Bricks and Mortality: Campbell & Carter 3 Read Free Page B

fall into that category. Then there were the people such as the travellers who didn’t want to talk to the police, whether they knew anything or not. Occasionally, one pearl in a whole bed of oysters, there was someone who actually knew something and was prepared to come forward. Jess crossed her fingers and hoped they found such a witness soon.
     
    One other person had been present, but unnoticed, and had left shortly before Jess’s arrival on the scene. Alfie Darrow had set out at first light to check his snares. Alfie was not a countryman, although he’d lived most of his life in Weston St Ambrose. But his grandfather had been skilled in country ways and it was he who had shown his grandson how to make a simple snare. Alfie’s grandfather had been the male presence in the family when Alfie was a child. His father had run off when Alfie was in the cradle. There was an ancient rabbit warren extending over a large area in a field on the edge of a copse of tangled native woodland, which formed a border between the single-track lane called Long Lane and the ‘rabbit field’ as Alfie knew it. Over the years the rabbits had made little paths all over the copse and through the undergrowth, each one leading back to their warren. They were creatures of habit. As they scurried back along these narrow tracks to their burrows, they had to pass under a wire fence half buried in nettles, thistles and dock, and it was to this fence Alfie fixed his most successful snares, just where the rabbits emerged.
    Today, when he’d set out, he’d soon become aware of the activity around Key House. The smell of burning hung in the air. From time to time a flame would shoot upward into the lightening sky as some still-remaining beam or upper floorboards of the house fell victim to the remorseless progress of the fire. Alfie concealed himself behind the untidy hedgerow by the road and watched it all, spending the most entertaining and exciting couple of hours he could remember. The fire crew were the real-life action heroes of the computer games that were Alfie’s favoured amusement. Uniformed and helmeted, they bellowed instructions and warnings to one another as they played the hoses over the fire, and sent great jets of water into the air. When the burning remains of the upper floor crashed down into the interior, filling the air with a meteor shower of golden sparks, Alfie had to press both hands to his mouth to stop himself whooping aloud with joy. The water fell on to the crackling timbers below and they cracked and spat like cornered wild beasts. It struck the hot stones of the building with a great hiss, and sent up clouds of steam to mingle with the smoke. Alfie’s mouth now hung open in wonder. Burning embers flew across the road like rockets. It smelled like Bonfire Night. Alfie continued to watch it all entranced, heedless of his cramped hiding place and the awkward way his limbs were bent to squeeze into it.
    Then the first police car had arrived, with two uniformed officers, and put an end to the fun. With the arrival of the law on the scene, Alfie decided it was time for him to go. He was not unknown to the local police and he thought he recognised one of the coppers. The plod would recognise him, if he spotted him, and the next thing Alfie knew, he’d be accused of starting the fire. The police were like that, in Alfie’s view, they grabbed the first familiar face and pinned whatever they could on its owner. He could come back the next day to check the snares. He crept out of his den, stretched his stiffened limbs, and set off over the field home. What a story he had to tell. If he’d waited a little longer until the body had been discovered, he’d have had an even more dramatic tale.

Chapter 2
    The best laid plans of mice and men seldom work out. Had they been contemporaries, Ian Carter thought, the Scottish bard who penned the words might have had him in mind.
    Sitting in his one and only armchair with a mug of instant