Page 5

The hotel bar was busier that evening. Even so, there wasn’t much more chatter. Perhaps the pelting rain outside had helped dampen things.

Steph was relieved to see the same woman behind the bar as before. She also noted that Jock’s friend was by the fire again as Jock leant against the bar ordering a couple of ales.

“Cheers, Jackie,”

Steph heard Jock say as he grabbed his drinks and returned to his companion.

Steph sat at the bar and looked around as she waited for Jackie to finish serving a woman. The woman kept turning around to her table to double-check that she had got the order right. Steph rolled her eyes.

A few couples were talking quietly over glasses of wine. Like Jock and his friend, other small groups were enjoying some local ales. In the corner, however, two men seemed slightly apart from everyone else. They had positioned themselves so that they could see the whole room rather than having their backs to people. One of the men looked somewhat weathered but otherwise jovial; a large grin decorated his face as he talked. The other looked surly beneath his heavy black locks that were flecked with the greys a tired life brings. The surly-looking one flicked his eyes up. For a moment, Steph was caught in his gaze until he looked back down into his half-drunk pint.

“Oh, my goodness!”

Steph spun around to see Jackie, the bar lady, staring at her.

“You look as if you’ve been deep-sea diving!”

“Ah, well, I did get caught a bit in the rain,”

Steph replied, taking off her sodden jacket and hanging it on a hook under the bar.

“Here!”

Jackie thrust a clean tea towel at Steph.

“Thanks,”

Steph replied, running the towel over her long black hair.

Having given the now-soaked towel back to her host and been given a whiskey – Jackie assured Steph that it would warm her more than gin – Steph began to open up her line of questioning once more.

“I’d heard someone say they thought there were two fences,”

Jackie replied after serving a man who kept looking at his watch, then the window and then his watch again.

“But I didn’t really pay much attention to it. Just seems like one of those things that isn’t really true. Why would someone need two fences?”

That was what Steph wanted to know.

“And it is electrified on the inside. Do people know why or…?”

“I can’t say I do. I’m not really one for rambling too far off the beaten track if you get my meaning.”

Steph sighed as Jackie set about making more drinks.

A moment later, Jackie put a tray on the bar with two ales and a whiskey. Steph looked puzzled.

“Take this over to Jock and Harry; they enjoy a ramble.”

“But there are three drinks?”

“The whiskey is for you; you still look blue, and I’d rather not have you coming down with pneumonia.”

Steph smiled.

She was not a whiskey drinker.

She’d forced the first one down.

Even so, she was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. She carried the tray over to Jock and Harry, who proceeded to fuss over pulling up another chair and seating her between the two of them.

Jock was all too delighted to divulge everything he knew about the fencing and the land within.

Some of it was first-hand information, but much was second-hand blended with his and Harry’s conjecture.

Even so, it gave Steph something to chew over.

It appeared there had been a small handful who had braved getting past the fence – Jock seemed unsure on whether the second fence existed, and Steph decided to keep her own knowledge to herself – but the outcome was mixed.

One was never seen again.

Another two claimed there was nothing really in there but some wildlife project and a man wanting a bit of privacy.

“There must be housing inside, as there are a few people who work there,”

Harry said.

“Also things get delivered there. I’ve seen the trucks.”

“Work there?”

Steph frowned.

“Of course!”

Jock snorted.

“It’s a bloody great piece of land. It will need tending to in some way, especially if some rich bugger lives there. They always need people looking after them.”

Steph nodded thoughtfully.

“Do you personally know anyone who works there?”

Jock shook his head.

“Not on a personal level. But I recognise the faces. Like those two in the corner for example.”

Jock then nodded over Steph’s shoulder.

She turned to see the two men in the corner she had clocked earlier.

The surly one noticed her looking again and held her gaze until she turned away.

Steph tried to ascertain from Jock and his friend exactly what they thought the two men did, but neither man seemed certain.

They kept themselves to themselves.

They weren’t oblivious to the locals’ dislike of the freedom of the land being taken from them – dislike from those old enough to remember the fencing not being there.

They didn’t need to get involved in the dislike.

Jock and Harry’s thoughts on their jobs ranged from tree surgeons to general handymen.

Essentially, Steph gained very little in that department from them.

Jock and Harry finished their drinks, and Steph accompanied them towards the bar as they headed to the exit and their wives who would b.

“likely to take away their drinking privileges if they were too late”. It was only nine.

“Well?”

asked Jackie.

“They knew a bit.”

“Thought they might,”

Jackie smiled.

“Hey, you haven’t drunk your drink! Come on. Your body will thank you for it.”

Steph grimaced as she put the peaty liquid to her lips.

It was then that she realised the two men from the corner were leaving.

The slightly older one smiled at her as he walked past, whilst the other, despite his earlier looks, ignored her as he left.

Steph considered following them, but the rain was still hammering outside, and she had rather little thought about what she would achieve by following them then.

“Do you know anything about those two?”

Steph asked.

“Which two?”

“The two that just left. The older-looking one with the smile and the other who looks like he doesn’t know what a smile is.”

“Ah, those two. Not really. I know they both work on the land on the other side of the fence, but everything they do seems to be a secret. That or it’s really as boring as they make out it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, on the odd occasion I have spoken to them, they just claim that they look after the land. Just like any forestry commission. They don’t come here often so it’s hard to strike up any sort of relationship.”

“Do you believe them?”

Jackie shrugged.

“They haven’t really given me a reason not to. People tried to ask them about the death of the boy though. They seemed as upset as anyone else but were as full of questions themselves about it all. That was probably the most I have heard them talk to me in actual fact. They didn’t know anything themselves though and it was not like I knew anything, so it was hardly a conversation destined to go anywhere.”

Steph nodded again and, her mind distracted, sipped her whiskey. She took too big a sip and coughed. Jackie laughed.

“So where do they get in?”

Steph asked.

“What do you mean?”

Jackie frowned.

“To the fenced-off area. There must be some sort of gate or entrance or something.”

“Oh, I see what you mean. There is meant to be some sort of gate thing – I am only going on what others have said – about five miles from here. If you take the main road south out of the village, you will see a road to your right after a few minutes of driving. It has no signs or anything because it just leads to the gate, or so people tell me. I obviously pass the road if I drive out, but I’ve never bothered going down it. Others have though. Curiosity and all that. They say they always get turned away at the gate.”

“What kind of gate.”

“Some big metal security gate with cameras and whatnot, where deliveries come in and out.”

“Deliveries?”

Jackie laughed.

“Yes, deliveries! I’m not sure people that live in there go and sweep their local supermarket for their weekly shop.”

Steph nodded. That made sense at least. Although much of what she had gathered so far did not make sense. Even the stuff that did, did not really join together in any succinct way.

She decided that she had two potential options going forward. She could get someone to drive her out to the gate to investigate it. Or she could find some way of getting past the fence. One way would see her definitely turned away. The other could see her done for trespassing as well as, in a roundabout way, turned away. She knocked back her whiskey and sucked it in between her teeth. She was getting the hang of this drink.