timing of our