A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [178]
Seeing a boy of about fourteen walking along Hurst Road with a greyhound on a lead, he stopped the car and got out.
‘Do you know a lane anywhere off here that leads up to a barn?’
The boy was lanky and spotty, wearing an oilskin coat that was several sizes too big. He looked gormless.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Well, it ain’t a lane so much, just a track.
I go up it with the dog sometimes.’
‘Would you take me there?’ Dan asked, and reached in his pocket and pulled out a ten-shilling note.
‘I got to get home,’ the boy said, but he was looking at the note as if he wanted it.
‘I’ll take you back there afterwards,’ Dan pleaded. ‘Look, son, it’s really important. I think someone’s locked my wife up in this barn. I’ve been trying for ages to find it, and I’m getting a bit desperate now.’
The boy’s face became more animated. ‘Cor!’ he said. ‘You mean like they kidnapped her?’
Dan nodded.
‘So will they have guns up there?’ the boy asked. He didn’t look frightened at the prospect, only excited.
But the mention of guns reminded Dan of the one in his pocket and that Trueman could have been lying when he said the women were there alone.
‘I don’t think so,’ Dan said. ‘But I’ll just have to take a look first and see how the land lies. You can hide up with your dog, and if anything happens to me, you scarper and call the police.’
‘Okay,’ the boy said eagerly, clearly not bright enough to exercise any caution. ‘I like your car, are you a gangster too?’
Dan had to smile; the Jaguar did look like a gangster’s car. A bricklayer certainly couldn’t afford one. ‘No, we’re the good guys. I’m Dan Reynolds, what’s your name?’
‘Clive,’ the boy said. ‘And my dog is called Lightning. ’Cept he isn’t like lightning, he’s really slow, that why my uncle let me have him.’
‘Come on then.’ Dan opened the car door. ‘In you get, Lightning can sit in the back.’
Dan would probably have never found the lane without help; as Clive said, it was just a track, and as the start of it was beside an old house it just looked like access to the back of it. It was very muddy too, and all Dan could hope for was that he wouldn’t get stuck.
Fortunately as they drove up it there were enough stones and weeds for the tyres to grip. It was very winding and overhung with trees. Clive remarked that hardly anyone ever came up this way because the farmer who owned it didn’t like people on his land.
‘But he died last year,’ he said. ‘They say they’re going to build houses on it soon.’
‘You’ll come to it in a minute,’ he added as they approached the top of the hill. ‘The lane goes on down to the farmhouse behind the wood. But no one lives there now.’
‘We’d better drive on past the barn first,’ Dan said. ‘Just to check if there’s anyone around. If anyone stops us we’ll make out we’re looking for our other dog that’s gone missing. Okay?’
All at once Dan saw the barn up ahead. In the grey light it looked menacing, but at least it stood in open ground, and he couldn’t see any vehicles other than a rusty old tractor. Dan slowed right down, looking about. It didn’t look as if anyone had been here for some time as there were thick weeds growing in cracks on the concrete in front of the barn and they weren’t flattened.
‘No one’s here,’ Clive said, sounding disappointed.
Dan had slowed down to a crawl. ‘There could be men inside the barn,’ he said, suddenly scared, realizing perhaps too late that he shouldn’t have asked the boy to come with him. ‘Can you run fast?’
‘I won the five hundred yards at sports day,’ Clive said proudly.
‘Is there any way back to the road other than the lane we came up?’
‘There’s a path down there.’ Clive pointed towards some bushes. ‘That’s the way I usually come up.’Course you can’t drive on it, it